Goodness was Jeanne Marie Laskas’s article about coal miners interesting. It’s 5 years old, but I don’t remember hearing about it before. Two snippets

When you’re inside the earth, this is what it sounds like. The earth isn’t some stupid rock, isn’t inert, isn’t just a solid mass for people to stand on. The earth is always moving, constantly stretching and squawking and repositioning itself like anyone else trying to get comfortable.

“Down here,” I said to Foot, “it’s like you’re away from all your problems. Do you think that’s part of the allure for you guys, that you escape your problems down here?”

He looked at me, laughed. “This is our problem,” he said.

There is good news. Every once in a while you find the good news, or hear about the good news: A glory hole! Come on over. A glory hole is a place where the “top” has opened up, forming a dome. Heaven. You can stand. Thank the Lord! Guys hang out in glory holes, Scotty stretching, Sparky rolling his neck around. Standing in a glory hole, you can feel your spine thank you even as you work on denying the fact that a glory hole is, technically, a cave-in, a place where the top fell down, maybe yesterday or maybe the day before.