Selections from new books:

From "Wanamie Colliery," in Anthracite Lives:

     The explosions that open a vein of coal for mining also disturb the ground where the vein runs, compromising the stability of the earth-structure supporting the mine, as well as raising dust to coat a miner's lungs, and releasing noxious gases, such as methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide.  The general term for gases formed in coal mines is "damp."  The combination of gases remaining after a mine fire or explosion is called "after damp."  Methane develops from the natural decomposition of coal and is called "fire damp," because it can feed underground fires and, when combined with surface air, becomes explosive.  Hydrogen sulfide, another natural compound, is "stink damp."  Carbon monoxide, "white damp," is formed by the slow combustion of coal deposits in limited air and, when absorbed by hemoglobin to the exclusion of oxygen, is fatal in minutes.  Fire and breathing yield carbon dioxide, called "black damp."
     Air shafts are sunk to ventilate a mine.  A fan at the head of the shaft draws out the noxious gases while sucking in fresh air at every opening of the mine to the world above ground.  At the Lackawanna Mine Tour in Scranton's McDade Park, the system is demonstrated by having a girl stand under an air shaft while the fan is running.  Her hair stands on end.
     It is essential that a mine have more than one shaft, for human passage as well as ventilation  The Avondale mine disaster of 1869, in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, resulted from the fact that a single shaft carried miners into and out of the mine and was also their air shaft.  When an engine spark started a fire at the base of the shaft, flames swept up that single shaft and trapped more than a hundred miners, who were suffocated as fire consumed their oxygen.

From the essay, "Cuthbert's Island," the title work of the book, Cuthbert's Island:

     In the year 1356 a Welsh anchorite, or solitary, produced a manuscript known as Llyfr yr Ancr, "The Book of the Anchorite."  The anchorite-scribe was living at Llanddewifrefi, a church in Ceredigion dedicated to St. David.  Among the several works included in this Welsh manuscript anthology is Cysegrlan Fuchedd ("Holy Living") or Ymborth yr Enaid ("Food of the Soul"), a work attributed to a Dominican Friar.  It treats first of the seven deadly sins and their varieties, and then of the love of God, to which the soul freed from sin is led.  The soul is welcomed into the friendship of the indwelling Trinity, the power of the Father, the wisdom of the Son, and the goodness of the Spirit.  Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, presents God to humanity with a human face.  This revelation is celebrated in a section titled, Pryd y Mab, "The Son's Face."  It is a word-painting of the twelve-year old Jesus, who tended to His Father's business by discoursing with elders at the Temple.  The style of the passage is that of imaginative symbolic descriptions found in medieval Welsh and Irish prose romances, suggestive, too, of the dazzling brilliance of mosaics or the calligraphic exuberance of manuscript portraits, as in The Book of Kells.  Jesus  is shown as a boy with golden hair, like fleeces of worked molten gold.  The spectaclar beauty of this description is a showing of love, and the extravagance of the language and imagery directs the mind beyond the body to spirit, to the primal beauty of God that surpasses any physical beauty.