And I said, 'A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could've had you?' And he said, 'Because when he sings ... even the birds stop to listen.

I'm not prepared for Rue's family. Her parents, whose faces are still fresh with sorrow. Her fiver younger siblings, who resemble her so closely. The slight builds, the luminous brown eyes. They form a flock of small dark birds.

As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.

They are closing the mine in two weeks, they say. Six days a week bumping down in the gondola, pecking out the rocks and hauling them back up, doing it again the next day for twenty-seven years, one cave-in, three thin raises, and a failed strike. Where am I going to go every day, what am I going to do with all that sunshine?

We've come a long, long way. We haven't killed a coal miner in a state of Illinois coal mine for two consecutive years.

Every coal miner knows that that's the very last resort, to barricade yourself somewhere. You don't want to do that unless everything else fails.