“
Minutes, foolish mortal, are the base mineral
that you must not let go of without extracting their gold!
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)
“
So this was where lust was satisfied. If I'd been an old-time miner I'd have asked for my gold nugget back.
”
”
Ava Gardner (Ava: My Story)
“
Some miners’ wives take in washing and make more money than their husbands do. In every gold rush from this one to the Klondike, the suppliers and service industries will gather up the dust while ninety-nine per cent of the miners go home with empty pokes.
”
”
John McPhee (Assembling California (Annals of the Former World Book 4))
“
Those Who From Heaven To Earth Came". They landed on Earth, colonized it, mining the Earth for gold and other minerals, establishing a spaceport in what today is the Iraq-Iran area, and lived in a kind of idealistic society as a small colony.
They returned when Earth was more populated and genetically interfered in our indigenous DNA to create a slave-race to work their mines, farms, and other enterprises in Sumeria, which was the so-called Cradle of Civilization in out-dated pre-1980s school history texts. They created Man, Homo Sapiens, through genetic manipulation with themselves and ape man Homo Erectus.
”
”
Zecharia Sitchin
“
I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one's life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is.
”
”
Amy Poehler
“
Although they probably know that some children were used and some children are used as miners, most adults are ignorant of the chocolate industry’s use of minors.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
“
Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the Great Work have a triple meaning: they are religious, philosophical and natural. Philosophical gold in religion is the Absolute and Supreme Reason; in philosophy, it is truth; in visible nature, it is the sun: in the subterranean and mineral world, it is the purest and most perfect gold. Hence the search after the Great Work is called the Search for the Absolute, and this work itself is termed the operation of the sun.
”
”
Éliphas Lévi (Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual)
“
I’m a miner, and I’m always dirty, because I’m constantly digging. Am I shoveling for gold? Hardly. I’m unearthing this hearty land searching for the next great American novel. If I dig deep enough, I’m sure to find it.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Seriously delirious, but not at all serious)
“
Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn. The trouble with learning the backgrounds is that you end up wanting to deck somebody, possibly Bettina Cook and the horse she rode in on. (Not happening. Her dad being head of the football boosters and major donor.) Once upon a time we had our honest living that was God and country. Then the world turns and there’s no God anymore, no country, but it’s still in your blood that coal is God’s gift and you want to believe. Because otherwise it was one more scam in the fuck-train that’s railroaded over these mountains since George Washington rode in and set his crew to cutting down our trees. Everything that could be taken is gone. Mountains left with their heads blown off, rivers running black. My people are dead of trying, or headed that way, addicted as we are to keeping ourselves alive. There’s no more blood here to give, just war wounds. Madness. A world of pain, looking to be killed.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
You Have to Be Very Careful”
You have to be careful telling things.
Some ears are tunnels.
Your words will go in and get lost in the dark.
Some ears are flat pans like the miners used
looking for gold.
What you say will be washed out with the stones.
You look for a long time till you find the right ears.
Till then, there are birds and lamps to be spoken to,
a patient cloth rubbing shine in circles,
and the slow, gradually growing possibility
that when you find such ears
they already know.
”
”
Naomi Shihab Nye (Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (A Far Corner Book))
“
Mining might convey an image of industry or technology, but I found this was not the case in the Congo. In the so-called ‘mines’, a brutally primitive process was in place involving what was effectively slave labour clawing minerals from the earth so that they could be shipped to eager cash buyers in the developed world. President Kabila headed what was effectively a cobalt and diamond cartel, while two rival factions (one backed by neighbouring Uganda, the other by Rwanda) divided up the rest of the country’s resources. Crudely, Uganda got gold and timber, and Rwanda got tin and coltan – a mineral used in mobile telephones.
”
”
Tim Butcher (Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart)
“
Ideals of liberty , freedom and righteousness do not prosper in the 20th century excepts they coincide with oil, rubber, gold, diamond, coal, iron, sugar, coffee, and such other minerals and products desired by the privileged, capitalists and leaders who control the system of government.
”
”
Marcus Garvey (Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey)
“
Blinding, mineral, shattering silence. You hear nothing but the quiet crunch of stones underfoot. An implacable, definitive silence, like a transparent death. Sky of a perfectly detached blue. You advance with eyes down, reassuring yourself sometimes with a silent mumbling. Cloudless sky, limestone slabs filled with presence: silence nothing can sidestep. Silence fulfilled, vibrant immobility, tensed like a bow. There’s the silence of early morning. For long routes in autumn you have to start very early. Outside everything is violet, the dim light slanting through red and gold leaves. It is an expectant silence. You walk softly among huge dark trees, still swathed in traces of blue night. You are almost afraid of awakening. Everything whispering quietly. There’s the silence of walks through the snow, muffled footsteps under a white sky. All around you nothing moves. Things and even time itself are iced up, frozen solid in silent immobility. Everything is stopped, unified, thickly padded. A watching silence, white, fluffy, suspended as if in parentheses.
”
”
Frédéric Gros (A Philosophy of Walking)
“
24 carat gold is a pure naturally occurring yellow metal. There are 4 basic shades of gold alloys: yellow gold, white gold, rose gold and green gold. A huge range of other colored golds are also possible including red (gold and copper), grey (gold, iron and copper), purple (gold and aluminum), blue (gold and iron) and black (gold and cobalt), depending on the amounts of different metals alloyed together.
”
”
Sybrina Durant (Magical Elements of the Periodic Table Presented Alphabetically by the Metal Horn Unicorns)
“
There is more treasure in people than in all the gold and mineral mines of the world.
”
”
Wesam Fawzi
“
This is the gaming gold rush, and I’m going to be the man selling shovels to the miners.
”
”
Kit Falbo (The Crafting of Chess)
“
ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
”
”
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
“
The lover of books is a miner, searching for gold.
”
”
Kathleen Norris
“
He dumped its contents out on the tablecloth: a gold ring, a gold nugget, and a gold signet seal. Francisco pointed to each. I told you that this was the secret of happiness. The three objects belonged to a rich collector. When he was asleep they argued all the time. The gold ring declared it was better than the other two because miners had risked their lives to find it. The gold signet said it was better than the other two because it had sealed the messages of a king. They argued day and night, until the ring said. ‘Lets ask God’, He will decide which of us is the best. The other two agreed, and so they approached the Almighty. Each made its claim for being superior. God listened carefully, and when they were done, he said, ‘ I cant settle your dispute, I’m sorry. The gold signet seal grew angry ‘What do you mean, you cant settle it? You’re God.’ That’s the problem said God. I don’t see a ring, a nugget and a seal. All I see is gold.
”
”
Deepak Chopra (Why Is God Laughing?: The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism)
“
Analysis of termite hills has become a highly successful means of prospecting for mineral deposits, since the termites are sampling the geology at some depth. There is indeed gold in some of them thar hills.
”
”
Michael Welland (Sand: The Never-Ending Story)
“
As the seemingly well-intentioned French journalist spoke about Africa’s scarcity and its limited resources, Nine smiled to himself almost condescendingly. He considered such statements an absolute joke. Africa did not, nor did it ever have, limited resources.
Nine knew something the journalist obviously didn’t: Africa was the most abundantly resourced continent on the planet bar none. Like the despots who ruled much of the region, and the foreign governments who propped them up, he knew there was more than enough wealth in Africa’s mineral resources such as gold, diamonds and oil – not to mention the land that nurtured these resources – for every man, woman and child.
He thought it unfortunate Africa had never been able to compete on a level playing field. The continent’s almost unlimited resources were the very reason foreigners had meddled in African affairs for the past century or more. Nine knew it was Omega’s plan, and that of other greedy organizations, to siphon as much wealth as they could out of vulnerable Third World countries, especially in Africa.
The same organizations had the formula down pat: they indirectly started civil wars in mineral-rich regions by providing arms to opposing local factions, and sometimes even helped to create famines, in order to destabilize African countries. This made the targeted countries highly vulnerable to international control. Once the outside organizations had divided and conquered, they were then able to plunder the country’s resources.
”
”
James Morcan (The Ninth Orphan (The Orphan Trilogy, #1))
“
a counter in front of my stock, and here I placed my scales and weighed the gold that was offered in payment. The men were as prodigal as all miners are, and denied themselves nothing so long as they had gold to pay for it. So my stock gradually increased in gold and diminished in merchandise, and the men were well fed and comfortable.
”
”
Walter Scott (The Greatest Sea Novels and Tales of All Time)
“
Our public lands contain a wealth of natural resources—trees, oil, gas, coal, gold, silver, copper, iron, zinc, and many other minerals, onshore and off. We own these lands. Yet under current law the corporations control their extraction and pay very little to Uncle Sam for what revenues and profits they reap. Sometimes, in fact, they pay just about nothing.
”
”
Ralph Nader (The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future)
“
gonna need this if you go out on the next set of rounds.” “Apart from the weather, how is it out there?” said Bob. “What kind of activity is taking place around town?” “Awful quiet,” replied Fred, shrugging out of his own bulky slicker and carrying it over to hang it on a peg next to where Bob had hung his earlier. “The storm’s got everybody sort of hunkered in close and tight. Only a handful of customers in Bullock’s, nothing like it usually would be. Little livelier up in New Town. You know how those miners are hell-bent on having their fun, no matter what, when they get down out of the hills. But even there, in the saloons and gambling dens, it’s a little slower than normal. And all those tents up and down Gold Avenue? Boy, are they flapping and shivering and shuddering in this wind. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them don’t tear loose and end up over in Nebraska somewhere before
”
”
William W. Johnstone (Rattlesnake Wells, Wyoming)
“
I'd been deeply affected by my contact with the miners, not only because of their kindness, but because they'd taken this potentially hellish place and made it, if not heaven, at least human; through their simple rituals of eating, drinking tea, smoking tobacco, praying, playing, and talking, they'd created civilization in one of the most impossible places to imagine it. And what seemed like a miracle to me was, to them, just another day at work!
”
”
Michael Benanav (Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold)
“
Chile, unlike other regions of the continent, did not offer the possibility of wealth beyond dreams. Gold and silver mines could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the minerals had to be torn from the rock with unspeakable effort. Neither did Chile have the climate for prosperous tobacco, coffee, or cotton plantations. Ours has always been a country with one foot in the poorhouse; the most that the colonist could aspire to was a quiet life dedicated to agriculture.
”
”
Isabel Allende (My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile)
“
Here's what an e-reader is. A battery operated slab, about a pound, one half-inch thick, perhaps an aluminum border, rubberized back, plastic, metal, silicon, a bit of gold, plus rare metals such as columbite-tantalite (Google it) ripped from the earth, often in war-torn Africa. To make one e-reader requires 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water to produce the battery and printed writing and refine the minerals. The production of other e-reading devices such as cell phones, iPads and whatever new gizmo will pop up (and down) in the years ahead is similar. "The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those for making a single book," says the Times. Then you figure that the one hundred million e-readers will be outmoded in short order--to be replaced by one hundred million new and improved devices in the years ahead that will likewise be replace by new models ad infinitum, and you realize an environmental disaster is at hand.
”
”
Bill Henderson (Book Love: A Celebration of Writers, Readers, and the Printed & Bound Book (Literary Companion (Pushcart)))
“
You know full well we are exploiters. You know full well we have taken the gold and minerals and then oil from the “new continents,” and shipped them back to the old metropolises. Not without excellent results in the shape of palaces, cathedrals, and centers of industry; and then when crisis loomed, the colonial markets were there to cushion the blow or divert it. Stuffed with wealth, Europe granted humanity de jure to all its inhabitants: for us, a man means an accomplice, for we have all profited from colonial exploitation.
”
”
Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth)
“
In other words, Navajo country. It was, Carleton said, “a princely realm…a magnificent mineral country. Providence has indeed blessed us, for the gold lies here at our feet to be had by the mere picking of it up.” Where Carleton obtained his evidence for these claims was not clear—he seems to have simply wished it into being. The more salient point was this: There might be gold in Navajo country. To ensure the safety of geological exploration, and the inevitable onrush of miners once a strike was made, the Diné would have to be removed.
”
”
Hampton Sides (Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West)
“
One long night that winter, lying on his hard bunk in the endless darkness, body failing him, London made a decision, a resolution even. No more jute mills or coal yards. No more pickle factories or dollar-a-day jobs. No more slaving for another man’s capital. He would do what he had long dreamed of. He would set his own way. London pulled out a pencil and, standing awkwardly on his weakened legs, wrote a message on the icy log next to his bed: “Jack London, Miner, author, Jan 27, 1898.” From then on, he was determined to be a writer. He had staked his claim.
”
”
Brian Castner (Stampede: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike)
“
Carly stopped at the base of the flags. One more foot forward and she would leave Alaska for the first time, and likely never see it again. She looked back over her shoulder for a long moment, and was hit by the fleeting temptation to turn around and coast back down the mountain to Skagway. But she turned to face forward, to face the future, full of unknown perils and uncertainties. It was a long and winding road to an unknown destination, a road that would take courage to face. And she found she had that courage, the same courage her history teacher had said drove the gold miners onward when there was just a narrow trail through these mountains.
”
”
Lissa Bryan (The End of All Things (The End of All Things #1))
“
More than even loving your family, there is no more important ambition than finding a job that you love. If you don’t, you’ll reek of self-loathing like a porn star who can’t get the box cover, and your family will hate you for it. Loving your work doesn’t mean finding a job you can tolerate for eight hours a day, but rather a job that gets you flying out of bed in the morning like a Jack Russell who just had a firecracker stuffed up his ass. Was I ever addicted to my job? Damn right I was. You’re fucked if you aren’t. You better scratch and claw like a Chilean miner to find a gig worthy of gettin’ hooked on. Unlike your hobbies or your spouse, you gotta do your job every day regardless of whether or not it gets you revved up.
”
”
Ari Gold (The Gold Standard: Rules to Rule By)
“
Back in the late 1970s, the very affluent Hunt brothers decided to bring about the remonetization of silver and started buying enormous quantities of silver, driving the price up. Their rationale was that as the price rose, more people would want to buy, which would keep the price rising, which in turn would lead to people wanting to be paid in silver. Yet, no matter how much the Hunt brothers bought, their wealth was no match for the ability of miners and holders of silver to keep selling silver onto the market. The price of silver eventually crashed and the Hunt brothers lost over $1bn, probably the highest price ever paid for learning the importance of the stock‐to‐flow ratio, and why not all that glitters is gold.3 (See Figure 2.4)
”
”
Saifedean Ammous (The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking)
“
When I heard about the path, I had to come down and see it for myself. I had heard about it before but didn’t really think it existed.” Zach was quick with his questions. “What do you think it is, and who made it?” he asked. Jeff looked at the boy, then back at Rock. “It’s my theory that Native Americans made the path using a giant shell for a mold. It’s the shape of a Noble Pen Shell, which is odd, because this shell is only found in the Mediterranean Sea. It could have been brought here from across the sea by early traders though - something to trade to the Indians in exchange for rich minerals such as gold or silver. They would have been fascinated by a shell this large and odd shaped. “The mold would have been filled with a crushed base layer, probably ground oyster shell, sand, rock and maybe even non-porous clay - then mixed with a binding agent, I have no idea what until I analyze it.
”
”
Glenda C. Manus (High Tide at Pelican Pointe (Southern Grace, #3))
“
In due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full fledged. I dropped into casual employments; no misfortunes resulting, intermittent work gave place to steady and protracted engagements. Time drifted smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed—and hoped—that I was going to follow the river the rest of my days, and die at the wheel when my mission was ended. But by and by the war came, commerce was suspended, my occupation was gone. I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver miner in Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter; next, a gold miner in California; next, a reporter in San Francisco; next, a special correspondent in the Sandwich Islands; next, a roving correspondent in Europe and the East; next, an instructional torch-bearer on the lecture platform; and, finally, I became a scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among the other rocks of New England. In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one slow-drifting years that have come and gone since I last looked from the windows of a pilot-house.
”
”
Mark Twain (Life on the Mississippi (AmazonClassics Edition))
“
Wouldn’t you think,” he asked us, “the miners wanted a different life for their kids? After all the stories you’ve heard? Don’t you think the mine companies knew that?” What the companies did, he told us, was put the shuthole on any choice other than going into the mines. Not just here, also in Buchanan, Tazewell, all of eastern Kentucky, these counties got bought up whole: land, hospitals, courthouses, schools, company owned. Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
That story, of course, isn’t unique to California, or to beavers. Europeans began despoiling North American ecosystems the moment they set boots on the stony shore of the New World. You’re probably familiar with most of the colonists’ original environmental sins: They wielded an ax against every tree, lowered a net to catch every fish, turned livestock onto every pasture, churned the prairie to dust. In California’s Sierra Nevada, nineteenth-century gold miners displaced so much sediment that the sludge could have filled the Panama Canal eight times.14 We are not accustomed to discussing the fur trade in the same breath as those earth-changing industries, but perhaps we should. The disappearance of beavers dried up wetlands and meadows, hastened erosion, altered the course of countless streams, and imperiled water-loving fish, fowl, and amphibians—an aquatic Dust Bowl. Centuries before the Glen Canyon Dam plugged up the Colorado and the Cuyahoga burst into flame, fur trappers were razing stream ecosystems. “[Beavers’] systematic and widespread removal,” wrote Sharon Brown and Suzanne Fouty in 2011, “represents the first large-scale Euro-American alteration of watersheds.
”
”
Ben Goldfarb (Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter)
“
I'm anxious for you to meet my new boarder," Miriam said as they headed down the street. "He's such a handsome, well-mannered young man. I think you would like each other."
Willow stopped short. "Wait a minute . You aren't thinking of doing some matchmaking, are you? Criminey, all I need is another man to take care of. Listen, if I wanted a beau that bad, I could hook one easy all on my own."
"Oh? Then why haven't you?"
"I just told you why. I don't need another man to do for. All a miner wants is a hard-working woman to slave for 'im while he chases dreams of gold and silver. Gamblers ain't much different, 'cept they're smoother talkers. They want a pretty mistress, one who don't mind working on her backside when her man's down on his luck."
After a whole afternoon in Willow's company, Miriam was becoming shockproof. She merely raised a disapproving brow at this last statement. "I see your point, Willow, but has a real gentleman ever asked to court you?"
"I suppose that depends on your definition of a gentleman."
"Humph! I thought as much." Miriam sashayed on down the boardwalk.
"You never did anwer my question," Willow reminded her, hurrying to catch up. "Are you matchmaking?"
"Oh,look, we're here at the ice-cream parlor already. What flavor are you going to have?
”
”
Charlotte McPherren (Song of the Willow)
“
She Is Remarkable
Salute to the woman who knows who she is
And why she is who she is
A powerful being
Once thrown into the deep end of the ocean
But swam her way back to shore
She never stops moving forward
Nothing can ever pull her backwards
Such a brave warrior
Shout out to the superwoman
Determined to change the status quo
Because she feels the need to do so
Just like an eagle
She soars higher and higher
As the wind blows stronger
She does not let anything deter her
From reaching another level in life
Thumbs up to an amazing woman
A great force to be reckoned with
That committed Mother on the street
Who trades from sunrise to sunset
Trying to make ends meet
Oh, she has a heart so big
Being mindful that come snow or sunshine
She has mouths to feed
I revere this gifted woman
Who uses her creativity
To make an impact in society
Despite the uniqueness of her talent
She remains a trendsetter
It could be the potter in whose hands clay becomes magic
The miner who touches gold, before it even gets sold to the markets
Or the strategist who sits in high-level meetings, making sure organisations do not collapse
A special mention to the special woman
Who chooses not to give up
She understands that others look up to her
The smart lady out there, with a clear vision
She makes things happen for her family, community, and the world at large
She deserves a badge of honour
Because she is remarkable!
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (From My Mother's Classroom: A Badge of Honour for a Remarkable Woman)
“
Nellie Cashman, from Midleton, County Cork, made a mint providing "bed, board, and booze" to the gold and silver miners all over the western US and Canada. She was a prodigious entrepreneur, running and owning numerous stores, restaurants, and hotels in various mining settlements. While working the bar of her hotel, canny Nellie was able to buy a number of very lucrative mines by discretely listening to the gossip of drunken prospectors.
”
”
Rashers Tierney (F*ck You, I'm Irish: Why We Irish Are Awesome)
“
Bacteria don’t just make yogurt. They can bind carbon to silicon. They can make electricity. They can absorb gamma radiation. They can eat minerals and excrete acids, or eat acids and secrete minerals. They can emit light. They can make superglue. They can eat electrons and breathe out metals. They can align themselves like a compass to Earth’s magnetic field. They can process gold ores into tiny gold nuggets. They can turn sunlight into bioplastic. There’s even a bacteria that eats rock and poops out sand. Nice, coarse, gritty sand.
”
”
Po Bronson (Decoding the World)
“
RA's name survives today in forms like radiate, radio, radar, and radius. They are all connected to transferring energy. To radiate is to give out love, light, and warmth. The most radiant mineral form is crystal. The most radiant metals are gold and silver. Granite is a slightly radioactive stone used for sculpture. The real value of these things lies in the energy they carry.
”
”
Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Age of Discovery Book 3))
“
All winter she has struggled to describe the joy of her life’s work and the discoveries that have solidified in a few short years: how trees talk to one another, over the air and underground. How they care and feed each other, orchestrating shared behaviors through the networked soil. How they build immune systems as wide as a forest. She spends a chapter detailing how a dead log gives life to countless other species. Remove the snag and kill the woodpecker who keeps in check the weevils that would kill the other trees. She describes the drupes and racemes, panicles and involucres that a person could walk past for a lifetime and never notice. She tells how the woody-coned alders harvest gold. How an inch-high pecan might have six feet of root. How the inner bark of birches can feed the starving. How one hop hornbeam catkin holds several million grains of pollen. How indigenous fishermen use crushed walnut leaves to stun and catch fish. How poplars clean soils of chlorinated solvents and willows remove heavy metals. She lays out how fungal hyphae—countless miles of filaments folded up in every spoon of soil—coax open tree roots and tap into them. How the wired-up fungi feed the tree minerals. How the tree pays for these nutrients with sugars, which the fungi can’t make.
”
”
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
“
The former Sabbath school leader among slaves seized upon his liberty and his new calling like a miner finding gold. At least by 1840, and perhaps as early as 1839, he registered to vote by paying his $1.50 poll tax. In Massachusetts in the late 1830s, men, including blacks, registered to vote by paying this small annual tax. In the sweep of America’s racist and discriminatory history with voting rights, it is remarkable that the most famous black man of the nineteenth century, shortly after escaping from slavery, while living with a new, assumed name, with no other identification and certainly no proof of birth in the United States, and while still “illegal” as a fugitive from Southern justice and the property rights of his owner, could instantly become a voter by paying $1.50 and having his name placed on the tax rolls.14 Approximately
”
”
David W. Blight (Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom)
“
Metalworkers first dissolved gold in a solution of water and corrosive minerals, to which they added bicarbonate of soda. A clean copper object dipped into this solution served as both anode and cathode, much like a car battery. As the electric current was maintained in the bicarbonate bath and the solution gently boiled, a microscopically thin coating of gold formed on the surface of the object, giving it the appearance of pure gold. A permanent bond could later be obtained by placing the object in a kiln. Ironically, the great artistry and technological sophistication that produced Huaca Rajada's gilded treasures had vanished along with the Moche, only to have been rediscovered hundreds of years later by Alva and his men.
”
”
Sidney D. Kirkpatrick (Lords of Sipan, A True Story of Pre-Inca Tombs, Archaeology, and Crime)
“
He said in America it dint matter if you was a gypsy or Irish or a Scotchman, or the poorest miner or nailer, you got a chance to better yourself, and in California there was gold in the hills for the taking.
”
”
Mick Kitson (Featherweight)
“
London pulled out a pencil and, standing awkwardly on his weakened legs, wrote a message on the icy log next to his bed: “Jack London, Miner, author, Jan 27, 1898.” From then on, he was determined to be a writer. He had staked his claim.
”
”
Brian Castner (Stampede: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike)
“
Niobe earned the ire of the gods by bragging about her seven lovely daughters and seven “handsome sons—whom the easily offended Olympians soon slaughtered for her impertinence. Tantalus, Niobe’s father, killed his own son and served him at a royal banquet. As punishment, Tantalus had to stand for all eternity up to his neck in a river, with a branch loaded with apples dangling above his nose. Whenever he tried to eat or drink, however, the fruit would be blown away beyond his grasp or the water would recede. Still, while elusiveness and loss tortured Tantalus and Niobe, it is actually a surfeit of their namesake elements that has decimated central Africa.
There’s a good chance you have tantalum or niobium in your pocket right now. Like their periodic table neighbors, both are dense, heat-resistant, noncorrosive metals that hold a charge well—qualities that make them vital for compact cell phones. In the mid-1990s cell phone designers started demanding both metals, especially tantalum, from the world’s largest supplier, the Democratic Republic of Congo, then called Zaire. Congo sits next to Rwanda in central Africa, and most of us probably remember the Rwandan butchery of the 1990s. But none of us likely remembers the day in 1996 when the ousted Rwandan government of ethnic Hutus spilled into Congo seeking “refuge. At the time it seemed just to extend the Rwandan conflict a few miles west, but in retrospect it was a brush fire blown right into a decade of accumulated racial kindling. Eventually, nine countries and two hundred ethnic tribes, each with its own ancient alliances and unsettled grudges, were warring in the dense jungles.
Nonetheless, if only major armies had been involved, the Congo conflict likely would have petered out. Larger than Alaska and dense as Brazil, Congo is even less accessible than either by roads, meaning it’s not ideal for waging a protracted war. Plus, poor villagers can’t afford to go off and fight unless there’s money at stake. Enter tantalum, niobium, and cellular technology. Now, I don’t mean to impute direct blame. Clearly, cell phones didn’t cause the war—hatred and grudges did. But just as clearly, the infusion of cash perpetuated the brawl. Congo has 60 percent of the world’s supply of the two metals, which blend together in the ground in a mineral called coltan. Once cell phones caught on—sales rose from virtually zero in 1991 to more than a billion by 2001—the West’s hunger proved as strong as Tantalus’s, and coltan’s price grew tenfold. People purchasing ore for cell phone makers didn’t ask and didn’t care where the coltan came from, and Congolese miners had no idea what the mineral was used for, knowing only that white people paid for it and that they could use the profits to support their favorite militias.
Oddly, tantalum and niobium proved so noxious because coltan was so democratic. Unlike the days when crooked Belgians ran Congo’s diamond and gold mines, no conglomerates controlled coltan, and no backhoes and dump trucks were necessary to mine it. Any commoner with a shovel and a good back could dig up whole pounds of the stuff in creek beds (it looks like thick mud). In just hours, a farmer could earn twenty times what his neighbor did all year, and as profits swelled, men abandoned their farms for prospecting. This upset Congo’s already shaky food supply, and people began hunting gorillas for meat, virtually wiping them out, as if they were so many buffalo. But gorilla deaths were nothing compared to the human atrocities. It’s not a good thing when money pours into a country with no government.
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Sam Kean (The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements)
“
The Truth is South Africa is a better country than most African countries. With a lot of gold, diamond, minerals, opportunities, human rights and freedom. But the problem is that most of our African brothers and sisters. They come to South Africa, running away from their country so that their lives can be changed for the better. But when they get here. They are now changing South Africa to be what they had left at home. They don’t respect the law, authority, and people here. Taking advantage of people and the government and doing whatever they want. Bringing all the bad things from their country here. They only see opportunities of doing wrong things. We are becoming ONE Africa. But not good Africa. We are becoming the poor, violent, genocide, corrupt, femicide, terrifying, fighting, racist, xenophobic, afrophobic, raping, molesting, murdering, kidnapping, unemployed, GBD Gender Based Violent, dangerous not safe Africa.
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”
D.J. Kyos
“
There are many countries in the world that specialize in material exports. They export minerals, gold, oil,, manufactured goods, technology etc. But Bhaarath specializes in exporting non materials and other intangibles of deep thought and spirit which money could never buy.
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Syd K. (Semmanthaka: The Second Quest for an Immortal gem)
“
From my loneliness,
a lantern takes shape
to be used in an emergency
during rainstorms.
Or donated
to miners working in a gold mine.
From my loneliness,
a carriage is made
to be used at tourist spots.
Or when the express train
derails in bad weather.
From my loneliness,
a bridge will be built
to be used during and after
the war for tanks to cross.
Or to suddenly be blown up.
From my loneliness,
a knife is honed
to cut paper or peel an apple.
And when it rusts,
it will be plunged into my heart.
— Zeeshan Sahil, “Knife,” Light and Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil. Translated by by Christopher Kennedy. (BOA Editions Ltd., June 4, 2013) Originally published January 1st 2013.
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Zeeshan Sahil (Light and Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil)
“
Africa, I believe, is embarking upon an era of sharp divergences in which China will play a huge role in specific national outcomes—for better and for worse, perhaps even dramatically, depending on the country. Places endowed with stable governments, with elites that are accountable and responsive to the needs of their fellow citizens, and with relatively healthy institutions, will put themselves in a position to thrive on the strength of robust Chinese demand for their exports and fast-growing investment from China and from a range of other emerging economic powers, including Brazil, Turkey, India, and Vietnam. Inevitably, most of these African countries will be democracies. Other nations, whether venal dictatorships, states rendered dysfunctional by war, and even some fragile democracies—places where institutions remain too weak or corrupted—will sell off their mineral resources to China and other bidders, and squander what is in effect a one-time chance to convert underground riches into aboveground wealth by investing in their own citizens and creating new kinds of economic activity beyond today’s simple extraction. The proposition at work here couldn’t be more straightforward. The timeline for resource depletion in many African countries is running in tandem with the timeline for the continent’s unprecedented demographic explosion. At current rates, in the next forty years, most African states will have twice the number of people they count now. By that same time, their presently known reserves of minerals like iron, bauxite, copper, cobalt, uranium, gold, and more, will be largely depleted. Those who have diversified their economies and invested in their citizens, particularly in education and health, will have a shot at prosperity. Those that haven’t, stand to become hellish places, barely viable, if viable at all.
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Howard W. French (China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa)
“
Mr. Armstrong as usual let the argument go rogue for a long while. But, he finally said. Didn’t we wonder why there’s nothing else doing around here, in the way of paying work? Our general thinking was that God had made Lee County the butthole of the job universe. “It wasn’t God,” he said. Just ticked off enough for his accent to give him away. I remember that day like a picture. Mr. Armstrong in his light-green shirt, breaking a sweat. We all were. It’s May, there’s no AC, and even the two cement bulldogs out front probably have their tongues hanging out. Every soul in the long brick box of Jonesville Middle wishing they could be someplace else. Except for Mr. Armstrong, determined to hold us there in our seats. “Wouldn’t you think,” he asked us, “the miners wanted a different life for their kids? After all the stories you’ve heard? Don’t you think the mine companies knew that?” What the companies did, he told us, was put the shuthole on any choice other than going into the mines. Not just here, also in Buchanan, Tazewell, all of eastern Kentucky, these counties got bought up whole: land, hospitals, courthouses, schools, company owned. Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn.
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Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
We keep on saying Africa is cursed, because we are suffering , but Africa is not cursed . Africa is blessed with minerals, gold, diamond, coal, animals, cultural diversity , heritage, wildlife , nature and natural resources. It is the leaders we select that are cursed to Africa . It is because of them , people are suffering in Africa .
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D.J. Kyos
“
The best that anyone could do for the present was to build him a not too costly home in some part of the earth where there was no gold, oil, coal, or other mineral treasure, and which was not near a disputed boundary or strategic configuration of land or water. There with reasonable luck he might have peace within his own walls, and perhaps think some thoughts which might be helpful to a hate-tormented world.
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Upton Sinclair (Between Two Worlds (The Lanny Budd Novels))
“
They are the same sort who developed a protocol for lynching disruptive blacks and Mexicans and Chileans and Native Americans. They are the same sort who will, in another few decades, form a mob in Oregon to murder more than thirty Chinese miners; the same sort who will, soon after that, chase throngs of Sikhs from Washington.
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Sanjena Sathian (Gold Diggers: 'Magical and entirely original' —Shondaland)
“
As they climbed the rickety stairs and made their way along the narrow balcony that looked down into the lobby, they were most unhappy to see the bearded miner head into Room 12, and the businessman open the door and enter Room 14.
"Surrounded!" said Christina.
"Shhh!" said Mimi, unlocking the door to Room 13.
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Carole Marsh (The Gosh Awful! Gold Rush Mystery (Real Kids! Real Places!))
“
TRAIL DESCRIPTION Segment 7 begins at the Gold Hill Trailhead on the west side of CO Hwy 9, mile 0.0 (9,197 feet). Leave the parking lot on single-track to the west and begin climbing where trees killed by pine beetles have been cut down. The trail ascends moderate slopes on the fall line here, though authorities have contemplated minor reroutes (traverses and switchbacks) to mitigate tread erosion and be more sustainable. The trail climbs to mile 1.0 (9,659), where there is a well-marked, three-way logging road intersection. Bear to the left. At mile 1.2 (9,748) continue straight ignoring trail on the left. Cross a logging road at mile 1.6 (9,990), passing an old clear-cut area that recently has been replanted. At mile 2.0 (10,158) the CT turns to the right through a colonnade of young trees at another well-marked intersection. At mile 3.2 (9,952) the trail turns left at the intersection with the Peaks Trail near some beaver ponds. There is water here and good camping. At mile 3.4 (10,018), turn right on the Miners Creek Trail. The trail sign here does not identify The Colorado Trail, but there are confidence markers on trees on both sides of the intersection. Over the next mile, cross and recross a small tributary to Miners Creek several times. There are good campsites in the vicinity of the crossings. At mile 4.8 (10,555), the Miners Creek Trail reaches a parking area for jeep access to the trail. Continue on the Miners Creek Trail by bearing to the left after passing most of the parking area. There are campsites on both sides of the parking area. Cross Miners Creek at mile 4.9 (10,583) and several more times in the next mile, most with potential campsites. The last crossing of Miners Creek before entering the tundra is at mile 6.1 (11,120).
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Colorado Trail Foundation (The Colorado Trail)
“
of the men were miners who had left farms, where the work was hard, to seek fortunes in the Sierra Nevada, where the work proved harder still. Many of those who went west had not survived, but these men had, and the experience had hardened not only their bodies but also their spirit. They felt themselves a special breed: unafraid to face hardship and to endure. One passenger remembered, “The voices of the workers rose merrily and powerful above the din of the storm and the lashing of the steamer’s sides by the waves.” Song added a sense of camaraderie and dispelled
”
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Gary Kinder (Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea: The History and Discovery of the World's Richest Shipwreck)
“
Do not call me a gold digger, I am a miner.
”
”
Paul Bamikole (TREES BY THE RIVER: Wisdom from here and above)
“
What the companies did, he told us, was put the shuthole on any choice other than going into the mines. Not just here, also in Buchanan, Tazewell, all of eastern Kentucky, these counties got bought up whole: land, hospitals, courthouses, schools, company owned. Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
“
When the storms of life knock at your door, when grief attacks you at your core, when despair tries to steer your course, and when the pain seems too hard to endure, do not lose hope. Find the courage to go out there and search for your purpose, like a miner searching for gold.
”
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Gift Gugu Mona (Your Life, Your Purpose: 365 Motivational Quotes)
“
Ruby Creek is breathtaking. Fresh air mingles with the aroma of pine and the mineral scent of the river rushing nearby, and lush green valleys butt up against the start of British Columbia’s North Cascades mountain range.
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Elsie Silver (Off to the Races (Gold Rush Ranch, #1))
“
In describing the overall approach to deliberated reading, you should notice that the three aspects, given in the opening of this chapter, all come into play. The first aspect, “understanding your strength and your situation,” is crucial in determining when to read, how to position yourself, and your overall goal for reading a particular book. From the second aspect, the “gold miner mindset” and the “one thing principle” come into play when you annotate the book and choose the most relevant chapter to read that will address the one big question that you seek an answer to. The final aspect, “building your reading habit around your situation, goal, and available cognition,” encapsulates the whole process from start to finish.
”
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Vu Tran (Effortless Reading: The Simple Way to Read and Guarantee Remarkable Results)
“
...being trans works like a miner sifting for gold. You might lose some people along the way, but not the golden ones
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Carolyn Hays (A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter)
“
miners from Mars of the Twelfth Sunshine Squadron.
”
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Pierce Brown (Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4))
“
Housing developments now cover the countryside where hundreds of miners, many from foreign lands, once worked in the Carolina gold fields. Modern highways slash through hills where King George’s men stood in resplendent battle lines. But the builders and developers have only destroyed the physical appearance of the area. They can never kill the ghosts and spirits which must rise at night as surely as does the full moon.
And the supernatural is far from remote. It is a matter of daily experience for those who look for more than mediums and witchcraft can ever offer.
”
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Nancy Roberts (This Haunted Land)
“
A hundred years later the gold is still there. The miners have all left and no one would know that beneath the red clay of these Carolina hills the best and the worst in man struggled with each other in the search for gold.
If you should walk across these hills, you may still hear the wind whispering the names of these mines—the Dixie Queen, the Yellow Dog, the Blue Hill, the Dutch Bend and the Reed Mine, but even the wind does not mention the name of the MacIntosh Mine.
—The Haunted Gold Mine
”
”
Nancy Roberts (This Haunted Land)
“
Does achieving extremely broad diversification seem completely out of reach for ordinary investors? Fear not. There are broadly invested, very low-cost funds that can provide one-stop shopping solutions. We will recommend a broadly diversified United States total stock market index fund that includes real estate companies and commodity producers, including gold miners. We
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Burton G. Malkiel (The Elements of Investing: Easy Lessons for Every Investor)
“
This was 1849, a year when the frenzy to reach California gold was so intense that all wisdom had percolated from the American brain. Speed in reaching northern California was everything, and Turner and Allen were actually pikers in that department. The craziest westering scheme of all was devised by a head case New Yorker named Rufus Porter, an inventor and balloon enthusiast who was the founder of Scientific American magazine. Like many Americans, Porter was swept up by the visionary possibilities of a mass crossing to plunder the gold fields of the Pacific West. Porter became convinced that giant balloons, powered by twin steam engines borrowed from a paddle-wheeler, could loft as many as two hundred Gold Rush miners to California at once.
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Rinker Buck (The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey)
“
There are far better MINErals than Gold and Platinum out there, so don't close your mine when you see them on TV
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Goitsemang Mvula
“
One key to African growth is what happens to commodity prices. Many African countries have long been and are still dependent on exports of “primary” commodities, mostly unprocessed minerals or agricultural crops. Botswana exports diamonds; South Africa, gold and diamonds; Nigeria and Angola, oil; Niger, uranium; Kenya, coffee; Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, cocoa; Senegal, groundnuts; and so on. The world prices of primary commodities are notoriously volatile, with huge price increases in response to crop failures or increases in world demand and equally dramatic price collapses, none of which are easily predictable.
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Angus Deaton (The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality)
“
Common quicksilver exhibits a great 'desire' to combine with related metals. With quicksilver, metal workers can make gold and silver liquid. Quicksilver amalgam has been used since early times to gild metal objects. After application of the liquid amalgam, the quicksilver can be eliminated by fire, and the gold remains. Gold can also be extracted from other minerals by washing with quicksilver.
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Titus Burckhardt (Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul)
“
SINKING UNDER TREASURES Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. Luke 12:15 One of the worst nautical disasters in British history was the 1859 wreck of the Royal Charter steam clipper. Hammered by hurricane winds and thrown upon the rocks, an estimated 450 people were killed. There were only thirty-nine survivors. Among the passengers were gold miners who had struck it rich in Australia and were now returning to England. Many of them died weighed down by belts loaded with gold. Their gold, far from ensuring their future, might actually have contributed to their deaths. Even worse, their greed likely prevented them from helping others. Not a single woman or child was saved from the ship. Greed is a terrible thing, a corrupting thing, that can blind us to our real needs and certainly to the needs of others. If there is no truer love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends, how much truer is it that we should lay down belts of gold in order to save the lives of women and children? SWEET FREEDOM IN Action We should not put our trust in riches, but in our faith, which promises a brighter future than gold can ever deliver. Today, take stock of your possessions and take note of those things that might be dragging you down or distracting you from living a more abundant spiritual life. Remember that your real life jacket is your faith.
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Sarah Palin (Sweet Freedom: A Devotional)
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Where once treaties signed at gunpoint dispossessed Africa’s inhabitants of their land, gold and diamonds, today phalanxes of lawyers representing oil and mineral companies with annual revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars impose miserly terms on African governments and employ tax dodges to bleed profit from destitute nations.
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Tom Burgis (The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth)
“
I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one’s life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is.
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Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
“
But most scientists studying the western climate believe the freak will become the norm. Researchers recently concluded that the extended dry period in the West over the last ten years is the worst in eight hundred years—that is, since the years between 1146 and 1151. Eight hundred years! If we were just talking about another decade of this or, worse, a decade of the type of heat we were seeing in the summer of 2012, the results would be catastrophic. But climate scientists believe it will keep getting hotter. If so even drought-resistant plants will die, reservoir levels will continue to fall, crop production will drop. Worse, as vegetation withers, it will no longer be able to absorb carbon dioxide, further exacerbating climate change. And now to this precarious and combustible mix we have decided to add fracking. We have chosen to do this not with caution but on a massive scale, and to do it right next to our precious rivers, right smack in the middle of aquifers. We go into these places and use, mixed with the millions of gallons of water, a secret recipe of chemicals, many of them poisonous to humans, which we then force into fissures of rock with high-powered blasts to flush out the fuel we are seeking. The man in the bar had warned about earthquakes, but fracking is, in essence, a small seismic event, designed to blast out minerals. We have decided to inject poisons into the ground, then shake that ground, in a region where potable water is more precious than gold. But not, we have decided, more precious than oil. One thing is crystal clear. Though fracking is unproven technology, we are not treating it that way. Instead we are conducting a vast experiment all over the country, from the hills of Pennsylvania to the deserts of Utah. Since we are moving into unfamiliar territory you would think, if we were wise, that we would carefully monitor any and all results. We are not. When people in the fracked area complain that their water is fizzling out of their taps in a foamy mix, smelling of petroleum, the companies are quick to offer other water sources, like cisterns, but not quick, of course, to question the enterprise itself. In fact, the corporate response to the contaminated water supplies and groundwater has been consistent. They tell the landowners and anyone else who complains that they are concerned but that they will not slow down until there is conclusive proof that what they are doing is dangerous and poses a health risk. This is standard operating procedure in today’s world, but it is also, to anyone with a dollop of common sense, an ass-backwards way of doing things. “Despite the troubles people are having, we’ll keep going full-speed ahead until someone proves to us the trouble is real,” they tell us. Never, “Maybe we should slow down until we learn the facts.
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David Gessner (All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West)
“
By Charlie Hubacek
release date June 30, 2014
John Randolph, left Missouri following a long and devastating drought the caused him to lose his farm. He had heard of gold just for the taking in Colorado. On his way, he nearly died traveling over the hot, dry high plains, but he was rescued and taken to a new town just beginning in the Rocky Mountain foothills. There, he found a new life as a lawman. This only presented to him new challenges as he was forced to deal with greedy gold miners and settlers also looking for a new life and the Ute Indians who had lived in the mountains for hundreds of years.
"Your job is to write the most honest book you are capable of writing, persuade someone to publish it at whatever terms are attainable, and get that book on the library shelves. Let it find it's own level, while you go immediately to work on the next one. Rack your brains on how to make this one even better. All else is irrelevant.
”
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-James A. Michener The World Is My Home-A Memoir.
“
The weightless rhetoric of digital technology masks a refusal to acknowledge the people and resources on which these systems depend: lithium and coltan mines, energy-guzzling data centers and server farms, suicidal workers at Apple’s Foxconn factories, and women and children in developing countries and incarcerated Americans up to their necks in toxic electronic waste.2 The swelling demand for precious metals, used in everything from video-game consoles to USB cables to batteries, has increased political instability in some regions, led to unsafe, unhealthy, and inhumane working conditions, opened up new markets for child and forced labor, and encouraged environmentally destructive extraction techniques.3 It is estimated that mining the gold necessary to produce a single cell phone—only one mineral of many required for the finished product—produces upward of 220 pounds of waste.4
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Astra Taylor (The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age)
“
On the other hand, Russia’s natural resources are enormous. No other country can boast of so large a variety of minerals, and only the United States is richer in resources. The empire had about twenty percent of the world’s coal supplies, located primarily in the Donets (Ukraine) and Kuznets (in mid Siberia) basins. Its huge oil and gas reserves may have exceeded half the world’s total supply. And there were vast supplies of iron, manganese, copper (of relatively low quality), lead, zinc, aluminum, nickel, gold, platinum, asbestos, and potash. Well endowed by nature, Russia seemed destined for a long period of leadership on the world scene. But because it failed to discard its archaic social and political system, Russia could not take advantage of the advances
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Abraham Ascher (Russia: A Short History (Short Histories))
“
Prior to starting any detox protocol, it’s prudent to have enough minerals in your body. Fortunately, this is relatively easy and inexpensive to do. A good place to start is with your diet (I know right, that old chestnut). One way to gently add more minerals to your diet is through natural sea salt. Although some sea salts contain more minerals than others. Baja Gold Sea Salt is a pretty decent brand
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James Lilley (Heavy Metals Detox)
“
A popular bit of condor lore is that miners in the West and in Mexico used condor quills as containers for gold dust. The light durable quills could each hold as much as ten cubic centimeters of fine dust, worth roughly $105 at 1855 prices. They had a diameter of nearly one-half inch. Each quill was fitted with a wooden stopper and had an attached thong so it could be worn around the neck. A man with a necklace of three or four quills could be carrying a modest fortune. And where else could you find a container so durable, waterproof, and handy in frontier times?
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Dick Smith (Condor journal: The history, mythology, and reality of the California condor)
“
Our corporate hustlers are direct descendants of the whalers and sealers, of butchers such as George Armstrong Custer, of the gold speculators and railroad magnates who seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, and wiped out the buffalo herds, of the oil and mineral companies that went abroad to exploit—under the protection of the American military—the resources of others.
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Chris Hedges (Wages of Rebellion)
“
God have blessed the earth equally with deferent natural sources from, oil, to gold, diamonds, minerals to drinking waters! History have proven that politicians & rich people managed the wealth of your country, and If your country, you state or you city is poor? It is because of your leader are robing you!
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Beta Metani'Marashi
“
The gold mined by the Anunnaki was shipped back to their home planet from bases in the Middle East, Sitchin claims the Tablets say. I think there is much more to know about this ‘gold mining’ business, and I don’t believe that was the main reason they came here. At first the gold mining was done by the Anunnaki version of their working classes, Sitchin says, but eventually there was a rebellion by the miners and the Anunnaki royal élite decided to create a new slave race to do the work.
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David Icke (The Biggest Secret: The book that will change the World)
“
I’m the new age miner,
going to work at the company’s
gold mines, where they charge me
for the pick axe
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”
Phil Volatile (White Wedding Lies, and Discontent: An American Love Story)
“
what is happening in Africa’s resource states is systematic looting. Like its victims, its beneficiaries have names. The plunder of southern Africa began in the nineteenth century, when expeditions of frontiersmen, imperial envoys, miners, merchants and mercenaries pushed from the coast into the interior, their appetite for mineral riches whetted by the diamonds and gold around the outpost they had founded at Johannesburg. Along
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Tom Burgis (The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth)
“
Secrets are gold and we are the miners.
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”
Nelo Igboejesi
“
And, Randy’s favorite, As to luck, there is the old miners’ proverb: “Gold is where you find it.
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Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
“
You know, back in the forty-niner days, every gold mining town in California had a nerd with a scale,” Avi says. “The assayer. He sat in an office all day. Scary-looking rednecks came in with pouches of gold dust. The nerd weighed them, checked them for purity, told them what the stuff was worth. Basically, the assayer’s scale was the exchange point—the place where this mineral, this dirt from the ground, became money that would be recognized as such in any bank or marketplace in the world, from San Francisco to London to Beijing. Because of the nerd’s special knowledge, he could put his imprimatur on dirt and make it money. Just like we have the power to turn bits into money. “Now, a lot of the people the nerd dealt with were incredibly bad guys. Peg house habitues. Escaped convicts from all over the world. Psychotic gunslingers. People who owned slaves and massacred Indians. I’ll bet that the first day, or week, or month, or year, that the nerd moved to the gold-mining town and hung out his shingle, he was probably scared shitless. He probably had moral qualms too—very legitimate ones, perhaps,” Avi adds, giving Randy a sidelong glance. “Some of those pioneering nerds probably gave up and went back East. But y’know what? In a surprisingly short period of time, everything became pretty damn civilized, and the towns filled up with churches and schools and universities, and the sort of howling maniacs who got there first were all assimilated or driven out or thrown into prison, and the nerds had boulevards and opera houses named after them. Now, is the analogy clear?
”
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Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
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Beneath a plateau in southern Africa, late in the nineteenth century, miners crawl through miles of narrow tunnel – cut deeper underground here than anywhere else on Earth at this time – lugging ore from a sunken reef of gold. Some of these men, who have migrated to the area in their thousands to work, will die soon in rockfalls and accidents. More will die slowly of silicosis from breathing the rock dust down there in the killing dark, year after year. Here the human body is largely disposable in the view of the corporations that own the mine and the markets that drive it: a small, unskilled tool of extraction to be replaced when it fails or wears out. The ore the men bring up is crushed and smelted, and the wealth it yields lines the pockets of shareholders in distant countries.
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Robert Macfarlane (Underland: A Deep Time Journey)
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W e are wealth. Our DNA comes from an African continent that is rich in minerals, precious metals and other natural resources, such as gold, diamonds, oil, and coltan. As
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Pamela C.V. Jolly (The Black Male Equity Initiative: Detroit: Reclaiming the Dream)
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By Anne Kihagi - For Wine Enthusiasts Looking for Off-Beaten Path Ideas- Consider the Town of MurphysSuggested by Anne Kihagi
California is known for its numerous vineyards and wineries. Located in Calaveras County, the town of Murphys is situated between Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe. It is home to several dozen wineries that operate year-round. Some of the wineries in the town include Indian Rock Vineyards, Mineral Wines Tasting Room, Newsome Harlow, and Courtwood Wine Tasting Tours.
The town also offers unique boutique shops, art galleries, and fine dining. You can find items that are new to you at Best Friends Consignment Shop, peruse baseball cards at KCK Collectibles, and sample olive oil at Marisolio Olive Oil Tasting Bar. Unwind after a long day of shopping and wine tasting with dinner at Gabby’s Mexican Cuisine or V Restaurant, Bar, and Bistro. If you have a sweet tooth, visit JoMa’s Artisan Ice Cream or Aria Bakery. A place of interest located near Murphys is Moaning Cavern in Calaveras Trees State Park. It is the largest cavern in the state.
If you are a history buff, you will enjoy learning about the town’s origins during the Gold Rush Era. It was started in 1848 by brothers John and Daniel Murphy. Some of the town’s original buildings are still in operation, like the Murphys Historic Hotel and Lodge. It earned a registered historic landmark designation because of the significant figures who once visited it, including Mark Twain and General Ulysses S. Grant.
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Anne Kihagi
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She had grown now not to blame any man, honest miner or bloody bandit. She blamed only gold. She doubted its value. She could not see it a blessing. She absolutely knew its driving power to change the souls of men. Could she ever forget that vast ant-hill of toiling diggers and washers, blind and deaf and dumb to all save gold?
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Zane Grey (The Border Legion)
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You want to cut off my leg.” His face tightened and a bead of sweat ran down his forehead to soak into the pillow.
“It is our only option,” I said. “The only way you are going to live.”
“Live?” He snorted. “Even if this works, what good will I be?” he asked bitterly. “What good is a miner with one leg – you’d be saving me from death only to see me sent off to feed the sluag.”
“Don’t say that,” I snapped, rising to my feet. “Your worth isn’t determined by your leg – it is determined by your heart and your mind. It is determined by what you do with your life.”
“Pretty words.” He turned his head away from us. “Just let me die.”
“No!” I shouted. “You listen to me, Tips, and you listen well. It isn’t your leg that can smell gold. It isn’t your leg that has ensured your gang never missed quota. And it isn’t your leg that all your friends chose to have as their leader. They need you, Tips. Without you, it will be your friends who will be facing the labyrinth.” I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. “The odds have been stacked against you from the day you were born, yet here you are. Alive. And having persevered through all of that, how dare you turn your head and tell me to let you die. You’re better than that.” My voice trembled. “You once told me that power doesn’t determine worth. Well, neither does a leg.”
He kept his head turned away from me, and the silence hung long and heavy.
“You make a compelling argument.” His voice was choked, and when he turned his head, I could see the gleam of tears on his cheeks. “Do it then.
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Danielle L. Jensen (Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1))
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Liberia is a country on the “Pepper Coast,” which in many ways mirrors the United States. While it has not been easy, the willingness of its dedicated, hardworking people has never subsided. Hopefully their endeavor to obtain a more perfect country will continue and perhaps the day will come when they can once again take the lead in Africa to find a brighter future.
During the mid-1950’s I witnessed the effects of the sudden affluence that came with the mining of gold and blood diamonds in the interior mountains of Liberia and Sierra Leonne. Although driven out of Sierra Leonne in 1954, the De Beers cartel set up a covert purchasing office in Monrovia. By 1956, there were thousands of illegal miners from both sides of the international border selling their diamonds and gold to anyone interested at places like the French Hotel on Ashmun Street or the American Bar at Mamba Point. It was always difficult to know the value of the mostly industrial diamonds, wrapped a dirty handkerchief or the glitter of what appeared to be gold in laterite clay at the bottom of a tin can. Of course there were also con-men who had nothing more than broken pieces of coke bottles to sell. It was a time when fortunes were made and lives were lost. Needless to say that Liberia was and most likely still is a risky place to be! Now, many of the lower grade diamonds from Liberia are sold directly to dealers in Sierra Leone but the more valuable stones valued at $500,000 or more, which are usually found in Sierra Leone, are smuggled into Liberia to avoid a 15% Sierra Leone tax. Sometimes diamonds are traded for gold but it’s a risky business that frequently cost people their money and sometimes even their lives.
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Hank Bracker
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She Is Remarkable
Salute to the woman who knows who she is
And why she is who she is
A powerful being
Once thrown into a deep end of the ocean
But swam her way back to shore
She never stops moving forward
Nothing can ever pull her backwards
Such a hard nut to crack
Shout out to the superwoman
Determined to change the status quo
Because she feels the need to do so
Just like an eagle
She soars higher and higher
As the wind blows stronger
She does not let anything deter her
From reaching another level in life
Thumbs up to an amazing woman
A great force to be reckoned with
That committed Mother on the street
Who trades from sunrise to sunset
Trying to make ends meet
Oh, she has a heart so big!
Being mindful that come snow or sunshine
She has mouths to feed
I revere this gifted woman
Who uses her creativity
To make an impact in society
Despite the uniqueness of her talent
She remains a trendsetter
It could be the potter in whose hands clay becomes magic
The miner who touches gold, before it even gets sold to the markets
Or the strategist who sits in high level meetings, making sure organisations do not collapse
A special mention to the special woman
Who chooses not to give up
She understands that others look up to her
The smart lady out there, with a clear vision
She makes things happen for her family, community and the world at large
She deserves a badge of honour
Because she is remarkable!
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Gift Gugu Mona (From My Mother's Classroom: A Badge of Honour for a Remarkable Woman)
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It is clear that the medieval conception of a quest is not at all that of a search for something already adequately characterized, as miners search for gold or geologists for oil. It is in the course of quest and only through encountering and coping with the various particular harms, dangers, temptations and distractions which provide any quest with its episodes and incidents that the goal of the quest is finally to be understood. A quest is always an education both as to the character of that which is sought and in self-knowledge.
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Alasdair MacIntyre
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Even though God (in three persons) created everything perfect, it wasn’t complete. We see in Genesis 2:8 that God planted the garden. In Genesis 2:15, Adam is put there to cultivate it. He basically calls Adam and Eve to work and to be His coworkers. He requires humans to bring out creation’s potential. Humans needed to dig rocks from the ground to make buildings, roads, and statues and to extract minerals to make gold for His tabernacle and silicon chips for computers.
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Russell E. Gehrlein (Immanuel Labor—God’s Presence in Our Profession: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Approach to the Doctrine of Work)
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They had nothing.
In their houses, there was nothing. At first. You had to stay in the dark of the huts a long while to make out what was on the walls. In the wife's hut a wavy pattern of broad white and ochre bands. In others - she did not know whether or not she was welcome where they dipped in and out all day from dark to light like swallows - she caught a glimpse of a single painted circle, an eye or target, as she saw it. In one dwelling where she was invited to enter there was the tail of an animal and a rodent skull, dried gut, dangling from the thatch. Commonly there were very small mirrors snapping at the stray beams of light like hungry fish rising. They reflected nothing. An impression - sensation - of seeing something intricately banal, manufactured, replicated, made her turn as if someone had spoken to her from back there. It was in the hut where the yokes and traces for the plough-oxen were. She went inside again and discovered insignia, like war medals, nailed just to the left of the dark doorway. The enamel emblem's Red Cross was foxed and pitted with damp, bonded with dirt to the mud and dung plaster that was slowly incorporating it. The engraved lettering on the brass arm-plaque had filled with rust. The one was a medallion of the kind presented to black miners who pass a First Aid exam on how to treat injuries likely to occur underground, the other was a black miner's badge of rank, the highest open to him. Someone from the mines; someone had gone to the gold mines and come home with these trophies. Or they had been sent home; and where was the owner? No one lived in this hut. But someone had; had had possessions, his treasure displayed. Had gone away, or died - was forgotten or was commemorated by the evidence of these objects left, or placed, in the hut. Mine workers had been coming from out of these places for a long, long time, almost as long as the mines had existed. She read the brass arm-plaque: Boss Boy.
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Nadine Gordimer (July's People)