Western coal share on the rise

IN West Virginia, it seems sometimes that good is so intertwinedwith the bad that you can't distinguish the separate strands.

The state's coal mining history is that way, risk coming hand inhand with opportunity, jeopardy tagging along with possibility.

Coal mining raised up poor Appalachian residents. It providedthem homes and work, hard but steady. But slipped in along with thepaycheck was the chance of early death, quick in a mine collapse orslow from black lung.

Appalachian music legend Hazel Dickens, daughter of a MercerCounty mining town, sings of black lung, "As you reach for my bodyand torture my soul/Cold as that water-hole down in the dark cave/Where …