Bethlehem Fortune, Bethlehem Elegy
The center didn’t hold. Things fell apart. For the second time in its history, a faith was betrayed and the gates of Eden were soldered shut.
The center didn’t hold. Things fell apart. For the second time in its history, a faith was betrayed and the gates of Eden were soldered shut.
As union halls closed and membership numbers dwindled, other networks and community group influences, often propelling more conservative values and messages, have become more central to the daily lives of workers and residents.
“Like homing pigeons,” a man in a New York bar once told me about Pittsburghers. “You leave. You go back. You’re lucky. There aren’t many places like that.”
The Beehive’s early clientele were Pittsburgh’s “neo-beatniks”: artists and art students, those studying at nearby colleges and universities, musicians, writers, filmmakers, out-of-work ne’er-do-wells and those still trying to find their way.
Every place in the world has a story, and every person’s journey through those places can change the path for those who follow.
We now know some of their names and how they died. Oscar Grant. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Laquan McDonald. Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray. Sandra Bland. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. Stephon Clark. Atatiana Jefferson. Breonna Taylor. Daniel Prude. Antwon Rose II. Rayshard Brooks. Andre Hill. Daunte Wright.
To walk through Frick Park – at least for me – is a pilgrimage into Milton's Paradise Lost, read not in words, lines, and stanzas, but rather rocks, trees, and water.
Some of our favorite reads from this past year.
Once the cobwebs are cleared off old journals, long-forgotten records consulted, and the veil of stereotypes pierced, a remarkable world is discovered.
Tuesday was just an average day in Donora and vicinity, when nothing particularly special happened. Nothing, that is, except a confluence of weather conditions that would place an environmental lid on the valley.
Belt Magazine presents an excerpt from distinguished reporter Jeff Sharlet's disturbing, brilliant, and important new book about the threat of American fascism "The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War."
In the hills of Appalachia in western Pennsylvania lies a bruised, stripped and timbered town of miners, mill workers and farmers called Sidle Creek. Award-winning author Jolene McIlwain's debut collection Sidle Creek unearths themes of class, health, trauma and the unexpected human conditions that happen in close-knit communities. To be released by Melville House on May 16, 2023.