Essays
On Running Out of Gas in Rural Missouri
Notes on fatherhood and petroleum
Fighting the Klan in Ohio, 1924
At 6:30 a.m. Saturday, a crowd estimated at 1,700 gathered for Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Catholic church established by Italian immigrants 18 years earlier. By 10:30 a.m., the Knights of the Flaming Circle started gathering in a park at North Main and Federal streets in Niles, across the street from General Electric. They were armed to the teeth and setting up blockades to keep the parade from happening. “We’ll meet the Klansmen as they arrive,” one Knight of the Flaming Circle told a reporter from the Youngstown Vindicator.
On Picking Apples in the Lower Midwest
Supposedly, it all started with an apple. In the beginning was the garden, the serpent, the woman—and “those fair apples,” as Milton writes in Paradise Lost. That was the beginning, or perhaps the beginning of the end.
A Bungalow of My Own
Every time I moved felt like facing my entire life all over again.
Living in East Chicago, Workshop of America
However, maybe because of the cantankerous aging process or a rekindled love for the region’s history, I often find myself staring at these sites now, wondering what once was and one day could be.
Hands that Carry Their Own Maps of the World
On this day in end-times 1999, Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, that sweetheart, was on a flight I was working. It was a shuttle flight, D.C. to New York, maybe. No First Class, no fuss.
Swing Set: The Giant’s Footsteps
The concept and meaning of risk changed as we aged. As kids, the risk of our fathers losing their factory jobs never occurred to us. The notion that anything as large and permanent as the factories would disappear seemed ludicrous.
A Northern Appalachian Syllabus
Today’s generation of Appalachian writers has been able to find outlets for an array of work that delves deep into the complexities and nuances of a geographic region larger than many nations in both area and population.
Carnegie Mellon’s Demarest Metals
Few exhibitions would be more appropriate for me to walk past on my way to work than the Demarest Metals, a reminder that Belt Magazine is grounded in the history – and the future – of this region, that labor deserves to be honored, that there are complicated, beautiful, and essential stories being written about and by people in areas too often passed over.
The Common Prayer of Immoderate Soils
Now there's an ubiquitous phrase on the Plains: we excel at "putting down roots"...Growing up in Kansas there is quite the opposite idea. Less so roots and more so treacherous vines.
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