History
A Complicated Heritage of Coal
In southern Illinois, one community’s complex relationship with the industry on display.
Inside the St. Louis Rent Strike of 1969
“It touched everybody all over the country who lived in public housing.” [From "The St. Louis Anthology"]
When Socialists Swept Milwaukee
Democratic socialists attending the 2020 Democratic Convention won't be out of place in a city with a long history of socialist governance.
The End of a World as I Knew It
On childhood summers at a black enclave in Michigan, and the moment everything changed.
Still Life, Ohio Valley
"In early morning the tributaries / at Pittsburgh meld, then flow on / for centuries"
Just Downriver from Detroit
"During my visits to to the nursing home, Dad and I have sometimes settled into chairs to time-travel through a photo album."
Minneapolis by Segway
"There was always a sense of something missing, a story still jumbled and incomplete..." From "Under Purple Skies: The Minneapolis Anthology."
Opèksipu Catches Sun Before it Flows Beneath the Washington Street Bridge
"home is built upon the scaffolding / of a hundred thousand stories..."
Today I Laid a Crayfish at Your Grave
"I kneeled at the stump where we laid the Ford agate,/Made up spells and secrets..."
Sentencing the Old Iowa State Penitentiary
Once the oldest operating prison west of the Mississippi, the facility is now empty, falling apart, and waiting for its next chapter.
Rust Belt history
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