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ESSAY
From Pretoria to Peoria
There’s a neologism that I’d propose for the often-radical international activism that comes from non-coastal college towns that are too often easily ignored – midwestern cosmopolitanism.
From Pretoria to Peoria
There’s a neologism that I’d propose for the often-radical international activism that comes from non-coastal college towns that are too often easily ignored – midwestern cosmopolitanism.
FEATURE
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.
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.
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More Stories
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.
15 Summer Reads for Our Vacation
Fifteen of our favorites for our summer hiatus.
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.
From Mexico City to the Steel City
She was motivated to get involved locally and feels her time at Carnegie Mellon in the School of Architecture paved the way. “The city was my campus.”
On Raymond Thompson’s “Appalachian Ghost”
Thompson captured photos of the place — the hills of WVA folding into each other like origami, holding mist and dew in the hollows. And he staged new photos which conjure these working men, bearing up under hours of physical labor, covered in white dust, looking otherworldly but also fully human and integral to the achievement.
Garbage Boy
John was unbelievable with a trash bag. He threw the lighter ones from his hip, like an uppercut. The heavier bags were more like a hammer throw. You could tell he was accustomed to using, and needing to use, all the muscle he had left.
The Pittsburgh School
Yet part of what defines the Pittsburgh School, from Brackenridge onward, is the mystical kernel of something beyond mere matter that animates any consideration of this place: the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane. An intimation of beauty amid a kingdom of ugliness.
The Fire Beneath Our Feet
Centralia became an attraction for both horror movie fans and ordinary people fascinated by the story.
No Son of Mine
I didn’t say, as they told me how they owned a boat and spent much of their summer cruising Maine’s coastline, that my mother’s biggest dream was to get out of West Virginia, that her biggest love was the ocean, that she hoped to die listening to the sounds of the waves.
Three Poems by Jacob Schepers
By Jacob Schepers The Creeping Gait These old haunts get older and pace from town [...]
May Day is a Rust Belt Holiday
May Day isn’t just an estimably American holiday, it’s a particularly Rust Belt holiday, forged in the cauldron of Chicago’s streets and factories, born from the experience of workers in the mills and plants of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.
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From the Archives
Preserving Black Artists’ Legacies in Pittsburgh
A photo and interview series exploring how black artists living in a rapidly-changing Pittsburgh see themselves and their work.
Fear and Loathing on Euclid Avenue: Dispatches from the RNC in CLE
“I’m not here because I agree with everybody.”
Recipe: Snowballs For Your Cookie Table
Feeding the holiday spirit.
Recipe: Whiskey Cider from Detroit
Make it like the professionals at Detroit Farm and Cider.
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