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COMMENTARY
COMMENTARY
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.
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.
Independent, context-driven regional writing. Support Belt Magazine today. »
More Stories
Confessions of a Radioactive Man
I wanted to travel to Bridgeton, Missouri’s West Lake Landfill to see the kind of radioactive waste dumped there, a journalistic urge to see things firsthand.
Of Fish Fries Past
Author Jake Oresick on some Western Pennsylvania fish fries of yore.
Phantom Phone in St. Louis
Living without a smartphone in a smartphone world.
Two Poems by Jeannie Whitlock
Two poems by Jeannie Whitlock - "Moving Day" and "Cousins."
Hollowed Out
How Pittsburgh-based EQT’s expansion in West Virginia set four families reeling, while state regulators trusted the company to answer their complaints.
Singing Rust Belt Union Blues
A discussion with Theda Skocpol and Lainey Newman about their book "Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters are Turning Away from the Democratic Party."
Growing West Virginia Drug Treatment Crisis
Amid record overdoses, lawmakers ignore calls to restore pandemic-era Medicaid policies expanding access to treatment. They used this session to debate ratcheting up penalties.
On the Edge of Something
A poem by Jason Irwin.
The Prince Fish
In October 1960, Prince Akihito of Japan visited Chicago for 21 hours. Chicago’s mayor presented the prince with a diplomatic gift: 18 bluegill. What happened next would change the underwater world of Japan forever.
Reading “The Goophered Grapevine” on the Farm
Charles W. Chesnutt was a serial transplant. He found the ancestral North Carolina inhospitable. And in the North--Washington, New York, Cleveland, he was always homesick, from his earliest departures.
The Plant Musician
Tom Wall is a West Michigan rock star who uses plants as bandmates. He uses a device to harness the electricity in plants, which then turns those impulses into musical notes. Tom insists the plants are talking to us through the music. But can they really do that?
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