“Paris! Appalachia!” (or How to Live Where You Are)
The beauty Thomas and Spradlin identify in this city is not the architectural grandeur funded by steel robber barons, or city-sanctioned ‘aerosol art,’ but the interplay of the wall and the graffiti; the law and rejection of the law; the memorial and the refusal to pay homage to a memory.
A Real and Un-Automated Horse: On Brian Merchant’s “Blood in the Machine”
Merchant demonstrates that to act as a Luddite is to be anything but out-of-touch: it is to mobilize a common sentiment that marches from the past, and to stride as part of a collective toward a more equitable future.
Mules Became Steam Became Code: On William Attaway's "Blood on the Forge"
“Day-O,” recorded by Harry Belafonte in 1956, is one of those songs that sounds cheerful, as long as you don’t listen too carefully.