On April 5, 2010, a coal-dust explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia, killed 29 miners. Though subsequent investigations found that a pervasive pattern of negligence and safety violations had led to the entirely preventable tragedy, in 2015 Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship got off with a slap on […]
Tag: West Virginia
Posted inBlogs
How Dems in red states can fight off Trump’s vicious attacks
Let’s hope voters in states from North Dakota to West Virginia appreciate senatorial independence from Trump.
Posted inArts & Culture
Photojournalist Nancy Abrams looks back on her years in West Virginia in The Climb From Salt Lick
It’s a great corrective to ugly caricatures of Appalachia.
Posted inBlogs
You can thank Karen Lewis for the national wave of teacher insurrections
The red-shirt-wearing teacher activists from Kentucky, West Virginia, and Oklahoma obviously learned a thing or two from Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis.
Posted inNews & Politics
Who loves Chicago’s most unlovable losers, the Bears?
Perhaps no local fan base is more loyal than that of the Bears. But what has the so-called pride and joy of Illinois done in three decades to deserve such devotion?
Posted inMusic
Rapper Rich Jones gives a verse to the Chicago Mothman
After 57 sightings in 2017, the Chicago Mothman turns up on a Halloween-season track by rapper Rich Jones.
Posted inMusic
Jason Molina’s long dark blues
Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. front man Jason Molina produced a prodigious catalog of stark and heartbreaking music. Then he disappeared.
Posted inBlogs
Reader’s Agenda Wed 9/25: Breaking Bad Quiz, Black Twig Pickers, and Laura Veirs
What’s on the Reader‘s Agenda for Wednesday, September 25