“I know we can’t bridge it, but how do we help make it better?” That’s how journalist Salena Zito posed the question of how to approach a public reckoning with the ever-increasing ideological and cultural split between progressive metropolitan areas and conservative small-town America — as a malady of modern […]
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The once-in-a-generation results from Tuesday’s special election in Alabama, and the campaigns that preceded it, offer several windows into the present-day political and social issues facing the nation. It would be easiest to look at those lessons tied to the winner, Doug Jones: that Democrats must reach both Black voters, […]
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Jewish communities across West Virginia are struggling to keep their traditions alive. “It is actually kind of scary. I worry because a lot of people my age are moving away for, like, school or jobs and because of that the communities are getting smaller,” said Kirston Kennedy, a young Jewish Appalachian who […]
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“To be an Appalachian American Arab Muslim … that’s a big title. I feel like I’m wearing so many hats at the same time.” Malak Khader of Huntington, West Virginia finds herself constantly fighting stereotypes about her religion and her home state. She started a multiethnic Girl Scout Troop at […]
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Just because we’re located in a rural part of Appalachia, this part of Virginia and in a small, rural county — don’t count us out. The people here — they have lives, they have lives that tell stories. Morris Fleischer: Depending on the measurements, we’re basically in the zone. We’re […]
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I’m not very good at running the register because I give basically everything away. — Joe Farmer of Axis Coffee Shop and Gathering Place in Manchester, Kentucky Tracy Farmer: We saw the need in our church to expand. We needed room for children’s ministry and youth ministry, but we also wanted […]
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