90.5 WESA s The Confluence for Monday, April 5, 2021
On today s program: Commonwealth residents in Phase 1B can begin booking appointments today, but there are still thousands of 1A eligible residents who haven’t gotten the shot; more than 100 COVID-19 cases have been connected to a Beaver County ethane cracker site; and award-winning author Bernardine Evaristo tells how one character’s youth in her book “Girl, Woman, Other” is a reflection of Evaristo as a young adult.
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“About 5.5 million [vaccines] have been distributed [in Pennsylvania],” says WESA health reporter, Sarah Boden. “That all shakes out to maybe roughly a third of Pennsylvanians have received at least one shot.”
90.5 WESA s The Confluence for Thursday, March 11, 2021
On today s program: The lead author of an MIT white paper explains how slowed coal production in Greene County translates to a loss of jobs and tax revenue; residents of long-term care facilities are still waiting for some “normalcy” after vaccination; and ahead of her talk with Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures, poet Naomi Shihab Nye tells us how poetry can help her find clarity.
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National production of coal decreased about 37% between 2008 and 2016.
The current and expected decline in coal production remains a contentious topic. But it doesn’t simply translate to lost coal workers’ jobs: It can mean lost tax revenue for counties that might not have a plan on how to make up the deficit. Greene County is experiencing this scenario.
Photo: Michael Lionstar Karen Russell Karen Russell can look at an austere, fallow landscape and see things most people miss. During a trip to the Sandhills in Nebraska, she looked beyond the endless vistas of sand dunes and prairie grass and found the germ of an idea that became “The Tornado Auction,” a short story from her collection
Orange World (Vintage).
The Sandhills have a certain flatness that reminds Russell of her native South Florida, where you feel like “a clairvoyant of the weather you can see so far,” she says, even though the ecosystems are different. But the inhabitants of that midwestern landscape, like some of the Floridians who inhabit stories based in her home state, are not quite what they appear to be.
Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout (Penguin) is not a typical young adult novel. A memoir composed of a series of poems, it’s a stunning, heartbreaking, and.