Thanks to @buzzfeed​ for including our latest story in the “Growing Up Through the Cracks” series on child poverty as part of their “8 Photo Stories That Will Challenge Your View Of The World” list.

The Brown family lives in rural Saltlick, Pa., where 2/3 of children are living in poverty. As milk prices continue to dip and Mary Beth Brown struggles with the physical, emotional, and financial pain of Stage 4 breast cancer, the Browns fear they will be the first generation in their family in 200 years to lose the dairy farm they feel call home.

In the rural area, government services are hard to access. The local officials don’t see social services as their job, while federal and state benefits are funneled through the county seat in Uniontown, a 40-minute drive with no transit options, writes reporter Chris Huffaker.

For the Brown children, a strong social network, centered on their family and their church, has shielded them.
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“They go fishing, they shoot bows and arrows,“ Ms. Brown said. "They don’t know they’re poor.” Read more and see more photos at the Post-Gazette here.

Top photo: Michelle Kenney looks out of the Allegheny County Courthouse window before the start of the homicide trial of former East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld, charged in the fatal shooting of her son, 17-year-old Antwon Rose II. “As a mom, you can’t prepare for this — you just have to do it — there is no go-to map on this,” Ms. Kenney said. “I’ll treat it as any other role that I have as Antwon’s mother. I just have to do it.”

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“We will continue to reach out to the community, to call on the community to come together,” said 1Hood activist/musician Jasiri X during a vigil in Rankin to honor Antwon. People gathered on the basketball court in Hawkins Village where Antwon once played, a painting of Antwon’s smiling face looking out above an altar of flowers and candles. Addressing Antwon’s family, Jasiri said, “We will not abandon you in this time… We are with you.”

The words came after a weekend of marches into businesses and through the streets in dark, rain, and shine after the acquittal of former East Pittsburgh Police officer Michael Rosfeld in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Rose. The marches continued through the week, with hundreds of students walking out from school and into the rain to flood the streets of downtown Pittsburgh and chanting the name of Antown Rose II. Third grader Esme carried a painting she made of Antwon that read, “This is why we kneel. #JusticeforAntwon.” Across town at Woodland Hills High School, Antwon’s mother addressed his former high school classmates. “I got up there and said what I would have said to Antwon,” Ms. Kenney said. Don’t walk out of school in protest, she told them. Get an education and work to effect change. Vote. “Do what Antwon isn’t here to do.”

If you have suggestions on stories you want to see from your Western PA community, feel free to contact me to start a conversation.

Bella holds still as her mother dresses her for her first time as Atabey in a Taino Full Moon Ceremony in their neighborhood of Hazelwood. The ceremony marked the last full moon for the winter season and honors the monthly cycles of the earth, human women, and Atabey, or the cosmic matriarch in the Taino people’s tradition. Miguel Sague, a behike (or shaman) at Caney Indigenous Spiritual Circle, spoke of the way that the full moon pulls on the tide’s of the earth’s blood, or the oceans and water. “Human blood also does the same thing, at least in the body of women,” he said,  "All of us, including men, all benefit by this cycle of fertility.“

Bella’s mother, Dayvanna, held tears in her eyes as she watched her daughter take this right of passage. "I get to witness you and all the studies you’ve done to be able to embrace this moment for yourself.” She thanked the cosmic mother for another month of life and blew prayers in smoke to her ancestors.

I felt the weight of hundreds of years of colonization on my shoulders as I watched this beautiful moment unfold. I know the harsh history of photojournalism, white colonialism, and indigenous people, the conflict and misunderstanding caused by the lens of outsiders, pressing up against the understanding that there I was, in a small living room, witnessing something that this young woman had been anticipating her whole life. My head still swarmed with thoughts of the history of my whiteness crashing up against this beautiful, breathtaking, quiet acknowledgement of the infinite and divine, womanhood and moonhood, of a repeating line of mothers and daughters that goes back farther than I can understand.

Miguel must have sensed my struggle. He looked at me and told me that the Taino people had painted their ceremonies on cave walls, which read as accounts of those times, the revelations and traditions and manifestations that occurred. “You are one of those cave painters on those cave walls,” he told me. Dayvanna agreed.

I don’t know if they knew that this week, with what we’ve been dealing with in our newsroom, these words, this beautiful expression of forgiveness and understanding, would give me the strength and clarity of purpose I need to carry through. There’s still more work to do (okay, a lot of work to do), but I’ll never forget that moment.

The (dino) geese are back atop the 10th Street Bridge by Pittsburgh’s South Side. “There’s a real risk right now to the city losing the character and the history that it’s had and people are starting to be aware of that and don’t want to just wash everything off and turn it into a shiny new place again,” said Brandon Barber, who assisted longtime friend and fellow artist Tim Kaulen as they perched 100 ft. above the street to try to match up to the painted geese Tim painted on the bridge some 20 years prior.

I’ve gawked up at those paintings since I first moved to the city, wondering about them, about how they got there and what they meant (and thinking they were dinosaurs). 995 people who signed a petition to save the art have been wondering alongside me, creating their own stories and meaning for the four-foot-tall figures.

Tim says he loves that people have crafted their own meaning behind them. “I felt that my community needed a spark, a highlight, something to say: there’s something here, there’s a pulse here that’s important, and there’s a voice here.” From his seat at OTB Bicycle Cafe in the neighborhood where he came of age as an artist, Tim talks inspiration from his grandfather’s primitive, handmade decoys, why he took risk for art in the 1st place, and being mindful to stand against the erasure of culture, work, character, and history in the city as it goes through a period of rapid change.

Sound on for the video, and see/read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here.