Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while were young…
Nobody in their right mind loves Michigan uncritically.
Everything that could be wrong with a state is what’s wrong with Michigan. Most of us dream of leaving from an early age. I remember hearing an interview with Michigan native, Madonna, where she said she wasn’t really sure what she was thinking when she moved to New York. All she knew was she had to get the fuck out of Michigan. All of us understood that meant without being told.
I knew I was going to leave Michigan too. From the time I did my first report on Italy in the fifth grade. I was going to get out. I wouldn’t stay where I wasn’t wanted–and Michigan made it very clear, it didn’t want me there.
I spent my youth holding on–just holding on–until I could get out. And when graduation time rolled around, I was ready.
But I didn’t go as far as I thought I would. After many travels, I wound up on the other side of the state, as firmly entrenched in the world of Michigan as I had been before when I dreamed daily, hourly, minute by minute, of leaving…
***
As I put on my shoes, I can hear the constant drone of the freeways. Yet another police car with it’s sirens blasting powers by. Before I step out the door, two airplanes and a helicopter shake the house as they prepare for landing.
***
The south east side of the state is all I know of Michigan any more. After I left the city of my birth, I rarely went back, and although I have vague plans to go see a tulip time festival with my kids, I never manage to follow through on them.
SE Michgan has been hit by industrialization in a way that the west side of the state was only beginning to experience when I left for good. The “Big Three” have spent the past hundred years raping Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, and hundreds of cities in between of pretty much every ounce of blood they have.
The Big Three backed the building of massive freeways from Saginaw to Detroit, Ohio, and Canada to better transport massive shipments of first cars, then airplanes and tanks, then cars again. The freeways were for the companies, but eventually the workers used them too–for escape. Factory workers used I-75 to sneak up North for some quick fishing on the weekend, youths used the Ambassador Bridge to find a place that would serve them alcohol before they were 21, and eventually all the people who could afford it (i.e. white collar workers, well paid factory workers) found the peace they were looking for out in the suburbs.
Escapism mixed with practicality created a huge chunk of Michigan this is little more than vast strips of concrete punctuated by a few trees here and there. It’s a concrete jungle that allows you to trick yourself into believing you’re not in prison.
***
I want to die with you on the street tonight in an ever lasting kiss…
***
Flint Michigan
***
When you walk into down town from one direction, you can see abandoned stores from decades ago. They smell vaguely of cat urine and sun heated wood. Somebody slapped a coat of blue paint on them years ago, and the blue is now crumbling away with the rest of the building.
Up the street, three family owned businesses have gone out of business since I moved into the area. Across the street a co-op that was started during the Great Depression as a way to bypass a failing system is still busy, but often too expensive for my family and others like mine to afford.
***
I want to guard your dreams and visions…
***
It’s only very rarely that it’s a joy to go for a walk here. More often than not, it’s a struggle, a pain, an effort. The closest *real* park (as in, it has birds and trees and wild flowers and leaves and maybe some bunny rabbits or raccoons–as opposed to a small plot of grass with a walkway forced through it) is about a 20 minute car ride into Ann Arbor. I have not been strong enough mentally to try the bus.
To drive out to a nice park where you can’t hear the drone of the freeways is often such a hassle (and expensive–$4 gas anyone?), it’s just not worth it. But walking around the local neighborhood…well…see for yourself.
Michigan, day one
Michigan, day two
Michigan, day three
Notice anything?
Inspired to get outside and take an invigorating, life affirming, healing walk?
I sure wasn’t. And that’s why I didn’t. The fam and I got in the car instead and drove around. We documented our surroundings, became more aware of them.
Michiganders spend a lot of time trying to outrun their surroundings, to make the bleak grayness as blurry as possible so certain things just aren’t noticed anymore.
So that the miles and miles of concrete grayness doesn’t swallow you whole.
***
The only places in town that ever stay busy are the bars.
When I lived in Flint, a city more ravaged and abandoned that this one, it was the same way.
***
On the other side of town there are multiple factories/warehouses. The small river that runs right through the center of town was harnessed by entrepreneurs of various kinds, and almost all of them closed up or left decades ago. But they all left their crap here–and none of us has been able to figure out what to do with the mess.
There is one factory in particular that is an especially sore thumb. Huge and white and surrounded by barbed fence, it looks like it’s been out of commission for years. And yet that stupid fence still protects it with an unsettling fervor, reminding us all that even an empty, abandoned, rusted out piece of shit factory is worth protecting–from us.
***
Only rarely do I go for walks by myself. During the day time, it’s not that I’m afraid of my surroundings, it’s that I don’t have the energy. And so I use the unending restlessness of my kids to motivate me. Can you imagine getting antsy kids all ready to go and then saying ‘never mind’ because putting your own shoes on is just too much work?
We’ve had neighbors comment on how great it is to see a family out walking. I haven’t told any of them yet the real reason the whole family is out there. I sense that they have their own reasons they aren’t out–and I don’t like to intrude on their space.
***
The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive…
***
When I leave for my walks, I always have that choice of not coming back. It’s something I think a lot of people forget–but also why songs like Born to Run resonate with so many of us.
We have the choice to not come back.
We have the choice to keep walking, to keep driving, to go and go and go until we reach the place where it’s sunny and beautiful and warm and brilliant.
We have that choice–but every time–we eventually make the big circular turn and come back home.
Our walks, our drives, our thoughts, never take us any place but home. A depressing, ugly, gray, polluted, noisy, just plain dreary home.
So when Michigan is what is, when Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Ypsilanti, Willow Run, Dearborn, and so many other ‘lost’ factory cities are what they are…why the hell do we make that loop? Why the hell do we turn around?
Why do we love this place when it is what it is?
***
There is a disturbing trend that many photographers follow–the one of taking pictures of burned out abandoned homes/buildings. Detroit seems to get the brunt end of this deal, but Flint and Ypsilanti also get it–eager ‘artists’ who can find the beauty in death and worship the way light falls across the fractured window frame or the collapsed ceiling.
I think there is beauty in death too, and so I can appreciate these pictures. But after a friend told me she wanted to send a wild pack of dogs after the next person who says how ‘tragically beautiful’ an abandoned library in Detroit was, I really stopped to think.
I became obsessed with the ugly horrible factory with its protective fence.
Why aren’t burnt out factories photographed the same way living and life structures like libraries, homes and stores are?
Why can’t I find anything beautifully tragic about a dead factory?
Wasn’t there just as much life at that factory at one time as there was at the burned out house?
When I stand in front of that factory, I feel sort of uncomfortable–like my body is on complete alert. The sidewalk in front of the factory is broken and uneven and glass is everywhere. There is another factory across the street, but it has no windows and you sort of feel like anything could happen to you and nobody would see it.
It is just an ugly mess on that corner. An ugly lonely mess.
But at one time, there was vibrant life.
And there still is.
It’s just we’ve all be looking in the wrong place, at the wrong thing.
***
It’s easy to love the dead. The dead is unchanging and more often than not, idealized. It can be what you want it to be, crystallizing the supportive memories and abandoning the painful ones. It conforms to your needs the way you need it to.
It’s not that easy to love life. Because what is life but the abused? The violated? The ugly? The never going to be ‘fixed’ or leave the asshole either total frustration?
It’s not easy to love the fierce vitality of life–because it fights back. It’s what keeps getting up after it’s been hit. It’s the Cool Hand Luke that becomes the ‘problem’ you never intended it to become and just won’t go away.
Why do we love this problem?
In the ugly factory’s parking lot is the secret, the answer.
The concrete that plasters the ground is thick and huge. It takes up at least a block worth of space. And every last inch of that concrete is broken–busted through by weeds.
Ugly, awkward, fierce weeds that grew anyway, even when they were told not to.
And that is what South East Michigan overflows with.
Food that grows anyway.
Youths that refuse to back down.
Teachers that bark, “sit back down, we’ve still got three more minutes!”
Healers that keep neighborhoods strong enough to get back up again.
Community centers that manage to feed the old folks on a few local donations.
People that dance in the street.
The broken hero that knows what the highway can bring her, and turns around to go home every single time–because what’s at home is worth fighting for–because *she’s* worth fighting for.
There is beauty in the fierce weeds that are strong enough to destroy the best capitalism has to offer and still flourish.
We just have to learn to look away from the grandeur of death and toward the tiny crack that just keeps getting bigger no matter what gets plastered over it.
***
Together we can live with the sadness, I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul…
***
There’s no place left to hide in South East Michigan. It is almost totally and completely destroyed–devastated down to the once life sustaining dirt.
It’s a place where “walking” is defined by car rides, broken down bus journeys, and songs and dreams.
But there is life in this land, in this body.
And we may be in a fight with it, or a fight for it, or in a fight because of it–or maybe all three at the same time.
But we all know that it’s a fight. And eventually, maybe someday, we’ll all trust each other enough to share our secrets–our love–with each other and recognize together, as a community, we’re worth it.
That the ugly ain’t as ugly as we thought it was.
Someday we’ll get to that place.
Till then..
***
The kids know why I need the shot of Flint as we are driving down the road. W* slows down so I have more of a chance to focus the camera. My son sees that I am very slowly turning from the front of the car to the back where he is at. He scoots down in his seat as low as he can so that I can get a clear shot.
Baby bfp screams from her side of the seat, “take a picture of me too, what about me, get me too!”
There is life here in this car. And maybe resistance is in offering to share the ride with you.
In asking you to share a ride with us all, with life.
Come on with me…
- Share
February 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm #
this is awesome. you are awesome. xxoo
February 9th, 2009 at 4:05 pm #
Damn. Has anyone told you lately that you’re made of 100 percent awesomeness?
February 9th, 2009 at 4:15 pm #
you rock, bfp… you just do…
February 9th, 2009 at 4:24 pm #
Beautiful.
February 9th, 2009 at 5:39 pm #
As someone said, this is awesome and so are you who wrote it. I’m Canadian. I know some parts of the States but not Michigan. I love the names: Ypsilanti and Flint and Saginaw. Why would there not be poetry and mystery and beauty in places with these names? Maybe for now it’s behind the fence, and in the river (which hopes you’ll save it) but it’s there, all just there waiting for someone like you to bring it out. Thank you for this.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:01 pm #
Yes, yes, yes.
This is my complicated love affair with Indiana.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:04 pm #
I also had a knee-jerk reaction to leave my hometown of Athens, GA when I was growing up, so I did. And it has taken me eight years to get to a place where I can see what is valuable about that town, why so many people love it and never leave. My mom said that the economic crisis is causing family-owned stores out of business, even ones that have been open for four decades or more. I wonder what it will look like when I return, what other vestiges of my childhood will be lost to the already committed sins of wall street and the banks and politicians and complicity.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:16 pm #
I just read that the Upper Peninsula’s unemployment is 11.4% while 2 counties in the UP have 20% unemployment. Michigan’s unemployment is 10.6%. I can’t stand the auto industry and I actually hope that it goes away so Detroiter’s wake up! It is one of the most exploitative and hurting industries to our planet and her people. I always shake my fist at Ford or GM’s world HQ. Since my view of the world is so Earth + Native based I feel left out here.
We have all stalled out here in Michigan.
When I took my walk tonight around the inner ring burb that I am in I hear I-75 and 696 and Woodward. What a nice mix. Although there are a plethora of trees to gaze up at here. The rest of the burbs are not so nicely done with trees. A place like Warren has bulldozed all trees back in the day when the auto industry was booming and people could but there cookie cutter homes to live in and enjoy the working/middle class “good life.”
I often want to run away and hide out in the UP but after reading the unemployment statistics about the UP I will stay down here in SE Michigan. It feels like Russia here because its cold, there are no jobs and it stinks.
I don’t know why I love Michigan so much. I don’t like the industrial corridor of Detroit/Flint/Bay City/Saginaw at all. I don’t care for consumerism or capitalism here. I care for the land so I do my best being really singled out here. I love anything north of the Mighty Mac. I love Lake Michigan although I hate the gentrification up there and the mega mansions of the lake shore. I love Michigan because a major part of my roots are here and the land is the land that is in my soul. I have no partner but I have the land. As a part of my Native tradition the land is my partner and so I feel most connected here. I am here for the land.
At the end of the day I would like a horse. I am done with cars so I am going to do this a little slower than you bfp. Turning back the clock, but in a good way.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:17 pm #
Great post. Like Bruce Springsteen, I am originally from New Jersey. I left for all of the reasons outlined in ‘Born To Run’. Nowadays I live in a somewhat hip and glamorous part of semi rural California, but my first love was the industrial midwest. When I go to South Eastern Michigan, the place was jumping. Detroit, at least in the mid-seventies, was full of brilliant writers, artists, musicians and activists. We all knew that we were living in the collapse of American Industry, but that was part of the excitement. Much of the city was already in ruins, but the ruins were crawling with life and we were a part of it.
I should also say that my friends and I were not hip tourists. We worked in the factories, rode the bus home, took classes at Wayne State and drank beer in the corner bars. Almost all of my friends were the grandchildren of immigrants or of poor southerners who had come north looking for opportunities.
I had to leave the midwest because I couldn’t make a living. It was nothing more than chance that kept me from ending up in Houston. Instead, I’m here in the wine country. When I think about Michigan, I think of a place that, among other things, has given the world as much great music as Memphis of New Orleans.
I understand why you are there.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:06 pm #
The work you’re doing on movement and walking and Michigan has put my life into so much context. And this piece is like you giving a voice to my childhood.
When my family moved from Detroit to the suburbs I couldn’t believe that cornfields and forests still existed. I remember that I used to scoff at kids for talking about the woods in their backyards. (“You can’t have a forest by your house! Duhh!”) Moving to the burbs was like moving to a different planet.
I’ll never forget the look on my mom’s face when I told her, one day a few weeks after we moved, I was “going out to play.” She looked at me like she was about to cry. My dad just looked at her and said, “We did good, babe.”
I was lucky to have a small backyard in Detroit, but we weren’t allowed to go near the back gate that faced the alley. I had a bike, but I wasn’t allowed to ride it further than 4 houses away in either direction. But then we moved and I was able to go EVERYWHERE! Me and another girl whose family moved from Detroit went on daily walks and bike rides in the summer. It was amazing. When my cousins came up to visit us we spent every second outside.
And now I can’t stop thinking about what it means that so many Detroit, Flint, Ypsi kids can’t “go out to play.” I love Detroit. I would (and often did) fight anyone for dissing my city. But good Lord, what does it mean for people’s mental and physical health that they can’t just go outside? And I can’t help but feel so sad and overwhelmed now that I realize how revolutionary taking a walk really is.
This is awesome, awesome work you’re doing. Thank you.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:46 pm #
Someone I know once said of Lansing that it’s a “great city for mediocrity.”
I honestly do think that can be said about Michigan as a whole.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:42 pm #
many thanks bfp.
i am simultaneously lured by and disgusted by artists’ attempts to gain off of such photographs. to try to re-imagine barren space beautiful. to profit off of loss is a strange and uncomfortable concept for me as an artist. why not focus our artistic energies on imaging the potential — rebuilding our communities instead of only documenting the loss? Historical and community memory are beyond important, and forgetting is a luxury i cannot afford, but….
i think about these images: how in my home of fruitvale, oakland artists have been creating public art pieces about Oscar Grant. Artists who when I ask about their personal connections to Grant and his community, have none. This rubs me the wrong way. Exploitation, i think. I’m realizing that this isn’t all that related to your post, sorry! But I think the issue you raised is interesting and possibly relates to Jess’ critique of perfectionism. Perhaps, there is something appealing in the capitalist failure of abandoned storefronts and warehouses. That i can breathe and see beauty again once the pressure to be perfect has dissipated into organic life and death. i can can live human again in the unruly absurdities.
February 10th, 2009 at 6:47 am #
wow mujer, just wow. Thank you so much for walking and taking us with you.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:23 am #
thank you everybody for your very kind and supportive words, they were really important and powerful to me last night–I was struggling to deal with all the emotions this post brought up in me, and it was just so amazing and *necessary* for me to read that other people understand and *get* it too.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:48 am #
as a detroit native i couldn’t hold back the tears as i read this… a couple months ago i was working on a film shooting in highland park, and i started to feel the same kind of rage that your friend expressed about people describing these places as “tragically beautiful”… you just captured so many things that i’ve been struggling to think for years and failing. thank you
February 10th, 2009 at 11:34 am #
I’m just an old softy, but I almost cried sitting here at work reading this.
and it made me think of my favorite springsteen song: now our luck may have died and our love may be cold but, with you forever I’ll stay
My mom has always said that there’s no reason to stay here if you don’t love Michigan enough to fight for it. The weather always sucks and the economy’s always bad and we don’t have the time for slackers.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:15 pm #
I’ve linked to this (with a substantial quote, but it’s short in comparison), having come to it by the rethinking post above.
Powerful writing.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:47 pm #
I have a long comment bubbling to come out, but it will have to wait until later. I did want to say though, that the reason I don’t want to leave Michigan is the people. Sure, Ann Arbor is infested with Libertarians and PoMo aficionados, west MI is neck and neck with Salt Lake City for the overbearingly religious prize, and our militia attracts none but the finest wingnuts. Let’s not even touch on the “metro area.”
But, after a year in exile in Austin at school, I couldn’t wait to come back. I missed the people here. Their friendliness, direct way of speaking, I don’t know. It’s hard for me to articulate. That, and the woods and lakes and rivers. If I ever leave, it won’t be for good. I just can’t do that.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:39 pm #
Also, if the infrastructure holding our society together collapses, there is no other place I’d rather be. I’ve been (idly, very idly) planning to overtake one of those imperious vacation homes Cecelia mentions above. Anyone for a feminist commune in the UP or northern LP?
February 10th, 2009 at 2:59 pm #
Wow. bfp, I was in a non-blog-reading mode for awhile there, and after getting notice that you linked to DCA’s website(!), spent the better part of my day catching up and reading and absorbing.
As someone who grew up in Lansing, lived in California for 17 years, and then moved to Detroit 6 months ago, I really understand so much of what you are saying here. People actually get kind of mad at me when they find out I moved back to Michigan from California – it’s hard to explain to them why.
I’m not sure how I feel about the label “healer,” but I’m *deeply* honored by you including me among such examples of amazingness as DAN and AMC (those people, indeed, and loving critical folks like you are who keep me going, who have something the whole damn country should be listening to.) I look forward to reading more. Come on down sometime and let me stick some needles in you – it’s all I have to offer!
February 10th, 2009 at 3:51 pm #
actually, @nora, I’m the one who called you this morning!
This Saturday you may stick away to your hearts content!
February 10th, 2009 at 3:56 pm #
@whit: I hear you, esp on the direct way of speaking–and you know, there really are some *very* unpleasant people here. People that drive me to distraction. And frankly, I can’t feel the same way about the other side of the state as I do this side, although I miss the land and the water terribly. But there’s something here on this side of the state–where even the libertarian assholes and the religious folks are straight shooters. They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. And I find that to be refreshing–and necessary, even as it is problematic on so many freaking levels.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:08 pm #
@ D. Potter–thank you much for your kind words! feel free to leave a link in comments so that we can see your own thoughts!!
February 10th, 2009 at 4:09 pm #
@ all the current SE michiganders, former michiganders, lovers of Michiganders–I can’t even read your kind words without tearing up. It’s so comforting and touching and sweet and touching the softest part of my heart that so many people love this place. It’s like you all love a peice of my heart.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:13 pm #
Yay! (Sorry if my directions were too long – I think I needed food!)
February 10th, 2009 at 4:17 pm #
@leyah—it’s an interesting and complicated debate. what *is* the attraction of devastation? I mean, I can think of a hundred pictures that *deeply* influenced who I am today (I grew up when LIFE magazine was still in publication), and almost every single *one* of them are pictures of horrible events–the girl running naked through the streets of vietnam, the kids who were shot and killed on Kent State campus, the guy shot in the head during the Spanish war…these are all necessary pictures–they helped to influence more people than just me, right?
but about the only pictures that I can think of that serve that same purpose–documenting the human condition–but *don’t* rely on violence to make an impact are the pictures of the great depression (think of the migrant mom) and pictures of the harlem Renaissance. But in *both* of those instances, it was a part of the artists pedagogy (or way that they worked) to become a part of the community–to get to know what was going on with the community and talk with the community before they took pictures–maybe spending days with them at a time before they actually took a picture.
The people who work with Oscar grant images and burned out detroit images etc–I have to think they’ve totally bypassed ‘getting to know the community’–because the community would tell them in a minute–the *last* thing flint or detroit or dearborn etc need is another commentary that showcase burnt out abandoned shit. that’s all people *think* about when they think of those cities!
February 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm #
I *totally* need long directions!!!! If I don’t get those long directions, I *will* wind up in Ohio somewheres! :p
February 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm #
Right, they’ll tell you to your face plain as day some awful thing that most self-respecting jackasses in other states only express on blogs or Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. And, frankly, I’d rather that than tactfully beating around the bush or saying one thing and then doing another, oblivious the whole while to the cognitive dissonance. I appreciate a tactless consistency to utter BS that’s been subverted into code words, personally.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:23 pm #
I *know*–you can just shrug your shoulders and let it go. Half the time, you can eventually even go out to the bar or something with that person! I think that in many ways, that might be why I find the religious stuff on the other side of the state so draining–they don’t respect that rule–that if you don’t agree, just let it drop and move on. I can be *incredibly* respectful of your choice to be a total asshole, now be respectful of MY choice to not follow Christianity. It’s what I do like about Libertarians–they leave you the hell alone and don’t spend all their time trying to convert you once you say, I disagree with you.
Not the healthiest relationship, yes, i know–but there’s not too much in this world that *is*.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:54 am #
Very interesting post. I escaped from SE Michigan — and the US — several years ago. Can’t say I miss a thing about it, but then I wasn’t born there.
The imagery of devastation is powerful. I like the wild places which offer a similar attraction: moorland, remote mountains of stone, etc.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:48 pm #
I probably sampled more quote than necessary, but http://onyxlynx.blogspot.com/2009/02/hard-cheese.html is the entry.
And I am just now reminded that the long-time morning dj for (San Francisco Bay Area) KFOG, Dave Morey, retired after 25 or so years–and moved back to Michigan. In winter.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:51 pm #
I can’t even say how deeply or personally this touched me. thank you.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:27 am #
This is some deep stuff you are doing with these posts bfp. While I read I can feel the mixed emotion, the sadness, the perseverance… I don’t have anything to add but a note that there is one more ear listening and one more heart in it with you.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am #
hey bfp…i cross posted a piece of this to revolutionary motherhood blog:
http://revolutionarymotherhood.blogspot.com/2009/02/rethinking-walking-bfps-second-walk.html
thanks for writing it…
February 12th, 2009 at 6:57 pm #
Thank you so much for this post. Reading your thoughts about Michigan is like a shot of love&pride vitamins straight to my heart. makes me so happy to be in this fight with/because of/for this place alongside you.
February 14th, 2009 at 8:14 pm #
Awesome post, BFP. I used to work at Ford in Detroit. You’re probably familiar with the Diego Rivera murals at the DIA? I remember seeing the grey, drone-like auto employees in one of them, and that epitomized my experience with the Big 3. Your imagery about the automakers is very moving.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:14 am #
Born and raised in SE Michigan on a farm my ancestors built in 1830. The family lost the farm in the 80s, the huge old farmhouse bought by an architect who immediately put in a swimming pool and a trendy wrap-around wooden porch to replace the sturdy cement stoop I remember Sam, the stone mason, pouring when I was 11 years old. I don’t think I have the heart to go back and see that anytime soon.
I’m a Minnesotan now, but my roots are in Michigan. I remember the smoke rolling by as Detroit burned in 67 and the National Guard rode their tanks over the neighborhoods. And that weird sense of pride knowing that only tanks were powerful enough to put down the enormous power of the people of Detroit.
I returned last year for AMC and the emptiness was overpowering. Nobody walking, nobody hanging out on the corners. Nobody filling the city parks with games and picnics and the sheer joy of being off work, in from the fields, out from the factory gates.
I don’t think anywhere in the world understands working people the way SE Michigan understands us. There was enormous pride being able to walk into those huge factories, toil away for hours and walk back out with our personalities intact. Or to put in a ten hour day bailing hay with the hot, wet summer sun draining moisture from our bodies in buckets.
Bfp, you make me miss it so.
April 6th, 2009 at 7:17 am #
“Why aren’t burnt out factories photographed the same way living and life structures like libraries, homes and stores are?”
That’s kinda exactly what I do, and exactly how i relate to living in Philadelphia.
Here’s a link to some of those photos:
http://spiritgate.typepad.com/photos/photos/philly/index.html
And, how come so much of the written words I find that describe Philadelphia are written in Detroit? LOVE your piece. Thank you.