Issue No. 8 from Barren Magazineis out, and features my story, “The Virgins,” among among so much fantastic poetry, prose, and photography for your weekend entertainment. (Thank you to the editors for letting my story sit among such great company!) See also my friend (and Rust Belt Girl follower) DS Levy’s flash fiction piece, “Tengku,” my fave poem of the day, “Barrels of Fruit,” by Caroline Plasket, and more gritty, rusty photography–along with sweeping skies and far-off places–than a girl could shake a stick at.
Interior of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Roman Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo and story credit: Johnny Joo, architecturalafterlife.com
Maybe old buildings are in my blood. For forty years, my dad worked as a draftsman and designer for structural engineering firms, drawing up plans by hand. On trips into Cleveland for the art museum or bagels, Dad would point out the buildings he’d had a hand in. His job: ensuring they would stay standing.
So, it feels like a personal affront to watch buildings–especially beautiful historic places–go to ruin, abandoned.
I’ve talked on the blog before about “Ruin Porn,” a type of photography that glorifies falling-down structures, often in post-industrial places, like my native Cleveland. I’ve said before, that to me Ruin Porn looks like the American Dream on its knees with no dreamer in the scene. (I wrote a three-part essay you can read here, here, and here.) So, what do we do? How to salvage falling-down places?
The stadium had hosted over 1,500 football games for the high schools in Akron, as well as for Ohio High School Athletic Association playoff games. The Cleveland Browns had also used the stadium for 19 preseason games over the years.
Rebecca here: Photographer Johnny Joo is “Preserving History Through Imagery” at his site, Architectural Afterlife. You don’t have to be a Northeast Ohio native (like Johnny and this gal) to appreciate his stirring photography. Much more than capturing abandoned sites, he provides the history behind the sites–separating his work from the likes of “ruin porn,” in my opinion.
What do you think?
What’s on your plate today? Photography? A good summer read? I can’t get enough of discussing A Gentleman in Moscow. Otherwise, I’m buried under work-writing but hope to surface soon!
Happy Paper Anniversary! (Ironic, but true.) It’s Rust Belt Girl’s one year blogiversary.
Happy, happy day! We made it a year. I appreciate you sticking by me—and just think of all the writing paper we haven’t wasted!
For the obligatory anniversary stats: this post make 51, with an average word count of 370 (wordy me), for 347 total comments (lots by me) from 593 total followers, some of whom hopped on this train on that banner day when my post was a WordPress Discover feature. Thanks again, WordPress editors!
I started this blog to wrap my head around the literature of my native Rust Belt. For sure, one of my favorite comments, starting out in the Community Pool (best place to be on a Monday) went something like this: I don’t know where the *#$& the Rust Belt is, but I like it!
WordPress is definitely global. As much as I enjoy connecting with my fellow native or current Midwesterners (and I really do), one of the best things about this blog has been finding commonalities between far flung people and places—and the literature and art that comes out of those places.
This blogiversary coincides with the anniversary of my jump onto social media via FB. Yep, you read that right. When everyone else starts jumping ship, I’m like: that boat looks nice and sturdy! (Really, dinghy pics definitely forthcoming.) What have I found as a social media newbie? If I let it, social media zaps my focus so that I have the attention span of a hyper puppy. (Nope, still haven’t taken the real puppy plunge yet; I’ll keep you posted.) Social media also keeps me connected to friends, family, and writers too nice to ignore my friend requests! But those connections are more like taps on the shoulder—“remember me?”—than conversations.
We’re conversing here—real two-way street stuff. So, now it’s your turn. Happy Blogiversary to you, because it definitely takes two! What would you like to see from me in year two? (Cotton anniversary, btw.) I’ll try to oblige. ~ Rebecca
An island in the rust belt,
once perhaps a wayward
rhinestone jewel and now?
Some parts have seen
better times and some
have seen bitter times,…
…some hang around
like the ghosts of a
history of light and dark,…
…and some don’t see time
at all, but time sees them
and watches…..closely.
Like a rag or a bag snagged
on a stick in the river, some
parts moving, some standing still,…
…a city that seems at
times not to know where— or even when—it is.
“Watching Time” poem and images by Johnny Crabcakes at A Prayer Like Gravity
Rebecca here: thank you, thank you to Johnny Crabcakes at A Prayer Like Gravity for these fine photographs and words. Together, they provide a window into the Rust Belt city of St. Louis, always changing, ever still. Please visit A Prayer Like Gravity for much more.
I’ve said before that my lack of talent with a camera has turned out to be a blessing. Wanting to feature regional photography here at Rust Belt Girl, I’ve turned to the experts–like Johnny Crabcakes; along with my fellow Northeast Ohio native, Johnny Joo, who specializes in abandonment photography at architecturalafterlife.com; and Michelle Cole, who posts her thoughts and photography at Intensity Without Masteryand who shared with Rust Belt Girlhere and here what her life is like today in Lima, Ohio.
Want more photography? Check out my handy-dandy Categories.
Are you a photographer in a Rust Belt-ish place? I’d love to hear from you!
I suppose there’s always been a certain amount of fear around kids at school. There’s the letting go, the separation from family and home. For me, this means a willful disentanglement of my heart from my kids’, as I drop them off at school every day. There’s no drama, no tears–it’s a wonderful school–but I do have to tamp down my mother love, or else I’d never let them go.
Making the decision to have a child…is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
She was right. So my little hearts leave my sight to beat and grow, and I have to remind myself it’s been eight years since we were skin to skin in the hospital at their birth. They are in their own skins now; they don’t need my mother heat like that.
They are strong. I tell myself this when they come home telling me–so nonchalantly–about lock down drills.
I don’t remember lock down drills in elementary school. I remember tornado drills, my knees pressed against the painted cement block walls of the hallway outside our classroom, my body curled like a potato bug, one in a long line of kids, our hands over the napes of our necks. I remember the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster in fifth grade; when I returned home from school my mom was crying while folding laundry in the basement.
I wonder if my kids will associate school with fear or if, instead, they’ll think of my hand taking theirs and squeezing it before they tumble out of the car each morning, looking like mini sherpas with their packs and bags. I hope that’s all the burden they’ll ever have to carry.
Grandma Ruby and Me, 2005, from The Notion of Family (Aperture, 2014). by LaToya Ruby Frazier; photo courtesy of npr.org
LaToya Ruby Frazier grew up in Braddock [Pennsylvania]. She’s a photographer who’s been taking pictures of her hometown for two decades, and she says that neither of [the common narratives of this place–as the birthplace of steel or a Rust Belt town revitalized] represent the Braddock she knows. Her Braddock is primarily black, primarily female and primarily poor.
I hope you’ll check out this eye-opening piece about a Rust Belt photographer, who provides an alternative view of the Mon Valley (former steel industry center, outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) to the one featured in the novel, American Rust.
Top 3. Top 10. Top 100. We attach ourselves to the superlative and feel tops–if only for a moment. And that almighty numeral: even an English major gets to feel like a statistician.
So, without further ado…
A Rust Belt Girl Top 3 (according to you)
with related recommended viewing for the new year:
Number 3: A blog is born, my first-ever post, covered my rationale for starting this blog. (Among my reasons: an online search for “female and Rust Belt” turned up rust-colored ladies’ belts for sale by JCPenny.) For those of you who made it to post two, thank you!
Number 2: Life in Lima and more–from Intensity Without Mastery’s Michelle Cole (along with the second installment) featured a collaboration with the photographer and blogger with an honest eye for life and art in the Rust Belt. (Bonus points for pronouncing “Lima” correctly!) Look for more collaborations in the blogosphere in 2018.
(And, drum roll, please…)
Number 1: The big kahuna, the winner of the most views goes to my Interview with award-winning Akron, Ohio, author and journalist David Giffels, who answered all of my pressing questions about his books–including Furnishing Eternity coming out January 2–along with his teaching, his hometown, and even Lebron. Be on the lookout for another conversation right here with David on his latest memoir early in the new year.
Until then, may your days be merry and bright and your New Year’s celebrations be tops…
How did we get here? Not here at Rust Belt Girl so much as here—writing, blogging, connecting? (Anyone else have that Talking Heads song running on repeat in their minds? You’re welcome.)
For me, it was my mom who was the reader in my young life, who made it okay to “waste” an hour or a day on a good book. She was my biggest fan, even when my writing hadn’t a prayer of reaching a larger audience than my immediate family. She made me feel like a writer—and sometimes a vote of confidence from someone you love is enough to begin to believe it, yourself.
As I emerge from my Thanksgiving Day food coma, I say thanks to memories of my mom and to everyone else who makes me feel like something of a writer.
Many thanks, in particular, to Intensity Without Mastery blogger and photographer Michelle Cole for this two-part collaboration. I’ve learned so much! (Please check out Part 1, here.)
For Part 2, I wanted to see where Michelle finds her inspiration, what sparks her creativity.
Michelle—what inspires you to take photographs, especially of your Ohio city? What do you shoot with?
I must first credit my parents with impressing me with the notion that hobbies are vital to happiness. My dad kept an aquarium and made pictures of ships with strings pulled around pins painstakingly positioned on canvas or velvet (there is a name for these sort of pictures that escapes me now; its popularity rose and fell alongside macramé). My mom painted and drew. She also read an ocean of genre fiction.
My dad had a significant interest in photography in the 70s. My parents’ bathroom did double duty as a dark room for a few years. My dad’s interest in photography was mostly confined to portraits of family members and some architectural photos. One of my earliest memories involves taking the elevator to the top of what was then the tallest building in Indianapolis, probably the National Bank Building. We went to the top so Dad could take a cityscape picture from that vantage point.
Like for so many Rust Belt families, the prosperity we knew in the 70s did not last, so Dad put aside his photography habit due to cost.
Despite that our fortunes rose and fell, the example of their hobbies endured. Creative pursuits had value. Eventually, my history of major depression intersected with this notion. When digital photography became widespread, I decided to try it because I wanted to see if I could develop a skill that I knew was not a total waste of my time. My parents taught me by example that all creative expression had inherent value.
Then I was struck by the idea that photography could remind me that life was worth living, that my life itself had value. The places I saw, my city especially, were a part of that value.
As I took more pictures of the places I had seen so often, I began to feel something akin to teaching a dying language. I was capturing scenes that should not be forgotten: this is how we lived, the good, the bad, the ugly . . .
I also have an enduring interest in nature photography. I feel serenity in documenting the change of seasons.
I shoot with three different cameras, a Nikon D5200, a Canon Rebel T6, and my cell phone camera (a budget LG V8). None of my equipment is expensive or super sophisticated. There is still much I should learn about the technical points of photography. My favorite shooting combo is my Nikon D5200 with a Nikkor 55-200 mm f4-5.6 VR lens.
What moves you to provide a short essay or story around your photographs?
I wish I had the time and consistent motivation to write about the pictures in every photography post on my blog. When I look at my pictures, I see shorthand for memories that I wish others could read. I suppose that great photographs past and present tell that story with no annotation necessary.
I feel like my inclination to write an essay to accompany a picture is a function of two things: time and depression. If my depression is flaring up, my picture posts have little or no text offered, and the writing is perfunctory or clinical in tone. If the text is short but optimistic in nature, I am simply too busy with work or parenting to write much more.
The photos I take of places in my city usually tap a rich vein of memory for me because I’ve seen them so often, and I really should offer an anecdote to accompany them.
Today I took a picture of a house near the downtown area that intrigues me with its longevity.
While this home has some striking Victorian details, its greatest distinction is being the last home left standing in its area. Every other home along that street for several blocks was taken by eminent domain for the construction of a new high school and stadium. I don’t know how this house escaped this dragnet that resulted in the razing of many aging homes and row houses in the vicinity. The powers that be made the school’s lawn large beyond reason to justify demolishing a problem public housing project that had been built in the 80s. This house reminds me that the place we call home stirs feelings of ambivalence.
At heart, I feel this project was like liposuction to this town; poverty and crime can’t be erased just by demolishing buildings and planting perfect lawns where they once stood. I wish some of the other houses had been spared. The perfect lawn and angled brick of the new high school are reminders that the Lima my parents and grandparents knew cannot be resurrected. At least we have this one home left from the old era.
Michelle—thank you for giving me a window into your world. Your personal journey captured in stunning images inspires me to keep growing by creating and connecting with bloggers like you. Anything else you’d like to say?
We live in a golden era of photography. Chances are you have at least one camera within reach almost all the time. No one’s life is just like yours. No one sees all of the places you’ve seen. What you’ve seen today could be gone tomorrow. Now is the time to share those images with the world.
Thanks again to Michelle Cole at Intensity Without Mastery for reminding us to keep sharing our visions in words and images. And don’t forget to visit Michelle’s site.
Do you feel you, too, are “teaching a dying language” by resurrecting memories of the past through your writing or photography?
For my next two posts here at Rust Belt Girl, I am honored to present Michelle Cole, a fellow Ohio native, who blogs at Intensity Without Mastery. I first stumbled upon Michelle’s photographs of the city where she lives: Lima, Ohio. I have posted before about abandonment photography, or “ruin porn,” as leaving me cold. Michelle’s photography, on the other hand, struck me with its depth of feeling, and I knew I had to learn more about the woman behind the lens. She has agreed to guest post here at my blog, and I’m so grateful.
As Michelle will tell, life in Lima—like in many Rust Belt places—has seen its share of hard times: leaving and loss. There are also sweet spots.
Between her photographs and candid backstory, Intensity Without Mastery moves me with its intense truthfulness:
My life was a mess of attrition and despair until the Recession. As the economy crumbled, I got better, and I’m uncertain why. … In this blog, I explore my sometimes incomplete recovery from mental illness. While I am candid about this aspect of my health, I also explore a hodgepodge of interests, such as photography …
Michelle describes for Rust Belt Girl life in Lima, Ohio:
Lima is situated near the midpoint between Detroit, Michigan, and Cincinnati, Ohio [cities along the north and south edges of America’s post-industrial heartland]. My family has deep roots in the Lima area, but I did not move here until I was nine years old, in 1981. I did spend a total of five years outside Lima in my late teens and twenties, pursuing my education, first, and starting a family, second. By the way, both of these ventures were failures in a conventional sense. I didn’t get a degree, and I became a single parent, which begins in heartbreak unless that’s the outcome intended from the start. I didn’t truly feel at home in Lima until I had failed to create the sort of life I envisioned for myself when I was young. I think that sentiment is key to describing what Lima is like.
The longer I live in Lima, the more I get the sense that this city is full of people who once wished they had landed somewhere else more replete with wealth and growth, somewhere the countryside is perpetually bulldozed to make way for more homes, stores, and schools. Reality eventually tempers these dreams for those who don’t have the skills or wealth to move away.
Abandoned storefront in Lima, Ohio, 2006 by Michelle Cole
There’s a lot of healthy cynicism in those who inhabit the “post-fantasy” world of surviving in Lima. I found a perfect portrayal of it in a now-old article from The Onion (which, by the way, started in the bleeding edge of the Rust Belt: Madison, Wisconsin) called “Coca-Cola Introduces New 30-Liter Size.” This little satire is a clever critique of the conventional American urge toward that which is big, bright, and new.
It is necessary to reject those sort of values to be happy here.
The city of Lima has lots of reminders of its past glory days, from abandoned homes to empty or underused factories on the outskirts of town. Nowhere is this more evident than our downtown area. Where once finely dressed shoppers and business people trod the streets, now there are people who were broken and couldn’t quite be put back together. That’s another reason I feel at home in Lima.
I am one of those broken people, and when I am feeling well, I am proud of all I do. When I am depressed, I feel a bit resentful of rising to the occasion despite having some disabilities. I am hearing impaired. I have arthritis and spinal stenosis, along with a long history of clinical depression that’s been treated with varying degrees of success. This situation is not rare in people who’ve stayed in Rust Belt towns like Lima that are long past their prime. I encounter so many people who are trying to get by despite their medical problems. It’s so common that at times qualifying for disability benefits is like crossing a finish line, a mission accomplished instead of a surrender.
I’d be remiss not to mention that there is an enduring vitality to Lima despite its long-term decline in wealth and population. There’s a longstanding effort to revitalize the city and improve our local schools. We have a local symphony and community colleges.
There’s also the treasure I see in the fundamental dignity of all people as they go about the business of living, whether rich or poor, old or young.
No matter how cynical or depressed I feel at times, I see a beauty and notice innate intelligence and wit in every person I encounter. When I drive through the city of Lima or walk some of its streets with my camera in hand, I often think of the following lines from Walt Whitman from “Song of Myself” in Leaves of Grass:
“There was never more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”
Part two, from photographer Michelle Cole at Intensity Without Mastery coming soon. Visit her wonderful site for stunning photography and more.
What is your song? Leaving? Loss? The sweet spots? How do you capture “home” in your stories? How do images factor in?
Rust Belt Girl 