My Midwestern Fleetwood Mac

She came from a dying Rust Belt town in southeast Ohio, and I came from a famously dying Rust Belt town an hour north of Detroit. We were both oldest children, with the same letter leading our first and last name. Our birthdays were one day apart.  And, we both loved Fleetwood Mac.

2023-07-19T08:13:43-04:00July 15, 2023|

That Good Night

By now I should understand that when every choice starts to feel like a miscalculation, a mistake, I’m up against forces bigger than myself. Yet I was secretly, irrationally angry at them for succumbing too willingly to death without any burning or raving or raging. If they’d just tried hard enough, I sometimes thought.

2023-05-15T08:20:44-04:00May 10, 2023|

Willie at Ninety

So, be you a Willie fan or not, when his 90th birthday tributes show up on television and radio this weekend, remember that he has in so many ways lived all of our lives and sung all of our songs in all our towns from Pittsburgh to Denver.

2023-05-03T09:12:47-04:00April 29, 2023|

Art that’s Rooted in the Rust Belt

Thriving creative communities can be found throughout the Rust Belt in other small- to mid-size industrial cities like Racine.  Places like Sheboygan, Rockford, Peoria, Flint, South Bend, Dayton, Toledo, Canton—the list goes on.

2023-04-01T09:02:41-04:00March 27, 2023|

On Woolly Bear Caterpillars and Michiganders

It takes a lot of work to survive winter. It takes a lot of gear, a lot of preparations. Buying salt for the driveway, buying kitty litter for our trunks. Making sure there’s blankets and flashlights and bottled water in the car in case we’re stuck in a drift or the car won’t start when it’s below freezing.

2023-02-15T10:01:49-05:00February 11, 2023|

Trent Reznor’s Conflicted Rust Belt Legacy

Trent Reznor never mentioned the Johnstown Flood in his interviews on MTV, though he would’ve learned about it the same way any other Rust Belt boy does...He never mentioned that he was a rich boy surrounded by a world his ancestors got tricked into helping destroy.

2023-02-04T08:51:09-05:00January 30, 2023|
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