The Potential of Public Art
The work of public memory is not only about the past, but about a shared vision for the future.
Mike’s Big Ditch
For decades, Mike Kirwan was the loudest advocate for a proposed canal from the Ohio River to Lake Erie. But he couldn't close the deal.
Returning to Pittsburgh
"For all the intervening years, Pittsburgh had lived in my memory...viewable but not touchable, sequestered behind a one-way mirror of time."
A Love Letter to Dayton
"When I became editor-in-chief of the city’s alt weekly, Dayton City Paper, it became my job to know Dayton intimately."
Power and Possibility in Dayton’s Oregon District
An elegy for a wounded place.
The End of a World as I Knew It
On childhood summers at a black enclave in Michigan, and the moment everything changed.
Scheherazaden: On the Power of Women’s Stories
Stories, recounted and repeated and insisted upon, accumulate.
Still Life, Ohio Valley
"In early morning the tributaries / at Pittsburgh meld, then flow on / for centuries"
Just Downriver from Detroit
"During my visits to to the nursing home, Dad and I have sometimes settled into chairs to time-travel through a photo album."
Today I Laid a Crayfish at Your Grave
"I kneeled at the stump where we laid the Ford agate,/Made up spells and secrets..."
Rightsizing Thanksgiving in the Rust Belt
As the jobs have vanished, as education and employment have lured our young people out-of-state and overseas, our holidays have been transformed as well.