Urban encouragement, in small doses
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Dear Detroit,
Yikes.
I'd heard you were ailing - I've had my own health and money problems for a couple of decades - but wow. I won't sugarcoat it. You're a mess.
The bombed-out buildings. The abandoned churches. The empty skyscrapers downtown. I see you have a casino; apparently, it didn't fix everything. Did you bet your whole economy?
You're not alone. Times are hard. Have you seen Toledo lately? The vacant plants and office parks with their crumbling, unshaven parking lots? Who ever thought we'd see Mother Nature getting her own back like that?
Not the guy standing at a traffic light with a sign saying, "LOST EVERYTHING. NEED WORK."
That about sums it up. That and the sign on the door of a deli in your downtown: "THOU SHALT NOT KILL." In other towns, businesses are satisfied with "No shoes, no shirt, no service."
I'm not here to snow you - we in the Rust Belt get enough of that - but I want you to know there's hope. I've been where you are. We're not identical and neither are our problems, but in the '90s people were saying the same things about me that they say about you now. Like "Will the last person to leave please turn off the lights?" Ha ha.
Look: You have, or are building, the same things that helped me begin to recover. And the best of those things aren't things - they're people. Loyal people who love you and don't want to leave if they can find a way to stay. I'm blessed with those - a fierce tribe of proud yinzers, and pioneering transplants who enjoy looking like explorer/colonists to the folks back home.
Yeah, the kids left to find work when they had to. But they want to come back, and a lot of them do now that I've fixed the place up.
First Published June 30, 2011 12:00 am
