A final burst of color as the storms brew darkly

Today was one of those days when the weather prediction for showers not only proved 100 percent accurate, it forgot to include the hail. But in the Northwest in November, you can stay indoors, or just get wet and enjoy this transition period from fall to winter. Most of the leaves in Forest Park, in my home town of Portland, Oregon, have fallen. They covered the forest floor in a mosaic of brown, yellow, and red. It was too wet for me to try to use my tripod. So I just held my FujiPro camera as steady as I could and clicked the shutter. I got a couple of OK shots. It was fun to see the colors and the many smiling people outdoors enjoying the rain, hail, rain again, and breaks of calm.

Slovak and Czech heritage in the Midwest

During my recent trip to Ohio and Michigan I stumbled accidentally on two meeting halls that served the needs of Czech and Slovak immigrants in the industrial Midwest, where many central and eastern European immigrants settled in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So-called fraternal organizations were common for Czech and Slovak immigrants in American cities in this era. Outside of churches or synagogues, this was where ethnic identity was allowed to flourish, celebrating the music and dance of the Old World in the New World. I found these two buildings very functional, and sturdy in a Midwest urban way.

However, hard times have fallen on Detroit, and the Detroit Slovak Home is a ghost, whose ethnic enclave has fled to the suburbs and all that remains is another abandoned building on Detroit’s east side, not far from the old Packard Plant. It was among many ethnic houses in Detroit, serving Polish, Lithuanian, German, Ukrainian, and Russian communities. The Bohemian National Home, or Sokol, Greater Cleveland’s Czech Cultural Center, in the Broadway neighborhood above the steel factory, still lives on to promote Czech culture. It too is in a lower-income neighborhood now that is experiencing economic decline.

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Random fall candids in Portland

The leaves are now falling en masse and the glory that is autumn is drawing to a close. I took a couple of shots over the past few weeks and decided to post them without any particular message, other than I enjoy sharing the season’s colors. I took two of these shots with a GoPro and one with my FujiPro, in really bad lighting without a tripod. But I still like the outcome.

Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.

Abandoned, east Detroit

Since coming back from Detroit in late September, I have reached out to five Portland area universities if they or their student groups might like a multimedia show on the realities facing Detroit. So far, I have not had any bites. I do not think the topic is of much interest to Portland area residents, as Detroit is nearly 2,000 miles away, and the realities facing a city with tens of thousands of abandoned properties and continued problems with public safety, poverty, and economic revitalization just do not register here. The Rust Belt and its many ills I think matter very little beyond the region that is experiencing continued economic decline for decades. But, I will keep working on this.

It still startles me how little people know and care about the pockets of distress in the United States, even though we still share the same country. This is not true all the time and everywhere, but for those pockets of intense decline and multi-generation poverty, it is as if we write them off as failed mini-states, doomed forever to failure. There seems to be an unwritten decision that just says, you are no longer worth it. And, for many in east Detroit, that looks a bit like what you see here.

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Tell me, you so wise, who among us does not have many masks

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

The expression “Janus faced” stems from Roman mythology. The god it represents, Janus, was two-headed. Sculptures show  two faces arranged in opposite directions.  The contemporary expression “Janus faced” is used to call out “two-faced” or deceitful persons, often politicians. Classic Greek theater  has a similar pairing many modern theater goers have seen of the two masks of drama, which show the classical Greek division of comedy and tragedy. They symbolize ancient Greek muses, Thalia and Melpomene. The muse of comedy is represented by the laughing face, and the muse of tragedy is represented by the weeping face.

I thought about the faces we present to the public, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. No one is able to fully mask their emotions, and I would say all of us can wear each mask depending on our ambitions and circumstances. Many of us encounter this daily, perhaps in a work environment with someone who projects being a lovable person to impress an audience he or she deems important to his or her personal priorities, and then they wear the other face when they no longer need to put on an act and can display the polar opposite behavior, usually to subordinates.

A conversation I had last night made me think about this, and during my long run today I thought about a pair of pictures I have of someone I once knew. Her faces were wonderfully clear, and powerful. I took these photos more than a dozen years ago, when I was much more involved in black and white portraiture and fascinated by what those portraits would tell me and other viewers. I hope one day to have someone capture me with my masks so I can see how I project my masks to the public.

Back-roads bike ride in Lane County, Oregon

I used to live in Eugene, Oregon, in the mid-1990s. I had not been back for nearly two decades to do one of my favorite bike rides, up Fox Hollow Road, out into rural areas by the millionaires’ high-priced mcmansions and rural homes, then back into town on the Lorane Highway. It’s a classic short ride, with great views of Spencer’s Butte and rural Lane County.

Colors were about at their peak brightness, but a bit brown because of drought. I saw more than two dozen wild turkeys that day too–the most I have ever seen in Oregon. I love this ride. I miss it, but not the pay level I had working as a reporter in that area. Ultimately I left because I could not sustain things. I always enjoy my visits there to see places I know and the people I once had as neighbors and co-workers.

A great list of area rides is published by the local bike advocacy group called GEARs.

The reds return to Portland maples
Taken on the campus of Reed College, in Portland, Oregon.
Taken on the campus of Reed College, in Portland, Oregon.

It was pretty hilarious when I returned to this spot on the campus of Reed College this past Sunday. Earlier in the day I had spotted this lovely old maple tree light up in a love shade of red. That is worth a picture. When I came back near 5 p.m, not one, not two, but three photographers were there with tripods, all with the same idea. We all were polite and took turns. Sometimes a tree just has that power and calls you have a conversation of sorts. That we did indeed.

And now the house is gone, too

I recently visited Detroit, to see where parts of my biological family (I am adopted) once lived. I previously reported on what I had discovered about the neighborhood where my grandparents once called home, in west Detroit, on Stout Street, not far from River Rouge Park. Using historical snapshots with Google Maps street view between 2007 and 2013, I learned that the old house that my grandparents called home for decades up until the mid-1960s had fallen into decay, like literally tens of thousands of other abandoned homes in the Motor City. My grandparents left Detroit for the suburbs in 1968. That was a year after the devastating riots that marked a turning point moment in Detroit’s recent history defined by economic decline, white flight, and population loss that outpaces any similar decline experienced by any major American city.

This picture is taken from a Google Maps street view, for the purposes of editorial comment.

The Stout home in 2013; this picture is taken from a Google Maps street view, for the purposes of editorial comment.

On my return visit in September 2015, I found the spot where the house used to stand. It is now a cleared lot, on property now owned by the Detroit Land Bank public authority, which manages the thousands of distressed properties in the 139-square-mile city. Based on photographs I saw on Google Maps street view, the tearing down of the house and its neighboring homes was inevitable. Arson and looting was visible in feral houses still on the street, across from the now closed Kosciusko Elementary School, itself an abandoned property and among dozens of public schools now vacated and being gutted by scrappers citywide.

I took a look inside one of remaining burned and abandoned homes on the block. It is a cookie-cutter house, built for the emerging lower-middle class of Detroit in its industrial heyday. Tract houses like this run for blocks in all directions, either of wood or brick construction. It was disturbing to see what was once a home where families once lived in such a state of destruction, brought on by economic decline. There were still spices in the kitchen cabinet, along with a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup. About a quarter of a century earlier, when I first saw this street, it was still a home for the people who lived there. They, like my grandparents, had left too.

This was the small piece of real-estate where my family’s story intersected that the bigger narrative of decline that has proven stubbornly hard to turn around. And now there is no trace of that history to be found except a cleared lot.

ArcelorMittal steel plant, Cleveland

Cleveland’s industrial legacy still lives. As one drives into Cleveland from the south, it is almost impossible not to see the massive ArcelorMittal steel plant on the Cuyahoga River. This plant covers more than 950 acres, with 7 million square feet of building space and nearly 2,000 workers. The company, based in Luxembourg, accounts for about 10 percent of all steel production globally, and also has been attacked for its environmental standards by critics. Iron and steel production in Cleveland and other northern Ohio towns have been a part of the economic landscape since the mid-1800s. The complex here dates to the turn of the 20th century, to the Charles A. Otis Steel Co., and has undergone a series of ownership changes until the current owners acquired the facility in 2004.

I have always been fascinated by the power embodied in these facilities, which belch out exhaust and steam and churn raw materials into the building blocks of our modern world. Cleveland is a place where such facilities still function, as heavy raw material production has moved from the United States abroad. (Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Finding mini-treasures in central Ohio
Taken in Cuyahoga Valley National Park
The Guernsey County Courthouse, in Cambridge, Ohio
Taken near New Philadelphia, Ohio

Ohio is likely not on most Americans’ list of tourist destinations, which is a shame. There are some stunningly beautiful places, particularly in the foothills of the Appalachia Mountains in southeast Ohio, stretching from Gallipolis all the way to New Philadelphia, and even further north in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, south of Cleveland. I found some hidden gems and surprises here. Cambridge was particularly fun. Its historic courthouse, built in 1881, is the centerpiece to a lovely old downtown, unfortunately surrounded by highway developments and Walmarts and dollar stores that are too common everywhere.

Exploration and drilling crews filled up the hotel where I stayed in Cambridge, Ohio

Exploration and drilling crews filled up the hotel where I stayed in Cambridge, Ohio

I found a lot of roughnecks at a local hotel here. They were crews working in the Marcellus oil and gas formation, which stretches into eastern hill country of Ohio. Where there is energy, there are men ready to do hard work.

I would have loved to have had a half day to bike some of the back roads around here. Maybe in another life. (Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)