An American Abroad

A Snowless Christmas and a Weed Tree

I call wherever I’m living “home” no matter where it is. But when I think of home at Christmastime, I think only of Toledo, Ohio. It’s where I spent my first 21 Christmases and, years later, where I spent 15 Christmases with my sons. Those memories are among my happiest. What is home if not a place in the mind to return to?

This year, Toledo was home to a spontaneous demonstration of the authentic, noncommercial holiday spirit. It erupted by a drugstore in a nondescript desert of concrete at the intersection of Art and Whimsy.

It began with a weed, a homely stalk that had stubbornly pushed its way up through a crack in a tiny pedestrian island at the corner of Alexis and Secor. The weed wasn’t very tall or especially beautiful. But 20-year old Alyssa Emrick saw it and was moved to show it some love. She hung a few ornaments on it and left, little knowing that what she’d done was about to inspire the whole city.

Others saw what Alyssa had done and were moved to add their own decorations. They contributed stuffed animals, baseballs, handbills, representations of Jesus, peace signs, cans of soda, American flags, beads, straw, marbles, buttons, dolls, tinsel, business cards, stars, lace, fuzzy dice, crosses, and playing cards.

When the decorations became so numerous that they obscured the little tree, people began to decorate the nearby light pole.

Someone put up a traditional Christmas tree in on a strip of grass in front of the drugstore. Local charities encouraged people to bring presents for the needy and place them around the tree. A pit bull rescue group collected food and toys for homeless dogs and cats. Choral groups came and sang Christmas carols while the traffic whizzed by.

Toledoans felt connected to this real-life realization of Charles Shultz’s parable about the meaning of Christmas. Maybe this is because Toledo itself is a little like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree: a bit homely, frequently passed over, but still loved. We can identify with that.

The growing folk art display attracted attention, first by the local media and then nationally. Soon the Toledo Weed Tree had its own Facebook page that now has over 13,000 followers. It became, improbably, a place of pride for a city that is often better known — if it is known at all — as an unfortunate example of the deindustrialization of the American midwest.

On Christmas eve, I made a pilgrimage to the Toledo weed tree along with Lori Seubert and Spencer Trumm. We dropped off our donations. We talked with strangers. A local bicycle sharing organization gave us cups of hot cocoa and a pizzeria offered everyone free slices. Lori sang some Christmas carols. We talked to a man who’d taken it upon himself to tend the weed tree every day and to wrap presents that people brought for needy families. At that moment, that urban intersection felt, improbably, like home.

There was no snow at Christmas in Toledo. I was disappointed. Having spent most of my life in the northern clines of northwest Ohio, Massachusetts, and Maine, I associate the winter holidays with landscapes blanketed in white. But seeing the Christmas Weed Tree put me into the spirit of the season nonetheless.

Christmastime at Greenfield Village

On December 23, 2018, Lori and I drove from Toledo to Dearborn, Michigan for a wintery evening of Christmas cheer. Our destination was Greenfield Village, a part of The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, a sprawling institution that includes museums and historical buildings.

It was a special night: two days before Christmas and the village was suitably decorated for the holidays. Actors, musicians, and storytellers, all in vintage American attire, strolled the grounds entertaining the visitors.

Greenfield Village is a large collection of historical American buildings that emphasize industry and innovation. The building housing Thomas Edison’s laboratory is there. So is the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop. There are vintage machine shops and mills, all in running condition. All of these buildings were purchased by Henry Ford and transported to the 80-acre site in Dearborn. There are antique steam locomotives and Model T Fords.

I took a lot of photos in the machine shop. It’s a place where form follows function.

It was hard not to be impressed by Henry Ford’s vision, his historical imagination, and the huge financial commitment he made to preserving artifacts of American history. He thought that factories, labs, and humble shops where inventors tinkered were a vital part of America and were worth preserving. And he was right.

Still, it was hard for me to keep Ford’s legacy of racism and antisemitism completely out of my mind. This article from the Washington Post lays it out:

In 1919, Ford purchased The Dearborn Independent, then an obscure newspaper published in the Michigan city that was the headquarters of his automobile company. For the next eight years, the weekly publication reflected his bigoted views.

One of the paper’s chief targets was the so-called “International Jew,” a sinister figure cited as the root cause of World War I. In 1921, The Independent printed the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” even though the book had by then been exposed as a forgery created by the Russian czar’s secret police in 1905 to foment virulent anti-Semitism.

The fraudulent document described an alleged secret cabal of Jewish leaders who plotted to control the world. Nevertheless, the Independent published the discredited document, giving it both wide distribution and global credibility. Ford’s newspaper merged racism with anti-Semitism by calling Prohibition-era whiskey “n_-r gin” and labeling jazz “Yiddish moron music.”

Ford and his publication attracted attention throughout the world, including from Adolf Hitler. In fact, Ford is the only American mentioned by name in Hitler’s notorious “Mein Kampf,” published in 1925. Anti-Semitic Independent articles translated into German and other languages during the 1920s were used to “prove” Nazis were not alone in their pathological hatred of Jews and Judaism.

The ethical quandary I was in mirrors the debate we have today about how to view historical figures — and present-day artists and politicians — who have contributed much to our culture but whose behavior seems abhorrent by today’s standards. Feeling some discomfort around these issues is the sign of a healthy mind. Those who freely grant impunity to bad actors because they also did great things are just as single-minded as those who attempt to reduce artists to monsters and politicians to perverts.

Having warmed up in the cozy sawdust-and-oil smelling machine shop. Lori and I walked over the the village’s mail street. There were a lot of Christmas festivities going on there. This fellow is a mummer and he was having a fine time walking around saying rude things to people.

Lori got the idea of taking home a Christmas tree in one of these Model A trucks. It didn’t quite work out, though we did score some nice wreaths on the cheap. It was the last night of operations before the holiday; everything must go.

The indoor carousel seemed magical that night.

The heavily wrapped-up guy on the left was telling stories and had his audience right where he wanted them.

The night ended with a fireworks display. A little more Fourth of July than Christmas, but it looked pretty all the same.

I’ve Got It Again

(Photo taken by me July 10, 2015 in Toledo, Ohio)

The Murals of Toledo’s Old South End

Toledo’s Central Union Station, where my sons and I have caught the Lake Shore Limited east many times, is situated in the city’s Old South End. I had gone down to the tracks there to photograph an antique steam locomotive as it chuffed through Toledo on its way to Youngstown for a special whoop-de-doo. Like many such events, there was about an hour of waiting and about a minute of what I’d really come to see. Since I was already in the neighborhood, I decided to explore.

This part of town now has a significant Hispanic population, a fact that’s reflected in the public artwork there. Many of the murals had been designed by Mario Acevedo Torero, a Peruvan artist who has an ongoing relationship with students of Bowling Green State University, a large state school about a half hour south of Toledo. The murals were in good condition, with very little overtagging or other defacing.

The murals were painted on the concrete supports for a large overhead highway. They made what might otherwise have been a grim (or even forbidding) environment feel loved, tended to, and peopled.

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The murals below adorned the exterior walls of Adelante, a Latino community organization.

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I liked the idea behind the two pieces below. The use of the blank faces encourages viewers to see themselves — or maybe their friends and family members — as the artist’s subjects. Fill in the blank: you, too, can be famous.

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The one institution that I remember from years back that’s still in operation is the Green Lantern, a classic burger café that’s been continuously operated at the same spot since 1927. I’ve never eaten there myself (I think I popped in for coffee once several years ago), but it gets rave reviews from the diner aficionados on Yelp.

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Outsized portraits of American heroes such as Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King graced the sides of several old buildings on Broadway. These, too, were painted by a BGSU group.

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It was encouraging to see that even on obviously decrepit and decaying buildings, someone had made an effort to make them look cheerier.

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Less lawful artwork could be found under the highway and atop a nearby water tower.

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Oh, and the steam train I came out to see? Here it is: The Nickel Plate Road No. 765. Quite a machine to behold.

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Detroit: Chaos at The Eastern Market

The art in the gallery-like ruins at Brush and Baltimore is controlled. Mannered. Almost formal. So when I went directly from there to Detroit’s Eastern Market, I wasn’t prepared for visual chaos. My initial reaction was confusion bordering on distaste. It took me a good fifteen minutes to adjust my expectations and to appreciate a different but fine example of unauthorized public art.

The streets around the market were almost deserted on a Friday mid-afternoon, like so many others in Detroit. Since the wholesale food market there is still functioning, there were some pretty putrid smells in these back alleys, to be sure, but nothing worse.

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On one street, there was a sad reminder of how some people live in America today. Much as I like prowling the mean streets in search of the beautiful, it’s important to be reminded that real, vulnerable people sleep in places like this. This bower was someone’s home; I didn’t disturb it.

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Works like the one below definitely show the Juxtapoz aesthetic, which I grow weary of in large quantities but appreciate in isolation.

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Some of the other murals picked up on the historic function of the Eastern Market.

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The mural below has stood on this wall for over three years now and is, amazingly, almost untouched by other taggers. Maybe it’s the proposal and the “She said yes x1000” that makes people refrain from defacing it. People like to see people in love get together.

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Detroit: The Museum at Brush & Baltimore

I was thinking about why people make art when I came across a desolate intersection in Detroit. In the post-apocalyptic environs of Brush and Baltimore Streets, there are dozens of vacant lots where houses and stores once stood. Most of the remaining buildings have been stripped of everything burnable and salable; they stand like monuments to some undefinable slow-moving catastrophe. I shot a few photos of the ruins’ exteriors.

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Then a Chrysler drove up. The driver’s window slid down. I tensed a little, in spite of myself. Usually when something like that happens to me in neighborhoods like this, there’s someone who wants something from me that I don’t particularly want to give.

“Hey!” the driver said. “You should go in there.” He pointed to a burned-out shell of a building across the street. “All kinds of art in there. Wild stuff. Beautiful stuff.”

I was still a little on guard. “Just walk in?” I asked.

“Yeah,” replied the driver. “We go in there sometimes, party, look at art. Some of it’s done by the people from the gallery there.” He pointed to a windowless building across the street that was painted completely black.

I must have looked a little doubtful, because the driver smiled and said, “It’s cool.”

What the hell. If I’ve learned anything from two years of traveling, it’s that some of the best things happen when you say yes to things you don’t understand. So I walked up to the building the driver had indicated. Plastic bags stuffed with moldy, smelly bread were strewn around the porch. Flies buzzed around them. A cinder block was propped against the front door. I toed it aside, pulled the door open, and beheld an amazing art collection.

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The building I had entered had no roof, no windows, and no finished walls. It did have something much better: stunning portraits of ballerinas painted by Everett Dyson. Some of the them seemed to be dancing their way out of the shackles that once bound them.

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Elsewhere were palimpsests of tags, notes, and images, reflecting unintentional collaborations that are still in progress.

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As I photographed the artwork, a freight train rumbled by twenty yards away. Nearly every car on the train had been tagged extensively. Watching them pass was like watching a filmstrip on the tagging aesthetic. I wandered through the back door and found several other small buildings in the same bombed-out condition. The whole complex was a museum with different galleries. I continued to explore.

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Some of the works were text-heavy, illuminated manuscripts inscribed on cinder block.

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As I made my way back to the street, I again wondered what motivates people to make art. The question seemed especially poignant in this environment. Everything in the “museum” I had visited spoke of the transitory and the ephemeral. The murals that artists spent hours and hours meticulously painting will not long survive the elements or human depredation. In that respect, they are more like performances than fine art, dances that, once completed, live on only in memory. Unlike a “real” museum, the complex at Brush and Baltimore is subject to time, decay, and dissolution. Heraclitus, who famously said you can’t put your foot into the same river twice, would have understood. Perhaps the artists who worked here needed to lay down an I-was-here marker in the river of time more than they needed to occupy a static space.

Detroit: The Hipsters Move to Corktown

There are signs of an artist/hipster presence in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Near Michigan Central Station, some abandoned buildings have been painted up and turned into giant urban canvases.

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Other buildings show signs of being brought back to life, albeit slowly.

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There’s a cool bicycle shop and several new bars and cafes near the station, as well as a redeveloped commercial district designed to appeal to the lovers of vintage watering holes.

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And then there are some businesses that look like they’ve been there for decades.

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It’s easy — chic, even — to deride the hipsters who have settled in Detroit in the last six years. But it’s almost always a cheap shot and seems more aimed at their sartorial and tonsorial choices than at their values. Their critics also tend toward stereotype; not every dude in a pork-pie hat, horn-rims, and a goatee drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon is a pretentious jerk. Yes, hipster disposable income and insistence on certain amenities drive local rents up and may displace longtime residents. But if the alternative is keeping rents low while the neighborhood crumbles and dies, then I’ll give at least two cheers for a hipster influx.

Detroit: We Did It to Ourselves

Detroit’s Michigan Central Station is now an American icon, a metaphor for the ruination of American industry and the hollowing out of once-vital American cities. Its very existence is commentary on our current inability to construct buildings that are grand, beautiful, or even functional. In his essay “Detroitism,” John Patrick Leary wrote:

The station is the Eiffel Tower of ruin photography and probably Detroit’s most recognizable modern monument other than the downtown Renaissance Center complex, as shown by the hobbyist and professional photographers who descend upon it on every sunny day. An imposing, neoclassical behemoth even in life, the windowless station has become a melancholy symbol of the city’s transformation in death.

The first view I got of it yesterday was from an elevated highway. From that vantage, I could see through the building from front to back. Light streamed through the ruin unimpeded by office furniture, walls, or workers. One might have thought it was a Potemkin building, a grand edifice thrown up to impress visiting dignitaries as they drive by in air conditioned comfort. But as I stood on the street directly in front of the station, it became clear that this was no two-dimensional facade, but a very real place where real people had worked, a place of heft and substance that had been allowed to fall into ruin.

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The placement of a new American flag in front of the station puzzled me. Was it supposed to instill pride? To symbolize determination in the face of adversity? Or, as Leary might suggest, to commemorate America’s new national monument?

As I looked at my photo, I recalled another photo, one I did not take:

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That image of the American flag planted amid the ruins of the World Trade Center, backed by strong vertical lines, always seemed to me to be an expression of perseverance, national unity, and determination to wreak vengeance on the men who destroyed the twin towers.

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But here, the men who eviscerated American industry and gutted our cities were not foreign terrorists. Pace Walt Kelly, we did this to ourselves.

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Inside the shell of the building, a handful of workers were engaged in labor whose purpose was obscure to me. It didn’t seem to be restoration or renovation. Perhaps they were securing the structure against trespassers. For their own safety, of course.

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Roosevelt Park sprawls in front of the ruins. A group of elementary-age kids sat in a semicircle under a tree, presumably getting instruction of some kind. The scene was almost pastoral. And it called to mind yet another image, Giovanni Paolo Panini’s painting of Apostle Paul Preaching on the Ruins:

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I didn’t get close enough to hear what was being preached to the children in the shadow of the derelict Michigan Central Station. I think I was afraid to listen.

Fourth of July, Toledo, Ohio in Color

Red, white and blue for the holiday, plus assorted greens, yellows, angels, and a cat. Photos I shot today in my hometown.

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Fourth of July, Toledo, Ohio in Black & White

A photo essay: my hometown on this most American of holidays. I shot these today in my hometown.

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