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.

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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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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Toledo, Ohio: My Hometown

When I was growing up here, I couldn’t wait to leave. At seventeen, I lit out for the territories and swore on a metaphorical stack of bibles that I would never ever ever return to Toledo. I managed to stay away for nineteen years before returning. When I came back, I planned to stay just a little while. But inertia, the low cost of living, and the excellent school system in the suburb where I lived kept me and my family here.

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But I wasn’t happy about it.

One day while I was driving around town with my son Spencer, I started talking smack about Toledo. To my surprise, my son didn’t share my sentiment. “Dad,” he insisted, “Toledo’s got soul!”

“Whaddaya mean?” I asked.

“People here keep getting kicked in the mouth,” he said. “Layoffs. Downsizing. Factories closing. Stores gone out of business. Crappy political leadership.”

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“But,” he continued, “Toledoans get up every morning and go to work, go to school, do their thing, and by and large they do it with a good attitude. They have every right to be bitter, but generally they’re not. They’ve got soul.”

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With that conversation, I began to make peace with my hometown.

I’ve been away from Toledo again for the better part of two years, traveling through other countries. Now that I’m back in town for a while, I’m determined to explore the city in the same way that I explored cities on the other side of the planet. And so this evening when the sunlight was golden, I went out and shot the kind of photos I’ve taken in Kuala Lumpur, Istanbul, and Chicago.

As I’ve done in those cities, I focused initially on public art: the authorized, the unauthorized, and the unintended.

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Chicago Housesit

I took the Megabus from Toledo to Chicago last week to begin a housesitting gig in Hyde Park. The double-decker bus was only about 10% full and was quiet, clean, and on time. However, the seat arrangement provided excruciatingly little legroom for my 6’3″ frame, and the WiFi was slow and heavily censored.

The house I’m taking care of here was built in the 1880s and features high ceilings, bay windows, an elegant L-shaped staircase, a cozy gas fireplace (with oak mantle and beveled mirror) and an honest-to-god front porch swing.

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The place comes with four cats, whose personalities range from ebulliently friendly to pathologically shy.

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The neighborhood, Hyde Park, is a wonderfully civilized place of tree-lined streets and older houses.

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It’s home to the University of Chicago and President Obama. It has a record store and a head shop, conveniently located next door to each other.

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Across the street is a barber shop, where you can get some Buddy Guy to go with your high-and-tight.

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Down the street is an African American bookstore still selling Malcolm X literature.

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Bicycles for rent stand out in public racks. With the swipe of a credit or debit card, one can unlock one of these machines, go for a ride, and return than at any one of scores of locations around the city.

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There are handsomely-executed murals on the walls of the viaducts where trains to and from downtown Chicago pass overhead.

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The neighborhood feels wonderfully time warped, like a portal to 1979. There is even a nightly repertory film series at U. Chicago just four blocks away.

In nearly every place I have traveled, there comes a moment when I look around and ask myself, Could I live happily here? The answer for the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago is an unambiguous yes. I will be here for at least two housesitting stints this spring. I may not want to leave.

Plans, Old and New

I must be the only person in the world to set out for Tierra del Fuego and wind up in south central China.

For over a year, I’d been planning a motorcycle journey through the Americas, from Toledo all the way to the Argentine city of Ushuaia. I’d expected to leave on May 15, 2013 and to be in Oaxaca, Mexico by now. Instead, I’m still in Toledo, but just for a little while. In ten days, I will fly to Kunming, China and then head 50 miles south to the city of Yuxi, which will be my new home. My job teaching English there will be my primary focus, but I also hope to travel, to come to know Chinese culture from the inside, and to gain some perspective on my own culture by viewing it from afar.

Someday I’ll look out over the Straits of Magellan from a motorcycle seat, but 2013 is not the year for that. The opportunity to live in China may not come to me again–so ready or not, here I go.

Right now, I am here:


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