Sunday, April 27, 2014

Home

3 years ago this month, I moved to Cleveland, via Swanton, Ohio, Hillsdale, Michigan, Ottawa, Ohio, and Wooster, Ohio.  For good measure, I can throw Findlay in, as a quasi-home that I've never actually had a permanent residence in.  Though I live in all of those places and more prior to moving to Cleveland, Ottawa, for all its worth, is my "hometown."  It's where I grew up, its where the farm I so often cite in stories about my childhood is, and its where I went to high school.

Last week, for Easter, we went back to Findlay and Lima to visit my grandma and my future child's grandma (aka my mother-in-law).  Every time we get back to northwestern Ohio, I think about all of the great things you can do there that you can't do in Cleveland.  That's a little ridiculous, if you've ever been to Findlay, Lima, or Ottawa, because Cleveland is larger than all 3 put together, particularly from a diversity and cultural standpoint.  As you can see, the Putnam County flag is pretty close to the confederate flag.  That's much less shocking than you might think, for a county literally 3 hours from Canada.



But even so, there are things back "home" that you can't get in Cleveland.  Kewpie (Lima) burgers are still the best fast-food burgers in the world; Main Street Deli (Findlay) could hold its own even in Cleveland's crowded deli-sandwich scene, and Pizzeria (Ottawa) would be my favorite pizza in Cleveland if it were here.  I don't know if my opinions on all of those are at all objective: but its the stuff I grew up with and its the stuff that, sometimes, I crave because you just can't get it here.  I should also note that, even though a "Titan Burger" is essentially a Big Mac made at a local ice cream stand (in Ottawa), my mouth still waters at the thought of it, even though I could get a pretty close approximation all over the place.  But it's just not the same.  You long for the things you grew up with.

But despite all of my cravings for things back home, (including non-food experiences, like sitting around a fire in someone's backyard, drinking busch light, with the closest neighbor miles away, or running into people you vaguely remember at the gas station and talking with a faux-southern accent), more and more, "back home" isn't very much home lately.



About a year before I moved to Cleveland, my mom left our family.  Though it would be easy to say it was a standard divorce sort of thing from my dad, it was really a complete walk-away from our entire family.  I've talked to her maybe 4 times since, and it is never more than barely polite.  Ever since, home, or whatever notion I had of it, just hasn't been the same.  Even if I'm in the backyard of a farmhouse on road M-10, drinking a busch light while the fire blazes, waiting for the pizzeria to deliver our pizza and crazy bread, there's not so much home to go back to when I go "back home."  In its own way, I suppose Ottawa, Findlay, Lima, etc. will always feel like home. But it hasn't been the same since my mom left.  There will always be a gap between what growing up was, with how my family is (or isn't) now.  So many of my memories and feelings toward northwestern Ohio are tied to a conception of life and family that doesn't exist for me anymore, because the family I grew up in doesn't really exist anymore.

And it is with that background that I came to Cleveland.  And it is in Cleveland that I'm finding the home I'd lost.  It could simply be a product of the facts: this is where my wife found a job, this is where we live, and this is where we're starting our own family.  I'm sure that is a part of it.  But more broadly, there is much more to it.

I've always said that something I love about Cleveland are the times when you get the sense that we're all in this together.  At a sporting event, at a festival, whatever it may be, there's a certain love for this place and a will to see it rebound and thrive that ties everyone together.  That is when Cleveland is at its best.  For me, thats the lifeblood on which I thrive myself.  It doesn't matter where you came from in Cleveland (at least when Cleveland is being the best version of itself)  If you've chosen to make this your home, you become "one of us."  It is very much the opposite of the cloistered German-American society I grew up in (I literally knew 0 white people besides my (technically adoptive) grand parents and extended family on my dad's side who weren't German.  As a complete side note, it's interesting that Ottawa, which was one of the earliest reservations for the Ottawa Indian Tribe, is now a sort of de facto reservation for German Catholics).  As my own home from my whole life faded into nothingness, Cleveland became a place where I could be who I am to this point, and become who I'll be moving forward.

There's a place for everyone in Cleveland.  And that's a good thing, because Cleveland needs everyone it can get.  It will always be a wild ride, as we struggle with our systemic problems that lead to poverty, homelessness, and scads of  condemned and decrepit buildings.  But there's a camaraderie in the struggle.  As Cleveland engages in its own fresh start, it grants us all the opportunity to do the same.  There's a circular beauty there.  Home is where the heart is, they say.  Perhaps, my whole life, my heart was here, and I just didn't know it.  Cleveland is my home now, and in many ways, more than anywhere else ever was.

Now, if we could just get rid of "Wahoo"....

-Zack



Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Don't Call it a Comeback

Unless this is your first time reading this, you're probably noticing the new look, and the entirely new concept.  But if this isn't your first time reading this, it's probably not all that unfamiliar.  I've realized, since getting married and starting law school, that I don't really write personal blogs all that much anymore.  Sometimes I do, but most of the time, even then, it's more like a way to share extended thoughts with friends far and wide on a level at least a little deeper than Facebook.

For the most part though, for quite some time, I've realize that I focus on a just a few things: entertainment, sports, food, but mostly, Cleveland.

Since moving here, even when I try to think about other topics, my thoughts always devolve back to what it means for this city that's propped up a spot in my heart.  So I decided, for better or worse, to actually dedicate my blog, for the foreseeable future, to writing about Cleveland- the people, places, things I encounter, the stories I hear, the thoughts and feelings it stirs inside me.  This is where my life is now.  I've hitched my future to Cleveland's future, so I thought I'd chronicle it, best I can, along the way.

But why "Post-Modern?"  3 reasons really:

1. The term itself is perfect for where Cleveland is now.  Ever since the seventies, Cleveland has been struggling to attain an unfulfilled promise of greatness.  Industry built Cleveland, and now the city, still, strives to reach its past by reinventing itself for the 21st century.

2.  Timing.  For better or worse, we've been in the "post-modern" era since the sixties as a society (or longer, depending on what you're looking at), and the tenants of post-modernity (namely non-centrality) have finally broken into the subconscious of adults.  Cleveland is going to be shaped by those people.  By "those people" I mean "us" because I'm right there in it.

3. Diversity.  Cleveland is a fractured city when you look at it up close.  East-West, White-Black, rich-poor.  But Cleveland somehow pulls it all together.  No matter where you're from or where you're going, Cleveland's shared sense of striving and pushing forward for the greater good brings people together here.  People, individually, are very different from each other.  But when Cleveland is at its best, those differences combine to make something strong, something tenable and beautiful.  Cleveland's identity is hard to pin down, because it is defined by so many people who are not like one another.  Like any big city, that's not always an easy fact: there is plenty of racism, sexism, and "side-ism" to go around.  But Cleveland has the potential to be truly cosmopolitan and communal, because we're all in this together in ways that cities without so much shared struggle don't have to be.

Federico Fellini once said that he never really saw the world til he look at it through the lens of a movie camera.  Well, I'm not a filmmaker, but I like to write.  So here I am, starting a journey to look at Cleveland and document what I find, to maybe see it a little better, to understand the people more, and to give a voice to the comeback.  Comeback though, is not the right word.  The industry won't come back.  Rebirth, perhaps, after a decentering and deconstruction, as something bigger, stronger, and better than ever before.

-Zack