Midwestern Gothic

Midwestern Gothic is a new literary magazine out of Ann Arbor is focusing on the Midwest.  The mags goal is to "collect the very best in Midwestern writers and writing in an effort to compile a definitive resource on the region and its influences.

Prose, poetry and photography by those who live or have lived in the Midwest are sought, especially those that that capture the essence of the Midwest.

My favorite Detroit-area writer/blogger Anna Clark will be featured in the first issue.

Fringe- Places that Verb Your World

5 Pieces by R. Justin Stewart by R. Justin Stewart • 03.07.2011

Fringe Magazine

Fringe Magazine, in honor of the launch  of Issue No. 26:  Maps (Spring '11), is asking readers to contribute to a piece of collaborative artwork, in the form of a Google Map:


For our anniversary Maps issue, Fringe is making an interactive map of Places That Verb Your World and we need help. Send a little something — a photograph, a verse, a few sentences about a geographical location that is meaningful to you - to FringeTheMagazine@gmail.com, or post your submissions on our Facebook page.

Quite a  few entries are up already. Viewed using the Google Maps plug-in, you can fly from place to place and view these places-from-the-heart from the landscape level or street level, accompanied by verse, a short story, or a photo.

Rumpus Readers on Neighborhood - The Rumpus.net

The Rumpus, a San Fransisco-based online literary and culture magazine co-founded by author Stephen Elliott, recently issued a call for reader submissions on the topic of neighborhood- 500 words or less.

As this post by NRDC's Kaid Bensfield so eloquently points out, neighborhoods, not cities, are the locus for defining our connection to place. They embody the spatial increments which circumscribe our daily existence and create (or preclude) the opportunities we have (or don't) for meeting the people who surround us.

Ray LaHood, Secretary for the US Department of Transportation, defines neighborhood this way.  Richard Florida has another take. According to Wendell Berry, local economies depend on them.

I have an ideal mental image of "neighborhood" and I am not sure that I have ever lived in one.  My first image derives, of course, from Sesame Street's "Who Are The People in Your Neighborhood."  I picture a bustling street with people milling about. I think of corner stores, neighborhood Christmas get-togethers, local eateries, dropping by, informal Friday night dinners at a friend's house, and "regulars".

I had a taste of this kind of neighborhood in college, in the student ghettoes of Ann Arbor, where on front porches festooned with decomposing couches, students congregated in impromptu, informal gatherings. I had another taste while visiting friends in Portland, Oregon, and again in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Before and since those college years,  I have always lived in suburban, single-family residential "neighborhoods."  The one I live in now is nice.  I can walk to a downtown area in about ten minutes in one direction, and to a park with a river in the other. People are out walking dogs and kids  in the evenings when the weather is nice.

Yet I feel something is missing, something that I can't quite put my finger on.  I don't feel connected to the community.  I don't feel part of my neighborhood.

I am intent on finding ways to be more connected.

Here's what I've learned about living in the suburbs: you meet people in your job and through other interests, but because you spend so much time away from home or inside of your home, meeting your neighbors takes effort. And because everyone you know from the other parts of your life  (which take place in other land uses) live so far away, having a social life takes a lot of planning. And, of course, driving.

The Rumpus' readers delve into some of these themes with some delicate, beautiful writing. Here is a sampling:

Aimee Loselle writes on the ideologies we manufacture about our childhood neighborhoods:

I’ve never found the same sense of belonging I had when I was ten, running home on a July evening, tan and tired from playing tag and kill-the-man-with-the-ball, ready to eat meatloaf and read a book in my bedroom or watch “Private Benjamin” or “The Greatest American Hero” on television. My house was mostly silent by then, everyone in retreat. Yet the neighborhood streetlights and kitchen windows were seemingly stable and warm outside my own lit room. I fell for that illusion. I had to believe, even as it shredded around me. Although I don’t believe anymore, I still have the longing. For something unchanging and full of sentiment. For something that doesn’t exist.

Ray Shea contemplates the illusory, arbitrary borders we construct in our neighborhoods:

I’ve never been past the La Chica. It’s not a neighborhood I avoid, it’s just that it’s all houses and apartment buildings and I don’t know anybody who lives there. I only go to the edge, to the taco truck. I wish I spoke Spanish. I wish I could hang around and drink beer, talk to the men, while my children play in the parking lot. It feels nice.

Sam Jasperh satirizes the isolation that suburban neighborhoods can engender:

After two years’ residency, you can try sitting on your porch, which constitutes a breach of neighborhood etiquette, with a sign lettered: “Seeking friendship. Apply within.”

Find the local indie bookstore, drive the fifteen miles to it, park in the very large lot. Walk in and case the place, like you would if you were planning to rob it. Make small talk with the clerk. You’ll most likely be the only person in the place.

Joan Mathieu describes the crime and poverty of a skid row neighborhood, then points out:

But here’s the thing. Bank robbers and car thieves make better neighbors than doctors, lawyers, and TV actresses, the sort of people I once called neighbor before fortune blasted me against the rocks. Those people never came out of their houses, and when they did never spoke to me, and when they spoke to me it was to tell me to keep my fucking dog out of their yard.

Read more at:
Readers Report Back From… Neighborhood - The Rumpus.net:

The Laws of Place

Image Source: New York Times

A fascinating article in last weekend's New York Times Magazine explores the work of Geoffrey West, a physicist who has constructed mathematical models to describe cities based on constants developed through statistical analysis of urban data from all over the world. 

Given, for example, the number of people in a city, West's models can predict the amount and dimensions of variables such as infrastructure and average income level.

Urbanists may take issue with such a  reductive approach to urban theory- after all, cities and place are about culture, nuance, history.  

To which West responds:

"That’s all we talk about when we talk about cities, those things that make New York different from L.A., or Tokyo different from Albuquerque. But focusing on those differences misses the point. Sure, there are differences, but different from what? We’ve found the what.”

Which has me wondering: are there two points here to be acknowledged; (1) that humans and our habitats are structurally similar but (2) uniquely colored by the beauty and nuance of our individual and collective spirit? And which is the more important "point"; or are they two sides of the same coin of our human experience?


West's work provides quantitative backbone to the ideas of Jane Jacobs, who, in her seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities, posited the idea that the value of cities lies in their facilitation of human interaction which results in enhancement of opportunities for collaboration and, ultimately, productivity.  West's models show that for every doubling in population within an urban area, a 15% per capita increase in productivity results.


From the article:

“One of my favorite compliments is when people come up to me and say, ‘You have done what Jane Jacobs would have done, if only she could do mathematics,’ ” West says. “What the data clearly shows, and what she was clever enough to anticipate, is that when people come together, they become much more productive.”

This aspect of cities was brought home to me recently via a comment from a friend who has departed the suburbs of Detroit for  life in Seattle. She spoke of the  difficulty of seeing old friends in the Detroit metro area while visiting because the extensive driving involved,  often 30-40 minutes, require so much advance planning.  Chance encounters and last-minute meet-ups at the corner bar are nearly unheard of. 


By living in cities, we have decoupled the linear relationship between growth and productivity that governs biology.  Of course, the increase in productivity is predicated on the assumption of endless resources, and will eventually bump up against the planet's carrying capacity.  West coins a unique metaphor for our resource consumption. So long, carbon footprint; hello blue whales:


From the article:

West illustrates the problem by translating human life into watts. “A human being at rest runs on 90 watts,” he says. “That’s how much power you need just to lie down. And if you’re a hunter-gatherer and you live in the Amazon, you’ll need about 250 watts. That’s how much energy it takes to run about and find food. So how much energy does our lifestyle [in America] require? Well, when you add up all our calories and then you add up the energy needed to run the computer and the air-conditioner, you get an incredibly large number, somewhere around 11,000 watts. Now you can ask yourself: What kind of animal requires 11,000 watts to live? And what you find is that we have created a lifestyle where we need more watts than a blue whale. We require more energy than the biggest animal that has ever existed. That is why our lifestyle is unsustainable. We can’t have seven billion blue whales on this planet. It’s not even clear that we can afford to have 300 million blue whales.”

Detroit: Urban Agriculture Tour

Finished up the Michigan Association of Planning's annual conference today with a great tour, and met some pretty fascinating Detroit people who are doing amazing things,.

Japanese journalists film us touring D-Town farm

In the morning we headed over to D-Town Farm, run by the Detroit Black Food Security Network on land in Detroit's Rouge Park.  The land is  leased from the City of Detroit for $1/year for 10 years.  Our host, Malik Yakini, chairman of the DBFSN as well as a Detroit Charter School principal, gave us a tour and an explanation of the DBFSN as well as the context in which it is doing its work.  The goal of D-Town farm is to create a model for urban agriculture and to achieve food security for Detroit's black population. D-Town sells produce at Eastern Market, other Farmer's markets in the City, and several restaurants.

Yakini says he is unapologetic about the intent of the DBFSN to advance black power and expressed the local grassroots movements' opposition to large-scale urban agriculture within City limits that does not have the interests of the community in mind.  We also discussed food policy issues; Yakini is on the Michigan Food Policy Council and is working to help develop policy within the city and at the state level that will help community-scale urban agriculture.

While we were there, Japanese journalists filmed our tour for a TV station, and a French radio reporter showed up, wanting to interview Yakini, who seemed used to the attention this project and others like it is garnering on the international stage.

Gwen, who came to Earthworks Urban Farm from Nebraska
 through Americorps

EarthWorks Urban Farm

Next we visited Earthworks Urban Farm, a project of the Capuchin monastery in partnership with Gleaners Food Bank, which has been in operation for ten years. Our tour host, Gwen, came to the Farm via an Americorps assignment and has stayed on through the end of this growing season.  She spoke of the need to engage the local African-American community in urban agriculture, noting that the movement is often led by young, white transplants. The Capuchin program trains local neighborhood residents in farming and gardening, and utilizes the produce in the soup kitchen, which serves neighborhood residents in need..

Planners in Detroit

Art Installation, Powerhouse Project, Hamtramck

Art Installation, Powerhouse Project, Hamtramck

I'm having a GREAT time at the Michigan Association of Planning's annual conference held in Detroit this year. Yesterday I attended a session with Philip Cooley, part owner of Slows Bar b Q  and Corktown booster, on why he came to Detroit and efforts to rebuild the neighborhood and Roosevelt Park at the foot of Detroit's greatest ruin.

This morning we heard from starchitect/star urban planner Toni Griffin and City of Detroit Deputy Planning Director Marja Winters on Detroit's much publicized, philanthropically-funded land use planning process, Detroit Works.

In the afternoon I attended a FANTASTIC tour of the City of Hamtramck, which I had not visited since high school when we hung out at Paychecks lounge.  Who knew- Hamtramck has retained it's density and walkability and is now an urban oasis amid the devastation of the surrounding City of Detroit.

The Polish population that founded the town in the 1920's is still present, comprising about 30-40% of the population, and has been supplemented by hardworking, entrepreneurial immigrants from Bangladesh and other countries.

It is fascinating to see these newcomers repeat the pattern of the Eastern and Southern Europeans of 100 years ago- they first land in New York, then come to Detroit for the cheaper cost of living, and start businesses.  Once they have gained financial stability, some move to the inner-ring suburbs, such as Warren, while others stay in the City.

Highlights of the tour included the Powerhouse Project,  a program to place national artists in residencies within an underserved Hamtramck neighborhood,  the Detroit Zen Center, which has been in existence since the 1990's and is working to create a neighborhood-scale sustainability model, and  the Polish Art Center, a purveyor and teacher of Polish folk art.

Tomorrow I am looking forward to Urban Agriculture Tour.

To Know a Place: Terrain.org

Image: Terrain.org

The new issue of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Natural and Built Environments was launched yesterday, and I am just diving in. I am so impressed with how this online literary magazine devoted to "searching for that interface—the integration—among the built and natural environments, that might be called the soul of place" utilizes the tools of the internet to bring a multimedia experience that goes far beyond what one can experience in a print journal, and by the same token exceeds the experience afforded by most online literary journals.


Take Sara Loewan's breathtaking essay, Setnet Fishing in Uyak Bay, describing the summer fishing grounds she inhabits with her family on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The piece is for the issue's "To Know a Place" feature, which selects a story, essay or poem that "demonstrates an eloquent intimacy between an author and the author's place". 


Not only is Loewan's gorgeous prose featured, but the journal includes a beautiful photo essay, a Google map of the location, and an audio stream of the author reading the essay.


Loewan writes:

We catch sea cucumbers when they tangle with kelp in the lead lines of our salmon nets. In the skiff, they heave their guts out as a defense mechanism and wriggle away so that predators will eat the feathery pink insides and leave the sea cucumber to grow new innards. These animals were traditionally harvested during minus tides by hand or with spears tied to long poles.

My husband cooks the strips in olive oil. The meat tastes sweet and brackish. I think of the care and labor to produce these small crisp bites and it seems that food, as much as landscape, connects us to the people who first chose this place.

Beautiful.  I can't wait to delve further.