by request, here’s the last column i wrote for the Times-Gazette.
Waldman: Ashland’s progress impeded by looking back
George Willard is finally escaping Winesburg.
If you’ve read Sherwood Anderson’s famous novel, “Winesburg, Ohio,” you know what I’m talking about. In the last chapter, Willard, the local boy who works at his hometown newspaper, realizes he has to skip town to find a better life.
In a similar fashion, I, Andrew Waldman, longtime Ashland resident, am jumping on a train to better things.
But I hope this isn’t my final chapter with this place. Over my still short life and career working in Ashland, I’ve been dizzied by the amount of things I’ve learned about Ashland as a reporter that I didn’t know as a young, dumb kid.
And much like the heartbreaking stories told by the characters that populate Anderson’s “Winesburg” (actually based upon the city of Clyde, which isn’t far from here), Ashland has its share of disheartening stories to share, many of which still trouble me. During my time at the T-G, I found many secret catacombs in the community I never imagined existed. A few examples:
n There is a homeless problem in Ashland, and it’s neatly tucked away in shadows while we consistently proclaim Ashland is “Someplace Special.”
n More than a thousand jobs had left town over the last decade and local leaders have done little more than shrug or create opportunities for out-of-town retailers to come in and make a quick buck.
n The Ashland City School District has substandard, old, dingy, dark school buildings (reference: Ashland Middle School, which was old 30 years ago), but laypeople in the community advocate saving them even while educational experts stress they be heavily renovated or replaced.
But it’s not all bad, and this isn’t meant to be the most depressing goodbye column ever. I saw a lot of things that give me hope for the future.
I remember labor leader Barb Phillips’ never-ending passion to be a voice for those who work hard but didn’t get the health care or pay they need to survive.
There was Career Center Superintendent Mike McDaniel’s dream of a bioscience tech program that came to fruition after years of work.
And I won’t forget Ashland City Schools board member Bob Hill, who, for whatever reason, decided one day that he’d like to help in schools and ended up devoting most of his retirement to helping students learn to read and be more confident about themselves.
The only problem with these glimmers of hope is the fact that they aren’t going to be around forever, and the young generation is quickly leaving town or falling into apathy as conditions worsen.
We’re losing George Willards by the score each year. That needs to stop.
The solution: We need to teach more of our youngsters entrepreneurial skills and remind them about the importance of listening and learning about the community around them. We need to take action, not talk about “quality initiatives” and “data-driven decision making.” It’s too late to waste time on things like that.
People like to remember what Ashland used to be like: a vibrant downtown, plenty of good paying jobs and things to do. Let’s keep those memories in our mind like postcards, and not reference points of how we want this place to be. Let’s look to the future and imagine a brand-new place, not something we used to know.
That’s the way to make Ashland really special.
Forget writing music criticism or presidential races. This is the stuff that matters; people overlook the real problems in their own communities every day (I am including myself in this statement.). If you live in a small town, this is happening there, too.
My article on the rural homeless of Ashland, Ohio.
Today, Cincinnati’s scrappy afternoon newspaper, The Post, printed its final edition. A bunch of things led up to the demise of the paper that once outsold the larger morning paper, The Enquirer, including a 75 percent decrease in circulation over the last decade, decreasing ad revenue and a few other things. But it’s all moot now. It’s over.
For Ohio, this spells a pretty significant change. Cincinnati was the last big market in the state to have two papers competing for readership. The Cleveland Press succumbed to The Plain Dealer in 1982, and the The Columbus Citizen-Journal buckled under pressure (perhaps unfairly) from The Columbus Dispatch in 1985. Those papers have enjoyed pretty good times since then, and have been able to focus attention on battling the Internet’s effect on the news. Cincinnati journalists, of both the Post and Enquirer varieties, had to scoop each other while keeping their eyes on the Web. That’s a difficult feat these days. I think that the Enquirer was better off for it, and I’m sure the Post journalists wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
When a newspaper closes its doors, it’s like watching a dog get shot. Despite what people would like to think, newspapers are filled with people who really do care about their readers and getting them the information they need. For many communities, the newspaper is a defining part of the lives of their residents. The first draft of history is written in newspapers, from wars down to engagement announcements. To think that subsequent generations of readers won’t get to experience a paper that documented their parents’ lives is almost unimaginable.
The original link I had to the Post’s last story is broken, but here’s the Enquirer’s tribute to their last major competitor. Here’s to giving the people light. -30-
So, I’m sure as hell not a poet, but I did write one poem once. It’s an abecedarian, and I published it the literary journal I edited (I don’t think I could’ve gotten any other editor to do it…). I’m posting it here. It still needs a lot of work. It’s about seeing my grandfather with my dad just before he died.
The Setting Sun and Its Satellites • for Fred V.Rowland
“A clearer image, the
blankness of this page,” you groan.
Clutching a smile, you grope for the two of us —
δελφοι hardly old enough to breathe. It’s
enough “To understand poetry,” you yelled with
fifty-five years of malice, “know me.”
Grip these four hands, feel years of our creativity to come
Hold this line, your first and last
Illumination danced across that sterile white room
jumped out of your eyes
kept contained only by our fingertips.
Long nights aside, this was our best time together.
My hand on the bedpost, trying to
not disturb what looks like peaceful sleep.
Our eyes are open
Pouring out on the cliffs of our skulls.
“Quiet.” Your wiry hands find the back of our necks.
“Remember the pain of painlessness.
So much is lost on an empty canvas.”
Taking these words for the first line of your biography
Underneath those three odd layers of blankets in
varying positions you sleep, a hundred thousand
withering lines skipping through your head.
X-ing out all the ones you don’t need us to need.
You’ll stay in between these, your
zeal directing us until you can no longer hear.
