The Placed and the Placeless

YOUNGSTOWN -- There is a house I see every so often in my travels. It is perched where the alabaster 33-mile marker stands along the long-defunct Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad line, by an old stone foundation that has likely stood for over a century.

Every year, ivy and wild vines suffocate its simple charm, climbing up and over its slanted gingerbread slate roof on its right side, the one that faces Cedar Street. And every year, it loses one more shingle and sheds more luster from its ancient apricot-colored paint.

In the back of its sloped property, a smaller structure sits -- likely a cold cellar, where the family would have stored roots, canned fruits and vegetables, and jerky. The elements have been less kind to it, and its roof has nearly peeled off.

Once upon a time, a man and a woman likely walked through the threshold of its front door and began their lives together, with the same hopes and aspirations most young couples share. They may have struggled; they may have sacrificed; they may have raised their family; and they may have grown old in this home after their children left for far-off places.

At least, that's how I imagine this story goes. I don't know the ending other than to say the owners are gone, and I wonder why no one came back to love this home again.

It is a line of thought my mind travels down every time I see a place, whether it is a home or a business, that time and people have left behind. How did that impact the neighbors? The community?

It's increasingly popular to criticize journalists today for spending too much time reporting on places that used to be something much greater. Those who are not populists have become bored, and ultimately dismissive, of places that used to prosper and the people who made them thrive.

The reaction has gone from a mild annoyance to full-on hostility -- placing the blame of the places' collapse on some sort of racism, denialism or lack of intelligence. The root of this hostility may be irritation at who is president and how that insults their sense of place in society.

"People like to talk about the dichotomy between coastal elites/fly-over; rural/urban; low density/high density," said Tom Maraffa, professor emeritus of geography at Youngstown State University. "I would add that the difference is between the placed and placeless, or people who are rooted in their places versus people who are essentially nomads."

These placeless people, like those highly critical of fly-over folks, develop affinities for ideology and abstractions, as opposed to neighborhoods and cities. The lives of the coastal elites, academics, big-business owners, high-tech innovators, entertainers and media personalities have led to this, because they are so mobile.

People who live in the heartland are not so mobile. Neither the rooted nor the rootless are "better." But too often, the cultures clash, with one spending an inordinate amount of time putting the other down, usually on a widely read platform.

"Many people in small towns, rural areas and some cities ... are tied to their places for generations. So, issues such as climate change and globalization are therefore viewed fundamentally different," said Maraffa.

The placeless think of global policies, abstract efficiencies and lofty ideas like social justice.

"Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both demagogues," Maraffa said, referring to the president and the independent Vermont senator. "Trump is the demagogue of the placed. Bernie Sanders is the demagogue of the placeless."

Examples abound, said Maraffa: "People who voted for Trump share a rootedness in place. Think of people in J.D. Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy' or the TV series 'Justified,' which was tied by the phrase 'We dug coal together,' an expression of place."

"The recent GM/Lordstown discussion is fundamentally about corporate abstraction versus the impact on places," he said on the Detroit carmaker's decision to render the 52-year-old plant "unallocated" to make a car beginning next year.

So, how do we bridge the gap between the placed and the placeless? How do we get the placeless to recognize the importance of place and that opposition to certain policies is not about ignorance or racism or denialism but about how those policies affect places?

The placeless think of global policies, abstract efficiencies and lofty ideas like social justice.

STOP all of this “equally bad” bullshit—trying to place blame for America’s obvious problems on some mythical “BOTH SIDES” of some unstated issue.

It just ain’t so.

Relating Trump AND Berniecommie Sanders as equals? And equally BAD?? Really?

And there’s ineffable EVIL about auto workers (and autos) in that godaweful “flyover country”

Gimmie a break.

I've been on both sides. I spent 25 years in the military, averaging a move every two years. On one assignment, I met and married a young lady who accompanied me on all those moves, including an overseas tour. We were as close to placelessness as you can get, being rooted only where our respective parents lived.

After I retired, her family home in a small town came on the market, when her aunt died. We bought the place. I've lived there ever since, now over thirty years. I've been rooted for the first time since I grew up and left my parents' home.

Travelling around was great, but being rooted in a small town is much better.

Good article, but here's the problem in a nutshell:

It is perched where the alabaster 33-mile marker stands along the long-defunct Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad line, by an old stone foundation that has likely stood for over a century.

It's one thing if a "place" was built and established based on some kind of natural feature like a harbor or fertile soil, but when your history is tied to man-made infrastructure you are always at the mercy of technological development, economic forces that can change very quickly, and someone else's business model.

This is why Youngstown is dying while New York City thrives even though you couldn't pay me to live there.

Military took me away as well, then when I got out (not retired) work kept us moving. I’m happy at this point that we’ve managed to get back to the same region.

I would love to be able to head back “home”. But alas, it’s never to be.

I’d never be able to convince the wife for two reasons.

First, being from Japan she’s more “citified” than a “home” of 800 could ever approach - though she’s starting to move a little my direction.

But second and likely a bigger issue, she has a hang up about being closer to my family when she’s so far from her own. I don’t think it’s jealousy as much as it is trying to avoid the pain she experiences. When she sees me with my family/friends, she misses her own.

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