Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Looking Ahead in Flint

New York resident and Flint Expatriate Shawn Chittle reflects on Flint's past and future:
It's more than our hometown. It's a place that made us who we are. I'm always struggling to achieve a good balance of Flint native and New Yorker, and you know what? The more "Flint" I try to be, the more ahead I get. People say to me, "Midwest is best, don't lose that."

Flint made us what we are, whether we like it or not. There's a lot of rust in our blood, but with that comes a lot of immunity to the constant stream of bad news. There are some pretty tough and resilient people in Flint. But the new ideas to fix age-old problems haven't emerged. It's as if Flint is stuck in its own version of "Groundhog Day."

Read the complete story here.



1 comment:

  1. Shawn, we are a product of our own environment. Planned obsolescence. So goes GM so goes Flint. No amount of oil,will quiet this squeaking wheel now. You made the right move.unclebuck

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.