The obstacle is the path.
Tara Brach

On January 1st, 2022, I pulled out the scrapbooks for the past year and scrolled through the pages. In many ways we are too close to see what we have done. In many ways each year is a lifetime.

When I thought about a word for this year—a practice some of us have done for quite some time—words came back to me from previous years, words that were embedded in a free world, a world free of global illness. I will say yes to opportunities.

G and I remember vividly our last weekend together in Manhattan. With her birthday on the horizon, I went to a leap year dinner party at a friend’s house, and she hit her favorite places, most notably the Russian Turkish baths. Where have you been? They asked, as she no longer was a regular. I went with her the next day, but I can never stay for long, so I left and went for a walk, sat at a café, had a coffee and wrote for a while. Simple things. We did all of our favorite things that weekend, I said to her recently. I know, she replied. We should remember to do that when we go places.

Always do your favorite things.

Who would have known that so soon we could not?

We have been in Ohio for almost eighteen months now. In two days it will be eighteen months since we walked through boarded up, graffiti-ed buildings, wondering what this could become. A decision was made, and G arrived to stay a few weeks later, living part time out of her car and part time at the Days Inn a few towns away. We were here lock-stock-and-barrel within six weeks. [On our decision to move: https://whereiendandshebegins.com/2020/08/02/manifesting-this-turn/ ]

It was hard being in a one-bedroom in Massachusetts under hard lock-down; it was hard being in Ohio where no one was concerned about Covid. Just hard in very different ways. This was before vaccines, which at the time everyone thought would save us. Before even vaccines divided.

By the time we started 2021, a lot of the demolition we intended was complete. The buildings were enclosed as best as possible. None of them had heat, so we used propane-fueled torpedos. It was cold and snowy, and we went internal. G was at the fire station most of the time, on or off calls, and I was doing a lot of shoveling. Reports from the buildings in January 2021 were as follows:

The convent was down to the studs, fresh electrical was being run and insulation started. Some bits of reframing (in hindsight, there should have been more. It should have been better work, too. I saw it and should have been a stronger advocate, but I was afraid of upsetting my contractor. I know. I am ashamed of myself.) There were newer windows. Tiny back stairs had been replaced with full sized risers. Treads were not yet in place. The back deck, once a genuine hazard, was rebuilt partly. Some fresh (or cleaned) siding was replaced after a layer of Tyvek encapsulated the old wood of the 1920s.

The church. Pews were gone. Everything we owned was on the altar. Stage left, mine. Stage right, G’s. Center stage, contents from the Michigan cabin we sold in order to try this path. Where there was once a congregation there were piles of things G was collecting: glass, lathe, plaster, doors, tin ceiling panels, windows, an array of old wood of varying sizes, and more. This filled the space.

The house next to the convent reeked and froze and when it rained, it helped to flood the convent’s basement. Its presence choked part of the life of the convent as vines and garbage and its rotting contents choked itself. I started having one of my helpers clean its exterior and another one mow its lawn simply to make looking at its vacancy more tolerable, and I asked one of my team to clean its nearby gutter to try to move the water away.

The rectory was down to a skeleton of brick walls. Much flooring was removed. The ceiling was insulated. In hindsight, work was done prematurely, before G had a plan. We expended valuable resources unnecessarily.

But this is nothing if not a learning experience.

By this time last year, I hadn’t gotten the results of my lead contractor’s license exam. We drafted and approved bylaws for our newly founded Wellsville Community Foundation, and we submitted for 501c3 designation. Who were we and what could we do? These questions stood before us. I was given the role of secretary.

G was fighting fires. I have a list of their many calls that included a fire igniting inside a coal bunker at a 2.2 gigawatt coal power plant down the road, one where a dog was resuscitated, and a two with fatalities. There were also car wrecks with entrapment, clothing caught on fire in a fireplace, a toaster fire, an oven fire, a stove fire and a basement fire, among others. This time last year she was running calls for two towns. She would go on to get her emergency medical responder certification and attend a weekend training in advanced extraction.

Overall, she was happy.

Overall, I was struggling, but things were better than they had been a few months prior, and I found some effective, happy-making coping strategies.

*

January 2022.

On New Year’s Eve, I sat in my cozy chair and hit refresh on my phone. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. 11:59. I must have hit the very start of that minute when I started refreshing, but as I kept hitting refresh, I had this thought: what if it doesn’t happen? What if there is no January 2022?

The world has gotten so nutty that thoughts like this can take form.

But of course, it did. There is. We are here. And in arriving, the year 2021 strikes me worthy of review.

First, the place. Wellsville has become our home. G for real; me for now. We call it home. Yet I am still in the rental apartment for the foreseeable future. Nothing moves quickly here; “recently” can be a decade or two ago.

I have been a part of nine properties here so far. Three ours, three G tore down and I helped tow away, one G improved and I helped tow away, and two were acquired/given to the foundation.

Of ours, the rectory saw the least progress this year, although its grounds improved. Grass seeded at the end of 2020 provided a fairly healthy area for summer, and a considerable amount to mow. (It took me four hours non-stop to mow all the lawns with a standard mower.) The rectory remains boarded up but there are several 3D models of floating around as G makes plans for its future installation at this site.

The convent has drywall, and on New Year’s Eve, the second-to-last room was painted. (One room has become storage and will be completed at the bitter end.) Finish electrical is mid-swing with the upstairs complete. There is running hot and cold water. Base-board heat is partly complete. Currently it is being heated by a garage gas unit in the center of the basement that is doing an astoundingly good job. The deck is not only finished, it has fairy lights up on the upper level and several sets of seats that my helpers use for breaks. From here, there are good breezes and a river view. On the outside it looks complete, albeit dirty from the ever-present coal in the air and the bbq guy across the street. The one-car sized shed also has fresh siding. Appliances and cabinets await, but first we look forward to the installation of two pallets of flooring, plus doors I still need to find (without lead paint. I will be happy if I never strip paint ever again).

Of course, the most dramatic observable change is the fact that the house next door is gone. I wrote about G taking it down by herself https://whereiendandshebegins.com/2021/06/24/squaring-the-circle-ohio-part-5/ ).

As soon as it was back-filled, I got seed and babysat the lot as the sun grew hotter. Lo and behold, a few weeks later, it was green. We banked the soil away from the convent, and now when it rains there are small pools that collect and gradually absorb back into the clay-filled earth, no longer as much into the convent basement. I even put a little angel in the shrubbery area and a cement compass rose marking true north. A small act of grounding.

From the outside, there is little sense that anything has changed inside the church, but in fact much has. At some point, G put out an APB that she wanted to start using it as a studio, as originally intended, and slowly but surely, things began to shift as they do when she sets her mind to things. Piles and piles of things crept out, leaving only those items she plans to use. New things arrived, too, and to make space for them, we needed to find shelving. Facebook marketplace is the thing here (not Craigslist), and through it, we found several options. But the big win was one a few towns away, where we first found a heavy duty cart. Then he showed me around his property. A dairy-product salesperson, he had two six-foot stainless steel carts that carry a dozen gallons of milk per shelf, and in the yard lying outside rusting away were ten and fifteen-foot shelving for cheese. Over several months and many trips, we brought them all into the church, and G and I risked our lives putting them up.

Additional updates to the church: a toilet, deep utility sink and furnace. The organ is seventy-five percent out and on its way to another Catholic home in Moon Township, Pennsylvania (about 45 minutes away). It’s quite a sight to observe its extraction. This wasn’t designed to be moved; churches have this concept of infinity, a member of their choir says. We laugh but he is serious. He’s also a former airline mechanic and all of his skills seem to be needed. It will be an act of faith in its own right to make it work again, but if anyone can do it, they can. I must say that when the organist came to check it out, he made music in our church, and it was beautiful. For a moment I felt like all of the pieces that were out of place were back in place. All of the pipes but one spoke their proper tones. I found the outlier and pulled him out of his spot, to invite harmony. One final goodbye of hymnal grace—an old role for this building slipping slowly into a new one—so many goodbyes for this space of prayer and promise. The next and last thing to go is the formal altar.

Not long ago, G convinced me to move all of my bins off the extended altar. Sadly, the convent was not ready for most of it, so we pulled wagon after wagon to the rental apartment’s basement, the rental apartment itself, the convent’s basement and back room. Believe me, it was a wrenching process I could not have done alone without losing my mind, but I had G’s help, and now that it’s over, I get peace knowing all of my treasures are in one place. Yes, some things also got unpacked here in the rental apartment.

Because surrender. And serenity. And carpe diem.

Other significant change is a consequence of the fact that G didn’t stop tearing down houses after the one next door. She went on to do two more complete houses plus a front porch, with one house on the way. The common theme of the houses is fire damage, and as she demolishes she takes things she finds beautiful out of the structure and stores them. Burnt walls, household items, doors and windows. As well as solid intact old wood milled 100 years ago like most of what tries to hold up this village.

She built several lean-tos on the backside of the church, facing the river, where the good lumber will live out this winter, and those wildly tall cheese storage shelves now house many of the more fragile items. All of them will be a part of her installation.

Once again the parking lot is relatively empty as we await snow.

G still responds to calls but her focus now is without doubt on her art. Her studio. And her installation. If things proceed as planned, she will begin construction next spring after she demolishes the last burned house that we acquired through sheriff’s sale.

I am finding myself to be the GC around here as I let my first contractor go. Now I work directly with the subs, and it’s going reasonably well. Not a job I expected or chose, I am finding things out about myself and others in the process. Things I may have known but I am fascinated to see manifest in this environment. I am deeply loyal. I do not take fondly to lying or any kind of dishonesty. I appreciate candor and truth-telling even if it’s not ideal. I value others using their brains and creativity to solve problems. I am open to alternative solutions. And: men can be really moody, even moodier than many of the women I know.

Patience is essential. Construction takes forever.

As the guru says to the dog, “the bone is not the reward—digging for the bone is the reward.” (Michael Maslin, New Yorker cartoon 6/23/14 – see below.)

*

When not being a GC, helping G or playing whack-a-mole with our lives, I am helping our fledgling foundation. Even before all of our paperwork was complete, we pursued a lead with our local Port Authority to pitch Wellsville as a point of study for Youngstown State University’s capstone program in geography. The professor took us up on it, and fall semester our village was the sole focus of their work. In December they presented their findings for revitalization to our mayor and town council, one step of which already has been approved for 2022: bringing YSU’s art department to design a few murals in dark and unused spaces like underpasses or old buildings. But we hope for there to be more substantive change provoked by their thoughtful work.

In May, we finally got our 501c3 designation and received two buildings, both in quite good condition and both on Main Street: one classic brick and white trimmed former bank building; and one sweet little church, formerly Episcopalian, kitty-corner from us. When we acquired the bank building, we held an open house to get thoughts from the community on how to put it to use (still needing tenancy), and we are seeking state appropriation for the church to update its electrical and put in HVAC and a bathroom so that it can become a place to house cultural events for the community.

Heritage Ohio is an organization that helps revitalization efforts, and I attended their annual conference in Springfield where I learned just how much I need to learn to help our efforts. If you’re reading this and happen to be in this space, please reach out. I believe there is much to be learned from one another. On the other side of the river, I have been studying successful revitalization efforts in Matewan, West Virginia; a player there said, “you earn trust by the thimble; you lose trust by the bucket.” I am trying hard to fill my thimbles.

In the fall, one of the things I wanted to know was who was running mayor and what was their platform, so we conducted a Mayoral Town Hall and had a questionnaire for everyone who attended to tell us more about what they want to see in their village. We filled the room. One of our YSU students—a fifth-generation local whom we just made a junior trustee—put it on Facebook Live where we got another eighty views. A powerful moment, seeing people show up to listen. 

In early December, G and I decided to throw a Holiday Fair as a fundraiser for the fire department and our foundation, in two weeks, which I wrote about here: https://whereiendandshebegins.com/2021/12/15/light/.

Throughout the year, the foundation instigated several Clean Streets events; I helped out with the first one formally and then started taking it on myself as the puppy and I take our daily walks. We are still trying to find our way as an organization strategically and to cultivate a supportive, working crew.

A recent idea led us to look at a building on Main Street for acquisition, notably because it is right in the heart of active businesses, some that have arisen in the past year (see photos below). Represented by an agent in Southern California and an owner in Flint Michigan, and priced barely above taxes and operating costs, we were still stunned when we walked inside on a rainy day to find the rain pounding down on the floor from three floors up. When the roof needed repair twenty years ago, a tarp was put on, fell off, and the rest is the second law of thermodynamics. It has a shared roof and attic with buildings on either side. What is to become of it and others like it, for it is not alone in its condition? What, truly, is to become of this village and the many villages across America like it? We need healthy Main Streets. How do we help one rotting from within, in the center of the block?

*

The challenge with all of this is finding balance and keeping a sense of inner clarity. During the summer I took a few weekends or nights away that helped my own revitalization, but at the same time I remember an old story. When G was an infant, I made friends with a fellow mom. We would walk to the park, two moms and two babies, finding sanity in each other. Missing his wife’s company, her husband got a babysitter and took her to Vegas for the weekend, and when she got back, I asked how it went. I will never forget her answer. She said, I don’t know. It was ok. Actually it was really really great but when I got home it was so hard to be back that I wish we never went.

Throughout my life I have tried to learn from the stories people tell me. In fact many of my major decisions were based on trying to avert the outcome of someone else’s story. I know, crazy. But this is one of them. I sort of understood what she was saying, deeply housed in me, and steered clear of “Vegas” for years.

*

So it goes. We face a new year with a fair share of unknowns globally and locally. Above all, I hope we find health as a globe. I hope our borders re-open and life resumes without health testing for every move.

As we work our way from the planet to the village to our little lives, I hope that by the end of this year our foundation will have more successes. I think about the sheer joy I had planning the Holiday Fair with G, and the magnetic excitement of preparing to see the Main Street building that turned out to be such a wreck. The highs and the lows of progress and stagnation. The idea that we might be making a difference versus the wall of indifference, or worse: the prevailing winds of scarcity, loss, defensiveness, and predetermined failure. Everything fails in Wellsville. How many times I have heard this. Really? Even something that has not yet started?

I realized recently that I come from four generations of people in the west of our country. An area where people move, where people try again, where people seek and often find their own, individual definition of gold. Their manifest destiny. While I never felt like looking for gold, illusory or otherwise, when I moved to the northeast, I felt like I was coming home, partly because my ancestors there were seeking faith, and this is vastly closer to what I seek. My own way to believe. My own path, my own discoveries, my own way of being. In so many ways, leaving home for the northeast once as a student and once as a young mother, that is what I found.

Now, in this place of ongoing decline for the past one hundred years, I have no ancestors here, to my knowledge. I ask why people settled here and the answer I receive is jobs. People moved from north, south, east and west to work. For coal, steel, ceramics and others. Jobs that looked after them as much as they looked after their jobs. Houses for their families and schools for their children. Clubs and churches for their belonging. Jobs for a lifetime. Until there were none.

There is so much packed into each day’s observations.

There are so many good people.

I observe so many acts of kindness each day.

I am continually surprised by what I find, and curious what I will uncover tomorrow.

Starting the year, I hold a note from Rumi close to my heart: “If God said, ‘Rumi pay homage to everything that has helped you enter my arms,’ there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, nor any act, I would not bow to.”

With love and gratitude to all of you who supported me last year and over the past eighteen months.

I bow to you.

Happy New Year!