“The
need to make art may not stem solely from the need to express who
you are, but from a need to complete a relationship with something
outside yourself. As a maker of art, you are custodian of issues
larger than self.” - Bayles and Orland
Knowing a history of place is important; however, living aspects of
that history can be stifling to individual and community growth and prosperity.
One of
the things I love best about coal country is we are, in many ways,
a community that exists outside of the mainstream in terms of pace
of life and major consumerism. In many respects, I like that we are
not homogenized. We are who we are and we are NOT changing, many coalcrackers
say. Unfortunately, this also has a downside. When we say we “ain’t
changing,” we mean it, even if change would be a good thing for
our individual emotional and physical well-being and for the good of
the community.
What we advertise is not who we are but who we were.
We are forever looking back to the reign of King Coal and not giving
our children a place with which they can feel proud to identify, a place
that has a positive future.
“The ways in which places and their histories are hidden, veiled,
preserved, displayed and perceived provide acute measures of the social
unconscious,” said Lucy Lippard in On The Beaten Track Tourism
Art and Place. “Yet their relationship to broad economic issues
seldom surface overly in daily lives. We live in a state of denial officially
fostered by State denial.” (23)
Previously,
I believed our stagnation was purely a local problem, a symptom of
loss and of apathy. Lippard and my discovery of a 2003 Brookings Institution
report, Back to Prosperity: A Comprehensive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania,
are proof that my view was myopic.
The socioeconomic
repercussions of urban decay, in our case the neglect of our older
communities, are among the most compelling findings of the Brookings
report, in my opinion.
“ Vacancy
is on the rise in older municipalities. And in the worst-affected areas
a ‘vicious
cycle’ of social distress, deterioration and abandonment is destroying
the state’s neighborhood appeal.” (10)
The report recommends a re-investment in older communities. I applaud
this suggestion. Instead of piecemeal, part-time efforts to grow a business
or an industry here and there, we need to restore a sense of community.
Like, many
locales in the United States, we promote industrial and cultural tourism,
and I understand why we do and believe that such events are of educational
value. Yet, I also believe we have ourselves locked into old and destructive
ways of BEing individuals and members of community. For many years,
our inattention and apathy, our acceptance of “fate” and
the secret stories of the abused, the aged, and the “others” have
occupied my thoughts and been the focus of my work in coal towns.