This is the second time in the last decade that I’ve managed to spend the better part of a year of seasons in Western Pennsylvania, somehow also managing to traipse cross-country, and also laying my head in New York, Philadelphia, and D.C for chunks of time. But all the while understanding that the anchors of evaluation and discovery are here in Johnstown and Indiana, PA. These places where folks with a say and those spoken about, for, would have hoped the march of time, slow violence, and attrition would have allowed to go unexamined by eyes with discernment. Yet, what I am learning is that the boomerang effect of gen-x and millennial kids - who were baa baa black sheeped out of town decades prior - scape goated and bleeding from the neck, have returned. Their families dying, in dotage, needing the assistance of the kids they’d harangued into nervous collapse. Who better than this strata of folks who wandered off in need of escape to return with their scars healed, scales long vanished from their eyes to see the reality of Western Pennsylvania in the scheme of the grander geopolitic? Viewing the return of mill and mine culture with a deep knowing of both where we’ve already been and where the hell this is all going- doesn’t win us favors but we also don’t give a damn. We were forged in this crucible - and our molds summarily broken, but our bullshit bells remain intact and finely tuned.

****The next few weeks, as I sort through notes and images - I suppose some will be posted as drafts and source material, and others as more fully formed essays. I implore a bit more of your patience as I get back to it - but certainly accept my gratitude for sticking with me through what is becoming something a good deal larger than what I’d initially intended.