Sorry to be a bummer.
Cultural heritage is always neat to be aware of.
It hurts far less, though, when a functional new culture has replaced what once was, when there’s some continuity.
See my other post about other celebrations of the good things this area has lost and not replaced: outyourbackdoor.com/article.php?id=861
Mid-Michigan represents the standard hinterlands American reality of today, where culture has been mostly destroyed and replaced by an anti-culture of sterile, exploitive minimalls, bigboxes, stadiums and cell-towers.
Today, in the hinterlands, real culture is like a weed. It grows in the cracks. Homemade and for free. We keep watering it, but the Dominant Paradigm keeps trying to dig it up or give it a genetic modification (“how can we make this a turnkey operation?”). …But it keeps spreading! We may never regain what we lost but maybe we can create something new and liveable anyway!
It’ll start with conviviality and it’ll include a living wage, I’ll wager.
What is a living wage anyway? Maybe it’s a wage that goes by the old slogan: it lets us live simply so that others can simply live, eh? It might be less than what some folks suggest—in self-interest? interest of credentialism?—but it might lead to something more.
https://www.lostlansing.com
