urban rusticated

This house has corn growing in the gutter. Birds are odd sowers of grain.

Houses are increasingly empty in Cleveland, and other cities. Some of these neighborhoods just past the point of hanging on. Loss of work, leads to loss of income, and people's finances fail. They have to go; if they are renters, well, the pool of future tenants is smaller. Empty houses are vandalised quick. There is destructive joy in window breaking. The metal scavengers come quickly. Aluminum siding, it goes. Copper piping, it goes. Metal downspouts, it goes. The house supra, has new asphalt shingles and vinyl replacement windows. Not very long ago, it was to be an occupied residence.

The bulldozers are more active, than in years past. There must be some government money for demolition. The city administration prefers vacant naked lots, to reasserted scrub woodland. Urban prairie will be prohibited. Cleveland does not want to be Detroit. If one comes to this lot, in what is called 'Slavic Village' now, a year from now, will the building be standing?

Poor neighborhoods are endangered. Economic compression is destructive. The change in populations, when one group evacuates under pressure, and is succeeded by both a more desperate, and careless group doesn't bode well in stability.

Next week, it will be ten years that the acolytes of Osama bin-Laden attacked America. Ten years of gwbjr's usurpation of government, and wreckage of the national economy has done greater damage. Stupid unpaid wars, extension of privilege and breaks to the super wealthy, and the fomenting of an idiot class of reactionary fascists that believe the country is theirs to hold, and destroy, is depression indeed.