The Wasteland

A recent NYT piece on the Lumenhaus
encouraged us to ennoble this once lovely abode,
"Wrecked House"

Not a good advert for vinyl siding

Pigeon Home

"Madonna's House"

The Bottoms Up gentleman's club.
Note the Sonitrol of the 'hood: barred doors

We wonder if the Original Glorious Church in Christ
was the convention center He visited

And you thought fish fry's weren't halal?

"Tha Brothahood Barber Shop" --
in case Obama needed a little off the top

..A mile away, nice houses in a small
oasis. "Escape From New York", anyone?

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn.
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
--The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot
__________________

Ranger and Obama recently shared a holiday treat since we both had the pleasure of visiting Cleveland, Ohio, Ranger's hometown. This former "Best Location in the Nation" is suffering like many other Rust Belt cities, and isn't the best for much, unless you're out to score some drugs or wish to be robbed.

Pleasure indeed! Browse our montage of Ranger's former hunting grounds, deep in the now-wilds of C-Town. None of these photos are exceptional and represent the shit-hole that is the reality of too many United States inner cities. They were all taken within blocks the two homes in which Ranger grew up.

Note the house with the pigeons rooting in the exposed eaves. People were seen drinking out of paper bags at noon on porches with plywood-covered windows. We doubt Mr. Obama's motorcade passed in front of those ghetto homes. Those people are passed by on the roadway of life.

Please realize that Pigeon House or Wrecked House are not anomalies; the detritus follows each street, for endless blocks of downtown. The outliers are the very occasional well-maintained homes, usually inhabited by some equally very old-timer.

One's attentiveness to home maintenance is not rewarded in these now-slums, however -- one house had a For Sale sign of $19,000, and it is highly unlikely they will get their price before the rats devour whatever's left of the wiring.

You read horrified about people in Iraq living with only intermittent electricity? It is not unknown in your own country -- the U.S. -- for people to live without heat and cooling, and even water, either intermittently or as a lifestyle. We are not talking only squatters, nor are we talking the new Green-elite or the Amish, who engineer a livable existence sans many amenities (but not without water.) Note that most of these houses have satellite dishes and open windows, suggesting occupants. (For those who can afford something, one may be able to live with intermittent utilities, but mustn't go without satellite.)

Our politicians seem to wear blinders to a reality that is a stark as anything in Baghdad. They ignore the plight of a blighted America, functioning under the false belief that the U.S. has the wherewithal to continue its pretensions to world interventions and occupations.

Our leaders are living like it's still 1950, when the Best Location had almost a million citizens and was a thriving hub of manufacturing activity. Today's ghettoized Cleveland has lost almost all of its manufacturing and half of it's citizens. The factories are razed or shuttered, moldering in decay where they stand in mute testimony to a once-great nation.

The citizens too occupy a 1932 economic time warp, sadly, even they forgoing their own better interests, reacting mainly to meaningless, hot-button drivel topics like who's going to hell for being gay or Muslim. (Our average citizens are probably not much different from average citizens everywhere, but it is leadership and infrastructure that makes the difference.)

We get what we deserve, save for the innocents, like children.