What's a box, a circle, a line and The American People?

I've had the pleasure of working the Jake Izenberg -- soon to be a graduate of Yale School of Medicine -- in thinking about the Main Streets of Essex County. What variation there is! From the density and intensity of Ferry Street in Newark to the quiet emptiness of Northfield Avenue in Livingston, we've seen all sorts of variations on the theme. Yet it takes multiple lenses to sort out why we're seeing what we're seeing. While puzzling over Main Street, I realized we were trying to solve the riddle, "What's a box, a circle, a line AND the American People?" The answer: Main Street. By looking into each of these images of Main Street, we have begun to map out some solid ground, moving ever closer to the goal of understanding how Main Streets help to make healthy cities and thereby healthy people.

Hard times on the main streets named for "Dr Martin Luther King"

Comedian Chris Rock made the famous joke about someone being on a street named for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. " You're where? Run!" he screamed. We all laughed because those streets are famously blighted and in disrepair. Melvin White, a 46-year-old postal worker in St. Louis has a different approach. He founded a non-profit to fix up those streets and restore them to greatness, the Star Ledger reported today. Mr. White's quest is a good one. These "Main Streets of Black America" are a useful thermometer of the state of Black America, just as Main Streets everywhere reflect the health and vitality of the surrounding urban tissue. How healthy is Black America? Here's how I see it. Last night I was at an event on Valley Street, the Main Street in my neighborhood. It was a release party for the local zine, masConsumption, edited by Patricia Rodgers. As the clock reached 9, young people dressed to impress and ready to celebrate started to pour into Hat City Kitchen. I loved the outfits and the sense of style, but what struck me was the earnestness, the dignity of these young people. Many of them, I know, work two or three jobs at minimum wage to support themselves and help their families. They struggle with terrible transportation, lack of family resources, and limited access to help when they are sick or in need. These struggles did not keep them from gathering around this expression of their hopes, the Music Issue of the zine. If we need to boil that down, we'd quickly get to, "And still I rise." This is often shortened further to buzz word of the day, "resilience," but that word irks me. People with money get a smug smile on their face and say, "They're so resilient," as if to say, "and therefore it's OK for them to work two-three jobs, with terrible transportation, no safety net, no health care." In my view, this is NOT OK. Therefore, I will avoid the people-can-take-any-amount-of-oppression-because-still-they-rise trap posed by resilience. Instead, I want to say that Black America today is fragile and hurting, hopeful and energetic. We need decent jobs, stable communities and fabulous education. We need limits on carbon emissions and corporate greed. We need clean air and water, and plans for the extremes of everything that are gathering around us. We need opportunities for expression and parties to celebrate it. We need the foot of oppression off our necks so we and those that are oppressing us can be free -- in the words of the Great Man we remember today -- "Great God Almighty, free at last!"

The local downturn

For a while, things were looking great on Valley Road near my house. I thought that the new facade on the set of stores that included the pizza place and the Chinese takeout was a very good sign. And maybe the coming of SevenEleven, which is replacing Delta GAs, was also good. But this fall things have taken a downturn with the loss of the latest iteration of the diner and the closing of Mazzi Dogz topping the list. The street is taking on a slightly desolate air. I am comforted that El Palacio del Pollo, which has magnificent Peruvian roast chicken, is well -- if well is a strong enough word to describe the number of roast birds that are sent out from there on weekend nights. Once 4.2 million hats were made in the Valley every year. Soon it will be 4.3 millions roast chickens.

"Car Brain"

Paul Salopek is walking in the path of the human diaspora, starting in the birthplace of homo sapiens and traveling to Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of Argentina. This is a long walk -- he expects to finish in 2020, after seven continuous years of walking. So far, he has walked 1,700 miles of the 20,000 he will eventually cover. He wrote in the New York Times, on Sunday 11/24/13, that, cars "...keep roaring into my awareness." Cars, he observes, have shifted our consciousness and we have lost track of what they did to us. In sum, comparing peoples in Ethiopia who still walk, to those in Saudi Arabia, who drive in cars, he finds that cars insulate us from each other and from the places we inhabit. We expect speed rather than connection, if I may paraphrase his essay. He writes, "I call it Car Brain." In studies of the psychology of place, "place orientation" emerges repeatedly as a key part of our psychological connection to the world. In fact, if we fall unconscious, when we awake a doctor will ask questions to find out if we are oriented to person, place and time, ie, "Do you know your name? Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?" In presenting us with his finding of "Car Brain," Salopek is offering us a profound contribution to the literature on place orientation. We may hypothesize that we are not oriented to place by where we are but rather by how we are moving through it. This has everything to do with Main Street. Main Streets in the US emerged before Car Brain. They were places that we walked to and around. They lay comfortably close to home, and made gathering possible, both gathering together and gathering the stuff of life, from vegetables to bed frames. As the car ascended, Main Street became something else -- one of the possible destinations of the car. The mall was another. One of the findings in my MainStreetNJ study is that Main Streets are a set of destinations, as likely as the mall to call us to come see and enjoy and gather stuff. Yet when we whisk away to the mall or to Main Streets not our own, we can lose the gathering that has to do with meeting our neighbors and getting to know strangers. Salopek describes waiting at the edge of a set of huts to be acknowledged before entering. We do not have to ask to stop at a MainStreetMall, but we don't meet anyone either. We are living in a time and place dominated by the car. For reasons of physical and mental health we need to get out and walk, but we don't exactly know how. Paul Salopek has given us a remarkable diagnosis: we have Car Brain.

Laurel+Poet=Brunch with Michael Lally

This morning I had brunch with Michael Lally, author of South Orange Sonnets and 26 other books. "Let's go to The Laurel," Michael said. "Excuse me, could you repeat that word?" "Like the crown you put on someone's head, Laurel." Seemed right -- I'd already named Michael the poet laureate of my neighborhood. South Orange Sonnets opens with the line, "In books it was the Lackawanna Valley." For those who live here that triggers the feeling of the train rolling by, its soothing promise of travel to lull us to sleep. His writing is laden with details that are a particular gift, expanding my place, letting me know it anew and for the first time. "The Laurel is gourmet comfort food for me and owned by a relative," he went on to explain. "Right across the street from the toy store." The toy store in Maplewood Village is a highlight of the Christmas season for my family, but The Laurel is a place I hadn't visited. On the other hand "gourmet comfort food" was irresistible. I was waiting outside, holding two books, a copy of Urban Alchemy to give to Michael and a copy of It's Not Nostalgia for him to sign for me. A man came walking by, and caught sight of Urban Alchemy. He did a doubletake. "Can I see your book?" I showed it to him -- "It is my book," I said. "I wrote it." "So you're Mindy? I'm working on Engage Maplewood, an effort to get more transparency in the city." I had gotten a postcard about their work when I was at Maplewoodstock on Saturday -- they had called a community meeting about the plans to update a major building on the village's Main Street. "Oh, my book is exactly what you need," I said with enthusiasm. "I was drawn to the title because my daughter runs the store Alchemy Hour around the corner." "We shop there a lot!" Michael arrived just then and I introduced him to my new friend, who said, "Where does this happen that you meet people like this, only in Maplewood!" For weeks I had been wondering what would I say, but Michael is a constantly pushing river of conversation. I joined the torrent and started to change, as when he told a story to point out assumptions I hadn't realized were assumptions, or ended with reflections on the true nature of consciousness. But it's not just what he says but the way he puts things. He told me a story about getting to know his brother and he added detail after detail, taking me into the whole event and preparing me to be there with him when he looked his brother in the eye and saw -- not diminishment -- love. The details go to the breath and open it up. We talked for a long time. The people who there having breakfast left. We were the only customers there. "Is it closing time?" Michael asked the waitstaff. "No," they laughed. And a bit later I noticed some other people had arrived and the noise of their conversations was filling the room. Michael was explaining what Hubert Selby, Jr., thought about the nature of consciousness, and said, "Let's go to the bookstore, see if The Willow Tree is in stock. I'll buy it for you." They didn't but we agreed I could buy it on-line. We said good-bye and he promised we'd meet again when he'd read Urban Alchemy. And that was my Main Street morning.

Museum as Main Street

Saying, "High Museum of Art," is a challenge for me. I want to spin off into "Museum of High Art," and "High at the Museum of Art." I don't think the name could survive in the cynicism of New York, and I am sure it's iconic red label pin that simply says "HIGH" would have many many uses. OK, I got that off my chest. What the High Museum of Art has to do with Main Street is that it made me think of museums-as-main-streets. An early flight to Atlanta and late lunch appointment left lots to time, as I reckon these things, to spend at the museum. It happened that it was Toddler Thursday. One little girl went running up to another, grinning form ear-to-ear to see her friend. The parents were not that friendly, so it seemed like this was a "museum friend." I wanted to know why, so I followed the toddlers to "see, read and paint." They were to see a video installation on the fourth floor, where they would hear a story called "Shadow." Then they could go to the lower level children's art center where they could paint, plastic smocks and all. There were a ton of little people, well-equipped with strollers and snacks and whatever else the modern child needs to be away from home for a few hours. I do not pretend to know what that is. Anyway, there was also the crowd of interns on break lounging in sofas and telling very silly jokes. There were kids from the Atlanta Boys and Girls Club, a large group of seniors, another pretty large group in wheelchairs, random single people, lots of retired people in shorts: in fact, all kinds of people roaming through the big wide spaces of the museum. These ample public spaces invited people to move at their leisure in their own way -- by stair, by ramp, by elevator, quickly, slowly, stopping to take photos, going to galleries as one pleased. The analogy of the museum's public space to Main Street was one I surely would have missed if an avid photographer hadn't been bent over the railings of the central atrium taking photos of the geometry of curving ramps and straight walls. I was enchanted by what she saw and copied her. She didn't seem to mind too much. But then, I started to think about the building blocks of Main Street, those things that form the public space by offering entrance from the plaza to Something Different. The High Museum had a gift shop, a coffee shop, a terrace with an installation of massive fruit, a family art center, and many many galleries that took off from the public space, making it rich in variation and satisfactions, including there being three buildings, connected by bridges and sidewalks in intricate ways. The intricate and dense whole is larger than the sum of the parts, challenging, rewarding, welcoming, in other words, a Main Street.

Michel Cantal-Dupart decorated in Paris

On April 13, 2013, Michel Cantal-Dupart, who inspired my new book Urban Alchemy: Restoring Joy in America's Sorted-Cities, was elevated in the Legion of Honor. The medal was awarded by the French Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault. The Prime Minister gave a long address, outlining many of Cantal's projects, especially those in Nantes, where Ayrault was Mayor for many years. Cantal, in his remarks, highlighted four phases of his life. The fourth started in 1993, when he met Bob Fullilove and me at Colloque Triville. In the course of travels and adventures in France and the US, I became convinced that Cantal's ideas were essential for the rebuilding of the American city. He related this conviction of mine to the Prime Minister and handed him a copy of the book (my book!). "This book has 302 pages, and my name is on 200 of them," Cantal joked, while encouraging the Prime Minister to read it. On his way out, after the ceremony, the Prime Minister stopped to say hello -- we have met a number of times in Nantes -- and to take a photo with Bob and me. The ceremony was held on the peniche Le Corbusier, which has been designated an historic monument for multiple reasons: it was one of the first barges to be made of concrete, later it was converted by Le Corbusier to house homeless men, and most recently it is being renovated as a free university of solidarity. The barge is huge, roomy enough for the hundreds of people who came to the ceremony and to seat, in one room, the 120 who stayed to dinner. I am so proud of Cantal and all that he has helped us understand about creating fun, equitable, sustainable cities!