Our family has rented houses since I was born and every affordable one has been on the edge of country. I've had to move out of every last one of 'em because someone decided the time had come to build a subdivision, and usually I've had to live there and watch it grow before we left, having my wander zone get narrower and narrower. This used to really make me nuts. One became a mall, where I had ridden horses.

One day I meant a man who had grown up in the urban choke of south side Chicago, alongside the coal and steel and rails, and rotting apartments. He said, "If you find yourself overcome by courage one day, let me know and I'll give you a guided tour of a dead and dangerous neighborhood." Who could resist a line like that. We made a date.

Driving by the rusting closed down cold steel mills I heard Si Kahn's "Aragon Mill" running in my head, Stan Rogers' pieces about dying fishing towns, a Gordon Bok piece about a crumbling tall ship left rotting on the shore... lots of other voices... and I wondered what it must be like to pour your sweat and a whole lifetime into an industry that isn't "viable" anymore, and then pass by the abandoned memory every day. It's all the same thing, isn't it, there's a way we are invested in what we do that gives life meaning and that then can cost us dearly when it's gone.

Peter T, your eloquent marking of the loss now lives in my head with the vpoices of all the other grand men who have worked hard for something they cared about and have to live with the daily reminder. Isn't it really odd to think that in that very building are people who will eventually "lose" what has now become their place of good memories, and that right now we are building new memories that may hurt later as life changes?