I was not expecting to feel this impending catastrophe quite so keenly. Watching the live coverage coming from the streets, it’s easy to see that the Kiev of today is very different from the dusty, glumly Soviet city I visited for a few days in the summer of 1978. (I’ve…

One of my favorite memes from a few years ago was a woman standing with a sign reading “Rethink everything.” If this idea of a big rethink once sounded fanciful, I think the multiple crises still cascading since 2020 have made it close to obligatory. …

This is simply a spectacular post. Thanks to all the authors here. Saving, sharing, re-reading...

The Best Reason South Bend Should Become Famous It’s a stroke of luck when your small city has national exposure because a hometown guy becomes a plausible Presidential candidate. But frankly I’d rather we became famous for a different reason: let’s be the community that finally figured out how to…

The election is on top of us now and Covid dominates the news as well. But I’m trying to think about the long game here for a minute. The title of this post is the question for lots of lovely, small, seemingly livable Rustbelt places whose populations have declined to…

In Memoriam: Bob Schwabach

Early this year, before the COVID crisis had really emerged, a new documentary film about life in South Bend called Big Enough, Small Enough was released. It’s a mix of great drone footage, interviews, and street-level scenes of this grungy-hip town which several of the interviewees describe as “just right”…

Some thoughts on our upcoming city elections here in my town… A few years ago, I heard that our Valpo Mayor Jon Costas was recommending a book called Community, by Peter Block. …

What Does a Healthy Downtown Look Like? This post is about defining a town’s success in terms of its small businesses and their ability to start up and then thrive. Specifically, it’s asking: how many local families is this downtown supporting? Is that number growing or declining? It is also…