Three years ago, on Thanksgiving, I wrote a piece called *Sigh*Time to Make Fun of Detroit...Again. A few days earlier, at a Detroit Pistons game in suburban Auburn Hills, a brawl broke out between the Pistons and the Indiana Pacers, and it moved in to the stands after a couple jerks in the hundred dollar-plus seats threw stuff at the Pacers. It set off the old familiar pattern of the national press presenting the Detroit area as a massive hellhole. This week the pattern is again visible, as Detroit—possibly America’s most disrespected city—was rated America’s Most Dangerous City. At times like that, I feel defensive of my hometown, and obviously others do too, because that piece generated some of the most wistful and heartfelt comments I’ve seen at Daily Kos. Probably because it was Thanksgiving, a holiday more than any other that we associate almost exclusively with family and home (by which I mean a place, not a house), it brought forth comments from members of the Detroit Diaspora, as well as many others marveling at our love of home, or sharing their own feelings about what home means to them.
One of the comments on that thread summed up why so many of us feel love for our hometown, wherever that may be:
OK -- political theme here:
You know what this essay is about? Loving your country. And the bluesy feel of it, and the responses evoked, show the depth of that for all of us.
Dick Cheney could not write that essay. Nor respond to it. (I would love to humanize him right now, by reading something he did feel that way about...)
You know what our "country" is? FOUR components.
*LAND
*PEOPLE
*GOVERNMENT
*ECONOMY
Guess which two of the four evoke our loyalty, our commitment to action, to defend and protect?
Guess which two of the four demand our questioning, our creative input, our resistance to manipulation and exclusion?
All the confused boo-ha about "patriotism" sifts out nicely for me, when I sort the issue I'm being asked to be "patriotic" about into one or two of the above.
(It also allows me to RESPECT the patriotism of anyone, anywherein the world, and reduce the siren call to arms to a likely manipulation of our loyalty to land and people, for the benefit of those controlling the economy and government.)
That commenter nailed it. In retrospect, I recognize now that I felt compelled to write that essay because I was sorting through the emotions of realizing that was going to leave my hometown, and that while I would certainly return regularly, that I would probably never again live in the Detroit area.
The last few Thanksgivings I’ve thought about the responses to that essay, and how passionate people are about places they call home. Almost everyone has some place that, possibly independent of where their family is, they consider home. A friend from Europe recently told me that she thought I wasn't a typical American because I understood the concept of loving a city. I told her we may not talk and think about it the way Europeans talk about their cities, but that many Americans do in fact feel a strong love for their hometowns.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of home a lot, as after an itinerate year moving around between DC and New England, I’ve now spent most of the last year in DC, and I'm beginning to feel more comfortable, one might even say "at home." I’m discovering things I like about it, such as the diversity, the earnestness of many people here who really do want to make a difference in the world, the "official" culture, the sense that many people here, whether they accept it or not, have been entrusted with great responsibilities, and many do take seriously those responsibilities.
But there’s plenty about home--besides my family and friends--that I miss. I miss being around thoughtful, cosmopolitan people who’ve never gotten a visa stamp but understand other peoples largely through learning and imagination and maybe by getting to know some of their neighbors, who might be from Lebanon or Bosnia or Iraq or Bangladesh, or friends who still practice traditions their great grandparents brought from Poland or Italy or Malta or Belgium or Greece or Kentucky or Alabama or, as in my case, Canada. When I drive back to Detroit, I get an almost physical sensation of knowing I’m back home as I drive north on I-75, because I see enormous buildings that don’t house federal employees or defense contractors, but contain assembly lines, and foundries, and steel mills; seeing those buildings, and knowing it was jobs in those kinds of buildings—in some cases the very same ones—that brought my grandparents to Detroit in the 1920’s gives me a sense of rootedness. I miss being in a place where the hippest people around aren’t recent college grads, but are probably a multi-pierced thirty-something woman who works in a resale shop or maybe a 45 year old guy who does computer aided design for a small engineering contractor to the Big Three. I miss that most people aren’t trying to impress. There’s more self-effacing humor in Detroit than in DC. I miss glorious summer days on a lake, frigid January mornings, having to wear a sweater in October, driving 79 miles an hour with the flow of traffic, Democratic party meetings where half the people are in a labor union, seeing Canadian license plates in every shopping center, and I really want some good Lebanese food and a coney island and a Vernors.
On and off for the last three years I've thought about HenryDavid's observation that loving your home is really a demonstration of patriotism, a demonstration of loving your country. So tonight, as you sit around in your tryptophan-induced stupors, think about what home means to you, and please share it with us. Tell us where home is, and why you love it.