Photo By John Hoff
Some weeks ago, I may have become the first employee of the "ad hoc but red hot" NoMi organization, when I was paid a small sum of money to get a house "trashed out" for a home tour that was happening in, oh gee, a few hours. Going through the house, I found remnants of the people who lived there prior to foreclosure. In an upstairs bedroom was...
...a poster which looked like some kind of exhibit for a junior high school science project. The poster was leaned against a wall, carefully and deliberately, and left behind. It was almost like a message to whoever would come along to clean out the house, or live in it:
I lived here. I attended school. I wrote a report about sedimentary rocks. THIS WAS MY BEDROOM AND I LIVED HERE DOING MY SCHOOLWORK.Who are YOU? Who are you to be here inside MY ROOM?
Admiring the science project, I thought how some little girl spent time and effort to create it. Well, now the precious science project was just another piece of trash to clean up.
But before I got rid of the poster board, I snapped a picture. I wanted to memorialize it, somehow, the fact somebody lived here and--in those last moments, before the very end--it seemed like in a very deliberate way they left something precious behind as a marker and a message.
Being the amazing, true-to-life adventures and (very likely) misadventures of a writer who seeks to take his education, activism and seemingly boundless energy to North Minneapolis, (NoMi) to help with a process of turning a rapidly revitalizing neighborhood into something approaching Urban Utopia. I am here to be near my child. From 02/08 to 06/15 this blog pushed free speech to the envelope, so others could take heart and speak unafraid. Email me at hoffjohnw@gmail.com
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1 comment:
JNS, This is a wonderful post. Thank you!
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