Hope

Last week, when RTA announced the latest round of devastating service cuts, I finally realized that Cleveland is becoming a place that I don't recognize. It is simply becoming a different sort of place -- a place where (unfortunately for me) it is much harder to live without a car. It finally feels to me like Cleveland is emptying out. Of course my old brain-box has always known that Cleveland is losing population. I've listened to older people complain about it since the launch of the Cleveland's a Plum campaign. But now I am becoming the older person. I can see how different the place looks as compared to ten years ago, twenty years ago.

And that unnerves me. Because suddenly I'm riding the empathy train with the voices of cleveland.com. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to urge the last one out to turn off the lights. But I've realized that when you hear "Cleveland sucks," it's often coming from the same place as "Cleveland rocks." The difference is thin and elusive, but I think it has to do with hope. And one thing I've learned is that hope is hard for some people, and maybe it's not our place to judge them.