Gloria, bravo for your brave call for action. However, I feel that as much as the media should sit up against urban decay,  the US. Urban League should be at the forefront  in the fight against urban decay.   Certainly City Planning is still an accredited profession.  The news media will be ready.to.volunteer support.  

Dear Colleague Harold Chike,

Thank you for this helpful and insightful suggestion(!)  Maybe, since my training is in rhetoric, I should draft a letter to the Chicago chapter of the US Urban League forwarding my idea that a kind of award be given for the best Urban Decay videos. I can CC: to NW Indiana chapter.  That might get media onto the topic.  They could do such an award for Urban Decay videos.  They have the staff and subscriber reach to make it happen.

My heart goes out to all these videographers trying to document with greater and lesser skill and polish, don't you think so, too?  What can an academic like me do but publish in some journal and reach a far smaller audience?  But, as they say, this could "grow legs."

What a concept. 

That idea is fantastic. You. may really be appreciated and rewarded.

Thanks to Prof. Wolfgang Schwartz  and Prof. Harold Chilke,

I have a friend who is in her eighties and who is cutting down on Internet use. She's an anthropologist.  I keep saying how much I benefit from contacts at ResearchGate.  Oh well.

I did write to both the NW Indiana and Chicago chapters of the Urban League (a US non-profit.) I suggested that they sponsor an "academy award" for 'ruins porn' videos.

You have helped me.  Thanks, Gloria

Three suggestions to increase the impact of industrial urban decay videos in Gary Indiana.

1. Timeliness is important -  invent time machine and start filming in the 1970s.

2. Have a celebrity (preferably from the performing arts) narrate the video.

3. A dramatic musical score.

Dear Colleague Wolfgang,

I hear that in German the term is 'Ruinen Lust' and it is from the Romantic Era.

Gloria

Ah, Karel Hynek Macha.  I have heard of him and read a few of his poems.  But I didn't know he liked ruins.  Beethoven wrote "The Ruins of Athens," too!"

Cheers,

Gloria

Hello, Everybody,

Posted this elsewhere, but it fits here even better.

===

I am "all about" breaking stereotypical thinking, these days.  So making all kinds of new connections.  It seems that the systematizing IQ so favored by the military and industry of all kinds favors stereotypes(!)

So I am re-visiting the devastated industrial sites of my youth and making new connections.  Everybody seems to just ignore Gary, Indiana, which is as destroyed as Detroit, MI, because perhaps we can only handle one "distressed" city in our national imagination.  So time for creativity and seeing the potential life in ruins--that flicker of a figure and ground experiment.

How's this one?

Claude Debussy "The Sunken Cathedral" and Gary Indiana's ruins of City Methodist Church (a favorite or urban decay photographers)...Try viewing the video of Gary with narration turned off and Debussy playing?

I try to write about the Rust Belt and people say, but what is "universal" in this that those of us not from there can identify with?

STAGE TWO And so... we get Debussy's "Engulfed Cathedral!" And Gary's ruined City Methodist Church.

Debussy URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAVyKDDsM3s

Ruined City Methodist Cathedral in Gary (the US's biggest "ghost town")

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF9yhnPBt1Y

Somebody in New York I know who is highly educated keeps saying how little he can relate to anything Rust Belt-esque in my short stories (or anyone else's from our Children of Steel writers book project, I am sure.)

I have to solve this to get the broader  readership's attention.  There is so much denial.Thanks as always for your thoughts,

Gloria

Here are some beautiful photos of the ruined cathedral in Gary. in a blanket of snow.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173761/Tragic-portrait-city-decline-The-desolate-ruins-Gary-Indiana-reveal-decaying-heart-Americas-proud-industrial-centre.html

The city as filming site for WW II films that need a ruined church?

Letter to the Chicago Symphony proposing a benefit concert and DVD at Gary Methodist Cathedral Ruins. Also wrote to

Northwest Indiana Symphony Orch.

Grant Park Fest. Orchetsra

Chicago Lyric Opera

==========================================================

Sept. 18, 2017

Dear CSO,

I know you recall the excellent concerts given by many classical musicians in war torn Sarajevo (cellist Jacqueline Du Pre, etc.).

These concerts in war zones and hurricane sites, etc., made millions of friends for the respective players and orchestras. There

are Urban Explorers from all over the world taking photos and videos of Gary, Indiana, similarly to the way they photographed

Chernobyl and Sarajevo--only Americans by and large, do not know this. At end of post I'm providing a link to Debussy and Gary Methodist Cathedral Ruins videos.

Because I made this connection, I had an "Aha!" moment. Why not the CSO at Gary Methodist Cathedral ruins doing a concert and creating a DVDt?

Certainly you could play Claude Debussy's "Engulfed Cathedral" ("La Cathédrale engloutie,") maybe Dvorak's Largo from Symphony #9, "From the New World," Beethoven's "The Ruins of Athens,"and could end with "Alle Menschen Werden Brüder,"

that "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven.

This could become the CD (or DVD if you show footage from Gary) that will put the CSO at the head of Best DVDs/CDs in classical

music for that year. I guarantee it would.

So please consider it and also giving some part of sales to helping the arts in Gary. Indiana.

Thanks;

Gloria McMillan, Native of East Chicago, Indiana, longtime Tucson, AZ, resident, and editor of a book about NW Indiana.

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Here are those links:

Claude Debussy "The Engulfed Cathedral" and Gary Indiana's ruins of City Methodist Cathedral (a favorite

of urban decay photographers)...Try viewing the video of Gary with narration turned off and Debussy playing?

Debussy URL: "La cathédrale engloutie"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAVyKDDsM3s

Ruined City Methodist Cathedral in Gary in snow in London Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173761/Tragic-portrait-city-decline-The-desolate-ruins-Gary-Indiana-reveal-decaying-heart-Americas-proud-industrial-centre.html

Ruined City Methodist Cathedral in general

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_twF8luodI

And read this about ruins as Romantic motif

Guardian essay on' Ruinen Lust.'

URL: https://www.theguardian.com/…/ruins-exhibition-tate-britain…