Best of the Rust Belt publishes today! Time to light the candles, toss the balloons, blow the horn.
The completion of this project is making me nostalgic—it’s a ten year anniversary volume of sorts, and when I think about the birth of Belt, and its early years, I think of Cleveland, so my nostalgia is for that city, too.
In the acknowledgments to the book, which I felt a bit fraudulent writing, as the work for the book was done by other editors at Belt, the many editors of Belt’s city anthology series, and the writers included in the book, I thanked the city of Cleveland. Because Cleveland is the spirit of the press, its genius loci. It’s a maelstrom of striving, wounds, carelessness, invention, charisma,, borne back ceaselessly. Perfect creative ingredients. So on behalf of this 6” x 9” bound set of typed pages I doff my hat and bow to the banks of the Cuyahoga.
In those acknowledgments also thank a person to whom Belt is deeply indebted, Peter Debelak, who ended his life two years ago. I could use the same list above to describe Peter, who was there from the jump, and who jumped in whenever I, and Belt, stumbled, and helped us figure out future paths.
For instance, our first anniversary party. So many people came out to celebrate, donate space and booze and items to auction, and were so touchingly congratulatory and excited. But I alone knew we only had about $700 in the bank, and was on the verge of having to have to shut things down. I went outside in the middle of the event to cry, and it was Peter who came out and bucked me up and led me back to the party. Over the next eight years, he would continue to show up to aid during crises and imagine next steps. Belt would not exist if it were not for Cleveland, and it would not have survived without Peter.
And boy was Peter intensely passionate about Cleveland, committed to its community and fostering creative lives. Cue the Rust Belt cliches but render them alive and meaningful: working with your hands, grit and persistence, wildflowers in the potholes, warehouses turned artist spaces, public art in pocket parks (and, of course, the Browns). Peter would not flinch at this purple prose, at being a metaphor for flawed, dogged, magnetic Cleveland, himself a genius loci.
Of course the conditions that make any struggle to better things, places, and people hard-earned, and thus meaningful, not to mention simply survive, are still, stubbornly, obstacles, and Peter’s death tempts me to reverse the florid story above, as if a filmic negative: just ruins, after all; potholes breaking axles, defeats swamping wins, machines leveling, houses decaying. All that is true too.
But! Optimism of the will over pessimism of the intellect, always, and currents carry us forward too. Peter would be delighted to know about this book, a thing a group of people came together to make. If you knew him, I hope my words here offer you solace or at least bring a smile.
And now to celebrate! [cue confetti]
A beautiful celebration and remembrance! I'm sorry for your loss, and glad you had both Cleveland and Peter in your life. (Also, I just wrote "Optimism of the will over pessimism of the intellect, always" on a note paper, attributed to you, of course, to stick up by my desk.)
Congrats! Happy to be a part of Belt family history (online magazine and Chicago anthology.) Cheers!