If you were to argue that transience is Greensboro’s most enduring trait I would concede that you had a defensible position. Moving on is as much an American habit as overuse of the past tense is a Southern one, and we live them both. The general from whom we borrowed our name was just passing through on a business trip and favorite son O. Henry, like other celebrated natives in his wake, got out as soon as he could. Our best-known nickname, the Gate City, advertised a rail junction as the “gateway to the South”; thanks for coming, bye-bye. The same value proposition lay behind the huge Overseas Replacement Depot during World War II and the construction of the interstates and an air-freight hub. We brag about our GPS coordinates in terms of proximity to the mountains and the beach, and even the geological designation of piedmont is defined by the region next door. 

From an essay I contributed to the book 27 Views of Greensboro: The Gate City in Prose & Poetry. The release party is at 4 p.m. this Saturday, April 18 at Scuppernong Books on S. Elm St. There will be readings! You should go. 

Comments

[Danny Wright]

Odd that I would stop by here today for the first time in over a year -- wondering if you had come back to this. Appropriate that I feel a sense of this transience after living there for 37 years (outside of college) and having been gone for the last 7. It's a fine city, and not a week passes that I don't feel like I will one day come back to live there. Hell, even my dad -- who walked away from his family in 1979 and then went to parts east from that point forward -- intends to be buried in Green Hill cemetery when all is said and done.

Greensboro has a pull that I think is most felt in the spring. I am convinced there is no place more beautiful this time of year.

Hope you are well.

- From the Music City

[Ed Cone]

Good to hear from you, Danny.

The rest of the essay is about the pull of the past and the challenge of allowing things we love to change so they can continue to grow and prosper, without losing the things we liked in the first place.

[Fec]

Sorry, but this bullshit cannot stand unopposed. I don't know about transience and will never put down $16 to find out what you and the rest of our literary luminaries actual wrote, but IMHO Greensboro is a great place:

- to suffer from hay fever
- to find a bad restaurant
- to find a broken business model
- to endure maddeningly stupid GOP fascists who've hooked up with local zionists
- to witness record income inequality
- to see some of the most ineffectual elected officials imaginable
- to suffer preening worthless media
- to witness idiotic property developers
- to witness a never-ending revolving door of public/private partnerships

In short, I fucking despise Greensboro and can't wait to put it in my rear view once and for all.

[Fec]

http://wfdd.org/post/study-hunger-greensboro-high-point-worst-nation

[Ed Cone]

Your POV would have added something valuable to the collection, Fec. Should you ever write an essay on the topic, I would consider publishing it here.

[Fec]

Thanks, but I have a blog.

[john hayes]

I thought this blog was officially retired/defunct when there was no Dean Smith post...

[Ed Cone]

I still use this blog to store some things and (hopefully, eventually) will write or post some longer things here.

But on things that are well covered elsewhere and to which I have nothing of substance to add --even Dean and other topics that mean a ton to me--I'm done. The zeitgeist does not need me, and I do not need it.

[Bill Bush]

I was glad to find this. The older I get, the truer I find the idea you included in your comment about having change without losing what we treasure. A quotation that applies: We do not see things as they are, but as we are. I think it is from Anais Nin.