It’s an alien feeling to drive through a city’s heart at 5PM on a Friday afternoon and see twenty cars on the road.

More crumbling buildings.  Boarded up doors and grass springing through parking lot tarmac.  A lot more churches.  People pay for gas with jingling coins.  I feel out of place buying things with paper money.

I saw a movie tonight, in the outskirts of town.  Things are still thriving there: a big movie theater, crammed with people spending money.  That part of Flint gives me hope.  It could have been like the Pennsylvania steel towns: once the heart of industry is plucked out, the city would wither.  But there may be enough life left to start something new.

If Detroit is a dying town, Flint is dead.  But maybe that’s what’s necessary.  Maybe the old ways of life have to die, so the world can get back to the business of being new again.