“I once bristled at the term ‘Rust Belt,’ corroded as it is with condescension toward this region, upon whose industries and industry other regions were built. I now find myself drawn to the phrase, as one’s fingertips are drawn to a scar. In the midst of the present, we are marked by the past. We bear it everywhere we go. But mostly, we bear it here at home.”
Dave Lucas, Ohio Poet Laureate 2018-19; Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology (Belt Publishing, 2014)