Thanks Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel – for a lifetime of amazing music like My Little Town
Tenure
I live in Pataskala, Ohio, but I am not a native “Pataskalan”. I didn’t go to public school here, and my ancestors didn’t own a farm or a store nearby. Nope, I’m a long-term interloper. I first arrived when I was twenty-one years old, a fuzzy haired student-teacher from nearby Denison University. The only thing I knew about Pataskala was that a charity food and clothing center, a place called LEADS, was located here. It’s where Denison students donated their clothes and excess dorm room furniture.
Now, I know that LEADS isn’t even in Pataskala, it’s in Summit Station, an even smaller town nearby. But, when Pataskala became a city in the 1990’s, Summit was incorporated. So while LEADS wasn’t in Pataskala then, it is now.
And I later learned that the high school where I student-taught, and then got my first and only teaching job, served Pataskala, but wasn’t actually in Pataskala. It was in the nearby township of Etna. Etna itself was a village on State Route 310 between State Route 40 and I-70. It was surrounded by cornfields and cow pastures. Now, it’s one “distribution center” after another, lined up for miles along the National Road and spreading out north and south along the adjoining country lanes.
Build in America
I came here in 1978, and except for a brief six-month sojourn to the University of Cincinnati Law School, I’ve stayed. That’s forty-six years; watching a farm community turn into a suburb, and now into a mix of industry, housing. The few remaining farmers are left tilling the land that’s been in their families for a century or more.
I’ve been a teacher, a coach, and the High School Dean of Students. I’ve volunteered with the Scouts, and worked to get school levies passed. When I now substitute at the high school, I’m that old guy who can tell stories about “our” school from nearly a half-century before. But to “native” Pataskala, I’m still that new guy from Denison over in Granville.
All of that history is to prepare you for what’s happening now. As industry arrives all over; giant Amazon warehouses and the American Electric Power’s storage and training facility; there’s one business creating a local uproar. One of the giant buildings is a company called “Illuminate USA”. It’s one of the very few US manufacturers of solar panels.
Like Intel’s giant computer chip facility just a few miles to the North, Illuminate USA is entering a market dominated by foreign manufacturers. With computer chips, Taiwan makes 60% of the worlds semi-conductors, and 90% of the advanced ones. The Intel plant is part of the US Plan (Joe Biden’s plan) to bring that critical industry back to the US. 78% of world solar panels are made in China. So Illuminate USA is also part of the “build in America” plan. And it’s not just about “jingoism”; the Covid pandemic showed how vulnerable America was to specific international product shortages. So better to make it here, than depend on getting it from there, wherever there is.
China, China, China
US companies are highly invested in China. The computer I’m on right now (Apple MacBook Pro), the phone in my pocket (I-Phone SE), the shirt on my back, all were produced in China or have Chinese parts. And companies like McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and of course, Coca Cola are heavily invested in China.
Illuminate USA is a United States company, but has connections to China. It makes sense: China makes most of the solar panels in the world, and has manufacturing expertise. Instead of “reinventing the wheel”, Illuminate USA is building on Chinese technology to produce solar panels here in Pataskala, Ohio. It’s what any reasonable company developing a new industrial process would do.
There are forces in America who are opposed to any connections to China. They describe it in lurid, 1950’s terms: Red China, Communist China, “The Red Menace”. And there’s big money behind them; the conservative think tanks like the Claremont Institute and Center for Strategic International Studies, all sponsored by right-wing billionaires. And while their pseudo-academic “credentials” look good, the reality is they are the same right-wing extremists that are polluting much of the American discourse.
Red Scare
They are good at stirring things up. The “money” groups sponsor a local front of “proud Pataskalans” who are “standing against Communist aggression” here in my little town. They call themselves “Not In Pataskala”.
Keep in mind, “my little town” is already “Red”, Republican “Red”. In 2020 Joe Biden got less than 35% of the vote. But the city leaders, the Mayor and Council members, are “regular Red” Republicans, not necessarily MAGA-REPUBLICANS. But the “Not in Pataskala” crowd, the “citizens group” with the expensive webpage, are going after those leaders, for “…allowing Communism to creep into our town”. Notably, the Illuminate USA factory building is located on the “Red Chip Parkway”, and will be right next door to the land purchased by that “woke-ist corporation of all”, Microsoft.
There is a long-standing battle in Pataskala. The transition of the past half-century has been from rural to industrial-suburban. There are traffic lights and fast food restaurants, bars and housing developments where corn and soybeans used to grow. The critical issue is summed up in one word: “change”. Many Pataskalans, even newcomers who weren’t here in the “good old days”, long for the “rural life”. It’s got nothing to do with “Red Chinese Communism”.
The local Mayor does his best to sooth fears, showing up at every public event, and publishing sunset pictures from his front porch. And the “Not in Pataskala” crowd really ain’t so crowded. It’s all just another sign of our polarized society; vulnerable to “Red Scare” tactics that cherry-picks “facts” to generate fear. Frankly, most Pataskalans just watch “the show”; some in support, some in disgust, and some just waiting for the “car wreck”.
It’s our little town, Pataskala; a microcosm of America.
