Who are you?
Pretty much just a crabby mid-career nonprofit worker who lives like a cockroach and wants young adults to have a future making a living wage without getting burdened with debt or dropping dead because they can’t afford healthcare. Simple, really!
One of my greatest skills is looking for the exit door so I’ve done a lot of other things too: librarian, editor, archivist, stay-at-home drifter, lovable monster, wiener dog enthusiast, slug. And back in the olden times (so 2005–2010ish) I wrote a Blogspot called Really Bad Cleveland Accent.
Here is the origin story of the title: Once upon a time, and by that I mean the mid-1990s, there was a very silly teenage girl from Cleveland with notions of attending Expensive Liberal Arts College. A couple weeks into fall semester, she caught her west-coast roommate making fun of her accent. Then years later this person, who I assume you’ve guessed is me, had a conversation that went like this with a library patron where she worked on the Jersey Shore:
Patron: (on the phone, through thick NJ accent) I can’t understand you! Your accent is too thick!
And so, a Blogspot was born.
What does a Cleveland accent sound like?
Go to YouTube and watch a video of Dennis Kucinich. Or, call up pretty much any DMV on the west side, ask for the unfriendliest white lady (preferably in her hard 50s) and ask her to say “black socks.” If you can’t hear the Cleveland accent, you probably have one.
Why are you doing this
Why have I necromanced Really Bad Cleveland Accent out of the grave now? Partly just because I am a barren middle-aged crone with no script for the back half of life. Partly I missed writing in this voice. Partly because you can take me out of the Rust Belt but as soon as I open my big trap it’s pretty obvious you can’t take the Rust Belt out of me.
Mostly because my Notes app is clogged with a decade’s worth of unvarnished ideas and unfinished essays I might as well corner like 15 of my friends into reading while they’re trying to avoid doing work.
What this Substack is not
Do not subscribe to Really Bad Cleveland Accent for reviews of Cleveland nightlife or restaurants. For one, I live in Minnesota now, and for two, I am a recluse. I can review my fridge and that’s about it (C+). You also won’t find anything of the “comeback city” variety. Nothing is coming back, anywhere on Planet Earth. The future, for me, has always looked like the intro to Thundarr the Barbarian. Please go somewhere else for your happy news.
What this Substack is
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I am semi-qualified to write about: books, libraries, ennui, public health, nonprofits, gloom, Duolingo, woe, scholarships and financial aid, lentils, austerity, cats, the menopause, Arby’s, Coronation Street, schadenfreude, what you should do with your life, gin.
If you want some mean old aunt parachuting into your inbox that is a good reason to subscribe. So.
Let me in…
…to your inbox. I know you have gin and Arby’s in there.
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