Maine poverty in a Pulitzer
Maine is beautiful but it's also poor. Although nearly all calendar views of the beautiful state of Maine depict idyllic beauty and the magnificent rocky coast, there is also a poverty side of Maine, hidden from view, but poignantly revealed in this essay:
A Poignant Tableau and a Pulitzer - nice writing by Jesse Ellison, contributing editor to Downeast.com The Magazine of Maine.
Born into poverty in rural Maine, Strider Wolf was only 2 years old when his mother's boyfriend nearly beat him to death. By age 5, he and his younger brother, Gallagher, were in the custody of their already overburdened grandparents, living in Oxford, Maine under constant threat of eviction. Journalist Sarah Schweitzer and photographer Jessica Rinaldi sent four months with the family for their 2015, Boston Globe story, "The Life and Times of Strider Wolf." If you haven't read it, consider putting down this magazine and doing so; it is a raw, intimate, and affecting a portrait of rural poverty in America as anything you will read.
Last year, Rinaldi won the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography for the photos that accompanied the piece, including the memorable shot of Strider and Gallagher on the back of an abandoned Ford, staring at the moon. It was the first time the award has recognized a photo series taken in Maine.
"By the time they got evicted - the night the moon photo was taken - we were entrenched," remembers Rinaldi. "It wasn't so weird anymore that we were there with a notebook and cameras and everything. It was a nuts day. Everybody was jut scrambling. The adults were so focused on trying to salvage their things, the boys were kind of left to their own devices and running wild a little bit. They were kids; exhausted, running around, being nuts." Strider and Gallagher ran out to see a train pass on tracks nearby and, on their way back, stopped to play on the truck carriage. In the photo, Strider is holding broken auto hoses to his eyes, like binoculars. "What's on the moon?," he wondered, aloud.
The moment, to me, it felt so hopeful," she says. "Nothing is working for this kid and yet he's still a did. He can still pull something broken from the car, put it up to his eyes, and look at the moon. That's hopefulness, that's childhood. And at the same time, it's two kids standing on a broken car that's not going anywhere."
Even apart from its heartbreaking context, it's a tension between stasis and wide-eyed wonder that may resonate with anyone who looks back on a rural Maine upbringing.
The response to Schweitzer and Rinaldi's feature was enormous. "We hoped that this story would do something, generate some sort of reaction," Rinaldi said, "but in the end, we didn't know. We thought, 'Will anyone really care?' ".
They did. Globe readers donated tens of thousands of dollars. The newspaper set up a trust and a GoFundMe campaign raised another $20,000. Last summer, for the first time, Strider went to summer camp. - Jesse Ellison, Contributing Editor
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| Strider Wolf and his brother Gallagher, in a Pulitzer Award photo taken in rural Maine by Jessica Rinaldi |
A Poignant Tableau and a Pulitzer - nice writing by Jesse Ellison, contributing editor to Downeast.com The Magazine of Maine.
Born into poverty in rural Maine, Strider Wolf was only 2 years old when his mother's boyfriend nearly beat him to death. By age 5, he and his younger brother, Gallagher, were in the custody of their already overburdened grandparents, living in Oxford, Maine under constant threat of eviction. Journalist Sarah Schweitzer and photographer Jessica Rinaldi sent four months with the family for their 2015, Boston Globe story, "The Life and Times of Strider Wolf." If you haven't read it, consider putting down this magazine and doing so; it is a raw, intimate, and affecting a portrait of rural poverty in America as anything you will read.
Last year, Rinaldi won the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography for the photos that accompanied the piece, including the memorable shot of Strider and Gallagher on the back of an abandoned Ford, staring at the moon. It was the first time the award has recognized a photo series taken in Maine.
"By the time they got evicted - the night the moon photo was taken - we were entrenched," remembers Rinaldi. "It wasn't so weird anymore that we were there with a notebook and cameras and everything. It was a nuts day. Everybody was jut scrambling. The adults were so focused on trying to salvage their things, the boys were kind of left to their own devices and running wild a little bit. They were kids; exhausted, running around, being nuts." Strider and Gallagher ran out to see a train pass on tracks nearby and, on their way back, stopped to play on the truck carriage. In the photo, Strider is holding broken auto hoses to his eyes, like binoculars. "What's on the moon?," he wondered, aloud.
The moment, to me, it felt so hopeful," she says. "Nothing is working for this kid and yet he's still a did. He can still pull something broken from the car, put it up to his eyes, and look at the moon. That's hopefulness, that's childhood. And at the same time, it's two kids standing on a broken car that's not going anywhere."
Even apart from its heartbreaking context, it's a tension between stasis and wide-eyed wonder that may resonate with anyone who looks back on a rural Maine upbringing.
The response to Schweitzer and Rinaldi's feature was enormous. "We hoped that this story would do something, generate some sort of reaction," Rinaldi said, "but in the end, we didn't know. We thought, 'Will anyone really care?' ".
They did. Globe readers donated tens of thousands of dollars. The newspaper set up a trust and a GoFundMe campaign raised another $20,000. Last summer, for the first time, Strider went to summer camp. - Jesse Ellison, Contributing Editor
Labels: Downeast.com, Jesse Ellison, Jessica Rinaldi, Oxford Maine, Strider Wolf, The Boston Globe
posted by Juliana L'Heureux at 10:12 AM
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