Steve Kagan

Jeanine Cummins (right), author of "American Dirt," signs a copy of her book for Juliet Dickerson at BookExpo in New York on May 29, 2019.

It was supposed to be the book launch of every author’s dream: Jeanine Cummins had scored a rare publishing industry trifecta. She sold “American Dirt” for seven figures. A Hollywood studio bought the film rights. Oprah Winfrey anointed it her Book Club pick.

Yesterday, Ms. Cummins’ publisher canceled her tour and issued a public apology amid a firestorm of accusations of cultural appropriation and stereotyping.

It’s a pattern familiar to writers of young adult, science fiction, and other genre fiction. But “American Dirt,” industry observers say, is the most high-profile work of literary fiction bound up in a thorny question: Who gets to tell someone’s story?

Ms. Cummins herself acknowledged the debate in her afterword of her thriller about a Mexican mother and son escaping a drug lord by fleeing to the U.S. border. “As a non-immigrant and non-Mexican, I had no business writing a book set almost entirely in Mexico, set entirely among immigrants,” she wrote. “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it.”

The furor over “American Dirt” centers around a previously noncontroversial idea: authors using fiction to imagine lives other than their own. To some, the controversy represents identity politics run amok. To others, the dispute highlights a lack of diversity within the most prestigious echelons of the publishing industry. At the heart of the matter is a deeper question: How can fiction best engender empathy?

“Why it’s happening now is because it is related to the politics of identity and the feeling that certain groups in society haven’t had a sufficient voice and representation,” says Ian Buruma, former editor of The New York Review of Books. “But when it starts relating to fiction or drama or film, it seems to me a very doubtful discourse because, first of all, if every writer could only write about characters like themselves that would become a very narrow exercise. And the whole point of writing, especially of fiction, is that you can get into the heads of people who are not like yourself.”

The caveat is that authors should strive for verisimilitude. Ms. Cummins has claimed she was “careful and deliberate” in her research and traveled extensively on both sides of the border. (Flatiron Books agreed to the Monitor’s request for an email interview with Ms. Cummins, but she hasn’t responded to the submitted questions.)

Yet Latino authors such as Myriam Gurba, Daniel Peña, and David Bowles have rebuked Ms. Cummins for employing nonidiomatic Spanish phrases, homogenizing Mexicans’ regional cultures and geography, and lazily relying on stereotypical tropes such as setting the first scene at a quinceañera. They fret that “American Dirt” will leave readers with the impression that Mexico is a hellhole.

“Cummins identified the gringo appetite for Mexican pain and found a way to exploit it,” wrote Ms. Gurba (author of the memoir “Mean”), whose caustic review notes that Ms. Cummins identified as white in a 2015 essay. In the run-up to the book’s publication, the author described herself as part Latino because her grandmother is from Puerto Rico. “Critics have compared Cummins to Steinbeck, I think a more apt comparison is to Vanilla Ice,” Ms. Gurba wrote.

By contrast, American writer Lionel Shriver (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”) has long defended the idea that authors should be free to try on other hats. At the 2017 Brisbane Writer’s Festival in Australia, she underscored that point by donning a sombrero at the end of a speech.

“We all observe each other,” says Ms. Shriver. “And part of self-examination is not always availing, is it? So sometimes others can see things about you that you can’t. So I’m interested in the observations of people about groups to which they do not belong.”

Lefteris Pitarakis/AP/File

Writer Lionel Shriver, shown in 2007 in her London apartment, has long defended the idea that novelists should be free to write about lives unlike their own.

“If you’re a good fiction writer and a good observer of the world, there are no limits to what you can take on with enough empathy and research,” says Ms. Shriver. “You own the whole world for as long as you are here. It is your backyard. It is your experience. And there is no hands off. And that’s for everyone, as well as artists. So you have a right to have an opinion about it, to experience it, to think about it, to talk about it.”

Of late, several genre fiction authors have been called out for misrepresenting marginalized groups that they aren’t a part of. The civil war in the Romance Writers of America – which resulted in the resignations of multiple presidents, an entire board, and the cancellation of the 2020 convention – erupted in December after the RWA banned a Chinese American writer, Courtney Milan, for forcefully objecting on Twitter to how Kathryn Lynn Davis described Chinese characters in “Somewhere Lies the Moon” (which was published in 1999).

In the world of young adult fantasy, Amélie Wen Zhao’s “Blood Heir,” Keira Drake’s “The Continent,” Laura Moriarty’s “American Heart,” and Laurie Frost’s “The Black Witch” were pilloried for alleged racist depictions of characters. Polite critiques on Twitter and Goodreads were about as rare as a starred review for a James Patterson thriller in Publishers Weekly. Consequently, several of those books were pulled prior to publication and revised.

Bestselling YA author Mr. Bowles (“Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico”) believes those protest campaigns resulted in more empathetic rewrites that were more mindful of the dignity of groups of people.

“Very few people are saying that people cannot write other people’s stories, but what they are saying is it is the height of privilege to believe that you are writing in a vacuum,” says Mr. Bowles, who notes that relatively few books are subject to headline-making instances of blowback. “All of this hand-wringing about, ‘You’re trying to censor me,’ feels like more of a move by white hegemony – often an unconscious move, but a move nonetheless – to continue to marginalize the voices of color.” 

The limits of sensitivity readers

For its part, the publishing industry is very self-aware of its demographic makeup. Yesterday, Lee and Low Books released a survey that revealed that 76% of employees in the industry are white, 74% are women, 81% are straight, and 89% are non-disabled. In recent years, many publishing houses have striven to promote marginalized authors writing about marginalized characters with #ownvoices marketing campaigns.

The industry regularly employs sensitivity readers to vet books – particularly for children and young adults – for offensive material related to portrayals of race, nationality, gender, religion, sexuality, and ability. In her acknowledgments at the end of “American Dirt,” Ms. Cummins thanks more than a dozen Latinos who read the manuscript, including scholars and people at various nonprofit institutions in Mexico.

Some are dubious that sensitivity readers can claim to fully represent a particular group. After all, people within different nationalities, races, classes, and genders aren’t homogenous.

“They’re being explicitly asked to make normative judgments, ethical judgments, aesthetic judgments,” says philosopher and science fiction author Craig Delancey (“Gods of Earth”). “Is the fact that this particular character is a criminal somehow now expressive of certain bigotries?”

Their evaluations go beyond fact-checking – they’re subjective, says Mr. Delancey. Case in point: Clarkesworld magazine recently pulled the sci-fi short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” – not exactly a common category of intersectionality – when some readers interpreted it as a transphobic allegory. The story had been vetted by sensitivity readers. And it was written by a trans woman.

Mr. Buruma, for one, believes that authors shouldn’t strive for sensitivity in an ideological sense of placating readers. After all, many works of literature, including “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Ulysses,” and “Last Exit to Brooklyn” have offended readers. Rather, authors should be sensitive to the behavior of their characters, who may well misbehave, as a way to understand the human heart.

“Fiction has an important role in making us understand not only ourselves better and how human behavior in general works – including our own – but where empathy comes in is that it allows us to get under the skin of people who are not like us,” says Mr. Buruma, now a professor of human rights and journalism at Bard College in New York.

By her own account, that’s exactly what Ms. Cummins set out to accomplish with “American Dirt.” She wrote that she wanted to remind readers that “the people coming to our border are not one faceless brown mass but singular individuals.”

A firestorm or a hiccup?

Some writers, including Ann Patchett and Lauren Groff, testify to being deeply moved by the story. “When I think of the migrants at the border, suffering and desperate, I think of Lydia and Luca,” Ms. Groff wrote in a New York Times review, in which she also expressed anxiety over the fact that “American Dirt” wasn’t written by a Mexican or a migrant.

Sandra Cisneros (“The House on Mango Street”) remains a staunch defender of the book and believes it could reach audiences who wouldn’t pick up one of her books. “It’s going to be [an audience] who maybe is undecided about issues at the border,” Ms. Cisneros told NPR’s Maria Hinojosa. “It’s going to be someone who wants to be entertained, and the story is going to enter like a Trojan horse and change minds. And it’s going to change the minds that, perhaps, I can’t change.”

But for Daniel Peña (“Bang”) the plot amounts to “lab-created brown trauma built for the white gaze and white book clubs to give a textural experience to people who need to feel something to avoid doing anything and from the safety of their chair.” 

Yesterday, Flatiron publisher Bob Miller issued a public apology in which he wrote, “We should never have claimed that it was a novel that defined the migrant experience.” The publisher also canceled Ms. Cummins’ extensive book tour due to “specific threats to booksellers and the author.” Ms. Winfrey now says she wants to host a “deeper conversation” about “American Dirt” on her Apple+ TV show.

Flatiron promises a series of town hall meetings at a later point in which Ms. Cummins “will be joined by some of the groups who have raised objections to the book.” Mr. Miller added, “We believe that this provides an opportunity to come together and unearth difficult truths to help us move forward as a community.”

In an interview prior to Flatiron’s announcement, Mr. Bowles said he was encouraged by the publisher’s response to the Latino writers who’d raised objections about “American Dirt.”

“I think the publishing industry is moving in the right direction,” he says. “I actually feel positive about the opportunities for writers of color in upcoming years. I think [the ‘American Dirt’ incident] is more of a hiccup along the way than an indication that we’re sliding back.” 

John Locher/AP

People cheer as presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont speaks at a campaign rally Jan. 26, 2020, in Sioux City, Iowa.

Since the day Donald Trump announced his first presidential campaign in June 2015, he has transfixed the nation – supporters and critics alike. In that nomination race, the other candidates in the historically large Republican field struggled for media attention, the lifeblood of a campaign. 

In the 2020 race, it can be argued, the even larger Democratic field is suffering from a similar challenge: Now-President Trump, unparalleled in the art of grabbing and holding the spotlight, has cast a gigantic shadow over the Democratic nomination contest. And his ongoing impeachment trial has only exacerbated the eclipse. 

It’s no accident that the president is holding a rally Thursday night (Jan. 30)  in Des Moines, Iowa, just days before next Monday’s Democratic caucuses, and another in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Feb. 10, the night before that state’s primary. Both events threaten to suck local media oxygen away from Democrats trying to break through right as undecided voters are making choices. 

One result of the “Trump effect” can be seen in Iowa, where polling – which often makes big swings in the closing days of the campaign – has been relatively stable. Media mentions of “Iowa caucuses” are way down compared with previous cycles, as are Google searches.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Nancy Bowden (center) stands with some friends at presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's town hall in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Jan. 25, 2020.

“Although I disagree with [Mr. Trump] on everything, he does know how to manipulate the media and get attention,” says Nancy Bowden of Humboldt, Iowa. She’s speaking in Fort Dodge, Iowa, as voters line up to see Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. 

“It’s like a train wreck. If you provide something terrible for people to look at, they’re going to focus on that,” says Ms. Bowden, a precinct captain for Mr. Buttigieg, referring to Mr. Trump’s time in office. 

The “Trump effect” is multilayered. Democrats’ fervent desire to defeat Mr. Trump, and the lack of an “establishment favorite,” led to a historically large field – at one point topping 20 candidates, now at 12. And with Mr. Trump looming over the race, many Democrats have emphasized that, above all else, they are looking for a candidate who can beat him. For some voters, a kind of mental gridlock has set in as they consider the array of choices. 

“For Democrats, there’s really a sense of existential crisis that Donald Trump must be beaten at all costs,” says David Redlawsk, a political scientist at the University of Delaware who has attended some 125 candidate events in Iowa while on a six-month sabbatical. “But there’s little agreement on what it will take to beat Trump.” 

In his latest academic survey of likely Iowa caucusgoers, taken in late December and early January, Mr. Redlawsk found that only 16% were considering just one candidate. Many voters, he says, are torn between “head and heart” – who they’d like to see go up against Mr. Trump versus who they think can actually beat him.

The Democratic candidate who has perhaps suffered the most from the Trump-induced media eclipse is moderate Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Recent Iowa polling has shown a bit of movement for Senator Klobuchar – the kind of momentum that, in previous cycles, has often presaged a surprise showing. But for the past week, the Trump impeachment trial has mostly trapped her in Washington. (Ms. Klobuchar grabbed a last-minute flight to Iowa Wednesday evening after the impeachment trial had finished for the day, just to spend precious minutes with voters, then flew back to Washington the next morning.)

Other Senate Democrats running for president – Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren – are stuck in Washington, too, but for Ms. Klobuchar, the Iowa caucuses could be do-or-die. She’s in fifth place at 9.6% in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. To be “viable” for convention delegates, a candidate must garner at least 15% of caucusgoers. 

Whether the senators running for president are harmed by having to attend the impeachment trial, rather than spending those days campaigning, remains to be seen. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia suggests they won’t be. 

“I don’t think voters are going to hold it against people that they were here doing the most important thing the Constitution asks them to do,” he says. 

Not all Iowa political experts see a Trump effect diverting attention from the caucuses – at least, among likely caucusgoers. Dianne Bystrom, a professor emeritus of political science at Iowa State University, points to studies that show political advertising in Iowa doesn’t have as big an impact on voters as it does in other states. 

“Iowans can go to rallies and see candidates in person,” she says.

The caucuses, which require being at a designated place at a designated time, favor committed voters, not casual observers who are easily swayed by media hype. 

Scott Morgan/Reuters

Sign-up sheets for caucusgoers are displayed at an event for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Jan. 11, 2020.

But in New Hampshire, where the Iowa results often significantly affect how the primary goes, political scientist Matthew Dickinson sees a Trump effect at work. 

“Donald Trump is making it difficult for any candidate to monopolize the various media platforms,” says Mr. Dickinson, a professor at Vermont’s Middlebury College who travels frequently to campaign events in neighboring New Hampshire. 

The Democrats themselves have compounded that problem “with a second factor,” he adds. “There are just so many Democrats occupying these [ideological] lanes, that all seem to a certain extent plausible and all of them seem flawed.” 

More often than not, the winner of the Iowa Democratic caucuses wins the nomination. But given the unusual nature of the 2020 cycle, there are no guarantees.

Some Iowans are frustrated by the media’s penchant for conflict in its campaign coverage. 

At an event for Democratic candidate Andrew Yang on the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City, several supporters partially attribute Mr. Yang’s lagging media coverage to the way the entrepreneur has chosen to run his campaign.

“Most of the media’s current airtime is given to the Warren-Sanders he-said-she-said debate, and Yang is not a drama candidate,” says Alexandra Petrucci, a neuroscience Ph.D. student who plans to caucus for Mr. Yang. “We’re told by the campaign to talk about Yang to other people, rather than bringing down other candidates.” 

Another Democratic candidate who emphasized the positive, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, dropped out Jan. 13 amid lackluster fundraising. 

Some Iowa Democrats see an upside to having Mr. Trump as the Republican standard-bearer. 

“Trump’s galvanizing people to get involved who wouldn’t normally. It’s the whole reason I’m caucusing,” says Connie Twining, a small-business owner in Dubuque, who just registered as a Democrat so she can caucus for Mr. Buttigieg. She was an independent for years. 

But she also bemoans the lack of attention to major issues, amid all the Trump drama. 

“The climate isn’t getting the attention it deserves,” Ms. Twining says. “There are a million things right now that aren’t getting the attention they deserve.” 

Staff writer Francine Kiefer contributed to this report.

Being labeled “yellow” saved Ivan Lam’s restaurant business.

The Hong Kong native opened his all-day breakfast nook last year in Causeway Bay, which turned out to be a hotspot for the city’s pro-democracy movement. As the protests began ramping up last summer, Mr. Lam found his restaurant nearly empty, night after night. 

“Those were the worst days of Hong Kong,” Mr. Lam says. “No one felt like eating out. We had one table each night.”

As the months wore on, Mr. Lam allowed protesters to store gas masks and first aid supplies at his restaurant No Boundary, convenient to the front lines. Later, he allowed a permanent Lennon Wall of sticky notes – outpourings of expression modeled after the one in Prague – after authorities began taking down public versions throughout the city.

“Eventually, word got out,” says Mr. Lam. He was a pro-democracy supporter – he was “yellow.” “Blue,” on the other hand, means pro-police or pro-Hong Kong establishment, seen as aligned with the Chinese central government in Beijing.

In September, mobile apps sprung up identifying retailers by their perceived politics, as the concept of a yellow-circle economy began taking root inside the movement. That allowed people to spend their dollars accordingly, and that’s when the lines for Mr. Lam’s restaurant began snaking down the street. 

“It saved us,” says Mr. Lam, who had considered shuttering the business before the yellow circle came to life.

Indeed, as authorities have tightened avenues for legal protest, the yellow circle is one way the movement keeps momentum going. Anecdotally, there has been an economic impact. Ultimately, the yellow economy is symbolic of deeper, long-lasting rifts in society that are separating families, classmates, and others who find themselves on opposite sides.

“The yellow economy is based on personal values,” says Isaac Cheng, vice chairman of the pro-democracy political party Demosisto. “We’re trying to punish people not supportive to the movement by using money.”

Shades of blue 

No one can pinpoint the genesis of the concept – much like the protests themselves, which are leaderless and organized largely via anonymous posts. 

Sometimes, color designations seem clear; other times, less so. One restaurant was deemed blue after waitstaff were overheard commenting that protesters deserved to be “beat up” – not necessarily a reflection of the owners’ position.

“It’s sometimes unfair,” admits Hong Kong restaurateur Tim Law, recognizing the challenges of a system that makes things seem black and white, when they’re anything but.

“Not all the blues are so crazy to me,” says Mr. Law, who supports the pro-democracy movement. “There’s a kind of spectrum. I have some friends I’d call ‘light blue’ because they hate the violence.”

Make no mistake: Mr. Law’s restaurant Little Vegas is decidedly yellow. He’s given staff time off to attend protests, sent 10,000 rice bowls to the front line, and allowed Lennon Walls to spring up in his restaurant.

Lenora Chu

A closeup of a "Lennon Wall" bearing pro-democracy messages of support, which have popped up in Hong Kong's "yellow" establishments perceived to support the protests.

One benefit of the yellow economy, Mr. Law says, is that staff have found new purpose. They’re united, and customers find reasons other than menu choices and bills to converse with them. “I also feel a lot closer to my staff,” he says, “because before our conversations were more up-and-down. Now it’s more horizontal. We talk about things with meaning.”

For some retailers, being labeled blue has hurt business. The city’s $350 billion-strong economy is largely controlled by conglomerates and companies with ties to mainland China. The movement has affected brands such as Bank of China, which experienced an exodus of customers to locally-owned banks.

Also labeled blue is Starbucks, owned and franchised in Hong Kong by Maxim’s Caterers, whose founding family member called protesters who participated in cyberattacks “terrorists.” Several Starbucks stores were vandalized during the height of the violence.

Deepening divides

Whether the financial impact is short-lived or not, what’s clear is that deeper strains increasingly fracturing Hong Kong society are no passing fad.

The older generation, as a rule, tends to prefer things the way they were, while the younger idealists want freedom from Beijing at all costs. There are divisions among the protesters themselves, over methods and the amount of violence employed. Among the student population, native Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese who used to study side by side are finding politics can drive a wedge between them. For some, the mainlanders are hard to separate from their authoritarian government attempting to integrate a fiercely proud city into the mainland.

“I’ve become more distant from my mainland friends,” admits Mr. Cheng of Demosisto. “It’s better we don’t connect right now.”

Divisions have opened up within families. “I have friends who can no longer go home,” says protest organizer Ventus Lau. His family worries about him, but he counts himself lucky that they still understand each other. “This is about the city’s future. My family tells me ‘I don’t care about the city – I just care about you.’ I can understand that.”

The two sides are so polarized that pro-democracy supporters are afraid to visit beloved shops that happen to be blue, or feel compelled to go in secret.

It’s hard to envision a way out from the new normal. Restaurant owner Mr. Lam, for one, talks about a friend who committed suicide in July, leaving a note that stated “a non-democratically elected government will not respond to our demands.”

“The only way to heal this type of trauma is by getting what we want,” insists Mr. Lam, his face darkening despite the light emanating from his restaurant. “Freedom, democracy, and the five demands.”

Trying to shop neutral

Back on the street, Hong Kong homemaker Bert Liu donned a black face mask, signifying protest support, while waiting in line at Lung Mun Café. “I eat out five times a week at yellow shops,” she says. “I need to play my part.” 

Others, however, are not moved by the yellow economy. Sharon Wong finished up lunch at the blue Glee Café when she stopped to talk to the Monitor.

“I had no idea it was labeled blue,” says Ms. Wong, a native Hong Konger who works as a physiotherapist. “I have no stance on any colors. I just want to have a great lunch.”

Yet that kind of stated indifference is also a position, insist some protesters. They label it with a different kind of moniker – an animal, not a color.

They liken them to Hong Kong pigs. “They just want a normal life,” says Mr. Lau, who last week learned he faces an incitement charge, which could carry a six-year prison term. They “just want to eat and sleep.”

“But this – this is our city’s future.”

Cruising down McKean Avenue, a main drag of this blue-collar river town in southwestern Pennsylvania, Charleroi presents two faces.

One is Equitable Heating and Air Conditioning, decked out in a white and powder-blue motif from a bygone era of prosperity, which now stands vacant, like many storefronts in town.

The other is the Perked Up Cafe, a three-year-old venture that draws couples and families and the local movers and shakers, who bump into each other while ordering the restaurant’s special blend of coffee.

Which one represents the future of Charleroi (pronounced SHARL-uh-roy) and the other communities here along the Monongahela River, which locals call the mid Mon Valley? It depends on how you look.

“The bricks-and-mortar have continued to deteriorate; there are a lot of ifs,” says Jamie Protin, an economic development consultant and tireless area promoter. “But the spirit of the people, the enthusiasm and the hope and the faith and all of those things, are starting to come together. ... I have really seen a dramatic shift in the mindset of the people.”

Onetime boomtowns, the cities and towns (called boroughs here) all along the Monongahela have been declining for 70 years or more. The biggest shock came in the 1980s, especially downriver in the lower Mon Valley, closer to Pittsburgh, when the steel industry withered to a shell of its former self and plants closed one after the other.

Even here in places like Charleroi, decline came like a giant vacuum, sucking the vitality out of the river towns. Pittsburgh and other communities that could make the switch to high-tech and services recovered and prospered. New bedroom communities sprang up like patchwork in the surrounding hills.

But in the Mon Valley itself, a turnaround still seems elusive.

Yet two factors are spurring hope. A boom in natural gas fracking in the two counties south of Pittsburgh, and a gas-to-plastics processing plant under construction north of the city, could create a spate of plastics industries in the area. The other trend is that entrepreneurs are discovering the river towns.

“There’s so much charm in towns like this,” says Casey Clark, who owns the Perked Up Cafe with her husband, Eric.

Working at a manufacturing plant in nearby Donora, they bought a building in downtown Charleroi for an art studio in 2014. Three years later, when the vacant building next door came up for sale, they bought it and turned it into a coffee shop.

“Business is good,” says Eric Clark. “We are just going straight up.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Many storefronts in the downtown business area of Charleroi, Pa., including Equitable Heating and Air Conditioning, are vacant, Jan. 21, 2020.

A few other places have opened up in town in recent years – a Chinese restaurant and a tattoo parlor. Corelle Brands, which makes the famous Pyrex glassware in Charleroi, last year began a $16 million upgrade of its plant intended to keep its 350 workers employed for years to come. An expressway project is improving access to the river communities. And local industrial parks have attracted new businesses.

“Manufacturing is getting to be an area that we can move forward on,” says Diana Irey-Vaughan, a commissioner of Washington County. “It’s everything from equipment suppliers to plastics.”

Yet, even the optimists concede the area has a long way to go.

“Some people still have in their minds the ’60s, when the steel mills employed 1,500” workers apiece, says Mark Alterici, who owns Dee’s Wireless, a regional chain of cellphone stores, which is the latest incarnation of the TV store his father used to run. “My dad’s motto was: always something new,” he adds.

Memories of what was have made it difficult for the region to move forward. When Michael Coury and his wife moved to Charleroi from Pittsburgh 17 years ago and proposed opening a local pizza shop, “people told me I was crazy, even the other local businessmen,” recalls Mr. Coury. But the first night the couple opened, the place was packed, he recalls.

Four years later, the couple moved a half block away and opened the River House Cafe, a favorite for people from around the region.

“This is a great town for a young entrepreneur: cheap rents, cheap real estate,” says Mr. Coury. “There’s a lot of money in these small towns.”

Tony Bottino, an insurance agent and president of the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce, is also upbeat. “We are so used to being so pessimistic,” he says, “I actually think we’re in a good position to plan for growth.”

In some ways Monongahela, some 10 miles downriver of Charleroi, might serve as a model for other river communities. It never had a large industrial mill, so it has always worked on developing its retail sector and tourism.

“Ten years ago, it was 40%, 50% vacancies” in the business district,” Mr. Bottino recalls. “Now, it’s hard to find a place on Main Street that’s usable.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Old buildings line one of the two main streets in the downtown business district of Charleroi, Pa., Jan. 20, 2020. Although many storefronts are vacant, there are signs of an economic resurgence.

Daunting challenges remain. While cheap real estate helps entrepreneurs, it results in a small tax base that makes it hard for schools to fund programs and attract top teachers. U.S. News & World Report last year ranked Charleroi High School among the bottom third of Pittsburgh-area high schools.

But “our community support is second to none,” says Edward Zelich, superintendent of the local school district.

Every year, the Charleroi Area School District raises approximately $30,000 for its volunteer food program. On Fridays, elementary and middle school teachers pack 175 bags of food so needy local students will have enough to eat over the weekend.

Another challenge is the housing itself, which doesn’t lend itself to attracting professionals. The biggest obstacle may be the parochialism that infuses the region. Residents’ loyalty to their communities, which is a strength for local activity, makes it hard to craft a regional strategy.

Instead, large companies – even nonprofit hospitals – have to work with a sometimes bewildering array of officials and geographical entities.

To get things done, “I cross party lines, district lines, county lines,” says Louis Panza, CEO of the Monongahela Valley Hospital, an economic mainstay of the area that employs 1,350 people. Then there’s the river itself, which creates still more geographical divides.

There’s no agreement on whether river development should be primarily industrial, residential, or tourism-based.

Mr. Protin drives down to the Monongahela Aquatorium, a 3,700-seat outdoor stage where bands and singers perform right on the river during the summer.

“I think we could be the next growth area: river, rails, history,” he says. “Charleroi will never ever be what it once was. It can be something different.”

It’s an attitude, says Ms. Clark, back at the Perked Up Cafe. She holds her hand horizontal in the air. “It’s a hard line. Either you are up here or you are down there.”

The mission was only supposed to last for 2 1/2 years. But, more than 16 years later, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has far exceeded expectations. 

Since launching in August 2003, Spitzer has facilitated discoveries that its designers never imagined. Peering at the universe in the infrared, the space telescope has unveiled stellar nurseries, spotted the most distant galaxies, and revealed the contents of exoplanet atmospheres. But on Thursday, Jan. 30, engineers are signaling to Spitzer to power down, as NASA shifts resources toward the impending launch of its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.

With wavelengths longer than those of visible light, infrared radiation is invisible to the naked eye, but not to Spitzer. As such, the space telescope scanned parts of the cosmos that were long obscured from view.

When it came to infrared astronomy, Spitzer did it all. It was sort of like a Swiss Army knife of telescopes. It looked past the visible at everything near and very, very far. It examined the cold side of the cosmos, and thus opened the door to a whole new view of the universe and its origins. Spitzer’s story is one of what happens when we probe deeper, looking beyond the visible.

“Spitzer Space Telescope has unveiled the infrared universe,” Farisa Morales, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during a NASA event celebrating Spitzer last week. “It has allowed us to see what our human eyes could not see.”

NASA

Towering pillars of dust are aglow with the light of embryonic stars (white/yellow) in this Spitzer Space Telescope image of a region dubbed "Mountains of Creation."

Spitzer was part of a team of four space telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and Chandra X-ray Observatory. Together, they were dubbed NASA’s Great Observatories. The idea was that each one would study a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and together they would give scientists a much more complete view of the cosmos.

“The visible is really a tiny fraction of the signals that we could detect. Of course it’s the signal we’re most familiar with, but it’s a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum,” says Pauline Barmby, an astrophysicist at Western University in Ontario. 

Different kinds of astronomical phenomena radiate across parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared radiation often comes from “the cold, the old, and the dusty,” as Spitzer scientists like to say. 

Not all objects in space glow hot enough to give off visible light, but all objects in space do emit infrared radiation. So Spitzer homed in on some colder objects – like nebula and brown dwarfs – to see what optical astronomy had been missing. Like night vision goggles, the space telescope also peers through dust for heat signatures of objects obscured from optical view. 

If you’ve ever looked at the Milky Way in a truly dark, clear night sky, you know that there’s a lot of dust and gas blocking the visible light of many stars. So Spitzer also turned its infrared “eyes” on our own galaxy. It snapped enough pictures for scientists to stitch together one of the most extensive maps of the Milky Way.

Because Spitzer could glimpse what was invisible to optical telescopes, it also revealed some surprises. For example, Spitzer data revealed that Saturn’s rings are even more extensive than previously thought. The space telescope spotted a wispy ring around the planet that hadn’t been detected before – and it’s huge. It’s about 170 times wider and 20 times thicker than the diameter of Saturn. 

NASA

Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes discovered that there are seven Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 star system. Under the right atmospheric conditions, all seven could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

“[Spitzer has] done so much. It’s done some things that we sort of expected based on the design,” says Sean Carey, manager of the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology. “And then we took off and just crushed the original science goals.”

One of Spitzer’s greatest legacies wasn’t in the original plan. When the space telescope launched, exoplanet science was just getting going. But, as Spitzer was built to add a new lens on the most intriguing parts of the cosmos, gathering data on exoplanets quickly became part of its repertoire. 

It turned out, infrared astronomy was particularly useful for studying exoplanets. Spitzer was the first to capture light directly from an exoplanet, opening the door to much more intensive study of the distant worlds.

One of the most famous exoplanet discoveries of the last decade – the TRAPPIST-1 system, where seven Earth-size planets orbit a single star just 40 light years away – is also a feather in Spitzer’s cap. After optical telescopes spotted a few planets orbiting that star, researchers realized that it was a job for an infrared observatory because it is quite cooler than the sun. Spitzer observed the TRAPPIST-1 system for more than 500 hours to count its planets. 

“This little facility that was never designed to study planets beyond our solar system, it totally changed the paradigm for that field in just a few short years,” says Nikole Lewis, an astrophysicist at Cornell University and a member of the Spitzer oversight committee.

Now the Spitzer-trained astronomers are gearing up to take infrared observations to the next level. The much-awaited James Webb Space Telescope is currently planned to launch next year and will build on Spitzer’s legacy.

At about 1,000 times more powerful than Spitzer, says Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at NASA and deputy project scientist for James Webb Space Telescope science communications, James Webb will bring the most distant galaxies into much sharper resolution. The goal, she adds, is to use James Webb to find the very first galaxies formed after the Big Bang – and, of course, to get a better look at exoplanets, too.

For many scientists connected to Spitzer, this is the end of an era, personally.

“It’s like this companion that has been with me for a big fraction of my career,” says Dr. Barmby. “I think we are all feeling a little bit melancholy, when we’re not in a panic to write our plans to use James Webb.”

Reuters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel talks to an employee at a Daimler battery factory in Kamenz, Germany.

After nearly a half-century of close ties to the Continent, Britain leaves the European Union on Friday night. This historic divorce has forced leaders on both sides to focus on how to reduce the potential upheaval, especially to their economies. Not surprisingly, each is now proposing ways to better tap the creative talents of their people. The divorce has actually spurred a competition to boost ingenuity in scientific research and, ultimately, economic productivity.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has unveiled a plan to turn the United Kingdom into “a global science superpower,” free of the EU regulations that he claims have stifled investment in risky technologies. He is offering an unlimited number of visas to the “world’s most talented minds” and hopes “to turn their ideas into reality.” He wants to spend nearly $400 million in mathematical sciences for “experimental and imaginative” research.

His goal is to put innovation at the heart of Britain’s economic regeneration, relying first on “unlocking the potential” of its people to create new technologies. To do that, he plans to double public spending on research and development over five years.

At the same, the EU expects to unveil a new “industrial strategy” by March, in part to recover from Brexit but also to better compete with tech giants from the United States and China. To stir creative research, the plan focuses on a goal of making Europe carbon neutral by 2050.

European companies already hold 40% of the world’s renewable-technology patents. The EU expects to invest in several other technologies, such as supercomputers and hydrogen energy, in order to produce “disruptive research and breakthrough innovations,” says the new president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

“Europe has all the scientists and all the industrial capabilities it needs to be competitive in these areas,” she says. “Let’s not talk ourselves down. Innovation needs brains. But it also needs diversity. It needs space to think.”

Britain and the EU differ in their approaches to nurturing new technologies. Yet they are hardly divorced in one respect: They both see an unlimited resource in scientific imagination. They want to push beyond material constraints and the boundaries of human thought. Under their plans, ideas are seen as universally available. At the level of seeking progress for their people, their parting could bring them together.