Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 9:00 PM

We know what kind of changes can kill a city, particularly in the so-called Rust Belt. But what does it take to bring that city back to life?

According to The Place That Makes Us, it takes activists who are passionately devoted to their hometown, even if they’re too young to know what it was like in its heyday. Karla Murthy’s 70-minute documentary focuses on a small group of such people who are working to revive Youngstown, Ohio.

When the industrial burg’s steel mills started closing down in the 1970s, thousands of residents were left without work. Many left in search of employment, while others stayed but were unable to find jobs that could support them and their families. The result is a city filled with abandoned and neglected homes, including many that are beyond repair.

Monday, March 29, 2021, 5:00 PM

From December 2019 to mid-February of 2020, he was a long hauler. It’s just the flu, he told his concerned family. Anyway, he had to keep working at his warehouse job at Rickenbacker.

Luckily he had health care, this fan of the Free Press told us. But two rounds of antibiotics didn’t help. Five to ten days of illness, a few days of what seemed like a recovery, but over and over it crept back. The coughing, the body aches, the constant sweating, the stomach issues refused to cease.

He remembers how his doctor wasn’t sure if it was the flu or possibly that new virus emerging on the other side of the world. The doctor shook her head, asking again, “Have you left the country?”

“I can’t afford a trip overseas,” the former long-hauler told us.

Finally, our unnamed source was fully back to feeling normal. It was the end of February 2020, suffering through three months of a COVID-19 infection.

Those days were a blur, says the source. But he does remember this –there was only one medicine that helped the symptoms. A natural remedy. In some ways like a mask. So simple, so effective.