French Port

Charles Baldwin was born in the southeast but transplanted to Akron, Ohio before he was old enough to remember a southern heritage. He has never felt at home anywhere. On his family’s visits to what they referred to as “down home” Baldwin saw tractors rusting in the fields and broken back barns on the verge of collapse. And he heard about constant unemployment. Baldwin worked for thirty years as a wastewater treatment operator and supervisor in Akron, Ohio, learning the deficiencies and whims of local government and discovering many of the consequences of ecological mismanagement. He saw the downward spiral of a great industrial city into one of the most prolific centers of illegal methamphetamine production in America. Baldwin is connected to the world by his wife of thirty-five years, four children, and two grandchildren. He is politically active to the extent that he votes, donates to liberal causes, and worries frequently about what sort of world we and our descendants will live in after the "last best hope of earth" achieves bankruptcy. Baldwin’s stories flow and are funny. But his characters frequently hurt one another and the more enlightened seem aware that something terrible is coming, that ultimately any civilization’s relationship with nature simply cannot be sustained. The reader isn't taxed by Baldwin’s detailed descriptions, which lend credence to the setting and invite the reader into the story. Baldwin's favorite authors are O. Henry, Barbara Tuchman, William Shirer, and Raymond Chandler. His favorite comment about writing is from Thorne Smith who considered himself a realist because his characters wander into the reader's awareness, make inadequate plans in order to achieve goals which frequently are contrary to their own genuine interests, fail, give up, and wander away. The reader is left with a comfortingly genuine sense of human inadequacy.