The Nominee

I don't watch awards shows -- not the Grammys or the Tonys, and not last night's Oscars. I was pulling hard, however, for one of this year's Academy Award nominees in the "Documentary Short" category.

The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, co-written by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, who also directed the film, chronicles the final days of a factory in Moraine, Ohio, 80 miles west of where I'm sitting right now. As I've mentioned before in KintlaLake Blog -- here, here and, by reference, here -- it's the plant that built the 2005 Chevy TrailBlazer that I drive every day.

Moraine Assembly was shuttered two days before Christmas 2008.



Of the film's nomination, co-writer Bognar said, "It's very bittersweet. We're very honored, but I would happily trade the nomination, or even an Oscar, for people to have their jobs back. So I think we both carry a complicated bunch of emotions.

"I want to stay grounded in the reality of this: the only reason we're getting this great honor is because something really terrible happened in our community."

An excruciatingly relevant story, no matter how well it's told, doesn't guarantee a statuette, and The Last Truck didn't win the Oscar. Still, I want to honor it -- along with all of the displaced Moraine workers, my neighbors -- in this space.