Arie Versendaal of Newton, Iowa.  For decades, he worked in a Maytag factory, but the plant closed last year, “taking 1,800 jobs out of [a] town of 16,000 people.”

Today, he has a new job in a manufacturing plant across the road from the old Maytag factory.  He’s making blades for windmill turbines and he’s helping to build the new green economy.

“A Splash of Green for the Rust Belt” tells similar tales across the country.  Peter Goodman writes:

No one believes that renewable energy can fully replace what has been lost on the American factory floor, where people with no college education have traditionally been able to finance middle-class lives.Many at Maytag earned $20 an hour in addition to health benefits. Mr. Versendaal now earns about $13 an hour.

Still, it’s a beginning in a sector of the economy that has been marked by wrenching endings, potentially a second chance for factory workers accustomed to layoffs and diminished aspirations.