David Gonzalez, a proud South Bronx native, had two really terrific articles in the Times recently about our part of the borough.

The Bronx Transformed, Through One Artist’s Lens ­

This is about a new book of photographs by Lisa Kahane that document the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s.

There are images that today seem like warnings from a parallel universe: bricked-up doorways and gouged-out windows, lots filled with smashed-up televisions, open-air apartments whose floors are studded with charcoal-black beams. The mosaic tiles of apartment lobbies peek though the dirt and garbage like volcanic ruins.

Then there’s Gonzalez’s essay on the last game at the soon-to-be old Yankee Stadium:

Melancholy in the Bronx, but Not Because of the Stadium

To love the Bronx is to love it when it is down, and yes, it was battered and staggering 20 years ago. But the beauty — yes, beauty — of that era was that people decided to stay and make it work. A generation of grass-roots leaders had stepped forward to spur the borough’s turnaround.