(A view of the abandoned Eddystone Hotel near the Detroit Masonic Temple, largest in the world, and sort of threadbare. Photo Socotra.)
There is such a lot not to talk about this morning. I am piling up crap to take to the farm and to the dump and am not completely sure which pile is which.
It certainly appears to be time to start leaning all this crap down. The mass of material that came with the dissolution of the estate made me realize internalize something that first occurred to me on Portobello Road in London a few years back. You can find anything under the sun in the stall along the road. For sale is everything in the attic of the old empire.
This is a microcosm here, and while I can, I ought to get it sorted out so the kids can make decisions about it all. And make mine first.
A pal told me that I was a pack-rat and I could never do it. Maybe she is right, but I am going to give it a try. She is right that everything has a story, and sundered from it, the objects are cut loose in time and space. Being mute, they lose all context and animation. With no story attached, it is all just junk.
Still, there is too much of it. I need to start letting things go.
(A once-magnificent gothic structure just off Woodward Ave. Rooms $10. Photo Socotra.)
They are letting Detroit go, by the way. There is some astonishing news emanating from the Wolverine State. We can talk about the Right-to-Work struggle between the Red Counties and the old industrial cities like Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City and MoTown itself. This is going to be something like a re-play of what happened in Wisconsin last summer. But we can talk about that some other time. It is happening now, I understand, because the Red Counties have solid majorities in the lame-duck legislature but will not have the same margin in the new session.
There is something very strange about all this. The National Government is lurching left, while many of the states are doing an equally dramatic lurch to the right. Very curious.
Anyway, City of Detroit is about to experience a coup d’etat orchestrated by Governor Snyder and his Treasurer. They are going to conduct a fiscal review of the finances of Dtroit.
It will surprise no one that the city is a disaster. The Governor is trying to coordinate a “managed bankruptcy” of the Motor City.
I take all this a little personally. I have a fascination with the town in which I was born. It may verge on what they call “Ruin Porn,” which is a way of non-mainstreaming the curiosity in the devolution of industrial age structures back into the clay.
Frozen in time, the city is. A sort of social Chernobyl.
I think it is probably political correctness in another manifestation. But there is something so strange about looking at abandoned sky-scrapers from the People Mover that seems to move no one to anywhere in particular.
I have been gone far too long to be guilty of boosterism- but there are some things up there that are so fascinating that it tempts me to go back and live life among the ruins. You can literally buy a perfectly good house on your credit card there- but more about that when we get to it tomorrow.
The Chapter Nine filing for what was once the fifth largest city in America (behind the Big Apple, Windy City, Philly and LA) will be a circus. As recently as 1990, the city was still in the top 10. The latest census data suggests that it will tumble to 19th, behind Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio.
There is enough vacant land in the city limits to hold the city of Paris.
I am not saying this is a microcosm of anything in particular. It is interesting that the top nine employers who remain in the city are either government of one stripe or another (Public Schools, City, Federal Government, etc, or health-care). General Motors comes in at Number 10.
Nothing new. This problem has been going on as long as I have been alive. It just had so far to fall.
Anyway, more on that tomorrow. I want to get down to the farm and light a fire in the cast-iron stove and chill.
And be thankful I don’t live in Wayne County. Of course, the old town may get a new start, be reborn once this is over. I will be interested in seeing the previews for what could happen a lot of places if we don’t take care of things.
Poor old Detroit can’t print its own money. If they could, you bet they would.
