(Detroit’s Finest break up a Whiskeytown liquor operation.) Elliott Ness, my ass. It is enough to make a Detroiter spit. That grand-standing son-of-a-bitch was charged with taking down Al Capone, and as head of the 300-man Untouchables, conducted a bunch of high-profile operations against the mobster. Elliot was never one to hide his brilliance under […]

(Members of a local Detroit social group, circa 1930. Detroit News photo.) It is Easter, the morning of the Risen Christ, and worth a contemplation of color. Nothing is black and white in the Easter season, though our crazy binary natures try to paint everything as either one of the other. In nature, things are […]

(Postcards that went into circulation in Ontario and Michigan depicting Canada as the barroom for the United States were vehemently opposed by temperance organizations. Cartoon from “The Rum Runners, a prohibition scrapbook” by C.H. (Marty) Gervais.) Go down to the river, brother, and the throw yourself on the current. It will set you free. Hear […]

(Raven’s Rail Car. A concept design from the American Motors design studio, circa 1955. Photo Socotra.) Whammo! The Hubrismobile became possessed by Germanic demons immediately upon impact. I don’t know what it was- a trench or really significant pothole of some sort on North George Mason that I could not see in the darkness. I […]

(The James Scott Fountain on Belle Isle. Detroit’s RecCen in the background.) Detroit may be capital of the Rust Belt (sorry, Pittsburgh) but once it had a buckle of iron. It is said that the legendary maker of the modern world, Henry Ford, met a Yemeni sailor in the early 1900s. The story has been […]

(Visionary industrialist, racist and philanthropist Henry Ford the First. Photo FoMoCo.) Gentle Readers, I have had my fill of the vile aspersions cast on lovely Detroit, the city of my birth. I was working on the agenda for the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit Tour that I intend to conduct when we are there. It is […]

(Duke Ellington in formal garb around the time he invented a new world. Photo courtesy Ellington Estate.) Day One back from the Front Range of the Rockies was in the bag. I was eager to have a glass of crisp Willow White and talk about the remarkable things that had occurred that morning. At least […]

Flight Level 34 was OK for most of the flight back to Dulles (IAD), but I have to tell you that everything happening south of that FL sucked, both directionally and altitudinally. Going up and down to cruising altitude, the Boeing 757 shuddered with the residual effects of the storm system. The front that passed […]

(Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. Photo by jemery.) I spun through the rest of the day in the Springs quite unnerved by the talking Magpie. I mean, how does a normal business trip hinge on things that are quite fantastic, and beyond the realm of the ordinary? I had a distinct sense of the […]

(Colorado Spring Marriott at dawn. Photo Socotra.) I put the Kindle aside. I had been reading e-Book version of Black Swan, not the psycho-sexual story of the film with Natalie Portman, but the theory advanced by Nassim Taleb that describes the impact of low-probability but extremely high impact events on societies. I had talked to […]