It was a tough call. Wings vs. Penguins, Game Three. The pool vs. exercise. The Condominium Board vs. Residents at the meeting.   The last item would have been a colossal loser in ordinary times, something I read about on the bulletin board on the short elevator trip to the fourth floor. Unfortunately, Mrs. Hitler […]

Malika El Aroud  I’m a feminist, of sorts, naturally challenged by my times and sex. But I have been one since I was first able to understand how remarkable the narrative of my mother and her mothers before her really was.   I think about women a lot, for the usual reasons, and about their […]

I have an unofficial deal with the President. I try to stay out of his way, and I do pretty well at it. I expect a little courtesy coming back the other way, but he is a busy man and sometimes you can’t avoid the odd motorcade, though, and that is how Memorial Day got […]

Memorial Ominous Semi-trailer on Pershing Street I have to let Detroit go. Everyone else has, leaving that wonderful old muscular city to die a long and painful death. The buildings are abandoned, block by block, sag, and then are destroyed. The Michigan State Department of National Resources is running an interesting program to capture the […]

A Museum Fan-fold on Eames Chairs- Mom has two of the one on the far right   This was fun on a couple of levels- Mom is trying to inventory the stuff in her house, not for value, but just to identify where it all came from, based on an existing list compiled by the […]

Speramus meliora. Resurget cineribus. – “We hope for better things. It will rise from the ashes.” Motto of the City of Detroit (circa 1805)   Is it kidnapping when someone drives off with you, a knife in your ribs, and then lets you go in exchange for you wallet and keys?   The whole event is still […]

Booth was a trendsetter and arbiter of taste in turn-of-the-century Detroit, and had the means to become, through his wife Ellen Scripps Booth’s fortune, a noted philanthropist.   In 1904, the Booths took their drive out Woodward and turned off on the track that was Lone Pine Road. They purchased a nice parcel of land […]

Henry and his Car. Photo by TopSpeed Honest to goodness, I am going to get to the Eames Chair. I swear.   To do that, tough, you have to drive out Woodward Avenue from the Detroit River almost seventeen miles to get to the Cranbook academic and arts community.   To get to Woodward, and […]

  The John C. Lodge Freeway Under Construction, 1950s Photo Wayne State University   Thomas Friedman just wrote about the world where oil is going to cost $200 a barrel. The pipsqueaks who control the black stuff are going to be riding such an unimaginable tide of cash that, according to Congressional testimony given last […]

The Manoogian Mansion, Dwight Street, Detroit 2007   The northern part of the mitten of Michigan is coming alive again after five months in the freezer. Dad said it was one of the toughest winters in years, and he is fed up with it. My folks winter-over in the city by the Bay, members of […]