Severe thunderstorms came through in the early afternoon and sharply demarcated the day. Mother Nature has an immediacy that is compelling when she sends rainwater flooding though the open windows.   There are hundreds without power, but not us. The storm only made the top two Big Pink events. The first was personal and immediate. […]

  I was going to tell you about being summoned to the dark-paneled Senate office where John McCain first got the Congressional bug.   I’ll get to that eventually, but I have a meeting this busy Saturday, and was processing the daily mail when I received a note from a pal who is traveling west […]

The Times this morning raked over John McCain’s time as a Navy legislative liaison officer in the US Senate. I was not sure what to make of it. It seemed to suggest that the sacrifice of CAPT McCain’s probable promotion to Admiral was a demonstration of some dark ambition. The author mentioned that there was […]

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 […]