I think of my dad as an accidental feminist. He has five daughters, so he didn’t have much of a choice. With that gender distribution, it was inevitable that he would witness his female progeny carry out multiple acts of intelligence and feats of competency. Practicality alone led him to avoid “traditional” paths wherein each […]
Originally published in Riverwise Magazine The dual issues of water shut-offs and tax foreclosure are well-known causes of individual and collective harm. In both cases, bills are inflated beyond reasonable or affordable levels. In both cases, those high bills can lead to people living without the basic human rights of water and shelter. In both […]
Previously published in the Free Press with minor unapproved edits. Original below: It started with a Facebook post “77-year old women needs help immediately!” The woman was a renter of a tax foreclosed home, and a stream of well-meaning friends offered their advice about what she should do. There was fear that she would face eviction, […]
Originally published in Hour Detroit An iconic image of winter in Detroit is the columns of smoke spewing from sidewalks. Steaming streets are part of the landscape, but few know the answers that lie beneath this mystery in plain sight. Below our sidewalks, there’s a vast infrastructure that includes electricity, water, sewer, and fiber optics. […]
Originally published in the Detroit Free Press If you’re anything like me, you feel a little sick when you hear that yet another 36,000 Detroit properties are facing tax foreclosure this year. Tax foreclosure is an autoimmune disorder through which our own local government has become the agent of its own destruction. The city, the […]
I’m quite sure that I had never truly prayed before. I know some who did, and swore by it. But most people I know do not pray, and I have never seen a need for it, or felt a calling to it. It was not until I watched with my own eyes as the tree […]
In the time before life, Earth was but a swirling mass of gasses: no land, no sea, no sky. A day was nothing but a shy twirl of the earth before the gaze of the sun, whose only impact was to stir the winds with waves of temperature that whipped the elements about. As they […]
Here is a truth: you do not know what God is. You use this word, it’s a useful word, you are free to use it, and you will be almost right when you do. But you do not truly know what it refers to. That which you conjure when you point your word at it […]
Reflections on my journey to stay in one place I never imagined I would be washing his dishes: the remains of some crusty casserole, six or eight months old; a mystery Tupperware; a rimmed teacup. I’m sure that if he had could have known that I, a woman he met only once, would be cleaning […]
Detroit is Not for Sale Originally published by Metro Times At the time of this writing, Detroit is in the midst of yet another round of the staged cage-fight that is the tax foreclosure auction. In many ways this feels like an individual fight — one home at a time fighting to mitigate the harshest consequences […]
