I leave the solitude of my cabin and spend some time in Nashville for New Years Eve. I’m not quite sure how to properly honor the occasion, but I do know that I want to see more of what this city has to offer. I’m self-conscious with my haircut and half-wishing I had already shaved […]
I drive around a lot, partly to get groceries, partly to explore Nashville, and most especially to resume my “reading” of Eat, Pray, Love in the car. I left the windows down when I arrived in the dark that first night, and the rain that so soothed me on my marathon nap also happened to […]
I sleep for 15 hours. Well, I wake up a few times along the way, but there was no phone or clock to check and my head was impossibly heavy on the pillow. Nothing to do, really. Why not let it happen? Just sleep. Finally, I get up at 3:00pm still tired. I am sick […]
I came to Nashville for the same reason that I’ve done a lot of things in the past eleven years– to get away, to make a clean break, to start over. This is one of the less dramatic iterations, seeing as I don’t want to fully wipe the Etch-a-sketch clear and start over altogether, I […]
Last fall, I met a man in front of his home in Hamtramck. His told me that his name was Mr. Ben Jaros, that he was 97 years old and had lived each of those years in this very house (except for the ones when he was enlisted in World War II). I snapped a photo in […]
Before the media and the politicians got ahold of the collective fear consciousness following last week’s attacks in Paris, individuals reacted naturally in the most vulnerable yet most generous way possible– by opening their doors and homes to strangers seeking shelter from the violence outside. How did the spontaneous hosts know whether or not to trust […]
Post-bankruptcy Detroit is a place of undeniable opportunity, and people from all walks of life are eager to make the most of it. Massive tax foreclosures led to a record 24,000 properties being up for auction this fall, pitting residents against speculators for the chance to buy a home on the cheap. Everyone is trying to take […]
They used to call it downsizing -but that wasn’t very popular- So then they called it “Right Sizing” -but everyone knew it was the same thing- And then they started calling it “Future City” -but still we knew better. And so, they didn’t say anything. Silently they issued yellow tax foreclosure notices And water shut-off […]
For the first 14 years of my life, I really didn’t talk to boys. It wasn’t really a problem in elementary school and, while it kinda sucked always sitting at the singles table in middle school, it wasn’t that big of a deal. But it was definitely an issue in high school. Girls seemed to measure how much they liked another girl […]
On a summer Sunday afternoon, approximately 50 people gathered together at the St. Paul United Church of Christ for an unusual kind of surprise party. The woman in charge gave instructions, handed out signs for people along the aisle to hold, and surveyed the crowd “is there anyone here who knows how to play ‘The […]
OberDoIt 