• Left of East- An Introduction

    In the summer of 2013, I embarked on a solo backpacking adventure across Northern Michigan. With no one to talk to along the way, my journal became a powerful and necessary companion. I wrote journal nearly every day, sometimes many times a day, to capture the events and insights of my time on the trail […]

  • One Cry Fix All

    My submission to The Moth Detroit StorySLAM topic: “Blood Sweat and Tears” When you go through a difficult time in your life, your body naturally deals with it by going into shock. This is a beautiful response because it allows you to go on with your life and get through every day when you’re not […]

  • A Real New Yorker

    They say you’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve cried in public.

  • CH@NGE

    The mathematical symbol for change is a neat little triangle Δ. I can remember drawing it on my notebook with a pencil. The teacher told us what it meant, and we took her work for it, but I wondered why, if we were describing change, did my pencil end up back where it started. There has […]

  • Light on Blight

    I grew up in a sweet, serene, safe community: a bastion of purity in small-town Michigan. We had no world-class issues. The police blotter in the local paper was comedically innocent: “raccoon topples garbage can,” “local man double-parks van.” But not too far away, trouble loomed large. Detroit, with its towering tombs was a shame to […]

  • On Solitude

    People, like deer and celebrities, tend to cluster amongst themselves. Anytime you should encounter a sitcom star, be still! Lower your gaze. Chances are good that his Emmy-winning girlfriend and the whole supporting cast will come trundling after.

Troopers- for the love

Posted on by

sign
Waking up in the hotel room is nothing like it is in the little cabin. There is no window to sit and watch the sunrise from. In fact, when I look out the window, I see nothing. The storm has subsided not at all, and sunrise will serve only to change the hue of our blindness.

The storm is so serious that the people on the news have given it a name– Neptune. I am inclined to scoff at this dramatization borne of the 24-hour news cycle, but there’s no question the Storm is worthy of a proper noun. Downstairs, at the front desk, I find out that all the roads are closed or closing. There is no way out of town. Snowmobiles are being blown off the road. “Would you like to make a reservation for another night?” I’m sad to think about our little cabin, the place Mom and Grandma love so much, sitting there at the opposite perimeter of that white throbbing blob on the Doppler. Reluctantly, we agree.

I take the opportunity to use the hotel sauna. It’s not the authentic Finnish variety that the UP is known for, but it’s something. It feels nice to be too warm and to take a break from my family. The only other person in the sauna is a middle-aged man who tells me about the ice caves he visited yesterday. I tell him I’d like to go with my Mom and Grandma and he replies by asking me if I’m married. I’m so caught off guard by the sequence of our conversation that I answer honestly– “no”– instead of appropriately– “what the hell does that have to do with anything?” He leaves promptly after that.

Well, it is Valentine’s Day. Maybe that explains what just happened. I smirk just to imagine the improvised celebrations that will come out of all those canceled dinner reservations. There may be an up-north version of “hurricane babies” where, in the prolonged absence of modern diversions, electricity, and transportation, people partake in some very old-fashioned distractions. I predict that there will be a swell of bellies this summer, a sweep of babies this fall and that, for as many lives as Neptune may take today, he will ultimately be quite prolific. Continue reading →

Troopers- snow canoe

Posted on by

P1080391

The streets in Marquette are closed off where the sled dogs will be coming through in the next few hours. We get a spot by the window in a downtown pizza parlor and watch the people congregate on the sidewalks. I’ve never see a sled dog race before but I’ve imagined it. In my mind, the starting line looks something like that of a horse race (though I’ve never seen that either), all the teams are lined up together, with animals straining against that boundary for the moment when the gun will blast and they can take off together in a mass of confusion and energy and competition. Continue reading →

Troopers- take advantage

Posted on by

predawn
I wake before the sunrise to watch it come up.

In the safety of the warmth inside the cabin, I huddle up against the window and look out along the vast and mighty Lake Superior, not 20 yards away from me. There is a lone streak of color in the sky.

Sunrises are so different from sunsets. When the sun goes down, you know what you are working with– you follow the light with your eye until it is gone. When the sun comes up, there is little gauge for when or where it will breach the horizon. My understanding of the sunrise’s inevitability is temporarily suppressed by sleepiness and the worries that always accompany a long wait. An illogical thought creeps in– what if, this time, the sun doesn’t come up? Continue reading →

Troopers- heavy load

Posted on by

We take one more stop before we reach the cabin- this time to Tahquamenon Falls. It is -12 degrees and a short walk to the water.

P1080501

We are accessing it from the world of people– where you start in your car and walk through the parking lot past the gift shop down the paved path to the viewing platform to observe nature. The last time I was here, I accessed it from the world of nature– where you start from the dirt trail and walk to the scenic overlook to the paved path to the gift shop to observe people. Once again I was a victim of the weather, driven there by crushing rainfall- the campsite flooded and evacuated. Back then, I felt guilty retreating to the human comforts, inauthentic as a hiker, lazy even.  Never mind that I’d already hiked a few hundred miles, never mind I had no alternative– I felt how I felt. I couldn’t handle the lack of control. I couldn’t handle my seeming failures.

That day, as I sat there, I watched the rain, and I ate. I ate a snack, and then all the snacks. I ate a meal, and then all the meals. I ate the pita bread and peanut butter, the packs of tuna, the chocolate, the nuts, and the beef jerky. I ate all the food I had just purchased for the next leg of the trip that I was now prevented from embarking on. Only two weeks after I had solemnly and passionately given myself over to a new life without bulimia, I relapsed on that bench right there.

That night, I stayed in the same cabin that Mom and Grandma and I are headed to now. It was the scene of my tragic reconciliation with myself where I faced the consequences of my inability to accept my lack of control. The next morning, I shared a breakfast in Paradise with a man who dropped me off back on the trail. As I left, he wished me luck and said “I can tell you’re carrying a heavy load.” It didn’t seem like he was talking about my pack. I walked that damn paved path from the parking lot to the trail with tears in my eyes because I knew he was right.

And that was almost two years ago now. I have not been back to the scene of my failure since then. The memory weighs on me heavily. In so many ways, my life has changed from what it was at that time, but I am still carrying that load, I am still on that trail, I am still not better.

The falls are beautiful, but it’s extremely cold and we all want to get back to the cabin we’ve been away from for far too long. I lay in bed that night and ask myself the same questions I pondered that day on the trail. Is it possible to pick up from where I left off? What other choice do I have but to try?P1080479

Just one more, if you care to aim your clicker and click your trigger right here

 

A Citizen’s Lament

Posted on by

Another newspaper has died in Detroit. Like so many others before it, The Michigan Citizen succumbed to the uncompromising economics of modern news, where corporations won’t pay for unflattering content and readers don’t pay for any. As print media wanes, electronic media flourishes. This tradeoff may appear to be more democratic – anyone can contribute to the internet- but print media, while it has fewer sources, may actually be more likely to represent the people. The reason is that when readers don’t pay for content, corporations do, and the internet can be a surprisingly narrow place to find your news.

IMG_0959 Continue reading →

Bless Your Heart

Posted on by

Grandma died last week. After 2 ½ years of bedrest in a trailer she shared with Dad and his girlfriend, she passed away. Everyone remarked at how she had been of sound mind until the very end. “Just yesterday, she was yelling at me like always!” said one of the home-care nurses with the strange fondness that accompanies all manner of recollections of the recently deceased. He had the thankless job of bathing grandma, whose general bitterness was made more potent by painful bedsores. The nurse never knew if he was being blamed for bathing her too much or not enough, but there was nothing weak about her opinions.

The funeral was miserably sparse. We tried hard to remember that you can’t judge someone’s life based on their funeral when they die at such an old age. At 88, most of the people who knew grandma in her prime are either dead themselves or at least bedridden. Maybe if we had gotten some webcams set up at the local nursing home, it would’ve been a better showing. But probably not. Continue reading →

Christm-ish

Posted on by

IMG_0900

I’d like to feel about Christmas the same way that I feel about Halloween. In other words, I’d like to just enjoy it and have fun. I grew up celebrating both holidays with unqualified joy. Each year through my childhood my family would pick out pumpkins for carving, and, a month later scout for a Christmas tree. But as an adult I can’t bring that same sense of celebration to both because they are just not the same. The difference is that one holiday is religious and one is not, and, as a non-religious person, I’m not sure that I can celebrate Christmas without committing some sort of moral perjury. Continue reading →

Blight Bungle

Posted on by

5710 senecaWith a click of a button, over 6,000 Detroit properties were purchased Tuesday for just over $500 apiece. The bidding on this “blight bundle” marked the finale of an auction process whose outcome surprised local government which had scripted a much different ending.

The properties were up for auction because of a Michigan state law that mandates foreclosure for all properties owing three years or more of back taxes. In Wayne County, that amounted to 24,000 properties this year alone.

The auction happened in two phases: In Round 1, all properties are available for a starting price equal to the amount owed in back taxes. Unsold properties make it into Round 2, where the starting price is only $500.

In other words, Round 1 is where the county makes its money back – and Round 2 is where the county takes what it can get.

Local government can’t change these rules, but it can manipulate them to its own advantage. In Round 2 this year, over 6,000 unrelated properties were combined into what was termed a “blight bundle,” in a joint effort by the City of Detroit and the Wayne County Treasurer. Continue reading →

Joy Ride

Posted on by

There is a movement building in Detroit, slowly building in power and purpose as it meanders through the streets of the city. It is not a protest or a new political party, it is not a tax break or a reality TV show, it is a bike ride. And though it has no manifesto, its purpose is clear: to bring people together through good old-fashioned fun.

Slow Roll is Detroit’s Monday night group bike ride in which thousands of pedalstrians come together to explore the city on a free bike ride. Throughout the route, riders share space with one another, explore new neighborhoods, and deepen their relationship with the city.

2014-09-29-crosswalk
Continue reading →