• 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.

Breaking Out

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hasidsHasidic Jews are a fascinating subculture in the melting pot that is New York City. These people brace themselves against the heavy current of the modern city with strong social order and a highly insular community. Densely Hasidic areas in Brooklyn were once considered remote but the geographical boundaries that protected them have faded as the city grows and encroaches on their once-isolated neighborhoods. Now the Hasids in Brooklyn (much like the Chinese in Chinatown) must rely on a combination of intra-community lending practices and their profound strangeness to protect them from being swept away. Continue reading →

Pants (The Second Installment)

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In a city as flat as New York, bridges represent pretty much the only hills that bikers face. Among bridges, the Williamsburg boasts the most challenging uphill climb for bikers (according to me).

The Williamsburg Bridge is over mile long. The road bearing cars and trucks is relatively level, the subway line is offset slightly above the road, and the pedestrian pathway rises above them all. Foot and bike traffic follows a steep route consisting of three segments, with a strong slant on either end and a moderately lower grade in the middle.

Scrambling up that incline one morning on my way to work, I was surprised to see another bike gaining on me. I’m a competitive person and I enjoy the sport of passing other bikers– especially men– so I was surprised to see a woman closing the gap between us.

I picked up my pace to try to shake her but she caught up in spite of my efforts. She pulled abreast, and faced me as we continued pedaling aggressively, then, with bated breath she said “I just had to tell you….GASP…..your pants….GASP….are totally see-through!”

And with that, she slowed down and faded into the distance.

Trying to Let it Out

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When I got married at the very young age of 21, I meant every word in my vows. When we celebrated our 5th anniversary, I thought we might someday celebrate our 50th. Divorce was not a milestone either of us ever expected to reach. So when I moved out of the apartment my husband and I shared, it was confusing and traumatic and deeply painful for both of us. Only weeks later, I was in a serious car accident. Heading to a New Year’s Eve party along the oceanfront Pacific Coast Highway in LA, the car I was in slammed into the side of another car making a poorly-timed left turn across our lane. We were incredibly lucky: everyone was wearing their seat-belt, no one was intoxicated, no one was driving above the speed limit, and no one was seriously injured. Except me. Continue reading →

Pants (The First Installment)

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For one week in August I took an energy efficiency class up in the Bronx. I headed “up North,” riding my bike the 10 or so miles from midtown Manhattan through Times Square, alongside Central Park and on into that Other Borough.  On my back I carried a pack with a notepad and pen, a sack luck, a water bottle and a change of clothes.

I’ve often thought that if I could play God or Mayor for a day, my first task would be to demolish the highways. As in the city of Detroit, neighborhoods in the Bronx have been bi-sected pureed and splayed out by highways. Back in the 70’s people paved over neighborhoods and truncated others with the myopic hubris that justified those roads as quite literally a means to an end (the end being Manhattan in the case of the Bronx, the end being The Suburbs in the case of Detroit).

With highways come overpasses, and that commute was the first time I had occasion to cross over a pedestrian overpass in New York. In the sweltering heat of that baking city in late summer, I carefully navigated around what appeared to be human feces* and entered into that beleaguered borough. Continue reading →

Bike for Your Rights

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“Don’t Let Special Interest Groups Tell You Not To Let Bureaucrats Tell You What Size Beverage to Buy”

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Times were tough in New York following Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s highly-contested anti-soda campaign, which waged war on the sugared-beverage rights of peace-loving not-quite caffeinated-enough New Yorkers. For the uninitiated, I’ll inform you that the mayor’s idea was to ban soda cups over a certain size to make a small splash in the fight against obesity.

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Doc’d Up

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greencardIn the waiting area of clinic 4E at the Detroit Medical Center, women in various stages of pregnancy and early motherhood are leaning against walls, sitting on plastic “kiddy” chairs, and pacing around the rows of empty chairs around them. They are waiting for their name to be called, and they will wait for hours. They’d like to sit in the chairs, but will not, for fear of bed bugs.

There are a number of unavoidable symptoms of pregnancy: swollen feet, morning sickness, drowsiness, sure. But parasitic insects? They have no part on that list.

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Ritual

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Every time I ride, I fly.
Arms extended, hail the sky

I lift my heart and pedal through.
I am a sail, but anchor too.

I make my peace here on the road,
Too free to fear, to far to fold.

Economies of the Heart

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couchWhen I moved to Detroit I had no job, no place to live, and almost no friends in my new city. But I did have a plan. My blank slate gave me the freedom to carefully curate every component of my life just the way I wanted it. This meant not accepting the first job offer that came my way, not signing a lease with the first apartment I thought I liked, not befriending the first people who invited me out for a drink, and not going out with to the first guy who asked for my number. It was the longer and lonelier route but I had just been through the hardest year of my life and I knew I was up for the challenge. Continue reading →

I do. I did. I doubt.

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There are a lot of things to hate about divorce: hurt feelings, divided families, changed names, lost possessions, strained friendships, financial questions and legal complications- the list goes on. Things as minor as an iTunes account may be affected by the change in your relationship status. The worst thing about divorce, though, is that it introduces Doubt into every corner of your life. This needling presence of uncertainty is the greatest curse of the whole experience; it lingers long after the papers are signed. Continue reading →

Summit Story: Mt. Kilimanjaro

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At 10:30pm on the night of March 7th 2014, it was time to wake up. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and, in the light of my headlamp, put on almost every piece of clothing I had packed. This was the night that I would hike from the base camp to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I was leaving with the “early group” in solidarity with some of the slower hikers and to embrace what was going to be an extremely long climb at any speed. The darkness was intimidating, and I took in what little light I could see as I waited for the others to get ready. Looking down at camp, there was a soft glow from tents lit up like nightlights by the headlamps of other cold hikers within. The camp spilled out into a great valley that contains the city of Moshi over 12,000 feet of elevation and four climate zones away. The sky was clear and the crescent moon small enough that the stars shone brightly. I looked in awe at the Milky Way extending boldly into the horizon, the Big Dipper strangely upside-down, and while searching for the Southern Cross, I saw a shooting star. Then it was time to go.

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