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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
You are never hungry
But you cannot taste
You are completely safe
But you cannot see
You are always warm
But you cannot feel the sun
The closest to utopia you will ever be is in the womb of your mother.
If you had a choice, would you stay?
Maybe you did chose, and maybe you decided to leave the garden
and enter the bright, cold, abundant, stark, world of color and flavor and pain.
Welcome darling, we cannot promise you it will not hurt,
but we’re so glad you are here.
I am 38 weeks pregnant with my second child and I am planning on having a home birth. I have loved the idea of a home birth for many years before I was ever pregnant but it has been the most difficult decision of my pregnancy. It took a long time to arrive at this answer and I feel an urge to write down the thinking behind it because, if it goes well, I want to remember the courage it took before I knew it would, and if it doesn’t go to plan, I want to at least retain the seeds of the vision.
Here is something hard: ultimately, this decision falls on me. Of course, my husband Jeff and I share in the responsibility, but the burden is not shared equally. It is my body, my labor, it will be chiefly my triumph or my blame. While a home birth may be safer and healthier the majority of the time, there are risks associated with being farther from medical care in those rare extreme cases. If anything were to go wrong, it wouldn’t just be “society” that placed the blame on me, I would do the same. That’s why I have to dig and wait and listen so much to figure out where this desire comes from. That’s why I can’t hold it too closely, or make it out to be mine alone.
Originally published by the Hamtramck Review 7/1/22
I will be moving from Hamtramck soon. This is a move with a reason, this is a move on purpose, this is a move toward the life my husband Jeff and I are trying to build. But for all the reasons my head understands, the thought of it still hurts my heart. Moving is something I used to do like a knight in a game of chess- jerking across the board in a mixture of defense and offense without any obvious direction. It was casual and often easy. This move feels more like a transplant. I’m wincing already in anticipation of the roots I will have to rip and tear to leave this place. I am mourning both my memories of the past and my dreams of a future here that will never be. After years of wandering, I let myself make a home in this house, so no wonder it hurts to leave it. As one of my favorite authors, Thomas Lynch, says: “grief is the tax we pay on our attachments.”
Originally Published in the Hamtramck Review Feb 20, 2022
For the past two years, Hamtramck homeowners with delinquent taxes have had a reprieve from tax foreclosure. But, this year, tax foreclosure is back, and the March 31 deadline will soon be upon us. 166 Hamtramck properties are at risk of tax foreclosure this year, including 86 owner-occupied homes (by my best estimation). The stakes are high, but we have never had such good tools to protect the homes of the most vulnerable. A poverty exemption for low-income homeowners has the power to STOP foreclosure, and reduce tax debt with a new payment plan called “Pay As You Stay.” These tools are nothing if residents aren’t aware of them, so please read on and consider becoming an advocate for your neighbors to spread this information before it’s too late.
Beloved tabby, En Voz “Alto” Oberholtzer passed away this week in front of his home on Trowbridge street. He was approximately 5 years and 9 lives old. Alto met his demise fleeing from the neighbor’s uninhibited dog, only to collide with a car that failed to slow before (or after) impact. So ended a lifetime of unabashed independence roaming the streets of Hamtramck with more freedom than a songbird, which he was quite fond of.
Alto is survived by his loving caretakers, Michele Oberholtzer and Jeff Zimmerman, who called him theirs, but knew he was actually everyone’s, and no one’s.
Alto was likely born somewhere near the Highland Park-Detroit border. He joined Michele’s family by serenading her in the parking lot of Detroit Unity Temple Church in a convincing display of orphanhood. He has subsequently used that move on approximately 35% of the residents of Hamtramck, who have alternately pet him, fed him, and temporarily adopted him depending on their generosity and/or gullibility.
Alto did not experience boundaries. His turf ranged from Burger to Evaline, from Gallagher to Lumpkin, traveling solo or following Michele from his personal kitty sidewalk along the curb. He explored basements and scaled rooftops. He navigated city street and wooded forests. He frequented many local establishments including Whiskey in the Jar, Olomon Cafe, Planet Ant Theatre, Best Deals Furniture and once, surreptitiously, Al Haramein. He loved few but was affectionate toward all. He rarely deigned to wear a collar.
Alto may or may not be a casualty of the excessive speeds on Hamtramck streets, maybe it was just bad timing. But, we who love him hope that his passing will be a reminder for all pedestrians to be so so careful, and to all drivers to slow down as though life was fragile, because it is.
Modern creatures, we must remember that we are essentially the products of a long and slow evolution. That, in the course of that time, everything we saw was both Here and Now. It was necessary to react to what we saw to maintain social order, to protect ourselves, to simply live.
Now, much of what we see on a daily basis is the product of a unilateral consumer relationship, it seems we’ve forgotten our own agency. We witness but we rarely bear witness. We just let the screen make us laugh or cry, but rarely do we let it rouse us to action. Technological achievements require us to calibrate our brains to react appropriately to what we see, which is often neither here, nor now, nor even real. When we learn to stifle the action impulse, we lose the power to act and react when we are called to do so. The dampening of consciousness acting in the police who watched their colleague kill George Floyd is the same as the one acting in the young adults who awkwardly awaited their brunch while a march for justice marched by. And despite our adeptness at looking the other way, we are still responsible for what we see, and, despite the diluted effect of distance, there is an added power in that we are now collective witnesses to so many of the crimes of humanity in our world. Continue reading →
Last week, the Wayne County Treasurer announced a total moratorium on tax foreclosures for the year 2020 due to the state of emergency caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Suddenly, the pressure was off for over 12,000 properties, including 8,000 occupied homes in Detroit that were likely to be foreclosed this year.
Most people’s first reaction to this news was a huge sigh of relief; a success years in the making, and long overdue. My job title at the United Community Housing Coalition is literally to prevent tax foreclosure, yet my first reaction (after the shock) was to mourn the collateral damage that this blunt tool will cause. Few recognize that this sweeping moratorium, while very beneficial to homeowners, perpetuates housing insecurity for many residents who live in but do not own their would-be foreclosed home, as well as delaying necessary interventions for vacant homes.
For years, there have been calls for a moratorium on tax foreclosure of owner-occupied homes. More than 1 in 4 Detroit properties have been foreclosed since 2010, causing many to lose their homes and spreading blight across neighborhoods. Past calls for moratoriums have been met with the same response: “We have to foreclose, it’s the law.” Yet Wayne County has decided to unilaterally defer foreclosures with no higher direction from the legislature.
Governor Whitmer has issued an extension for tax foreclosures across Michigan, and other counties will be using discretion to determine which properties will need additional leniency. In Ingham County, for example, it is likely that no occupied home will be foreclosed this year, while foreclosures continue for vacant structures or vacant land so that they can hopefully be restored to productive use. Other counties may suspend foreclosures for property owners directly affected by the coronavirus while proceeding for others. Continue reading →
OberDoIt 