• 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.

It Takes A Flint To Start A Fire

Posted on by

 

160120-protest-in_lansing-flint-water-crisis-yh-0631p_2d88d1eecd4854a4a31edee714ed0293.nbcnews-fp-1200-800It takes something truly egregious to catalyze public action – we all now know the harm that was done and the toxic combination of neglect and manipulation that led to it. Will Flint be the tipping point?

 

Originally published by Occupy.com

The violation of human rights in Michigan has been going on for decades – the inevitable result of maintenance deferred in a strained economy. The canaries have been singing for awhile with emergency management, crumbling infrastructure, job loss, poverty, failing education, and so on. But since we keep falling it seems we haven’t hit bottom yet. As with other social movements, mere mistreatment isn’t enough to provoke true change.

It takes something truly egregious to catalyze action and Flint may provide the spark.

Continue reading →

Policy ideas to fix Flint’s water crisis (and help avoid another)

Posted on by

Originally published by ModelD

Flint water

Gov. Rick Snyder has apologized for the inexcusable failures of leadership that led to the current situation in Flint, where tens of thousands of individuals, including children, have been poisoned, dismissed, neglected, and lied to. What’s clear at this stage is that great harm has been done to both people and the city’s infrastructure.

Now that state and local government have acknowledged the truth, they will have to do something about it. Any good nerd knows that “I’m sorry” doesn’t de-corrode miles of water piping or detoxify children – we need money to pay for that. But how will we find it? Here are some policy suggestions that could help ameliorate the water crisis in Flint and buttress the rest of our state’s deteriorating infrastructure.

Top it off

In the midst of ongoing financial and social instability in many of Michigan’s cities, the price of oil happens to be at a 10-year low. The current approach to this happy circumstance seems to be to just enjoy the break at the pump, but we are missing a real opportunity. The fact is that Michigan is facing grotesque infrastructure disinvestment, with aging roads and water infrastructure that our governments have proven to be either unwilling or incapable of addressing. We need to take collective action to take advantage of the opportunity that low oil rates present. What Michigan needs is a “Top Off” law that would set a price floor on gas prices.

Under this law, any time market rates of gas fall below $2.00/gallon, the gas station would become a savings account for state and local infrastructure fund. The differential between market rates and that indexed value (which could grow gradually over time) would provide funding for projects from road repairs to water pipeline modernization. If market rates exceed $2.00/gal, then we pay nothing. If prices stay above that index, well, we’re no worse off than we are now. The law would create a fund to address infrastructure issues that aren’t getting paid for now, and certainly won’t be when gas rates hike back up again. Continue reading →

It Takes a Flint

Posted on by

When it started hard to say

Couple hundred yesterdays

Simple system growing cracks

Auto business, off the tracks

 

Getting mine means getting gone

Whites flight from the red line zone

Money tighter, feel the strain

Pull the plug, choke the drain

 

Safety net becomes swiss cheese

poor is spreading like disease

Trickle down aint spreading shit

No more flow from the faucet

 

Do you want a drink today

Or would you prefer to stay?

Pauper’s prison, in your home

Only choice is move along

 

In the country, people know

How to build a fire, slow

Let the wood get nice and dry

Kindling on the underside

Stack it up, support the beams

Maybe squirt some gasoline

But if flame’s what you desire-

It takes a Flint to start a fire

How to Get There

Posted on by

IMG_2310 (2)

Get in your car. Wait for it to warm up, like he would do.

When your impatience catches up to you, 20 seconds later, put the gear in drive and head onto the highway, north. Pass the 7-mile and 8-mile and 11-mile exits and the accompanying suburbs thereafter. Don’t check your phone or pick at your hair or worry about how long it will take. Listen to public radio and hear what they have to say, or put on the same CD that’s been in your console for two years and sing along to Ella Fitzgerald, or turn everything off altogether and see what your brain turns the silence into. Pass the outlet malls and fast food signs and let the hotheads of the leftmost lane pass you. Think about what you will do when you arrive.

Turn off the highway and take a right. Pass the final gasp of the commercial uniformity and pass the turn-off for the landfill/skihill and pass the Springfield Inn and the empty restaurant with the baldly desperate sign that says “Eat Here or We’ll Both Starve!” Take a right again. Drive down the one-lane road beyond the mustard yellow house and the fake pond and the lonely-seeming houses on what some living memories knew as farmland. Take a left. Watch out for the pothole and go down the final stretch, maybe sneak a look at yourself in the rearview mirror and decide what song you want to end your drive on. Right where the road splits, don’t take either fork but a hard left up a dirt road that is actually a driveway. Curve up past houses that are almost-but-not-quite it and park your car at the gate by the 60-foot pine-tree. Get your bags out of your car, straddle-step over the fence– careful not to rip your pants– and walk the path in the snow to the front door that you have always felt comfortable letting yourself into without knocking.

There he is.

He may patiently wait while you take off your shoes and greet the dogs and set down your things. He may listen as you comment on his beard or lack of beard or work coveralls or t-shirt– in this weather? Or he may stride past the frenzied pets to your watchful side and hold you so long and so sweet that you almost cry even though you’re not sure why.

You made it. Here is this man, tucked away in the woods even though they said all the good ones were taken. Here he is and you have found him. Let him make you coffee and put some logs on the fire. Let him spread some of his peace onto your heart and, for God’s sake, if you’re smart, let him love you.

a portrait of divorce

Posted on by

Screen Shot 2016-02-09 at 2.42.38 PM

one I lived in a gleaming sterile 42-story complex in midtown Manhattan. It was one of the biggest buildings I’ve ever been in, but it still sat in the shadow of the Empire State Building just behind. New York has a way of offering a ready reminder that you can always have more. I never wanted to live there in the first place, but I started to get used to the one-on-one yoga classes, the incredible views, and the perspective that comes from living in the middle of something so seemingly important. It was fabulous but shallow. When my marriage started failing, I left.

two The little brownstone in Brooklyn was the epitome of hope and innocence. I believed I would check the box of legitimate adulthood by living alone for once– one short month to be exact. In that time, I’d get out of my system whatever it was that wasn’t working, move back with my husband, and everything would be back to normal. We’d laugh about it later.

When I made the arrangements with the renter, she said: “I’ll be a nice girl from California and you be a nice girl from Michigan and let’s just trust each other, ok?”

It was wonderful to insert myself in a space that someone else had made theirs, it didn’t require much imagination to consider that I could make a home like this too. To this day, the smell of Dr. Bronner’s dish soap reminds me of my nascent singlehood. But I had to be out before the end of the month and, with travel for Christmas and New Years, that meant I was moving again just three weeks after moving in and no, I wasn’t ready to go back to my former life.

three Feeling adventurous and pressed for time, I moved into a basement apartment before leaving New York for the holidays. It was farther from the subway, and the quarters were dingier and dirtier, but I was testing my boundaries and I thought it would be cool to live with artists. Moving sucks but this wasn’t so bad. I could fit everything but me and my bike into a single cab and so I cycled behind, unloaded, and poof! I was moved. Continue reading →

Detroit, Autocorrected

Posted on by
IMG_1450Since I moved to this city, I’ve kept a note on my phone to keep track of the weird ways that my phone interprets the word Detroit. They’re not exactly electronic Freudian slips, but it’s still fascinating to see how my careless spelling is contorted.
  • Det Riot
  • Serpent
  • Tide trot
  • Detour
  • Devote
  • Fisher
  • Dishrag
  • Deceit
  • Dwight
  • Delete
  • Elite
  • Work it

 

Volunteer State- Part 5 “Suffrage”

Posted on by

IMG_5471 (1)
Somewhere between the meetings and the writing and the car rides, I learn something­­ that surprises me– I don’t actually want to shave my head. I want to want to do it, but I don’t actually want to. I know that if I do it, it won’t be free– it will take some sort of emotional toll. I think back to my little prayer the other night and I just don’t feel the need to take from myself more than I’m willing to give. I don’t want to have to recover from today if I can help it. If the means to the end of balance requires me to imbalance myself, I don’t trust it.

I especially don’t want to do it now, on New Years, for the same reasons that I did want to before. To perform an act like this, on a day and in a way so steeped in symbolism and expectation would all but guarantee my failure.

In the miniscule space between the question and my decision, I’m already almost floored by how effectively I distracted my over-conscientious mind into obsessing about this question. What a ruse! What a joke! I spun an impulse into a thesis statement. All the reasons I told myself were true, to a point, but the core of this desire was sheer and sharp, razor blade desperation. I guess I’m not desperate right now.

Three years ago, I started the path that began with a divorce and has stirred my restless soul around almost a dozen different residences (you can hardly call them all homes). When I lost most of what I had, I gave up the rest. I had nothing and so nothing to lose. But I’m not there anymore. I have a life, I have a lot to lose. It’s taken a lot of time and a lot of work to build the shaky foundation I’m navigating from now, and I know firsthand how much easier it is to destroy something than to create it. Let me be gentle with myself right now, let me not throw away what I have, even if it is just, you know, hair. Continue reading →

Volunteer State- Part 4 “Song”

Posted on by

IMG_5455I 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 my head in order to practice dealing with its awkwardness in the company of strangers. I can’t tell what exactly it is that I want out of this night. To make friends? To flirt? To have some great epiphany? No way to guarantee any of them but my choices of how I spend my time will make some outcomes more likely than others.

I go to an OA meeting, I take myself out to lunch, I write and drink coffee at a downtown cafe and almost order a cookie. I know where that leads and that is one thing I definitely don’t want for myself today.

As it gets dark, I walk around and into a trashy-yet-self-aware “boogey bar” with some of the best free live music I’ve ever heard. Now you’re talking. After awhile, I float down the street and into a karaoke bar. To sing karaoke in Nashville was the one cultural goal of my trip, and here’s my chance. The bar is pretty much empty and I get picked right away to sing “Bobbie McGee.” I love that song, but its hard to sing. And Janis is so weird. And I’m so unsure. I don’t make it through very many of the “la la las.” Why did I even pick that song? It’s so much longer than I remember, I wish they’d cut me off. At least I did what I came there to do. Continue reading →

Volunteer State- Part 3 “Spiral”

Posted on by

IMG_5428

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 soak the interior of my car, which now smells mildewy and suspicious. No one hurt but me and me hardly hurt, no big deal.

I drive to Nashville and am surprised by my lack of curiosity. Maybe it’s the grey day, or the good book, or the pedestrian-free sterility I see all around me, but I have no desire to leave my car. I finally park, but wait to withdraw my keys until the end of a chapter. And there, as I gaze out the window listening, a large metal sign loosely nailed to its post swings in the breeze to face me and invites me to read it. “Parking By Permit Only” it says. I smile. I didn’t want to get out of the car anyway.

I drive all the way back to the small town near my little cabin, and I pass a coffee shop that is approachable enough to beacon me from my metal cocoon. A woman– apparently a regular­– enters to compliments about her hair. She announces that this was the first day she’d worn her hair “down” in 5 years. She’s had cancer. She lost it all, and now it’s back. Such talk to announce in public! My ears perk. Everything seems to be about hair. I see it everywhere. I am self-conscious of mine already­– I can only imagine how I’ll feel if I actually shave it. I am so thin-skinned. Will this make me stronger or pierce me? Continue reading →

Volunteer State- Part 2 “Sleep”

Posted on by

IMG_5421

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 and the sore throat that started with hearty gospels in the car yesterday has stuck around. I am proud that I have allowed myself this excess. I wonder how I would have accommodated this illness if I were back in my normal life. Would I even press snooze? Would I drink a cup of tea? Would I force myself through yoga and binge my way through the uncomfortable feelings my body was putting out? Whatever it would be, this is certainly gentler.

I walk around the woods awhile, I pick through my books, and I write. From the comfort of the Pepto-Bismol-pink soft-with-age sheets, I write out my lofty goals for my time in this distant place.

  1. I want to Get Clean: I want to get off sugar. I need a foundation of abstinence to get me through my “normal life.” A controlled environment, a peaceful environment, I believe this will help. I believe abstinence is possible here.
  2. I want to read: A pile of books sits next to me. I want to pass hours turning pages, get tired, close my eyes, and go back for more. It used to be that I never started a book without finishing it, now the exception has become the rule. Where did my persistence go? I want to indulge my love of learning and be patient with the time it takes to mosey through the countless lines of text. I want to reach the last line and smile.
  3. I want to write: Always so much to write about. I want to write by hand, in this journal. I want to finally finish my 3rd creation story. I want to write out my confessional to facilitate my recovery. I want to stain my left pinky in ink.
  4. I want silence.
  5. I want to shave my head. Well, I don’t really want to, I want to be willing to. I want to be brave enough to. I want the freedom to. The idea first occurred to me just over three years ago, when just about everything in my life was different but the aching desire to be free of my addiction to food. The desperation tugged at me then, it does now. I want to do it, if doing it will help me extend my commitment beyond this time and place. A few days ago, my sister cut my hair to give me bangs (with my permission) but she did a very sloppy job (without my permission). Earlier today, feeling like the shave was inevitable, I cut my own hair with a pair of scissors in the mirror of my little rustic cabin. I didn’t like the ends, with their damaged dyed blonde scraggly ends, but now it is short and embarrassingly childish. Nothing is inevitable, but I’ve certainly set myself up for a dramatic re-coiffiture.

Continue reading →