The Lesser Cathedral District

Hand in Mine: Column for the Bay City Times

2012-01-22T13:03:00.000-08:00

There are things in life too important for words and too fleeting for a pictures; they come and go, leaving us a little changed as they pass. It is for such things we have memories. They are like bright fragments of stained glass indexed by sight, smell, touch and - sometimes - an emotion. A memory may spring to life after years of quiet rest in some forgotten corner and pull a person into a spinning dance of happenings that are no longer a part of now after having been revived by the scent of lilac on the wind or the sound of rain tapping a lullaby on the roof.

I remembered something today from my sixteenth summer. That was a summer made of moments, and some of them remain very vivid. I think that summer, more than most others, changed my life by bending and stretching my perception to include things I had not yet had to think of.

Bert and his wife were an elderly couple that belonged to my family's small church and who were two very important menders, makers and benders of my growing years. Jane was born and raised in the South, as it once was, and truly made every decision based on an unwritten code of Southern nicety. She encouraged me to read poetry and to enjoy culture by bringing me books. I learned to sit with Jane by the hour and hear anecdotes about the folks who once sat around her daddy's well-appointed table chatting of this and that.

Bert was from the North, and a hardened Yankee if ever there was one. He was very tall and looked rather like a retired statesman with massive white eyebrows. Bert often brought my brothers and I old games and stories of ghost ships and mysteries at sea that were written in the day when politics were actually what one believed and a writer could say what he needed to say without fear of someone getting rankled and hauling him onto a nationally syndicated talk-show for a raking down. Bert could understand these writers, being absolutely free with his own opinions to anyone who stood still long enough to be victimized by them.

Bert had had a collapse the previous year that ended in a hospital with the diagnosis of a cancer too strong to struggle against. Bert was to be sent home on Hospice to die, and I, because I was almost family and free of any commitments, was to stay with them and see to things until the new arrangement became a little less strange.

I was to cook his meals the way he had eaten them for three-quarters of a century. I was to keep a log of his symptoms and deal with all of the eccentricities brought out by an aspect of his personality that would have been medicated, were he not already drugged. I was to change his outsized diapers when he had an accident caused by the progress of his cancer. I was to inform him when he pulled out needles and tubes for the fifth time in two days that I was running out nice places to put them, but that I had no objection to his being a stubborn mule if he had no objection to my getting creative with the needles. I was to take all sorts of guff from him when he got frustrated, and I was to put up with every prank he decided to pull. (With his experience that was one hell of a lot.) Here's a healthy "for instance:"

Bert, his wife and I went to the grocery store in that first week and took him in his wheel chair. I had no idea that this was such a hefty task for a green teenager and a sheltered old lady to cope with. Naturally, we didn’t, and he got away from us while we looked through coupons.

When I found him he had some poor, polyester-clad girl cornered in dairy goods, and, rolling his eyes, lolling his head, drooling and slurring loudly, was asking her in vaguely threatening tones if she was quite sure that the eggs were fresh. Having skipped a number of classes in school, the girl didn't have the vocabulary to deal with this kind of situation, so she stood there, back to the corner, eyes wide, shaking and producing small noises that only cats and dogs could hear.

As soon as Bert turned to see who was coming toward them, the girl shied and bolted as fast as her cork platforms could take her. I would guess that she trotted straight out of the building and home to lock her door and cower in a dark corner until pigs flutter over a peaceful Middle Eastern countryside. Bert wiped his chin, tucked his shirt in, and gleefully exclaimed, “Pretty good, huh?!” I wanted to haul off and smack the chump. Would have, too, if I hadn't been so totally disturbed.

This man had every reason to be cold, bitter and belligerent, but he wasn't. He must have been in a great deal of pain most of the time, but we rarely heard about it, somehow. He had a zest for life and a sense of humor that could turn any event into a stage for some raffish prank, and I was to realize he seldom missed an opportunity.

I was also to learn that summer that the effect of so many of life's circumstances depended upon the window a person happened to be peering through at a given moment. I realized my window was dull and very tiny, and that there was an enormous world full of fascinating details that I would never see if I was not willing to step outside and let them surround me. Living with that strange man who was so wonderfully alive and dying of cancer at the same time made me wonder if, after all, it wasn't that one person had a hard life and the next did not, but, perhaps, that the same life affected individuals differently because of what they brought to it. So I stood in the grocery store and laughed with that old man until tears came and everyone who passed put us down as a little less than sane.

That same night, after Jane had gone to bed, and as Bert and I were settling into the long wait for morning, he began to feel uncomfortable and decided he wanted to get up. Bert could not sit up in the hospital bed without a good bit of assistance, so I passed one arm behind his back and reached over to take his left hand in my right.

Looking down at that withered, age-spotted hand made me see, suddenly, and very clearly, that one day it might be I sitting in his place. I looked at his face, at the expression in his eyes, and for the first time I could easily see him as the boy who blew raspberries at black-and-white movies stars, the young officer his wife had been so taken with, and the quirky father his children remembered so fondly. I was surprised by his humanity. For the first time I looked at Bert and saw - not an old man - but a person, and that person amazed me.

(Originally published in the Bay City Times, 2005, SPM)

Things Passing, Buffalo, SD: Column for the Bay City Times

2012-01-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

Uncle Sike and Aunt Lil had lived in Buffalo, South Dakota since the Great Depression, and have been, from my very first encounter with them, two of the most remarkably wonderful people I will ever know. They could talk for hours, tell the absolute truth and still never say a malicious word.
Going to Buffalo was rather magical as a kid. The trip took just short of forever, and there was nothing to be seen between the Black Hills and there except peacfully ripp'ling prairie. Suddenly over the top of the last hill, you saw a small patch-work of trees, (the only ones for miles), and knew you were there.

Thier house was something between a time-machine and a magic treasure chest: There were odd weapons and bits of tramp-art all over the walls and in odd nooks, strange pieces of old oak furniture from the early 1900's, fountain pens, and a juke box in the corner of the living room that lit up with bubbles running through its front.
The kitchen walls above the counters were covered with old cooking utensils that went out of vogue long ago, and the seat next to the counter was a stool made from the seat of Aunt Lil's daddy's tractor. Nothing in the house really matched, but there was a zany sort of unity in the sheer uniqueness of each item. And then there were the rocks.

The back yard had neat rows of wooden barrels and old zinc sinks full of rose quartz, Apache tears (obsidian), clear, sharp quartz crystals, agates, fossils, petrified tree stumps. In the basement there were rows of glass cases filled small, museum-quality specimens. Underneath were tidy little piles of fossilized dinosaur bones, agatized wood, and tins of delicate, pearly fossils and psudomorphs of corals and ferns. It was like a museum rummage-room. And we were alowed to rummage and take what we liked.

The very first time I was in that house was for a family. My mother and I were still very new to the family, then, and Uncle Sike and Aunt Lil knew it. They knew it, and somehow made me feel that I belonged as much as they did. (I later learned that they didn't belong that well themselves, and that they never really seemed to mind.) Uncle Sike gave me my first rock.

Sounds wierd outside of a tribal setting, but it meant a great deal to me and launched me upon one of my few childhood hobbies. That first rock was a slice of agate he had polished and cut himself. It was a thin slice of translucent, milky-hearted, amber-edged Montana agate with tree-like inclusions. To me, it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

In later visits, I was to hear wonderful stories about the humdrum-to-them time gone by. I remember the first time I tasted Aunt Lil's home-made doughnuts; they were heavy, rich and warm. I tried making them myself from her mama's recipe, but, not having had her mama's teaching, they never turned out. Closest I ever came was to get the smell right.

We still went to visit after Uncle Sike passed on, and I remember sitting in the living room once after supper and Aunt Lil's getting up, crossing to the juke box , and making it play for the first time in one of our visits. She wanted me to dance with her, just once, and I felt too shy. She never did push it, and she never poked fun about it.

I've had cause to remember a lot about them, lately. He's gone, now, and she's missed him so much. They never had children - just each other and occasional visits from the outside - but they'd been enough, so long as they were together.

Aunt Lil is in a nursing home, now, and I heard that the house was emptied out and sold to strangers. I still have that first slice of agate that Uncle Sike gave me. I still make biscuits using Aunt Lils' mama's recipe ("cut 'em out with a greased bean can - nothin' else will do").

I never have gotten over regretting that one dance missed with Aunt Lil; it's not the sort of moment one can expect twice. I think that dance I missed is the reason I dance now, and I know Aunt Lil is proud of me for it as if I had been her own child. It is so easy to love someone like that, and so hard to let go when it is time.

(Originally published in the Bay City Times in 2005, SPM)

The Mill and Brewhouse, Almont, Michigan

2012-01-15T12:10:00.000-08:00

In the village of Almont, Michigan is a building set back from the road inviting a visit. It was built in t 1843 as a mill of some sort and the building is not possessed of a single solitary straight edge or even surface so, of course, it is easy to fall in love with it even if it were standing empty. Which it is not. The Mill & Brewhouse is a study in reclamation:

One walks into a room with a gas fire before a pair of small, paisley-clad benches that face what at first looks like a store front with glass windows above wooden wainscoting on the right and left with two pair of massive doors mostly covered in flaking ivory and gold paint; between the pairs of doors are another pair of windows side by side. On closer inspection one notices the doors are not matched and what looked like store windows are actually curved window sashes rescued from some building that no longer exists and suspended from the ceiling of exposed lumber is a long axel strung with wheels of the remaining mill workings.

Walking through this front one is greeted by long tables keeping company with rows of mismatched chairs, chests of drawers and trunks and boxes and bits of linen, lamps pictures, the pipes of an organ that has tired of tootling, rusted pieces of metal that have aged beyond their intended uses and into the vague-but-kinder world of sculpture. Every surface is laid out in careful vignettes of objects that are related but not crowded; the space is rather more like the home of an eccentric great-aunt expecting a lot of company rather than a typical antique store.

Grab a sturdy, hot Americano and begin your ramble; this is a place worth visiting and keeping in mind as a place in which to hold your special events should you find yourself in this part of the world. Keep an eye on www.circa1843.com for updates on the transition from antique shop to coffee bar and event space.
SPM

Almont Mill and Brewhouse

2012-01-15T11:58:00.000-08:00

When Everything Was Neighborhood

2012-01-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

Muriel is a customer of mine at the Magic Bean Café who was 2 ½ when the family moved to 711 Cherry Street from 5th street. Muriel’s parents (Clotilda and James A. Ellis) and two siblings, both older, shared the house on Cherry Street. (“Used to be 111 when we moved there. Then they changed it. I remember it so well. Back about 1928, somewhere in there.”) I am lucky enough to chat with Muriel almost every morning and one morning I asked a few questions (in parentheses below) which were rewarded with a glimpse into the past of the neighborhood in which she grew up and where I now live.

“My folks lived there until 1970, I’d say. Then moved out to Carrollton. Four bedrooms and when we first moved there it had that humongous furnace. Coal. There was a coal bin they shoveled into. And when we first moved there, there was a cistern and dad took it out. I remember it scared me because I was small.

Dad had it all painted and remodeled. It had French doors between the living room and the dining room. The chandelier in the dining room was just gorgeous; it looked a lot like the one at the Temple Theater – all prisms – and I hated cleaning it. The living room went clear across the front of the house. With a fireplace, and there were two chandeliers in the living room, two of them, smaller than the dining room. Behind the dining room was a little breakfast nook. There was an open stairway. Both the living room and the dining room had framed in panels of rough plaster and both rooms had purple velvet drapes. I hated those things – they were hard to clean.

My dad had all this decorating done, and then the Crash came, so there was no decorating done for years and years. They ran out of money, I guess.”

(Did you have your own room?)
“When I was young it was in the back, later in the front. We had boarders, two men, who stayed the front bedroom. We took boarders in the hard times. The boys (siblings) had the other back room and my folks had the middle bedroom.

(What was it like living in the neighborhood at that time?)
“It was gorgeous. It was a prosperous neighborhood. It wasn’t like Washington Street, or anything, with all those big houses, but it was a nice, nice neighborhood. It was close to three schools; I think that was why my dad chose it. And it was close to a restaurant he had.

My dad’s restaurant was called Jim’s Lunch. It was on the corner of Federal and Weadock Streets.”

(What do you remember about it?)
“Well. I hated it. I had to work in it. They closed it in 1943, the year I graduated. But it had good food. We always had food. Just ordinary home-made food: roast chicken, roast pork, meatloaf, those kinds of things. A whole plate full of food for twenty-five cents – no tax – I remember taking the cash. My father was Greek (my mother was not Greek), so he was with all the Greek restaurant owners, they were buddies. We had a lot of Greek restaurants. I think almost all the restaurants downtown were Greek somehow at that time.

I remember when they were working on that Post Office (remodeled and rededicated in 1937), and when they were taking up the trolley tracks out of Genesee Street. We had all those workers in for lunch.”

(What was Christmas like?)
“Oh, the stores were all beautifully decorated and once a week the stores all changed their window displays. Once a week – the stores closed at 5 or 6 o’clock – my mother and I would walk and window shop. Morley Brothers had the most beautiful window displays. Saturdays everyone would go downtown to do their shopping. The busses would be running. We had a thriving community, such a beautiful downtown.”

(When did you leave the neighborhood?)
“In the ‘50’s, probably, when I got my own place.”

(What do you miss about that kind of neighborhood?)
“I miss the type of neighbors you had back then. They were all nice people. Baums were on the one side of us, I guess he was a mayor years and years ago. Perry’s Grocery store was right next to Baums’. It was a convenient area to live in because it was close to everything there was. We had everything close by: schools, libraries, drugstores, busses. Everything was “neighborhood” at that time. Neighborhood stores, neighborhood everything.”

It is sad to think that so much that was wonderful has vanished through short-sighted efforts to curb what is called urban blight, but it is a delight to report to Muriel and others like her that a strong sense of community and neighborhood still survive and that we who live near St. Mary’s Cathedral hope to keep this kind of neighborhood alive in the structures and streets and people that remain of the place they once called home. It is still the most wonderful place in which to live. I hope it always will be.
SPM

Streetlights: A column for the Bay City Times

2012-01-10T12:16:00.000-08:00

It had been a long, hot day. The market had offered sounds and smells and tastes that were new to me, and I had paused more than once to take things in. The people I had met while bumming about with Julie had been friendly and tried to make me feel welcome with hand gestures and facial expressions since I couldn’t understand their other language.

Then we bumped home in a taxi. The driver had to take us nearly thirty miles before dropping us a couple of streets from the house. He charged us about nine pesos and shuddered off in a thick fog of exhaust thinking he’d ripped us off. Julie and I stood there a moment and shared a chuckle: Nine pesos for thirty miles. That’s, like, a dollar-ten.

The air was cool and heavy, and the streets were not very well lit. The streetlights were so far apart that the darkness settled thickly between them creating spot-lit vignettes of the city. We passed a group of musicians, (guitars and hand percussion) under one light getting warmed up for an all-night jam session. A young man and woman, oblivious of the other activities on the street but obviously not immune to the music, were enjoying each other under another light. The next several lights presented empty sets until we came near the streetlight nearest Julie’s parents’ house.

In that light stood a little girl about eight years old, tiny for her age. Her shoulders were shaking with sobs kept quiet by one delicate hand against her mouth. She was dressed in grubby shorts and a blue T-shirt, and her small-boned feet were bare on the pavement.

Julie crossed over to her and asked what was wrong in words that conveyed concern, but no meaning, to me. The girl told Julie that she had accidentally left the water running in the chicken house and she was waiting for her father to get home and beat her for it.

Julie tried to reassure her; she tried to make her believe everything would be fine. She bent down, and, not noticing the dirt, pulled the child to her and hugged her close as she patted the little back and smoothed the long, dark hair. Everyone concerned knew there was nothing any of us could do. The girl’s father would come home and beat her, (Didn’t he, always?), but at least – in that moment – a respite could be offered where a sanctuary could not.

……~.~.~.~o'O'o~.~.~.~……

So much has happened since that trip down into Vera Cruz; so many things have changed, but that little girl standing in her own pool of light still comes back – just as she was that night – to make me pause and think. I cannot forget the time I suddenly saw life through those eyes. A life not marked by happy birthdays and merry Christmases, but by tears and beatings in a long night shot with bright spots that show the best better and the worst just as it is. I remember. And I pause. For just a moment. Then I move on painfully grateful for each happy child-life I am so blessed to witness in my life.

Originally published in the Bay City Times in 2005, SPM

After Katrina and Christmas: Column for the Bay City Times

2011-12-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

(Note: This piece is very specific to an event that is very much out of our headlines currently, but I decided to drop it into this blog because I am reminded of late of other things that are slipping from our headlines: Hurricanes in subsequent years, the BP oilspill that has left parts of the Gulf of Mexico dead, the earthquake in Haiti that still is not recovered from. I am reminded that just because things are no longer considered "newsworthy" does not mean they chould be forgotten. Forgetting is just another way of wearing ourselves until one day a disaster that does not immediately impact us personally fails to awake in us any compassion for those who are impacted. So it is good to remember. SPM)

Holidays bring different sorts of memories and associations to each individual. The day after Christmas is for many a great anti-climax that is hard to recover from, while for others it is a relief to be able to look back on another holiday rather than forward to one; depending on the holiday, I can see both points of view.

This New Year, post-Katrina as well as post-Christmas, is one that holds a great many unknowns for all who have been fortunate to survive this past year to see the new one in.

Many have spent holidays in ways and places they had not expected and the New Year is not being brought in with the typical resolutions because this year is full of uncertainties beyond many of the years preceding it.

We in Michigan are not immediately, obviously impacted by Katrina, but for many in the South there are questions more pressing than any resolution: Where will we live if there is no home to return to? How will we live? Will my family always be separated? Will I ever feel safe or at home again?

There are certain places in this world that bring images and half-memories to even those who have never physically visited them: Paris with its art and romance and rain. Istanbul, Gate to the East. Jerusalem with the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall. New York City with its Stock Exchange, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. And, ever and always for some, New Orleans with its fourteen-foot ceilings, its Latin Quarter, its Mardi Gras and – oh, most of all – its music.

They are the places that we share with each other; places we all know a little about, places that are a subtle part of our human identity. They break the ice in public and inspire dreams in private, and the world is more wonderful because they simply exist.

I have to believe that New Orleans will recover because it is such a part of the whole that it will leave a great void if it does not. Never mind Mardi Gras; parties come and go. The music, the art, the architecture and the bizarre and delicate tolerance of the Crescent City are too valuable to let pass without the greatest struggle. There are far too many things that only survive in memory and photograph, too many ‘used-to-be’s, for this not to be so.

We need New Orleans just as we need every one-horse town and steamboat stop along the sultry Gulf Coast. Wherever we may be from in this country, whatever may come, they are a part of who we are, and we cannot forget them just because they are beginning to slip from the headlines.

A disaster of this magnitude is not over because we are tired of hearing of it. Rather, it will go on, impacting further daily, like a deep flesh wound that must heal from within before it can be made truly whole again.

This healing is going to take time and it is important that we continue as we have begun and exercise patience and generosity, not because we have to, but because we were spared and are able.

Even when – having grown up in the South I cannot bear to write the word ‘if’ – New Orleans is placed upon its feet again, there is a great deal of distance between a place that has never changed and a place that has been restored, no matter how loving the restoration. The loss of life and way of life as well as the loss of property and the displacement of commerce cannot be reversed, but they can be lessened.

Some hold that there is another life in which we settle our tab from this one, and others hold that the present life is the only one we can be quite sure of. Either way, it would seem wise to use this life very carefully.

Whether one is an optimist or a pessimist, whether the glass is half full or half empty, the contents are what we have; this New Year is the one we have to work with and, though eating less and spending more time reading are admirable resolutions, let me challenge you to another this year: Purpose to pause now and again and simply remember.

Remember the simple and often taken-for-granted boons of your small children about the house and your old people around the table; neither will be there always and it is impossible to tell what this year may bring.

As you are remembering and counting blessings, don’t forget those whose children were old enough to go to war and may not be coming back as well as those whose old people may not have been fast enough to escape Hurricane Katrina. Remember and do what you can; no one could ask more.

(Originally published in the Bay City Times, December, 2005, SPM)

Le Cour des Miracles: Column for the Bay City Times

2011-12-22T12:25:00.000-08:00

Hundreds of years ago in Paris, France the area around Place du Caire was inhabited by beggars, gypsies, prostitutes, thieves and rag-and-bone men. By day many of these plied their fellow citizens with strange wounds, maimings and crippled children; by night wounds were wiped off, maimings became whole and crippled children laughed and romped. The place became derisively known as ”Le Cour des Miracles”, (The Court of Miracles).
I remember the first time I had heard of that place and realized that each of us have our own “Court of Miracles.” A place we go when we need to be who we are and not what we have to be to survive. In that place we have friends who know, and do not judge us for, our weaknesses. They are our people, these friends, and we come together with fair regularity to escape the myriad stresses and expectations of the day.

One such place for me is the coffee house on Saginaw Street. I know that on any given day I can amble in and be among friends, or, at the very least, away from stresses. There I can engage in intelligent conversation on the interesting trivialities that make up my world or quietly put thoughts together into stories, paintings or bindings.

This afternoon the coffee house was filled with members of the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra and the piano kept us all company as we worked or chatted on this or that until the time came to go to the evening concert in Wenona Park.

I stopped for a moment today as the piano played – sitting with a cup of joe – and thought of a few past moments: Ba’b and the Spur-of-the-Moment Fur Coats, Helen and the Saga of the Man-Eating Mini Dog, Amandrew and the Naughty Bowels, Naseem and The Many Queens, Chadwick and The Next Sarcastic Thing, Erica and The Swearing Tuesdays, Judith and The Soggy Quiche, Mark and The Dangerous Tambourine, Sean and The Porkchop Hooker . . . .

I cannot begin to number the griefs shared, the stories swapped and the laughs enjoyed in that place; they come, do what they do, and leave our lives that much the richer for having brought us all closer for those few moments. After such times, we gather the tools of our various trades, adjust our countenances for the rest of the world and leave our Court of Miracles until the next time we meet, each able to better cope with the day because of the respite had and the respite anticipated.

(Originally published in the Bay City Times, 2005, SPM)

The Cow

2011-10-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

I was told once that there are always three sides to any story, his, hers and what actually happened. This story not ending in cake and confetti, I only have the “his” bit to offer with all of its flaws and possible errors. I’m not saying it’s fact. I’m not saying it’s fiction. I’m saying it makes me feel better, so here it is:

I was engaged to a woman once. Sort of. She was from Houston, Texas and I met her through giving her and her niece violin lessons at a local music store before moving to Michigan to grow into myself. This girl had blue eyes and an electric, somewhat crazy grin, she wore cowboy boots in all weather, or wedges that were denim or cowhide and she liked many of the same things I did for completely different reasons.

After many, many letters, emails and all-night phone calls we decided we might make a good – or at least a solid – marriage between us and she should come to Michigan for an extended visit to see if what worked on paper and over wires worked in person. I think it possible that lack of sleep might account for an awful lot of what finally fell out.

She arrived in town with a good amount of luggage and a fixed sort of expression that implied she might have done some thinking during the flight, but that it was too late to turn around now. After some initial chat we headed to the friends’ who had offered to let her a room during her stay so she could get settled for the next five or six weeks.

In the ensuing days we had some fun catching up on mutual acquaintances, sharing meals and introducing her to people. We began to run thin on activities in about a week because it is a small town, and it was cold, and we had no clue how to proceed after we ran out of new things to talk about. I think we actually had a conversation sitting on a bench once that went,

Me: “What a wonderful tree.”

She: “Yes, yes it is.”

That was it. For two hours. Eventually, we decided kissing could be a good thing to look into if we were to spend the rest of our lives together since there might not always be a tree to discuss.

She had never kissed a guy before and I felt since my experience was only with other guys the conversation might have gotten awkward if I tried to offer advice. Her sister had told her that chocolate made first kisses more interesting, and we figured it was worth a try while we were spending time in my studio after dinner and watching “Ten Things I Hate About You.” She put a piece of chocolate in one of our mouths and then leaned in slowly to begin kissing. That’s when I realized she had gotten a bar of chocolate with dried blueberries inside.

I have to agree that trying to kiss around melting chocolate did sound interesting in theory, but given the newness of the joint activity the addition of dried fruit might not have been advisable.

The girl went from gentle lip pressing to eating my face; actually eating it. Her teeth were trying to pull my lips from my face much the same way they would have pulled meat off an over-cooked short rib.

The intensity of her approach caught me off guard and I inhaled a dried blueberry and began choking. She did not notice the difference between a return of passion and a desperate struggle for life, and the realization hit me: “I am going to die asphyxiating on a blueberry watching Heath Ledger drill a hole in some nerd’s text book while a woman enthusiastically chews my face off.” Shit.

I was finally able to swallow during a brief tactical error and survived our first kiss, but – for a now-confirmed gay man – things don’t get any more real than that moment and I still class blueberries amongst unconventionally deadly things like tire irons and cast-glass door knobs and socks filled with pennies.

I remember on a weekend I’d gone to the house where she was staying to see what she was thinking of doing with the day, knocked on the back door and waited. And waited. I called her cellular phone and got no response so I knocked again and finally heard steps in the house as I was about to leave. She answered the door in whatever she’d woke up wearing with her mouth set in a firm line and moved aside to let me into the kitchen. She was clearly peeved, and I wasn’t sure why. (This being early in our relationship as a couple, I had not yet realized that trying to run her mood through logic wasn’t a productive use of time.)

On the butcher block table (which now lives in my own kitchen) were two place settings, one used, in front of the two stools that lived there and on the stove was a sheet pan bearing what appeared to be baked rocks. I sat down at one of the stools and waited for something to develop.

“Here,” she said in a flat-line voice putting two rocks on my plate with a thud and a clink. “You were supposed to be here earlier. I made breakfast. My mother used to make these when my sister and I were growing up.”

Did her mother make rocks for breakfast when they were growing up to let them know they’d behaved too badly for mere bread and water? Would I have gotten rocks for breakfast if I had come when anticipated? Did I have to actually eat the rocks, or just regard them mournfully and wait for a change of topic? Pending conversation, I sipped tea and made a tentative attempt to cut into one of the rocks.

I later learned the items in question were Scotch Eggs which consisted of a boiled egg rolled in uncooked sausage, then in breadcrumbs and baked until brown. Her eggs had sat meditating in the oven long enough they resembled the handiest tool of a street fight.

From that point forward, things began curdling between us more often than sparking and because everyone knows confined spaces soothe hostile situations, I thought a road trip to one of my favorite places might be fun. Sort of like Camp David, but without warring Middle Eastern factions or the involvement of even one Bush.

An hour and a half north of where I lived in Michigan is a national forest, and in that national forest is a spot called Iargo Springs. The springs are not a spot commonly known even to people who live in the area because most people think the spot is only another scenic overlook of the Au Sable River.

Next to the overlook platform are over 300 stairs descending to a place where the world seems to stop and time doesn’t exist. It is a heavily wooded place of babbling springs – clear as a fine day and cold as an angry woman’s stare – criss-crossing each other twisting around mossy stones and fallen trees to the river. It is possible to look out across the water at the outside world but there isn’t a building or power line to be seen in any direction.

We had a very quiet drive north until we reached the parking area near the top of the stairs and began to descend. The place had more than the effect I had hoped; I hadn’t realized that having grown up far away, she might not be familiar with this type of terrain at all and just might find it both interesting and possibly a little alarming.

We wandered, and then settled in one of the seating areas overlooking the springs where I took out a note book and began doodling and she sat with a book in her hands looking at the springs and woods until she nudged me and asked with barely-subdued alarm, “Is that a cow!?”

I looked at her very seriously and after reminding her that we had come down over 300 hundred steps asked her if she thought a cow, even a wily, devious and blood-thirsty cow, could do that. Once she agreed this was not likely I looked in the direction she had thought she’d seen a cow: The cow was actually a bear cub ambling casually into a clearing.

When I told her that the cow was really a bear she wondered aloud if it were safe to pet the animal. I was left with the distinct impression that she would never in a million years approach a cow with such familiarity, but a bear – that was different; stuffed bears were given to children all the time, so how dangerous could they be?

Part of me, the petty, bored part, wondered what would happen if I said she could, no, should – even – pet the bear, but then I recalled we were alone and there were bound to be questions if a girl from Texas got mauled petting a bear in the woods of Michigan while her boyfriend watched, so I suggested we take pictures and sit tight.

When the bear’s larger mother arrived, the girl looked at me again as if to ask if now it were alright to approach. I hesitated, but said it was best to leave the animals be.

I think now of the ensuing arguments, episodes of depression and bewilderment, the exchanges of non-compatible wants in life, the confused bartenders, bag ladies and friends and the irrevocable damage done to an innocent vacuum cleaner and I can only shake my head. In retrospect it might’ve been simpler to have just let her pet the cow, but I was hardly to know that at the time.

(This piece was finished on a bus to Patras, Greece.)
SPM

Link to temporary blog...

2011-09-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

While with the Rotary Team in Greece, we will be blogging in joint at http://www.greecegse2011.blogspot.com/

Check it out!
-Steven

The Warmth of a Smile and a Fountain Full of Lions

2011-09-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

We were met at the port in Heraklion at 7 in the morning by Anna, whose ready laugh and humor set the tone for our stay in Crete: This was to be an incredibly different experience from Athens in that Anna was determined we were to slow down, laugh, see what there was to see but – above all – never hurry.
We were settled into suites provided at Anna’s Kalimerna Village Hotel in Piscopiano just outside Heraklion to rest until a late lunch.

TJ and I unpacked in what turned out to be our little house with a living room, bathroom, kitchen and two bedrooms and I had the chance to open my violin case and play a bit to relax; this last resulted in Anna’s directive to bring the violin to the evening’s Rotary club meeting.

The meeting was to take place at a hotel in Heraklion owned by the very chic Maria, but before the hotel we stopped by a salon owned by the club president, Giannis, where we were given gifts and the girls were left to have their hair done. (This is also where we met another gorgeous soul: Fo-fo.)

While the girls were being pampered, Anna took Tj and I for a walk in the center of Heraklion. My first impression of the city was one of magic, laughter and soft lights off of incredible window displays, music drifting from full cafes, the saffron-and-purple lit lion fountain in the central square and, as ever in Crete, the laughter and enthusiasm of Anna.

Once we had collected the girls we went to the Rotary meeting in the rooftop restaurant of Maria’s hotel. There was more Greek than English available in the room, but we never for a moment felt out of place or anything but very welcome.

The club secretary, Sophia, translated our presentation for us and after a wonderful dinner (which was made a lot of fun by Voula’s conversation) we heard wonderful young musicians from the school of Ms. Marianne play flute and classical guitar and I played a piece improvised for that evening on my violin. After many, many, manymanymanymanymany photographs and much laughter we went home – in one afternoon of Anna’s hospitality it began to feel like home – to Piscopiano for a night’s sleep.

Honey, Love and Faith

2011-09-20T16:10:00.000-07:00

In the morning we visited Attiki Honey to find out how the company not only packages honey, but also creates three distinct blends of honey as well as coaching the apiaries from which they buy honey in the best techniques to produce the best product.
We then visited a place called Margarita:

Margarita was founded in 1978 by a mother whose daughter was challenged by Downs Syndrome. Only hall the school’s funding is subsidized by the state; the rest of the funding must be raised through private donations and grants.

The school’s purpose is to assist mentally challenged individuals in finding jobs in the open market and learning basic life skills such as hygiene and simple meal preparation so that they can make the best possible lives for themselves with the most dignity possible.

Students enter at age 14 or 15 and though many only stay 5 or 6 years, some stay into their 40’s.

We met a good number of the students in our visit learning to weave, make copies, jewelry, cook, etc. One thing stood out to me: Wherever we went people who do not know how to lie lit up with appreciation for the people guiding us through this remarkable facility.

Meeting Katy, who has decided to learn Greek after growing up in Britain and only coming to Athens after losing her father and Murto whose day was complete in the simple action of giving some one else a hug and telling a portion of her day…these were incredible experiences illuminating the incalculable importance of providing a place in our world for people who do not know what it means to be bitter of grow old.

One of the original students of the school graduates this year at the age of 50.

The government funding for the school has been frozen because of the financial crisis currently shredding the economy of Greece and the staff has not been able to be paid since February of this year, but – yet – they are still here.

Upon leaving Margarita, we went to the mountain where much of the marble that graced the Acropolis and other monuments in ancient Greece was taken from. On the top of this revered mountain is a monastery of great age noted for its focus upon education – even when education of common people was forbidden. There is a secret school underground and under the “modern” church. The tiny chapel of St. Stephen, also underground, was the site of many generations of marriages and christenings.

We board a night boat to Crete after dinner…

Sweets and Smalti

2011-09-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

We had separate vocational visits today and my first was immediately after coffee with Dora. We left the house and she drove me to a bakery (Top Bakery, to be specific) near home in Kiffisia where I was to put in my morning. While waiting for Dimitri, the owner, to arrive I had the chance to look about the shop and counted over 130 different baked products including varieties of breads, cakes, tarts, cookies, rusks, sandwiches, sweet and savory pies as well as gelato and espresso.

Dimitri arrived and we had coffee as he explained to me that they make and sell something like 500 loaves each day aside from other goods. The bakery makes gelato in house and we discussed specific types including one called Kaimaki made with Sheep’s milk and mastic (a special substance whose production is unique to one Greek island - Xios - in all the world), thickened with salepi, frozen and topped with a “spoon sweet” of sour cherries. I am thinking this one might just show up at the Magic Bean when I get home.

Aside from learning to make phyllo dough and about 8 other things, I had a very interesting discussion with Dimitri about the economy in Greece and how it impacted his business; the intriguing thing was how similar the economic challenges to service businesses in Michigan and Greece seemed to be.

I was picked up from the bakery by a Rotarian contact and spirited to meet Maria and her daughter, Aggie, in another part of Athens where I was allowed to visit the studio of a mosaic artist working in the Byzantine style on a piece of the Madonna for a church commission.

It was incalculably useful to be able to see, smell, touch the various natural adhesives, stone and glass smalti and backing materials that were strange to me; the artist was enthusiastic to share what she knew and her book of pieces was very impressive.

Having a chocolate and a sandwich with Maria and her girls at a French-themed café next to a large church afterward was an amazing way to chat and end the scheduled part of the day before returning to Kiffisia to rest and get ready for dinner.

The Layers of an Ancient Society

2011-09-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

The morning started with the finding of a parking space near the city center so that we could visit the Presidential gardens, walk around the surrounding district of mansions and consulates and go to the Byzantine museum. The museum was interesting to me in particular for its collection of icons and wall paintings.
{photo of mosaic Madonna of Tenderness]

We filed out of the museum to make it to Constitution Square for the changing of the guard at Parliament and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The skirts of the guards contain 400 pleats: One for each year of Turkish occupation.

Next came a walk to end all walks: We went past temples, Hadrians’s gate and the stadium where the first modern Olympic Games were held on our way to the New Acropolis Museum to meet our guide – the inimitable Dora with her wide grin, floppy hat and perfect English.

The museum was an incredible architectural experience: The glass floors and open spaces of the structure give the impression that floats above the architectural dig that gave the museum many of its objects.

The place of honor in the museum is reserved for what much of the world knows as the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. These pieces were looted irrespective of structural damage to ancient temples and monuments and taken to England in the late 19th century/early 20th century where they remain today. Greek officials and academics have tried unsuccessfully through diplomatic means to engineer the return of these objects to where they belong: In Athens.

Initially, the British Museum and government claimed reluctance to return the pieces because the city of Athens had not a safe or suitable home prepared for such historically significant works of art. The current museum certainly resolves that issue without dispute. I sincerely hope one day to return to Athens to see the alarming number of plaster casts scattered through the phenomenal facility replaced with the originals pirated by a British collector about a century ago; it is time for the marbles to come home, regardless of the possible chaos it may cause in the world’s most famous museums. It is time to call theft what it is and make restitution.

The climb to the Acropolis itself was a bit tiring in the heat, but standing on the summit amid structures I had only read of and never thought I would see in person was a very moving experience and well worth the climb.

My favorite building was never the Parthenon; It was always the temple that belonged to both Poseidon and Athena, though it is said that Athena got the lion’s share of space because she gave the perfect gift to the ancient Athenians: An olive tree that once stood in the angle where the two sanctuaries met.

The olive tree was significant because it symbolized life, light and wealth through its oil and fruit. An olive tree was replanted in the same spot some years ago…I left the Acropolis to head to dinner and then to walk folk dances from all over Greece, but in my pocket were two dried olives and several leaves gathered from under the tree re-planted to commemorate Athena’s perfect gift.

Art, Golf and a Sunset

2011-09-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

After a chatty breakfast with Dora we went to the studio of {insert name}, noted painter and sculptor. The light in the studio came mostly from one wall and fell on a forty-year accumulation of canvases, plaster busts and medals, mosaics and stained glass panels.
I loved that the abstract canvases – some very large – all had very harmonious colors but a strong sense of movement as if the swirling fragments might converge into something new if one only looked long enough. All of the artist’s human compositions in either plaster (later to become bronze) or in paint had a warmth I have not seen in portraiture in some time.

My favorite piece, though, was a small composition on paper – again a rapidly but quietly moving abstract – in an incredibly beautiful frame of leaves and cherubs ornately wrought in bronze. The artist rightly commented that the piece combined with its very contrasting frame became a separate work that neither could have achieved alone.

I create works in a variety of materials and it has often worried me that this was not sustainable; this studio and this artist have shown that not only is such variety sustainable, but that it can also help produce better works through interchange of disciplines.

[insert pic of studio, artist, busts, stained glass and piece in bronze frame)

After leaving the studio we were taken to the Athens Golf Club in Glyfada where we leatned that gold was a costly sport to maintain in Greece due to the water requirements involved in maintinaing a course. So far we have only heard of three courses in Greece. We learned to hit balls, strokes for long and short game as well as putting…though golf was never a favorite of mine, our coached made thigns simple and I had a good time.

Instead of a more formal meeting of the younger Rotary club of Athens, we had a lunch meeting at the gold clubhouse chatting sociably with those we had tootled around the course with earlier.

After lunch we bundled into a couple cars for an excursion to the Cape of Sounion (Maria had to return to work, Sevy joined us and I rode with Jimmy).

After sweeping around curves over hills and through valleys we drove up Cape Sounion to explore the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon at the top. It was an incredible fitting site for such a temple so that it’s god could accept his offerings and keep an eye on his watery kingdom at the same time. The site was also one of ancient tradgedy, we were told, when an ancient Greek king threw himself from the cliffs mistakenly thinking his son had gone to battle and been killed when in fact he had conquered and merely forgotten to change the color of his sail as agreed upon before leaving home.

The massive standing columns and seemingly random piles of colossal pieces of marble combined with the sunshine, wind and sparkle of the sea to make one of the most romantic sites of our trip so far.

[Photos of Temple]

On our way up to the temple we had driven past a group of abandoned buildings and I requested a stop on our way to the bay to explore a bit. The church was the most interesting to me because it was unlocked and most of the bits of paper and prayer cards left behind dated from 1969. It almost seemed as if the last prayers were offered and then the church was left to the howl of the wind and the sand swirling restlessly across the floor.

[photos of abandoned village and church]

The day’s activities closed with swimming in the bay below Sounion as the sun set. Had dinner at a lovely Taverne with Dora before crashing for the night.

[sunset at sounion photos)

Walking Glyfada

2011-09-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

Waking up at the Glyfada Hotel there was just time for an espresso and a three-block walk to the beach (the color of the seas is this incredible blue-green) before meeting Olga and Kosmas for a walking tour of the shopping district of Glyfada. The pavements we walked on in a very short time had captured my attention (not hard to do): There were sections of white marble (most of the curbstones were also marble), red marble, granite cobble, polished granite interspersed with tile, pebbles and all were tied together with the crosshatched 16” colored and cast pavers.

We stopped for coffee (which is a typical mid-morning in Greece). In passing, Cappuccino Freddo is wonderful and will become a favorite of the team. After meeting our hosting District Governor and after deciding where we were to eat and were waiting for our meals we settled in for some chat on what we would be doing and where we would be going during our stay in Athens.

We had several dishes, but the lamb fricassee with a warm salad of chicory on top. A woman in black carrying a cardboard sign walked up to the café wanting money before shuffling off. Despite very slight translation issues we had an enlightening afternoon before being taken to our host families to rest and settled before heading to dinner at an Aesop-inspired cafe.

Flight to Greece

2011-09-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

We boarded a plane at MBS bound fro Chicago after the weighing of bags and much debate over whether everyone had everything he or she should have to be equipped for a country none of us had ever visited.

The layover in Chicago seemed long, but the chance to stretch our legs before the longer portion of our journey would prove precious later and the airport was an enjoyable one to explore.

The Lufthansa flight to Munich was novel for a group that had become used to domestic American flying conditions in post 9/11 United States: We were greeted by copies of international papers to read in flight, hot towels for our faces, lap blankets, cocktails ranging from Dewar's and Capari & soda to beer and meals that were actual meals were all included as a part of our fare.

We settled each in our respective ways to read, journal or watch television (the latter chosen from a wide variety of programs available to us) as the the flight took us into the night and across the Atlantic Ocean to Munich before boarding a connecting flight into our first Greek home - Athens.

Met upon arrival by three of our new Greek Rotarian friends, we were taken to the Glyfada Hotel to rest before dinner and unpack. Our new friends and dinner itself were wonderful, so I will write of the separately as soon as time permits.

An Inherited Memory of Place

2011-02-19T08:28:00.000-08:00

I met an individual a few summers ago (Ralph Wolpart, I think I recall him saying) who owns one of the empty buildings on Potter Street not far from the train station and the details this 80-something recalled from the time he was a grocery delivery boy on Potter Street so clear and detailed:

The distinct hot-wet smell of trains
Almost as if they drew a deep breath far, far away
And only exhaled when they came to rest
(find two people who remember that - I dare you)

People streaming in and out of storefronts
Making purhcases or deliveries
For long trips
Or a homecoming

Sounds of horse-drawn vehicles
On wood and brick pavements

The quiet that fell after the last train of the day

Ralph finished his coffee that day and shambled out leaving on the counter in front of me a gift I could almost-but-not-quite touch: A memory-like impression that the Potter Street district must have been an amazing place once.

Now it is very, very quiet as if the last train of the day somehow led to an indefinate stall that left people trickling out over the decades and now the empty windows of the stores and depot look on nothing and no one. Well, almost.

It is interesting to note that even as the city govornment of Saginaw looks upon this neighborhood as a problem to be dealt with there is a small, but very energetic, group of people who live in the few remaining "big old houses" and the friends of these residents who see the remaining commercial buildings and homes surrounded by a tree-dotted meadowland as a place of opportunity.

That opportunity only exists as long as the neighborhood also continues to do so...

Potter Street at night. Six blocks worth saving...

[a diverse life]

2011-01-02T11:59:00.000-08:00

michigan seemed like a good opportunity
to reinvent myself
but sickness and time alone
and people who only live
on written pages or in hospital beds
taught me it was not enough
to wear a mask
in a place where I could be
not theirs
but me
and that rediscovery and restoration
were more profitable
than reinvention
and that it really made sense
to trade pieces of my life
for pieces of others
because then
suddenly
there was this crowd of people
who rested gentle fingers
on points of each other’s lives
that interested us for intensely personal reasons
so at the end of days
that left no will to go on
we knew just one thing
with perfect clarity

we could not let
our shareholders
down

SPM

2010-12-25T13:33:00.000-08:00

Ice on the porch garland at 503 S. Jefferson Avenue.

After several starts and stutters, it seems winter is here for a while and the snow and ice are welcome additions to offset demolition and boarding-up activities in the immediate neighborhood...

[three shopping days left]

2010-12-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

the snow falls carelessly
covering crowded streets
as people rush
frantically searching
through past conversations and
all of the objects in their world
for the one perfect thing
that brings back a moment
reminds of an interest
tells a story
to be consecrated with paper and ribbon
and handed to another
so no matter what the new year brings
in its rough hands
this object becomes a talisman
to touch
to remember
that someone else’s life
is richer
because you exist

503 s. jefferson avenue, saginaw, michigan
SPM

Cats. Birds. Snow.

2010-12-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

“ 'Course, I'm mad about animals, but raccoons and cats become a little bit boring. I mean, for too long a time.”

“Little Edie” Bouvier Beale

The snow threatened all morning and began to come like sawdust blowing off the edge of a workbench before becoming hardened little shard then flurries of feathery clumps that began to stick to the sidewalks as we discussed house things with our neighbor.

The coming winter has been apparent for some time through a few bitterly cold nights and morning frosts and flurries and even the stray cats that abound near our intersection have begun their search for someplace warm to deliver kittens and avoid freezing.

Then – night before last – came the birds: When we got home from work in the dark it looked as if the leaves on the maples in front of our house and down the block had turned black instead of falling. When getting out of the car, the leaves took flight and circled the houses low making dissatisfied squawks before settling back into the trees…

Between the cats and the birds, the snow is a welcome change.

Last Things

2010-11-19T10:28:00.000-08:00

There is something about the light of a Michigan autumn that is hard to describe. Everything seems older and more settled in some way and things stand out more clearly... And then - suddenly - you realize that there can not be many more such days because the canopy of red, orange and gold that filters everything is getting thin. Then a stiff wind blows all night and by morning the autumn is gone. That morning the light begins to look more blue and gray and we suddenly miss the autumn light we barely noticed was there the night before.

Arson Watch 2010

2010-10-31T11:38:00.000-07:00

Arson watch since 2007 has been more about a gathering of friends and neighbors to actively dispel 30-years-out-of-date perceptions that the neighborhood we live in is a hot-bed of violent crime than to provide some kind of civilian safety enforcement crew.

The reporter from the Saginaw News who joined us was surprised to hear that single women walk their dogs alone at night here without issues. But they do… In this neighborhood we gather in each other’s homes for meals and company. Most everybody here knows most everybody else. Once we locate a family of Cleavers including Beaver we'll just about have the full cast of a perfect neighborhood. Well. A complete cast plus a few wandering individuals with shopping carts. But still…

Arson watch isn’t the product of paranoia. It’s not the flashlight-wielding offshoot of a fear that our neighborhood is going to spontaneously combust. The patrol does not look to catch an arsonist. Rather, the patrols by keeping an eye on susceptible buildings show the neighborhood to be cared for and looked after.

On our first night we had eating, walking, driving or hanging out one of each: Tana, Arik, Roderick, Christy, Eric & Kaitlin, Mark, Tom, Rick, Chummy, Quinn and Wes and self. A watched pot never burns, I suppose.

Photo by Jared Hamilton of the Saginaw News

Breakfast at the Savoy

2010-10-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

On a rare and coveted Saturdays when - between errands and work later in the evening - there is time for only one meal in a day that might end sometime within minutes of the next morning I like to scoot for breakfast at the Savoy on Franklin a few blocks from home.

Tangerine Formica-topped tables of various shapes, 6 or 7 types of chair, random groups of photographs showing a more architecturally wealthy Saginaw before old buildings became illogically undesirable, sideboards, coffee urns, massive columns half buried in the wall leading up to an olivey-brown tin ceiling. This is the kind of place that always smells of enough to eat and demands either a chatty table mate or a good book; this morning, I chose the latter.

I ordered my favorite breakfast of solid biscuits (a lot like Aunt Lil’s) napping under thick, peppery sausage gravy, and a couple of eggs on a bed of crisp hash browns all washed down with hot coffee and settled into my current favorite book, “Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place At The New Orleans Table” by Sara Roahen.

Her stories reminded me of frequent-as-we-could-manage trips down to Galveston with my mother – just the two of us – with their packed lunches, bumming along the seawall ducking into shops built on pilings jutting into the Gulf and offering everything from lunch to the shells it might have come from. I remember hours of beachcombing at beaches that have lost most of their tidal pools and personality in the storms since 2005. As siblings and responsibilities made such trips more challenging we were left to remember and grin more than pack and run.

Mostly, though, I think I value the apparent hiding from time these trips represented. Everything about them from the food we packed to the random pebbles we chose to carry with us as we stumbled into the next photo opportunity seemed peppered with a sort of reckless, lucky-to-have-made-it refugee joy.

With my mother there were always photo opportunities that I think might have sprung from few of them in her own childhood combined with a passion to only remember what is good whenever possible. Despite times when that damn camera seemed such an irritation, I have to admit that I now love the pictures and videos and I am aware in myself of a near-genetic need to record everything wonderful before something else crowds in and a bit of happy history – a look, a particular moment of sunlight and leaves, a random thought – is gone forever. My mother chose a camera; I just happen to favor words.

On one our family trips to the coast in 1993 we discovered shrimp Po-Boys at Pier 19 in Galveston; they were a lower-case epiphany. Such simple food with their tiny, melt-in-your-mouth fried shrimp that likely came out of the Gulf that morning, citrusy tartar sauce and a long toasted bun resting in a nest of hand cut fries. That first sandwich satisfied and at the same time spoke of more, always more, because the Gulf would never fail to feed us on one hand while it terrified us on the other.

I realize sometime after that Po-Boy I tended to remember family trips and personal excursions as a series of smells and sounds punctuated with food. Food became the tethering point of memories; start with remembering the meal, and the entire trip could be brought back and loved all over again.

All of this came back as I sat over my plate at the Savoy reading Ms. Roahan’s stories of family cafès, local personalities and the foods that pulled them back into existence in her memories. I found a kindred spirit and a new loved author.

This was a wonderful find since I live in a place far enough north that the storms of 2005 had very little impact and even the recent oil spill in the Gulf is just another news item over which to rail at corporate and governmental failings because it does not involve General Motors and its local impact is not as immediate.

Having grown up much farther south, such news items are so much more personal to me. The storms of 2005 were the beginning of the end of so many things that seemed as though they would go on forever. That year levees broke, whole neighborhoods vanished, casual meeting places like coffee shops and cafès and Galveston’s Strand were drowned and a world was interrupted.

Much like a stroke or heart attack, the longer the interruption lasted, the less life would return afterward. In many cases the interruption has become permanent; things and places and people have died and I still have a catch in my throat for things I remember that will never be the same.

After 2005 and the record storm seasons since many things are gone irrevocably only to be temporarily revived through photographs taken and sentences written. The last item of note I came across regarding Galveston’s Strand was in an architectural preservation journal: Due to the repeated storm waters seeping into the masonry and corroding the cast iron facades of its buildings the Strand is on a short list of immediately endangered districts.

Sometimes – in the present - when I need to go back I cook dishes like gumbo that includes okra and file powder because I love them both, but with no seafood because it scares my neighbors. I cook, and I read and remember over quiet breakfasts.

Many Waters in the Fall

2010-10-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

When my mother was younger she would skip school and drive north toward Tawas Point turning off at Wilbur Road toward Lumberman’s Monument with friends to enjoy the woods. Just down the bank of the Au Sable River from there was a place called Iargo Springs where she and her friends sometimes also spent time.

This last place has been very special to me since the first time I remember my mother taking me there as a child. There is an observation deck overlooking the Au Sable as it placidly, gently kinks through green marshes hemmed in by stands of now-shimmering orange and gold trees.

The best part of the Springs, though, is gotten by a descent of something like 300 stairs to a place where moss covers everything sitting still too long with mayapples and plantain poking through getting ready for next spring.

Crisscrossing this way and that under board walks and small decks are whispering ribbons of ice cold, crystal clear water tripping over fallen trees and stones to meet the river.

I was glad Arik, Tisch and Roderick and I could make this trip to the Springs, Tisch, especially, since she seems in need lately of a break from a world that sometimes pinches a personality that deserves more space.

As we wandered I was reminded there is no way to view from this place anything to do with modern conveniences. Iargo is entirely given over at this time of year to the spicy scent of fallen leaves mingled with the musk of wet bark and mossy stones mingling into something deep and ancient; in my mind this is the smell and feel of continuity where time is not a threat, but more of a thread that everything hangs on waiting for the next thing to begin.

Finding things.

2010-09-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

I had just had breakfast with a girlfriend who insists that she will die alone surrounded with cats. I had tried to tell her that she was wrong, that she was a beautiful woman who just needed to accept the fact that her life ran in a timeline she did not yet recognize and that she would find her someone one day, but not soon, maybe.

I headed to the mall afterward to use what I thought was a “safe” bathroom (gruesome mistake, by the by), and noticed an unusual couple while wandering in a stupor recovering from the restroom break:

He was maybe 5’ tall, wearing a putty-colored cardigan and seeing the world through exceptionally thick glasses that made his eyes seem huge. She was shorter than he, a stooped little thing who moved uncertainly forward in her red sweater and white canvas sneakers as he and she wended their way through the mall chatting with lots of pauses and grins.

Watching this couple caused me to stay at the mall for almost an hour walking at a respectful distance behind – pausing when they paused, sitting when they sat, walking when they walked. I could not help but wish that this had happened before breakfast and not after so my girlfriend could have been with me to see these two people who were perfectly contented in their later years on what had all the appearances of a second date in spite of the fact that one of them had a hump and they both had mustaches. Happiness is not trendy and love does not have easily recognizable traits. They rarely look like one expects them to, and they seldom makes sense to someone not sharing in it at that exact moment. No matter who one is or what one does to attract or avoid – they have a way of finding one, in the end and if allowed.
SPM

2010-09-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

We have had an odd summer of cool nights followed by weeks of scorching weather and now it seems that a near-permenant twighlight has settled on the district as we wait to see when the leaves will turn and fall, when the first snows will come and what plans the city has for the apartment building next door to us...

Miss Mary's Birthday

2010-09-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

This is the first year of many, many past when Miss Mary is not at home on Sheridan for her birthday and this cannot help but make me a bit sad. Her visits this year to our house - car bouncing a little too fast down the street and stopping suddenly enough in our drive to leave her dog, Muffin, wedged somewhere under the dash - have become more and more rare. Her stamina weakens as we watch and sometimes she seems very confused. Her lenghty unplanned visits to various hospitals for assessment leave me hoping the medical staff in her life find a way to give her a few more years at home to be her fiesty and sometimes scary self. I'm getting less done lately with my fingers crossed, but I think it is a worthy effort...

Howards End

2010-08-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

I just finished re-reading “Howards End” by E. M. Forester. Once upon a time I thought that this book was about social classes, social injustices, antiquated relations between men and women… Reading again, I find the book is about the concept of home and how the Basts, Wilcoxes and Schlegals find, make or lose home.
Mrs. Wilcox’s house – Howards End – with its ancient wych-elm leaning protectively over it and a vine covering part of its walls was more than mere real estate, more than the inheritable value of the dirt upon which it was built; it was her home and being comfortable with both her person and her home Mrs. Wilcox was able to extend this sense of home to protect her family and loved friends.

After her passing, the Wilcoxes do not realize that they have lost home even though the deed to the property is comfortably, legally in their hands. The Schlegals’ childhood home is had on a 30-year lease and the land owner has decided to tear the house down when the lease expires so the family is left on the edge of having to make a new home with no experience at having done so. The Basts are on the edge of vagrancy with the loss of any penny.

All three are followed either to a new sense of home, or to the edge of society where they fall off and disappear forever. Pick this one up, do: You will not be sorry.

Splinters and Fragments.

2010-08-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

A fellow artist and friend on Facebook posted a very interesting link that got me thinking: Could Saginaw’s incredibly strict building codes be worked around or through to construct creatively-designed, green-friendly houses or studios on a tiny scale?

There are major challenges that must be overcome before building a new structure in Saginaw’s inner city districts becomes the first choice to pursue:

-There are too many housing units to be sustained by the city’s current tax base or population.

-The current economy and number of empty homes make it more affordable to buy a house than to build one.

-The city’s building codes are some of the most strict in the Mid-West.

-The average lot size in the city is too small to build on according to current codes.

The current rate of demolition in Saginaw will in a very few years dramatically decrease the number of housing units in the city and create a massive number of empty lots that will need to be addressed as well as making it more possible to acquire several connected lots to offer a larger building site.

We will one day perhaps be able to see interesting comtemporary structures popping up in our inner-city, but a major concern between now and then is the fact that so few of the buildings being demolished are being properly salvaged. Habitat for Humanity is granted deconstruction rights to a very few properties (two at the present out of hundreds being leveled over the next year.)

These two homes out of hundreds being deconstructed by Habitat contained very little historic or architectural detail that could be reused and – interesting point to consider – the lumber being salvaged is not permitted for building use in the city because it is not graded. (Or so I have been told.) Said lumber may be virgin-growth timber of a superior quality to that being sold in today’s lumber yards, but since it is not graded/approved, it cannot be used to build a new home. So why salvage it? To build an amazing rose arbor or dog house?

Seven homes in the last 30 days were demolished in my immediate neighborheed. Each one is now just a scarred piece of land studded with wood splinters or fragments of brick where homes once stood for 80 to 100 years and these scars leave a vaguely uneasy feeling as one walks or drives past them.

Among these was a very charming black-and-butterscotch-painted house on the corner of Thompson and Weadock that was structurally sound but in need of all mechanical systems. The home was torn down while the dangerous, partially burned structure next to it on Thompson still stands due to its taxes being semi-current. Nothing was salvaged from this home prior to demolition.

A properly boarded (translation: not dangerous to the public) house on Hoyt near Weadock associated with the family of Jesse Hoyt (red and white carpenter gothic built mid-late 19th century) that - again – needed new heating, wiring, plumbing, etc., was torn down when a home several blocks away on Owen standing wide open with a collapsing roof and no siding is left standing. Nothing was salvaged from the Hoyt home prior to demolition.

One lot over from the Hoyt home (on Hoyt) stood a massive, brown Dutch Colonial home whose roof and foundation were failing (the back corner of the home was being held up by the tree that had destroyed the foundation). The home had a large porch whose roof was supported by sets of slender turned columns and wonderfully detailed windows were set into the front of the house. Inside were heavy moldings, built-in cabinets and a very detailed stairway reminiscent of the one so prominently featured in the film “Grey Gardens.” Nothing was salvaged from this home prior to demolition.

These are but three examples among many that have prompted reactions ranging from bewilderment to anger from area residents that more is not being done to make these architectural elements available to home owners in the area instead of crushing them and dumping them in a landfill.

The city has multiple programs to assist rehabilitation of historic homes, but it is interesting to note that even a rough estimate of the cash value of the architectural details being treated as trash by the city’s demolition program could easily equal the grant dollars available for home repair. We do not seem to be coming out monetarily ahead when these programs are pitted in opposing columns.

The owner of 519 Millard had to spend thousands of dollars on new porch elements. My own home was purchased whilestill missing multiple detailed windows, a fireplace mantle, vestibule door and other features that will have to be tracked down and bought or remade a great expense. All over the city homeowners are actively hunting for items and purchasing from warehouses as far away as Grass Lake and Detroit architectural elements whose manufacture today is cost prohibitive.

The city is throwing such elements away faster than they can be documented when in most cases a single afternoon of volunteer effort (by volunteers who are more than willing to sign any needed indemnity agreement for the city’s peace of mind) could make these details available affordably to homeowners in Saginaw that need them through Neighborhood Renewal Services or Habitat For Humanity’s Re-Store.

Is it possible that some of these resources could be used in new ways to help address some the city’s rapidly increasing inventory of empty lots? Could creative compact housing or studios be built of said materials at some point in the near future? Would the city be interested in partnering with an architectural school to see a text project begun? Could some of these materials somehow be made available to residents in need of specific details in a way that could assist in offsetting demolition costs or that could support the overhead of a salvage warehouse in Saginaw such as the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit (a wonderful not-for-profit to check out)?

The situation begs questions that will have to be voiced respectfully by many individuals to the proper city authorities if a solution is to be reached before these resources are gone forever and the subsequent empty lots become the result of a decision to be questioned by a new generation who were not here for the deliberating but will not hesitate to ask why those who were present in the now did not do more while there was still time.

SPM

(House formerly on corner of Thompson and Weadock)

(Dutch Colonial that was demolished without salvaging)

(To see the original story that was posted on Facebook and prompted these thoughts, go to NPR’s site and look for “In Japaz, Living Large In Really Tiny Houses” by Lucy Craft)

Tom, Dick and...Larry?

2010-07-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

He comes to the Redeye every day. Usually once in the morning and once in the afternoon: In the morning he always comes in wearing a baseball cap, carrying a tiny yellow umbrella and a McDonald's bag containing two breakfast burritos. He orders a large milk, takes his things to the back of the coffee house, sets them on the bench and proceeds to the bathroom where he will spend a half an hour in subdued yelling and hand washing. Then he emerges, picks up his milk and McDonald's and leaves for the day.

In the afternoon he comes in (usually sans umbrella and in a different hat) to order an iced coffee with no ice.

I think what strikes me about this man - Larry - is that he never varies from his routine and life still seems so interesting for him. I suppose it is the value he places on the simple elements of his day that make his life so contented. Now it is time to pause and think about that...

SPM

Three Sides to Every Story

2010-07-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

Weddings are noted in art and literature as wonderful opportunities to observe the human animal in some very raw moments and we were all coming to Houston for a wedding not really knowing what to expect.
A few of us were arriving on a Tuesday before the wedding and expected a quiet evening before the others arrived, but there was enough to do that even the quiet had a chattery quality to it and we waited for the others to arrive because there were still so many small but important details to be sorted out with only days and hours to the wedding.

A set of grandparents would arrive, then another with a precious aunt in tow, then a van with a trailer; grew up Amish but had been adopted in her late teens. The maternal grandfather was not there with his new wife and the maternal grandmother was to arrive with her “friend,” Whitey, a little later. (We had been told that the grandmother was struggling against lung cancer to make the seeing of her granddaughter getting married one of the last things she did.) So it was unspokenly clear that between the recent Amishness of the bridesmaid and the separateness of the maternal grandparents there was still some sort of recovery being worked out.

Friends of the bride and groom arrived by plane, by cars of their own and one even arrived in the bed of a pickup belonging to a stranger because he would rather hitchhike than miss his friend’s wedding. So the groom’s parents’ house was filled with layers of generations that each had their own reasons for being present: Some were there because in some way they were saying goodbye to the children they had raised, some because this couple was the first in their set to make a move toward something they had considered and they wanted to see it from the first to determine if the risk was worth taking themselves, some for the adventure, and one – at least – because she wanted to see with her own eyes that in some form her life might go on beyond her own time.

Each day to the wedding had its own random pattern that meant all of these varied people who would never have known each other under typical circumstances were forced to adjust their various comfort zones and scruples to share meals with each other and find commonalities to discuss. One would enjoy alcohol and another would try not to be offended by it, one would try not to take umbrage that the person nearest them firmly believed there was a heaven they were certain enough of that they were unconsciously resigning others to a hell that was possibly less harsh than one they had already been pulled from. A miraculous balance that was at first awkward and then unnoticed governed these meals and will be one the marking things I take from the event.

On the evening of the wedding rehearsal we all made our way to the chapel the chapel to get an idea of what would take place the following day. The grandmother of the bride had not yet made it, but was supposed to be present that night at the chapel. The proceedings held for her, but in the end had to go forward so the service coordinator could get back to her family and we all learned where to be at what cue and whom would signal to whom at the appropriate time. It was getting to the end of the run-through when a very slight woman with short grey hair, a gentle, warm smile and wearing a summer dress slid into the room and into the last pew just in time to hear her granddaughter sing with two of her sisters and conclude the rehearsal.

The grandmother cried in frustration at missing so much and the groom’s mother – not quite understanding that the tears were for more than just the rehearsal – reassured her that she was there for the most important part. Before everyone headed back to the Groom’s parents’ house for a rehearsal dinner the maternal grandmother introduced herself as Sharon.

When Sharon was complimented on her earrings it came out that she was very fond of jewelry and used to manage the jewelry department of a Macy’s back home in Wisconsin. Except…Sharon did not say that she used to do so; she said she was on leave and hoped to return to work very soon because she needed to stay busy.

It was not time in Sharon’s mind to talk of things in her own life in the past tense. She had enough to think of in her very short present; let those who would outlive her sort such things later.

The wedding day came humid and clear and everything that should have been ready was so. Tuxedos and dresses and stained glass did what it is that tuxedos and dresses and stained glass are supposed to do on such occasions and the wedding could not have been better.

It occurred to Sharon as she stood in the entry to the chapel that her own mother was fond of saying there were three sides to every story – his, hers and what the rest of the universe saw – and that this would be the advice she would pass on to the new couple.

As the evening wore on with its dancing, eating, laughing and the many goodbyes that marked the start of something new I thought to myself that it did not do just now to worry too much about the future and that maybe the groom’s mother – my mother – had been right when comforting Sharon at the rehearsal: She had, we had, been there for the best part and the future would have to be someone else’s to watch for.

SPM

"Love is a place." First Lady Rachel Jackson

2010-07-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

When all is interrupted
After the last Good night,
Things are not ended, but moved
Beyond time and darkness and light.

Until then there is just what we have,
Perhaps not to see the other shore
Perhaps just to stand there waiting
Quietly amazed there is more.

To see life through what it is made of,
To love it while it is,
And then, still loved, to lay it aside,
Would be a fine-great gift.

Time is given as it slips away –
Too precious to be an often-waste.
When all of life is each moment,
And love,
"Love is a place."
SPM

Things You Inherit.

2010-06-17T23:07:00.000-07:00

Stomach pain became a hospital stay which became a panel of tests which became a recommendation to Hospice care which rapidly became a series of voicemails, texts and calls between my mother, her sisters and his grandchildren to communicate his passing.

He didn’t raise them. He didn’t go to school functions. He didn’t walk them down the aisle. He didn’t behave much of his life like a father is expected to and the position of “Dad” belonged to someone who was there and shared those relevant moments in their lives. But he was still their father and it was hard to pinpoint exactly what caused the pain they felt.

They didn’t miss him as a human being, or not enough to explain that depth of hurt. I think it was that they now had to accept the hole he left in their childhoods was irredeemable; what they regretted more than his passing was what they never had with him. They missed what never was and now could never be because his life was over and all that was left were a mobile home, a few vehicles, a little bit of cash in his bank accounts and a blind, fat little dog named Pixie who was the last love of his life.

After a home was found for Pixie, there were things to go through that a stranger could not be expected to deal with so two of the sisters went to the trailer to sift and remember and decide after touching - each object having once been important to someone - which things should be held, which should be passed on and which should be discarded.

Everything, every canned good, walking stick and small appliance he owned had written upon it in fine-tip black permanent marker the word, “Got,” and a date.

In the process of sorting it was discovered that he seemed to buy certain things in sets and that these things were tucked in random places and never taken out of their packaging. There were cards, letters and photographs that had survived changes of address, and one in particular – black-and-white with scalloped edges of a baby born in 1958 – that had been handled often enough that it was almost falling apart.

It was simultaneously comforting and heart-breaking: He had obviously thought about them enough over the years to buy gifts for them and look at their photographs, but did not give these gifts or tell them that he loved them as often as he could have because he did not know how.

Everything he ever “got” was recorded, but how would he ever record or contain what he had lost? How could someone who could only joke when he should have loved express sorrow for not being a part of a daughter’s life? His life seemed to have room only for laughter and regret: In the last couple days when even Pixie knew something was wrong and sat at his feet whimpering, he turned to my aunt and said, “I am sorry I was so mean to you,” and she replied, “You did okay, Dad.”

I couldn’t understand why I had been asked to write an obituary but had been given no deadline until I was told the sisters decided against a public funeral because of who might randomly show up. I envisioned the type of person who could inspire that kind of decision: The kind of people who had maybe had a disagreement in the 1970’s over a forklift, or a foreskin. I am not really sure, but whatever it was, they haven’t spoken since and my mother and her sisters didn’t want these people dropping by unannounced to say whatever they felt they had to before the family could get out of the way.

To stubbornly hold to what we think is important, our small noses that are slightly turned up at the end, to be territorial over our families and possessions, to sometimes love in secret because people should just know they are loved when we harass them, to desire to give but to sometimes not know how, the need to make laughter when tears might be more natural, knowing that stories are important and that simple things are what life is made of: After all things have been said and there is nothing left to divide, these are the things we inherited from the man who left a larger void than a presence in our lives.

I was told as a boy that people start over by being Born Again and I have heard you can never really go home once you are grown because childhood is a one-time thing. I have witnessed a lot since then, and have noticed that some people just start over and when they find they can no longer go home they make a new one. So I imagine my mother and her sisters standing at a gravesite taking note of the passing of a man who had so much influence – but at the same time so little involvement – in their lives and waiting for the childhood they remembered to reconcile with the lives they have built for themselves.

The gap is too large and as the afternoon wears on I know they will finally stop trying and will turn and go, instead – two north, one south – taking their inheritance back to the homes they have created for themselves when childhood got too small to hold the lives they needed.

SPM

Sigh.

2010-06-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

I have learned that drunk Democrats sound a lot like sober Republicans and wonder if the reverse is true...
SPM

All in one's perspective...

2010-05-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

"My mother gave me a completely priceless life."
Little Edith Bouvier Beale

Lilacs and Lullabies

2010-05-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

“Earth gave us all the satisfaction we asked.”
Virginia Woolf, Reminiscences

It has been an odd kind of spring that has promised to warm, but then gone back to ice, and wind and unseemingly long dark nights that give way to frost on young leaves.

Lilacs have come bringing with them so many memories of other springs when a grandmother sat in a backyard swing with her arm around me - back and forth, squeek-squeek, back and forth, sigh-and-smile - softly singing "You Are My Sunshine" and talking of future evenings that would be lit by fireflies.

I can bring those evenings back (with a suddeness that sometimes brings tears) as long as the breeze has a hint of lilac left on it...And when the last hint is gone, all such memories are soflty folded away for another year.
SPM

Keller Williams Red Day

2010-05-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

The sky was roughly the color of the flakes of slate that once made up the roof of the Hill House but lay now on the ground at its foundation. Well. Lay in the mud at its foundation, is more accurate because it was pouring cats and dogs. Or ponies and sheep...or radiatiators and wrenches, or...

And in this weather were tromping a little over a dozen Keller Williams agents, friends, family and a random little person. They had all come out to help get the new neighborhood garden started by planting perinnials along what would one day be a fenceline and gate arch but was today just a field of mud under pouring rain.

The effort was one more wonderful contribution of neighbors in the broader sense of the word coming together to help boost the gathering vitality in a pocket of one of Saginaw's wrongly-dreaded East Side neighborhoods. And, Surprise: The rain was the worst thing to befall any of them, and even the rain couldn't dampen grins in the mud...
SPM

All mothers give up something to be what they are...

2010-05-09T11:06:00.000-07:00

“When I try to see her I see more distinctly how our lives are pieces in a pattern and to judge one truly you must consider how this side is squeezed and that indented and a third expanded and none are really isolated, and so I conceive that there were many reasons then to make your mother show herself a little other than she was. We lived in a state of anxious growth; school, reports, professions to be chosen, marriage for the elders, books coming out, bills, health – the future was always too near and too much of a question for any sedate expression. All these activities, too, charged the air with personal emotions and urged even children, and certainly “the eldest,” to develop one side prematurely. To help, to do something was desirable, not to obtrude diffident wishes, irrelevant and possibly expensive.
So your mother, whose sight seemed in some ways so clear, took it upon herself to be what people call “practical”…”
Virginia Woolf, Reminiscences

2010-04-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

There are things we can describe, sketch or photograph so that another can hear them, touch them and know what it is that they are...but there are some things that we cannot begin to contain in a bowl made of words or images; then it is only possible to describe how precious they are to us and hope that someone will take the time to try to understand before it is too late. And even as spring unfolds it seems the year is going to be a single, long struggle to describe things faster than they disappear...

SPM

Timothy's Birthday Book

2010-04-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

There was a time when I was not sure how many of my little brother, Timothy's, birthdays I might be able to spend with him so - for his 10th birthday - I created a book that incorporated snatches from some of the stories I had read to him when he was small enough to fit beside me in a creaky, overstuffed rocking chair. The binding is made of acid-free boards covered in handmade marbled paper and with brown silk quarter binding on the front cover. Also on the front cover is an amber cabochon carved hollow from the reverse with my cypher, held to tte the board with a pair of sterling silver straps and surrounded by a band of silver wire wrapped in silk interspersed with seed pearls. Behind the amber are two lilac seeds from the bush our mother planted in our grandmother's back yard on the edge of Bay City, MI. The spine of the book is held together with stitching of waxed linen thread detailed in brown silks. The text block of the book is ma,de of watermarked hand-laid paper from England and the pages consist of my own illustrations to the stories that Timothy grew up hearing with a page here and there headed by the date of a birthday in his future from his 10th birthday to his 21st. Under each date is a question I might have asked him had I been there for that birthday. The book was made seven years ago and is beginning to show wear...SPM

Whatever happened to the concept of homesteading in reality?

2010-03-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

Debbie Besanson shared a concern in her comment to the post a couple below this one regarding keeping young people in Saginaw. The standing-but-delapidated buildings in Saginaw and keeping the young here are indirectly linked. But they are linked. I read an article in a Detroit publication recently that profiled a young couple who were using the incredibly low home prices in their Detroit neighborhood (All below $1,000) to attract other artists into their district to build an enclave of working artists. Together they have also taken over the working of an empty house and lot to make a working experiment in urban gardening and studio space.

If we want young people - artistic or not - to stay here there must be an incentive to do so in spite of the current economy.

The city has possession of a powerful bargaining chip to boost young population here in the form of buildings it sees as expendable.

In all of the articles and interviews on urban blight I have heard and read in Saginaw, I have yet to hear one that seriously explored solutions that made an attempt to actively attract residents. Efforts so far seem geared toward not scaring away possible residents; what seems to be consistantly missed is that current young residents must be retained in order to see real population growth in the city.

I am not in the market for a house, but I would be terribly keen on seeing (and helping promote) some kind of homesteading program in certain neighborhoods of inner-city Saginaw that helped attract young couples and artists into putting sweat equity into properties that are currently borderline to being uninhabitable and that are currently not marketable.

It would cost the city less to place a building/home in the hands of an interested party for a very nominal sum of money and see a new resident move there or an existing resident not leave Saginaw than it would to tear said building/home down. Would the now inhabited structure not bring tax revenue to the city over time as it is improved? Just a thought.
SPM

[Rich Life]

2010-03-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

when i lived in houston

i thought vacation meant leaving the country
for two weeks
asking the natives
where they ate
because they knew where to find the best food

living in saginaw
vacation means going to detroit for the day
asking bag ladies
and that guy who pees all over Woodward
where they sleep at night
because they know
where to find the most amazing buildings.

brush park, detroit, michigan

SPM

Empty Lots or Empty Houses: Assets or Liabilities?

2010-03-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the Saginaw News (Red Tape Delays Using a Back Hoe to Make Historic Saginaw Houses History, 3/20/2010) discussed challenges in the demolition of abandoned 19th century homes on N. Jefferson (Saginaw’s Northeast Side) in order to make way for a “Green Zone.”

As a resident of the city of Saginaw who lives amongst abandoned buildings, I want to know: How is the proposed “Green Zone” any different than the multitude of empty lots already in existence in Saginaw? How will such a zone positively impact perceptions of our community? How will such a zone attract much-coveted new residents into the city? More importantly, has the future impact of extensive demolition of possibly historical structures been thoroughly looked at, or is this just a temporary fix?

I want to know – I think anyone living in the city has a right to know – what city leaders see such activity achieving in the next two decades (as opposed to the possible short-term changes in perception within the community that will only impact the next local elections).

How will more empty lots be useful in revitalizing the city’s challenged neighborhoods?

Senior citizens who own the homes they have lived much of their lives in are now in danger of losing said homes to foreclosure due to back taxes. These senior citizens are vital heads to be counted in the census this year and they have been productive residents of this city in their prime earning (and taxpaying) years. How will widespread demolition boost the quality of their lives?

Monies at the city’s disposal for neighborhood revitalization are only available to individuals with a household income of less than $19,000 on the stipulation that they own their home, the home is properly insured and all taxes and water bills are up to date. If one’s income is above $19,000, there is a good chance one does not need assistance in repairing one’s home. If one’s income is below $19,000 and one’s house is in desperate disrepair then it is highly unlikely that such things as keeping the house properly insured or the taxes current are even a blip on the family’s radar. At that point food and heat in the winter are much bigger issues.

Another concern with the above mentioned funds is that they might possibly only be available if the homeowner agrees to have his or her house re-sided, original windows replaced, original banisters replaced to meet current code and the removal or covering of lead-bearing elements (which could include original woodwork that has been painted or varnished). What is left of the historic aesthetic of a once intact house is then difficult to find. The charm and personality that attracts so many to live in an old home have now been removed making the property less appealing inside as well as from the street.

It would seem that the way in which grant/stimulus monies are being governed and property taxes are being levied in some cases are going to lead to more properties on the city’s dangerous building list. So it would seem the demolition of structures currently on the dangerous buildings list will only make way for more structures to be added to this same list as the elderly are forced to move elsewhere and those who desire to live in the city’s historic neighborhoods cannot get access to funds required to keep their homes from falling into decay. When will this cycle end? What will happen to Saginaw’s inner city neighborhoods over the next decade? What will happen to the city if these neighborhoods do not recover viability as residential districts?

It is possible that any city official or resident could reverse the questions I have asked to demand how empty structures could be any more of an asset than empty lots. The individual turning those questions back would likely win a prize at a high school debate meet. But this is not high school. This is not a debate meet. This is the community we live in and it is time that any inhabitant – official or resident – in any of the city’s challenged neighborhoods needs to look seriously across the street or over the back fence before making decisions that are irreversible.

Much of Saginaw was built up from a wealthy economy that will never be seen in this region again. What has been bequeathed to us from that era is all we have to leverage our community into its next cycle of life. These buildings are only here until they are demolished. The wealth will never again exist in this region to build such structures as the home of the Castle Museum, the former Bancroft Hotel, the Potter Street Station (second only in size to the great central station in Detroit) or the homes on N. Jefferson referenced in the recent Saginaw News article.

Detroit is pitted with areas that were once bustling residential and business districts which might now – after years of systematic demolition – fall under the description of “Green Zones.” These former neighborhoods aren’t terribly green; rather, they appear barren, desolate and depressing with absolutely nothing to recommend them to new residents or business owners.

It is worth looking again at our possibly dangerous buildings and considering whether it might not be worth removing front steps and boarding windows and doors to make structures less of a risk and provide time (and city cooperation) for/with residents to attempt to provide solutions for the structures within sight of their own front doors. Demolishing these structures now and thinking about the future of the districts they once stood in at a later date seems irresponsibly irreversible.

There is no easy fix for neighborhoods whose hearts, for one reason or another, have stopped beating, but one thing is indisputable: Empty buildings have a greater chance of attracting new businesses and residents than do empty lots.
SPM

"Could I have a side of decaying opulance with that, please?"

2010-03-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

Sarah and Paolo like things that are a little urban, so it was time for them to get a tuck-and-roll daytrip to Detroit under their belts. In taking this trip with them, I was reminded again of some of the things I love about the gritty, grungy, slightly tarnished beauty of Detroit.

We began in the morning heading south in I-75 allllllll the way down to 9 Mile Road to exit there into Ferndale to look at the bustling few blocks of business street that intersect Woodward and remind me of what I think Hamilton Street in Saginaw could be in another twenty years with the right people keeping busy there.

Then we headed south on Woodward pointing out the ramshackle remains of the old Ford plant and the bright specks of craft tile that pop from every other facade in Detroit. We turned right on Warren to go to the Architectural Salvage Warehouse and looked at piles of flaking, splintering design possibilities.

Next came Showcase Collectables in what was once China Town, then we headed downtown to Bagley and the Michigan Building.

I had driven past and - once-upon-a-time - had peeked inside what is now a parking structure as a child and wanted to take Sarah and Paolo to see the repurposed space. After driving around the buildign without recognizing it four or five times we finally parked near the blown-out remains of some one's car windows. We were let into the back of the building by a friendly security guard in the lobby.

Ten or so steps through a narrow, twisted little hall and out a steel door and we stood under what was left of something incredible:

Barely 8-9 feet above our heads were baroque wreathes, faces whose expresions had long ago flaked away, crumbling egg-and-dart patterns and fragments of marble veneer. Walking forward toward light pouring in from the side of the building we were suddenly in a space that soared four stories upward to an amazingly ornate cieling that seemed to have columns hanging from it instead of supporting it; the cieling seemed to float like an art installation over what was now a parking garage. Visible through the steel eye beams and seemingly-too-slender poured concrete columns holding up three levels of parking was the cieling of what had once been the auditorium of the old Michigan Theater. Even after having been closed since the mid-1970's and converted to a parking garage it cannot help but be impressive in a way that inspires goose bumps.
SPM

Lent

2010-03-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

This Lent thing is officially over at my house. I can totally appreciate the idea, have tried it since...well, whenever it started, but the headaches, and (so Roderick finally told me last night) the irritability coupled with always feeling tired are gettgin in the way of work and that can't happen now that it's possible to get around, lol. Ah well. I suppose it was worth the try, anyway.
SPM

Ruby

2010-02-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

“We all want to be loved and to proclaim our love.
Lucky # 03, 09, 13, 27, 3, 38, 41”

Fortune cookie from Pasong’s

The Madonna swung through Dawn’s today with her friend, Ruby. Ruby is ten years old, her knobbly ankles are the palest salmon pink, she has a patch of white hair across her chest and nipples for miles.

Ruby is a pit bull of dubious ancestry and impeccable personality that wore a black hoodie with its sleeves cut off and a flowered vintage belt from Mexico around her waist and a really great necklace made out of coin silver and about two hands full of red coral beads.

The Madonna lost one of the few people she regarded as a friend about a year ago. She obviously has a lot of love to give Ruby in the wake of that loss and she is not stingy in giving it.

“She gets excited when you tell her she’s pretty,” said the Madonna. Don’t we all…
SPM

An addendum to assist harassment.

2010-02-20T23:56:00.000-08:00

Being somewhat vaguely connected to certain things, it had not hit me until this morning that I had accepted a dinner invitation with a group of friends and neighbors in Bay City for this evening that might be a problem for Lenten aspirations. It was.

I had counted on Terry to have one of his wonderful soups and thought I could plead some impending medical proceedure and get away with only eating soup. No soup in sight and I got a ribbing from Brian about eating solid foods. Well, that's all there was and I don't like being a pain in the posterior oriface, so I dug in, enjoyed and start over tomorrow on no chewables. And no more dinners out until Easter.

Dinner was great and the roast beef, in particular, was very tender and flavorful. (Though a couple days on fluids could have factored in.) When asked how the meat was prepared, Mark just gave all and sundry a look that said either, "I'd have to kill you if I told you," or "I did something inapproriate with that meat and you don't want to know." Well. It was good, anyway, and the company was, as well.

I sat in the window at a smaller table with Bowen, Michael and Wes. The last making references to boredom that inspired me to say:

"Well. I have a whisk that could change your life."
SPM

Lent. Interesting.

2010-02-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of ongoing research into a couple different possible projects in teh neighborhood that are just full of redtape slowing things down, so it was refreshing to get a text from Iris on Ash Wednesday asking me to bring my violin and join her for a musical lunch at Dawn's.

Dawn asked what I was giving up for Lent...I hadn't thought about it. I pointed out that I am not Catholic. Not even vaguely. Dawn pointed out that it was a spiritual excercise and not really tied to a denomination. So here's what I've decided to ry this year:

For the fourty days of Lent I will give up solid food. This is a big deal to me because I love to cook - and of course eat - and will still be cooking for others, but I thought it could be an interesting experience to keep a notebook during this time (surprise).

At fist I thought I would just record what I was grateful for whenever I was hungry or when I would normally have sat down to chew. The notebook went like this:

Coffee.
Coffee.
Coffee.
Coffee.
Windex.
Coffee.
Coffee.
Tea.
Coffee.
Dog food. (Don't ask.)

Hardly productive. So, instead, I have decided to take those times and set them aside as special moments of focus on the world around me. Instead of a steak, a sunset. Instead of a scoop of ice cream, a pause to look at a snap shot of the Madonna over her cofee cup. (Notes will still be taken, and in a notebook decorated with her hands collaged on a background of reclaimed wall paper.) So far I have been surprised with what has happened to the way I see things and I am only a couple days in; so we'll see what happens.
SPM

Closure of the Jeannine House

2010-02-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

I was saddened to recieve this notice this morning and can only hope that a new comunity will form in time to keep the house running as a desperately-needed benevolent force in a challeneged district.
SPM

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 5:04 PM, jeannine house wrote:

With sadness, the Jeannine Coallier Catholic Worker announces that it will close its doors on March 1, at least temporarily. We simply don’t have enough live-in community to manage a house of hospitality and the money in our account at the moment won’t even pay the heating bill for the rest of our equal-pay contract.

For fourteen years, the house at 721 E. Holland in Saginaw has operated as a home for women and children in temporary need, and closing it has been an extremely difficult decision. We are working and praying that another community will step in so that we may re-open sometime after May 30 and so carry on the compassionate and nonviolent legacy of the late Jeannine Coallier, for whom we named the house.

If you know of people interested in becoming Catholic Workers in Saginaw, please have them call or email one of us. (See below.) Alternatively, if you know of a local non-profit agency or church that would be able to use this beautiful home in some way that serves the people of Saginaw, please let them know to call one of us. Web presence is found at http://www.myspace.com/jhousecw,
http://jeanninehouse.com/, and http://secure.pjep.org/organizations/?id.

We are all so thankful for your financial and emotional support and friendship over the years and thankful also to Jude Thompson for her years at the house. As the Irish would say, "It was a great ride." Blessings and peace to all,

The Jeannine Coallier Board of Directors

Janice Coty, 989-921-5822 (amy_seaver@yahoo.com)
Renaye Fewless, 231-825-0182 or 231-878-2587
(renaye.fewless@cadillacoasis-frc.org)
Clif McQueen, 989-799-0679 (powerdown_now@yahoo.com)
Amy Seaver, 989-792-0051(amy_seaver@yahoo.com)
Rosalie Riegle, 847-492-1856, 847-644-2281 and 989-389-7660 in the summer (riegle@svsu.edu)

The Madonna's Gifts

2010-02-11T09:16:00.000-08:00

“At every tick of the clock, in every inhabited part of the world, and unimaginable richness and variety of “history” falls off the world into total oblivion.”
C. S. Lewis

The snow began quickly falling like sifted flour over the neighborhood just a minutes before 8p.m. a week or two ago and we trundled down from the warmth of the attic to let the dog out for a trot. As I opened the door I was struck by the fact that someone with small feet had come up our driveway to a point just past the back door, turned around and retraced their steps back down the drive and to the left up Millard toward Warren.

The night was cold and whoever it was had been in the last few minutes because the prints were already blurring away into the falling snow. I walked beyond the last couple prints beyond our door and noticed something different on the falling-down porch connected to the kitchen:

On one of the hooks that supported awnings in a better time in the house’s history was hung a drab-green-enameled, battery lantern with an aluminum handle that had a large white light on the front and a red one at its top and bottom. One of the red lights was cracked and the switch was rusted in place. There was nothing else to indicate someone had been near the house and the tracks went no further.

Once back inside the house we came to the conclusion that there was only one person who might have left such a gift and I had to make sure in that cold night that she had not gone to squat someplace and freeze.

We went back out with the dog and followed the almost-erased prints up Millard across Warren toward Weadock. If she had gone left on Weadock, that meant she was warm and mostly safe; if she went right on Weadock, then she was in the basement of a partially-roofless house that had been empty for the better part of a decade and some thinking would have to be done.

When we got to Weadock, if was obvious she had gone to the left and warmth so we went home and took the Madonna’s gift into the kitchen thankful that our roof was whole and the attic was a warm place from which to watch the weather as it wiped the neighborhood’s features clean for another day.
SPM

A Rosary of Naked Indian Trees

2010-02-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

We left Houston in a white minivan headed toward the Mexican border with Jim and Linda Hendrix for a visit to their home in Coatapec. I was thrilled to the point of needing extra stops to use the bathroom that we were finally going to Mexico.

Growing up in Texas, I had a very distinct impression of Mexico mainly informed through dogmatically proud Texans waffling on about the history of the Republic and by watching too many John Wayne films with my dad.

Mexico, I thought, was arid and full of sparsely scattered adobe structures where women in long braids bent over babies and calla lilies while men wearing large hats hearded cattle from the backs of little spotted horses.

The Mexicans I knew never seemed to fit into the impression I had of the place they were supposed to come from, so I was looking forward to eliminating the gap between what I knew and what I thought I knew.

It took a bit to get through the border because the Mexican authorities had to be convinced that we were not making the trip just to sell our vehicle in Mexico and avoid the importation tax that was then about equivalent to 150% of the vehicle’s value.

Once across, I could see no difference in the countryside. I set myself up for a disappointment and focused, instead, on chatting with Linda about her collection of orchids and trying to find out about where we were going through their young friend, Pepe’s, broken English.

We drove all day only seeing a few fist-fulls of other vehicles, all headed north and we were stopped once for an inspection by machine-gun-sporting policemen. We only passed one gas station all day and Jim wisely stopped to make sure the tank was full before continuing south.

That night we pulled into a small, white-washed stucco motel that had a small café built on one end and when we went inside to have a late dinner I noticed that the café with its rough tables, light yellow walls and white vinyl floor was spotlessly clean.

I don’t recall what was on anyone else’s’ plate, but I remember what I ordered: Chicken boiled in its own stock and with cumin, cilantro, mild peppers, onions and tomatoes until the meat fell off the bones and corn tortillas cut like noodles were added at the last to soak up all the liquid. It came plated with mild goat cheese shredded over it and black beans with pork on the side. I had never had the dish before, but I make it for myself every now and again with a grin.

After dinner we all went to our very sparse, very clean rooms and slid in between sheets that felt slightly damp in the cool of the intensely humid night.

The next morning we woke early, went to the café and had a breakfast that was ordered by everyone at the same time, but came out one plate at a time as the woman serving us cooked each person’s food.

We were on the road all the next day and, in the afternoon, the land began to become more green and the fences actually grew because they had been made by hammering stakes from a tree whose name meant naked indian; when the stakes were pounded into the ground they leafed out and each fence became a line of trees connected by wire.

Finally getting close to Vera Cruz we turned inland to Jalapa where every driver made his own lane wherever he could find space to squeeze a car – many of which were forty to sixty years old if a day – and working our way out of town we headed further into the rainforest at the foot of a volcano to the smaller town of Coatapec and the Hendrix’ house.

The next days were full of seeing, tasting and going everywhere and meeting everyone the Hendrix’ knew and Sunday meant a full day of church in the concrete building with its crude wooden benches where they met.

A tiny woman named Maria was the first to arrive. She lived more than an hour away, but she was always the first to arrive and the last to leave on Sundays. She was very old. No one really seemed to know how old; Maria herself was not sure, but could remember the Mexican Civil War… After her came Pepe and Manuel, their parents Pepe and Marga and all their extended family ( I remember a cousin my age named Hugo and many aunts and uncles).

After church ended in the late afternoon, we all went to Pepe (the older) and Marga’s house to eat. The living space was on the second floor and we quite filled it. Over the next few hours we ate fried stuffed squash blossoms, rice, beans, pulled meat, cold fruit (I learned how to say naranja – orange) and drank an amazingly refreshing mixture of pureed melon, tapioca, sugar and cold water.

Everyone laughed, shared stories that included a lot of large gestures and became comfortable in each other’s space. I felt mostly complete in that group and felt that they had a wealth that I could not begin to understand but could appreciate nonetheless.

Jim always had deeply penetrating eyes that could twinkle suddenly as his white-streaked black beard broke to reveal an infectious grin. Solidly built, full head of hair and gentle in everything he did, he had the appearance of the best kind of rabbi.

For the first time all day, I had broken away from the group and went over to the small window to look out over the street. Turning back to watch the room, I could feel my face warming into a slow smile and Jim walked over to lean his back against the wall beside me.

“Now you have seen Mexico,” he said as he also surveyed the room, seeing all and loving equally.

And I realized: Mexico had nothing to do with beaches, volcanos, fields of coffee trees, noises, smells or a different language. Mexico had everything to do with the people who happened to live among these things and I couldn’t help but reflect – even as a teenager – they were incredibly resilient, resourceful and more full of the joy of living than almost anyone I had ever met in my life who supposedly had more to give thanks for. The world grew considerably that evening in my understanding.

The concept of diversity has come up a few times recently in the life of the neighborhood in committee meetings for events coming this summer and over coffee with neighbors.

I didn’t have a close acquaintance with the word “diversity” on that trip to Mexico. It wasn’t nearly so popular a button to push then, I suppose. I got a sense of what was to become my understanding of that concept later in life, though: I had been caught off guard and out of my own bubble of experience so that – for the first time in my life – I simply saw the world as it was. No nagging desire to change one little thing to make the view into what I perceived to be perfect. No judgment upon the differences between their lives and mine. No question of any kind; just sight of what was and an acceptance that did not require a developed tolerance.

Diversity, then, was not an action taken or a tolerance exercised by individuals temporarily in control of a situation. Diversity was, and is, a delightful fact of humanity. The world is diverse in the same way that the world is in color and surround sound; maybe it takes a rosary of naked indian trees leading into a rainforest full of strangers to open one’s eyes properly. Maybe, but I think one moment of unguarded sight could be easier to find than that.
SPM

Life as a Freak Show

2010-02-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

This blog is in sad need of updating and many of the "Up-dates" are of things that happend some time ago, so they will be back-dated accordingly. In the meantime, I am at Dawn of a New Day sipping coffee and have learned this:

Sometimes life is reduced to a bag of flaming Cheeto's and your dreams can become realities before you know it, so pack a change of clothing. Just ask Linsey.
SPM

Places Called Home

2010-01-16T10:01:00.000-08:00

“We had come home and if home was not what we had expected, never mind, our need for belonging allowed us to ignore the obvious and to create real places, or even illusory places, befitting our imagination.”Maya Angelou

Her husband worked at the hospital around the block from my house and said there was no such thing as a Lesser Cathedral District and she chided me for having given her faulty information as we sat having coffee. Looking out the window at passing traffic, I reflected: I knew it existed; I lived there. The neighbors all lived there. John lived under a porch there. Lorie walking through with all she owned in the bags she carried about with her was acquainted with every stray kitten there. We all knew it was so. I thought about trying to convince her that what I knew to be so was so, but – instead – I let it be. We had our coffee and she told how she once took plywood, cardboard and a steak knife and built a fireplace where there wasn’t one before. It occurred to me that a woman like that would figure out what was so on her own; she would know it was so when she saw what had been made there for herself because faith is, after all, a very tactile thing at times.
S.P.M.

A Grandmother's Eyes

2010-01-14T09:55:00.000-08:00

“She had that spontaneous quality of aliveness which illuminates people who have already done a lot of their dying, and I think I am beginning to understand the truth of that.”
Madeleine L’Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

From the first moments that I can clearly remember, where ever she was – and that was usually the house at 3910 Smith - it felt safe. She is gone, after a fashion, but I will always remember: A house near the river that smelled of popcorn and clean laundry in the winter and lilacs and fresh-cut grass in the summer, the sounds of the evening news and passing trains and – always at the center of all – her blue eyes and warm smile. I have never gone back to the house after it sold; I suppose that way I can believe nothing has changed.
S.P.M.

Holiday Strength Prozac

2009-12-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

I was thumbing through my coffee table book of New Yorker cartoons recently and saw a drawing of a huge pill bottle with a label reading, “Holiday Strength Prozac.” It was funny. So I smiled. But, seriously, where can I get some?

The holidays are upon us and with them are bourne so many emotions that it is often impossible to sort, identify or trace one before the next is tugging at us for attention. Case in point: I found myself yesterday standing in the middle of a wide empty room at a client’s holding a green christmas ornament in one hand tearing up for no good reason.

It suddenly ocurred to me for about the thousandth time that Christmas was coming and something was missing; I felt that I was in a taxi on the way to the airport and knew I had forgotten something critical to the trip without knowing what it was I had forgotten. Then I remembered: My grandmother was gone.

She died a few years ago, but – somehow – the coming of Christmas without her still causes a catch in my throught and tears in my eyes at the most random moments. I stood there marvelling that life could go on so seamlessly without her, and, at the same time, felt like a child who woke up in the middle of a bad dream; it took a minute to get my bearings and find my place in life and that moment again.

I find the older I get, the less I seem certain of anything and there are days when life is reduced to its most primal needs written on a wheel that never stops turning: Work. Food. Warmth. Fear. Yearning. Love. There are no words to quantify these things in real time; they are known by face, form and feel alone and if one of them is fractured we become totally disoriented.

Disorientation can be overcome, and I have a friend who, very sensibly, cooks when she is not feeling up to competing with the world. So, some weekends when everyone else is busy about things for themselves, she can be found at home listening to country music, sipping a glass of something, and turning mounds of various ingredients into a refridgerator packed to bursting with enough labelled packages to feed her staff and random hungry relatives for the next week.

They read like post-its your mom would leave in your lunch box, those packages, but grown-up: Smashed potatoes like you never imagined! Aparagus sauteed with bacon. Special shrimp oriental stir fry especailly for Linda! Turkey noodle soup with extra thick noodles. Really wild rice. The best stuffing in the world. She calls it her therapy and I know she takes comfort in the fact that through feeding people she is needed.

Everyone needs to be needed . . . almost more than anything else – more than to be fed, clothed, admired or loved – we need to be needed. But sometimes even being needed cannot fend off the lurking, malignant feeling that we are superfluous. We are extra. We are disposable. So what, then?

I don’t know, and this sometimes scares me. I feel I might disappear entirely if I let go for a second the carefully compsed image that is myself. There are moments like the one yesterday – ornament in hand – when I feel as if I were holding myself confidently in my own hands like a soapy dish that suddenly, inexplicably, slips from my fingers and falls into dangerous fragments at my feet before I can catch my next breath. I look about to see if anyone else has noticed, pick up the fragments and pretend that everything is fine, but I still know that something elemental has changed and I am a little less certain than I had been.

The days that make up November and December are like a great sink of soapy dishes waiting to be dropped while attempting to prove to others that I am worth enough to be among them and to myself that I am needed. So it’s a good thing that the holidays require so much cooking, after all.
SPM
(Note: Lori passed away aver a year ago, but this piece, written in 2007 originally, demonstrates how she just comes to mind everytime a large meal is prepared or a holiday looms.)

The Stairs of Home

2009-12-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

Our house was not prepared to offer us a home when we met it about a year ago. With all first floor windows and the front door boarded over, the vestibule was almost black and most of the building’s nakedness was semi-concealed.

The only sounds in the house were the wind whipping down the street and thin flakes of plaster and paint falling now and again from the water-damaged ceilings to break with a sound like old eggshells on the dusty oak and maple floors.

The library to the left once had a detailed window part way up its main wall, but that had been stolen by looters, as had been the detailed columns in the living room opening to the right. All that was left of either were a ply-wood covered hole on one side and a wide sagging arch on the other with prints in the old shellac of bases and capitals to hint at what had once been there.

The living room ceiling had settled into a crackled grid with odd little pieces laying on the floor. The fireplace wall with its green tile looked very bare since the mantle had been stolen and someone had tried to remove some of the tile hearth resulting in a jagged edge looking a lot like teeth broken in a bar fight.

Pocket doors – miraculously remaining – led from the living room to what was once the dining room with another missing window in its bay and a Lazy-Boy-sized patch in the ceiling where the bathroom above must have caused problems in the past.

In the kitchen there was no stove, a sink in a rusted metal cabinet connected to nothing and drywall sagging from the ceiling because it was screwed up with no respect to joists.

The dust and grime of an empty house were everywhere as you headed up the stairs to the bedrooms and bath on the second floor, but at least there some of the windows that had been only cracked had been patched using acrylic sheeting and silicone so some sunlight broke into the rooms.

The bathroom had yellow-green tub connected to nothing, a toilet that had shattered from cold and a sink that had to be re-plumbed.

The house had been so long empty that even mice had moved elsewhere and scattered all through the house – mainly painted a much-grubbied flat white – were scrawled profanities, references of love to a girl named Felina and notes to a personage named Joel who was to stay out of the kitchen and bathroom.

The only space under that was possibly tame was the attic, and that possibility was only visible after tapping into the fort-building skills of a creative childhood. So we tapped. And hauled and rearranged until we were to be found squatting in our own attic. Since the budget set for the house by our broker didn’t go as far as he’d hoped before he passed away, it would be another seven months before the house had working plumbing beyond a basic toilet and it will be this Christmas before the kitchen is functioning.

But this year has been an interesting one in the development of our concept of home. Living on the third floor of a house set one-half a floor above ground meant a lot of stairs. Up from the back door to the kitchen. Up from the front hall to the bay in the landing. Up from the bay to the upper hall. Up from the hall to the attic with its pine floor, walls and ceiling.

A sofa and chair. Coffee table. Bookcases and mountains of books. Art supplies. Our make-shift dining table. Boxes of china. Paintings tucked wherever they would fit. A bed in one corner. Dressers in the back dormer. Everything involving home meant hauling up and down seemingly endless stairs to a space that was an odd hybrid of Rapunzel’s tower, Swiss Family Robinson’s tree house and Anne Frank’s annex. Home became all about stairs and waiting the winter out so we could begin expanding into the rest of the house.
SPM

A magical year.

2009-11-22T17:29:00.000-08:00

Ken (now Ben) Fremer descended upon Bay City and told me that he had been more crazied than wronged – an incredibly astute statement – and said that he saw in me all the evil that rocked his boat. I decided to take the statement as a compliment and not miss anything at all because there seemed a special quality in the people and the air about that time – the better part of a year – that began with dancing under trees named The Sisters in Bay City between the park and the DoubleTree.

Mandy trotting down the sidewalk in a pouring rain holding twigs over her head as if they were an umbrella. (I have one of the branches still.) Roderick and I walking almost every night down to Caroll Park and talking there until the small hours of the day. Random midnight pizza at Brooklyn Boyz with Dan (who cannot see to drive, but is guided by the loops of energy that radiate from all things), Meredith (whose personality was as wild as her fabulous hair and whose uncle Ray was an ex-carnie), Jon Rigg (who was pale and cadaverous and whose clothes always looked as if they’d snagged on him as they blew by and whose look could only be described as heroine chic), Jen (who will one day realize her greatest art are the grafitti drawings she doesn’t have to think so hard about), Schultzie (Damn, the boy can look nuts when he wants to), and sometimes Amandrew.

Amandrew…watching Amanda and Andrew become the kind of couple that quirky novellas are made of was a once-only thing to see. Spontaneous road trips to Iargo Springs and unplanned but perfect evenings with scrounged suppers and foreign movies. Happy Hilfiger (Chris has had a sartorial awakening since that summer and has now – I am happy to report – entirely recovered from the experience of being home schooled) and his love of sushi and air guns. The end of the summer had Warren off to Interlochen and Nick out of the closet and firmly established as an adopted brother headed to Detroit to learn this thing called life.

In the autumn, the trees clung to their color almost three weeks longer than the year before as if trying desperately to slow the coming of winter and we all looked upward into the branches and grinned appreciatively.

Winter was brought in with a dancing of our group in the intersection of Saginaw and Center late the night of the first swirling, fluffy snow. And then it was over. Somehow, suddenly, everyone was boarding buses, packing cars, finding new adventures and life began to look different. But it still happened, that year, and we are all better for it.
SPM

Scratching posts and Baby Boys

2009-11-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

October 18th, 2009 11:18pm

I looked out the window and watched as nineteen cats of every possible ancestry (or incestry?) prowled all over my front porch, lawn, the alley next door and meandering across the street to use the newly planted trees as scratching posts. Several had planted themselves in a row in what was left of the O’Keefe carriage stone as if governing the assembly. I watched them and thought of another odd October night Some years ago.

My mother became pregnant when the family still lived in Norway and our move back to Houston landed at the extreme end of her last trimester and our flight was on British Airways. The in-flight movie was "Batteries Not Included," and our row of seats was the last in the no-smoking section. We arrived in Houston, found an odd house, and my mother began labor just after closing on the house.

I sat up that night waiting for a baby and reading “The Time Machine” from cover to cover. The book is still a favorite. And the baby wasn't so bad in time, either.
SPM

The tight-wire act that is the universe.

2009-11-13T16:51:00.000-08:00

“And then there was this shift in the universe and his texts, like, just about dried up altogether.”

Granted, she was about seventeen years old and trying to force down a double espresso at Starbucks because it had sounded like an elegant thing to order ("cool" she would probably say cool.), and her universe probably didn’t take much to rattle it, but she got me thinking.

Tiny things can rattle the universe and some of those tiny things aren't in the hands of superheroes, but, instead, in the paws of very average folks who can choose small things at every turning. There is no comittment to the level of choice taken...could range from how and where one buys produce or shoelaces to the amazing trick of looking into another human being’s eyes – even those of a total stranger – and draw from them a smile without saying a word and reminding them that they are not alone. And - knowing they are not alone - perhaps they make a tiny choice that changes someone else's day, and with that day an entire life.

Imagine what a hug or a random, but carefully considered phrase could do fifty years from now. So there’s really no excuse not to create a shift in someone’s universe today.
SPM

Gathering sticks and threads.

2009-10-21T16:57:00.000-07:00

We had hoped to eventually have a table in the dining room that could accommodate 6 and a drop-leaf table in the library that could seat more when open. We thought it would be great to have the option to have holidays at our house, but that it might be a while before we could afford two such tables.

Shortly after we came to think this would be a great thing, three different friends and neighbors offered us lovely tables. We ended with a wonderful mahogany veneered, claw-footed affair in need of a little repair from Wes and Levante, and I knew as soon as I saw the color of the finish that I would love it. Then Brian (the Brian who reminds me of a faun) made a gift to us of a table and six chairs that had been in his family for some time. Both tables are amazing and coordinate beautifully with each other.

Tonight Roderick and I had the first sit-down meal at an actual table since we bought our house. It felt a bit odd to be veering toward the current century again after nearly a year with partial utilities and no kitchen or proper bathroom, but I think we’ll adjust in time and the holidays should be interesting.
SPM

Leaves and things.

2009-10-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Brian Smith and I were at Begick’s to pick up the trees Lori had purchased for the 500 block of Millard and we took our time wending through the plants – touching this leaf and that – and comparing gentle notes on the people we mutually knew and cared about. We talked about the need for watering and nourishing, how some things transplant better than others, how some respond to a little adjustment of light or location more than others.

We were joined back at the houses by Gary and Rick in the planting of a maple in front of 519 and two liquid amber trees – sweet gums they’re called up here – for the opposite side of the street. Bryan helped plant the weeping birch Roderick and I bought for our yard and Rick helped plant a couple hundred daffodils in the mostly-round penny park where Owen, Sheridan and Millard meet.

The world grew bigger by four trees and so many bulbs that day and bits of the conversation with Brian drifted through my mind as we worked. After a time it became apparent that most people and plants were alike: They had very simple needs and could all be beautiful when given the proper amount of care. The trick was observing them, quietly and neutrally, and discerning what that amount might be…
SPM

A reason to get out of bed.

2009-09-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

September, 2009

I know a Karen and I know a Bruce who work together at times. Her comment once about work and the way I have noticed his outlook on life subtly shift resulted in this:

[Ministering Angels]

You get cynical in this job she told him and he said he could see that but even if you get to where you saw abusive people around every turn that meant that behind them were people who needed to know the whole world was bigger and more beautiful than their personal experience and that made for a powerful reason to get up every morning.
SPM

Writing on the wall

2009-08-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

The Mantle for our fireplace had been stolen long before we ever saw what was to become our house and we know it may be a while before we can afford (or find) the right replacement. So I decided to do what I love to do: I wrote on the wall and the quote is a favorite of mine that seemed appropriate to a house that had been empty a while.

“But there was no prayer in Joel’s mind; rather, nothing a net of words could capture, for, with one exception, all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved…and in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.”
Truman Capote

Lost Things; A St. Jude kind of day.

2009-07-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

Why would anyone cut down a tree that has lived a hundred years?

Why does a temporarily empty building seem to equal a useless building?

Who would steal a dog?

Why are wanted children miscarried before they can recieve a first caress when so many unwanted children live to understand not being wanted?

Why would a vibrant child pass from living and laughing last weekend to being silent forever?

I don't know. I cannot begin to understand. I can only think that such things make old trees more remarkable, ruins more romantic, puppies more magical, families more precious and heaven more lovely. But who can really tell at then end of the day?

"Benjamin, we're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?"
(Mrs. Maple, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)

Life is....

2009-07-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

Dr. Gregory House: "They're out there, doctors, lawyers postal workers some of them doing great some of them doing lousy. Are you going to base your whole life on who you got stuck in a room with?"

Eve: "I'm going to base this moment on who I'm stuck in a room with. It's what life is. It's a series of rooms and who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are."

(From a 2007 episode of House MD)

Innocents and Opalescent Sea Urchins

2009-07-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

He was tall, broad-shouldered and had dark shaggy hair above puzzled eyes. He moved a little differently than others and spoke a little louder. He brought his own cup – an opalescent punch glass with nubs in rows that reminded me of the shell of an sea urchin. Cookies and cups of coffee were priced at a dollar each and he wasn’t sure that his $3 would cover him.

He got his cookie and coffee, sat near Hailey and I, chatted pleasantly for a few minutes in his sweet way about nothing particular and everything at once, and then he was gone.

The kids I went to grade school with would possibly – no, certainly – have called him “retarded.” (Hell, they called me that.) As he walked away with his magic cup in his bag and his smile (always just hinted at the corners of his mouth), I had to wonder: What’s wrong with moving slower than every one else? He may not get concepts like anger, bitterness or revenge, but – then – he notices every pretty thing in his way and will fall asleep one day not knowing what old is.
SPM

A Thought

2009-07-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

“A purely natural landscape is one which has never been occupied by man. An area which is unified upon the basis of the way in which man has used and transformed the natural landscape is a cultural landscape.”

(Edna Scofield in a 1936 article.)

Wonderful Book. Interesting Topic. (Yes, and lots of pictures.)

2009-06-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Richard Sexton assembled a phenominal collection of photographs of buildings on the edge of existance and his text was every bit as interesting. Here's a passage that I found locally relevant:

“Architecture is as undeniably mortal as the humans who build it. The role of the preservationist is merely to thwart an untimely demise. We deny our own mortality by going to extraordinary lengths to prolong human longevity, but we tend to be far more ambivalent with our architecture. In fact, the willingness to tear down almost anything we have built has been a hallmark of American culture – a predilection that has only recently been subjected to serious reevaluation.

America is about progress and migrations, entrepreneurship and the economic exploitation of fertile landscapes. It is also about invention and innovation, hybridization and assimilation. Perhaps most significantly, however, America is about freedom, including the freedom to do whatever on wants with one’s property. America is, therefore, less occupied with tradition, heritage, stewardship, and civic duty than other cultures, including those from which we have directly descended. Though America is a world power economically and militarily, culturally it is merely postcolonial. America is still finding itself, gradually and sometimes painfully; is becoming a more mature and stable place of human habitation – the cultural equivalent of an adolescent, a brash and prodigal one at that.

Along Louisiana’s River Road are scattered some of the most compelling vestiges of our exotic past. Though today we recognize the significance of this architecture, we are somewhat baffled by what to do with it. In far too many cases, there is no longer a logical economic reason for this architecture to exist…”

(Richard Sexton, Vestiges of Grandeur, The Plantations of Louisiana’s River Road, 1999, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, http://www.chroniclebooks.com/)

Last Things

2009-06-10T05:37:00.000-07:00

We were very happy in our quirky apartment on Warren Avenue; even its too-small-to-be-a-panic-room kitchen became charming with the proper threats. I may even miss the view from the kitchen window with its random assemblage of crap and crud. SPM.

A Visit from the Madonna

2009-06-01T06:32:00.000-07:00

"But they didn’t understand it
And I tried to make them see
That one is only poor
Only if they choose to be
Now I know we had no money
But I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors
My momma made for me
Made just for me"
Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors

As the last sounds of church bell had faded and 7 O’clock approached that evening, the air had an almost golden quality and the breeze was crisp as we stood in our drive chatting with Rick Rios about paint colors and Jazz on Jefferson.

As we stood chatting, a youngish woman came into view from around the front of 509 Owen and cut through the empty lot the O’Keefe house once occupied as she walked in our general direction.

She was very slightly built, about 5’8”, wearing skinny jeans that still somehow managed to be a little baggy on her, a brilliant blue scarf around her head, a walnutty-brown cardigan with a rolled collar, an assortment of beads around her neck, bangles on her wrists and a suit case in each hand.

(One bag looked to be from the 1960’s and was sprinkled white, orange, green, pink and blue flowers on a black background. The other bag was made from an old Persian carpet, and I swear she inherited it from Mary Poppins herself.)

She and I said hello as she got into our front yard, a smile broke on her face as she saw she was welcome, and – while Rick looked mystified and Roderick looked disoriented – she set her bags down on the spit of lawn between our house and drive, opened the flowered bag, pulled out a white bath towel and proceeded to go hunt kittens in the brush between the old Barie house and 509 Owen.

I met her a few years ago, back before her teeth had been broken, before she might have had a child no one can seem to find, and before she’d dropped to skin and bones and become a possible transient with great luggage. She told me her name, but I call her Madonna of the Strays.

She has a passionate determination that kittens should not be left to fend for themselves, so she catches them, feeds them and nurtures them until they are clean and docile. She then finds people who will not be able to refuse a home to such an adorable creature.

She has a mothering, nesting instinct. It may seem that she talks to herself almost constantly as she goes about her day, but this simply isn’t the case: She isn’t alone, so she is not talking to herself. She is talking to a caring, interested third party that always wants to know what she is doing, how she is feeling and what she thinks is important.

Laurie didn’t find any kittens to save, but she did find a stray stoneware plate that could be washed and used, and she found a used tin pail to fill with long grass, nettles and twigs. She was just telling us (the third party and I) what she planned to do with the contents of the pail when she spotted the last two – of eight – construction dumpsters in the alley between our house and the Jefferson Apartments next door.

Graham Construction Corp. acquired the building over the last couple months and – over Saturday and Sunday – had been dropping everything and anything left by years of former tenants in preparation for a rehabilitation of the building out of four floors of windows to the dumpsters below.

To Graham, this was trash to be handled with gloves and a Bobcat; to the Madonna, the dumpsters were full of possibilities. Within minutes Rick, Roderick and I could hear the sounds of metal and glass hitting the pavement next to the dumpsters as the Madonna began sifting for treasures.

Over the course of the next five hours, she had emptied first one, then the other dumpster to their bottoms and removed anything of interest to be hauled off later in her pair of stashed shopping carts.

By 3a.m. were laid in neat rows on the sidewalk in front of our house:

Three painted wood and mirror-doored medicine cabinets with broken shelves
(“I might have a house one day and these are great.”)
A turntable with no cord
(“It’s not done yet, this thing.”)
A stack of mismatched plates, one of cups and mugs, one of random silverware
(“I could have eight people for dinner, you know. Yes. Well, I could.”)
The top and two sides of a metal radiator cover
(“I should be able to paint this.”)
A bent tin-framed, plexi glass glazed portrait of Martin Luther King Jr.
(“If a pope was in this frame, it wouldn’t be in the trash.”)
A brown velvet snood
(“Oh!! I could disinfect this!!)
A collection of folded towels and baby blankets
(“Now they’ll all be warm.”)

Her only pauses were to sip from a can of strawberry Ensure and sometimes chew on Kool-Aid powder she mixed with the Ensure.

By morning there was no sign of the Madonna or her treasures. After sorting the items, she returned all those she could not use to the dumpster, wandered the neighboring yards picking up trash. Then she swept the alley and our sidewalks with a broom from one of the dumpsters, loaded her finds into her carts and bags, and was gone from us before dawn.

In the course of the previous evening she found a bracelet that inspired a huge grin and a scrambling trip over to share with me. It was made of metal with tiny rhinestones, green enamel leaves and cabochons of glass backed with foils to look like opals. It was perfect, even after dropping from a window and being buried in a dumpster of rubble. It only took the right person to find it and appreciate it.

The Madonna’s blue eyes sparkled above her hollow cheeks and ragged grin as she held it for me to see. And, suddenly, I got it:

At that moment, there was nothing I could give her that she needed. She wasn’t lost. She wasn’t alone. She wasn’t even poor. She had everything she thought she needed. She was wealthy in her own perception, and after sharing her find with me, she was off to save more precious lost kittens from a wide, frightening world.
SPM

Popsicles and Cornbread

2009-05-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

Last night Theresa hosted an open mic night at Dawn's and the turn out was wonderful. Theresa (who will hopefully post her "let me take you back" on this site), Assigid, Gloria and Alma (amongst others) sang, read their work, sipped coffee and chatted through an evening. Aside from being the only woman I've ever known to eat a banana with a knife and fork, Alma has wonderful stories...if you see her, you should ask her to tell you the one about her heart taking a dance class; you'll be touched.

Popcicles and Cornbread

Popcicles and cornbread
What an odd combination

But there's nothing odd about
How I fell into the conversation

It was about better times
When we had lots of fun

Popcicles in the freezer
I remember box after box

After playing jump rope
Baseball or hop scotch

For dinner there was cornbread
Fried chicken and greens
Sweet potatoes and fried corn
Y'all know what I mean

Those were the good old days
I play them over and over in my head

And when I remember mom
I'll always remember
Popcicles and cornbread

(Poem by Theresa)

Another Take on What Makes Home "Home."

2009-05-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

"As collectors mature, old teapots, procelain animals and family heirlooms take on a new humanity and suddenly the house becomes a home."

Letitia Roberts, Art & Antiques, December, 2006

Home: water color on paper mounted on board. SPM

There's this house on Jefferson...

2009-05-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

There's a badly sided house on Jefferson Avenue that I pass going pretty much anywhere to or from home. It is low and multi-gabled with a half-dead crab apple tree blooming in its front yard. I was walking past it the other day on my way nowhere, tripped all over the sidewalk and came up sniffing peppermint that someone planted in the back yard years ago when someone still lived in the house.

So I thought of this poem, rubbed my knee, stood up and got on with things:

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

(by Shel Silverstein)

Friday night music at Dawn's on Washington

2009-05-22T19:03:00.001-07:00

George Worthmore is a small man in a straw hat with a big personality and several acoustic guitars who sang a few songs. He played a lot more.

There is something about the sound of a lovingly, skillfully played guitar and a particular kind of voice that just works with songs about tight times. I was thinking that when he went into a cover of a B.B. King song:

"If I ever get my hands on a dollar again, I'm gonna squeeze it and squeeze it 'til that eagle grins…"

I love that he didn’t require undivided attention. He stated that some music was just furniture music: it was intended to just sit there not getting in the way of what was going on at the time.

He wasn’t terribly sure of one he said hadn’t yet been played out, but he thought he’d try it anyway. Maybe it’ll fall victim of the “Swiss cheese effect”, when you get to watch it disintegrate before your very eyes. Maybe not.

He said it was called “Avenue Maria” after a street in Little Italy…And then played the most lulling version of Ave Maria I had yet heard. It was almost enough to make me a Catholic. Almost. Not quite. (But almost).

George will be at White Crow Conservatory (on Mackinaw) here in town tomorrow (Saturday) around 7PM, if you missed him at Dawn of a New Day (or "Crack of Dawn," as George thought it was called, lol.) Go. You'll be glad you did.

www.georgeworthmore.com

Two Sides of a Coin

2009-05-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries."
A. A. Milne

You know, I keep telling Roderick this and he keeps looking at me as if I had just said something threatening to his sanity. Then he begins flitting about the house - eyebrows drawn together in concern - muttering and "clearing surfaces." Ah, well, what does one do? Fill "surfaces," that's what.

Flowers in the Attic. (But not.)

2009-05-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

From Hayden to Washington

2009-05-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

The boys from the Savoy have a new house and the view from one of the upstairs windows toward the garage and Washington was pretty neat. SPM.

2009-05-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

An average Michigan sunset over springtime fields after a long weekend of gardening out in Cass City turned out to be a reminder: After the hells of winter in this place, something as simple as an everyday sort of sunset over the most common field of weeds can be pretty incredible. Almost makes winter worth it. SPM.

Dreams, Ambitions and Bleach.

2009-05-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

Salon chat is often jolly, acidic, or wandering and is never boring. And the clientele at Salon Decadence is no exception.

I had been reading a magazine and waiting out my toner when, two chairs over from me a woman materialized like a firecracker in a toilet bowl. She was an energetic woman with dynamic red hair, Day-Glo Band-Aids on her right thumb and a personality that had no time for the work, “No.”

Dynamic asked where _____ was and was told she worked a couple doors down for more hours because she was pregnant. Dynamic shot up in her chair suddenly and said, “REALLY!? HOW GREAT!! IS IT A BOY OR A GIRL?!!

When told the couple had decided they’d like to be surprised, Dynamic said, “That’s CRAP. I HATE that. How do you shop not knowing if it’s a boy or a girl?! You don’t know whether to get blue or pink!!” And, defeated, she slumped back into her stylist’s hands.

Her stylist suggested green. I suggested going with yellow. Dynamic would have none of it, declared surprises to be elaborate crap, and announced with finality that the couple were just going to have to find out the gender of the child so she could shop appropriately.

I sat there staring at the same page of my magazine, scalp tingling, and thinking: Pink with butterflies, unicorns and princesses or blue with frogs, cowboys and knights would imply – even today – that girls are supposed to have dreams while boys are supposed to have ambitions. What a shame when we were so clearly intended to experience more than half of the universe on a good day.

Look.

2009-05-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."
Anne Frank

500 Block of Millard: Watercolor, pencil, charcoal on reclaimed wood panel. SPM. (Used for the poster of Jazz on Jefferson 2009)

Negative Urban Renewal?!

2009-04-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

How “Urban Renewal” Destroyed San Francisco’s Fillmore District
By Carl Close on Jul 21, 2008 in Economics, Housing, Property Rights

The great urban journalist Jane Jacobs probably had New York City in mind when she wrote about the potentially devastating effects of government-sponsored “redevelopment” on the inner city, but her lesson applies in many cities across the world. San Francisco’s Fillmore District is a prime example of an “urban renewal” disaster.

“The agency’s time there has not been a happy story,” Fred Blackwell, the new executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. “There is no way to make up for clearing large swaths of land and displacing thousands of people.”

In 1948, city officials declared the Fillmore, an ethnically diverse but largely African American neighborhood, to be “blighted” under the California Redevelopment Act of 1945. Over the next few decades, and with the help of eminent domain and federal funding, 4,729 businesses were forced to close, 2,500 households were pushed out of the neighborhood, and 883 Victorian houses were demolished. What the Fillmore got in return for its troubles—a high-rise residential project, some fast-food restaurants, and, late last year, a posh jazz nightclub—was too little, too late.

What went wrong? Several things. First, the urban planners of the day got it wrong: Rather than being “blighted,” the Fillmore was the center of the city’s vibrant, black commercial district, providing goods and services, gainful employment, and upward mobility for thousands. If it wasn’t broken (and in the eyes of many of the Fillmore’s residents and shopkeepers at the time, it wasn’t), it didn’t need fixing. Second, the economic opportunities and complex social networks that fostered economic empowerment and community spirit were fragile things: Hoping that they would boldly spring forth years after they had been dramatically disrupted was no more realistic than trying to unscramble an omelet. Third, the powerful politicians, bureaucrats, and contractors who profited from “redevelopment” had different short-term interests than those displaced by program.

What can be done to prevent future “urban planning” disasters? Several things. First, eminent domain must be drastically curtailed. (That’s no real loss: Bruce Benson argues forcefully that the “holdout problem” is a bogus rationale for eminent domain.) Second, rent control, which, as Paul Krugman notes, inhibits the creation of new rental property and contributes to the deterioration of existing rental properties, must be dismantled. Similarly, below-market housing mandates, which curtail the creation of new housing and therefore drive up housing prices, should also be scrapped. Third, the power of politicians to dole out favors to special-interest groups should be greatly restricted. (The harms of interest-group politics and other sources of “government failure” are ably explained in Beyond Politics, by William Mitchell and Randy Simmons.) Fourth, urban planners and residents themselves must better learn the nature and positive potential of the voluntary institutions, networks, and patterns that arise without government planning. (For details, see the Independent Institute book The Voluntary City, edited by David Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alex Tabarrok.)

San Franciscans better learn these lessons fast: Last June, the city’s voters passed a redevelopment initiative for the Bayview/Hunters Point area.

www.independent.org/blog

"My own private Idaho."

2009-04-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

…in Saginaw.

Oh the experiences I have had. Evidently I have been single for far too long, because I am starting to exude so many single gay man pheromones, that construction workers in Saginaw are trying to pick me up. So the story goes something like this:

I went to Saginaw to visit Steve, and just as I was walking into Dawn of a new Day a middle age man in a truck with a trailer pulled up and called me over. I just assumed that he needed directions, which was kind of the case I guess.

Worker guy: “Where is Janes Street?”

Me: “I think it is back that way.”

Worker guy: “Do you need a job?”

Me: “No.”

Worker guy: “Okay. How about food, or dinner sometime, or something?”

Me: “Um okay?”

Worker guy: “Can I get your number?”

Me: *Insert fake Detroit phone number here*

Worker guy: “Oh okay I’ll give you a call sometime. Do you not live around here?”

Me: “I live in Detroit.”

Worker guy: “What are you doing here?”

Me: “Visiting family.”

Worker guy: “Okay...have a nice day.”

So after our conversation I go in to Dawn’s and tell Lindsey about it.

So I thought it was over. But it goes on from there. He then shows up at the coffee shop.

At this point I promptly had to go find Steve and I left. So, once again, I thought the end of the story.

After a brief break at Steve’s house, we head back to Dawn’s. So a little time passes and he [worker guy] calls Dawn, and asks for me. Dawn’s phone messes up and I loose the call, and then he shows up again, and the conversation went something like this.

Worker guy: “Hi, the number you gave me was wrong.”

Me: “Oh you must have taken it down wrong...”

Worker guy: “Oh. well, can I get it?”

Me: *Insert real phone number* "Oh but I am going to be Europe and my phone won’t work.”

Worker guy: “Oh. well, do you want to get together tonight?”

Me: “Um, I have lots of things to do today. I’ll be back in the end of June.”

Worker guy: “Good”

He exits stage left. At this point Dawn is freaking because her world had been blown: Our worker guy’s wife is going to be making glass vases with Dawn.

For a cross reference on how I feel about this check out my post on straight acting gays.

Nick Piotrowski
www.qemargie.wordpress.com

The things you try to survive.

2009-04-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

A man walked into a coffee shop near the river and settle into his favorite corner – between the front window and the yellowed brick wall – to read “Rolling Stone.” He was just part way through an article about the Grateful Dead that had a photograph of the group performing in what had once been a synagogue in New York City.

The building still had much of its original bones…the women’s gallery, the very gothic windows, ornate gates set into the back of the bemah with Hebrew script above them. Over all was a blend of light varying in color from gold to lavender and the man thought the synagogue full of rock music just might be one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen when he looked across the shop and saw that a casual acquaintance was looking his way.

The acquaintance, a young man with dark curls and an ever-concerned forehead, got up and came over to the first man as though he suddenly decided he must.

The second man came to the first, offered his hand and sat down, asking the first man, “Do you ever feel as if you didn’t want to be here anymore?”

“You mean here in the coffee shop, or here in this life?

“Here in this life.”

“Yes,” said the first man.

“Well. What do you do with that? What keeps you together?”

The first man had to stop and think on that for a moment before replying because such feelings are not often voiced, and the dealing with them is more instinctual, more survival driven, than carefully planned and worded. In this moment, words were needed because the second man was not making casual conversation. He was seriously enquiring.

The first man told the second that he had learned he would have such feelings just about every March. March is the month when the world has been frozen long enough that giving up is easy to do.

So, knowing this, the first man told the second that he had to be prepared.

“Prepared how?” asked the second man.

“Well…I know that in those times it is really important I have some kind of outlet to create. I force myself to journal, or to cook or paint more. You can’t create anything out of a funk, so that means you have to look back beyond that funk to find the things that are bright enough to be inspiring to creativity. That way your mind yourself that the thing you are going through is really only a small fragment of your whole story.

Sometimes you have to remind yourself that God just might have a sick sense of humor, but the joke always comes to an end. Sometimes you have to stop what you are doing and remember there is something or someone bigger than you are and that – even though you feel alone and nowhere – you aren’t alone and never really will be.”

“Hmph. That’s interesting, but I don't do those things and it's not much to hang onto when you feel like letting go,” said the second man.

The first man thought for a second and then said, “You attend a synagogue, right?”

“Yep,” said the second man.

“What has your Rebbe told you about creation?”

“What do you mean? Like, the beginning of creation? The creation of the world?”

Said the first man, “I mean the continuation of creation. Has your Rebbe ever told you that creation is not finished? That we were put here to continue the creation of the world?”

“Sure,” said the second man.

“Well,” continued the first man, “we are told we are here to continue that creation. To make more than was here when we arrived. So, logically, leaving a work unfinished could possibly be the worst thing we could do to the world around us. Have you ever been very close to giving up or moving on and some tiny act from another person changed your mind or reminded you what you were about to lose?”

“Sure,” said the second man with a slightly puzzled expression.

“Did you ever stop to think,” asked the first man, “that perhaps this random thing that changed your mind was the result of something random itself? What if somewhere – five, six, or maybe seventy persons removed from you – a word, look or gesture had set in motion a chain of events that led to the moment that changed your mind and perhaps saved your life? But, what if – seventy persons before you – someone had decided they had lived enough, that they would leave this life unfinished regardless of the consequences? That chain of events might never have happened to save your life. So, then, that person seventy people removed from you – by leaving their life unfinished – left holes in countless other lives he or she may have never known of.”

“That’s kind of a big thought,” said the second man, looking at his hands folded on the table.

“I suppose it is,” said the first man, “but it is also an amazingly hopeful thing to think that the world is not out of control, that perhaps it is just unfinished and there is still a great deal to do in it that requires every hand and every tiny gesture if it is ever to be a finished work. So, then, it would be an incalculably selfish thing to deprive the world of one pair of hands, or even one tiny gesture or look that might help finish this world, wouldn’t it?”

The second man thought a moment before saying he agreed with the first and that, somehow, the thought that your life could be such a big deal if you looked at the ripples that came from it made the thing you were trying to survive seem a lot smaller.

They chatted for a few moments longer about all the ways you could impact the universe with all of the tiny things you had to do anyway: You had to live somewhere, so why not choose that place so you could help make it over new? You had to see people, so why not listen a little more and share a little more so life was broader for the meeting? You had to buy your food and somewhere, so where would you buy it so it could help the place in which you live in?

So between getting excited about the things they could do, the things the two men had to try to survive got so small - so very small - that they disappeared entirely when compared with the great business of creating the world they lived in.
SPM

(Took place at the Redeye in Old Town)

Almost Charming

2009-04-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

“Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.”
Iris Murdoch

Someone. Something. Someplace. Dame Murdoch’s words gave me cause to stop and wear a somewhat pissy grin for a moment. In that moment I suddenly found a reason for the perfectly confident and seemingly ever-negative comments about our neighborhood delivered by persons who have as much connection with it as I have with an affluent lifestyle:

They do not know its charm. Period.

Opinions regarding certain parts of, and people in, our city seem to spring from the same root as malicious gossip: If it’s good, why mention it? If it’s bad, then repeat it into immortality.

Is it still true that white people and black people in Birmingham, Alabama attend different schools and must only ride certain public conveyances? Is it still true that women cannot vote in this country? Is it still true that any child born of unwed parents is still socially unacceptable? Is it still true that all Americans are rude and all Germans have expansionalist ideas? (Well. The American bit is mostly true. Ask the French.)

No, these things are mostly untrue today and so are many of the rumors passed to and fro regarding our neighborhood. It is not mostly made up of rentals where drug lords party the night away and no one cuts their grass because they are too busy stealing each other’s rims and shooting one another’s dogs.

There are films and exhibits at the Castle Museum, Spires of historic churches that chime at evensong and shine at night, the library Jesse Hoyt endowed, amazing homes waiting for a combination of love and skill to pull them away from extinction and a network of neighbors and organizations quietly having dinner in each other’s homes, tending gardens on long evenings and organizing events. The neighbor hood has slept quietly after a long period of violence and decrepitude, but it is stirring and soon there will be more life than it was build to hold.

Venice may or may not be sinking, GM may or may not survive, Obama may or may not be the economic Messiah of the United States and the Cathedral District may or may not be the ghetto its clairvoyant critics seem convinced it is. How will you know if you do not visit yourself?
SPM

Exact Centers

2009-04-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

“This is one of the exact centers of the universe & it's in charge of a lot of the beautiful & amazing things we'll take for granted in the future.”

Brian Andreas
(www.storypeople.com)

Have you Seen This Child!?

2009-04-17T05:28:00.000-07:00

St. Parsimonious: Paint, pencil, copper leaf on reclaimed oak panel. Salvaged hardware for hanger. If you know her, feel free to comment, lol. SPM.

The heart of prayer is a quiet, empty place.

2009-04-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

“But there was no prayer in Joel’s mind; rather, nothing a net of words could capture, for, with one exception, all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved… And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.”
Truman Capote
Other Voices Other Rooms
(At least, I *think* this was the work's name.)

This was our second Easter morning at St. John's, Old Town. The service was helpful in a very pertinent way, and the brunch afterward was lovely and a massive treat...so. Easter may stay, I suppose.

2009-04-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

“”What is it, my dear?”

“Ah, how shall we bear it?”

“Bear what?”

“This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?”

“We can be quiet together, and pretend – since it is only the beginning – that we have all the time in the world.”

“And every day we shall have less. And then none.””

A. S. Byatt
Possession

Life has moved so oddly, so randomly, this last six months. Passover last year was a hectic, jolly affair at our apartment on Warren Avenue with much thought, a lot of chat and barely a Jew in sight. It was a healing, starting over sort of evening. Passover this year was a much more sober thing to behold: Our good friend, Bob, had passed only the Sunday before and there was just too much going on at our house so far as demolition and destruction in the kitchen that a meal there was out of the question.

Nick, Roderick, Lindsey, Gabe and myself had date-studded roast and gefilte fish salads and swapped some chat standing in the kitchen at Dawn's. It was good. It was just different. So here's to next year in a finished house...

Lights on the River

2009-04-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

“Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen.”

There was no question in this statement. It was always said with just such a tone and twinkle as to imply we were about to do something that might land us in trouble, and always followed the statement with an infectious grin as if the fun now would be worth the trouble later.

More importantly, Bob always said, “Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen,” in a way that made it clear he had absolute faith in the ability of determined individuals to accomplish whatever it was they set out to do.

It was this confidence that inspired some of us for years, and others of us only more recently. So, for the “others”, this attitude of Bob’s was one of the first impressions of Saginaw. That being the case, who wouldn’t want to live in a community where one could change the things that one did not agree with or improve the things one was willing to work for?

Bob passed on Sunday the 5th after an incredibly long fight with an illness that swallowed his physical being whole but could not touch his scallywaggish optimism.

His funeral filled St. John’s Episcopal on Michigan Avenue to standing only. Sitting in the front out of sight behind the organ with Mel Curry waiting to do our bits, it was amazing to think that one life could have touched so many others.

Tonight a group of Bob’s friends and family – bizarre and inspiring in its diversity – met at a boat launch near Old Town to release paper lotus flowers – each holding a lit tea light – onto the river in remembrance of Bob’s life.

As the dark closed in, the group huddled in the chill night with their children, their mothers, wives, lovers and friends to take a moment and quietly reflect on what a life could be and what it could do when driven by a mad twinkle and seemingly endless energy.

Tiny lights swirled in circles as their number grew…round and round in the launch until, finally, they were taken by the river slowly toward Old Town and it’s lit spires.

It is only appropriate, I suppose, that so many tears and so many lives should meet together to make light and more light as the clouds rolled back and the moon joined the company. I think Bob would have approved. I think he would’ve grinned and said, “Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen.”
SPM

(Photo, Michael Hollenbeck, Saginaw News, 3"x5" painting on wood panel with pencil, silver and copper leaf, SPM)

King of the World

2009-02-23T08:11:00.000-08:00

This tall, bald fella with glasses came into the Red Eye, set his coat and a tote down at an empty table and began fluttering about “helping.”

He took magazines from the rack on the wall and added them according to some random internal pattern to the tables in the rest of the shop. He put creamer packets in a neat row under the non-functioning payphone in the back room while having a conversation with no one at all through the dead receiver.

He arranged a fist full of straws on the bench by the phone. He went into the bathroom, pulled the liner out of the trash can, set it on the floor, flushed the toilet, locked and closed the door with himself on the outside to prevent anyone from messing about with anything. He randomly informed customers that the coffee was very good and there was plenty of it.About the time he pulled out the duct tape and began looking for a place to use it, the owner thought maybe he should go.

”Why?!, he yipped. "I’ve made myself very clear! I’m tired of being polite to you about this! Fine…I’ll go. You know where to find me. You know where I work. Why do I have to leave? You should be doing all this (with an expansive hand gesture)! It’s not my job to stock the shop! You can call the Chinese place around the corner! I’m busy! I’m in the phonebook, you can page me. There are pagers all over town. There are clocks all over town – you probably have one at home – and they watch you through them. I don’t need this! I’m going!”

So he was gone. Pushing determinedly off to the next obsessive compulsive crisis where only he could save the situation. I’m not sure about him: is he to be pitied because he doesn’t know he’s gone momentarily crazy, or does this make him king of the world?
SPM

Writing on the Wall

2009-02-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

I got in trouble once as a child for writing on a wall. I am grown now and can write on walls as often as I like, but I still choose my moments carefully.
SPM

Flight to Chicago

2009-02-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

She showed us all how our seatbelts worked and then the plane gathered speed and took leave of the ground. I looked out the window as we rose and watched as the snow-powdered fields, trees, farm houses and roads got smaller and more exquisite until – suddenly – they were gone.

The whole world was gone and life had become incredibly simple because, at that moment, it only mattered that I had remembered to pack my toothbrush and say, “I love you,” before I left home.
SPM

Still Snowing

2009-01-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

SPM

In the Attic

2009-01-10T05:46:00.000-08:00

515 MIllard SPM.

Detroit Scenes

2008-12-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

Tina Holtz Grew up in Detroit and needed a large work of art (or series) for a challenging space in her home. After some conversation with her, this is what I came up with. Watercolor, paper, charcoal on paper. Mounted in a frame made of reclaimed moulding and hardware from buildings that will shortly not exist. Frame detailed with brushed on gilding. SPM.

Remembering Naggy

2008-12-25T04:08:00.000-08:00

When I moved back to Michigan, I was unsure I would like living here and had no idea how to connect with anyone. Until I moved into an apartment in a chopped-up old Victorian house upstairs from Naggy. (Her mother named her Agnes, but Naggy told me the name just didn’t take.) We started with nods or "hello's," moved on to the weather, then came family, and, finally, we were friends.
Naggy was eighty-years-old, swore as she said her rosary, observed a Saturday Sabbath and owned a lovely 18th century Thai Buddah, "Just in case."

Christmas day was looking all lovely in white lace and diamonds that year when I shoveled the steps of my building and headed over to Naggy's with goodies. She never cooked, only baked, so I made all of her favorite real foods and packaged them in Gladware.
(I found the best present for a woman who knew everything: A highly inaccurate, but very entertaining, biography on Lucretia Borzia [sic.] published in 1852 and bound in tacky red leather with a gold-tooled death's head grinning unconcernedly from the cover.)

We sat down in her tiny front room (I want one just as interestingly cluttered when I grow up. She even has a plaque from a London taxi commemorating the time it got hit in the Blitz.) and had slurry-thick coffee only old and young fools of the bookish kind can stand.

Toward the end of the visit I asked how she was going to put in her day. She looked out the window a minute, turned to me and said she missed snow angels. I looked out the window a minute, turned to her and asked what she wanted to do about it.

Naggy waddled outside behind me bundled from ankle to neck in fur, wearing a hat made of several dead pheasants and a quantity of brown ribbon and REEKING of moth balls. We made snow angels. We made several. And we laughed hard the whole while and whooped to no end. It was one of the best Christmas mornings ever.

Sunday at Dawn's

2008-12-14T21:58:00.000-08:00

It was a Sunday night at Dawn’s in the Bearinger Building. Music nights at Dawn’s tend to be a very eclectic bag… yesterday the place was filled with punk bands and fans.

When the bands were done, the boys done skipping in vicious circles and the furniture sorted, the air still rang with the sounds that once filled it. There was a wad of hair in the middle of the band room stuck to the floor with what later turned out to be a smear of blood, and I had learned a fascinating fact from one of the lead vocalists: Satan loves bologna. Who knew?

But Sunday was different…the evening started with Evan Mann and Haylie Miller singing soft, warm songs that could’ve been lullabies. There were original songs that talked of last Decembers in this place and past loves that echoed through everything along with a cover that was delivered with the sincerity of musicians who have decided that there is no need to reinvent when one can take up a song that exists and pass it forward…

Song For The Road
(by David Ford)

well the day cast down
lengthy shadows on unfamiliar towns
and i drove 300 miles from the place i call home
and i tipped my hat to the angel of the north
and the sun, it set fire to the heavens
on the hills over sheffield tonight
and i will sail over this countryside with new friends and old
we are nowhere but man, we’re alright
so you can keep your belief in whatever
and i’ll wear my cynicism like a tattoo
and while poets try to engineer definitions of love
oh you know that all i can think of is you
and i just can’t wait to see you on sunday
far from the traffic and the smoke and the noise
but for this evening i will play back every message that you sent
so i can sleep to the sound of your voice
oh
now i don’t lightly use words like forever
but i will love you ‘til the end of today
and in the morning when i remember everything that you are
well i know i’ll fall for you over again
now i know someday this all will be over
and it’s hard to say what most will i miss
just give me one way to spend my last moments alive
and i choose this, i choose this, i choose this
i choose this, i choose this, i choose this
i choose this, i choose this, yeah i choose…
this

The writer spoke of other places, but it seemed appropriate for the current place, time and economic climate that one should choose to savor what was now.

Thanksgiving at the Savoy

2008-11-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and Roderick and I had been packing in our apartment, then scraping and sweeping in the new old house on Millard until we decided we needed a break.

We began walking down Jefferson toward Genesee talking of this and that toward Dawn’s to grab a sandwich when it occurred to me we had not been to the Savoy in a long while so we turned down Federal and then Franklin past empty buildings and emptier lots until we came to the restaurant.

The board outside said the day’s special was Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, but no price on the board. We walked in and paused: two-thirds of the tables were filled – which was odd in itself – but the crowd seemed somehow off, as well:

There were construction workers next to a retired couple, a young Mexican couple who looked around nervously with every bite they took, and I’m certain I recognized the random vagrant who haunts the parking lot of the library asking for quarters sitting off to one corner chatting to no one in particular.

The waitress – warm smile, very tall and very slim with tidy dark hair – told us to sit anywhere, followed us to our table and set points of pumpkin pie in front of us and walked away without asking what we wanted…

When she came back I asked about the price of the special and she said the meal that day was on the house: The meal was free. The waitress told us tips were welcome to help with expenses, but not at all expected.

One of the owners said they served over 325 last year. Our waitress said it was the Savoy’s way of showing thanksgiving to others before celebrating the day with family.

Our food came out before our shock cleared and we watched as extra (volunteer) staffers cleared plates as folks ate, grinned and left.

So we ate our turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls and pie chatting with friends, neighbors and acquaintances who had all stopped in to support the second year of a very special contribution to the neighborhood we had just found out about.

It seemed lately that there have been so many national concerns over everything from the presidential election to whether Brad and Angelina hate Jennifer Aniston, that it was so *amazingly* refreshing to see a couple of small business owners supported by a hand full of friends and neighbors making a difference in the neighborhood in which they lived.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”
(Margaret Mead)