2. Michigan's Boulevard of Broken Dreams

A journey down Detroit's 12th Street.
[Table of Contents]

Urban Prairies off 12th Street.

Continuing on me and my daughter's journey through the past, we pull forward, heading back toward Michigan Avenue, and away from the abandoned train station in Detroit.  We take the jog over to 12th Street, which also sports the name Rosa Parks Boulevard, and turn left.

We head north, passed an old ball field and some abandoned lots.  The ball field is all that is left of Detroit's 100 year old baseball stadium, just more history my daughter will never come to know.

We continue north over a freeway viaduct, behind the tower of Motor City Casino, as we head to the Briggs neighborhood.  Briggs is one of Detroit's most desolate neighborhoods, with most of it's houses gone.  Stephen A. Weisberg, author of the popular Detroit Army blog, said it best when he wrote;

"It might as well have been farm country in Northern Michigan".

Of course, this was not rural Michigan.  This was the raw aftermath of a mass exodus from the City of Detroit.  Over the past couple years, I have been driving through neighborhoods like these.

I have been in many of the homes remaining in Briggs, and talked with their inhabitants.  The houses that remain are either vacant, or are often inhabited by people in bad situations.  Many inhabitants are seniors or the terminally ill.

View Larger Map

Urban prairie (above) inhabitants often paid off their homes long ago, when Detroit was still strong.  Caught in regular donut holes, many residents put all their disposable income towards medical bills and prescription drugs.  They are often too old or sick to take care of their homes, let alone participate in community efforts for change.  This is how we treat our sick and elderly in America.

Passing Spaulding Court, the area gets more desolate.  We pull off the road, near a vacant block so I can give my daughter something to drink, while I continue our story.

'Sweet Pea, why does dumb stuff seem so smart when you are doing it? Everyone has been so patient with me. I go back and look at the things I said and did, and yeah, I am the biggest idiot I know. Why else would I get so defensive?

I've been wasting time blathering on to a bunch of people who did not invite me, nor care to listen to the garbage I have been spewing. Am I ending up how everyone said I would, a disposable idiot, a poor white trash hater? Everyone might as well just call me the garbage truck, while I get pissed at anyone who tries to warn and reach out to me. This never would have happened if my brother was still here to keep me on track. Damn it, I am alone. I do not even know if anyone even reads this blog. Sometimes I doubt it.

Sometimes I wish I could just go back to the good times that were never meant to last, back to when Leland, Dave, Alisa, and Jeff used to sit around and plan our dreams. Now Stacey even hates me, and everyone else is gone. I miss them.

I think about all this every night. I cannot even fall asleep anymore. I know tomorrow will not change. Tomorrow I will let you down.

The entire time, my daughter's eyes are locked onto me, until she is nearly finished with her juice. I pull away from the decrepit lot, and continue north up Twelfth Street, entering the Woodbridge area, another Detroit neighborhood. I think back to a group of urban buildings left standing back in Briggs. Despite all odds, a local group is getting ready to restore the Spaulding Court buildings. I begin to think about all the people stuck back in the rural urban homes.'

'!@#$ this outside validation.  I can not win that fight.  Here I am, complaining about my own life and my own circumstances.  I can not save this place (Detroit), but maybe I can save you and Mommy.

00. 12th Street Synapsis: Table of Contents

Introduction:

The 12th Street Synapsis was a narrative written and posted by "Sean of Detroit" Sean Anthony Jagodzinski, in 2011. Posts were cleaned up and re-released in February 2012.


Contents:

1. Thicker, and Nothing Changes
2. Michigan's Boulevard of Broken Dreams 
3. The Garbage Dump (Adult Content) 
4. Standing Up
5. Staring Into the Sun (Adult Content)
6. Land of the Lost
7. Ghosts and Guardians
8. Good Girls and Detroit Princess (Adult Content)
9. The Wake of Detroit
10. Stargate to Atlantis
11. колобо́к, в Современный
12. Detroit: City of Sorrows
13. New Foundations
14. Ghosts of Lost Ships
15. The Fires of Change
16. Waiting on a Train
17. Hello World
18. Encore Coming Soon!
19. Encore Coming Soon!

1. Thicker, and Nothing Changes!?

An idle conversation with my daughter, at the end of the world. 

[Table of Contents]

Lost souls, in the sea of Hell.

The nights after the 2011 blizzard have been bitterly cold.  I pretty much had to turn back on the way to my blog spots in the skyscraper lobbies and atriums surrounding Campus Martius Park.

But, back to what?

Today we may be forced to give up our apartment in Downtown Detroit.  Not long ago we hoped to move up to a luxury building with a playground.  Reality of the recession hit home, and when it rains it pours.  Job trouble, school trouble, and health issues all came across the arctic with that blizzard.

Instead of blogging from Campus Martius Park, I will be taking a trip with my daughter in tow, through Detroit, and indeed American, history.

I head back to get my daughter so my wife can keep packing.  While I wait for her to finish cleaning our daughter up from snack time, I sit on the ledge in front of our 13th story window.  I think to myself; "The city looks so beautiful covered in snow.  That ground looks so far down from up here.  God, we have some hard days coming up.  I wish I could just skip over that part, or will it stay like this?"

I am interrupted by my wife telling me Baby Girl is ready to go.  We head down to our car, a small beat up two door compact, and I buckle Baby Girl into her car seat.  We turn out of the car park, and head down Michigan Avenue, strait from Campus Martius Park. Along the avenue we pass several quaint, yet run down, small urban buildings.  We are in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood, a near ideal collection of subdivisions hidden behind the commercial blight and missing teeth of Michigan Avenue.  We pass some children playing in the cold, dirty snow, on an abandoned lot, as we continue

Suddenly, a massive 20 story skyscraper appears in our line of sight.  A monstrous, beautiful horror that looks amazing enough to be a ruin of ancient Greece, Rome, or Guatemala.  The building is completely see-through, missing all its windows, and the late day sun can be seen shining through the gapping windows.  Upon arriving closer, we see the skyscraper sits behind a large park, and above a giant beautiful and horrific structure, resembling some sort of giant mausoleum, behind a barbed-wire chain link fence.  For this is the abandoned Michigan Central Station, one of Detroit's grandest ruins.

Michigan Central Station, Detroit, Michigan.

I chose this spot, the abandoned Michigan Train Depot, because of its significance.  Like so many other Detroit immigrants in The Twentieth Century, this is the first thing my grandparents saw when they came to Detroit.  Henry Ford started paying people an unheard of wage, and the masses came to the new Detroit Frontier with little more than hopes and dreams. I can see where many of today's Detroiters inherited their optimism from.

I turn our car left, into the run down park, and drive up the cracked and crumbling road to the train station, where we pull to a stop.  With our Bloggie Video Camera on the dashboard, I begin to tell my story... our story, to my daughter.

17. Hello World

Repaving Electric Avenue in Lost Cities Enlightened

It seemed to all start with a dream.  Dreams get dashed.  You really have to be able to rise from the ash.  Shine like a Phoenix.  We were flooded with hope.  Our laughter was like that of child's play.  Down with the ship our dreams sank.  My job was to captain this vessel, but I just stood stone cold in shock, as the events unfolded before us.

That's kind of what our life's like.  When we tried to rise, all we got was despised.  That's kind of what my wife's thoughts seem to be like.  I shut down; a big mistake.  While waiting for you, you waited for me.  I didn't lead.  With much love, I send to you.  Believe me that the tranquil times follow intense storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, tornadoes, and hurricanes.  I've been told an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of attention.  Be ready and protect yourself.  You never know how long it may take to fall.

When a tree falls in the woods, how much does it take down with it?

For the second world has long fallen.  On the third world, the first world is falling.  Among liars, cheats, and villains, in the fourth world we have been thrown.  Are we just products of our society and environment?  Born to work the lines?  Struggling in vain at life's chains?

To you who are close; I love you, but I am lost.

Stricken by those planes, towers burning, all are we.  As we sink our ship, on lifeboats we sit, sneering and laughing out loud.   How the Hell did we get so selfish, self loathing, and twisted?  Cold are our souls, we can't help but reexamining our goals.  As we raped and ripped you apart, like zombies we fed. It turns out the dead are now free, and it's we who are dead.

Will you forgive me?  Has everyone forgave you?  I'm not stopping.  I am reflecting, then dawning anew.

So, out of these ashes, if you find your grudge is too new, like salt in my wounds, I say Goodbye to you.  For I'll be missing my love and my crew, in this day that is dawning anew.

It's time to start over.  I am starting over.  I have started over.

I hope you enjoyed the Campus Martius Chronicle and the Campus Martius Chronicle series; The 12th Street Synapses.

16. Waiting on a Train

Are we waiting on a train bound for nowhere?

Michigan Central Station then and now.

This place has grown so empty, so cold.  We walk among the prairies and ruins that exist in the fourth world.These bustling lobbies are desolate.  The tracks here are rusted.  We are a disposable people, the outcasts of a society waiting on a train.  But, the train doesn't stop here anymore.

Then merged with now in the Michigan Central Station Lobby.
.

The loading platform at Detroit's Michigan Central Station.  

If there is one thing I learned, it's that you can't sit and wait for changes.  We have a natural attraction to the route most traveled.  He's been gone so long, but if Shane could see me now he'd be proud to call me his brother.  

It was those days that Shane taught me to snowboard as a child.  I kept trying to give up, falling, cold and sore.  He told me to get up, no brother of his was going to be a quitter.  I didn't quit, and that feeling of overcoming yourself was the greatest lesson I ever learned.  He's not around anymore, but he helped ignite a fire that just seems stronger than most.

A train passes Downtown Detroit.

15. The Fires of Change

Sometimes, the fires of change are needed.  

Sometimes fire is needed to clear away the dead brush so that new trees may grow.

Sometimes the weather is dry, and you can be a needed spark to light a brush fire.

Sometimes the weather is wet, and you have to dry the woods to get a spark.  

Sometimes the weather is wet, and you are one of the droplets of water keeping the fires of change away.

Sometimes you have to work through pain to get joy.

What more can I say?

But....

Love can be a war zone if you let it be.

14. Ghosts of Lost Ships

A Leadership Parable 

We set sail from the bay under the Colossus of Rhodes, with the warm wind to our backs, and the open sea out in front of us. You could call me Odysseus. No one could stop me. Ignorance is bliss. Who are they to tell us we are ignorant?

You'll force your way into that role, not knowing you don't own the skills to own it, you lead. Some hit you with jeers. Some cheer you on. In the end you'll lose it all, and no one will care, as you seek to find the treasure of Detroit; The Spirit of The New Colossus.

On the second day of our journey we took advantage of the smooth seas, and ordered more speed, as we rushed towards the mighty blue horizon.  In our hearts was The Spirit of The New Colossus

On the third day of our voyage, warning came in that icebergs had been spotted along our projected course. With the crow's nest manned, I knew we would be able to see any dangers that lay in our path, allowing plenty of time to change course, if so needed.  We sailed with The Spirit of The New Colossus.

That evening, we neared the halfway mark of our journey. The crew marked the evening with celebration. For we only took into account that we were nearing our destination, never stopping to think that we would never again be any further from shore.  Our blindness should have been apparent, but we were blinded by the light of The Spirit of The New Colossus.

As I dreamed snugly in my quarters, and the crew celebrated, I awoke to the warning bells of the crows nest. For that night was an idle calm night. A night where the many possible troubles were the last thing on my mind.  On my mind was The Spirit of The New Colossus.

13. New Foundations

Responsibility, Ramadan, and establishing yourself. 

Juicy, by The Notorious B.I.G..

I'm sitting here in Saginaw, Michigan; my wife's hometown.  Recalling the birth of my daughter, and how I am letting her down.  I am defeated, unable to do a dream job due to my own inabilities, and banned from my Internet forums.  My friends and family stopped calling.  I told them I had to go to get where I'm going.  I told them I would find my way and come back for them.

Over five years have gone by.  I haven't come back yet.

Detroit is moving forward, and I'm not.  I spent too much time sitting on networking and message board sites.  I could have been working.  I blew my money instead of investing and saving.  I partied instead of being responsible.

My wife, daughter and I are on welfare, food stamps, and are a drain on the few family and friends that do exist.

I'm uneducated, I've been depressed, and am an unrealistic dreamer.  I have issues getting by socially.  My mentors aren't even deadbeats or criminals because I can't even keep up relationships with the fringes of society, and all I am surrounded by is often the fringes of society.

I have long overdue library books, videos, and credit card bills.  I am having trouble getting a bank account, and if I get a job I don't get to keep the money.  I still need sleeping pills to fall asleep some nights, I'm self medicating.  I need help man.

My grandparents gave up so much for me.  I guess I'm the ghost of The American Dream.

Who out there can relate?

12. Detroit; City of Sorrows

You turned into a prison.  Have you ever been to prison or a lockup for the night?   How about a probationary period or jail?  No, that will never happen to you, right?  You think there is a thickening line between good and evil.  You're not the same as a criminal.  Yet here you are, stuck in this madness.

11. колобо́к, в Современный

Today I feel more alive than I have ever felt in my life!

Puppet Art Theater in
Detroit.

Yet I feel like I have the fires of Hell burning down my neck with some devil; like the Nain Rouge, whispering depressing words into my ear.  God, people are probably beginning to think I'm bipolar, but they don't know.  Everytime something goes wrong, it's like I got a damn lutin in my ear; I end up thinking about all the wrongs in my life, and that can bring me down from the highest high.

From that post on that cool dark Spring night back in March; that night I pulled my rundown G.M. compact onto the Belle Isle bridge, and gazed up at the lights of the G.M. on high, above the International skyline of confusion.  All the way through those ghosts and guardians of 12th Street, to the latest trip through the Detroit Hart Plaza stargate.  It was almost like I was playing Russian roulette on that island, and the only people who came looking for me were good Samaritans reincarnate, and maybe the spirit or thoughts from people who are no longer around here.

Detroit skyline with the bright blue G.M.
lights of the Renaissance Center.

I feel like I should be dead.

It turns out I was just the Kolobok baking in the oven.  Ha, ha, now I'm free and you can't catch me.  I'm the Kolobok, man!

And, don't worry about those letters about my sleeping beauties.  I'll wake them.  In fact, they're all beautiful, and they've all been asleep to long.  Come help me wake the roosters.  Rise and shine!

Over two hundred years ago my city burned.  There were only chimneys left.  The fires left this city in turmoil.  But, the people got themselves together, and with some help, stuck around and rebuilt.  That city was Detroit, Michigan, during the great fire of 1805.  Great things can be done when you stick together, all as one.  Obstacles are as boulders that are reduced to pebbles.

10. Stargate to Atlantis

The Spirit of The New Colossus

9. The Wake of Detroit

Our Death and Resurrection
This post is for anyone who has ever gone through trials in their life, and had it made harder by people around you not knowing what you've been going through.

Detroit Tiger Stadium Demolition.

"You took our country from its infancy into industry. And your name still carries with it, the idea of a nation. Built on steel, muscle and sweat. you became a city that carried a country. Who know that nothing is accomplished without hard work, without sacrifice. When you hurt, we hurt..."-Detroit Rap Artist Eminem

A Letter To My Sister

Dear Tracey,

I hope everything is going well in out on the East Coast. How is you cat adjusting?  How's my little nephew Zach? I love keeping up on Facebook and seeing pictures, he's getting so big.  Kylie is doing good. She is so smart, she already knows her ABC's, shapes, and animals. 

I hope Ron (your husband) is enjoying his new job, and you yours. It stinks that you guys had to move out of state. It seems like everyone is moving away from Michigan now-a-days. You mentioned on Facebook that the things on the news out in small towns cracks you up. I can only imagine what type of things you mean. Maybe we should all long for such places where it amazes us what makes the news, rather than being confused why something hasn't, that should of.... nothing in particular in mind here, just rambling and small talk.

The weather has been beautiful lately, I hope you saw the pictures of Kylie swimming for the first time. I try to follow everything you post about Zach, you don't even know! Every day is so great, I hope you are enjoying him growing up as much as I am with Kylie!

Sigh... I guess I need some advice, and also someone just to talk to. I am completely and utterly lost. If you would be so kind to listen to me.... even though some of this is whining.... at an age where I should have long hardened up and figured out how to deal with all of life's hardships. But I know, you're busy, and I apologize about the length.

I just got off the phone with Dad. He invited us to go a bar-b-cue tomorrow, and I wanted to go so bad that I asked him to spot us for some gas money. I haven't seen him since Christmas, and I just so wanted to be there with Kally and Kylie, and now where going. But, he said (after saying he could offer to help if we ever need it to come visit, some time ago) that; "wow you guys are doing so bad that you don't even have money for gas". Sigh. He offered half the money, $10. I have to figure out how to make it down there now after already telling Kylie and Kally they were going to see Grandpa. The trip with these gas prices is $20-$30 round trip.... gulp!

It's Summer now, and were living with Kally's Mom; she's awesome. She bought us furniture, helped us with our rent, and now is giving us a place to stay. But, it's wearing on her, I can tell. 

Kally hated our little attempt to fly (metaphor) down in Detroit. In that smelly, old apartment (great place to lay a foundation, a blank canvass that city is... but only if you know how to paint). It had mice, we got cats (expensive mistake) and Kally doesn't know this but one night I woke up and saw a roach in bathroom... I killed it. Eww... there are some nice urban lofts and condos in the city, we went and looked at them (no clue why), but that isn't where we were. We were stuck in a old crumbling dangerous building owned by a slum lord, laughed at by all our friends and family out in Livonia and Saginaw, and held for contempt by all our poor friends (one person's slum is another person's oasis. The poor people mentality don't live Downtown, only hopeless dreamers do).

I had to get us out of there, it wasn't an oasis, or our pursuit of happiness. It was an elevator, and that elevator was headedstraight down to Hell. I walked away from a job that I was incompetent for (and would thus be losing soon anyway), and told them I had a nervous breakdown. The stories elsewhere to anyone of why that happened where only half truths, the real truth is in this letter. I was able to do the jobs I trained myself to do.

Now just the other night, Kally... (my wife) came crying to me, saying that she hated being back here, and that we felt lost.  Just trying to get help from these government programs is like like a job in itself. The weight of the world is on my shoulders in Uncle Sam's food stamps, and how I will explain this to Kally and Kylie.

Mom told me to buy a lottery ticket. She got us a snow globe with an angel that says to pray for hope.

Kally's Mom bought us a lottery ticket for Fathers and Mothers Day and told us to work hard, then she got us a bunch of chocolates, cookies, and ho-hos. She looks less worried since we got on food stamps. She got mad at us from changing her normal grocery list recently.  I gained thirty pounds since I have been here.

Geese, sorry, this is getting depressing. Where is my hope snow globe to say a prayer too so that god will come and save me? Hehe, sorry about the sarcasm, just trying to keep some light heartedness in here.  I appreciate everything, but that just isn't what I needed.

Please, offer me some words of advice.  I'm lost, I have my faith back... and I will even be bold enough to say that I don't need a money... or a fish... but I could use someone who could give me direction and maybe teach me how to fish... or if you know anyone who can help... it would be appreciated.

Geese, where is the damn violin?  Honestly, a tombstone?

I would love to talk more on the phone, and know I am putting you in a weird place by asking for an ear and some life advice.


Sincerely,

Sean Anthony

Rekindling A Flame

“We need to get a little bit of positive attitude out there.  Too many are mired in the past glories of the industrial era, led by the auto industry".
-Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

8. Good Girls and Detroit Princesses (N.S.F.W.)

Cynics and Sex

Descendants is a short film from Heiko van der Scherm -- Writer and Director.

Blonde woman on a radiant morning.

At times I felt dead inside.  The ups in life just always get reversed.   I start to fall, reach out for your hand, but there's no one there.  We all need somebody to lean on, but it goes to show me that I'm on my own.  Where were you when we needed you?  Come here and put your chips down.  Roll the dice and take your craps.  I put mine on 5 and 9 (good bet), so why do you keep playing sucker bets?

Excuse me sir, but I think our games are too different to compare.  Go back to your Monopoly board and play fair, and don't worry about my life.  The stakes are high, but what do you expect in this Russian roulette, hey guy?

Woman at the Packard Plant.

Now, just before our worlds end, and we're somewhere around twenty seconds from being dead, I'll encounter you. You who said we'd never make it.  It was you who laughed at me, you who abandoned me.  I can still feel you looking up asking why God had forsaken me.  You smiled while I left, and laughed when I cried.  My humiliation wasn't complete until you started kicking me while I was down.  It was like you came after the battle, onto the field, to shoot the bloody maimed  survivors.  To Hell with you, you're worthless.

I was moving closer to death, but stopped digging that grave.  There's just nothing you can do to stop me with the hate that you let eat at your soul.

WHEW!  You smell.  Get out of here.  You're repelling my readers.

Woman after the apocalypse.

Bring Me To Life

"...Save me from the nothing I’ve become
Now that I know what I’m without, you can't just leave me.  Breathe into me and make me real.  Bring me to life"."Bring Me To Life"(feat. Paul McCoy)

 Die Detroit, Die!

7. Ghosts and Guardians

Children of the City of Destiny

1967 National Guardsman shout commands within modern day Detroit.

No! This can't be right.  This can't be right, can it?  Change; needed but never found.  Is change even something found begging on a street corner, or are we responsible for creating the change we want to see?  No, maybe it isn't that complex.  Maybe the change we seek is mislabeled, and we are misguided.  Maybe everything is already here, and only must be reestablished and realized like ghosts as guardians.  Change; laying dormant for these children of the city of destiny.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control"

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Keweenaw copper county; Calumet, Michigan was a mining town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, at a time when Michigan was experiencing a great "copper rush".  It was early in the Twentieth Century, a time when steamship routes and rail lines were in place of motorways (expressways) and flight paths, and the occasional horse and buggy could still occasionally be scene riding alongside automobiles, though very rarely.

6. Land of the Lost

I'm sorry.  I'm sorry I made you and Mommy live in that dump.  I'm sorry I started slacking off with my work.  I'm sorry I need the government to help take care of you.  I'm sorry I can't seem to keep up with my classes.  I'm sorry I can't play with you more, and that we have to be so far apart right now.  I'm sorry I didn't stand up to the challenges I faced.  I'm sorry I couldn't save you from loss, or teach you how to overcome it.  I'm sorry I couldn't make this a better place for you and your generation.  I'm sorry I failed at everything I ever set out to do for you.  I'm sorry I couldn't buy you a Christmas present just from me last year.

Abandoned church & school along 12th Street in Detroit, Michigan.

(Part of the 12th Street Synapsis).

Recently, I was made aware of a former schoolmate's passing.  We shared some moments in our life, spending time together in a room of life.  In a never ending transition of adjoining corridors and rooms, we gave a hug and goodbye, wishing each other well in the long journey of life ahead. While we were not terribly close, her last blog entry maintained on her MySpace page by family and friends, really touched me.  She brought me back down to Earth and reality, like nothing else ever could.  I'll leave you here with the ending line excerpts from her last blog post, made before she died, quoted below:

"... i actually got a job. im a manager at dollar general.its actually a pretty cool job. OMG and get this...DANNY GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!!! i have a jack russel terrior now.. so all you fuckers better watch out my little 8 months old ankel biter is gonna get you....lol...
and i started college 2 days ago. im so excited about it. im actually gonna be able to do something with my life instead of being stuck in a dead end job like most people that i know... well i guess thats allt he updates i can give you for now".

Me and my daughter continued on our car ride from the abandoned Michigan Central Train Station.  We traveled up 12th Street, past the sites, sounds, and memories of the desolate urban prairies of the Briggs neighborhood, 12th and I-94 warehouse district, and the cultural center of rundown Detroit.  It was here that we came to an amazing site.  Looming up ahead was a massive abandoned cathedral.  I pull off to the side of the road to snap a picture.

5. Staring Into The Sun (N.S.F.W.)

Blinded By The Light

Continuing our ride down Twelfth Street, we pass a formerly great grilling spot, a hangout spot.  You can smell the succulent home cooked soul food.... ah what times were had here, and what times will be had.... I drift....


Back before the youngest Estevez became a Sheen, this is how we use to get down to the town.


The night would start up about half past whenever work got out, and we all headed over to the party spot.  What was the party spots in Michigan and Detroit?  Well I'll tell you, it was either my studio to some shades of Bleau, with the most fun always at the after parties.  The after party was at Big Jeff's Trailer...... out in Canton, and that was our spot  where we came here to be.  It's a dark night snowy, but an after party is in the wind on this night.


Dave:  Here, he is he's finally here!

ShadesofBleu: hear? what?

Dave:  And we won't stop, let's celebrate man.  Here, I'll pour you some more of that ever clear that will make you sit up!

Dave:  NOW DRINK UP!  Abstaine to absinthe

ShadesofBleu: WHAT!?

Dave: Nothing, nothing.

ShadesofBleu: This is the after party to the concert?

Dave: Yeah, but uh, you aren't looking too good.

ShadesofBleu:  They must have slipped me something....

Dave: Yeah probably, that shut can happen when you;re drinking down minnies.  ARE YOU HEARING ME?

ShadesofBleu:  Oh yes. oh and I am..... Jeff's trailer park rocks off the rocks, and oh my god.... the white light

God:  Our people need us

ShadesofBleu:  It feels so warm and fuzzy and I must save them all, I must save Detroit.

I mean tonight I'm the shit, putting the win in winning, But good God why is there so much pain, why so much sorrow?

God:  The path you need lies in the light, look into the light...

ShaesofBleu: I am!

God: towards the light,

ShadesofBleu: I am ready oh savior.

God:  towards the light.

ShadesofBleu:  I'm here, I'm here!

God: Come into the light!

ShadesofBleu:  Yes, I just want to play with you.   We will have many good trips..

4. Standing Up

Procrastination and Our Crisis of Confidence

"A community is not found, it is created.  How can I just take this?  How can I sit here in defeat, a hypocrite, telling my daughter she can do anything she sets her mind to?  I know no one who has done this.  Defeat is all around me, it's all I've ever known.  Daughter, know this, that your father did not just go quietly into the night, another victim of this factory we are all born into.  He fought, and he tried to be proof for you, to you, that all things can be done."

(This entry contains dusted off archives from a three piece editorial I did in 2009).

Traveling further up Detroit's 12th Street, my daughter and I come to a stop at a traffic light.  The street signs are missing from this intersection, and only one of the two red lights is working.  A mother and a young child cross the street, they are caring groceries.  They take a diagonal across one of the urban prairies, and disappear behind a collapsing alley garage, gone from view.  It's a reminder that I am in a place comparable, at times, to Hell.  At the same time, this mother and child are an affirmation of truth, that people here are still fighting, and still dreaming.

I can just hear them now; "why are you beating a dead horse, Sean? You are setting yourself up for disappointment. You can't change anything, why even try?" Have you ever heard that before? I have.

During preparation for Super Bowl XL, I remember reading an article stating that the Detroit public lighting department has had some problems with keeping all the streetlights on. In their defense, the department head mentioned that the problem isn't actually fixing the streetlights, it's going around and testing them. Supposedly, this is part of the reason things get so out of hand. In a similar analogy, this is part of the reason I feel compelled to pick up trash or clean up graffiti. I just got sick of walking past it, over, and over, and over.

Huh, you and I getting involved; who would have thought it actually makes a difference?

Part I

Some time ago, when things were just starting to get depressing around here again, we were talking about why optimistic views are viewed as junk in Metro Detroit, over on DetroitYES.com.  I think that entire discussion could be summed up by saying; "The optimists view long term goals, while the pessimists seem to view the short term goals". Oversimplified? I'd love to hear more thoughts, either over there, or in the comments section here, when that discussion is eventually archived.

The comment by Retroit was interesting. He mentioned something many others have said; "The good thing about being a pessimist in Detroit is that you are rarely disappointed!". I don't understand the fear of disappointment. If you need unhappiness to make happiness, than aren't these people just saying they'd rather never ever be happy again? Am I misinterpreting this?

Later in that thread, Supersport mentioned the mentality of; "I'll believe it when I see it". But... that's just it. Some do see it, just like Ford saw the automobile of tomorrow, and Hudson saw a large shopping district on Woodward. Why is it that we laugh instead of encourage and lead? If you want it to happen, do something... whatever you can, with whatever you have, to make it so. The recent announcement of the Eastern Market Plan is a perfect example. I remember a few people laughing at it, and saying they'll believe it when they see it. Other's pointed out how much needed to get done. Zoning changes, building redevelopments, and a change dealing with the parking meters.

If you don't see it now, then you never will. That was an imaginary vision, that was a preview of what was to come, if we want it to be. That means mass acceptance and participation. Business owners and residents need to locate there, and everyone has to pick some of the million tasks up, multiplied to leave room for the many small imminent failures.

It is what it is, and will exist as we want it. We must plan on our furnace to crash, and be tough enough to keep ourselves going when the world outcasts us, and our people call us derelict parents or evil slumlords for it.