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more plantings [May. 23rd, 2012|11:04 am]
When I was in New York, Bob and my mom pulled weeds and added more landscaping at the Bagley house. Their master plan for "the triangle" isn't finished, but this is the progress they made by Sunday evening:





The Japanese maple tree is from Wabash. They said that the ground is very hard to dig in and is filled with chunks of concrete. They also uncovered multiple antique glass bottles, including a Heinz Worcestershire sauce bottle with a glass stopper. I'll have to research the names on the other bottles.

When my mom and I were working on the initial plantings in front of the house the weekend before last, she said, "I'd go berserk if I had to do the landscaping at the house on Elkhart," referring to her former home that she rents out. I told her, "I AM going berserk!"

We'll all be working on the house, inside and out, all next weekend. And you know lots of photos will follow.

Thanks, mom!
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mini road trip 2012 [May. 21st, 2012|10:17 pm]
This year's annual/semi-annual New York trip was trimmed down to a mini-vacation for financial and time-related reasons. I was on the road by 6am on Saturday morning and arrived in New York in a little over nine hours. And YES I downloaded the About Schmidt soundtrack and listened to it there and on the way back--who the fuck do you think you're talking to?! Other albums that got more than one listening were Godspeed You Black Emperor's Lift You Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven and Tom Waits' The Black Rider.

I booked a room in Astoria (a neighborhood in Queens) on Airbnb.com. The apartment's renter ended up having to go out and leave a hidden key for me. I actually never even saw the guy the whole time I was there, although I did hear him come in late both nights. Nothing against the guy, but you know me--I was oddly relieved to not even meet the person whose home I was staying in. The apartment itself was very clean, comfortable, and quiet.


My room is through the open door.


After getting settled in, I met up with Liz. We were both too tired to go far for dinner, so we just walked to a nearby Indian restaurant. I picked this place because I was amused at driving over 600 miles to eat at Seva.


It's also the name of the one vegetarian restaurant in Detroit. That's the joke.


The following morning, I walked around Astoria for about an hour to oggle the houses. The residential parts of the neighborhood consist of very densely packed, mostly wood-frame, flat-roofed houses. Unfortunately, most were covered in vinyl, aluminum, or asphalt siding. I went around undressing them with my eyes imagining what they'd look like with their original clapboard siding restored.



Some places had built-in garages entered from the street. I don't think these blocks have public alleys running through them.



The neighborhood seemed very peaceful, although I was exploring it early on a Sunday morning. I loved the postage-stamp front lawns most of these houses had. I couldn't get a photo of the best front gardens because they tended to have people working in them. The area reminded me of certain parts of southwest Detroit, with all of the Hispanic people and homes decorated with wrought iron. Those Hispanics love their wrought iron.



I met Liz around 11am. Even though she and I aren't super close friends, I wanted my visit to express the value I place on the friendship as well as express solidarity and support after all she's been through lately. But first I decided to buy some donuts.



The first place we went to on our vegan food binge was Dun-Well Doughnuts, a 100% vegan donut shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At first I got overly excited, declaring that we would buy ONE DOZEN donuts, but Liz calmly explained that two for each of us was more than enough. I got one chocolate and one sprinkled vanilla--she got one peanut butter & jelly and one banana-cream. Both of mine were great, but Liz didn't really like the banana-cream one.



We ended up driving my car to Brooklyn because it was a lot easier than using public transportation. Apparently, we would have had to take a train west into Manhattan, then go south, then come back east over the river into Brooklyn. In fact, we drove everywhere the whole day and did not use public transportation once. Liz enthusiastically praised the speed and convenience of the automobile several times, which was really weird to hear from someone who has lived her entire life in a city with a public transportation system so advanced that she has never needed to obtain a driver license. I decided to interpret her praise as a flattering compliment on Detroit.

Next we had brunch at Champs, a vegan diner also in Brooklyn. (It turns out that every place we ate at that day was in Brooklyn.) I got the French toast slam, and she got biscuits and gravy. Everything was awesome.


Our breakfast dishes came with salad. Because, you know. Veganism.


Later I asked Liz if it was misogynist of me to enjoy the fact that the waitress' shirts were pretty much transparent. She said I wasn't misogynist, just sleezy.

We had to find something touristy to do while waiting for our food to digest and kill time until dinner. So where do a vegan and vegetarian who became friends while interning at an animal sanctuary go between stops on a vegan food binge? To a *zoo* of course!


I think I'm asking why it's taking so long to take this picture.


The main building at the Bronx Zoo was designed by George L. Heins and Christopher G. LaFarge in 1897. Heins & LaFarge also designed the impossibly beautiful (and no-longer used) City Hall Subway Station.








I AM ON VACATION.


We drove back Brooklyn to visit Foodswings, a vegan fast food restaurant.


I guess this would look charming without the garbage bags.


Foodswings is definitely a place you go to for the novelty of it and not for actual nourishment. I got three barbecue "drumsticks" with a side of macaroni and cheese and a chocolate milkshake. The food was very greasy and unhealthy, but it was a worthwhile experience. I should have gotten a burger instead, but I didn't because they weren't reviewed well.


Yeah, I guess that's framed good enough.


We tried going to a nearby place for pie or cake, but they were all out--so we just came back to Foodswings for mint chocolate milkshakes. Then we walked around and complained about how irritatingly "cool" Brooklyn is (and Corktown wants to be). But of course we made these complaints wearing our black plastic glasses, with Liz in her army cap and me in my size-small American Apparel t-shirt. No, but seriously, fuck those people--with their beards and their "ironically" ugly clothing and self-infantilizing internet memes! Give me your delicious vegan mint chocolate chip milkshakes and get out of my sight! Just kidding, you guys are all right. No, seriously, go away.

Even though I skipped the upstate New York portion of the trip this time, I might do that in the fall. Possibly. But first I have to visit my family in Arizona this year for sure.


Driving back home through Pennsylvania.


P.S. I stole the line "But first I decided to buy some donuts" from "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Albuquerque".
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I guess THIS post is okay to not be friends-only [May. 15th, 2012|09:24 am]
If you want something done, you have to do it yourself. By which I mean you ask for your mom to help you with manual labor the day before Mother's Day. On Saturday we pulled all of the weeds from in front of La Maison de Bumblebee, brought over plants and paving stones from the yard at Wabash, and arranged all of it (plus some lilies of the valley that my mom brought from her yard) in a neat pattern. I can't say what was originally here, but Victorians were all about formal planting arrangements.



Yeah, I still have to sweep the curb and street. I'll get to that this week.

On Sunday I took my mom to Inn Season Cafe for Mother's Day brunch. She had said before that she wanted to see the Titanic exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum, so I took her there. It was really interesting, although it was a bit of a downer that we spent Mother's Day at an exhibit that overwhelms visitors with existential dread. But it was still very much worth the visit!
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About Schmidt [Apr. 26th, 2012|11:20 pm]
I'm not very good at seeking out great works of art. Usually I only find them by chance or because someone goes out of their way to show them to me. Joe Krause has exposed me to probably more than half of the non-classical music that I like. And I would never have seen About Schmidt if not for Kevin McGillen. It's one of those movies that is so good that it feels like it was made specifically for me, exploring the themes of life in the Midwest, loneliness, rejection, and the inevitability of death.

(This post contains some spoilers and probably shouldn't be read by those who haven't seen the movie.)



Read more... )
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M&M's® Speckled Eggs Easter Blend [Mar. 26th, 2012|04:33 pm]
Every day that I skip lunch, I always tell myself that hunger pangs come and go, and that it's no big problem. But then every day I do this I forget about the whole "feeling like utter shit" part and then regret my decision. The stupid vending machine wouldn't even let me buy peanuts.

When I'm out of blood sugar--or whatever the hell is scientifically happening--things just stop making sense to me. Take this ad on my email page for example. It says "Make Easter decorating fun with M&M's® Speckled Eggs Easter Blend."



Where am I, Bizarro World? Is the Mars Corporation implying that Easter decorating isn't already fun? Is there some other reason why people do it? If you don't like it, who the fuck is making you? Well, it is no matter, for the dull drudgery of Easter decorating has now been made FUN ... by buying pre-decorated, mass-manufactured M&M's®!

And there is something else I'm not getting. Here is the way I understand it:
Step 1: The infinite creator of the universe incarnates in human form.
Step 2: We humans torture him to death.
Step 3: This death is a blood sacrifice that is the final vicarious atonement for all sins of the human race collectively.
Step 4: The corporeal manifestation of the creator rises again to live forever as those who accept his gift of atonement will live forever with him after death.
Step 5: Make Easter decorating fun with M&M's® Speckled Eggs Easter Blend.

Am I fucking missing something?

WHY WON'T THE VENDING MACHINE TAKE MY DOLLAR??/
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operation: try not to die alone [Mar. 3rd, 2012|12:35 am]
My bullshit false modesty about dating-related LiveJournal posts isn't fooling you, and it isn't fooling myself. So let's get on with it.

Operation: Try Not To Die Alone is yielding mixed results. Before tonight I had two OK Cupid dates. The Thursday date went really well and we have a second date planned; and the date last Saturday certainly was not bad, but I did not feel a connection to her. She was cute and cool, but asking yourself if you feel drawn to someone is like asking whether or not you are hungry or if you should have children: if you aren't sure, the answer is "no". Unfortunately, there is no way to say "let's be friends" without sounding like an asshole, so I hope it happens on its own.

And then there was tonight's date. This woman actually emailed *me* first, and was the only person to do so on OK Cupid. Although she wasn't exactly my type, I thought, "What the hell?" What I took as flattery should have been "clue number one". After we planned to meet up, I was looking through her answers to the site's survey questions. One of the questions asks users if they are on the site to find a partner with whom they wish to have children, and she answered "yes". So that was "clue number two" right there.

Now, I'm obviously no Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Having said that, let's not pretend that it isn't a bad feeling to experience thorough non-attraction to one's date. This wasn't a case of "You're cute but I'm not feeling it"--it was more like, "Oh god, I don't have to, do I??" Before Operation: Try Not To Die Alone was initiated, I only dated people I either previously knew as friends or first hung out with under platonic pretenses. This policy shall be reinstituted immediately following tomorrow's final OK Cupid date.



Here's an idea: Don't go to your place of employment on a first date. I thought going to Friday Night Live at the DIA would be cool because I can get myself and guests in for free. God has clearly punished me for being a cheap asshole. I was walking around thinking, "I hope no one thinks that this person is my date," and then remembering that she is. I kept on hoping that the staff who work evenings would all be people who I don't know--but no, it was all the same security officers, front desk clerks, etc. as usual.

As if that wasn't bad enough, she brought along a book that she had borrowed from the programming manager who was coincidentally her ex-brother-in-law (or something). I tried to explain to her that he is working right now and doesn't want to hang onto a fucking book while trying to manage the logistics of a live musical performance. I remained seated when she brought it up to him. I hope she didn't tell him who she was with, but I'm pretty sure that God saw to it that I was punished for my shallowness as well as my cheapness.

And just to add a special touch of weirdness to it all, the woman stared at my shoulders the entire evening. So what the fuck was THAT? I actually started to ask her at some point, but she interrupted me and I decided to just drop it. She stared at them with increasing frequency until by the time I dropped her off at her car, she was literally just sitting there and looking right at them while talking to me. It gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I came home and inactivated my OK Cupid account. However, as I mentioned I do have one final OK Cupid date tomorrow evening, but I am actually optimistic about it.
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women in movies [Feb. 10th, 2012|11:03 pm]
I'm not done complaining about Super 8 yet.

I was disappointed that the final act of the movie consisted of the protagonist rescuing the attractive blond girl he was infatuated with from the monster. That's a bad enough cliche by itself, but it's also the exact plot of Cloverfield. (Minus the blond part.)

I'm no super-liberal, but when is the last time you saw a movie where a woman risks her safety to rescue the man with whom she is in love? I literally don't think I've ever seen one. Also, this movie just barely passes the Bechdel Test. In case you don't know, the Bechdel Test asks whether a film has at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man--a very charitable bare minimum standard of exhibiting at least some female perspective. I didn't even think the movie passed the test, but a poster on the Bechdel Test Movie List confirms: "Scantily clad teenager Jen tells her mother, Mrs. Kaznyk, that it's not fair that she can't go to a party or wear even more revealing clothing."


I guess this technically counts...


* * * * *


One of my favorite 80s movies is Aliens, which I have watched countless times since I was little. I'm not sure what convinced my parents to let me repeatedly rent a gory, R-rated movie from the video store, but I'm glad they did. I wonder whether that film affected my view of gender roles growing up. For what it's worth, here are the adult female characters in Aliens:


Colette Hiller as Corporal Ferro


Sigourney Weaver as Lieutenant Ripley


Jenette Goldstein as Private Vasquez


Now THOSE are WOMEN! Oh, and here is Lieutenant Ripley in Alien 3:


I find this appealing. In that way.


But even in Aliens, Ripley is rescuing a child, not a male lover. It's not as if there aren't "strong female characters" in movies. Sarah Connor manages to save herself in The Terminator, and she does protect her son in The Terminator 2, although the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) ultimately saves the day. I get the feeling that women are allowed to be heroines once in awhile, but audiences find it too emasculating for a woman to rescue her husband or lover. Jodie Foster's character in The Brave One avenges her fiancee's death, but she does not rescue him.


I also find this appealing.


I can think of films where a woman incidentally saves a man's life, but the film always climaxes with him ultimately being the hero (e.g., 28 Days Later). And then there are movies where a woman "saves" her man, but merely through the power of love. Belle saves the Beast by falling in love with him in Beauty and the Beast, and Trinity somehow convinces Neo to stop being dead by falling in love with him and crying at the end of The Matrix. I am not counting those.

There have got to be films where a woman puts herself in harm's way to rescue her male lover, and I hope that my failure to produce an example is partly to blame on my being a movie dilettante and not a "film buff". If you can think of an example for me, please let me know.

And finally we come to Fidelio--not a film, but Beethoven's only opera. It was composed around 1805 (and revised later) and based on a libretto written in 1798 by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. The opera is set in a prison run by a corrupt warden...


...no, not this one...


...who is holding his political enemy, an innocent man, in a basement dungeon. The innocent man's wife Leonore disguises herself as a young man ("Fidelio") and works in the prison to try to find where they are keeping her husband. The warden receives intelligence that a state minister is going to perform a surprise inspection of the prison soon, so he orders "Fidelio" and one of his other workers to dig a grave in the man's cell, after which he will come down himself and commit the murder. But at the last moment, Leonore reveals that she is the prisoner's wife, pulls out a loaded pistol, and says (sings): "One more word--and you'll be dead!"



As she does this, a trumpet signaling the arrival of the minister is heard in the distance. The warden gives up, and Leonore is spared from having to take a human life. The prisoners are freed, and in the finale the chorus sings in praise of Leonore. Two hundred years later, I can't even think of a movie I've seen where a female character is permitted to perform a similar act.

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einstein on the beach [Jan. 21st, 2012|05:31 pm]
Last night I attended a performance of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach. I was going to buy my ticket from Joe and Matt, but they very generously declared it to be a late birthday present. This is the first production of the "opera" in twenty years, and last night was the first performance. The producers claim that the shows in Ann Arbor are "previews" and that the "real" premiere will be in Monpellier, France in March. That is bullshit--I hereby declare last night's performance to be the premiere!

I have been listening to this piece since my adolescence, and finally seeing it in person is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. But there were a couple of disappointments. The A-G-C bassline that begins the opera is supposed to repeat while the audience is being seated, but Knee Play 1 was just *ending* as we entered the auditorium. I was really bummed out to miss it.

The other disappointment was the fucking asshole in the back who would NOT SHUT UP. He was talking on and off throughout the entire performance. Our glaring at him didn't work, and neither did my "shooshing" of him. Oh, and by the way, it turns out that the man was Robert Wilson. I shooshed Robert Fucking Wilson. As in:



He is the co-creator of the opera. It turns out he was giving notes on the performance, according to Matt, who was sitting closer and could actually make out what he was saying. I didn't recognize him until he was called on stage with Philip Glass. Wilson also collaborated with Philip Glass on the CIVIL warS and with Tom Waits on The Black Rider. And he is as crazy as a craphouse rat. I still think he's a dick for talking the whole time. Dress rehearsals are dress rehearsals, and performances are performances. You don't get to charge a lot of money for tickets and fill a house three nights in a row and dismiss them as "previews" that you can talk over.

* * * * *


Einstein on the Beach is an opera only by the most bare, abstract definition--there is action on a stage while music is performed in an orchestra pit. It is 1970s postmodernism at its most decadent. The five-hour work is divided into four acts but is performed without intermission. Audience members are allowed to come and go as they please, and I thought I would have to take at least one break--but I did not feel the need to leave my seat at any time. There is no story to the opera, only recurring, abstract images and the recitation of poetry written by an autistic fourteen-year-old. For much of the opera, a violinist dressed up as Einstein plays next to the other musicians.

The YouTube video below contains Joe's remix "Night Train", one of my favorite scenes in the opera. The images for this video were taken by Joe on an Amtrak trip to Milwaukee a few years ago.



I have now seen all of the operas that comprise Philip Glass' trilogy of "portrait" operas. I've seen them all with Joe, and in reverse order. In the summer of 2000 we drove to Chicago with Beth and Sarah to see Akhnaten, about the pharaoh of the same name. A few weeks ago we saw an HD simulcast of Satyagraha (about Mahatma Gandhi) in a movie theater in Livonia. Since the performance was technically live, and since the ticket cost $22, I'm counting it as an opera I've actually seen.
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the township system and an idea for detroit [Jan. 16th, 2012|11:00 am]
If you've ever looked at a map of metro Detroit, you might have noticed that many of the municipalities happen to be exactly six miles square (e.g., Canton).


(Source)


This was the result of the Public Land Survey System, adopted in the late 18th century to organize Federally-owned land. The first step in laying down a grid in a particular territory was to establish a Meridian (vertical axis) and Baseline (horizontal axis). In Michigan, the Meridian runs near Jackson and coincides exactly with the line of longitude at west 84 degrees, 22 minutes and 24 seconds. It was chosen in part because it was already the established eastern boundary of lands ceded by the local Indian nations to the United States in the Treaty of Detroit. The Baseline in Michigan is none other than 8 Mile Road--established eight miles north of the Point of Origin in Campus Martius Park. I have been unable to find out why the Baseline was laid down north of the city and not, say, directly through the Point of Origin.

Due to surveying errors, Michigan technically has two baselines. They intersect the Meridian 935.88 feet apart in what is now Meridian-Baseline Historic State Park, which unfortunately is not currently accessible to the public. (Sucks, right??) Once these lines were established, Michigan was subsequently divided into six-mile-by-six-mile townships, each of which was surveyed in the early 19th century.


(Source)


Each township has both a name and a designation that indicates its relation to the baseline and meridian. For example, Shelby Township is designated Township 3 North, Range 12 East--the third township north of the Baseline, and the twelfth east of the Meridian.


(Source)


Townships in this system are generally divided into a grid of thirty-six sections, each measuring one mile square. The roads built along these grids are what give us our familiar Mile Road System.


(Source)


Cities and villages may be created out of parts of township land (e.g., Mount Clemens from out of Clinton Township), but sometimes all thirty-six square miles of a township are incorporated into a single city (e.g. Livonia). City borders may overlap multiple townships--the south half of Fraser was once part of Erin Township, and the north half was annexed from Clinton Township. The massive city of Detroit ultimately annexed land from no fewer than seven townships: Redford, Greenfield, Hamtramck, Grosse Pointe, Dearborn, Springwells, and Ecorse. The map below illustrates what northeast Wayne County looked like in 1875, when the City of Detroit was only a fraction of its current size. The neat and tidy township grid had to be adjusted due to land patents already issued to owners of the ribbon farms along the river.


(Source)


[info]_kissingchaos recently said something on her LJ that I have also been thinking--the City of Detroit is too vast to be efficiently served by a central, bloated bureaucracy, and it should be divided into smaller cities. Reading this idea from a homeowner and lifelong city resident made me think that this idea might actually be accepted by others in the city.

I think the most logical way to partition the city is along the old township lines. Instead of imposing artificial divisions onto the city, the land would simply be reverting to what it was in the 1890s. Using MS Paint and a map from openstreetmap.org, I tried to show what the city would look like if the bulk of it was dissolved and the borders of suburban municipalities were not altered. The new Detroit city limits would coincide roughly with Grand Boulevard, which I used to think once marked the exact borders of the city. I asked Allan about that, and he told me that only one part of the Boulevard ever literally coincided with the city limits. If shrinking the city were up to me, I would say that any parcel with a Grand Boulevard address remains a part of Detroit, and everything outside reverts to its respective township.


Click here for a larger map of these borders.


One problem that is immediately apparent is that the portion of Redford Township that was not annexed by Detroit in the 1920s was never incorporated. The existing Redford Township shouldn't be forced to merge with northwest Detroit, so the "new" township might have to be called "East Redford Township" or something like that. Then again, any of the townships could probably change their name to whatever they want.

The residents of the dissolved portions of the city might not want to give up their identity as "Detroiters". But when people from South Lyon and Rochester Hills tell out-of-towners that they live "in Detroit", what is going to stop the residents of Greenfield Township from doing the same thing?

Although Detroit would be shrunk back approximately to its size circa 1890, it would retain its most iconic institutions of the Central Business District and the Cultural Center, as well as stable residential areas (Corktown, Woodbridge, Lafayette Park, etc.). The government of this relatively dense urban core will be able to focus on the issues faced by normal urban cities. The annexed townships were, for the most part, developed in a way that isn't technically different from the suburbs. Most of their oldest neighborhoods were built around the 1920s as intentionally low-density suburbs (e.g. Palmer Woods), and their newer portions consist of tract housing indistinguishable from that of ordinary suburbs (e.g., the upper west side).

Consolidating the tri-county area into a megapolis, as advocated by some, seems to be less likely to become reality than dividing an overburdened city into independent municipalities. At least this way neighborhood taxpayers will know that they are funding local services, and not paying police overtime to ensure that drunken suburbanite sports fans downtown behave like rational human beings.
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art deco buildings [Jan. 6th, 2012|09:47 am]
I like that I can see the Maccabees Building from my bedroom window at home...



...as well as from my desk at work:



Even when I'm lying in bed without my glasses on I can still see the flashing on the radio tower at night.
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2011 in review [Dec. 31st, 2011|09:35 am]
My life has centered around the Bagley house in 2011 just as it did in 2010. The outside of the house looked more or less like this toward the end of last year:



By November 2010, though, the rail and spindles were added to the porch and the new front door was up:



But by this last fall, the house looked like this:



Even since that photo was taken, the brick foundation and the trim around the downstairs windows have all been painted the dark blue/green to match the rest of the trim.


Now some details of the past year:

2011

January
*I started my local history blog, which caused my Live Journal output to decrease.

February
*I renovated the laundry room (with my mom's help) and installed a laminate floor upstairs at the Bagley house.

March
*I took a day off work to drive to the State Historic Preservation Office in Lansing hoping that they would have the film negatives for the 1976 Detroit Urban Conservation Project, but they did not.
*I contacted neighbor Scott about researching his house. He and neighbor Jason visited later that month.

April
*I found out (with Allan's help) that the above-mentioned film negatives were actually at city hall, and I bought a film negative scanner to digitize all of the Corktown images. They are now online for free distribution.
*I finished the carpentry portion of the front porch at Bagley.

May
*Anny and I took a road trip to New York to visit Ellis Island exactly 100 years after my great grandparents Joseph and Catherine Waldowski were there. Liz, as always, very generously hosted us.
*Don put new exterior trim on the Bagley house, which I painted. I installed new screen doors.

June
*I painted the Bagley porch. I also installed a whole-house fan that moves much less air than you would think an $800 appliance should. Gutters started to go up, but part of the soffit needed to be replaced before they could finish.

July
*I decided to give up on the Wabash house. I was severely underwater on the mortgage, the house needed tens of thousands of dollars in structural repairs, and the slumlord at 2150 Bagley was attracting increasingly terrible tenants.
*For some insane reason I rebuilt the front porch on the house on Wabash with Don's and Scott's help.
*A home invader stole my laptop. Sarah gave me her old one, but it stopped working a couple of months later.

August
*Despite refusing the same offer a year earlier, I accepted a "promotion" at work because I sort of "had" to. The work is positively awful.

September
*I did not pay my mortgage payment on the first of the month, and I haven't made a payment since.
*I moved to Ash Street. Scott gave me his old couch, which in my opinion is practically in mint condition. My mom generously bought two area rugs for the barren apartment.

October
*I spent $1,900 on a new soffit on the north side of the Bagley house, and finally had the remainder of the gutters installed.

November
*Discussing problems with Anny on our 7th anniversary, she reveals that she wants to move out. It would take about a month for this to happen.
*I did some exterior painting at Bagley before it got too cold.

December
*I had a fun time researching the history of 287 Twelfth Street.
*Joe and Jeff released the short film Silent Night, which I'm proud to say I contributed to.
*Anny moves out tonight. Almost all of her stuff is gone. She is moving in with a magician. I guess there is a "disappearing act" joke in there somewhere.
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A Brief History of 3143-3145 Trumbull [Nov. 17th, 2011|01:16 pm]
I assembled this information for my landlord Tom, who owns this house on the corner of Trumbull and Ash:



This three-story, brick double-residence was originally numbered 513-515 Trumbull. The city fire marshal issued a building permit on March 19, 1887 to build the structure, which indicated an estimated cost of $8,900.00. The house was designed by the architecture firm Donaldson & Meier, founded in 1880 by John M. Donaldson (1854-1941) and Henry J. Meier (1858-1917). Donaldson & Meier are best known for the David Stott Building, constructed in 1929. Their other designs include the First Unitarian Church of Detroit (1890), Sacred Heart Seminary (1923), and St. Aloysius Church (1930).

The first owner of this home was Stephen A. Pratt, a successful boiler manufacturer. He was born in England on August 13, 1838 to Stephen and Jane Pratt and immigrated to the United States with his family at age 10. He married Sarah Jane Gregg on September 24, 1863. The couple had at least three children who survived infancy: Stephen Jr., John, and Jennie. Mrs. Pratt died on April 18, 1881 when giving birth to a stillborn baby girl. On August 12, 1885, Stephen Pratt married Mary Barbara Essick, the family’s 24-year-old maid, in Ann Arbor. They had four children: Edward E., George H., Mary Lucille, and Helen I.

After the house on Trumbull was completed, the Pratt family moved into the north unit (3145) and rented out the other half. The first renter of 3143 Trumbull was businessman Nelson King Riddle, who resided there until 1904. Stephen A. Pratt passed away on March 29, 1907. By 1920, his widow and children were living in California, and this house was inhabited by his nephew, Albert Samuel Pratt, a successful contractor.


I'll do more real research later, but that won't be for so long that I wanted to at least provide him with what I found out so far.

The Albert Pratt mentioned at the end is the contractor who built my current apartment in 1917. I successfully contacted his daughter, who lived in this house until the age of two. Her brother, born in 1919, is also still alive. He is supposedly searching for old photos of this house.
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"hit my snooze alarm, for the 27th time..." [Oct. 28th, 2011|07:15 am]
Once a quarter (or something like that) my place of employment requests nominations for what is a sort of "employee of the quarter" program. At some kind of reception during work hours, three nominees get special recognition and then one of them... "wins" or something--I don't fully understand it. On Wednesday the list of the nine or ten initial nominees went out and saw that my name was on it. I don't know who the smartass was who nominated me, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it wasn't necessarily out of malice. The reception was yesterday (Thursday) so I skipped work, which I never do. I didn't lie and say I was sick, I just emailed my boss and supervisor and told them I wouldn't be in.

(It took an hour after seeing my name on that list for me to realize that life was sort of imitating art.)

I did what most people would have done with a day off of work--I went to the City of Detroit's Historic Designation Advisory Board office to look up the original building permit for the apartment that I live in.



I called ahead of time and the receptionist said I didn't need an appointment. It turned out she was wrong, but they still accommodated me. I also gave them the CD-R of all of the 1976 Corktown photos that I scanned from the negatives in that office six months ago, so I hope that made up for it.

After that, I spent the rest of the day at the library to research the house on Vermont that I recently posted about on the history blog, a new house on Leverette Street, and my own apartment. If only some rich maniac would pay me $29,000 a year to do that full time.

EDIT: Apparently I got "second place". I would have vomited out of sheer humiliation if I had to stand in front of everybody like that. How misunderstood can I possibly be by people who I've seen every day for 4-1/2 years? They know not to mention my birthday now, and I don't even like being said hello to, and now this. It probably was actually done out of malice.
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service printing co [Oct. 15th, 2011|04:40 pm]
Some days, you just have to say "Eff it, I'm going to the library."

Yesterday's Live Journal post contained a photo of this building at the corner of Cochrane and Pine Streets...



...as well as an undated photo that seems like it could be from the early forties...



I might be able to date the photo better if I knew anything about old cars. I found that photo on Virtual Motor City, where it is bafflingly mislabeled as a police station.

Yesterday I erroneously assumed that the building was from the 1930s. It actually first appears in the city directory in 1926. Its first occupant was the Service Printing Company, founded in 1919 by Herbert S. Wolfe, John F. McNutt, and Elden Glanser. When they moved into this building, its address was 2606 National Ave. The street was renamed Cochrane in honor of Detroit Tigers player/manager Mickey Cochrane shortly after his death in 1962.

I was able to find an advertisement for this company in the 1927 directory:



You know something? I think it kind of looked better back then.

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pine street [Oct. 14th, 2011|10:01 pm]
Since moving into this apartment, one of the routes where I walk Lola takes us down a block of Pine Street where there are no houses left. I think it was on this same block where Anny and I saw our very first urban pheasant, which was a shocking sight at the time.



You've seen images like this so many times that it's basically a cliche. While walking down the street, I try to imagine the "novelty" of it actually being surrounded by two-story residential homes.


From a 1949 aerial photograph.


One day I realized that the houses that had faced the street were the only houses that ever stood there, ever. This land was part of Woodbridge Farm, and these particular blocks were platted in the early 1880s. Houses were built, added onto, and finally torn down. The only second-generation structure seems to be the building on the corner of Pine and Cochrane, which was built in the 1930s as a print shop.



I'm not sure what it's used for now, but it's owned by a company called Screen Machine. So maybe it's still used for printing? I don't know, do your own effen research.



The building been improved since this Google Street View image was taken, and there is some kind of work being done inside. But the houses on that block are gone and they're never coming back.

* * * * *


Here's another unbearable cliche for you--the city's motto. You all know what it is--don't even make me say it. I think reading it in blog posts about the city leads to some sort of collective unconscious assumption that we're experiencing a temporary period of decline among a continual series of deaths and rebirths that he city has always experienced. The city seal even depicts the origin of our motto--i.e., Detroit being destroyed by fire in 1805.


You should be able to see flames on the left.


Everyone knows that "the city burned to the ground" in 1805, and you can't avoid the comparisons to the 1967 riots or the Devil's Nights of the 1980s. The 1805 fire and the subsequent resurrection of the city was its defining moment, but what exactly did it entail? I mean, how much destruction did that amount to? Below is an image of the city's present-day size, in orange. That green spot downtown represents its extent in 1805.



Detroit's population was a mere 500 residents at the time. The town's borders roughly corresponded to Washington Boulevard, Larned Street, Griswold Street, and the river, whose shoreline was closer at the time.



Basically, the great symbolic destruction of the city amounts to a couple of blocks burning down. Of course, the blocks in that little town were a lot smaller, and the streets were a lot narrower, ranging from just ten to twenty-five feet wide at the most. This map from 1796--the year the settlement changed from British to American hands--shows the blocks and streets that would be destroyed just nine years later. The thing at the top is a fort.



Unseen here are all of the farm houses, up and down both shores along the Detroit River. The farmers undoubtedly took in many of the homeless residents. Temporary structures were also erected on the public land, which was roughly between Washington Boulevard and Randolph Street.

When I would look at the old drawing of Judge Woodward's plan for the new city, I assumed that it was for the downtown portion, not knowing how small Detroit was at the time. But Woodward's plan wasn't just for one section of the city--it was THE CITY. All of it.



In fact, the blocks that burned down would only amount to less than one-eighth of this plan. This map, by the way, is what I used to estimate the previous location of the riverbank.

I should qualify what I said about the above image representing "all" of the city so that people don't correct me. Although the above image represents more city plots than the people could have occupied at the time, it was Woodward's ultimate intention to repeat the pattern indefinitely.



Only a portion of the first plan was ever implemented, let alone any repetition of it.



* * * * *


I have gotten completely and totally off track here. I guess what I'm saying is that the burning of the "entire city" in 1805 really only amounted to a few blocks, and it did not set a precedent that has granted us the magical power to rebuild after widespread destruction. And when I walk down Pine Street specifically, past those lots where only one generation of houses stood for a few decades before being wiped completely out, I realize that this desolation isn't a temporary setback to be overcome--the prosperity of the past was the anomaly. I'm not even sure how long the block was even complete. The 1885 atlas of the city shows that not all of the lots contained houses yet, and a 1961 aerial photo shows that some of the houses were already missing. Only one house facing the street is left standing in a 1981 aerial photo. The thousands of tightly-packed houses that used to go on for miles is not our standard--it was a one-time event.

I have nothing original to say. I just wanted to post pictures of maps.
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soffit at last! [Oct. 6th, 2011|09:35 am]
It was back on June 15th that Allied Gutters declined to put gutters (or, if you're Canadian, eavestroughs) on the dilapidated soffit along the alley side of the Bagley house. After months of delays, work has finally started on building the new soffit!


I can't believe my eyes!


Without rehashing the boring history of getting this far, let it be enough to say that the job finally went to my landlord Tom, who is a general contractor. The job will cost at least $2,000, but no more than $2,500. The total calculation will come at the end.



You can't tell from this photo, but the part of the roof off of which this soffit is projecting is pitched at a very low angle--almost enough to qualify as a flat roof. The new soffit includes about 14" of new roof that comes down at a normal pitch.



Seeing how straight and exact the work is coming along makes me feel better about spending all of my money on it. No, really. They're doing a very professional job.



The roof used to be very jankity here. The red line indicates the weird, pointless angle that used to be in this area. Since that was dumb, Tom had the area rebuilt to be one straight, solid line.

Unfortunately, Tom did not find any gold or jewels hidden in the attic. Just mummified squirrels.


"Happy Halloween!"
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don's house [Aug. 9th, 2011|11:14 am]
I never posted a photo of Don's house on this LJ. This is what it looked like before he bought it:



The home was lived in by an old man who was a hoarder. His family sold it after he died, but it was up to Don to remove the indescribable mountains of garbage packed into the house and basement. The screened-in porch was so dilapidated that Don said he wasn't exactly sure how it was still suspended in the air. Here is what the house looks like now:



The wood siding is original--in the first photo, it is covered by that god-awful "Insul-Brick". He added the cedar shingles. Inside, the house was gutted down to the bare studs. Don did all of the repairs himself. I maybe should have actually gotten out of my car to take the "after" photo, but I didn't want to look like a weirdo to his neighbors. Which I am.

So where is Don's writeup in the Arts section of the New York Times? Where is the media praise, randomly peppered with the word "community"? Well, there isn't going to be any because he doesn't seek out the attention. There are a lot of artists nowadays overly flattered by the media merely for having an *idea* for something, and not even any practical accomplishments. And yet there are thousands and thousands of skilled homeowners rescuing pieces of our collective history (this house is probably from the 20s or 30s) and restoring the most beautiful and functional objects there are (houses).

The same thing could be said for Scott. When researching his house, I only found one single piece of media coverage about his project--a 2008 article on ModelDMedia.com that for some reason has a photo of Tim McKay but not Scott.

I would also post a photo of Tom's renovation of a house on Pine Street, but I'm afraid a mob of historic preservationists might threaten him. He covered a Victorian home in galvanized metal siding and bright red paint... But at least the house itself was saved, right?
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funkey pop [Aug. 2nd, 2011|11:06 am]
This past weekend I was digging a trench for a new ratwall by my porch. Digging around my house is always rewarding because I get to play amateur archaeologist. Here is one of the cedar stumps that once held up the house, which have since been replaced by (improperly placed!) concrete blocks:



Cedar is rot-resistent, but obviously not rot-proof. At least not after 150 years.

I also discovered a broken plate, a rusted jar lid, a broken glass bottle, and of course, more animal bones.



There is no way to know how long the plate, lid, and bones have been under the house. The bones could have been dragged under there by animals at any point. Anny thinks they're too big to be sheep bones, and are probably from a cow or pig.

The glass bottle says: "A. Funkey's Bottling Works, Detroit, Mich". It was hard to find information about it at first, because "A. Funkey" actually refers to Anthony Funke. He went into the soda water manufacturing business around 1868, and started spelling his name "Funkey" in 1873. By 1878, he went back to Funke. I have to assume that this bottle dates to the mid-1870s. Here is Anton Funke and family in the 1870 census:



Everyone knows that Vernor's, invented in 1866, is the oldest soft drink in the United States--but it was not the first. An 1867 article in the Detroit Free Press mentions that Warren Cronk had been manufacturing carbonated soft drinks in Detroit for twenty years. That article also explains how pop was manufactured in those days:
The water to be charged with gas is placed in strong vessels called "fountains," usually made of iron. The gas, obtained by the bringing together of sulphuric acid and marble dust, is passed through water to purify it, conducted to the "fountains," and after sufficient agitation in contact with the gas at high pressure the water becomes changed, and is then what is known as soda water. The syrup, flavored either with lemon or sarsaparilla is added during the process of bottling. The water is bottled and corked by machinery skillfully handled, and an experienced workman has, with one machine, bottled in a single day as many as seven hundred dozen. ...

Considering the immense quantities these establishments produce, we find that the manufacture of "pop" in this locality, is of greater magnitude than is generally supposed. The demand, of course, depends much upon the state of the weather, but during the "heated term," it often exceeds the supply.

(Detroit Free Press, 6 July 1867)

Sarsaparilla (or sometimes "sasparilla") used to be the main flavoring ingredient in root beer.

Anton Funke died on December 5, 1905. The following appeared in the Free Press the next day:



The Bernard Stroh mentioned in the article is, of course, the founder of Stroh Brewery.
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skateboarding is x-treme. dude. [Jul. 22nd, 2011|04:41 pm]
Yesterday afternoon I attended another meeting about the redesign of Roosevelt Park, which focused entirely on the proposed skate plaza. I do not oppose a skate plaza in Roosevelt Park. I *am* a grumpy old man, but I don't view skateboarders as some kind of thugs. They seem pretty benign.

Having said that, though, there is just something so incredibly bizarre about the whole idea. How did it come to be that the overriding theme of this park will be--of all things!--skateboarding? Phil Cooley claims that "a survey went out" to "the community", and that people wanted a place to skateboard. I really, really, really, really, really doubt that. Have any of your neighbors participated in that survey?

The meeting began with a PowerPoint presentation of statistics showing how safe and popular skateboarding is, according to pro-skateboarding organizations. It was kind of like getting your information on the health effects of bacon from the National Pork Producers Council. A flier was distributed on "10 Skateboarding Myths", which included:
#2. Skaters area small percentage of our community.
Skateboarding is one of the fastest growing sports in the U.S. and has surpassed baseball and football as the healthy activity of choice. There are about 13-million skateboarders in the U.S. with a 10% annual increase in participation during the previous 3 years. Skateboarding is here to stay.

A note on the back of the flier indicates:
Sporting Goods Manufactuerers Association (SGMA) Sports Participation Topline Report, 2002, shows that skateboarding enjoyed a 14.4% growth between 1987 and 2001 while baseball and football are in decline, with -24.5% and -17.8% respectively.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren't using ten-year-old statistics on purpose. The most recent data indicate that skateboarding isn't growing at all, but is sort of doing the opposite thing:



This is according to the Outdoor Recreation Participation Topline Report 2011, which you can read here (PDF). They also provide data for the last five years in a separate table, covering all ages six and up:



Since 2001, skateboarding has fallen from 13 million participants to 6.8 million--almost a 50% decline! I'm not saying that this makes skateboarding an illegitimate sport. I just expect more up-to-date information. Something close to the 13 million citation was apparently extrapolated to estimate the number of Detroit resident skateboarders at 34,500, but the more up-to-date number would give us only 16,600. But that's only if skateboarders are evenly distributed geographically, and if Detroit matches the U.S. overall demographically. Which it doesn't.

That kind of brings me to my next point. I'm totally fine with something designed to bring people to the neighborhood from outside of the area. But for some reason, the skate park is instead presented as something that will be used primarily by city residents. Why not just be honest and say you want to bring suburbanites into the city? Not only is that okay, it's necessary to repopulate the city. Just be honest, that's all. (After the meeting I saw a lot of the "local skaters" get into their automobiles to drive home. I'm not sure if I ever actually saw any skateboards that day. But then again, it was 100 degrees at the time.)

The meeting broke out into discussion groups. When the general meeting resumed, one speaker said that her group seemed to consist of more "hardcore" skaters, and that their views seemed to differ with the skate park plans in a couple of ways. The current plans call for "skating elements" to be scattered all throughout the park, but these skaters were suggesting that keeping the skate-related activity to one section of the park might not actually be a bad idea after all. Phil Cooley reacted with the same defensiveness he displayed in the last meeting. "This is the first time they're telling us," he replied. One skater said that "it might be against my best interests" to say this, but he was skeptical when the flier I mentioned before stated that a skate park produces the same amount of noise as two people talking. He mentioned how loudly a skateboard cracks on the ground when such-and-such a trick isn't performed right. "That's a myth. They disproved that," was Mr. Cooley's reply.

That noise statistic mentioned on the flier was from Portland, Oregon's Noise Control Office, which reported that ambient noise in its skateparks was 52 decibels, while an average conversation generates 59-63 decibels. That reading was reported by Noise Control Officer Paul Van Orden--a former professional skateboarder.

Although I never really opposed the skate park, I *am* relieved that the preliminary drawings of skating elements that spell out "Roosevelt Park" will not actually be built. I did not like them. The architect's attempt at subliminal advertising did not work on me.

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boycott inca cola [Jul. 6th, 2011|09:13 pm]
I learned the other day that Juan Carlos was in Michigan in May and checked out the Bagley house. You remember him. He's the p.o.s. who left my family with the Bagley house, the $17K debt associated with buying it, and the responsibility to then renovate and rent it out--the reason I have spent well over a thousand hours of my life and several thousand of my own dollars in addition to taking on of tens of thousands of dollars in debt. THAT a-hole. It turns out that I was painting something on the outside when he drove by. Can you imagine what would have happened if I saw and recognized him? He would be WEARING that paint can. I don't care how expensive exterior paint is. It would be the best fifty dollars I ever spent. Oh, and he also came by a second time and peeked in the window. I can only hope that he experienced the slightest bit of regret when seeing the transformation of that house first hand. Who knows, maybe he even felt just a fleeting moment of that emotion we humans call "regret", but I doubt it.

Lola had another seizure last night. They're thankfully not frequent, but it was the worst one Anny and I have witnessed. I think it was around 2am, and her claws scratching the floor woke us up. It seems like she tries to crawl across the floor when she seizes. She was afraid to go back into the bedroom after that, so she slept in the front room. Anny slept on the couch and woke up later to find Lola curled up next to her. I wish there was a way to communicate to a dog that what she's experiencing is a known medical condition that's nothing to be afraid of.

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roosevelt park - vernor closing [Jul. 1st, 2011|12:41 pm]
I was thinking about the possibility of moving into the Bagley house yesterday, and about how it wouldn't be a permanent solution since I like living with the fewest number of people possible. It's a big house designed for either a family or boarders. Then I was thinking about how I wish I instead had a little cottage to fix up. And then I realized that I DO have a cottage to fix up! My own damn house! I don't want to foreclose on my house. But what else can I do? The repairs are not affordable, and it wouldn't make sense to pay for them anyway, while I owe $69K on a house that Zillow.com estimates is worth $33K. And then I think about Mindy's house, and the situation at 2150 Bagley, and that ridiculous amphitheater that's going to be built in Roosevelt Park.

Speaking of that, I attended a meeting hosted by the Roosevelt Park Conservancy a week ago Wednesday. The subject was the closing of Vernor Avenue through the park. These meetings are supposedly held in order to "get input from the community"--but I really have the feeling that all of the changes that those people have for the park are going to go forward exactly as planned, no matter what the neighbors say. And let me get this out of the way right now--"community" is a meaningless buzzword. It's just something we urban hipster transplants repeat as much as possible in order to seem socially engaged. When you replace "community" with synonyms like "our neighbors" or "local citizens", the things they say stop making sense.

For example, at this meeting Phillip Cooley stated that their plans for the park included a skateboard plaza because "the community" asked for it. Really? You guys were had no skate plaza plans until Corktown residents approached you and asked you to please built a skate plaza? Really?? For all the time I spend outside (walking a dog four times a day, working on two houses), I have a hard time remembering the last time I saw one of my neighbors on a skateboard. I'm not even particularly against a skate plaza. I mean, I cringe at the fashionable hipness of it all, but it's probably harmless. I'm just tired of being told that "the community" asked for it and that our input is taken into consideration, when it doesn't appear that either is true.


(Source)


Although the subject of the meeting was the closure of the boulevard that runs through the park, the skate plaza came up a lot. A lot of lame OLD people (who evidently don't count as part of "the community") expressed misgivings about the skate plaza, including increased liability on the city's part and noise problems associated with a skate park in Livonia. Phil Cooley was defensive and insisted to all of my neighbors assembled there that "the community" demands a skate plaza. There wasn't the slightest indication that anything we said was going to affect their plans in any way.



The only question I asked at the meeting was whether the park was part of a historic district, and if the closure of Vernor would require the opinion of the Historic Designation Advisory Board. Mr. Cooley didn't know, but one resident said that the park was not actually within the district.

At the end of the meeting, an irritated-looking young man said, "Phil, on behalf of the community, just close the street." He also stated that there wasn't enough positive feedback at the meeting. But wasn't the whole point of the meeting to gauge the opinions of my neighbors, be they positive or negative? I guess not. In fact, their website lists this development time line:
  • Early 2011: Continued neighborhood outreach and dialogue for programming.
  • Spring 2011: Construction of the Michigan Avenue signage and commencement of skate plaza.
  • Late 2011: Planning and public hearings for closure of W. Vernor highway through the park.
  • Summer 2012: Closure of West Vernor to create park unification.
  • Summer 2012: Construction of the amphitheatre.

They have already decided what they are going to do and when they are going to do it, the public be damned.

Before the meeting ended, Ron Cooley (Phil's father and co-owner of Slow's) tried to turn around the negative mood by proclaiming with grinning condescension, "I JUST WANTED TO SAY HOW GREAT IT IS TO SEE SO MANY PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEIR COMMUNITY!" And then he just sort of started ... clapping....

I am glad that wealthy donors want to revitalize the park, and the skateboarders are probably benign. But a residential neighborhood is a wildly inappropriate setting for an amphitheater. I'm not going to go into battle mode over the street closure, but I would prefer that the historic layout of the park be preserved. This neighborhood's greatest asset is its history. The park was designed to be a grand, formal, and beautiful compliment to the train station. And now the building has been demoted to being merely being a "cool backdrop" to somebody else's project.

I guess simply re-landscaping the entire park to restore its historical look isn't as sexy as a "hip reboot" of the entire thing, but it sure would be nice to experience the park as it was originally intended.


Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library



EDIT: Coincidentally, young men *were* skateboarding in a spot on my Lola-walking route after work today. Build that skate plaza! I wonder if they were local residents--because if they were, they probably wouldn't have driven their cars to that place. As opposed to, you know, riding their skateboards.
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i'm tired [Jun. 20th, 2011|08:46 pm]
Bill Maher once said that suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me--I quit!" That's as funny to me as it is true. I've always found it comforting to know that suicide can be relied upon as a kind of fail-safe for any conceivable kind of nonsense that you have to put up with. It's nice to know that the option is there if you ever need it. But the more I've thought about it, the more I realized how unrealistic it is.

Some time ago I saw The Bridge, a documentary about the high number of people who commit suicide by jumping off of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. It included an interview with a man who jumped and survived. He did not stand on the rail and jump, but put his hands on the rail and swung his legs over. In his interview, he said, "The second my hands left the bar--the railing--I said, 'I don’t want to die.'" Unlike 98% of the jumpers, he lived. How many of those 98% also changed their minds on the their way down?

I would have to believe that most people do change their minds after it's too late, all thanks to the one source of all of our mindless instincts and motivations, our own DNA. It has hard-wired into it, against all logic, that one unquestionable directive: SURVIVE. Why this directive wasn't awakened within that man before he decided to jump, I don't know. Maybe it's one of God's many little jokes, like the way he gave animals the ability the feel pain and then told people to eat them.


"Stay alive! Ejaculate whenever possible!"
"Eat as much salt, sugar and fat as you can!"
"People who look different from you aren't in
your tribe and should be treated accordingly!"
-Mr. DNA


Mahatma Gandhi went through a rebellious phase as a teenager when he and a cousin ate meat and smoked cigarettes behind their parents' backs. He wrote in his autobiography that they became so disgusted with their parents' authoritarianism that they decided to kill themselves by swallowing poisonous seeds. When the time came, they were too afraid to go through with it. He wrote, "I realized that it was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. And since then, whenever I have heard of someone threatening to commit suicide, it has had little or no effect on me." Frank Zappa was more direct:

I know full well I would be just such a "chump" and a coward when the time came. It's not hard to imagine--having driven my car to a peaceful spot on Belle Isle, with the CD of Puccini arias cued up (may as well be dramatic), and while duct-taping the garden hose to the tailpipe, the thought finally comes--"I want to live!" Even just in thinking about it, an urgent feeling in my chest jumps up and says, "No! You should live!" And I call back, "Yeah, but why? Give me a reason!" And there is no reply. That's because the thing that said "live" is not a conscious entity--it's just blind, dumb instinct. Life has absolutely no meaning, point, or purpose.

And for the chumps and the cowards like me, there is no escape. It doesn't matter what you want--your DNA is going to grab you by the hair and press your face against that which you do not want regardless. "No," it says, "you are going to experience every grinding second of every meaningless day for the rest of your meaningless life." And for what? That animalistic drive to keep on breathing is just an empty, pointless, genetic instinct forcing you to experience everything from the constant irritations of daily life to helplessly watching your loved ones grow old and die.

And so I will live as long as I possibly can, for I guess about fifty more years. Fifty more years of failure, humiliation, and constant annoyance. And at the end of it all, I'll die anyway. It's the same result. The same, exact, identical result! Another one of God's jokes, maybe. Only this way I get to watch my teeth and hair fall out. But my hands are tied ("I want to live!"). There is no place to live where everyone keeps quiet and behaves like civilized human beings. There is no occupation that I would find rewarding and enjoyable. I don't want to go anywhere, I don't want to talk to anybody, and I don't want to do anything. But too bad. I keep on waking up, doing stuff, and going to work in order to afford food and shelter because "I want to live". And I'll spend the next fifty years cringing in embarrassment at the incompetence of both myself and the rest of this species. And then, one or two years after I am dead, everything will be exactly--exactly--the same as if I had never existed at all.

People who go around telling others to "make the most out of life" are the most insufferable and completely full of shit human beings who walk the earth. But I don't exactly have an alternative strategy to offer. So here are the things I enjoy that I will have to distract myself for the next half-century.

1. Plumbing



I will admit that I was probably born at the best possible period in history, if for no other reason than the widespread availability of indoor plumbing. Westerners are accused of taking modern conveniences for granted, but not me. I am amazed every time I turn a knob and receive sanitary water. And I feel lucky to live where I do. Detroiters enjoy more sparkling, pure water than any similar area in the world. And how amazing of an invention the toilet is--waste disappears and is properly treated. I would be willing to bet that this sanitary device has saved more lives than all of medicine combined. Nothing is more comforting when you're sick than being able to sit on a toilet in the comfort of your warm, clean house, especially when your asshole is burning from having added too much cayenne pepper to your microwavable Punjab eggplant from Tasty BiteTM.

2. Microwavable Punjab Eggplant from Tasty BiteTM



Now you can enjoy all of the flavors of India in your home kitchen with microwavable pan-Asian dishes from Tasty BiteTM. The package says "Heat and Eat". My favorite one is Punjab Eggplant, "Braised eggplant with aromatic Indian spices." Just microwave for 90 seconds and serve with white rice. They make it pretty mild, so I like to add plenty of cayenne pepper whenever I prepare it.

3. Cake.




And that's just about it. What else do you expect me to do? See a therapist? And they are going to do what, exactly? Prescribe antidepressants? Teach me "progressive muscle relaxation therapy"? WHOOPIE!! I'll get my checkbook out right now!

No, the best distraction I can utilize while patiently awaiting oblivion is to enjoy being an overfed American. That's kind of what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes anyway. And yet that's the same thing everyone is saying we're supposed to be ashamed of. The things I can most relish, or at least be grateful for, are the same things I am supposed to hate myself for having at all.

So I'll see you all tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that. I have too much going on to consider the alternative anyway. It's like George Carlin said:
"Who's got time to be committing suicide? Aren't you busy? I got shit to do! Suicide would be way down on my list. Probably down past lighting my own house on fire."
--George Carlin, Life is Worth Losing
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party [Jun. 19th, 2011|05:12 pm]
I have stayed at the Bagley house late most nights for the last two weeks so that at least the porch would be finished in time for Joe's party, which was Friday. I wanted the home's entrance to be dignified and welcoming. Here it is compared to a photo taken last fall:



The partygoers proceeded to ash their cigarettes all over the freshly painted porch and throw all of their cigarette butts on the ground all around the house. So there's that. I would curse these people, but the things they are doing to their own bodies are already far worse than any punishment I would ever wish upon them.


Pictured above: lung cancer.
Nice job, shit-wit!


When I got to the house this morning I could see that an effort was made to pick up the cigarette butts, but I had to put on gloves and pick up the rest. St. Paul wrote that Christian love "does not keep a record of wrongs". Well, I'm not Christian, and I can tell you that there were exactly thirty-four cigarette butts left behind. To be fair, it's possible that some of those were from house guests before Friday.

It also turns out that the party moved outside after I left and lasted until 4am. I hope the neighbors have central air and didn't have to sleep with their windows open, because that street is a fairly intimate space where voices carry very easily. When I was painting the porch spindles, a man across the street was on his phone, and I could clearly and easily hear every word of the conversation as if he was speaking to me. Hopefully the party guests were in the alley and not on the sidewalk.

People were also smoking pot at the party. We know this because someone left their pipe behind. ON THE LEDGE NEXT TO THE MAILBOX OUTSIDE. Good one. I'm doing *everything I can* to make the house *NOT* look like a whitetrash shithole, and the response from the guests who have been welcomed into the house is basically a giant middle finger to myself, the renters, and our neighbors. This nation has produced an entire generation of adult children who don't know how to act. Thanks, everyone.
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road trip part 2 [May. 16th, 2011|11:57 pm]
After spending a few hours at Ellis Island, we went to Red Bamboo for an early-ish dinner, including vegan milkshakes. Not satisfied with meals consisting of merely 1,000 calories each, we went to Curly's for vegan cake. Their cakes are basically perfect. If they weren't, would a 31 year old accounting clerk be making a Live Journal post about them?


The walls are decorated with placemats that people have drawn on.


I only appear content in photos taken in vegan restaurants.


Anny decorated her placemat. I drew my own caricature, and Anny
drew the things I'm thinking about: dinosaurs, tools, and death.


We spent a second night at Liz's apartment. Here are her and her husband's dogs:


Roxy and Ollie!


Apparently we didn't take many photos that included our host. They were all either blurry or she wasn't looking at the camera, so I'll just use this one instead:



We got up early on Thursday and drove to Ithaca, New York. On the way we stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts for a coffee and bagel in Parsipanny, New Jersey. I asked for two small coffees with sugar and two toasted cinnamon-raisin bagels without cream cheese. The woman behind the counter couldn't believe her ears. A toasted bagel--without cream cheese?? She made sure that that was what I wanted, and I confirmed it. She repeated the order to another female worker, who then had the same expression on her face as if I had just ordered thirty-seven Cadbury cream eggs with the cream removed and replaced with human urine. When she handed us the bagels, her eyes were wide with disbelief and laughed (!) as she said, "Two cinnamon-raisin bagels, toasted, without cream cheese!" Can someone please explain to me what these fucking bitchs' problem was? What exactly in the fuck is so crazy about my order? She may as well have had the same reaction to my request for coffee. "Coffee?!? Ha! Ha! Ha! Okay, whatever! Here's your coffee, you goddamn retard!" I have ordered plenty of toasted bagels without cream cheese before and never once got shit for it. Not even a little. So please, if you ever find yourself in Parsipanny, New Jersey, do me a favor and go to the Dunkin' Donuts at 199 Littleton Road, walk in, and say, "Yeah, I think I'll have a coffee and, hmmm ... I suppose, A PLAIN, TOASTED BAGEL WITHOUT CREAM CHEESE YOU FUCKING CONDESCENDING CUNT BITCH!!!"

So we drove to Ithaca. Our original plan was to eat at the Apple Blossom Cafe (aka "ABC"), but we learned before our trip that it was closed. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, since our previous two days of gorging left us not hungry for dinner. We did have really good falafel wraps from an outdoor stand for lunch. Those left us satisfied for the rest of the day.

Ithaca is so beautiful it's stupid. Even without the natural beauty surrounding the town and the overwhelming liberalism of its residents, even the houses and buildings themselves make me wish I lived there. Not only is the city set up in a proper, urban, walkable arrangement--the houses are immaculately preserved Victorians. (Although I'm sure a couple of Edwardians are mixed in...) They were all painted appropriate historical colors, and no one nailed vinyl shit all over them. It was all so perfect that it just made me sick.





We also visited the gorges in Watkins Glen before heading to our final destination for the night, the Ginger Cat Bed & Breakfast. The woman looked exactly how you would expect the owner of a vegan bed and breakfast to look. Basically, picture Anny just after her hair turns gray but still braids her hair, and owning a bed and breakfast in upstate New York with her eight cats and naming it after one of them. What really impressed me was how immaculately clean the place was. I don't mean that to sound condescending--very clean places relax me. I do not remember seeing one single strand of cat hair anywhere in the house, although the cats are confined to the owner's living space and do not go into the guest area. Even then, the owner did invite us to see the cats in her area, and it was equally spotless.




Our room, the morning after we spent the night there.


The common area, where we had our breakfast.


I wholeheartedly recommend The Ginger Cat Bed and Breakfast for anyone traveling through the area. Farm Sanctuary also has a bed and breakfast nearby, but the Ginger Cat's private guest bathroom is a really nice advantage over Farm Sanctuary.

The vacation was very relaxing. I even found Liz's pull-out sofa bed to be very comfortable. My eye even stopped twitching after the first day of the trip, and it didn't even start up again until today! Seriously, what was up with those fucking bagel whore bitches?? What if some people just don't want the cream cheese?!? UP YOURS.
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road trip part 1 [May. 15th, 2011|12:51 pm]
Anny and I drove to New York City on Tuesday on what was a four-day road trip. My original reason for the trip was to visit Ellis Island, where my great-grandparents Joseph and Catherine (Skorowska) Waldowski arrived 100 years ago on May 9th. This month also marks ten years since I met Liz (who gave us a place to stay in Brooklyn) when we were both interns at Farm Sanctuary.

After arriving, we went to Kate's Joint for dinner since their vegan macaroni & cheese was (for Anny) the highlight of our last trip to New York. We also went there for breakfast the following morning before heading out to Ellis Island. The ferry that takes tourists there is the same one that goes to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty, but we did not get off on that stop. I was satisfied just to pass it by so closely.




Anny with Liz, who was trying to duck out of the tourists' photos.



Above is our view when approaching the immigration processing center, built in 1900. The building remains as it would have looked when my great-grandparents saw it 100 years ago. Although they lived in northern Poland by the Baltic Sea, they traveled to Bremen, Germany where they boarded the S.S. Kaiser Wilhelm II and departed on May 2, 1911. It took one week to cross the Atlantic Ocean.


The adults in the photo are Joseph and Catherine Waldowski.
The baby at the center is my mom's mother Rose (Waldowski) Bonkowski.


They arrived in New York on May 9, 1911 with their six children (but not my grandmother, who wasn't born yet). The shipping manifest has provided a lot of valuable information about them and their experience at Ellis Island.





First class passengers and others who had received permission entered the U.S. prior to the immigration processing center at Ellis Island, which was intended to ensure that new arrivals were physically and mentally capable of earning their own living. Immigrants also had to prove that they had a place to stay and enough money to reach their final destination. Joseph Waldowski indicated that he had $80 and a ticket to Detroit, Michigan where he was to stay with his brother-in-law Joseph Sarnowski. The manifest states that he was able to read and write, and was in good physical condition. However, the family was detained under suspicion of being a "likely public charge"--i.e., unlikely to earn their own living. This was the most common reason for detaining immigrants.


The waiting room was once filled with benches and partitions.


Some of the old benches were left out.


One of the dormitories where detainees once slept. My great-grandparents
and their children spent two nights on Ellis Island before their release.


Detained immigrants were fed at the shipping companies' expense. The
manifest for the Kaiser Wilhelm II indicates that the Waldowskis
were fed one breakfast, two "dinners" (lunches), and one supper.


The Waldowskis would have had to defend themselves in this hearing room.
They were obviously successful.


The shipping manifest states that Joseph Waldowski and his family were released at 1:40pm on May 11, 1911. Anny, Liz and I arrived on the island around 1:30 on the same date, just barely observing the centennial. When my ancestors were released, they would have been ferried to Battery Park at the southernmost point of Manhattan, the same place where we departed and returned. From that point they would have traveled by train to Detroit.

Joseph and Catherine Waldowski settled in Detroit's Poletown neighborhood and had several more children, the last of whom was my grandmother. Joseph worked in auto plants and later for the Detroit Department of Public Works.



On September 6, 1928, seventeen years after coming to the U.S., Joseph Waldowski committed suicide. He hung himself in the barn behind his house at 4421 Dubois Street, which no longer stands. His widow remarried three years later and passed away in 1952.
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