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EJ

Fire and Rain

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The moon is nearing full. I can see it outside my bedroom window. Clear sky. Cold. Back in Detroit. Back home. Who would believe that shit?

Look down upon me, Jesus. This city is in the toilet. Is that the way it should be?

Seen fire. Seen rain. Detroit in the toilet? Yeah, kind of saw that coming. Happy about it? Maybe once upon a time ago I might have given it a thirty second laugh. Now? Not so much.

Detroit is a grand old lady brought low by greed and avarice. There are great people here. People who stayed because they had to. People who stayed because they wanted to. And those of us few who returned because we love this dirty old town, this wheel-spoke layout of a city that refuses to die despite those who stab it at every turn.
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The Silly Season

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The silly season, and 2011 as a whole, is finally nearing its end. I have severely neglected this blog over the last few months. Actually, I’ve severely neglected my writing, my TBR pile and interactions with other humans as well. The house and my Detroit adventure have been a time suck of epic proportions.

Not that I mind all that much. Well, the writing part is a bit irritating. I tend to go a little batshit when I don’t write for long periods of time.

Work on the house has progressed well, though. About half the house is wired. Friends of my son gave me a refrigerator, a stove, a washer/dryer, a table, a couch and a chair for which I am eternally grateful. After a great deal of cursing, I have hot and cold running water upstairs in a temporary sink in the kitchen. Oh, and a flushable toilet. What a joy!. Despite the cold weather and my lack of a furnace, I’ve been keeping fairly warm, hunkered down in a small back bedroom.
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A City of Two Tails

I’ve been back in Detroit exactly a month and a day. A few folks I know, mostly my relatives, wonder if I’m crazy. My son even asked me if I’d gone senile. Well, crazy yes, but then I’ve always been a bit crazy. Senile? Who knows. Could be.

Detroit has a bad rap. From Motor City to Murder City, an urban landscape of burned out and abandoned houses, empty, trash strewn lots, crime and crack-heads. But there is another side to her, a side not often acknowledged in the if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality this country seems so enamored of.
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No More Nothing To Do

Don Watts, a long time friend, once said to me that owning a home means never having nothing to do. That’s especially true if the house you buy has been sitting vacant for a number of years. The one I’m sitting in at the moment, listening to rainwater drip into a bucket near the front door, is just such a house. As of the 21st of this month, it’s mine: lock, stock and leaky roof.

Structurally sound, it sits on a slight rise from the street which has helped to keep the foundation strong and the basement dry. Two bedrooms on the ground floor and a long, low-ceilinged bedroom upstairs, it has a huge living room, a tiny kitchen and an extremely damaged bathroom. Damage-wise, the bathroom is the worst of it. The entire back wall is torn out. I guess, if you’re going to steal a bathtub, it’s easier to tear out the wall then to drag the thing out the smashed-in backdoor.
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