“We must not think that these efforts are not going to change the world. They benefit society, ..for they call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread.” -the Laudato si’ Pope Francis. “My message is we’ll be watching you.” Greta Thunberg Michigan in late April, and it’s always the same question: Will it…
There’s a particular type of person that indulges in the type of thinking that brought us to yesterday’s sedition, sedition incited by what some are calling a treasonous leader. I’ve known some of them personally, although I’d care to know them less these days. They feel gifted with the insight that they “understand” that there have…
In something like this a larger question is raised that’s not about one person, one party, about winning or losing. Do I know the country I’m living in? Do I want to know it? In my most absent moments, I find myself laughing at what 45 says. Because of the sheer absurdity of it, and because…
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend Christmas in the White House? As with most of us, home, especially now, is a wonderful refuge from the rest of the world and its attendant problems. All the more so, perhaps, if you could retreat to America’s first historic home. It must be a…
“Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll’dAround their shores”–William Blake, “America: A Prophecy” I spent the summer of 1982, the entire summer, stuck in a small town in central Texas, forced there by my betters. I was meant to discover, as my predecessors had, that “I didn’t want to work for a…
“A totalitarian society makes enormous demands on the courage of men, and a partially totalitarian society makes even greater demands for the general anxiety is greater.” —Norman Mailer I. Norman Mailer once posited, in so many thousand words, that our greatest ally in making critical decisions in circumstances both highly consequential and immediately threatening is instinct.…
The craft-cocktail movement, a trend so pervasive it’s become second nature at most bars, has given us some great rewards and some terrible setbacks. This website, when it comes to food and drink, is here to celebrate these things and not to critique them, however. That’s sometimes difficult when you order a martini and the hip…
Only In Detroit, v.2 New music has always been misunderstood and maligned, none more so than what is commonly known as ‘techno.’ I have a friend, whose opinion I generally respect, who pretends to find it so childish that he always says the word in the voice of a preteen dork. ‘Ooo, teck-noh,’ he says, an…
About twenty years or so ago you couldn’t really get a decent Italian dinner in this town. Can you now? More on that later perhaps. In Detroit, if you had a mad craving for linguine alla vongole it was Mario’s, or Giovanni’s, or bust. Don’t even get me started on Mario’s. I love the place, in a…
“Objectivity must prevail, carrying us above mere notions of ardor or antipathy, whose ideas are instilled or forced upon us by tribe or circumstance.” Roland Barthes perhaps? No, this was the stuff of our conversation with all manner of young women back in the heady university days of our youth, stuff that occasionally rings true today.…