community | Six Ten

“If it weren’t for the Chicagos and Detroits and Toledos, the terrible things would spread out across the whole country and make trouble for everybody else. Such places were collectors of badness in the way hospitals were collectors of the sick and damaged.”
― Stephen Dobyns, Eating Naked: Stories

i’m not from detroit – i’m from a small town further north, somewhat in the palm of michigan. i didn’t grow up in detroit, i didn’t go to school in detroit. i don’t live in detroit. detroit scares the shit out of me and depresses me and i don’t go there much. but some part of me just loves detroit. i understand the fascination with the ruin porn and the photographers who come from other countries to photograph it. the scope of it is beyond comprehension and what is left behind is nothing short of post-apocalyptic. the infrastructure is completely shredded, rife with rot and corruption.

but there are a lot of cool things going on quietly in detroit, and although it will take decades for any sort of real recovery to take place, there are days and events and places that make you feel proud of the folks who stand their ground and try to bring some sense of joy and community amidst the zombie rabble. detroit eastern market is one. their flower day market has become an annual pilgrimage, joining hundreds of thousands of people every year.

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Mid-Michigan received a wallop of ice before Christmas that rendered most of my hometown without power for the holiday. I am not sure how everyone managed to stay warm and make the holiday bright for their families. I always imagine myself living in past times but I know how completely unable I am to deal with any loss of my mod cons, so perhaps the London Blitz and I wouldn’t have been the best fit.

I drove up there on Christmas Eve day. I don’t get back there very often; our family has mainly decamped and scattered. The soundtrack once you get through Perry, up on M-52, is mostly country western or Christian stations or, as I found, classic rock, and so, to a soundtrack that was right out of my formative years, I wended my way north of the fields. I found it quiet and still and frozen, no sound except the creaking of ice in the wind-stirred trees, and legions of power trucks from all over the Midwest coming to the rescue. The sun was blinding and I wanted to stop every five minutes to photograph the cornfields and the hedgerows and the barns, the beautiful old barns and tumbled stone walls, all coated in silver.

It was undeniably beautiful to look at.

Downstate, we thankfully missed the ice, but got enough snow on Christmas and Boxing Day to make it a beautiful winter wonderland.