June 20, 2007
Summer Chill
I don't know about you, but I can't think of a more chilling, Stephen King-ian, dark-side-of-summer story than the little two-year-old witness to something horrible, found left alone in his ransacked house, who keeps repeating, like a mantra, "
Mommy's in the rug...mommy's in the rug."
However, this is real, and events in this story are still unfolding.
Labels: disappearance, event, news
jb | | # | 
February 19, 2007
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
The BBC has run
a lengthy article on the decline of Detroit (my hometown), and for me, it's just so *sad.* I was a little boy when the oil crisis hit, starting the Big 3 on the inexorable path to obscurity, so I'd never known a time when Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day, just as I've never known what it means to respect a President in the pre-Watergate sense.
The dot-com bubble's burst in 2000-2001 was a shocking blow, but recovery here has been steady and relatively swift. Detroit has been limping and wheezing in a slow torturous death for decades, and one wonders what that does to a population that's already disillusioned, disaffected, without promise or hope.
While I'm not surprised that my family didn't see it coming (hindsight being what it is), but what does amaze me is how vehemently they argued against my leaving the area, and lobbied for me to return in 2003.
This could be Silicon Valley in 40 years or less.
Labels: article, bbc, decline, detroit, michigan, news, urban
jb | | # |
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