Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. I'm not big on the Ash Wednesday service itself...it reeks of trendy Catholicism, if you know what I mean...but I'm pondering what I should do over the next forty days to incorporate this season a bit more in my life. I need to start with prayer, something I am not always so conscious of. Five minute chats with God, along with the daily prayers of childhood, is something I would like to be more conscious of. Let's see how I do on that.

There's a part of this day, too, that reminds me of New Year's Day. I want to be more thoughtful. I want to be less snarky. I want to read more, an article a day about the world outside my own. I've become too self-centered at times, not in a selfish way, but I've been more disconnected from the world. This relates to Lent in a way, though not so directly: I used to read the Economist every week on the Metro, and that of course does not happen now. But I do want to regain that connection through reading about what's going on in the world, good, and mostly bad at times, in that thoughtful way as a way to remember how blessed I've been, how lucky I've been, and how there is very little I lack or want for, despite not having everything I would want. I have a wonderful family, husband, friends, home, and job.

The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.

Detroit RIP

Another of those articles about the death of Detroit has appeared, this latest one in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. This one focused mostly on the auto industry.

I do disagree with his opening assertion...that for those of us kids who grew up in Detroit circa 1980s, attending the auto show was mandatory. It most certainly was not!

But I was not struck so much by his description of the auto show, its decline, its lack of prestige, its detachment. We know all of this. But little things: the pathetic People Mover:

To get to the conference, I ride the People Mover, an elevated tram that runs through downtown Detroit in a three-mile one-way loop. The city used to have an extensive trolley system, but it was purchased by National City Lines, a front company formed by GM, Firestone, Standard Oil and other corporations with automobile interests, after which the trolley tracks were ripped up and replaced with buses. The People Mover began running in 1987 and seems, in its utter uselessness, as if it might have been built by another secret auto-industry cabal as a way of mocking the very idea of public transportation. The monorail cars are automated and driverless, like trams at the airport or an amusement park; occasionally, walking along a barren downtown block, you glance up and notice a pair of empty cars passing above your head at a haunted crawl.

And:

We drive into Highland Park, a tiny city almost completely surrounded by Detroit proper. Highland Park is best known as the site of Henry Ford's first assembly line and, more recently, as the setting of the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. Thousands of people moved to the area in the Teens and Twenties to build Model T's, but those working-class families are mostly gone now, and in recent years, entire residential blocks, once tightly packed with houses, have been razed by arsonists and demolition. We turn onto a side street and drive past a large, empty field covered in snow, with impossibly tall patches of yellow grass poking up like a wheat field. "I wish you were here in summer," John says. "It looks like a jungle in Bolivia. You'll see these vast grasslands with one home in four blocks. There are no city services. These people are alone on the frontier. Someone saw a coyote downtown last year."

We keep driving, turning near a lot where the Motown headquarters once stood. John says he snuck inside before it was demolished and discovered Marvin Gaye's old desk, with love notes to his wife still inside. We drive past GM's gargantuan Fisher Body plant, in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood — a railroad junction where a number of car manufacturers sprung up in the early days of the industry. Built in 1919, the plant initially turned out Cadillac and Buick bodies, eventually shifting to fighter jets during World War II; in the Depression, the space was used as a homeless shelter and soup kitchen. Now, the factory, closed since 1984, sits empty, its six floors of broken windows — hundreds of them, entire blocks of them — giving the place an odd beauty, like a dried-out beehive. On a wall nearby, someone has spray-painted "Fiends Will Have Their Poison."

His conclusion is sad. It was the Detroit of my youth. The author grew up in St. Claire Shores...perhaps a St. Joan's kid? They were a little more high-brow than those of us who went to St. Jude, St. V, St. Peter's, straddling the lines of the city, barely. But it's all our Detroit, and what was ours never really existed. He seemed to mourn but not really, and he seemed to take a blunt tone: this is what it is. This is what is left. This is what remains. There's nothing left to mourn.

You want to believe everything will turn out OK. But the Big Three clearly had no concept of what they were up against until it was too late. And now, after years of having our trust abused with shoddy cars and patently deranged business models, we're being asked to take a huge leap of faith and believe in their ability to learn from their mistakes, to turn everything around. On an infinitely vaster scale, of course, the United States government is doing the same thing: begging the rest of the world to trust us, to continue to buy our Treasury bonds and fund our bailouts and stimulus packages because we're too big to fail. And we're hoping the world won't ask us the most pointed question Congress asked the carmakers: Why don't you try selling something people want to buy?

It's hard not to wonder fleetingly if Detroit, in the end, might reclaim its old title after all — not the Motor City but the City of Tomorrow. John says we should go. I squint out over the ledge one last time. The icy wind is almost harsh enough to make you cry, and Detroit, from up here, looks like it goes on forever.

Isn't acceptance the final stage of grief?

Girls Night In

I had a nice time on Saturday night with Liz, Ann, and Mary and meeting baby N. Girls night out-in. Ahh, how life does change. It was SATC gossipy and snarky, and I enjoyed drinking wine and a cocktail and just kicking back. Though a little bittersweet because I remember all of the other incarnations of girls night, with Cindy and Alex and Katherine, etc. over the years. All have moved on. On Friday I lunched with Sally for RW at Tuscana West. Yummy, not the best meal ever, but the risotto was tasty. The salad could have used a bit more goat cheese, though! I am lucky to have several circles of friends around, from the Jennys to the Georgetown crew to work friends. Separate circles, but still.

Husband is still sick. Poor guy. And he has a birthday coming up!!

Good Advice from Jeb

I love Jeb Bush. Wish he would have run for Senate. Here's an interview in the WSJ.

But Mr. Bush becomes animated when talking about ideas and policy innovations -- he's an unorthodox Republican who latches onto reform ideas wherever he finds them. He's a fan of the school system in Sweden (more on this below). Currently he's reading "Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns" -- on his Kindle electronic reader. And he's convinced Republicans should make a heroic effort to govern California because it's "a center of innovation and a place that looks like the changing demographics of our country, similar to Florida."

Back in the Day

So I officially am facebook obsessed. Of course that was what was going to happen. It's been odd/bizarre/surreal to reconnect with the grade school crew. I was flipping through a couple of old diaries yesterday....1987 was over twenty years ago. I was so sad, so lonely at times. So jealous and I still remember comments made to me, who was cruel and who was kind. All of those games kids play where one minute they are mean and the next manipulating a vulernable you to be their friend. How you are figuring out hormones and still mourning a good friend of yours who has moved on. I remember how much I craved a friendship then, how I could not wait to high school to escape the face that I never had a crowd of friends.

Part of reconnecting means coming to terms with the past. It's not just about showmanship, is it? It's about feeling comfortable with who you are now, forgiving of the way they treated you, lowering your expectations, and also letting go. Not just of that sense of curiousity as to wondering what they are like now and what they have been up to for the past two decades. But letting go of that part of you that still feels like she's eleven and wants to fit in, have the most friends, look the most stylish, have the most and best comments on her yearbook page. Also that yearning to be remembered. Of course, you want to make a difference. You want people to have wondered about you. But didn't want to be forgotten. That's the crux of it: it's not the comment of oh, you've met her, of course, you would not remember her. It's of course, how could I forget. Of course.

At least I can lurk, be kind, be a stronger woman then I was at eleven or twelve. But a little part of me then is still here now.

Tough times, but also good times

Scary article about the unemployed.

T&S's wedding was fabulous on Saturday. The weekend started with a great rehearsal dinner at Lebanese taverna, followed by the fabulous wedding at Christ Church and the Arts Club--steak and crab cakes, and all you could drink. The band, Millennium, was awesome. We danced, we had a good time, etc. Great to be with friends. There was a sense that we all had grown up and moved on, and there was a bittersweetness I think for S that those days of being goofy guys partying and chasing girls were long past over. Not a sadness but a realization that those days are over. I guess we're not all married off yet, but at the same time, we've all moved on.

Good questions

I'd be interested in your answers, President Obama.

Stuff to do this week...

Get a Valentine's day card/gift.
Pick out dresses for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.
Get three more workouts in. Nice on yesterday's 60 degree plus weather!
Clean the ring....on the to do list from forever.
Think about birthday gifts...
Buy thank you cards.
Order wedding pictures.

Obama Meltdown

Hee hee.

I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and the Secretary of Defense. If he doesn't quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.

Seriously, I did enjoy the Tom Daschle meltdown. Seriously, the guy owed how much in taxes, and no, he would never have paid or done anything about it whatsoever if it weren't for his (pending) nomination. The stimulus is debt upon debt.

On a more serious note, this was a fantastic column, and an important reminder that people do hate Americans.

Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.