Ode (and owed) to Detroit (Comments: 0)

July 1, Canada Day – the beginning of the crossborder holiday madness, what with July 4 in the offing stateside. Liz and I and our friends in Waterloo ON are headed for Niagara Falls this morning for a picnic and a farewell as the two of us bike somewhere over the Rainbow Bridge toward the Land of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. But it will be good to get home again after two weeks on the road.

My mind is still back in Detroit. Somehow I got more out of the Tent City experience there of solidarity amidst the urban decay-slash-renaissance. Official Detroit is American capitalism writ small – and the smallness is moral as well as geographical. The city has been left to Smith’s invisible hand pretty much, though I’m persuaded after my Michigan visit that, just as Joe Stiglitz says, the hand isn’t invisible, it’s not there at all. The “surplus populations” of the US are being left to rot, and you can see real live human evidence of this every morning, afternoon and night along Woodward and other downtown Detroit arterials.

Case in point: We were having breakfast in a greasy spoon one morning when a woman came by, obviously mentally ill, and took off practically all her clothes, uttered some curses to persons unseen, dressed herself again and went about picking up litter along the sidewalk. When a crew from the restaurant pushed a loaded coffee cart out the front door, probably heading to some catering gig, the woman approached them. In a short drama we watched from inside the place, a drama that obviously has gone through many rehearsals, the guy pushing the cart drove the woman away by spritzing her on the face with what I hope was only water. In a civilized country, women in such distress get real social services that keep them from being “refreshed” in such a manner. Maybe our nation will someday be civilized. But the way things are going, don’t hold your breath (or do hold your breath as you get spritzed politically).

In my next post – after I can mentally break away from the contradictions and conundrums of Detroit – I’ll jump to our biking experience in Southwestern Ontario, specifically the route from Sarnia to Stratford and beyond.