Say yes, Michigan: Marriage equality now

Photo by Marvin Shaouni

(originally published 5/21/13 in Model D)

My partner of seven years and I were married last September in a small ceremony on the Detroit River. The next day, we celebrated with a big picnic on Belle Isle. It was wonderful: simple, informal, and (almost entirely) stress-free. Family and friends streamed in and out steadily all day, bearing goodwill and great food, chatting, relaxing, and playing games until nightfall. In the end, our union was thoroughly witnessed and enthusiastically affirmed, and we understood, for the first time, really, the extent to which our community's love and support surrounds and strengthens our relationship.

Those two days felt perfect, while we were living them. But the truth is more complicated than that, because there were two important parties notably absent from the proceedings (and, more to the point, from the union): the federal and state governments. Her words rang true when our friend and officiant proudly pronounced us husbands that day on the river, because as far as we're concerned, and as far as the community we're a part of is concerned, that's what we are. According to the laws of the land, however, our marriage is no marriage at all.

Read the rest at Model D.

Green City Diaries: Conserving water, improving neighborhood life

Photo by Marvin Shaouni

(originally published 5/7/13 in Model D)

Last month, I reported on a community forum that brought Detroiters together to talk about water. The forum addressed issues of water conservation and stewardship by focusing on neighborhood landscape infrastructure projects (a stormwater infiltration forest, for instance) and everyday individual choices (like using a rain barrel instead of a hose to water your home garden).

This week, let's dive a little deeper. I'd like to introduce you to two passionate Detroiters who spend much of their free time thinking about our water problems and trying to help solve them. First we'll learn from Deborah Dorsey, a member of the West Grand Boulevard Collaborative (WGBC), about the remarkable "blue" infrastructure projects she and her neighbors are developing along the boulevard between the Lodge and I-96. Then we'll turn to Erma Leaphart-Gouch, a North Rosedale Park resident and everyday water activist, to get an up-close look at water conservation at home."

Read the rest at Model D.

Free City & Jason Mitcham

We went to a curious art festival called Free City last night in Flint. We'd caught a few minutes of a conversation about it that morning on the Craig Fahle show and liked what we heard: something something old Chevy plant, something something light art. Well, why not?  The last (& first) time I was in Flint I was 15 and watching that terrible Avengers movie with Uma Thurman & Sean Connery at the drive-in.

Free City (at least this first night -- it's a three day festival) was kind of a mess. Poorly lit, difficult to navigate, and attended (pretty sparsely) by as many rowdy, wasted teenagers as arty types. Not that we had a bad time, exactly. There was a certain sloppy, anarchic, '80s movie charm about the whole thing. It was like ... an art carnival, complete with hot dogs.

Some of the art was pretty exciting, including a big inflatable silver dome (remember Starlab?) with a party waiting to happen inside. One participant at a time pedaled a stationary bike that powered a stereo blasting "Move This" by Technotronic. There was a tiny disco ball hanging from the very top of the dome, and if you weren't dancing or making the music happen, you could make bubbles with tennis rackets, instead.

There was also a pretty spiral made from strings of different colored LED lights. It seemed to invite participation, so I walked through it, carefully & concentrically, for about five minutes until I got to the center, where jets were spraying cold mist. Later I talked to the artist and she seemed surprised that people were walking through it. And by "surprised," I mean "dismayed but resigned." I told her I was sorry, but that it seemed like it was made to be interacted with. I think mostly she was sad that drunk kids were stepping on her light bulbs & breaking them.

The highlight of the evening, though, was the work of Jason Mitcham, the whole reason I wanted to write this. His stop motion paintings stopped us in our tracks, and made the ~140 mile round trip excursion totally worth it.

Each short video piece is assembled out of still images of a single, painstakingly altered painting. These keenly observed depictions of American-style progress are rendered in a rapid, fluid visual language that shows the viewer years, even decades, in minutes. In constant forward motion, we see landscapes, development, construction, infrastructure and economic boom; we also see transformation, neglect, collapse, and decay. Mitcham's moving paintings provide lyrical & transcendent birds' eye views of triumph, folly, and the steady erosions of time. They pull us back from the historical moments and processes we unconsciously inhabit, thereby revealing them.

According to the artist, he is inspired by Robert Smithson's view of suburbs as "rising into ruin." "They exist without a past," he writes, "at least in any real sense, and thus have no hope for a lasting future.  As they are being built, their immanent decay can already be predicted."

Below are three examples of his work, all of which were featured at Free City. (The last one is a music video for "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" by the Avett Brothers.)

This Land is Your Land from Jason Mitcham on Vimeo.


Valley of Ashes: A Brief History of Flushing Meadows from Jason Mitcham on Vimeo.

Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise from Jason Mitcham on Vimeo.


For more examples of Jason Mitcham's work, check out his Vimeo page.

Yamasaki restored

We visited Minoru Yamasaki's recently restored 1958 reflecting pool & sculpture garden behind the McGregor Memorial Conference Center on Wayne State's campus this morning. It's a beautiful public space: simple, elemental, elegant, and tranquil. For its relatively small size, I nonetheless felt a powerful sense of both freedom & exploration while poking around. What a joy to see it restored, to have the opportunity to interact with/in it.

I'm looking forward to returning soon and getting more, better, & wider shots; these are just hints of the whole.

This work by Matthew Piper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Green City Diaries: Paradise found

Photo by Marvin Shaouni

(originally published 4/2/13 in Model D)

Consider Detroit, before it was Detroit.

Before the Emergency Financial Manager, before Kwame, before the Renaissance Center. Before cars and highways, black flight and white.

Before Hastings Street and suburban sprawl, Boblo, Deco, and Pingree's potato patches. Before dirt roads, ribbon farms, and enterprising New Frenchmen in birchbark canoes.

We can begin to know this distant, verdant place secondhand, through a letter written by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac to Louis XIV in 1702, one year after French settlement.

Cadillac describes a river of "sweet water," linking "a lake which has been called St. Claire" and the Great Lakes, via the St. Lawrence River, to the Atlantic.

"This river or strait of the seas is scattered over," he writes, "...in its plains and on its banks, with large clusters of trees surrounded by charming meadows....On the banks and round about the clusters of timber there is an infinite number of fruit trees, chiefly plums and apples. They are so well laid out that they might be taken for orchards planted by the hand of a gardener."

Cadillac's letter contains a rich description of what sounds like another place entirely, an "earthly paradise of North America" abundant with things that grow (as well as crawl, hop, fly, swim, and slither). Looking back on what's happened here in the intervening 300 years, including the displacement of native peoples, the industrial revolution, and a turbulent period of post-industrial decline, it's hard not to think of Detroit as a kind of paradise lost.

But even today, after centuries of development and environmental degradation, traces of the original landscape remain. And some Detroiters find themselves drawn to these sites, where they can escape the pressures of daily life and commune with the natural world that once proliferated here without having to leave the city limits.

With Spring doing its thing all over the city, now is a good time to check in with some of these Detroiters and see what they have to teach us about the vital, nourishing relationships we can all build with the nature that's still here, hiding in plain sight.

Read the rest at Model D.

Green City Diaries: Shear innovation, part 2

(originally published 3/5/13 in Model D)

When we started our conversation last week about sustainable stylists in Detroit, I mentioned that Sebastian Jackson of the Social Club Grooming Company is considering several interrelated areas for improvement over time. One is the toxicity of the products he uses and sells. "There are real health benefits to this industry," he says, "but also the potential to do real harm. I don't want to hurt my clients."

Jen Willemsen concurs. She owns Curl Up & Dye, a non-toxic salon in the Cass Corridor, about a mile down the street from The Social Club. When she opened the business four years ago, she used and sold standard, high quality beauty products, without giving much thought to the potentially harmful effects they could have on her customers, her employees, and the environment. "Providing non-toxic products and thinking about sustainability were never goals when I started this business," she says. "Honestly, it's the last thing I ever thought I would take on. But at this point, I can't go back."

Jen started thinking seriously about cosmetics ingredients after some of her vegan customers asked her to provide professional quality products that weren't tested on animals. For the first time, she started really paying attention to the labels on the products she used every day. She started investigating the ingredients she found listed there: ("chemicals," as she puts it, "with repercussions"), and her research led her to some disturbing insights into the beauty industry.

Read the rest at Model D.

Green City Diaries: Shear innovation, part 1

Photo by Marvin Shaouni

(originally published 2/26/13 in Model D)

Here's something pretty remarkable about sustainability in action: when it comes to considering the social and environmental impacts of business practices, there is opportunity for innovation and continuous improvement in every kind of human endeavor. The sustainable ethic, in other words, is both global and adaptable. It has to be, or we're doomed. In the long term, only like-minded efforts by leaders from every industry at every scale, from building to baking, will truly change the world.

I mention this because the green leaders we're focusing on in this two-part story couldn't work in a more different environment than the folks at Detroit Diesel, the large-scale industrial operation we profiled in January. But, motivated by the same passions, they are engaged in a similar daily struggle: to remain profitable while finding ways to uplift the local community and help heal our beleaguered planet.

Sebastian Jackson and Jen Willemsen don't work in an industry that's usually thought of as a hotbed of eco-conscious innovation, but if the two of them are any indication, now is a good time to start rethinking that. Detroit, meet your sustainable stylists.

This week we'll get to know Sebastian, who owns The Social Club Grooming Company, an almost year-old barbershop, salon, and day spa on Wayne State's campus. Next week we'll talk to Jen Willemsen, the owner of Curl Up and Dye, a mile down the street.

Read the rest at Model D.