Pictures From Detroit!
I can't even touch the surface of all the things that happened in Detroit, but here are a few images and excerpts.First off, if you're staying near the water, Detroit feels like a coastal city. There's no smell of salt, but the bodies of water are so immense that it might as well be the Gulf of Mexico. Having grown up on the Gulf Coast, I immediately bonded with that feeling.
We tend to do fine on vacation in terms of encountering people, because I am (believe it or not) so egregiously polite that it makes Gloria laugh. Both her and Eli are very polite as well, and I found no matter where we go, people will usually respond to politeness in a warm and friendly way.
Detroit, of course, is in the Midwest, so the people are warm and friendly anyway. And they drive like complete assholes, just like we do in Texas.
There are many beautiful places in the city, like this:
Sadly, though, the beautiful places are often right next to decay:
That seems to be the essential character of Detroit, at least today: pride mixed with a sense of resignation, with those feelings echoed in the current architectural state of the city.
There's an above-ground rail system called The People Mover, and they have lovely art at the individual stations. Like this:
Here's another entirely spectacular view:
These last three pictures are special, even though they're poorly taken. On the last day of goalie camp, I walked outside during a break and saw a bulldozer digging a grave:
There was something coarse about this. In my mind, men dig the graves for other men. There's something personal about shovels striking the earth. It feels like it should take work to bury someone.
A bulldozer makes it seem so easy.
I thought about that a bit during the afternoon session, and when I walked out later, I saw a carefully dressed woman standing at the foot of the newly-dug grave. I felt like I was intruding, to even be watching her, but I also wanted an image that I felt would honor the moment. Of course, she started walking about two seconds before I took the picture, but the meaning was the same.
She didn't linger. I stayed and watched quietly, wondering who she had lost. After a few minutes, she turned and walked away.
I went back in to the rink, coming back out thirty minutes later because the kids were doing off-ice training. That's when I saw the third and last panel of the story:
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