The Tragedy of Detroit

The above image is from a stunning photo montage by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, called simply The Ruins of Detroit.

Detroit has been the convenient butt of jokes for a number of years. Crime rates. Corrupt government. Corrupt unions. Greedy, irresponsible industry. We can argue until we've lost our voices over what Detroit has fallen into ruin, but one fact remains undeniable: This is one of the great tragedies in our country's history.

As Marchand and Meffre state on their website, "Nowadays, (Detroit's) splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great civilization."

I admit I am not an objective observer. I'm from Michigan, and grew up going to Detroit to Tigers games, the Henry Ford Museum, Greek Town and the Fox Theater. I have family who live(d) there and work(ed) there. I'm from a family of automotive workers. There was once great pride in that, by the way.

The Detroit of the early 1900s was, in large part, responsible for the creation of this country's middle class. We were manufacturing actual things. Things people wanted to buy and use. No more. What do we manufacture in this country now? Electronic transactions. Fake money. Intellectual property. That's just about it. So bye bye Detroit.

Again, I'm not here to argue about who or what is at fault. Anyone who thinks there's a simple answer to that is a simple person. I care about the people. Lost homes, lost jobs, lost families, lost lives. No matter who you are or what your political beliefs, these are fellow Americans. Not to be confused with a bunch of book-cooking crooks who were bailed out by our inglorious government to the tune of 700-something BILLION dollars, mind you. These are my relatives.

Go click the link above and look at the pictures. The one of United Artists Theater literally made me cry. Cry for what has been permanently lost.

Back.

Dad/kid camping trip Saturday night: Rained Out.

Now before you pseudo-psycho "I drink my own pee when I camp" outdoorsmen get all fuckity with me, understand that we six dads had 16 boys and girls ranging from age 5 to age 13, and it rained so hard that all of the paths turned into rivers flowing directly into the tents. Everything and everyone was soaked, inside and out. So the decision to pack it in was a pretty easy one to make, because while "sticking it out" might sound fun and adventurous in spirit, dealing with cold, wet, miserable children all night when you could have avoided it is just plain stupid.

As one of the other dads and I were on breakfast duty, we did have everyone over to my house in the morning for the breakfast burritos we were planning to make in the mountains. We even cooked all the stuff outside with our camping gear, just to get in the spirit. Yep. That's the guys we are.

Then went back into the mountains with the family for a vacation, except that I only got to go for one day because I had to drive back down Monday and hop on a plane to Cincinnati for a work thing. Family stayed in the mountains until today. Work thing went well, but yeah, I'd have rather stayed on vacation.

Okay, I better get going. I just knew you were missing me, so I thought I'd drop you a quick line to let you know I'm back.

Chatterbox

In the spirit of O'Tim's Monthly Max post, it's time for a gratuitous Sam post. He and I had a very meaningful conversation recently. Luckily, I caught it on tape. And yes, you will LOL. TTFN.

Gadgets are just too cool.

My buddy just got a new digital camera. It's a little Canon point-and-shoot, 7.1 megapixels, blahbedy blahbedy blah. Anyway, it has this feature where you can select one color, then take the shot, and this is what it does:
Now the camera is doing what you used to have to spend hours learning Photoshop to do.

I know. I know I'm a geek. But damn, I love this shit.

Now I gotta get one...

We Have Become...

Minivan people. My wife disagrees -- she says we're now people with a minivan, but not minivan people. I say, what's the difference? We traded in the big, gas-guzzling Explorer for a fancy new dark blue '07 Toyota Sienna with rear side doors that open with the push of a button on the key remote, a DVD player in the back for the kidlets, tons and tons of space, a JBL surround-sound stereo system, and -- get this, Paula -- a jack to plug an iPod directly into the stereo. Oh, and about 25 mpg (vs. the 12 we were getting with the Explorer).

We now have a station wagon and and minivan.

We've arrived!

Chillin' in the pool, Sammy-style.

Makes you want to be 13 months old again, doesn't it?

Back in the Saddle

Thanks to everyone for the kind words regarding my Uncle's funeral. PJ wrote up a wonderful synopsis of the proceedings in the comments to the last post, so check that out if you're interested.

While the reason for the occasion may suck, funerals do offer an opportunity to be together as a family. And given that I have one of those huge families where cousins many-times-removed grew up together and aunts and uncles possess the same authority over the kids as parents, there was an abundance of hugs, kisses, laughter and tears. It's something special, and it's always hard to leave.

But it was awfully good to get back home to my wife and kids.

Uncle Ray

Uncle Ray & Sammy
Originally uploaded by jeffkos

Uncle Ray died early Monday morning. As a veteran of the U.S. Navy, it was befitting that his last moments fell on Memorial Day. He was 68. This photo of him with great-nephew Sammy was taken last October. I feel awfully lucky that Sammy got to meet and laugh with his Uncle Ray on this day, just as I'm awfully lucky that I got to spend 38 years laughing with the man who was not just my Dad's oldest brother, but also my Godfather. Now he and my Dad are back together again. I'm sure they're already staking out their spots to watch tonight's Pistons-Cavs game 4. And my Grandma's yelling at them to get their feet off the coffee table.

C

Four and a half years ago, C killed my dad. It was a rare type of thyroid C, and it took about 2-1/2 years from the time we discovered it until the day he died. He was only 51 when he died, and I still struggle with it daily. Try as I might, I just can't put it together in any sort of box that I can stash away. It's open, it's out, and it makes me really angry.

My grandfather -- Dad's Dad -- will be 95 this August. He's the Energizer rabbit. An astonishing man of physical and mental strength, and faith. He's buried five -- yes, 5 -- of his children in his lifetime. Four of them were truly children, and then my Dad in '02. My Dad's death took a lot out of my Grandpa. He slowed down a lot. He still lives on his own in a regular apartment (no nursing home, no assisted living), but he really struggled, particularly mentally. He recently admitted to me that he had been horribly depressed, and finally got help. The last time I talked to him, which was about two weeks ago, he was doing much better. He's still sharp as a tack, my Grandpa. Has a wicked sense of humor, and the stories he can tell -- he was born in 1912, so suffice it to say he's seen a lot. It was great hearing him sounding good, sounding happy.

My Uncle Ray -- Dad's brother -- has had C for a few years. They discovered it right after my Dad died. I'm not quite certain what the origin of his C is, but it's been manageable. Until now. Uncle Ray and his wife of nearly 40 years, Aunt Peg, have been in Florida where he's been undergoing some experimental treatment. We all thought it was working, but I guess not. My cousin called last night to say they're flying back to Michigan today and Hospice is being called in.

It's deja vu all over again. C just doesn't fuck around. C might give you some time, might give you some breaks, but when C wants to, C ends it. And there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. And while C may directly kill one person, C also wounds everyone in the vicinity without ever getting its grips on their bloodstreams. Grandpa had a skin C a number of years ago, but he beat it. Now C may still kill my Grandpa by killing his boys.

Why C has taken such a liking to my family, I'll never know. But I look at my step-mom, and my Aunt Peg, and my Grandpa, and my Uncle Doug, and my Aunt Bert, and my cousins and my mom and all the rest of my family and I say, damn you, C. Why don't you just fuck off and leave us alone?

Just leave us the hell alone.

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Sam, Day 1
Sam, Day 365

Happy birthday, little man.

Daddy loves the hell out of you.

So it begins...

Our little girl has her first boyfriend.

A boy asked her yesterday if she would go out with him. She said yes.

When I was a kid, we just asked someone if she wanted to go with you. We usually wrote it in a note: "Will you go with me? Yes No Maybe."

Now they go "out," though they're not going anywhere.

Anyway, first boyfriend. Mom was in tears. Little sister kept saying big sister's first name with boyfriend's last name.

I told her I need references and two years of tax returns.

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Camera phones.

Love 'em.

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Great Birthday / Not So Great Day After Birthday

I got a pair of Bill's Khakis for my birthday. I've always wanted a pair and now I have some. They're the most comfortable khakis ever. My wife is the greatest! I also got the complete Strangers With Candy series on DVD, which is about as twistely hilarious as you can get. It was a very nice birthday at home with the family.

We'd planned to go out to eat, but Maddie hadn't been feeling so hot so we ordered take-out Thai food from the place down the road for our birthday dinner. We've eaten there a few times and always liked it, and Wednesday night it tasted particularly good.

Apparently food poisoning tastes particularly good.

Everyone who ate the Thai -- my wife, both step-daughters and myself -- spent all day yesterday violently ill. I've never experienced anything like that in my life. Normally you'd think three bathrooms is enough for a family of five (one of which is an infant), but not yesterday. No, there were times when each bathroom would be occupied and someone else would be hurling in a pot next to the bed. The only one who was unaffected was little Sam. He just hung out in Mommy and Daddy's bed all day happy as can be.

I came into the office this morning but I still feel like crap, so I'm going home.

Blech.

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Teenagers! Aaaahhhhhh!

My step-daughter turns 13 today.

I'm remembering when my sisters became teenagers.





If you need me I'll be hiding in the basement.

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When cars and car seats do what they're supposed to do.

Imagine being in Chicago on business and getting this phone call: "Honey, we're both okay, but Sam and I were in a car accident."

Now imagine standing by for an earlier flight, getting on by the skin of your teeth (being the last standby to get on, as a matter of fact, and only because there was one seat available and the two people ahead of you were a couple and didn't want to be split up), getting home and seeing your Explorer looking like the photo above.

That's our Explorer. And that rear passenger door that's so completely caved in? Our eight-month-old son was sitting in his car seat at that door.

Believe it or not, he and Julie had nary a scratch. The door took the hit (a woman in an older Wagoneer T-boned them), buckled and spread out the impact. Sam's Britax car seat completely protected him. The door was pushed in so that it was about three centimeters from the edge of his seat, but got no closer. A few minutes later, he was giggling at the firemen.

Needless to say, Julie was a wreck. She's truly one of the safest, most defensive drivers on the road. It just goes to show that anything can happen, anytime, anywhere.

But the car and the car seat protected them. Potentially, they saved my wife's and little boy's lives.

When we get the Explorer back (been in the shop since December 26, and the damage total is more than $11,000), I'm going to give it a big kiss.

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My earliest memory.

Ms. Gekko has a post up asking about our very first memory. While I have flashes of images from when I was very young, I think the first complete memory I have is of an event that happened when I was maybe four years old (PJ, I'm sure you can verify or correct this!). Remembering this, er, memory has brought me great joy, so I thought I'd share it with you so that it may bring you great joy as well.

We lived in a small house on a dead-end street in Lansing, Michigan. Because of the cul-de-sac, the cars passing our house were never going very fast. I'm not quite sure how I got out, but I was wandering around in the front yard like a puppy. Every so often a car would pass and I'd stop and watch it go by.

Then I decided it would be a really good idea to throw a rock at a car.

I found a big rock, picked it up with two hands, and stood at the edge of our property, watiting for the next car to come by. After an eternity, a car finally turned onto our street. I waited patiently, right at the side of the road. Seeing me standing there, the driver slowed down as he passed. I lifted the rock up over my head and let it fly with both my hands.

Boom! The rock hit the passenger door, and I started giggling. The car stopped and the driver got out, just as my mom came running out of the house thinking I'd been hit.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He threw a rock at my car!" the guy said.

She asked me if I threw the rock at his door (which dented it, btw). Yes, I said, and giggled some more.

I can't remember anything else that happened during the next two years of my life.

But I'm still giggling about that rock.

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How the times have changed.

Over the past couple of years I've taken to introducing my step-daughters to movies that came out before their time. We've plowed through Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Groundhog Day, ¡Three Amigos!, Back to the Future, the original Star Wars trilogy, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Home Alone, Better Off Dead, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and more that I can't think of right now. Good fun.

Well, last night I introduced them to The Bad News Bears. The original, not the recent remake with Billy Bob Self Mutilation. The 1976 classic with Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow (some seven years before being killed on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie), and a bunch of kids you've never heard of.

It was rated PG, but that was before the PG-13 rating came out. I remembered quite vividly that there was some choice language, especially from the kid Tanner, but that it was of the "shit," "goddamn," "son-of-a-bitch" and "asshole" variety.

About 10 minutes into the movie, right after Matthau meets the team, Tanner says, "All we got on this team are a buncha Jews, spics, niggers, pansies, and a booger-eatin' moron!"

Um, yeah, didn't remember that one. My wife said, "Um, Jeff..." which translated to, "Hey, jackass, I thought you said this was appropriate!" I told her I didn't think anything like that was said again in the movie, and of course immediately after that a kid basically repeated what Tanner said. We kept watching, and the movie ended up being as silly and charming as I remembered, though the term "faggot" was also used a couple times.

Talk about being in a tough position as a parent. You can't just say "Times were different back then" and leave it at that. The idea that a little kid would say something like that, no matter what the time, is shocking. It was so shocking that it took the edge off that fact that the rebel kid, Kelly, rode a motorcycle and smoked cigarettes (he was maybe 12).

So I did what any good father would do and took a newspaper into the bathroom to let my wife explain.

Nah, that's a lie. We basically just told the girls that we were as shocked as they were. We also said that the good thing is that times have changed for the better, and that while there are unfortunately still people out there who think and talk that way, there aren't as many today as 30 years ago.

Today, that line would never make it into the movie. If it were in the original script, it would be removed during re-writes. If somehow it remained in the movie, the movie would be threatened with an "R" rating and the producers demand it be removed. It'd be different if the line was used as a step toward some sort of anti-bigotry message. But it was just simply there to be funny. Back then, it was funny, which makes me feel a little creepy. I know there are definitely people who would find it funny today, but that's a different matter of personal bigotry. In 1976, it was outward societal bigotry. Ick.

Tonight we're going to watch the original Love Bug. I think that one's safe.

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The party of the working class? Doesn't exist.

I was reading some interesting posts on Courtney's blog regarding class -- specifically, the Conservative Party's apparent disdain for the lower and working classes in Great Brittain -- and it got me to thinking about the class-based society we have here in the U.S.

The entire paternal side of my family is working class. My dad worked at a cement factory until the day he died. My uncles are retired UAW auto workers. My grandpa worked in a machine shop. They're real blue collar, and I'm a blue-collar guy who somehow managed to infiltrate the ranks of Corporate America.

Both parties here claim to be "the party of the working man and woman," which is complete and utter bullshit on both sides for a number of reasons. My question is, is it possible to truly have a party of the working class? I don't see how. When you look at Capital Hill, how many working-class folks do you see up there? No, not the landscapers. The elected officials.

I can count them on one elbow.

The working class don't have representation because, well, they're too busy working. So they have to rely on some magnanimous higher-class saviour to take on the charge of the little people.

No wonder the working class is a bit cynical and pessimistic.

Even in the rare event that "one of us" makes it into some sort of elected office, he or she isn't really one of us anymore. The compromises and arm twisting and backroom bullshit in which American politics are so deeply entrenched will squeeze the ideology right out of the most well-intentioned.

At least in Great Brittain the Conservative Party lets it be known in no uncertain terms how they feel about the working class. Here, the Repubmocrat Demolicans (term borrowed from my friend Bob Dubac) all stand in front of microphones and cameras and talk about the working class like they really care. "I promise I'll take the fight of the working man and woman all the way to the White House!" The promises, of course, fly the most fervently as we near elections.

I'm surprised we haven't heard someone resurrect Hoover's "A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."

The working class' biggest concerns are pretty simple: Pay my mortgage and feed my family. Everything else is secondary to those two things. Pick any emotional issue -- abortion, gay rights, education, the environment or the Iraq war, to name a few -- and while they may strike a strong emotional chord on one side of the issue or the other, they're still going to fall behind the basic human needs of food and shelter for the working class.

Think long and hard about this question: Do you want a party of the working class? A party that makes all those emotional concerns secondary to allowing the working man & woman to take home as much money as possible? I daresay that many of us wouldn't list food & shelter as our #1 concerns.

I know damn well those aren't the real concerns of elected politicians. So maybe they should take a page from GB's Conservative Party and stop the pretense. Let the working class of this country know that their concerns aren't overly high on our to-do list and focus on the real issues like who should or shouldn't be able to marry whom, or what language the local WalMart is printing on its signs.

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On a gushy happy note.

Is this kid cute or what?

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Blizzard, Part Deux

Been spending a wonderfully relaxing week with my family (no work this week, yay!). Christmas was tons of fun. Sam loved his presents, and by presents I mean the things inside the wrapping paper, bows and boxes, as well as the actual wrapping paper, bows and boxes. The girls were giddy with all their new clothes and dance things and Nintendo DS and all that. Julie loved her new espresso maker she'd been hinting at for a year, and her cool new shooze and the bracelet that came in the little blue box. Me? 80GB iPod Video!!!!

And last night we were hit with another blizzard, and it's still falling. Probably got a foot (piled on top of the two feet that's still in our yard), and another foot or so is expected.

I'm dreaming of a white New Year's.

Merryhappy whateveryoucelebrated, everyone. Have a great and safe New Year's Eve.

Peace.

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