Time does its work on us and life goes on. Detroit has astonishing architectural surprises, like this well preserved store floor built in the 19th century. From Detroitblog. I love the colors. Where are the giants who built these stores?
Time does its work on us and life goes on. 
11 comments:
Glad that you are back.
Glad that you are back.
It will be used to store grain from the land where they used to build automobiles.
Welcome back.
Anon.
Yes, welcome back, J.
Detroit quickly rose to become one of the richest cities in America on the back of the auto industry. It's fall has been just as fast - it is like those ghost cities with opera houses in the jungle in Brazil founded on a rubber industry that is no longer there.
The reason that what you see in the picture has been preserved is that Detroit fell so fast there was not even time for there to be gradual renovations as this type of elaborate (but no longer fashionable) decoration was covered up with more modern layers as happend in more prosperous cities. There was not even $ for demolition, so giant high rise buildings just sit empty and abandoned but intact, an American Pompeii. The US still has an auto industry, mostly run by foreign mfrs, but the cars are assembled in the South, far from the unions that destroyed the Detroit industry.
K
I think we all love your love of Detroit and to see you writing again.
By the way, these structures were not built by giants but by men just like ourselves, except that they were filled with boundless optimism and we are old and cynical and that makes all the difference.
I was just flipping thru the channels and came across a program from Chinese TV (with subtitles) which was a sort of Chinese "American Idol" - a singing contest with judges. Except instead of individuals, the singers were all groups and the songs mostly (and unironically) had lyrics like "I love my homeland". America once had songs like this ("God Bless America") but our educational system has been undermined by a leftist 5th column that teaches our children that America is a evil country , made up of racists, torturers and baby killers. If you believe this, then it is impossible to build beautiful, hopeful structures like you see in the picture.
K
Also, there just isn't the money any more to spend on ourselves.
We're too busy paying for war, for aid to the newly independent country of Wall Street, and the many other Quixotic endeavors to make silk purses out of sows' ears.
Anon.
Detroit is our future today; you don't have to come to Mogadisho, Mogadisho will come to you in due time. In other words, Detroit is systemic entropy in a democratic political system, eventually reaching all the other centralized efficient networks whose proper and smooth functioning we rely upon without even being aware of their existence. Once the main product on the delivery of which all the networks rely was disrupted and slowed to a trickle, the networks started to shut down. The law enforcement network went first, and everything else followed. There is no going back. The only hope I can see for the way forward is the resilient community, which John Robb writes about in http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/ . If people can locally manufacture their own power, architecture, food, water and mechanical implements, then they can move on to creating governance when the centralized nation-state has hollowed out and ceased to provide it to them. This is the only way that I can see out of the coming Third Worldness, aside from a replay of the Dark Ages leading into a Rennaisance through an institutionalization of chieftains who wind up providing governance.
I'm glad your situation has stabilized and you're back to writing.
All of this is the consequence of a quasi-religious belief in something that is "self-evidently" NOT true, which is the equivalence of human beings, and the authoritarian enforcement of the thousand fallacies that flow logically from it.
Anon.
Here's another Detroit blog, lots of pictures and an active forum
http://detroityes.com/0tourdetroit.htm#The_Fabulous_Ruins
I can't believe that some type of return to primitivism ala Baghdad/Mogadisho is the solution, where you have neighborhood generators running wires all over the place, water trucks etc. To the extent that other places (China) are NOT failed states, places that are will not be competitive - making electricity off a gasoline generator costs 10x as much as making it in a big coal fired station, etc. Also, so far the # of places in the US that are failed states is quite small - most of the US (even Detroit for that matter) has water & power 24/7 unless there's a storm. It's fun to indulge in these apocalyptic Mad Max/Robinson Crusoe type fantasies but I think (pray) that there's not a big chance that we'll have to live them.
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