Saturday - January 24, 2009
A Special Find
I went down a trail of hyperlinks and wound up at a very unusual blog. It’s very professional, and it’s very insightful. The author, DetroitBlogger John, does several interesting pieces a month on life in Detroit. He also is one of the editors of the Detroit Metro Times, which I guess is a newspaper, dead tree or online. Skilled and professional, his blog is a treat. “John” considers himself an Urban Explorer and he loves the city and the stories he shares on his blog. It’s made up of those colorful fill-in articles you sometimes find in the Sunday paper, that take a look at the people who are keeping this city alive. Barely. From the old man who fixes pianos in his unadvertised windowless shop, to the empty house set up as a monument to the people that died in it, to the little mom & pop bakery still in business after 60 years to the old men who bought a shack and started their own social club because it got too cold to be sitting around on the front stoop, DB John tells each small tale in a truthful but upbeat way, and usually includes a couple of pictures to help the story along.
The archives go back several years. In case you have a rainy Saturday to contend with, or there’s nothing on but reruns. detroitblog.org
- Did you know that many areas of Detroit have gone downhill so far that they’re coming back up the other side? No, I don’t mean Urban Renewal. I mean Earthly Renewal. Vast sections of this most dilapidated city are turning back into prairie and forest. It’s not just a bottom-up thing either; sometimes it’s top-down.
- The answer to that perplexing trivia question “How many boats have their own zip code?” is ONE. That’s because it’s also the post office.
- Got a hankerin’ for some roast raccoon? How about with a side order of Delta Blues? Glemie Dell Beasley can set you up right.
- Literacy in Detroit is less than 50%. Yet libraries still hang on, even though they sometimes just serve as shelters for the homeless. But at least some folks are trying to keep the dream alive.
- Think you have a tough job? How would you like to run the only gun shop in Detroit? They buy and sell guns and ammo, do repiars, teach CCW classes, rent guns (for use on their range) and have a somewhat safe shooting range in the basement. General Laney, the man that owns the business, has strong views on gun control, and he’s taken them all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. And won.
His core belief is that gun laws target blacks. “Gun control in Detroit is racist to begin with. You heard of Dr. Sweet?” he asks, referring to the case of Ossian Sweet, a black physician who, with his family, was tried and eventually acquitted for shooting into a mob that attacked their home when they moved into an all-white neighborhood in 1925.
Soon after, the state passed stringent gun-control laws, known as Public Act 372 of 1927. Laney sees those laws aimed squarely at blacks, a reaction to the verdict. “After the Sweet case, the Michigan Legislature said we couldn’t allow black people to have guns, and that’s how Michigan gun laws come about.”
“Gun control is race control,” he adds. “It has been that way to keep blacks in servitude.”
Posted by Drew458 on 01/24/2009 at 03:59 PM
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.