Detroit News Weblogs

Super bore

Last night's Super Bowl was a super bore to me.

I couldn't care less about the Giants, the Patriots or a 53-year-old Madonna strutting her surgically-enhanced body around the halftime stage.

I was, however, interested in seeing what Chrysler would do for an encore, how the company would follow up on last year's Super Bowl ad featuring Eminem -- the commercial that had us all feeling proud of our Detroit roots the next day and beyond.

Unfortunately, Chrysler's 2012 kick went wide left. Clint Eastwood and the "Halftime in America" stuff were lame and sappy.

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Micheal's Lounge

Where everybody knew your name.

Ever since I started to make regular visits to the old neighborhood again, it's a landmark I looked forward to seeing.

Despite its current cruddy condition, Micheal's Lounge (yes, the establishment's sign had the e before the a rather the tradition spelling, Michael) is on a very special corner, Van Dyke and Dubay. My Grandpa and Grandma Lemanski lived on Dubay, about five houses from Micheal's Lounge.

Micheal's was also an occasional hangout for the men in my extended family, and sometimes celebrations at the grandparents' house ended up there. I can remember one Mother's Day when the women sent the kids, including me, to bring the men back to wash the brunch dishes after they conveniently skipped out to Micheal's.

For the past four years, I've coveted the Micheal's Lounge sign. Even though the bar has been closed for at least 30 years and the building became a church for a while, the sign still hung on a pole near the back of the triangular-shaped structure.

Until now.

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Bucking the system

The system is broke and common sense is dead.

A recipe for disaster.

I was talking about this two weeks ago with Jon Morgan, a Founding Father of this blog who's now working on his doctorate in journalism at Michigan State.

Because he's in East Lansing and neck deep in academia and I'm here with a challenging job and a family, we haven't spent much time together during the past two years.

But a recent death in Jon's family and a trip to Columbiana, Ohio, for a memorial service put us in the same car for about eight hours in early January.

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Learned enough to teach about it

I'm changing professions.

It won't happen overnight. It could take three or more years.

But I'm determined to do it.

The application process began last week. The plan is to enroll at Wayne State University this fall, to attain my master's degree in teaching and to move into a classroom setting before I turn 50.

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MLK Day 2012

"Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

In seach of 'Going Home'

Several times during the past four-plus years, I thought it was over -- this blog, the park, the reunions, the whole chebang.

But then something always happened -- an unexpected happy thing that presented itself like a tall, cold glass of lemonade on a hot, muggy August afternoon.

It happened again just before Christmas when The Detroit News redesigned its website and "Going Home" ended up falling off detnews.com.

I thought to myself at the time, "Oh, well. It's time. Nobody's reading anymore anyway."

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A walk and a smile

I was finishing up a long walk with my dogs this morning when a middle-aged woman, presumably on her way to work, slowed her SUV to get a glimpse of my two canine buddies -- a 10-year-old German Shorthaired Pointer called Patches and a 10-month-old Australian Shepherd-mix named Happy. The woman flashed a broad smile at us as she sped up again and headed on her way.

Based on the look on her face, the sight of me and the dogs getting a little exercise before starting our day lifted her spirits.

If only she knew the rest of the story ...

My walk with Patches and Happy this morning wasn't a casual, happy event. It was done out necessity -- for my sanity and for the dogs' survival.

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Hopes for the new year

It's always been hard for me to curtail my imagination and ambition to change the world.

But as the days turn into months and now years in the new life of Fletcher Field, it's gotten a lot easier to keep it real.

What I had hoped to accomplish in the beginning -- using the park as a catalyst to rebuild the entire neighborhood within a decade -- just isn't going to happen. Frankly, the neighborhood might eventually be all park and farmland before I die.

So with 2012 just days away, here's what my scaled-down vision for the new year is:

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The other brother

Just wanted to update you on an entry from just before Christmas, the post about the brothers in the old neighborhood -- one who was violently killed recently.

The second brother, the one who was so despondent after his brother's death that he attempted suicide, is out of the hospital and doing well.

Please keep him and his family in your prayers, though. The road before them is filled with a mine field of complicated emotions and issues.

Traditional Christmas message

Four years ago, I posted the following message for the first time.

Times are tough for so many in 2011, but tough doesn't begin to describe what some of these children are living through.

'Twas the night before Christmas in the old neighborhood,
But to look around, you would think nothing good.

Few lights were hung, no dollars to spare.
Most houses were gone, others were bare.

The children who remained stuck in this place,
Dared not dream of presents or futures to embrace.

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