In case you can’t tell what this photoooo is, it is a burned building. I think it has been there for a while. I *think* it is in the city of Detroit, downriver a bit, but I’m not totally sure. I do know that it is highly unlikely that the remains of a fire that devastating would be left to fester here on the [arguably] upscale Planet Ann Arbor. Certainly not in many of the [definitely] upscale northern suburbs and exurbs of the bombed out [looking] city of Detroit.

This is a bad pitcher because I was in an automotive vee-hickle at the time. Whenever I go down into Detroit these days, I always want to walk around and take pictures but we are usually driving around and I don’t want us to stop every time I want to get out and take a pitcher. That would annoy me as a driver and even as an iPhoneographer. I hate jumping in and out of cars to take pictures. Anyway, I am not that good at photography or even iPhoneography. If you take 8,000 pitchers, some of them turn out.

Anyway. We play a little game of sorts whenever we are Downtown. There are the totally burned out buildings (like this one) that are beyond repair. But then there are the others. We ask each other, “Is that building being rehabbed? Or has it already been rehabbed? Or is it still abandoned?” Sometimes Liz knows what’s going on, at least in her neighborhood, which has a facebook page. No I do not follow it. My kid is 30, fer kee-reist! Although I’m gonna guess that she wouldn’t mind if I *did* follow it at this stage of the game…

I did not keep close track of the SOTU or the GOP replies last night. One of the issues that I am very interested in is the idea of providing free community college tuition to everyone. I spent a few years taking classes at a wonderful community college (as a 50-something who could easily afford the tuition) and it all ended in my loverly current career, so I know the value of these schools. Alas, I wish we would focus more on our public schools. So many students arrive at community college unprepared to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. It is sad that so many colleges need to enroll students in remedial classes. That’s not to say that public school teachers are bad (my mother was one), just that they cannot solve all of every students’ problems and the shrinking budgets and increasing paperwork do not help.

I didn’t hear the Iowa gal’s speech. I think she was trying to say something about how hard her childhood was and she wore bread bags on her feet (but she also castrated hogs). I understand her hard life because I used to have to walk the proverbial four miles to school through deep snow up and down hills (and I used an outhouse). I never wore bread bags on my feet (and I didn’t castrate hogs). Neither did any of my classmates (well, there may have been someone who castrated hogs). Most of us were not that poor. But just try to live in the dern Yooperland. There were plenty of families who were poor. If you want to find kids who are having a hard childhood, check out Detroit (and your own backyard). We need to help those kids. And their parents. Obama was right when he asked if a family could survive / thrive on $15,000 a year. No. Not so much. Not that those of us who are well above that income level should totally subsidize others. But just think about it. Hard-working people should be paid a living wage. We need to think about that.

Overachiever? That was what a premier meteorologist called today’s snowstorm. That means that it produced more snow than it was expected to. And so it did, at least for the morning commute, which was a looooong slooodge over to Cubeland. Going home the roads were actually cleared enough that I took the freeway. It was okay but nobody was going 85 or even 70.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.