Matty’s fence — gone!

Posted on June 4, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

By the time we got to Riverside Park a bit after six Friday afternoon, June 4, 2011, Matty’s fence was gone.

The metal poles that once supported it were still standing in a row parallel to the Ambassador Bridge, but the east end of Riverside Park, for years cordoned off by Matty’s thugs, now sits open to the public.

Dozens of cars were parked on streets near Riverside Park’s extension, and many people — to numerous to count — were playing softball or gawking at the fake “Homeland Security” designed by Matty to intimidate visitors to the park.

I saw an occasional Detroit police cruiser. I didn’t see any of Matty’s shotgun-totin’ goons.

For years, I’ve urged city officials to send city workers escorted by cops to tear down Matt’s fence and re-occupy the city’s park.

How amazing that a group of citizens could do the job peacefully.

Matty needs this parcel of city land to site his proposed new bridge to Canada.

In my opinion, Matty never seriously planned to complete a new span. It was only a bargaining chip in his myriad maneuvers to prevent a publicly-owned bridge from being built.

For years, Matty occupied the city land, defying Detroit’s legal attempts to dislodge him.

Now the fence and the fake signs are gone. Riverside is a public park entirely, once again.

Matty’s sham possession is obvious.

What’re ya gonna do now, Matty? Put up another fence?

I counted three TV trucks at Riverside Park.

This time, a lot of people will be watching the west side of Matty’s bridge.

Congratulations to Bridge Watch Detroit and Joe Rashid and the hundreds of volunteers who took down Matty’s blight.

Posted in Me & Matty | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Matty’s fence

Posted on June 3, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Wonder what this might mean:

An electronic flyer from Detroit Bridge Watch calls for “Community Action to Take Back Riverside Park.”

Wow!

Is somebody going to take direct action to return a stolen park to the city of Detroit?

Whatever happens, according to the flyer, will happen today, June 3, 2011 at 5:30 p.m. at the extension of Riverside Park, which is at 23rd Street and Jefferson just west of the Ambassador Bridge.

Hey! That’s where I met Doug, the shotgun-totin’ goon, back on September 22, 2008. I was taking photos alongside a chain-link fence in the park when this hireling of Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun first ordered me out of the public park, then tried to arrest me.

I soon learned that the fence, festooned with phony “Homeland Security” warning signs put up by Matty’s henchmen, was on city property and that Matty hijacked that end of the park, because he needs that property to build a new bridge.

In Matty’s book of ethical substandards, if you’re a billionaire and you need something that belongs to someone else, you just take it and stall the owners in court.

At Riverside Park, using 9/11 as his pretext, Matty tore down trees, basketball hoops and fenced off the park land he wanted, decorating it with various pieces of construction junk.

The city of Detroit has been trying in court to re-take its park for nearly two and a half years.

Guess Detroit Bridge Watch decided Matty’s been squatting on city property long enough.

According to the flyer, there will be a rally at the extension: “Now is the time to come together to mobilize a few hundred people to take back our park!

“Invite all your friends and family of all ages as we want a critical mass of people for this event!”

For more information, e-mail detroitbridgewatch@gmail.com

Posted in Me & Matty | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The myth of Matty’s twin

Posted on June 1, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Why am I not ecstatic about the Detroit Free Press’s strong endorsement of the New International Trade Crossing, aka Detroit-Windosr bridge on Sunday, April 24, 2001?

How journalists shape their questions largely determines how they present information and conclusions to their readers.

The gist of a question also may tell us more about a reporter’s mindset than the answer he or she unfolds.

Sometimes, a question is so problematic that it produces more questions than it answers.

And a poorly-reasoned question can even produce fallacious answers.

So it is with a single question in an April 24, 2011 Detroit Free Press article that, the paper promised, “separates the swirling exaggerations from the truth in the border showdown critical to Michigan’s future.”

In a headline, “Breaking down bridge battle,” the Free Press promised: “Questions answered amid swirling accusations.”

Deep in the article, the Free Press poses this question:

“Why won’t the Canadians allow Moroun to twin his Ambassador Bridge, like he wants to?”

The question suggests that Canada is the only government opposed to Moroun’s twin bridge.

That is wrong.

Matty’s “twin” bridge is going nowhere on the U.S. side as well as in Canada.

He doesn’t have U.S. Coast Guard approval for his proposed new bridge.

Worse for him, he doesn’t even own the property on the U.S. side that he needs to build a new bridge.

To complete his twin bridge, Matty would have to acquire property he doesn’t own.

The property directly adjacent to his Ambassador Bridge belongs to the city of Detroit.

Matty illegally seized a section of Detroit’s Riverside Park, but the city went to court in 2008 and a judge has ordered Matty evicted.

Where does that leave Matty’s new bridge?

The bridge is dead on both sides of the border.

Why won’t the Free Press report the Riverside Park piece of this story?

The Riverside Park story has been reported on this blog, in Metro Times, The Detroit News, the Windsor Star and by Jack Lessenberry, a Metro Times columnist, radio and TV commentator and Wayne State University journalism professor.

But it slipped past the Free Press.

It is a blind spot that allows the Free Press to continue presenting Moroun’s proposed second bridge as a viable plan.

It is not.

The viability of the bridge, given Matty’s failure to meet basic permit requirements in both countries, is one more “swirling exaggeration” that the Free Press supposedly wants to set right.

If you don’t believe me, drive over to Windsor — please take the tunnel, not the bridge; no use lining Matty’s pocket even more — and look at the approach to Matty’s twin. It resembles a concrete cliff. Seems he started building the approach, then stopped. Didn’t have permits. That pretty much kills any bridge I can think of.

Just like there are two sides to a story, there are two ends to any bridge.

Now I’d like you to drive over to the foot of Ambassador Bridge. Walk to the chain-link fence Matty illegally put up to keep people out of a public park. Facing the Ambassador, please look to your left. You’ll see another concrete cliff that stops because Matty doesn’t own the part of Riverside Park he needs for his bridge.

I started out by opining that a poorly-worded question can open up more lines of questioning.

But left unchallenged, a bad question can propagate false conclusions, in this case the notion that there is something real about Matty’s quest for a twin to the Ambassador.

The Free Press promotes this assumption.

Here is a question to chew on: If, as I believe, the twin span is a pipe dream, totally unrealistic because it’s been blocked on both sides of the international border, why is Matty pursuing it?

Now, here’s another question: Given that the bridge lacks permissions on both sides of the border, why did Matty start to build it in the first place?

Is it because he knew this battle would be prolonged over several years and he needed to make the twin appear like a real thing by starting to build it? In other words, the twin might simply be a bluff by Matty to play with people’s minds, making him look like a genuine player in the new bridge game when in fact he’s a big fake.

Is it possible that Matty truly believed when he started pouring concrete that there would be no opposition and that he could build the bridge, at least on the U.S. side, with the compliance of Detroit, Michigan and U.S. authorities?

The media are replete these days with stories about Matty and the tale of two bridges. It’s hard to remember, but two and a half years ago, there was very little news coverage about Matty. Maybe the billionaire thought he could get away with building his sham bridge on city of Detroit land and nobody would notice. For years, the Mayor of Felonies, Kwame Kilpatrick, was in Matty’s pocket.

Free Press editorial writers on the same day strongly urged that the government bridge be built, rather than Matty’s twin.

The Free Press is out of sync with itself.

Why won’t Free Press reporters give up on the myth of Matty’s twin?

Posted in Joel's J School, Me & Matty | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Naming names

Posted on May 31, 2011 by hro50ta1
Peppermint Patti

Peppermint Patti

By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

My two-leggers have names for each other, Sophie.

KahRen.

ChowEl.

I call them other things.

The female is “Finder.”

She found me at the dog pound.

I am graateful to her.

I call the male two-legger “Flato.”

Let us just say that he has a penchant for stenchant.

Or a pench for stench.

We’ll leave it at that.

Did you know, Sophie, “Flato” was the name of a famous Greek philosopher?

So I mean no disrespect to the head two-legger.

Excuse me.

Gotta shake.

Wow, that was good.

Where was I?

“Flato.”

A living wind tunnel.

Two-legged walkers do not digest food well if at all.

If they stuck to Purina, everything would come out okay.

Being two-leggers, they must have variety in everything, or they suffer boredom.

What do they think I suffer from when they leave the house?

Boredom.

The eternal quest for the bush-butt, Sophie, is what gives life its zest.

But two-leggers are useful. When they open the door, I go out and pee.

Or the other.

But I can’t do either if they leave the house with me trapped inside.

At least, not officially.

Oh yes, Sophie, we dogs know ways — indoors — to relieve the pressure.

Personally, I like the feel of carpet, though I know you prefer Linoleum.

You know what they say: “History will absorb me.”

But back to two-leggers and wind: It’s all about being cooped up behind those light tablets they write on.

They spend too much time around those illuminated planks.

It does not suit their bowels.

Nothing a dog can do about that.

I’ve said it before, training two-leggers is hard, thankless work.

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | Leave a comment

Peace Corps needs a union

Posted on May 15, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

The Peace Corps does not need a cascade of new laws designed to force its administrative caste to treat the flunky class — volunteers — like human beings.

What Peace Corps volunteers need is a union.

Recent news reports about prejudicial treatment of Peace Corps volunteers who were raped, and the callous treatment of the family of a volunteer who was murdered in West Africa, are current manifestations of institutional attitudes that have typified Peace Corps management for a long time and maybe from the beginning of the program 50 years ago.

Laws that are focused on one or the other part of this problem will fail, because the target is much bigger than it appears from these news reports.

The problem in the Peace Corps is not just with bad behavior involving crimes against volunteers.

The bad behavior stems from the “tale of two cities” structure of the organization. The Peace Corps is a top-down institution whose public face is the thousands of mostly young, idealistic volunteers engaged in what  they think at the outset of their Peace Corps experience will be personal contributions to “saving the world,” as a volunteer who was raped in Bangladesh described her early aspirations.

What we have with the Peace Corps is an institution with supposed liberal ideals that is modeled on the organization of a factory. We have the managers who make policies, and we have the grunts who carry out those policies. The bosses are paid well and get lots of perks. If they happen to staff overseas offices, they live in urban areas with modern houses, servants, even chauffeur-driven cars. But they are removed from the often-isolated communities where volunteers live and work, and in my own experience, often are unwilling to spend time at volunteer sites, mainly for reasons of personal comfort. If they happen to work in Washington, D.C., they are so far removed from volunteer reality that their ability to understand volunteer needs is at a level that deserves little respect.

But respect is what this whole flap is about.

It starts with compensation. Volunteers are paid by American standards at a subsistence scale with the promise of a “readjustment allowance” to be paid after they leave the corps. However, that readjustment allowance itself can be “readjusted” downward, as I learned after I ended my Peace Corps service in Togo, West Africa back in 1974.

Compensation for volunteers is a joke. Now, I know many volunteers will protest that they didn’t join up for money. Well and good. But you do deserve respect. In any case, the financial rewards for being a volunteer are poor, while the rewards for being a Peace Corps boss are paid at government career scale. The pay disparity is a root cause of the problem.

There’s an old saying: “If you’re paid shit, you’ll be treated like shit.”

Well, compared to the compensation of Peace Corps bosses, volunteers are paid shit.

Being poorly paid, they are not respected.

In fact, they have no power within the organization.

As far as I can see, volunteers are treated worse today than they were when I served in the early 1970s. At least I had my Yamaha 80 motorcycle. If things got ugly, I could — and did — escape.

Recently, I was talking to some prospective volunteers and mentioned the motorcycle. They looked aghast.

“You could have been kicked out of the Peace Corps!”

“What for?” I asked.

For riding on a motorcycle.

Seems that in today’s Peace Corps, if you are caught driving a motorcycle or car, you are subject to instant dismissal.

Well, I told my young listeners, in my day, volunteers were issued motorcycles and even pickup trucks and Jeeps from the Peace Corps motor pool.

Appears that the rationale for banning volunteer use of motorized vehicles is the alleged high incidence of injuries from car and motorbike accidents.

It is a stupid policy based on desk-bound logic. Anyone who’s lived in the boondocks of an alien country like Togo, or Benin or Ghana, or you name the Peace Corps host country, is aware that personal safety may well depend on being able to get away from bad people and events.

Being able to jump on a motorcycle and speed away from violent behavior is a big deal if you’re living isolated from any semblance of rule of law, which is pretty much the way it is in many volunteer locales.

The ban on motorized travel is the brainchild of some functionary working in an air-conditioned office in Washington, D.C., sipping his or her Starbucks and issuing edicts with profound implications for the grunts on the line.

So here is my proposal. Forget these proposed laws that would legislate good behavior by Peace Corps factotums. Instead, enact a law creating a strong union for Peace Corps volunteers. Such a law is needed, because it would be difficult to organize volunteers all over the world into a union in the classic way, with cards and organizing meetings and so forth.

Instead, create a union for volunteers with the power to negotiate collective bargaining agreements with the Peace Corps.

Peace Corps labor contracts would cover the entire range of bargaining, including wages, health benefits, pensions, readjustment allowance, professional integrity and health and safety.

A model Peace Corps contract would include a procedure for lodging a grievance with mandatory unappealable arbitration. That way, if a volunteer is a crime victim and doesn’t receive appropriate support from staff, there is a way to complain. Better, there should be sanctions against managers in cases of bad staff behavior.

Transportation would be another part of the contract. Frankly, I think each volunteer should be issued at least a motorcycle. Effective transportation is a personal health and safety issue. Not only does motorized transport allow a volunteer to escape from violent situations, but it allows a sick volunteer in a remote place a way to get to medical help.

(I’m remembering the friend who skipped his chloroquine pills and got malaria, then managed to drive his Peace Corps-issue Toyota pickup to our place, where we got him some help.)

What I’m arguing for is basic respect for volunteers from the staff who supposedly are paid to serve them, but all too often abuse them.

One way to gain that respect would be to give volunteers the power to bargain for better pay and better working conditions, and provide them with a means of punishing those mandarins who mistreat them.

The descriptions of Peace Corps administrators’ treatment of crime victims sound like the kind of behavior we’d expect from functionaries in a police state, which many host Peace Corps countries are. The union structure I’m proposing would force reform on the Peace Corps in an organic rather than a legislative way. Ultimately, the improved behavior and better respect for the lives and work of the volunteer class would improve the entire Peace Corps.

In many countries like Togo where I served, local people are accustomed to being mistreated by authorities. Sadly, the history of Peace Corps administrators’ behavior conforms to that pattern. Right now, volunteers are members of a subject class who are treated with disrespect. But a reformed Peace Corps that shows true respect for its volunteer class, upheld by a union contract, could serve as a positive model for people in poor countries — and for the people who govern them.

“Look at what how the Peace Corps operates,” a Togolese person could say to his own government officials. “The Peace Corps treats its workers fairly and with great respect. Why don’t you treat us like that?”

Such a positive comparison is impossible now. Peace Corps administrators’ attitudes could be transformed through a good old American labor contract.

Posted in Bad government, Togo & Peace Corps | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

UP THE ROUGE! and REI Paddlefest

Posted on May 12, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

I’ll be talking about the adventure of canoeing an urban river Saturday, May 14 at 11 a.m. in the REI store in Northville Township.

The stream I’ll be discussing, of course, is the Rouge River in metro Detroit.

I also plan to show an 11-minute video about the project.

And afterwards, I’ll be selling print and audio versions of the 2009 book, UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER written by me with photos by Patricia Beck. The print book was published in 2009 by Wayne State University Press. The audio book was published by Hardalee Press.

UP THE ROUGE! co-author Pat Beck is a Detroit Free Press photographer. When we canoed the Rouge in June 2005, I was a staff writer at the Free Press. I retired from the paper in 2007.

Our series about the Rouge project in the Detroit Free Press won the Water Environment Federation’s 2006 Harry E. Schlenz Medal for Public Education in 2006.

Our book, UP THE ROUGE!, was selected as a Michigan Notable Book for 2010 by the Library of Michigan.

I’ll talk Saturday about the plight of the Rouge River, but since Paddlefest is about canoeing and kayaking, I’ll focus on how we planned for and organized our 27-mile odyssey up the Rouge River in Detroit. What are the conditions that make the Rouge River a challenge to paddlers?

Here is the schedule of events at REI on Saturday:

11:00 AM – Up the Rouge – Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River!

Presented by Author Joel Thurtell

12:00 PM – Family Canoeing & Kayaking

Presented by REI Specialist Rob B.

1:00 PM – Paddling the Boundary Waters

Presented by Wilderness Journey Guide & Outfitters

2:00 PM – Kayaking Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Presented by Black Parrot Paddling

3:00 PM – Stand Up Paddleboarding

Presented by REI Specialist Travis A.

Posted in Adventures on the Rouge, Lakes and streams | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Redeeming the Peace Corps, or not

Posted on May 11, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

I’m not surprised that Peace Corps volunteers are being raped at their work sites overseas, and I’m less surprised that Peace Corps administrators have taken a callous, blame-the-victim attitude.

I’ll be astonished if Congress passes a bill that will correct the problem. And I’d be flabbergasted if such an act of Congress could successfully change the attitudes of a stratum of bureaucrats — Peace Corps management — whose main function is very different from the public concept of doing good that the Peace Corps enjoys.

There is a gigantic tension within the Peace Corps between what volunteers — the grunts — believe they are sent overseas to do and what the bosses know is the prime mission of the Peace Corps.

A volunteer who was raped by local thugs thought her objective as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangladesh was “to save the world.”

Her Peace Corps bosses acted like it was her fault.

Typically, Peace Corps volunteers are idealists, young or old, who want to accomplish positive things with their lives. They don’t care that their wages are pegged at the subsistence level compared to the career-sized earnings of officials who run the Peace Corps. Volunteers don’t care, or at least recognize that they have no say in Peace Corps policies that determine how they work and live. Those policies are made in Washington, D.C., by desk-based officials with tidy federal salaries and benefits.

Most of all, though, the lives and well-being of volunteers are at the mercy of the real goal of the Peace Corps, which has nothing to do with saving the world.

If the real goal of the U.S. government were to promote benevolent change in the world as a prime means of defusing war and corruption, then the Peace Corps budget would be huge, and the Pentagon budget would be as paltry as the current Peace Corps budget.

But in fact, the real purpose of the Peace Corps is to serve as a cognate of U.S. foreign policy.

Does this sound like the statement of a radical?

Not unless Bob Iglehart, onetime Peace Corps director of Togo, was a wild-eyed radical when he set a bottle of Scotch on the table of our little house in Dapaong, Togo back in 1974 and listened as we Peace Corps volunteers listed our grievances about the Peace Corps’ lack of support for our projects.

Problems at your work site? Little help from the Peace Corps administrators? Not to worry, Iglehart told us. You are achieving Peace Corps goals just by being here in Togo, showing the U.S flag and acting as an American presence and ambassador to your Togolese neighbors.

Saving the world?

Doing good works for the Togolese, whose per-capita income in the 1970s and today is roughly $300 a year?

Not to worry. That is not what the Peace Corps is about. The Peace Corps is all about U.S. diplomacy. Be happy with that big picture, and don’t worry about saving the world, the country director told us.

Here, have a shot of whiskey. Take it easy, live the good life on your subsistence allowance, which after all is much higher and allows you a far better standard of living than your Togolese friends and neighbors.

And oh, by the way, I won’t be visiting the village where you and local residents are building a school under rough conditions. There is no air-conditioned hotel in Dapaong, so I’ll need to leave before nightfall so I can sleep in relative comfort   compared to you peons who are the standard bearers of our forign policy.

Meanwhile, a pacified corps of volunteers who don’t ask too many hard questions of administrators like Iglehart was the best thing for that other corps — the well–paid administrators with full federal benefits who got to ramble the country in their air-conditioned, chauffeur-driven cars before heading back to their big houses in the capital with their squadrons of personal servants.

Now, if Bob Iglehart’s pseudo-philosophy of realpolitik still drives the Peace Corps (and I’m sure it does), then I have little hope that reform of administrators’ heartless response to rape victims can be converted to sympathy and understanding on even that limited scale.

I’ll believe it when the Pentagon’s budget is transferred to the Peace Corps.

Posted in Bad government, Togo & Peace Corps | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

UP THE ROUGE! at West Bloomfield

Posted on April 30, 2011 by hro50ta1

Writer Joel Thurtell will talk about the book, UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 1, 2011 at the West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation center.

An exhibit of Detroit Free press photographer Patricia Beck’s photos from the pair’s June 2005 trip up the Rouge River will be on display in the West Bloomfield parks building at 4640 Walnut Rd. through October.

Also, displays show equipment and other things used by Beck and Thurtell on their 27-mile odyssey.

Thurtell will show a video about the trip. In his talk, he will talk about why the two journalists made the trip, how they planned for it, the state of the river.

Posted in Adventures on the Rouge, Book signings/book events | Leave a comment

I’m an artist!

Posted on April 25, 2011 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

For the argument to work, you must agree that I am an artist.

I’ll assume that much.

Otherwise, my reasoning is high and dry.

Je suis artiste.

There, a declaration in French is always so much more positive that a flat statement en anglais.

I learned recently at a lecture on contemporary art that if an artist says something is art, then by gum, it is art!

The trouble started in my head, really, where trouble often commences.

I was listening to a lecture on contemporary art by former Detroit Free Press art critic Marsha Miro, now head of MOCAD — the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Her talk was part of a winter series of lectures presented by Wayne State University’s SOAR program — Society of Active Retirees.

Miro was talking on art in the 20th century. She showed a lot of slides of things that I would not have thought were art. I never thought of concrete culverts as works or art, even if they’re made square instead of circular and even if littered across a field. Might as well tour a contemporary landfill and call it art, to my way of thinking.

Ditto some guy who doesn’t know how to play the violin strolling around his studio making squawking noises. If I had seen this guy, I’d have thought he was nuts.

He was not nuts.

He was an artist exploring the boundaries of his space.

Well into the two-hour lecture, my wife leaned toward me and whispered, “This is a bunch of bullshit!”

No doubt about it, I thought: bullshit.

But very interesting bullshit.

Maybe even very useful bullshit.

At one point, a skeptical member of the audience asked, “So you’re saying that if an artist says it’s art, that’s what it is?”

The questioner was not alone. There was a buzzing in the chamber that nearly drowned out the speaker. The buzzing of dozens of bullshit meters going off at once.

From Marsha Miro, the answer came back affirmative: If an artist says it’s art, then it is art.

End of argument.

Wow.

Once you get your head around this concept of everything is art if I say it is (provided I am an artist), then the possibilities are endless.

That bent paper clip on the floor?

Art.

That old bicycle beside a trash can?

Art.

Well, it’s art if an artist says it is.

It’s a pretty exalted power.

Not everyone qualifies to be an artist.

But since some of you agreed that I’m an artist, I can proceed to outline my plan.

You did agree that I’m an artist, didn’t you?

All it takes is one person to dub me an artist, and I already have that distinction, even if I’m not willing to name the dubber.

What if I find an old tire beside the Rouge River. Is the tire art?

If I say it is, then it is.

Now some of you may be aware that my friend and colleague, Patricia Beck, and I took a canoe 27 miles up the polluted and logjam-infected Rouge River back in 2005.

Pat is a remarkably talented photographer, and along the way she took some amazing photos which the Detroit Free Press published in a series of articles about the river’s condition.

The year 2005 was when environmental officials said the Rouge would be safe for swimming and fishing. It was neither and likely is getting worse. But Pat and I documented the river by doing what nobody had done before — going by canoe from the river’s mouth to a bridge in Southfield during five days of hard and dangerous travel. Our purpose was to take Free Press readers to a place where they would never go. Later, Pat’s photos and my narrative were published by Wayne State University Press as a book, UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER.

Amid the stench, the wrecked cars and boats, the immense masses of jammed up logs and debris, the last thing we were thinking about was art.

But as I listened to Marsha Miro, I began to think of our canoe trip in another way. All of the objects that made the trip possible, from the canoes, the paddles, the life jackets, hip boots, binoculars, cameras, waterproof bags, compass, notebooks, digital audio recorder and even the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we took along to  eat. By contemporary artists’ standards, these things were objets d’art. (Always feels more legitimate spitting it out in French.)

Whatever you want to call it, art or just plain things, stuff, whatever, a selection of our gear will be on display — along with a collection of Pat Beck’s photos from the canoe trip — at West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation from May 1 through mid-October.

I’ll be talking about the trip at West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation at 2 p.m. on May 1.

I’m told that someone at West Bloomfield parks and Rec noticed something missing from the faux logjam created in a display case by West Bloomfield naturalist Laurel Zoet: The logjam lacks a discarded tire.

Well, I went poking around the Rouge River at Fenkell and Telegraph and found just what our fake logjam needs to make it look authentic: an old tire that I plan to put in the exhibit. A friend has offered an old fire extinguisher, another object seem too often along the river on our trek in 2005.

Anybody who saw me rolling that tire through the trees might have thought I was crazy.

Not so.

That tire is art.

How’s that?

Because I say so.

You see, I am an artist.

Posted in Adventures on the Rouge, Book signings/book events | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Cathedral of Finance

Posted on April 24, 2011 by hro50ta1

Here is another of those stories from 2008 that used to appear on my howtostopabankrun blog, now kaput.

By Joel Thurtell

In the wee hours of Tuesday, February 14, 1933, Michigan’s new Democratic governor, William Comstock, emerged from the posh Detroit Club after a long meeting of Detroit financiers and Lansing and Washington treasury bigshots. He turned right on Cass Street, right again on West Lafayette and right yet again as he walked through the ornate entry of the Albert Kahn-designed Detroit Free Press building.

In the Free Press newsroom, he dictated a proclamation ordering all Michigan banks to take a breather for eight days. The state’s banks were to close while state bank examiners determined which financial institutions were solvent and which ones should never re-open. The governor’s move forestalled further runs on banks that threatened financial chaos in the nation’s automotive manufacturing center.

A few blocks away at 500 Griswold Street stands another ornate monument to the era of the 1920s opulence that led into the Great Depression. It is now known as the Guardian Building, and is the subject of a beautiful book recently published by Wayne State University Press. Researched and written by Detroit Institute of Arts art historian James Tottis, it is titled The Guardian Building: Cathedral of Finance.

Most people I talk to have no idea that this gaudy showpiece of 1920s opulence, known then as the Union Trust Company, symbolizes the profligacy that brought many of the nation’s banks to ruin. The bank whose building was intended to signal stability and strength was actually insolvent by 1933. By then known as the Guardian Detroit Union Group, the bank had as two of its largest investors Henry and Edsel Ford. When Henry Ford, steamed at his former business partner and then U.S. Senator James Couzens and distrusting banks in general, refused to sink more money into the Guardian Union bank and when the Fords also refused to step aside as  preferred creditors, it looked like the impending failure of this big bank would topple Detroit’s other banks, all of which, like the Guardian Union bank, had invested heavily in now hugely devalued real estate and industrial bonds.

The standoff between the Fords and the feds forced Gov. Comstock to order the eight-day “banking holiday” that froze a billion and a half dollars worth of Michigan bank deposits along with 550 banks with 900,000 depositors, according to 28 Days A History of the Banking Crisis, by C.C. Colt and N.S. Keith.

In the twenty five and a half months preceding the Michigan banking holiday, 163 banks had failed in Michigan. One of the prime causes of those failures was incompetence of bank officials, according to a study by then University of Michigan business Professor Robert Rodkey. I will go into more detail about Depression-era bank shenanigans in my book, HOW TO STOP A BANK RUN.

Banking holidays already had been declared in Nevada and Louisiana, but those states lacked the heavy capitalization and the overwhelming debt of the country’s car capital. The Michigan banking holiday precipitated runs on banks in other states near and far. By the time the new Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was inaugurated on Saturday, March 4, 1933, the nation’s banking system was in chaos. In Michigan, people were applying to their out-of-state banks for funds to meet payrolls and daily household expenses, thus stressing those banks and forcing other governors to order holidays. Some people were were traipsing over to Windsor in hopes of finding loose cash. There were no bank failures in Canada during the Great Depression.

On Monday, March 6, President Roosevelt ordered all of the nation’s banks to close while auditors could figure out which ones were solvent and which were zombies. In Michigan, dozens more banks closed during the state and federal holidays never re-opened.

And it started right there at 500 Griswold Street in the “Cathedral of Finance.”

James Tottis’ book will be on sale Thursday, March 26 at 5:30 p.m. in the Guardian Building, where Wayne State University Press, Detroit Area Art Deco Society, Michigan Architectural Foundation, Wayne County and Preservation Wayne will celebrate the Guardian Building’s 80th anniversary.

Oh yes, I almost forgot: Wayne State University Press has published a book authored by me and Patricia Beck, Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River. Our book can be ordered for $34.95 plus $7 shipping.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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