Sister Cities

Towering new buildings are going up throughout Center City Philadelphia. It's hard to believe that once, Detroit and Philadelphia were comparable in size and prosperity. Philly has no discernible industry. It has problems, but remains one of America's great cities-- and is more beautiful and dynamic than it's ever been. What is it doing right?

COLD!!!

You can tell in an old apartment building when the temperature hits zero or lower. The building begins to creak, loudly. Pipes through the building begin banging as if they're about to burst. Sometimes they do. As do old pipes in the ground beneath the very streets outside, bursting because of the cold so that water gushes from the concrete ground, freezing across the old city into beautiful white layers of ice.

When it gets very cold, colder still, one can hear outside at night the vast sky itself cracking. In its way, a fantastic, spiritual experience.
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By the way, isn't Fahrenheit a perfect artistic measurement? 100, the top of the scale, truly feels it-- as does zero on the bottom. When you dip below zero, then you're in dangerous territory.

Celsius, which Canadians use, is what you'd expect from a bureaucratic measuring system-- confusing; unrelated to human beings and to nature itself.

Similarly, bureaucratic literature so everpresent now is unartistic. True art isn't ultrarefined, regulated, and regimented, but discovers and expresses the eternal patterns of nature and God. Art traditionally, historically, was an attempt to express, or commune with, the Great Artist who created the universe. The best art transcendentally does this.

Wake Up!

I stopped at the coffeeshop at the new Double Tree hotel downtown on Lafayette. Multiple greeters opened doors for me as I entered and exited. The hotel seemed empty. Is there really enough business for two large new restored hotels in Detroit, outside the occasional special event?

Half of downtown Detroit is a ghost town. I'd guess that at least half the businesses which are open are barely hanging on. The trick is to not engage in endless wishful thinking, which this city is very good at, but to take drastic action.

Boldness!-- strong moves which will bring people and attention to Detroit are called for.