upsidedown house

Kept in the Dark

Part II.
Listening to Cole Porter songs under the covers. My breath can be seen and my nose is running. I thought I was waiting for a guest to help keep me warm, but it turned out I opted to get warm somewhere else.

Half hour earlier, looking for the tiniest of keys for a chest where I keep my extra blankets I found my small oil lamp and a cord to connect my portable MP3/CD player to the line out of my crappy garbage picked boom box instead. I could finally listen to CD's and have a little more light. It was cold, but my room was beginning to feel warmer.

I never found the key and instead jammed a knife into the lock and before I could even give it a twist it jumped open. As though it were satisfied in a way that if I had found the key there is no way it would have worked as easy. Out come the reinforcements thanks to one of my favorite tools, a pocket knife. Fuzzy ones, wool ones, flanel ones- blankets are good.

I was trying to play piano to the Cole Porter songs for a few minutes,and it was sounding ok, but the covers called, especially to my stiffening limbs. It's really not even that cold out yet, but tell that to my toes.

Earlier earlier that day I got a good amount of tiles gifted and dropped off to me. They are rectangular and a blue bronze that is hard to describe, but I like them a lot, and not just cause they were free. I am considering dropping $50 bucks or so on some complimentary antique Koy tiles that would go very nice with the ones I already have and use them for my bathroom. The only thing is the fish tiles are $6 each.

There goes the oil lamp, out and at the same time (coincidence?) there goes the music too, the inverter is out of power. It's only comfortable under the covers. Two thoughts. I can't stand DTE and it's time to leave.

Part I.

At work, like I sensed it coming, despite knowing I should paint til it hurts so I can finish this job already, I left at the right time. After only 4 1/2 hours and only a slight shift in the grey weather to greyer, I called it a day and started for home. I ran out of paint in my small quart container and without contemplation it was just like, "well that's it, I'm out".

The kids from Western are walking by and traffic is suddenly backed up as smoke already starts to fill the air. That was 3:30. As I'm hitting Vernor at Vinewood, fire engines race past towards a thick black smoke coming from a few blocks straight ahead on Vinewood and it looks like Toledo. There are both houses and buidlings of some sort up there. I wonder what it is? In a moment I can even see flames.

It was not that I got to be there in that moment as everything came together and something started to happen, but because they ended up closing off and evacuating 3 streets for several blocks that I felt lucky that I was already getting out of there. At 7:30 when I was visiting a friend back in the area, just on the other side of Vernor, smoke was settling into the neighborhoods. It was pretty creepy.

Not really expecting to get any information I pull over and my friend gets out to ask a cop what was/is burning in there. He gets some ridiculous "well you see that would be the Fire chief's call, and I'm not sure why those people were evacuated blah blah blah protocal. At least we didn't expect much from them. Cops. No matter what it, seems clear that there was something in that building that is coming down into SW Detroit.

Should more people had been evacuated and will they ever know what was in that building? What about the other buildings near us that seem empty, because there is little activity going on should we assume we are safe, who knows? The point. SW Detroit and too many cities where the residents in areas that are low income have what are called "acceptable" levels of toxins fom industry in it's back yards, literally, for too long. Canaries in the coalmine.

Lois Gibbs formerly from Love Canal, a housewife turned amazing environmental activist, at the Bioneers conference last weekend talked about how it is legal to poison us. No joke. To assume that we would be told what are in these buildings that may catch fire or explode one day with no warning, or corporations involved in industries that pollute our environment stay within permit levels is not likely, and even if they were, discharge permits mean permission to poison us. We need to shift the burden onto the polluters and refuse to be lied to and kept in the dark.

posted by the upsidedown house @ 6:26 PM