Lots of people willing to help

Busy day on Saturday. I met two women from my church in the parking lot at 8:00 am. to head to the big United Methodist Church in the New Center area of Detroit. There we joined the Hands 4 Detroit event put on by the Detroit Renaissance District of the UMC. There's a lot of need in Detroit, but there are also a lot of people willing to help if provided an organizational framework. I've seen a billboard and a newspaper article about the event and heard there were radio and TV reports of the event.

A week before the event there were about 100 volunteers signed up through the event's website. Organizers felt they would do well to get 250 workers.

Two days before they shut down online registration at 750. Another 200 showed up without registering, including one who heard about it on the radio that morning and caught a bus to the church. Another came from Ohio because she felt the excitement and wanted to see how we did it. There were another 50 volunteers at the church guiding parking, doing registration, handing out shirts, organizing lunch, and doing all the other behind-the-scenes tasks. Yup, that's a total of a thousand.

I was on a painting team. A young woman had bought a 1911 vintage house about a mile of the church. She was feeling stressed out with the extensive renovation work the place required. Thirty of us helped her with the painting, even though it seemed she wasn't quite ready for us -- I painted the bathroom and one wall still had a big hole in it. Even so, the place looked a lot better when we left.

Volunteers went to 20 sites around the city. Some stayed at the church to box up donated food to send out to area food pantries. Volunteers brought 17,700 pounds of food with them. Others went to other UM churches in the city for repair and clean-up work. Some helped in a community garden. The two women from my church were at an abandoned home doing what they could to clean up the site. The neighbors thanked them for the little bit they did.

All the teams returned to the church for lunch and a celebration service, then heading home. Yeah, that meant most of us worked only a couple hours.

The event did pretty well for having only two months to prepare and being overwhelmed with volunteers. Yeah, there were a few problems, such as the owner of the house where I painted expected 20 helpers, not 30 and another paint project expected 20 and got 4. I suspect some volunteers got the two confused and joined the wrong one. The date for next year has already been set and I'm sure the event will run a lot more smoothly.



After an afternoon at home I was back to Detroit's Midtown area for the DlectriCity event. It was held after sunset and featured some 30 outdoor art exhibits having something to do with light.

I thought a couple were interesting, including one projected on the side of the Science Museum. The artist created a series of paintings of whales and the images faded from one to the next. From the size of the entrance doors in this image you can how big the projections are. The head of the whale is to the left.

Alas, most of the displays had a Wow, look at what I can do with light! or a modern art aspect that didn't connect with me. Besides, it was cold. I lasted a couple hours and didn't see all the exhibits.

Many of the events did connect with little kids. I got down there in time to see the bike parade. All the bikes had lights wrapped around them. I'm sure the kids (some as young as 5) had a blast riding their bikes down Woodward with several hundred others (including many adults) while traffic was stopped for them.