Hurricane over Kentucky

Last evening I went to downtown Detroit for the Ruth Ellis Center 25th anniversary gala. The first part of the adventure was parking. The freeway exit I wanted to take – near the Fox Theater and entertainment district, baseball stadium (the Tigers are doing quite well now, but I don’t know if there was a game), hockey arena (has the Red Wings season started?), and football stadium (Lions are also doing well, but I’m sure they weren’t playing on a Thursday night) – was way backed up. I figured the nearby parking lots would be full. So I went around downtown and ended up at Grand Circus Park, not too far from my venue, and with a parking garage underneath. So I parked. Many of the pillars have signs on how to pay by phone, saying how easy it was – do something on their app and then just drive out. The exit stairwell had a sign about the penalties of not paying. But there was nothing about how to pay if one doesn’t have a phone – and I hadn’t brought mine. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to put their app on it even if I had brought it. There was no sign of payment machines in the stairwell, entranceways, or on the parking floor. At the end of the evening I got in my car and drove to the exit. There was no payment machine there, either. The exit opened and I drove out. Was parking free for the evening? Will I get a bill with a penalty? For that I’ll simply wait. And if there is a penalty I will strongly object. And my reasoning will be simple – they do not provide a way to pay for those without a smartphone. On to the fun part of the evening. In walking to the venue from Grand Circus and past the Fox Theater I could see downtown Detroit is a happening place now. That’s good to see. Though I hadn’t been to the Center since the start of the pandemic, four and a half years now, one of the women checking guests in recognized me. I had served supper on Wednesdays for 11 years and the youth had gotten to know me. This woman had been a youth at the time. Also, pretty cool, a staff person I knew well and the executive director also recognized and welcomed me. The cocktail hour was followed by a sitdown dinner. There were over 200 people in the hall, which was quite resonant and thus loud. I had the butternut squash ravioli with a butter herb sauce (a little too sweet) plus a salad, rolls, and dessert. The emcee for the evening was comedian Sandra Bernhard, a lesbian. She gave a passionate condemnation of the nasty guy and spirited support of Harris. Beyond that she stuck to her emcee role and did little comedy. Executive Director Mark Erwin spoke about the history of the Ruth Ellis Center. Memorial Day weekend in 1999 several elders in the Detroit LGBT community got together. By elder I don’t mean old, I mean they were well into adulthood. Some are still around. They had heard a youth had been thrown out of his home because he had told his family he was gay. The elders said this is not good, what are we going to do about it? They laid out immediate plans to get the boy a place to stay, some intermediate plans to create a safe space for LGBT teens, and long term plans for their most elaborate wishes for safe medical care and safe housing. They named the project for Ruth Ellis, caretaker and mentor for many of these elders and for many other LGBT people in Detroit through the 20th century. By the following year they had a place. And Ruth Ellis, at age 101, cut the ribbon. She died two months later. By 2007 a new drop in space was purchased, renovated, and opened. This is where I had done my volunteer work. A couple years before the pandemic a small medical clinic opened in the building. In 2022 the Clairmount Center for safe housing and support services opened. They’ve gone on to success in many areas of helping LGBT youth thrive and stay connected to families and they are a model for similar organizations around the country. Bernhard talked about the nonsense of requiring women to give birth and then throwing the child out because they are queer. If you’re so pro family to insist on one how can you do the other? A youth leadership award was given to a young woman who had needed the Center’s services and was now giving back. The name wasn’t familiar to me (though I knew few of their names). There was a Ruth Ellis Legacy Award given to a person who most exemplified the spirit and grace of Ruth Ellis. I was delighted with the winner – Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer! She has done a lot for the LGBTQ citizens of the state, as was documented. Whitmer wasn’t there to receive the award in person, though did appear on video. I’m pretty sure a drawing of her lesbian daughter was on the table behind her. The award was accepted by the chairperson of the LGBTQ commission, which Whitmer created to guide the state government in how to better treat LGBTQ people. The evening ended with a few songs by Wyn Stark. I hadn’t heard of him before (as I don’t pay attention to popular singers). He is good. One of the songs was about coming to terms with being gay. This was their first gala in five years. In previous years I went as a volunteer of some sort, such as checking in the guests. This time I actually paid to attend. It was a great evening and I’m glad I went. Hurricane Helene has swamped the big bend of Florida, soaked Georgia, and as I write this is over Kentucky. Kentucky?! My niece, living north of the eye said they expected worse wind and the power to go out. Schools had closed. Now they’re waiting for the rain to end. My forecast for the next four days is rain. I don’t know if this will be Helene remnants reaching north or another storm system. In a pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Craig Pittman who included a photo of a marina in which all the boats were on the beach and road. He included a quote from and a link to an article in the Florida Phoenix.

"Project 2025 calls for tying the hands of the National Weather Service, eliminating its role as a forecaster. It would relegate the agency to only collecting data. Then private companies could use that taxpayer-funded info."

Dworkin also quoted Alan Elrod of The UnPopulist

During a White Dudes for Harris fundraising Zoom call, Walz said, “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” The point wasn’t to argue for the implementation of doctrinaire socialism, as his conservative critics alleged, but to emphasize that actions and policies that take our pluralism seriously often get unfairly dismissed as radical leftism. His aim was to redefine progressive politics not as a slow-moving statist takeover, as Republican portrayals suggested, but as a form of affirmative concern for your community and the people around you. Neighborliness is one of the main victims of this era of intense polarization and digitized communication. In recent decades social trust has eroded, and other social capital indicators reinforce the same conclusion. There is an anger and cynicism about one another that runs from small town squares to urban high-rises. However, neighborliness is not just about interpersonal decency. In Walz’s usage, it’s about social policy, which is far broader than most uses of the word; this is a neighborliness of scale. Walz is not dismissive of everyday neighborliness—on the contrary, for him it’s a microcosm of good governance. But his conception does go beyond mere interpersonal neighborliness and informs a full social vision predicated on the idea that what it means to be a good neighbor is the same as what it means to take seriously the demands of a multicultural democracy.

The nasty guy told women, “I’ll be your protector.” In the comments are several cartoons showing how creepy that comes across.