A Small Percentage of Heart: D-Week 5: Prim and Proper, Steel and Copper

Oh, what's new, you ask? Freckles and highlights in my hair! Because I've been working in the sun a lot (and there is plenty of sun here), I have new freckles on my face and hands, and my hair is getting a bit lighter. I have a new freckle on my finger, too! Once when I was little, I got a new freckle on my hand and I thought it was a tick so I scrubbed it really hard and kept scratching at it until I realized I was just kissed by the sun.

Anyway, life has been more exciting than freckles and hair but typing it just doesn't do it justice. Perhaps it is best described by the moments I look around at my surroundings and the people around me and the things Jen and I are doing and just smile in perfect contentment. I love my life here. It's right. Jen and I are having the best summer ever I would say. We continue to be the dog, and since our commitment to Detroit is only a summer we don't have too much responsibility so we are mostly free to just have fun. We don't have much money so we don't go out so much and mostly live like Grandmothers, going to bed at about 10pm and waking up at about 6am. But we have done some cool stuff.

This past Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the March to Freedom in Detroit. MJK Jr. lead that march and delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech here before he marched in Washington a few months later. We participated in the 50th anniversary march on Saturday, and it was so great. I don't have many words to describe it. It is much better and deeper than "great", but how can you describe marching to freedom in a blog? I will say that the Four Tops did the National Anthem and we are not positive but pretty sure that Rev Al Sharpton was MC'ing the event. Can't get much cooler than that!

Sunday we did our usual Remedial Soccer league thing. We meet so many great people there, and it is the funniest thing to play remedially, but probably more fun to watch. Lots of people fall when they kick the ball, or they prance instead of dribble. It's real skill. We were invited to a fiesta with the Detroit City Futbol League which is a step up (like, big step up) from the Detroit Remedial Futbol League. There was Romanian moonshine, sausage (side note: no one does sausage like NOLA street venders. I miss home!), lentil salad (yum), great tunes, and extremely sexist Jamaicans that kept saying "prim and proper, steel and copper", all in the back yard of a really nice house in Historic Corktown. And, we were invited back for a birthday party. Huzzah! It's good to be the dog!

This weekend was Allied Media Conference in Detroit. The discussions and workshops were too expensive and heady for us to afford and understand ("Fractals and Sacred: Identifying patterns of being and inter-being in our cosmos and recreating them in our communities." Um....), but we did score tickets to Complex Movement, which was not a concert like I kept saying, but an interactive performance where the audience is in a pod and we participate in a scenario where a town decides whether to reform or revolt over the government's management over the regulated food supply. Fun. But again, pretty heady for me. My brain aint that big.

Because I don't do words well, pictures!