D-Week 9: Farewell

I really don't know Detroit. I have had an amazing time here and my experience has been widespread, from yacht clubs to soup kitchens, but I've only been here two months. And, I'm leaving soon. I bought my ticket home this week and it made me very sad. One of the saddest things is that I really can't replicate my time here, nor can I explain it comprehensively to anyone who wasn't here with me. So leaving Detroit means leaving all my familiarity and memories of this city with the people I am leaving behind.

Jen and I recently got a package from our dear friend Alyssa, who stayed at the Hostel for a week about a month ago. We got really close with her and some of the other guests that week. In this package, she typed us a letter (on an old type writer!! She is too cool!), and her words really explained how I am feeling about this summer.

"I am so happy and thankful that I got to meet you 2 and Leslie and Amir and Jeff. That week of time spent together was so amazing and refreshing & joyful, it really renewed something in me, and at the same time it is (or was) a temporary thing that cannot be recaptured because the five of us will not be in the same place (in Detroit!!) at the same time again. And that makes that week all the more special."

But, as my time here winds down, we have been aggressively going after a short "to-do before leaving" list. This week we went to Hitsville, USA, or the Motown Museum. Our tour guide was Stevie Wonder's son, and we literally got to stand in the same room that so many Motown greats have rehearsed, recorded, and relaxed in. Wow. I was so giddy!

Jen's friends were in town this weekend so we went to the Pig and Whiskey Festival in the close suburb of Ferndale. I got a apple smoked sausage with cabbage and also a tempeh sausage with some kind of delicious aoili. We saw Passalacqua and Tunde Olaniran again (amazing), and saw Flint Eastwood for the first time. They have a female guitarist and singer and they were really awesome. It reminded me of my band days. I miss playing! We ran into one of the guys from Passalacqua in Hamtramck the next day and got to crash a music video set for Clear Soul Forces. Phat Cat was there, and he apparently was involved with J. Dilla (a producer who revolutionized the game - very worth looking up) back in the day, so apparently we are pretty eternally hip.

I also paid a visit to the electricians union to do some snooping about the possibility of getting a union card. I got the information I needed, but what stood out more was how scared I was to walk in the building. I asked my guy friend from the Hostel to go with me, and as we were walking in I explained how nervous I was feeling and hastily said "I resent being a woman." A few minutes later while we were waiting for the man I was supposed to talk to, I clarified my statement and explained that I just wish people would see me as a worker who happens to be female, not JUST as a woman. I want to embrace who I am, but who I am is more than my gender. This was a strange and anxious moment, but a healthy realization and reflection on what it means to be a woman in a male dominated field, and really what it means to embrace myself and be unashamed of who I am, which is something I am really working on this summer.

Pig and Whiskey Festival was very rainy for a few moments

Pig :)

Tom and Bootsy! i.e. Passalacqua

Tunde with his fabulous backup dancers

Sweetest Heart of Mary Cathedral. And you thought beautiful churches were only in Europe. 

The manager of the Hostel is in the incredible Detroit Party Marching Band, who played Mardi Gras last year, and they crashed a bar after rehearsal. They are getting down in and on the bar. 

Back porch sitting - what I will miss most

Eternally Hip +/- ster