MT 05/18/22

2 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

3

NEWS & VIEWS

Feedback Readers respond to last week’s cover story about abortion rights in Michigan, following the news of a leaked draft that indicated that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade.

I’m very strongly in favor of women choosing, however this “wake up call” is far too little, FAR too late. The SCOTUS is stacked with hard right ideologues and Michigan helped let that happen in ’16.

—Andrew Alexander, Facebook Wait until the ones that think this is funny and are poor and oops they get raped or a relative decided to defile them, see because until it happens to them, they don’t give a

crap and they think women dying is funny.

What’s even funnier they think they’re Christians. —Diana Hoffer, Facebook Mitch McConnell said recently a national ban on abortions is possible. And within that language is a pre-screening for women to determine pregnancy if trying to leave the country. Sounds like a form of government slavery to me. It was NEVER about returning to a state decision. This is war against women. —Marie Millican, Facebook Once the baby is born, their job is done.

They couldn’t care less what happens to the child. —Leslie Britton, Facebook Have a comment? Of course you do! Sound off: letters@metrotimes.com.

Vol. 42 | No. 30 | May 18-24, 2022

News & Views Feedback ............................... 4 News ...................................... 6 Best of the Rest ..................... 8 Informed Dissent ................ 10 The Incision......................... 12 Feature The Fiction Issue ................ 14

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12 mos’ exp as Developer or Engineer, developing apps using HTML, CSS, JQuery library, &MS SQL, &working on web app using ASP.NET MVC, or related. Mail resume to Ref#490-1, UWM, Human Resources, 585 S. Blvd E., Pontiac, MI 48341.

Software Developer, United Wholesale Mortgage, Pontiac, MI. Design &develop .NET Core MSA in Agile methodology.

Collaborate with cross functional team including Analysts, Scrum Masters, Engineers, Developers, to improve internal MSA apps, Online Broker portals, Mortgage Pay Off Calculator apps, Closed Loan syss, &Administrative Tracking Pay Off systems.

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metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

5

NEWS & VIEWS

A right-to-counsel ordinance unanimously passed Detroit City Council.

STEVE NEAVLING

Detroit joins the right-to-counsel movement

City of Detroit to provide free legal representation for residents facing eviction

By Steve N eavling

The Detroit City Council last week approved “a historic” measure that will provide lower-income residents with free legal representation when facing eviction.

The right-to-counsel ordinance passed 9-0, and Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration endorsed it.

“I believe this is about stabilizing our neighborhoods, it’s about protecting our most vulnerable,” Council President ary he eld, who introduced the measure, said during the meeting.

“It’s a historic day in Detroit. It really is — to be able to provide free counsel for our low-income families that are facing eviction. … This is an issue that all of us have united on.”

The ordinance is intended to help tenants who are victimized by predatory landlords. About 52% of Detroiters are renters, a rate that has been increasing for decades.

Nearly 18,000 eviction cases were filed in th istrict ourt in .

With more than 80% of Detroit’s residents considered low-income,

many tenants can t a ord an attorney.

Some tenants also have been scammed by fake landlords who rent homes they don’t own.

“An individual should not have to go into court, try and figure out a system that they don’t know, and not have any support,” Tonya Myers Phillips, an attorney with the Detroit Right to Counsel Coalition, recently told Metro T imes. “So we’re saying that the city of Detroit should provide a right to legal representation and provide funding support for that right, so thousands of Detroiters facing housing insecurity in the th district court, they have a fair day in court and their rights are protected and defended.”

New or ity was the first . . city to launch a right-to-counsel ordinance in 2017. Since then, other cities that have passed right-to-counsel ordinances include Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Denver, San Francisco, and others.

At the meeting Tuesday, Phillips urged the council to approve the “criti-

6 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

cally important” ordinance.

“Today is the day we can start a new chapter in our Detroit history and put forth systemic change to ensure that we are protecting our most vulnerable residents in the city of Detroit,” Phillips said. “Let’s get relief to thousands of families that are hurting, that are afraid, and that need full legal representation and robust community outreach.”

Some advocates of right-to-counsel said the city hasn’t gone far enough, citing funding concerns. The city will use million in ederal American Rescue Plan funds to pay for attorneys in the first year. Advocates said the city would likely need more than $15 million a year.

“Although the passage of this ordinance in Detroit is groundbreaking, make no mistake, we are not at our destination,” Branden Snyder, co-executive o etroit Action, a nonprofit that empowers workers and people of color, said in a statement. “To solve the housing and eviction crisis in Detroit,

we need to fully fund the Right to ounsel. he current o er is an inadequate attempt to appease the general public without spending nearly enough money to make a long-lasting di erence in our city. artial unding gives an illusion of stability, but it does not set low-income Detroiters up for long standing success. That is why we will continue to organize until Right to Counsel is fully funded.”

More than two dozen advocates of the right-to-counsel spoke in favor of the ordinance Tuesday.

“A right to legal counsel for our Detroit families facing evictions is a moral crisis, and our families are bearing the cost,” Charles Thomas, a clergy leader for People of Purpose Ministries, told council members. “Our children are being uprooted during their school year, our elders are being put out during their golden years. Young people just starting out are being preyed upon by predatory landlords. Instead of building or their uture, they are fighting or survival.”

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

7

NEWS & VIEWS

slated for J une 17-19.

“Dear Bruce Fans, we have a less than groovy announcement — due to a scheduling con ict ruce est etroit has been cancelled,” organizers posted on Twitter Friday. “In moore groovy news, we’re announcing a new BruceFest with location + dates soon! ” While a new location hasn’t been set yet, the tweet eatures a ier saying “new dates and city announcing soon,” which sounds like the festival won’t be held in Detroit.

Campbell, who was born in Royal Oak, had previously billed the festival as his “homecoming.” H e retweeted the announcement, apologizing for the cancellation, on Saturday.

The annual festival’s return to etroit was first announced bac in March to the delight of horror movie freaks and geeks. So much for that.

—Randiah Camille Green

CDC recommends wearing a mask in metro Detroit

Trevor Strand performing with Black Dahlia Murder at Knotfest Mexico in 2016.

Best of the Rest

Black Dahlia Murder frontman Trevor Strnad has died

By Randiah Camille G reen

Trevor Strnad, the vocalist of Michigan band Black Dahlia Murder, has died.

The melodic death metal band announced Strnad’s passing in an Instagram post last Wednesday.

Strnad, who was 4 1, could frequently be seen drinking beer and sharing laughs at Michigan metal shows. It was hard to miss Strnad, a burly dude with glasses who loved to party and talk about death metal.

“Beloved son, brother, and Shepard of good times, he was loved by all that met him,” the band wrote on social media. “A walking encyclopedia of all things music. H e was a hugger, a writer, and truly one of the world’s greatest entertainers. H is lyrics provided the world with stories and spells and horror and whimsy. It was his life to be your show.”

No cause of death has been given so far, though the band’s post includes the number for the Suicide Prevention H otline at the end.

Decibel Magazine, whose pages Strnad frequently appeared in, wrote

that it seems impossible to fathom that Strnad would take his own life to anyone who has interviewed him, seen him perform, or knew him in real life.

“H is life force was so strong that you can’t see him not existing,” the metal magazine wrote. “... he was a consummate performer who turned BDM shows into moving parties, death metal’s version of the late H ank von H ell of Turbonegro. Finally, he was a death metal fan, historian, and archivist of the highest order. E ven if you count the ecibel sta , ew people on the planet loved death metal as much as Trevor Strnad.”

The Black Dahlia Murder’s name comes from the infamous unsolved murder of E lizabeth Short in 194 7 in Los Angeles, who was dubbed the “Black Dahlia.” The band formed in Waterford in the early 2000s.

The band’s most recent album V erminous was released in 2020, and they had tour plans for this summer including an appearance at Dynamo Metalfest in August. This makes the news of his

8 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

FACTOR METAL/FLICKR

abrupt death all the more surprising.

H e was one of the few original members left in the band’s current lineup.

Grand Rapids Starbucks is first to unionize in Michigan

A Starbucks store in G rand Rapids has become the first in the state to vote to unionize as the labor movement continues to gain momentum nationwide.

E mployees at the store at 24 80 Burton Street voted 15-3 to unionize Friday.

In a letter earlier this year to Starbuck’s then-president and CE O K evin J ohnson, employees complained of insu cient pay, bad e uipment, and minimal COV ID-19 protections.

An additional 11 stores in Michigan plan to hold votes to unionize in the coming months.

So far, more than 6 0 Starbucks in 19 states have unioni ed as co ee wor ers push for more rights.

In Detroit, employees at G reat Lakes o ee Roasting o. went on stri e in February and are moving to unionize.

—Steve Neavling

Bruce Campbell’s BruceFest canceled

Sorry screwheads, Bruce Campbell will not be heading to Detroit’s Masonic Temple for BruceFest this J une.

The celebration of all things campy Campbell has been canceled, and the organizers are looking for a new location and date. The fest was originally

If you thought we were in the clear from COV ID-19, think again. The U .S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend people in 16 Michigan counties, including nearly the entire metro Detroit area, to mask up again when visiting indoor, public spaces.

The counties are Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, St. Clair, Chippewa, Mackinac, E mmet, Cheboygan, Antrim, G rand Traverse, Manistee, K alkaska, Benzie, and Calhoun.

An updated map on the CDC’s website shows the 16 counties as “high-risk” for transmission as of Thursday, May 12.

COV ID-19 just won’t give it up. It’s like the annoying person who keeps sliding into your DMs saying “good morning beautiful” even though you’ve never replied and clearly aren’t interested. Once you’ve continued life as normal, it pops right back up again to annoy you.

The Michigan Department of H ealth and H uman Services reported 83 2 people were hospitalized on Wednesday, which is a roughly 90% increase from a month ago when 4 3 0 people were hospitalized with coronavirus.

While the numbers aren’t quite as high as when Michigan hit peak numbers in J anuary with more than 4 ,6 00 people hospitalized, the rates are beginning to climb again with the rise of omicron subvariant BA.2.

The CDC recommends getting tested if you are experiencing symptoms and staying up-to-date with COV ID-19 vaccinations, however, fully vaccinated people can still contract the new variants.

—Randiah Camille Green

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

9

NEWS & VIEWS Informed Dissent

Critical Race Theory isn’t the problem. The Great Replacement Theory is. effre

. illman

The 18-year-old white supremacist who drove 200 miles to shoot 13 people — 10 fatally, 11 Black — in u alo, N. ., with an AR on aturday serves as yet another reminder of how thoroughly the corrupt sociopaths at the NRA have warped this country s discourse about guns. hat we ve skipped the usual performative calls for “reform” only reveals the depths of our surrender.

But the massacre should serve as a powerful reminder of another depressing reality. he right has convinced many Americans that the country has been endangered by “wokeness”: schoolchildren learning about racism and having access to books with LG characters, social media plat orms banning and corporations shunning conspiracy theorists and bigots.

For the last year, invented panics about critical race theory and cancel culture have dominated headlines. ut that s not where the monsters lie. he u alo gunman, whom I won t name, is an aficionado o the reat Replacement heory, the idea that liberals are bringing in immigrants to outvote decent white Americans, who aren t birthing enough babies to eep up. It s easy enough to trace the theory’s intellectual journey rom a New eal era Mississippi senator ( and K K K member) to the harlottesville i i torch parade in 2017 ( “J ews will not replace us! ”) to, most recently, o News pundit uc er arlson, who too it mainstream.

While Carlson has the biggest microphone, he’s arguably not the most important o ender. ast year, Rep. Elise te ani o New or , the third ran ing ouse Republican, paid or aceboo ads that accused radical emocrats o plotting a ER ANEN E E ION IN RRE ION. heir plan to grant amnesty to I ION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and

Police outside the Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, where a mass shooting occurred on Saturday.

create a permanent liberal majority in Washington,” the ad says, with an image o brown people re ected in oe iden s sunglasses.

In other words, reat Replacement heory though te ani s sta called it a “new disgusting low for the e t, their Never rump allies, and the sycophant stenographers in the media” to label it as such a ter the u alo shooting.

A ew wee s be ore she complained about the media reporting on what her ads said, she too to the ouse oor to denounce the supposed “invasion” on the southern border. wo days a ter the u alo shooting, she went bac to the well emocrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote. te ani isn t alone among Republican politicians, o course.

Vance, the au populist who recently won the O nomination or enate in Ohio, told arlson in arch emocrat politicians who have decided that they can’t win reelection in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here. Rep. att aet , the Florida congressman under federal investigation for dalliances with a teenager, believes arlson is ORRE about Replacement heory.

Ari ona state en. endy Rogers, an election conspiracy theorist, thinks “we are being replaced and invaded. ormer ouse pea er Newt ingrich said that immigrants would “drown” out “classic Americans. hatever could he mean te ani replaced Rep. i heney o yoming in the O leadership last year after Cheney was ousted for being anti sedition. o win the job, te ani transformed herself from a pro-busi-

10 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

ness Republican to the ind o ull on culture warrior who last week called emocrats pedo gri ters, a win to her party s Anon reactionaries.

On onday, heney tweeted he ouse O leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti semitism. istory has taught us that what begins with words ends in ar worse.

Cheney is undeniably correct and also li ely to lose her primary in August. hat is, in a nutshell, the modern Republican arty. his sort o demagogic incitement — “replace,” “pedo grifters,” “invaded,” overthrow has conse uences. Not just what we saw in u alo and be ore that, in ittsburgh and El aso, where mass shooters similarly embraced the white-replacement delusion — but in everyday vitriol and violence directed at members o marginali ed and targeted groups. he more acceptable e tremism becomes, the more violence will ollow.

Reported hate crimes based on race rose nearly 4 0% from 2019 to 2020, according to the most recent I data, a byproduct o a rump era ri e with racial division. ith Republicans turning their culture war on classroom “groomers,” don’t be shocked if the 2021 and 2022 data reveal increasing violence against the community.

We can’t worry only about hate crimes. olitical violence will become more common, too, as will the overlap in this Venn diagram right wing terrorism, which is already the most urgent security threat the country aces.

E tremism has become so acceptable on the right that it s no longer e treme.

On uesday, a ter this story goes to print, ennsylvania Republicans might

AP PHOTO/JOSHUA BESSEX

nominate candidates for senator and/ or governor who participated in the an. insurrection. ast wee , lorida ov.

Ron e antis appointed a Anon nutter to the state education board, then made her equally extremist husband the secretary of state with authority over elections. he wi e o a upreme ourt justice plotted with the White H ouse chief o sta to overturn the results o an election there were no conse uences. he court s hard right bloc is poised to obliterate a half-century of abortion precedents — and remove protections for birth control and same-sex marriage, too, while anti-abortion groups plot to ban the procedure nationally a ter lying to the enate about Roe . a e being “settled law”; no conseuences there, either.

And just as e antis used state law to punish isney or halting donations to Republican politicians, Republican jurists want to prevent social media companies from regulating their own plat orms. ast wee , the right wing i th ircuit ourt o Appeals bac ed an absurd e as law that prohibits many apps and websites from moderating posts by e as residents and prohibits companies from not doing business in e as. he judges did not seem particularly tech-savvy; one insisted that Facebook and G oogle “are not websites” but are “internet providers instead which, well, no. he u alo gunman live streamed the shootings on witch, which removed his post within two minutes. egal e perts say that under e as law, a e as resident could sue the Ama on owned company or doing so. et more at billman.s bstack.com.

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

11

NEWS & VIEWS

Activists in Washington, D.C. demonstrating for health care reforms in 2021.

SHUTTERSTOCK

The Incision

My testimony to the Senate Budget Committee on Medicare for All

By Abdul E l- Sayed Friends, last week I found myself on Capitol Hill in W ashington, D .C. to testify before the Senate Budget Committee on Medicare for All. I wanted to share my written testimony with you, laying out the case for Medicare for All — and how it would solve not j ust a limited set of our challenges, but all of them.

Y ou can watch the testimony at budget. senate.gov.

My name is r. Abdul El ayed, I trained as a physician and epidemiologist. I served the ity o etroit as ealth irector between and ,

where I was responsible or the basic health and wel are o nearly , etroiters. I also led the rebuilding o the etroit ealth epartment a ter it had been privati ed during municipal ban ruptcy and financial ta eover by the tate o ichigan under the same system o emergency management that led to the lint ater risis. oday, I teach at the niversity o ichigan s ord chool o ublic olicy, as well as American niversity s chool o ublic A airs. I find mysel shouldering the aw ward responsibility o e plaining the hapha ard dys unc-

12 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

tion o American healthcare to some o the brightest young policy minds in the country. I watch my students aces crin le when I e plain how deductibles wor comparing them to having to pay . or each movie you watch on Net i even though you already pay or your monthly subscription. ast year, my boo on the very subject o this hearing, along with r. icah ohnson, Medicare for All: A Citiz en’s G uide was published by O ord niversity ress.

I have given a copy to each o your o ces.

I want to start with the two most

obvious problems in American healthcare e ail to provide everyone health insurance coverage. he cost o healthcare in America is spiraling upward.

Coverage e li e to thin o ourselves as customers o healthcare. ut we are not. o understand why, let s review how being a customer actually wor s.

Imagine you were to go to a armer s mar et in search o some heirloom tomatoes. here are multiple varieties

all at di erent prices. et s say you find a stall with some tomatoes you li e. ou as the seller or the price. I that price is too high, you move on. ut i it s air, you purchase them. ou tender payment and you are now the proud owner o heirloom tomatoes. hat is a normal customer e perience. ut that s not how we e perience healthcare. Imagine I was to complain o chest pain during this hearing. I d be e hibiting signs o a potentially deadly heart attac . I should hope that you would call . hen the ambulance comes, I would have no choice as to where I was going no choice o who would sell me healthcare. Indeed, I would need to be ta en to the nearest hospital. ime is wasting. hen I arrive, I have no choice in the care I get or rom whom I get it I m le t at the mercy o the physicians assigned to provide me care. ut there are several directions my care could go depending on the physician, the services provided at the hospital, and what they deem my pathology to be. No one ever shares a price list or the care I will receive.

A terwards, a bill is sent to my health insurer. y insurer is based in ichigan, while I would have had my heart attac in ashington, . ., so I would have received out o networ care. It is unclear e actly how much o the cost o my care they will pay. ut it is ay, and my amily and I have been healthy this year. e have yet to pay down our deductible the paywall in ront o the health insurance my amily pays a premium or every month. o, some o the cost would get pushed bac to me. Either way, my insurance pays or my healthcare, and sends me a bill or whatever it will not cover.

Now compare this e perience to the traditional customer e perience I laid out at the armer s mar et. I do not get to shop around between providers. I do not get to choose what product I want owing to the in ormation asymmetry the di erence in nowledge between my provider and me. I am le t to the provider to both tell me what I need and sell it to me. I am never as ed what price I am willing to pay. It s assumed I ll pay whatever it costs considering I only have one heart that is priceless to me, a per ect e ample o what economists call inelastic demand my demand or care does not change based on price. And finally, once I receive my care, I do not pay. Instead, a third party insurer pays on my behal and passes whatever it will not bac on to me.

Rather than being the initiator and completer o a financial transaction, I am the reason a financial transaction

between my insurer and provider has ta en place. As yoursel , in the traditional customer analogy are we the customers ... or the tomatoes Our profit driven healthcare system renders our bodies into products, over which providing healthcare justifies financial transactions between major corporations. ealthcare is not a traditional mar et product because it violates so many o the re uirements o the mar et. e are not the ones who pay or our healthcare. e o ten receive healthcare in circumstances that preclude us rom negotiating. e rely on our providers to both tell us what we need and to sell it to us.

It s no wonder why mar et based healthcare so obviously ails. I I were a customer, I would be ree to wal away i the price is too e pensive. hat act would orce any seller to lower their prices i they wanted the sale. hat s the power o negotiation in a true maret the act that you do not have to buy. ut in our system, no one can wal away. As a patient, I don t have time. As an insurer, the care has already been provided. o instead o eeping prices down, health insurance companies have reali ed that they can just pass more o their costs bac onto us. remiums what we pay every month or the privilege o being insured have risen aster than wages and in ation over the past decade. he median amily premium is now , nearly , o that is coming out o amily, not employer, poc ets. onsidering that the median amily earned about , in , they spent . percent o their earnings on premiums. ut that s not where the healthcare cost burden ends. eductibles usually sit around , or private amily plans. hat ma es the annual cost o private health insurance nearly , per year, or . percent o the median amily budget be ore ta es.

Out o poc et costs in the orms o deductibles and co pays are not just financially costly, but they re also physically costly. aving to pay a deductible delays necessary healthcare. One study ound that high deductibles delayed treatment or breast cancer by nearly nine months. orse still, deductibles have more than doubled over the past decade.

All o this contributes to the irony that the operative part o the word insurance is sure. And the structure o our or profit system leaves Americans increasingly unsure about their health insurance access. he nature o insurance coverage, itsel , has changed.

It s no wonder that nearly percent o adults struggle to a ord their care, and percent report rationing care

because they cannot a ord it.

And that s or people who are winning in our or profit healthcare system. hese are the privately insured Americans who are routinely told that they have the greatest healthcare in the world. hat about those who are losing in our profit driven system hat includes, o course, the uninsured o whom there remain million according to the census. hat includes percent o America s children.

It also includes about million Americans enrolled in edicaid, our ederally unded, state operated health insurance program or low income Americans. hile edicaid is a critical program, a li eline or millions o Americans who cannot a ord private health insurance, the program is only just that a li eline. edicaid reimbursements, on average, are substantially lower than private insurance reimbursements. And because healthcare providers are not re uired to accept edicaid, beneficiaries are, in e ect, second class healthcare citi ens.

It is impossible to escape the act that reimbursing the same healthcare services at a lower rate re ects an implicit lac o value o the body or which the healthcare is being provided. One study ound that just a increase in edicaid reimbursements led to a . percent increase in the probability that a edicaid beneficiary had seen a physician in the past two wee s. ecause Americans o color are substantially more li ely to be insured on edicaid than their white counterparts, our tiered healthcare system is just another means by which our healthcare system assents to undamental health ine uities. Empirically, our system literally values lac bodies less than it does white ones.

Costs e spend a whopping , per capita on healthcare more, by ar, than any other country on Earth. Our neighbors just north spend less than hal as much , . And the costs are rising aster than comparable countries, too. hy do healthcare costs eep rising ecause corporations ma e money when they do. ealthcare providers ma e more when they bill more. ospitals mergers and ac uisitions continue to surge. And as hospitals buy one another up in mergers and ac uisitions, they eliminate their competition. One study ound that hospital consolidation was associated with increased healthcare prices, o ten as high as percent. ou might e pect health insurance companies have an incentive to negotiate healthcare costs downward on behal o consumers, acting as a chec

on rising healthcare costs. ut instead o negotiating these prices downward, insurers have leveraged cost sharing mechanisms to pass rising costs bac onto American amilies. here are also the unintended conse uences o the rule which re uired health insurance companies to spend at least percent o their annual collected premiums on healthcare or return anything in e cess bac to beneficiaries in the orm o a premium rebate. hile it was intended to eep premiums low, it also removed the incentive health insurers had to negotiate down provider billing. All o this illustrates the undamental ailure o assuming that negotiations over healthcare costs between profit driven insurers and healthcare providers on behal o the American public would do anything but ma imi e the profits o both sets o corporations at the e pense o the public.

The pandemic shows us how America’s healthcare failures extend well beyond this Now that I have discussed the most obvious problems with American healthcare, I want to e pand the aperture. hough we o ten rame our healthcare discussion simply around coverage and cost, this raming specifically e cludes some o the most important issues acing health and healthcare in America. o help us understand these, I want to ta e us bac just two albethey e traordinarily long years, to early .

None o us will orget the horror o the first days o the pandemic that spring. e were acing a new virus with very little in ormation about how it spread, how deadly it might be, and who was at highest ris . e had no vaccine nor any e ective treatments. e were watching hospital wards fill up their sta struggling without the ventilators or beds they needed to treat patients. rontline nurses, doctors, and hospital wor ers were doing all this without the basic personal protective e uipment they needed to protect themselves and their patients rom what was then called the novel coronavirus. Indeed, this added to the already chronically poor wor ing conditions or many healthcare wor ers including unsustainable and unsa e sta ng ratios, mandatory overtime, and vicious union busting. oday, nurses are being orced to travel or more lucrative locum opportunities where they wor alongside permanent colleagues who ma e ar less or the same wor all this cementing a permanent sta ng crisis in America s hospitals. esperate to atten the curve, mayors and governors around the country were orced to close schools and issue

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stay at home orders. We watched millions of Americans already teetering on the edge o financial insolvency lose their livelihoods. With their jobs, up to 27 million Americans also lost employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, local and state health departments, as well as the CDC, anemic after decades of disinvestment through the austerity of the G reat Recession, struggled under the load of the pandemic. Burnt out from the experience, a third of public health workers in a national survey say they are considering leaving the public health workforce in the next year.

Despite the stress the pandemic put on hospitals around the country — and the desperate need that communities had for hospital beds — 21 hospitals shut down or ended service in the course of 2020 alone. These hospitals are shutting down in disproportionally rural communities and in states that did not expand Medicaid. Millions of Americans are being forced to drive further and further for medical care, those distances posing serious obstacles in emergencies.

H ospitals, despite being gorged with patients, were being starved for cash ow. he pandemic orced them to cancel their most lucrative elective procedures to make way for COV ID-19 patients. But it wasn’t only shutdowns that robbed people of healthcare options; 2020 also featured 73 hospital mergers or acquisitions that leave patients around the country with fewer choices for care. More than one in three ( 3 7 percent) of these deals involved a or profit healthcare system, up rom less than one in four ( 23 percent) in 2019.

Along with or profit hospitals, guess what other industry had a banner year in 2020? The health insurance industry. uddenly, they were ush with all the money they should have had to spend on elective procedures. U nitedH ealth roup made . illion in profits in the second quarter of 2020 — nearly double the $3 .4 billion it made in the same quarter in 2019.

Where did they put that money?

Well, 2020 was an election year — so they invested in making sure that nothing fundamentally changed about the nature of our healthcare system.

They plowed that money back into our political process through everything from lobbying to electioneering. In the 2020 cycle, Blue Cross/ Blue Shield—the biggest political spender among health insurers — spent $6 ,4 06 ,253 in political contributions. It also spent a whopping $4 9,879,3 10 lobbying. It was a key sponsor of the “Partnership for America’s H ealthcare Future,” a lobbying group

Our disinvestment in prevention and public health is a function of the fact that prevention rarely makes financial sense in a system predicated on profits that accrue only after people fall ill. that ran millions of dollars in ads throughout the cycle to specifically target Medicare for All. The pandemic has claimed nearly a million American lives. It’s claimed millions more livelihoods. U S life expectancy fell by several years — even more so among people of color — erasing a quarter century of growth.

This singular health catastrophe demonstrates so many of the other healthcare challenges in America in addition to coverage and cost.

American healthcare is precarious.

E mployer sponsored insurance means that while you may have health insurance today, you could lose it for several reasons: losing a job, getting a new job, turning 26 , getting married, getting divorced, or striking at work. Beyond that, in an America where we believe in the can-do entrepreneurial spirit, consider how many businesses are left unbuilt, career opportunities left unpursued for fear of losing health insurance.

American consumers are losing healthcare choices. The choice that Americans want in healthcare isn’t which health insurer, but which doctor to see or what hospital to go to. But mergers and acquisitions, let alone hospital closures, are robbing Americans of the healthcare choices that matter most to them.

H ealthcare workers are being exploited. The power of consolidating healthcare companies leaves healthcare workers — nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers — at a disadvantage. When large hospital chains consolidate, workers are left with limited alternatives, reducing their ability to hold their employers accountable for unsa e sta ng, orced overtime, and unsafe working conditions. They also fall prey to the well- documented reduction of pay due to what economists call “monopsony” — the ability of oligopolies to collude to suppress wages.

We are failing to invest in prevention and public health. Our public health institutions were responding to the worst pandemic in modern history on shoestring budgets. But the continued defunding of public health does not align with Americans’ preferences.

14 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

If given the choice, most Americans would choose to stay healthy rather than pay for healthcare after they’ve already gotten sick. But our healthcare system rakes in trillions of dollars, nearly a fi th o our entire gross domestic product, to pay for healthcare while our national investment in public health — the means of keeping Americans healthy — remains minimal. We live far shorter lives than our counterparts in other high-income countries.

G ermany’s life expectancy, for example, is more than four years longer than ours.

Medicare for All: a single solution for all our healthcare problems Well-meaning people often attempt to explain why alternative proposals to Medicare for All could also provide universal coverage and reduce our healthcare costs. But as discussed, assuming that those are the only two problems we must solve hinges on a limited understanding of the full scope of America’s healthcare challenges. When I introduce those challenges — the closing of rural hospitals, the expansion of forprofit healthcare through mergers and acquisitions that eliminate choice, the defunding of American public health, the exploitation of America’s healthcare workforce, the tiered nature of our health insurance system that turns lowincome Americans into second-class healthcare citizens — they propose Rube G oldberg add-on policies that render their proposals so complex as to be unworkable.

Medicare for All — a universal national health insurance program for everyone — is the most elegant, a ordable, understandable, e uitable solution to our myriad healthcare challenges. H aving enumerated a fuller scope of America’s healthcare challenges, I want to map how Medicare for All would solve each of these.

Medicare for All would provide universal health insurance coverage. edicare or All would o er the clearest pathway universal healthcare insurance coverage. E very single resident would have cradle-to-grave coverage.

That coverage would insulate Ameri-

cans from the escalating premiums, copays, and deductibles that leave even privately-insured Americans rationing, delaying, or forgoing healthcare right now.

Medicare for All would do away with second class healthcare citizenship.

It would finally o er the e uitable health insurance every single American deserves. Regardless of what you earn, the color of your skin, or wear you work, you would be entitled to the same coverage — that reimburses at the same rate — as everyone else. This would save lives. A Yale study found that Medicare for All would save up to 6 8,000 lives every year.

Medicare for All is durable. Turn 26 , get a job, lose a job, get married, get divorced: none of these would cost you your health insurance under Medicare for All. Regardless of the nature of their employment, Americans would be secure in the knowledge that they would not lose their health insurance.

Beyond the peace of mind, this would support America’s economy as well: it could unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans to start new businesses or explore new career opportunities without worrying about what it might mean should they or their families fall ill.

Medicare for All would slow the hospital mergers, acquisitions, and shutdowns that rob American consumers of their healthcare choices.

Mergers and acquisitions, let alone hospital closures, are robbing millions of Americans of the choice of what doctor to see or what hospital to go to.

These deals are driven by non-transparent negotiations over reimbursement rates between hospitals and health insurers. Larger hospitals can leverage their size to negotiate better reimbursement rates than their competitors—allowing them to press their advantage and ultimately purchase their competitors. Meanwhile, hospitals in low-income or rural communities shut down because their communities lack density or people with private insurance, leaving residents with no healthcare options at all.

U nder Medicare for All, there would be just a single insurer. H ospitals in similar catchment areas would be reimbursed at the same rate for the care they provide, barring larger hospitals from commanding better reimbursement rates simply for being larger.

This allows smaller hospitals, as well as independent practices, to remain competitive, and o ers consumers more choice.

Similarly, Medicare for All would keep rural hospitals open through “global payments” — rather than reimbursing for each unit of healthcare

they provide, these hospitals would be paid in lump sum for the critical services they provide rural communities.

Medicare for All empowers healthcare workers. Today, nurses are being exploited by consolidated healthcare systems, just as those systems are squeezing physicians out of their practices because they cannot command the same reimbursement rates. These systems dehumanize their employees and cheapen the provider-patient relationship. In curbing the power of these mammoth healthcare systems, Medicare for All empowers the people who actually provide America’s healthcare, not the C-suite executives who manage their workplaces.

Medicare for All aligns incentives to invest in prevention and public health.

Our disinvestment in prevention and public health is a function of the fact that prevention rarely ma es financial sense in a system predicated on profits that accrue only after people fall ill.

Indeed, many of the most important investments in prevention take decades to manifest. But because people transition between insurance providers so often during their lives—ultimately transitioning to Medicare after they turn 6 5 — an investment in prevention today is unlikely to save an insurer money in the long-term. Insurers have little incentive to invest in prevention that won’t save them money.

Furthermore, the most important long-term investments in prevention and public health are structural interventions upon the “social determinants” of health, which are beyond the power of a single insurance company — these include rebuilding our decimated public health infrastructure, building walkable communities, addressing inaccess to healthy foods, improving air and water quality, or investing in early childhood education.

Medicare for All aligns these incentives. In this system, there is no churn in insurance providers because every American is insured by the same entity throughout their entire lives. E very investment in prevention yields savings for the very same entity. And because the insurer is the federal government, rather than a corporation motivated by its profit margin, it has the power to act on those incentives to address the broader social determinants of health.

Medicare for All would reduce the costs of healthcare for individuals, families, and the country — and expand the economy. An authoritative report by the Congressional Budget O ce, which you will hear about in the second witness panel today, has demonstrated that Medicare for All would reduce household out-of-pocket costs, increase wages, improve the e ciency

of the healthcare system and “economywide productivity,” and increase labor productivity.

Conclusions Medicare for All saves lives. It saves money for families and the country.

And it o ers a sense o security that millions of Americans go without in our inhumane healthcare system. But opponents for Medicare for All continue to make the same fearmongering arguments opponents of national health insurance have been making for nearly a century.

They will tell you that Medicare for All would eliminate “healthcare choices,” although Medicare for All is critical to addressing the consolidation that is, in fact, robbing Americans of the choices they actually care about: which doctor, clinic, or hospital at which to seek care.

They will say that Medicare for All is too e pensive, that we cannot a ord it.

In fact, Medicare for All is the best way to protect Americans from the exorbitant — and rising — healthcare costs that force the median American family to pay 12.5 percent of their before-tax income for basic healthcare needs.

“But the free-market drives innovation! ” they claim, even though healthcare providers would remain private under Medicare for All, and smaller, more innovative, providers would finally be able to leverage their innovation to compete with larger providers rather than get crushed by unfair reimbursement rates. Never mind the fact that the U .S. federal government is one of the most important funders of biomedical innovation in the world.

“What about rationing? ” they’ll ask, when in fact rising out-of-pocket costs are forcing Americans to ration, delay, or forgo their care every day in America under our current system.

They will tell you that more government is the problem, when in fact our private, or profit health insurance system delivers mediocre healthcare outcomes despite being the world’s most expensive healthcare system.

They will say Medicare for All is somehow “un-American,” when what is truly un-American is staring at our broken healthcare system and the people it breaks along with it and choosing to look away.

But today, you are choosing to stare our broken healthcare system in its cruel, indi erent ace. I commend you.

And I hope that I have o ered some insight into how and why it is so broken, and how Medicare for All is the solution to fi it.

Originally published May 1 2 in T he I ncision. Y ou can get more at abdulelsayed. substack.com.

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FEATURE

In the Distance

By Andrea Kowch A globally collected, acclaimed, and institutionally recognized artist with new museum exhibitions set to open across the U.S. in 2023 and 2024, Andrea Kowch is a Detroit native and former adjunct and alumna of the College for Creative Studies, residing and working in Michigan, where she paints full time and is represented exclusively by RJD Gallery.

16 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

The 2022 Fiction Issue

Guest edited by Nandi Comer and deputy editor Zig Zag Claybourne

The Ghanaian symbol, the Sankofa,

is represented by a bird with one foot stepping forward with its neck bent backward arching its head toward its back feathers.

It represents the belief that in order to step into the future, we must look back and learn from our past. I have been thinking a lot about the future, but lately, every time I try to step forward through the doorway of a café or bar I pause, mask in hand, a little paralyzed by our new normal. Inside venues across metro Detroit, throngs of people elbow to elbow lean into one another unmasked, as if trying to dismiss the last two years of social distancing and washing our hands to “happy birthday.”

One thing these past two years have taught me is that the future is not certain, that no matter how advanced we humans think we have developed, no matter how sophisticated our technology, no matter what modes of transportation we build to arrive at destinations much farther and in the fastest means imaginable, we are still at the whim of our own nature. We are vulnerable creatures that have been grounded by terrible illnesses and natural disasters.

And these illnesses and disasters happen every generation. But we have also forged resilient communities. We are made up of gardeners, healers, scien-

tists, and caregivers. When faced with uncertainty we turn to one another.

In this Fiction Issue, by taking on the theme “Conjuring Future Visions,” writers and artists meditate on what lies ahead. Some pieces create speculative imagery of a future Detroit where citizens have access to devices that read our emotions; others ask us to question our relationship to the multiverse, the imaginative selves that may be more accessible to us than we thought.

But not all the work ventures into a distant future that is tech-driven. Some of the work asks that we only think about actions that will affect our future

selves, others to consider the next seconds. There is even a piece where a future sage sends a message to the past (our present) warning us and guiding us as we move towards a radical future.

To be, in the most personal sense, wizards and magicians.

And then there is ritual. Some of our artists acknowledge that in our desire to move forward and transition into a new day there is a need to uplift traditional practices that we have preserved for generations. They embody the spirit of the Sankofa by remembering our past in order to move forward into the future. Together these 21 artists present work of documentation mixed with that of conjecture and speculation.

There is magic in the scenery. Their work highlights the alchemy of our survival, the importance of looking at our land, and ancestral practices.

The 2022 Fiction issue invites us to conjure and meditate on our tomorrow.

They help me to understand that while the next step into the future may not be assured, it will be guided by our past and filled with curiosity and imagination. I hope you find delight in their work, like I did.

-Nandi Comer

Artist fees provided by Kresge Arts in Detroit (a program generously funded

by The Kresge Foundation and administered by the College for Creative Studies).

Nandi Comer is this year’s editor and Zig Zag Claybourne the deputy editor. Leila Abdelrazaq is the cover artist.

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future sermon # 1 | WHAT IF I TOLD YOU (abridged)

By Cherrise Morriss What if I told you that we are revolution unfolding, that cain’t shit scare you when you realize who you really are

with our loving and our healing and our fearlessness with our intention and our consistent actions and efforts our unbrea able will and our diligence to show up and show out as the best version of self we can possibly be at every moment, even and especially amid crisis.

that your healing was your inheritance that you and I, we, are bigger than our problems, more brilliant and beautiful and wise than our undoing fiercer than our mistakes and more formidable than any force working against us.

What if I told you that all the tools we need, we already have within that it was, in this time, when we waited, wanted, wished for change, for growth, for love and transformation, healing and hope and safety that it was, us,

We will do it by listening to the wisdoms whispered by the wind, by looking in the mirror and noticing the ancestor holding your hand, by sitting with yourself and remembering how divine you really are, the vestige of heavenly bodies that had to be broken to become whole, you were made in the image of God, And cain’t shit scare you when you realize who you really are.

What if I told you, it was this, this whole time, it was us We are the change that’s gone come.

We are possibility untamed.

We are magic in motion.

We are revolution, alive.

all along we were transformation in the esh and bone we were the happily ever after we were the substantiation of our wildest dreams As if we were everything we’ve ever awaited

CAN I GET AN ASÉ, CAN I GET AN AMEN, CAN I GET A GITCHI GITCHI YAYA AND A UH NANA NANA Cherise Morris is a writer and spirit worker dreaming towards a future, free.

And what if I told you how we’ll get there —

Brittany Rogers is a poet, educator, native Detroiter, and Editor in Chief of Muzzle

What if I told you that you were magic unfolding and you and me, we got the power to shift the reality of everything we’ve ever known to be true that the world we been dreaming up, is not only possible but promised and no — it won’t be perfect but it can be just and accepting and embracing and understanding, it can be honest and loving and kind, it can be wiser and more beautiful and divine,

Acrylic paint, gold leaf, gold pigment, chrome pen on paper, 11” x 15” in

By Brittany Rogers

it can support us all in living better lives.

As if we were all we needed to get free.

By Dalia Reyes

Aubade for the changing season The sun will not rise early yet today may be the day to unplug the sunlamps, glaring at each other from their corners of the room.

Testify: it is true what they say of winter’s rotten mouth, of this sky, bark-dry and starless. Before today, I obeyed its dog whistle. Sit. Stay. Roll over. It could be worse.

In some states, sunlight is a myth whispered by folks who are from not there. But what of it? What, when there are places where the soil is soft year round, the sun chirping and kind each morning. This morning I woke up singing. What if?

Heard my own self sing back.

Wade into what could be.

Light the candles on the dresser; the vanity; the nightstand. Fling open the curtains. Wide.

Wider.

As if we were lightform coming home

Leaving Home

18 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

Dalia Reyes is an artist, curator, and music lover from SW Detroit.

Magazine; learn more about her at www. brittanyrogers.org .

Even in decomposition The land remembers

The Land Knows Us By Name

Knows the seeds I keep in my throat The maíz I plant on Anishinaabe land And the seeds I always save

By Christiana Castillo Knows me The seeds in my throat How my bis bis bis abuela planted maíz in Jalisco How my abuela planted maíz Created space for pollinated golden tassels To reach towards the sky Next to clouds of smoke in Detroit The land remembers their names Knows every shape of their body All their curves, the scars, self-proclaimed beauty marks

Knows how I dream of seeds Covered in dirt So I know my lineage is Seeds covered in dirt Christiana Castillo (she/ella) is a MexicanBrasilian-American poet, educator, and gardener.

The Girl with a Bird’s Wings

By Matthew Fogarty She was a girl with a bird’s wings they locked in the attic. Her sister was a lion they kept chained in the basement.

This was in the old house, in the old neighborhood of auto workers and artists and immigrants, corner stores. The old blue house with three stories and shutters and a wood porch and a front wal lined with red and white owers.

The house with the chainlink fence and the tall gutter spouts where she’d watch a nest gather in the curve under the overhang of the roof. The house in which they were left behind, the sisters, after the family business collapsed, literally, the restaurant, it burned, the joists fell, and the family moved on. The house where the worst of things happened.

The two girls so young they formed few memories before what they became.

For the eldest it was all at once: a collapse of the legs, the nose, the mouth, the ears, the golden eyes, the back arch, the pads and claws, the mane. The youngest, they grew over months, the wings, small bits of bone calcified into the changing shape of her back, under her skin, which stretched, minerals gathering into new joints of bone and sinew as though currented toward a delta. First she remembers noticing was sitting back in a chair, the discomfort. Then the welts appeared.

The surface broke.

They are real wings, gray and feathered and grown now, and she hides them always under a coat, under clothing, even in summer. They can ap. he s ne er wished to y. In a wind she holds firm. In uiet moments alone, before locking the attic door at night, her mother would say you’re our baby blessing and she d run her fingers around each knot in the girl’s back and the fingers made a feeling close to lo e.

Though the parents, they were religious, there was so much they hid in shame, why they hid the girls at opposite ends of the home, why they scuttled the middle children away from the city into the Thumb like the animal parts of their daughters were some strain of contagion.

Left, the girls grew together. Out from the cold of the basement and the empty of the attic they imagined a future they could live out together, a life among farmland like where they pictured their siblings. Cows and a tractor. A barn the shape of an ark. A family the shape of a bruise. heltering woods.

After months, the sisters left the house, too, to explore the city for companions. In fact it was the other left children who lived under the bridge amidst the shifting owing forms of the strangenesses of weather and the swift currents of the river, it was they who gave birth to the idea that the girls— that they all—had some graver purpose in life in service of nature. nd this is when she saw it that first night, alone among the others, under the bridge: The violent hailstorm, that

prayed with aerosol cans Of the world that could be Ancient cave paintings guide his way Mammoth, mastodons, bears, bison, lions Once walked with him pears car ed from stone Walking through turtle island He is the poet moving about A world that wants him silenced He is the conjury of spells Words forbidden, As he speaks truth to power Yet power does not yield to mere words With “wat up doe” met with sign language onfidently showcasing colors po en in codes and codices oded in crucial con ict on icted future constricted crucified by the choices that await him Candles light corners where souls once stood with smiles Now the candles illuminate the empty li uor bottles Blunt guts, ash, and haze, a gaze can be caught Once a year as they attempt to return home again

When Grace Is Afforded

By Rashaun Rucker I make things that I am passionate about.

it could come on like nothing and a wicked wind that whipped waves into the shores of the peninsula, a wind so hard it could blow over signs and blow out storefronts and blow down barns, tear ea es from attics. In the worst of the storm strong enough to blow down even her make believe farm’s shipshaped barn. A storm in the shape of a freight train locomoting through everything in its path. Her face, it’s sweet and tired and worn for her age, but warm, her face with the easy wonder of a youngest. That they might come looking for her—for a blessing, for safety, forgi eness. he d be outside then in a future woods, hidden away by nature and watching as they searched. This: all of what she wished would appear within the haildrops.

In wa ing in the morning in the soft humid light of spring and the warmth of the fur of her sister next to her and the shadow of the bridge above, she remembered as a child, her sister stalking abo e her bed her tail ung wild and wailing, the broad smile of teeth, and the way she would sing out a sweet roar as a welcome, to welcome them both back to the wide awake world

-Rashaun Rucker

and all the wild wide joys of being two whole real things alive, sweet and soft, spreadwinged and taildriven and alone in the city, together.

Matthew Fogarty is the author of a collection of stories titled Maybe Mermaids and Robots are Lonely (Stillhouse Press, 2016) and is currently at work on a novel.

Quetzalcoatl’s Shadow On Vernor

By Reyes He walks down streets unknown His cans spray truth, colors combine for beautiful images of re ection Visions of past blood memories echo through his hands He conjures spirits of ancestral songs, sung seeing the feathered serpents in a solilo uy ubtle as it is it is his truth is brush fills the can as His words conjure the future visions

Just a shadow on Vernor As a poet, artist and curator, Reyes performs internationally and facilitates performances and workshops by merging creative expression and critical thought whose work has been featured on HBO, CNN, PBS, The Chicago Tribunes Hoy Noticias, and Latin Nation.

Bad Day

By Keith Gaston BB, the voice stuck in Jasmine’s head, whispered, “You’re tired, honey. Call in sick.”

“That sounds good,” Jasmine purred, pressing her head to the pillow, then o I can t do it she said shooing away s sweet urgings. I e missed too many days already.”

“You’ll regret it,” BB replied. asmine had ta en fi e sic days only one of those days because she was actually ill. lipping her legs off the bed she s uinted at the daylight coming from the window. “Curse you, sun.” tanding she stared at the bed.

“Missing it, already?” BB taunted.

I don t.

“Liar.”

Inside the bathroom the sin and toilet were so close that her head and butt could touch them simultaneously if she bent slightly. Budgeting herself

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19

for a dream house she’d someday share with a man of her dreams required sacrifices including a shower that ne er kept its hot water. aahh hat s cold “Why torture yourself? Gurl, move to someplace nicer,” BB said.

I ha e to be strong. tay focused. ut there is someone who ll be able to

hear my thoughts. omeone I ll marry.

“Husband? You don’t even have a man, honey.” hut up . I m ust ha ing a bad morning. hat s all.

“Whatever, gurl. ‘Read your thoughts.’

Right! You want a man in your head, date a brain surgeon.” fter her shower asmine wanted

coffee. nfortunately the cabinets were bare.

“No coffee? Gurl, you are having a bad day.” ne getting worse by the minute.

I m running late anyway.

“Poor baby,” BB teased.

It s the de il s drin anyway asmine shouted defiantly as she departed.

he scarce par ing lot held fi e cars. asmine s old heap stood out among them. umping into the blue ord spire the car whined rattled and then discharged dar smo e from the rear. ea ing the lot she spotted children boarding a school bus. hey pointed at her car and laughed. he patted the dashboard. It s all

FIELD TEST Hiking with the Daedrim D4 Up Mt. Detroit

By Jack Cheng

In 2041, Daedrim rocked the

periential apture world with its re olutionary . he de ice had none of the typical outward facing cameras or sensors. Instead it used a proprietary electromagnetic halo to capture the emoti e content of e periences which when played bac could summon the corresponding sights and sounds. o wear the was a re elation. It felt li e periential apture the way it was always meant to be a esh colored blister on the side of your nec . ight years and three models later aedr m is finally releasing its long awaited . o see if it s worth the upgrade we too it for a hi e up t. etroit. ur field test happened on a mild arch day. he afternoon clouds had started to clear and we hoped that the sun would show by the time we reached the summit. rom the trailhead through the first gentle stretch our re iew unit detected our low le el anticipation nicely. ut as soon as we passed our first group of hi ers the de ice also pic ed up our self consciousness in wearing it. he reason he is actually larger than its predecessors less a thumb si ed blister and more of a mini pancake. ur contact at aedr m says this was in order to accommodate the brand new o e sensor but we suspect it has more to do with recent congressional hearings on where s fit under federal sur eillance law. egardless we didn t want our thoughts about the new form-factor to interfere with the remainder of our test so we double tapped our pancake to turn on metaawareness cancellation. e followed the trail up a steeper incline and the registered our mild satisfaction in feeling our e opac ac-

tuators actuate. round the ne t bend we were rewarded with a iew angled north up oodward enue along with an informational pla ue. century ago t. etroit was the site of the ichigan tate airgrounds. hen for a brief span in the early s it housed a fulfillment center which later shuttered as a result of the arren lobuchar eplatformi ation ct. he site lay mostly abandoned until a push by the etroit reenways oalition to transform it into usable public space. s we read the pla ue the captured a ash of warm recognition we remembered learning all this on a field trip in fifth grade. bout that new sensor the was notorious for its erratic beha ior. ome moments it would miss altogether while others it would blow out turning say slight hangriness into a bottomless pit of longing. ubse uent models resol ed these issues but their recordings often felt too clinical and sterile. nd while the lac s the wildness of the original its ability to con ey nuance is truly unmatched. he o e sensor can register emoti e content at far higher resolution not ust social boredom but the ittery ennui of an o er long first date. ot ust disappointment in a bad meal but the self critical regret of going to a restaurant and ordering something different from what you always get only to ha e it be not as good. e pic ed up our pace winding bac and forth up a set of switchbac s. round the ne t bend we encountered a gaggle of blister less teenagers wearing intage late s go bags and rubber ood boots. e recogni ed the boots

they were the same kind our parents ept in the closet by the front door. he teenagers all laughed at something e cept for one of them who was admiring wild owers along the trail s edge and who upon noticing us told us we didn t ha e much further until the top. hen they went bac to the owers. he captured this entire interaction well from nostalgia for a di cult but more purposeful past to an ious wondering if you ha e something on your face that isn t a mini panca e through to a rueful longing to slow time s relentless march. ne last bend and we d finally reached the top. The summit was pac ed with people their blisters glowing softly in capture mode. ere we finally turned on the s crowd cancellation so as to filter out our mild annoyance at not being the only one who had this idea. e loo ed for a more solitary place to sit and found a spot on a roc y outcrop o erloo ing the eastern face of the mountain.

It d rained the night before and the retention pools were still full. In one of them we spotted what loo ed li e a new art installation. ut then it mo ed.

It was not a sculpture we reali ed but a li ing animal. blue heron. e d heard about such animals. hey were sub ects of childhood drawings the mascots of our schools. ut we had ne er seen one in person. e weren t e en sure if they were e tinct or endangered or what era they d roamed wild here. ind rippled the water s surface. ut the heron unfa ed bowed its head and lifted one leg almost li e a dancer at a slow ra e. e thought about the

Jack Cheng is a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow and the author of See You in the Cosmos, a novel for young readers.

20 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

Daedrim D4 Pros: • Higher-resolution Évoke2 engine • Same great crowd-cancelation • USB-K charging

Cons: • Pancake design stands out at first • Blankness of pure being feels like a bug

Times Rating: 6. prepper id staring at wild owers. ome time passed. hen the heron in a riot of feathers too ight. It s immed the retention pools and climbed up cutting across our iew of amtramac s canals and orth nd s rice paddies past the gleaming fern spilled towers of ighland ar o er the cree s and capillaries of the teeming ouge under pin and purple contrails and mottled clouds toward the already set sun. e were eager to see how the had rendered our sense of awe. But this portion of our recording was blan . e thought it had to be some ind of malfunction with our re iew unit. e reached out to our contact at aedr m who told us that our unit had wor ed e actly as intended. hen pressed further they offered the following e planation we as an emotion was a function of memory it only appeared in hindsight. hat the had captured was what we had actually e perienced in that moment the blan ness of pure being. ur contact ac nowledged that the effect could be uite arring and said that the company was already wor ing to blend in synthetic awe to better match users’ expectations. They assured us that within a wee of the s release the issue would be addressed in an o er the air software update.

right. Never pay attention to brats.” “ ou re riving a co n on heel Turning on the radio to tune BB out, the Aspire jerked hard halfway to work, and thic puffs of smo e filled the rear iew s mirror. “ ha no ? BB shouted. hate er it is I m ignoring it attled asmine nearly swer ed into another vehicle. sti ed her complaints and instead hummed uff he agic ragon’s theme.

Irritated asmine lost it. o on say it “ ay ha , gurl? et it o er with “ hen ha ignoring a ro le ever or e ? nother er and now smo e from under the hood. asmine ept repeating I can ma e it e en as blac clouds spewed from both ends of the car.

She ignored passing drivers shouting, our car is on fire She ignored the engine noises that sounded like choking elephants. he ignored s screaming “We’re gonna ie he spire went another half mile.

It died.

Powerless, it coasted to the side of the road. ratiot enue. ush hour. asmine cursed loudly for letting tal her into buying the thing. “ chea an relia le, she recalled BB saying. “ ou an e o ave u or a hou e an ele a hic hu an , re e er? BB said. “ i n i your ar asmine tried and failed to restart the Aspire. She got out and circled to the front, lifting the hood. She fanned at the blac smo e coming from the engine. “ ou can re air car no ?

“No.” “ o, ha are you oing?

I ha e to do something.

“You should’ve stayed in bed.” efeated asmine shut the hood and got back into the car to search her purse. here is it she muttered. “ ou le i , honey on he coun er recharging “I hate this day,” she shouted. asmine glowered at passing tra c.

Not one person slowed.

Stepping out of the Aspire, a shadow loomed. lancing up a billboard read BAD DAY? EAT A SNOOKER’S. It was a candy bar ad.

I need a noo er asmine thought. “ i e ee can change your luc a, you i h asmine got bac into the car ust as a car slowed as if to stop. She instincti ely hit the emergency lights switch. “ ou on have any o er, honey “Will you keep quiet?” “ u aying asmine opened the door and ran out, frantically waving.

ould you li e me to stay until your tow arrives?” he asked. he spun concealing e citement “I would. But I don’t want you late for work…”. hey ll manage without me. e stepped out of the car, revealing his tall lean frame. i I m al in. “ e aler e a a g, gurl oof woof asmine thought.

They talked until the tow truck arrived.

BB said, “ o are you going o ge o or ?

“Can I give you a ride?” Calvin asked. asmine nodded grabbing essentials from the spen while the tow s dri er worked. Studying Calvin, she wondered, an you rea y hough ? is ga e went to her left hand. e wants to now if I m married. he thought made asmine s heart race. hen their ga es met he as ed are for a coffee asmine replied otally.

“Gurl, he a a g, BB yelled.

Calvin glanced around. “I could have sworn I heard someone shout dog. asmine s eyes brightened. aybe this isn’t a bad day, after all.

Entry 12.27.21 & Entry 2.17.22

By Bakpak Durden Bakpak Durden is a Black Trans multi-hyphenate self-taught post-disciplinary artist born and raised in Detroit; They are the owner of Paper Street Press, a philosopher, a Rulebreaker, and an all-around pretty cool cat.

“ ou loo ri iculou The car sped up and drove by. “ ee, you loo e ri iculou “I hate this day, and I hate you,” asmine yelled.

The car slowed again and then reersed. he impeccably clean car pulled in front of the Aspen. asmine positioned herself to bloc the driver’s view of her car. “ our hi aren ha i e, honey Tinted glass hid the driver.

The window lowered.

It re ealed a stri ingly handsome lac man. e smiled. eed help oice caught in her throat asmine gulped. “ a y, gurl e repeated the uestion. asmine blushed and gestured toward the Aspen. “Car died. Can I use your cell phone?”

I suppose he said playfully. e stretched out his arm the mobile in his hand. ccepting the phone asmine e am-

ined the car interior. A Charger. Cherry red. New. “ har ing lean an o e erec on ru hi hut up asmine whispered. cuse me e loo ed confused.

“Oh, nothing,” she replied. asmine s eyes gra itated to the man s hand. o ring. ood. hough that wasn t enough to confirm his marital status. et. I could lead him subtly into the sub ect asmine considered. “ ou? u le? on a e e laugh, gurl Making two calls, one to work, the other for a tow asmine returned the phone hoping he wouldn t immediately leave. But she couldn’t think of anything to get him to stay. ll that came out of her mouth was han you. asmine inwardly cursed herself for missing her opportunity. e nodded accepting the phone. “ ou le i , gurl I cannot belie e my bad luc asmine thought turning.

Keith Gaston is a Michigan author, husband and father with nearly 20 novels under his belt, and in 2022 he’ll publish his first comic book.

This Ain’t That: A blues fable

By Bill Harris You are in the airport after a week-long business trip. You are an hour and a half early. our fight is on time. ou are scrolling through the photos on your iPhone. Your youngest daughter, enee was for some reason insistent on downloading them from the scans from a photo album she had come across on a dusty closet shelf. You’re not sure why. Not even sure she was certain why.

An array of aunts and uncles and cousins the girls had not known roll by li e mo ie credits after a film they had not seen. ome of the relati es in the fading sepia snapshots have even blurred into the dus of your memory. ot so much lost as as the girls see it but to them inconse uential. eople they ha e no connection with e cept through these waning images and tangentially, of course, through you.

A studio portrait of the three of them uth the oldest enee and ean your wife, when the girls were still in their teens. our daughters young women now grow from buds to full blossoms in the photographic recollections of their school performances parties picnics

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

21

vacations, proms, and graduations.

Jean, your wife, thinks she knows her daughters in ways you never could.

You think she is often as clueless about them as you, or you are about her. She thinks that you were too involved in the business to really know them for who they’ve grown to be. Maybe. It’s all a question of when and who, why and what, you suppose.

A picture of Ruth. Four years old then. In her beauty queen pose. She is in many, if not most ways, a girly-girl, who takes after her mother. Beautiful certainly, but not enough to satisfy something in herself. Renee, Jean thin s is the opposite almost indifferent in that regard.

Picture of Renee, tussling with Puck, still a puppy then. It is the family dog, but Renee’s really. It was she who wanted a pet. She who feeds and walks and cares for him.

Picture of Jean at a company picnic.

In a sports outfit loo ing off at something in the distance.

Ruth, you would say is the – selfinvolved one — like her mother — they would say self-aware, while Renee is the caring one. Concerned about people, animals, the world. When you returned from a trip Ruth always asked what you had brought her. Renee wanted to hear about the trip. Where you had been? What you’d seen, who you’d met?

Picture of Ike, your business partner and you mo ing into the new o ce.

The best that can be said, you think, is the past can’t be known any more than the future. What was is and can’t be changed.

Thinking of them and all that you have. You are, for the most part—satisfied. he step by step the missteps slips, stumbles along the way. You’ve been successful enough, you suppose, given where you started. The help, encouragement. Your parents were proud. A lot of hard work.

In that way that the sun’s setting darkens the details of a day’s ending, your mind drifts away from the phone and its images. You become aware that the departure gate section is filling up when you get a text. It’s from Fred, your next-door neighborhood.

Here is how it reads: Your dog is dead.

Suspecting it is a joke, a bad one, not that Fred is given to jokes, you reply, How did it die?

Jean was in a hurry. Backed over him with the car, is the response.

Why was she in such a hurry? ecause your house was on fire. n fire Burnt down.

Burnt down?

To the ground.

roots and herbs, poems and songs, circle dances to touch the Spirit for sustenance.

Geniuses, they were, in the arts of endurance, resilience, hope.

Thus, daily they cultivated the cotton, cane, tobacco, rice, whatever crop; withstood the beatings and abuse, looked forward to collards and cornbread, the communion meal of daily resurrection; to the cool darkness of evening, and the relief of dreams.

But there would come a day when all such knowledges no longer served. Home hung so heavy on their hearts, so bulging, so full and bursting, they had only to raise their arms and they were aloft, levitated by the longing for Africa and freedom.

Sun Forward

By Ijania Cortez 48x48”, oil and acrylic on canvas “When I hope for the future, I vision black people simply being able to be seen in fullness.”

Ijania Cortez (b 1990) is a fine artist living and working in Detroit MI.

How? Arson.

Who? Jean did it.

Why? She had everything in the U-Haul that she wanted.

Why was she putting things in a UHaul?

She and your business partner’s idea.

What’s Ike got to do with it? hey ran off together.

Your breath is labored. You are sweating. You type: I have to tell my daughters before they hear it from somebody else.

Ruth is in the hospital.

Why? She had an accident.

How? Broke her hip.

How? ell off her si inched spi ed heels.

Why was she wearing six-inch spike heels?

Her new job.

New job?

At the club.

Club?

Slipped on some dimes on the stage

22 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

at the end of her pole dancing routine.

How is Renee?

In jail.

Why is she in jail?

He, you mean.

What?

Just came out as a transman.

In jail for what?

Arrested for Driving While Black.

Is that it?

Isn’t that enough?

It’s not that bad. I’ll start over. ow are you going to find a way to face your future?

From Sara, and Ramsey.

Who were they?

My great-great-great grandparents.

What about them?

They were slaves.

Bill Harris is an Emeritus Professor, Kresge Eminent Artist, playwrite, poet and short fiction writer.

Sacraments

By Aneb Kgositsile They say our old uncles and aunties would fashion their survival medicines,

There they would hang for a moment, African saints, dissolving into air and sunlight.

“Chirren,” they would whisper as they ascended, today we yin bac home. ou gon be alright. We see afta you.”

Memories remained of their grey, wiry beards, their sunburnt, overworked hands and arms, their indigo stained fingers and palms their squinting eyes-so-tortured-bythe-sun, their thread-bare trousers and tissuethin, faded skirts, the smell of tobacco in their shirts.

Memories of how to fi bro en tools cure tumors, summon joy in feasts and festivity, mend broken hearts; how to wait, how to be patient, how to revive, how to love, how to laugh; how to engender justice, how to attain peace.

Those risen saints left us chirren these holy sacraments of endurance.

They guide us from the place they called glory, keep us on the righteous path, till the world we call freedom someday will come.

Aneb Kgositsile (Gloria House, Ph.D.) Professor Emerita, University of MichiganDearborn and Assoc. Professor Emerita, Wayne State University, is a life-long freedom worker, essayist, poet and recipient of the Kresge Eminent Artist Award 2019.

The Immigrants

By Stephen Mack Jones They were from the very beginning stillborn, white as bone.

Ghosts stumbling through withered fields with hunger held like the swaddled corpses of newborns close to their naked ribs, and breathing each other’s cholera.

Incinerated with the typhoid fever of their neighbor They are collapsed in on themselves, gaunt Sinking into the dysentery mud of an unfamiliar shore, dirty hands pressing pristine rosaries to parched lips, slobbering the Hail Mary from collective mouths, giving thanks for having survived the journey to this Promised Land with only lice, tick bites and vacant stares from eyes starved of hope Widows and whores, petty thieves and priests And always failed farmers, all weeping as they scratched at diseased dirt of their home A battered and bruised bloodline, mongrelized by the occasional English rape These immigrants long ago (and perhaps tomorrow) driven by the brutality of men, the capricious cruelty of a revered God to a rough-hewn namesake a thousand miles away A Hail Mary enclave of other empty bellies and dream seekers in Corktown.

Stephen Mack Jones is a poet, playwright, and award winning novelist of the August Snow series living in the metro-Detroit area.

Ofrenda a Itzpapalotl

By Kia i’x Arriaga

Sonnet They’re burning the world and banning the books Want you to lie for them or to vanish

Itzpapalotl is an ancient female force that represents the Aztec women warriors, the ones who lost their lives in childbirth as well as on the battlefield literally or metaphorically . It s about strength creation and rebirth after letting go. he ceremony was made in parts community online frenda with other women. he creation of a butter y amulet to set and bring my intentions in for the year. The creation of another Ofrenda and a ritual dance on the full moon.

And the creation of one last altar, with a portrait of me in full regalia, representing Itzpapalotl.

But you were taught Talk honestly to crooks By this city of Arabic and Spanish

Kia i’x Arriaga is an Aztec Dancer and a multidisciplinary artist from Mexico; her art explores Aztec Culture, through ritual performance, music, art installation, and storytelling. Visit www.metrotimes.com to view the full video.

By Saladin Ahmed

This city of English up from the south This city of motors and rivers Taught you Watch the eyes, don’t watch the mouth Watch the takers who pretend to be givers

This city of alley and beautiful isle Prepared you for these coming days Taught you that the courts don’t give a fair trial Taught you to see through smokescreens

and haze They want you silent. They want antebellum.

But you’re from Detroit. Stand up and tell ‘em!

Saladin Ahmed is the novelist of Throne of the Crescent Moon and is an Eisner winning writer of the comics titles Spine-Tingling Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Batman Unburied, Abbott, and more, with new projects

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

23

Starsigns and Terrorwar on the way.

Future Self Meditation

By Ingrid LaFleur The following meditation is to help you align with your future self in order to bring balance and joy into the present.

Find a quiet comfortable space to sit or lie down. Preferably meditate with a tourmaline crystal or rose quartz, or whichever crystal vibrates with you now. Place the crystal in the center of your palm or rest it on your forehead in between your eyes…

Close your eyes Massage the base of your head and neck for 10-15 seconds As you massage, feel your body relax, feel your inner organs relax Stop massaging and relax Scan your body slowly to ensure all areas are relaxed Take three slow deep breaths, in and out In this mediation, our cosmic ancestors will serve as your guardians. It is within this cosmic space we will find our future selves.

With your eyes closed, set your intention on the connection you want to make with your future self Take three slow deep breaths, in and out Focus on the space between your eyes, the third eye Let the darkness surround you Release and submit into the darkness With the soft focus on your third eye, imagine a portal opening up between your eyes right cosmic light ows into the portal Take three slow deep breaths in and out ith each inhale fill your body with the cosmic dark energy With each exhale release your negative energy, thoughts of fear, doubt, anger eel your body fill up with the strength of the cosmic light Let yourself feel superhuman Imagine you are sitting in front of your future self Look into the eyes of your future self and take a deep breath Feel the energy gather in your heart into a ball of light As you exhale, send your future self that light energy Watch the energy move into your heart, making it glow Inhale, watch the light move in your future self from the heart to the third eye.

Exhale, watch the ball of light move

Broadcast News 4

By Senghor Reid Marker and ink on paper, 42x30” (1) Gray’s Anatomy Mind Maps The purpose of these mind maps is to provide myself with blueprints for healing. Engaging in these images using text and symbols allows me to revisit my diaries and reorganize my notes about alleviating stress and pain. Recalling thoughts, methods, and approaches to healing from trauma is a vital aspect of centering myself and maintaining a healthy consciousness. “Broadcast News #4” is a culmination of several smaller works and pieces of writing from the “Gray’s Anatomy” series.

Senghor Reid is a practicing artist and Fine Arts Department Chair at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School.

24 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

Wed 5/18

PATIO BAR OPEN @5PM Welcome Back, Cornholers!

Shorts Beer PROMO… $3 Starcut Squishy $3 Soft Parade Summer Shandy

Mizz Ruth’s Grill @5pm Fri 5/20

PATIO BAR OPEN @2PM NWRH/Bathroom of The Future/Josie Palmer/ Monk is King Doors@9 $5 Cover Mizz Ruth’s Grill @6pm Happy Birthday, Johnny L! SAT 5/21

PATIO BAR OPEN @2PM Outdoor Show Dude/second hand drugs/ Alluvial Fans Doors@7 $5 cover

Landscape of potential 1

By Mother Cyborg Landscape of potential 1, Quilt, 45” x 55” 2022, Photo by Ara Howrani You can view this work at STAMPS Gallery in Ann Arbor until 7/23/22.

In conjuring the future I summon a relationship to the multiverse, whether it be cultural or physical, evolving from segregated planes of existence to landscapes of potential. I see this future forming from the recognition of the patterns that keep us from craving difference.

-Mother Cyborg

FREE POOL Tues 5/24

B. Y. O. R. Bring Your Own Records You Can DJ! 9pm NO COVER! Sun 5/29

Happy Birthday, Julie Flynn!

Coming Up In May & June:

from your future self into your third eye Inhale, send the light into your heart Exhale, send the energy back to the heart of your future self again Repeat the cycle three times

How do you feel communing your future self?

Does the future self you imagined shift your mission in the now?

Imagine it’s 2050 Ask yourself the following questions: What are your dreams in this future?

What brings you wonder and joy?

What pleases your future self?

What are your desires?

How will you love more, rest more in this future?

ow oat in the cosmos and listen When you are ready, let the energy of your third eye pull you back into your body ith it the light of the uni erse filling every inch of your being Take three slow deep breaths in and out Slowly open your eyes

ow oat in the cosmos and listen

How do you feel communing with your future self?

Does the future self you imagined shift your mission in the now?

When you are ready, let the energy of your third eye pull you back into your body ith it the light of the uni erse filling every inch of your being Take three slow deep breaths in and out Slowly open your eyes

Mon 5/23

5/27 FUNK NIGHT (monthly) 5/28 Something Elegant Lady DJ’s (monthly) 5/29 TONY NOVA (movement weekend DJ) 5/30 MEMORIAL DAY Pig Roast 6/02 Craven Idol(UK)/ Berator(CHI)/TBA 6/03 Foul Mouth/ Bizarre(D12) Album Release 6/04 Poor Player/HONEY & BUFFALO/ WC Edgar 6/10 Sudden Death Syndrome/ Scum Queens/Macho/Hail Alien 6/11 PARKHOUSE NIGHT JELLO SHOTS always $1

Ingrid LaFleur is a curator, artist, afrofuture theorist, pleasure activist, and founder of The Afrofuture Strategies Institute.

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

25

WHAT’S GOING ON Select events happening in metro D etroit this week. Submit your events to metrotimes.com/ calendar. Be sure to check venue websites for COV I D - 1 9 policies.

FRI-SAT, MAY 20-21 Detroit Women of Comedy Festival

If you’re down for a good chuckle, the D etroit Women of Comedy Festival is happening this weekend at P lanet Ant Theatre and The Independent Comedy Club in H amtramck. The mission of the D etroit Women of Comedy Festival is to use comedy to amplify the voices of marginaliz ed voices. The festival will feature a variety of acts across the spectrum of comedic stylings including improv, sketch, and stand-up. There will also b e a live podcast recording of the D ead Waves podcast on Saturday.

Marcella Arguello, a California-b ased comedienne and host of the Women Crush weekly showcase at H ollywood’s Improv L ab , serves as the headliner for this year’s festival.

—A lex W as hingto n T he D etroit W omen of Comedy Festival takes place at P lanet Ant T heatre; 2 3 2 0 aniff t., Hamtramck. ickets start at $ 1 0 and are available online at planetant. com/ dwcf- tickets. See website for full schedule.

FRI, MAY 20 The Offspring

crew the good times, the O spring only wants the b ad. L et the B ad Times Roll is not only the name of the poppunk b and’s 2 0 2 1 alb um, it’s also its latest tour. Y es, the rock b and formed in 19 8 4 that knows you wanna hit that is still making music and touring, and we’re sure the b and’s middle-aged fans will b e happy to hear that they’re making a stop in D etroit on Friday at the Fillmore. We guess they really have b een on a roll with all the girls they know all these years. Apparently the kids still aren’t alright.

—Randiah Camille Green D oors open at 7 p.m. at the Fillmore; 2 1 1 5 oo ar e., Detroit ickets start at . .

SUN, MAY 22 Benny the Butcher

B enny the B utcher is b ringing his show to etroit this wee end. he u alo rapper, who is also one-third of the rap

Marcella Arguello will host this year’s Detroit Women of Comedy Festival.

group G riselda, will b e performing this Sunday at the Magic Stick in D etroit.

Originally slated for St. Andrew’s H all, the show has b een moved to the Magic Stick while St. Andrew’s is still undergoing renovations. ( The b uilding was deemed unsafe following a B ab y K eem concert in March, which was cut short once the oor started warping under the weight of the rapper’s j umping fans.) The “J ohnny P ’s Caddy” rapper released Tana Talk 4 , the latest installment of his Tana Talk mix tape/ alb um series b ack in March.

—A lex W as hingto n Doors o en at .m. on n a , a at e a ic tick, oo ar e., Detroit oo ar e., Detroit 3 1 3 - 8 3 3 - 9 7 0 0 ; maj esticdetroit.com.

T ickets are $ 3 5 .

26 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

UNTIL JUNE 5 Detroit ’67

D ominiq ue Morisseau’s play D etroit ’67 will make you laugh out loud one moment and cry the nex t, followed b y the urge to sing along to its b rilliant Motown soundtrack. The play takes place at an after-hours party spot in the b asement of Chelle and L ank P oindex ter’s childhood home. Things start to head south after L ank rescues a white woman they find on the side of the road who’s ob viously j ust had the crap b eat out of her. Meanwhile, tensions have erupted b etween B lack residents and racist police who want to prevent D etroit from b ecoming a “negro city,” and the D etroit Reb ellion of 19 67 b egins. B ut the reb ellion itself isn’t the point of the play. The point is

COURTESY PHOTO

how the families of victims of police b rutality are left to pick up the pieces following their loss. It’s how the media and authorities choose the narrative, painting victims as thugs and aggressors rather than entrepreneurs, dreamers, mothers, or b rothers. Through it all, the most important theme is hope.

—Randiah Camille Green Detroit ill be er orme at t e arles H. ri t se m o rican merican Histor . arren e., Detroit t e ri t. or . ickets start at or eneral admission. P roof of vaccination is req uired and all audience members must wear a mask for the duration of the performance. T he play runs through J une 5 .

JUNE 7

JUNE 5

COLIN JOST

ASKING ALEXANDRIA & NOTHING MORE

W/ ATREYU, EVA UNDER FIRE

JULY 18

THREE DAYS GRACE

W/ WAGE WAR, ZERO 9:36

JULY 20

CHASE ATLANTIC

W/ LEAH KATE, XAVIER MAYNE

JULY 2

LESS THAN JAKE, BOWLING FOR SOUP & THE AQUABATS W/ DON’T PANIC

JULY 21

REBELUTION W/ DENM, DJ MACKLE

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

27

FOOD

Brussels sprouts and a burger from Ferndale’s Public House.

TOM PERKINS

A Ferndale favorite retooled

By J ane Slaughter

When the original Public H ouse opened in 2013 , the Metro T imes’ Noelle Lothamer nailed its formula for success: “Choose an area of town with a high concentration of people in their 20s and 3 0s who like to go out often but don t want to spend fine dining dollars.

Reel in the crowds with low priced, trendy menu items and good ambiance, and then cash in as patrons spend most o their money on their bar tabs.

I’m not sure why Noelle sounded somewhat disapproving of these ormulaic bar restaurant hybrids, but she noted that the recipe had worked for nearby taco spot Imperial and Detroit sliders joint G reen Dot Stables, with food at the former priced at less than .

Today’s Public H ouse, closed in summer 2020 and reopened under a new owner in December 2021, follows the formula without the handicap, for management, o low prices. urgers are , appeti ers , coc tails , desserts or . he re uired trendy foods would be the extensive list of new vegan items, and the good ambiance is found in the enclosed back patio, which is as ern y as any s ern bar.

Lest that sound disapproving — the patio garden really is lovely, with palm trees and wisteria and a wall of pretend owers in shades o pin you ta e your selfie under ello orgeous written in neon.

The food is good, more hits than misses by far, and I enjoyed both a cocktail and a mocktail, each with ginger, and there s ginger beer too. he beer list, trans erred rom the best sellers of the previous Public H ouse incarnation, is relatively short, with eight dra ts, five bottles, and eight cans, including R, ud ight, and some fancier drafts from Michigan and elsewhere.

Oddly, my friend’s beer was served in a small snifter, and my refresh ing, lemony all ale vod a, yel low Chartreuse, ginger, lemon, with a cherry) appeared in a glass much wider than it was tall. hat s O , there are no rules worth following in the stemware department. tand outs rom both sides o the menu, vegan and not, are russels sprouts and carrots. he big pile o sprouts tastes fresh despite what’s been done to them, including vegan “Parmi giana and a sriracha agave vinaigrette, and the carrots, though hardly recog nizable in color, are a crunchy, smoky delight, to dip in a buttermil dill mi ture.

I was e ually enthralled with red shrimp rom Argentina, big and juicy. hey re served with a corn pur e. he tall burger includes two o . patties, Dijonnaise, red onions, and American cheese, and I chose to gussy it up with a fried egg and some bacon,

28 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

neither o which was wasted the thic , at bacon is cured and smo ed in house. I as ed che Vince trolis why American cheese, and he spoke in terms of simplicity and not “wanting to get pulled in a bunch o di erent directions. he avor is prominent and good for nostalgia value but something more interesting would have been welcome.

Among the sliders, the slightly sweet chic en apple is the best, perhaps because o the bacon jam and avocado.

Chef Strolis chooses G ouda here for his beef slider, but neither it nor the salmon slider are particularly memo rable. he Reuben is. It s a big slab o mel low beef, so rich as to bring to mind vanilla or caramel. he Nashville ot hic en wor ed less well my compan ion as ed or hot sauce.

Regarding the Caesar salad: it is not a Caesar if the dressing tastes like mustard and the lettuce is shredded into little tiny bits. ran ly, I thin I would have sent it back, protesting alse advertising.

Other vegetable o erings are a wedge salad, beet salad with burrata, cauli ower tacos, smo ed mushroom sandwich, and vegan shrimp, plus the housemade vegan burgers. he burg ers, which include barley, carrots, and beets, deliberately don’t try to mimic a bee burger. trolis e plains that many

Public House 241 W. Nine Mile Rd., Ferndale 248-733-4905 publichouseferndale.com Handicap accessible Appetizers $11-$13, burgers $15, entrées $13-$17

vegans are put o by a meaty te ture besides, “when you look into the sci ence aspect, when you look into things that help bind the ingredients together, what can work well with xanthum gum and soy protein — you don’t want to get lost in all those powders.

I was fortunate to try all three of ublic ouse s chocolate desserts. est by far was a giant slice of vegan choco late cake, which had a bit of a crunch and something smo y in the rosting.

Next was Double Chocolate Dream, a hard chocolate shell around cake and raspberry mousse. A poor third was vegan Red Velvet a e, its icing a sic ly pin because it s avored with Red Pop! There are better sounding ideas on the menu a with aioli, a pret el croissant closer to a croissant than a pretzel) , smoked mushroom dip on a baguette, and a number of seitan and tempeh pretensions. a e a reserva tion li e Noelle said, it s popular.

FOOD Bites

Boutique hotel with floating barge bar opening in Port Huron in nearly 100-year-old former bank

By Lee D eV ito

A new boutique hotel that describes itsel as the first o its ind in the area is set to open in ort uron ne t month. he new ity lats otel ort uron will o er uni ue bouti ue guest rooms, with no two rooms urnished ali e. he hotel is built inside the ormer home o the ichigan National an , originally built in . In a nod to its past li e, the original ban vault has been trans ormed into a ballroom that can host weddings and receptions and seat up to people. he hotel s restaurants are already open or brea ast and lunch and e pected to e pand with dinner hours on emorial ay wee end. he itchen provides a ca style atmosphere or a rela ing meal with a view o the lac River, with outdoor seating in the warmer months. It s partnered with ichigan s e ington o ee o. eanwhile, the ar serves up coc tails, beers, li uors, wines, and small plates.

Outdoors is the air eather rill, which serves up grilled dishes li e burgers and bratwursts. It includes ity loats, which the hotel describes as the hippest bar in ort uron a trans ormed barge that eatures picnic table seating and standing tables.

It s so e citing to see the progress that is ta ing place every day and to compare the uni ueness o each room, managing director athy ills said in a statement. he colors and d cor are very contemporary, and our ama ing interior design team made sure that each room loo s di erent rom the others. ith custom made urnishings and bedding, guests who stay with us, again and again, will have a di erent e perience in every room. hat s just one reason why our motto is tay i erent.

The new CityFlatsHotel in Port Huron includes a floating barge bar.

he hotel s urnishings were designed by eeland based harter ouse Innovations. he company also has hotels in rand Rapids and olland.

Hazel Park’s Frame has a summer outdoor film series starting in June

rame, everyone s avorite a el ar restaurant pop up, is ic ing o summer with a film series and a istani ood in une. he series will be hosted in the restaurant s new ig op space you now, li e a big circus tent .

O , the ig op isn t new rame used it occasionally last year, mostly in the event o rain during outdoor events. his year, the tent will host the movies and eats all summer long in rame s bac lot until eptember. rame is teaming up with inema amont or the film series, which will go down every hursday night rom une to Aug. . cheduled movie screenings include o the Right hing, ummer o oul, he Virgin uicides, and more. he tent opens at p.m. and movies start at p.m. a istani ood pop up hana etroit will be on dec hursday through aturday evenings rom une to ept. . with ebabs, butter chic en ried sandwiches, pulled chic en ti a tacos, and the li e. oo y and non boo y ro en slushies, coc tails, and your typical beer and wine be available as well.

@CITYFLATSHOTEL, INSTAGRAM

here s also the econd unday rame ar et under the tent eaturing local artisans selling everything rom fiber art to smo e accessories. he maret has three dates une , uly , and Aug. , rom a.m. to p.m. ay as well get a boo y brunch coc tail while you re at it, because why not.

No reservations are re uired to enjoy hana s eats or the mar et, though tic ets or the movie nights should be purchased in advance. he tic ets cost and include the movie and one snac rom hana. ore in ormation can be ound at rameha elpar .com.

—Randiah Camille Green

The new Twin Peaks restaurant in Auburn Hills is now open

itschy sports bar chain win ea s has o cially opened its latest location in metro etroit. he new , s uare oot restaurant is located at N. uirrel Rd., Auburn ills.

According to a press release, the new win ea s eatures Vs covering wall to wall sporting events, capturing each game rom every angle. ans can sit bac and rela in the an ave lounge area with a co y fireplace to have a delicious coc tail be ore ic o . he chain also says it has a etroit rand ri show car onsite.

It s almost game time here in Au-

burn ills, and we re ready to welcome the community into the lodge, ranchise controller and director o development ichael Ansara said in a statement. here s no place li e win ea s when it comes to enjoying an ice cold beer and watching the game with your crew, especially i you can snag a seat in our an ave. e loo orward to ma ing this the ne t go to spot or the Auburn ills community to cheer on their avorite teams by creating a new home or Oa land olden ri ly and etroit ions ans. or now, the restaurant is open daily starting at p.m., with a happy hour on wee days starting at p.m. hen the location e pands to ull hours, happy hour will be rom p.m. on wee days.

It s the chain s ourth win ea s in ichigan, ollowing other locations in ivonia, adison eights, and outhgate, and its th overall. he chain was ounded in in e as, nown or its ooters es ue win ea s irl waitresses who wear revealing lodge themed outfits. ore in ormation is available at twinpea srestaurant.com. ounded in in lorida, ooters has been in decline or years. In ichigan, there are only three ooters le t, in aylor, lint, and aginaw. he Roseville ooters, where the amous stripper turned A movie subject ola used to wor as a waitress, closed in .

—L ee D eV ito

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

29

WEED

A worker for Viola, a Detroit medical marijuana provisioning center. Detroit’s new ordinance would put medical cannabis dispensaries out of business, lawsuit claims.

One-Hitters

Detroit struck with another lawsuit over ambitious recreational marijuana ordinance for social equity

By Steve N eavling

A medical cannabis

company filed a lawsuit challenging etroit s ambitious new recreational marijuana ordinance on ednesday, delivering the latest blow to marijuana consumers in the state s largest city. ouse o an , which operates our medical marijuana dispensaries in etroit, ta es aim at a provision in the ordinance that prevents medical acilities rom getting a recreational license until . he company is as ing the ayne ounty ircuit ourt to stri e down the provision, saying it violates the state law governing recreational marijuana. he city is attempting to give certain pre erred newcomer applicants an artificial head start by preventing lainti s and other e isting medical marijuana provisioning enter licensees in the ity rom even applying or adult use retailer licenses until at least which clearly violates both the letter and spirit o the ichigan Regulation and a ation o arihuana Act, the lawsuit, filed by evin lair o the onigman law firm, states. he etroit ity ouncil approved the new ordinance on April with an

vote. he lawsuit comes nearly a year a ter a judge deemed the city s original recreational marijuana ordinance li ely unconstitutional because it gave pre erences longtime etroiters. he city scrapped the ordinance and gave it another go. nder the new ordinance, the city o ers two trac s or licenses so that e uity and non e uity applicants aren t competing with each other. he goal was to avoid another lawsuit by still o ering licenses to non etrotiers. ut the new ordinance goes too ar, the latest lawsuit argues, and would li ely result in numerous medical marijuana dispensaries going out o business. nder the worst case, and most li ely, scenario, the city will have awarded all o its allowable retailer licenses by , leaving plainti s unable to obtain even one such license, which will ensure the financial ruin o their businesses, as well as the termination o do ens o employees, many o whom are residents o the city, the lawsuit states.

Now that recreational marijuana is

30 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

legal, ewer people are getting medical cannabis cards because they cost money and ta e time to obtain. he number o active medical cards ell rom more than , in to ewer than , so ar this year, a . decline, according to the state s arijuana Regulatory Agency RA . edical cannabis sales ell even harder, rom . million in ebruary to million in ebruary ,a drop. hat has spelled serious trouble or the medical cannabis dispensaries in etroit that have hung on and waited or the city to allow recreational sales.

On April , the city began accepting applications or recreational marijuana businesses. he city declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying o cials have not yet had time to review it.

No weed at Arts, Beats & Eats this year, Royal Oak votes

oo s li e we won t be getting to smo e weed at Arts, eats Eats in Royal Oa this year a ter all. ity o ficials rejected a proposal to add a consumption lounge to this year s abor ay wee end estivities during a recent meeting. he pot smo ing tent would have allowed or both the sale and consumption o marijuana, with a capacity o around people. It would have also included several industrial ans to disperse the smo e. he annual amily riendly event typically draws around , people, and concerns were voiced about public sa ety and children being e posed to

SHUTTERSTOCK

secondhand smo e. Now in its th year, it s one o metro etroit s largest outdoor summer estivals. hese concerns were mostly voiced by olice hie ichael oore, who cited other events in ichigan that have allowed pot were much smaller with between and , people in attendance. e said he spo e with law en orcement agencies that have wor ed the a orementioned events and they echoed his sentiments.

Out o the law en orcement o cials that I personally spo e with, most i not all o them e pressed concern with what is be ore you tonight, oore told the commissioners. oore also said that those events with marijuana licenses typically don t have alcohol available or sale while Arts, eats Eats does. ast year the dispensary ouse o an became the estival s first cannabis sponsor, though no actual weed was or sale at the event. he proposal ailed at a narrow margin with a vote, but the issue may be considered again in the uture.

Residents were also divided, with some e pressing e citement at the idea and others being concerned or their children.

At the meeting, Royal Oa ity ommissioner yle u uc said, maybe ne t year. everal o cials, li e u uc, want to wait and see how other large events o this scale approached allowing marijuana, and then maybe Arts, eats Eats can ollow suit.

I don t thin we need to be the trailbla er on this, u uc said.

—Randiah Camille Green

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

31

CULTURE The Bard is back

Shakespeare in Detroit returns with new home at Marygrove

By D arlene A. W

hite

A performance of Hamlet by Shakespeare in Detroit.

A Shakespeare performance is coming to Detroit, but

this time it’s not all about the Bard — it’s about the audience.

“Shakespeare in Detroit is about breaking down barriers that exist for people in our beloved Detroit,” says Sam White, the founding artistic and e ecutive director o the nonprofit theater organization.

White says she started Shakespeare in Detroit ( SiD) because she wanted to produce inclusive, equitable productions that re ected the diversity o etroit. H er goal was to bring the Shakespeare experience to parks throughout the city.

“I have loved Shakespeare most of my life because of my Black mother,” she says. “I never really thought about the dead dude who wrote them. These

stories have touched me deeply and in a real, personal way, and, in many ways, have expanded my imagination and outlook. I felt like other people deserved that same exposure and experience.”

Currently, SiD is the only professional theater in Detroit that is founded and led by a Black woman.

In 2012, the company launched as a grassroots e ort called ha espeare Against Cancer. A group of actors from the local theater company would perorm private per ormances at di erent hospitals for children receiving chemotherapy. By 2013 , Shakespeare Against Cancer transitioned into Shakespeare in Detroit. The actors would perform their shows at various parks across Detroit, just our wee s a ter the city filed for bankruptcy.

32 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

CHUK NOWAK

“We understood the assignment,” White says. “We knew that there was a need for the community to sit together, under the stars, embraced by the architecture of downtown Detroit, to remember challenges like that in Othello, where the decisions that one person or a small group makes impacts so many others.”

White says it’s important to have the community support the arts, especially when it comes to the SiD performances.

“Businesses will bring people here, but the arts will make them stay,” she says of Detroit. “We need food, water, and shelter to stay alive, but the arts make it possible to live. The arts support our quality of life. People can choose to live in any city in the world.

But if we want them to stay in Detroit, the arts [ must] thrive.”

She adds, “Nobody is going to New York because Wall Street is cool. They go for the arts. We must take heed.”

White’s hope it that her audience is open-minded when watching SiD’s performances. She believes that if people think that Shakespeare in Detroit is about Shakespeare, they are missing the point.

“We do his plays, but it’s about the humanity, the real-life situations, in the stories,” she explains. “When I was in isolation taking care of my father who su ered rom ar inson s in the throes of the pandemic, I thought of K ing Lear’s daughters who watched and dealt with their father with dementia.

It is a di cult thing to watch a parent actively dying.”

During the pandemic, White says she would connect herself to characters

CULTURE

Sam White and the Shakespeare in Detroit troupe.

from the Shakespeare plays as they both battled with the idea of legacy, family, and moral obligations while trying to sustain their own well-being.

“I could see myself in them – some days I was Regan, other days I was G oneril, most days I was Cordelia,” White sats. “Shakespeare writes about reallife, and we all live in the real world, no matter what costume we have on.”

The Shakespeare in Detroit performances are geared toward all ages, White says.

SiD’s last time onstage with professional actors was in 2018. The performers were on a break from professional programming to focus on their educational work, by way of the Shakespeare STE AM program, where they provided artistic and vocational training in schools.

Then came the pandemic, which put everything on pause. The COV ID-19 shutdown had major e ects on the Shakespeare performances.

“COV ID extended that hiatus,” White says. “It was quite traumatic for us because we had planned to come back with a bang in 2020. So as of this year, we have been on break from our professional work for 4 years, which means we have lost touch with some of our audiences. And on top of that, we were supposed to move into a lovely new theater in 2020 on Detroit’s Riverfront, and that fell through as well due to COV ID. But we’re still here and T he Complete W orks is a wonderful toe dip back into the work.”

SiD’s has moved their performances into the former Marygrove College, now known as the Marygrove Conser-

DAWN HAMILTON

“Having a home where we can truly strategize for the future, build our team, host our youth theater conservatory each summer, and construct our costumes is important to our stability.” vancy. T he Complete W orks of W illiam Shakespeare { abridged} [ revised] , a coproduction with the African American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco and directed by Reed Martin, will be the first per ormance ta ing place at SiD’s new home. The new site will serve as i s o ces as well as storage or the costumes and props used in the performances.

“We hope to return to outdoor performances next year, but this is where this month’s show will take place, and where people can come to see a lot of our work,” she says. “H aving a home where we can truly strategize for the future, build our team, host our youth theater conservatory each summer, and construct our costumes is important to our stability.”

The group has geared its focus on making the new venue a home and plans on hiring a team of professionals who not only believe in inclusivity and kindness, but also display it on an everyday basis.

“We are absolutely headed in the right direction with the right people since the pandemic,” White says. “Our

new home and new team are going to be re ected rom here on out rom behind-the-scenes to what people see with our educational work to our professional shows and our special events.”

Last fall, White reached out to L. Peter Callendar, an artistic director at the African-American Shakespeare Company, about the idea of working with SiD to revamp the show that played last summer on the West Coast.

“It feels like the world could use some joy right now,” Martin says. “This show delighted audiences when the African-American Shakespeare Company produced it in the SF Bay Area last fall. We are delighted to bring it to Shakespeare in Detroit.”

H ilary J ohnson, 3 2, of Taylor, says she’s looking forward to seeing the new performances.

“I’m excited that SiD is back,” J ohnson says with a laugh. “Now that we can get back outside, it’s going to be such a fun time to see the performances again.

It seems like it has been forever. I am really looking forward to going with my girlfriends. We are making a whole

special day out of it.”

White wants her new audience to keep in mind that their Shakespeare performances are just for fun.

“T he Complete W orks of W illiam Shakespeare { abridged} [ revised] is a reminder that Shakespeare in Detroit is still here as we re-emerge from the pandemic with professional shows,” says White. “We also want the audience to laugh and have fun. It is a sprint where we take all the core bits from the narratives of all 3 7 plays and make them as funny as possible.”

She adds, “It is great for folks who love Shakespeare or those who hate him. It makes great fun of the plays, and whether you are 8 years old or 80, this is the show for you. It is especially great for any high school students who may be struggling with the plays, which are required reading throughout Michigan’s school districts. Come see this show because it really breaks down the stories and makes them more digestible for those new to Shakespeare.”

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [ abridged} [ revised] opens on W ednesday, May 1 8 and closes Sunday, May 2 9 . Show times are 7 : 3 0 p.m. on W ednesdays, T hursdays, and Fridays with two shows on Saturdays at 1 2 : 3 0 p.m. and 7 : 3 0 p.m., and matinees at 1 2 : 3 0 p.m. on Sundays with a 7 5 - minute run- time and no intermission. Shakespeare in D etroit is located at Marygrove Conservancy, 8 4 2 5 W est McN ichols Rd. ( Madame Cadillac Building) ; 3 1 3 - 5 0 6 - 9 7 2 1 ; shakespeareindetroit. com. T ickets are $ 4 5 for general admission and seating.

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

33

CULTURE

Yvette Wyatt at her shop, Motown Witch.

NICK HAGEN

Bewitched

The Motown Witch talks upcoming Detroit Hoodoo Festival and the contradictory nature of magic

By Randiah Camille G reen

A distressed young woman

approaches Detroit metaphysical shop Motown Witch with her hand on her head, a concerned look stuck on her face. She enters the shop, passing aisles of candles, incense, and herbs as she heads for the shelves furthest away from the cash register.

She’s in over her head, and needs to muster up the courage to ask what she’s actually come here for.

“I need something to get rid of a dark cloud of evil energy that’s following me,” she says after stalling for half an hour, finally approaching the register with hesitation. She isn’t ready for the answer shop owner Yvette Wyatt is about to give.

“Who told you that bullshit,” the 57-year-old shopkeeper asks in a decid-

edly no-bullshit tone.

Wyatt, who is a H igh Priestess of hoodoo, opened Motown Witch in 2021 after leaving her 3 0-year-long career as a legal secretary behind. Prior to opening Motown Witch, located at 16 84 4 Schaefer H wy., she sold candles and other spellwork supplies out of her husband’s capoeira gym.

The young woman is taken aback, and Wyatt asks her “bullshit” question again before the woman admits an internet psychic told her she was surrounded by darkness. She was instructed to purchase products for a cleanse that the mystery internet person would perform on her.

“Child please,” Wyatt responds.

“There is no such thing. I can tell you right now that you got dark shit and

34 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

you need to buy this, and this, and that, and now you gotta pay me extra money so I can do this work, but there’s nothing on you. You take in suggestions. A lot o subliminal stu is bullshit. ou just have to be aware of it.”

Wyatt tells the woman to go home, take a bath with a bit of salt and bleach, stop drinking pop, and remove toxic food from her diet. Also, she should watch who she hangs out with because to ic people have a way o rubbing o on you, as Wyatt says.

That’s the cure. No magic rituals or spells required. The woman ends up leaving with a bundle of sage, but not before trying to buy a “love candle,” which Wyatt dissuades her from.

“See this is when I’m a bad business owner because I don’t sell shit, I just

tell people like it is,” Wyatt says. “The grandma comes out… This is how I am be ore I have my co ee.

In yatt created etroit s first, and so far only, festival dedicated to hoodoo and witchcraft, the Detroit H oodoo Festival. The annual festival’s second installment is scheduled for this weekend with a lineup of conjurers and H oungans ( voodoo priests) teaching classes. There will also be tarot readers and around 25 vendors selling jewelry, herbs, crystals, and more.

The classes include topics like how to conjure spirits through various passages from the Bible, how to make “magical medicine” with both everyday and exotic ingredients, and graveyard work, which is “not to be undertaken by the uninformed or the faint of heart,”

CULTURE you know what I mean.’”

In case you don’t know what that hater meant, H ecate is the G reek goddess of witchcraft and magic, who is commonly called upon by Pagan practitioners during rites.

At Motown Witch, however, you’ll find statues o hango and Oshun, gods and goddesses from the traditional Yoruban belief system that originated in Nigeria. The shop also hosts a monthly meeting called “The Real Black Witches of Detroit,” which you could probably surmise is only open to women of color.

Wyatt started the group because she would often encounter Black women who were lost on their spiritual path and had questions they were uncomfortable asking elsewhere.

“We don’t have a place where we can just tal unfiltered and as someone who wor ed in the legal field where I was often the only Black person, I know what it s li e to have to filter and edit what you say around certain people,” she says. “I’ve had some white ladies tell me it’s racist, but it’s not. We have di erent issues and problems. hen my son leaves the house and when your son leaves the house, we have di erent concerns.”

according to the festival’s website.

It sounds li e pretty serious stu , but Wyatt is literally one of the most chill people I’ve ever met. Well, chill with a splash of motherly love, a dash of crazy, and a healthy dollop of I-justdon’t-give-a-fuck. J ust imagine a gothy woman with long locs who will tell it to you straight, because she actually cares about your well-being.

I visited Motown Witch and spent some time with Wyatt learning more about her hoodoo origins, the festival, and how cutting o to ic people is crucial — even if they’re your own parents.

Hold up, what exactly is hoodoo?

According to Wyatt, hoodoo is an African-based folk magic system that enslaved Africans used to persevere through the horrors of slavery in the U nited States.

“Like when this young lady came in here earlier talking about the love candle, I’m trying to get people to understand that ‘ low magic’ per se was done so that masa would not sell our loved ones away. It wasn’t to make Craig come back to you,” she explains in the store’s backroom as heavy metal plays in the background. “That’s why I tell people, it’s self-love sweetheart.

People are exiting your life for a reason, so don’t try and manifest them to come back, ‘ cause you gone manifest the same kind of asshole in another person ‘ til you get your shit together.”

So hoodoo is not a religion. In fact, Wyatt says a lot of her customers are Christians — “old church ladies” coming in to buy candles for their superstitious practices. e re ooded in here on unday afternoon ( after church) ,” she says.

People often confuse hoodoo with voodoo, which is a H aitian religion that you have to be initiated into. Although there are some hoodoo circles in the South that require initiation, that’s beside the point. Adding more confusion to the mix, some presenters at the hoodoo festival are also voodoo practitioners. he easiest way to di erentiate between the two is to remember hoodoo is a type of magic practiced by people of various religions. V oodoo is a religion itself, with its own set of beliefs.

Wyatt has been a hoodoo practitioner pretty much her whole life. G rowing up, she would watch her grandmother, who was a Southern Baptist, make herbal healing potions.

“My grandmother, if something was wrong, she either had a bath or a tea

Items at Motown Witch includes satutues of Yoruban dieties and candles.

for you,” Wyatt says. “I remember my dog stepped on some glass and cut her paw... My grandma put some kinda solution in this cup and stuck the dog’s paw in it. That shit bubbled everywhere and turned brown. Ooze went everywhere, it was gross. The next day the dog was fine.

It was normal for Wyatt, even though her mother was a “J esus freak” ( her words, not mine) . H er father, on the other hand, was a hardcore atheist who didn’t want his daughter going to church. A match made in heaven, or hell, you could say.

Wyatt grew up living with her grandmother and father in H amtramck in the 1970s, but she would often visit her great grandmother down in Alabama where she picked up more hoodoo traditions, except they didn’t call it hoodoo at the time.

“G rowing up with no internet, no

RANDIAH CAMILLE GREEN

YouTube, and all this shit, there was no name for these things, it was just how people lived,” she says. “I just knew I was going to be blind because all my aunts would crowd around me and put some shit that they had mixed up in my eye when something stung me… [ They] just knew to do these things.”

As she got older, Wyatt discovered aganism, but uic ly got turned o because “all the deities were white,” so she leaned more into her hoodoo roots.

The lack of representation for people of color in Michigan’s Pagan communities is also what inspired Wyatt to make her shop focused on African-based spirituality. Apparently this “irritated a lot of people.”

“Some man made that part of his Facebook review,” she says, laughing.

“H e was like, ‘ it’s a good store but if you’re looking for H ecate or something li e that, you re not going to find it, i

Detroit Hoodoo Festival So how did Wyatt end up starting the Detroit H oodoo Festival? It’s kind of a complicated story. When Wyatt was trying to find her place in ichigan s witchcraft community, she got involved with the Detroit Pagan Society. She was there in the 1990s for the group’s initial Michigan Witches Ball — back when it was called the Midwest Michigan Witches Ball — and she eventually started to help organize it.

That is until about 2018, anyway, when the event was passed onto new leadership.

“Back 25, 3 0 years ago I was generally the only person of color, and it did get more color over the years, but when they changed hands I knew that person was going to mess with the intention of the event,” Wyatt says. “The person they changed hands to didn’t want my assistance, so I left it alone and did not go.”

Instead, she created her own event, the Detroit H oodoo Festival, with classes, vendors, and a dance party on the final day. It was the epitome o i you want something done right, do it yourself.”

“People complained to me, so I just made my own,” she says. “A lot

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

35

CULTURE of my friends in Detroit don’t want to go on the other side of Eight Mile, so they would never go [to the Michigan Witches Ball] anyway. They had the preconceived notion that it was just a white people’s thing. They didn’t like the music, and just didn’t want to go.”

She adds that she didn’t intend to create any division in the community by starting her own event, she just wanted a place where people of color could participate after she was seemingly pushed aside.

“The person that the ball was turned over to created the division,” she says.

“My thing is, we can both go to each other’s events. They’re not on the same day, so what’s the problem?” he first etroit oodoo esti al was supposed to be held in 2020 but, like most things, was postponed due to I and ic ed off in instead. Wyatt also started her own ball, the Detroit Witches Ball, the same year after the hoodoo festi al went off without a hitch.

Interestingly enough, despite the racial tension, Wyatt says she doesn’t believe that hoodoo is only reserved for Black people, even though it has frican origins. e eral white oungans have taught classes at the Detroit oodoo esti al and will do so this year as well. rowing up in amtramc which had lots of Polish and Bulgarian families at the time, Wyatt learned that different cultures ha e their own forms of folk magic. But in the end, the intentions are the same.

“It’s usually people who have been oppressed or that are poor and have to struggle that find different ways to make their shit work,” she says.

“But now you have this big thing that rootwor can only be lac . y first husband was white. is grandmother ga e me my first mo o bag. hey were from Kentucky, from the hills. So when people give me that racial thing, I’m li e I beg to differ. hat s not how I was brought up. I was taught by everybody.

I was taught by my whole community.”

A mojo bag is something like a lucky charm carried by hoodoo practitioners for things like protection and good luck. They can contain a range of things like herbs, stones, and incense powder sewed up in a pouch depending on what the person’s intention is.

Either way, Wyatt wants people to come to the festival with an open mind, whether they’re Christian or whatever else. It’s a place for people to learn more about hoodoo and discover tech-

“Whatever you put energy towards does manifest, and that’s what many people forget.

They actually think the candle is a Band-Aid, but that’s not the case.” niques to deepen their own spiritual practice.

“I want people to walk away with a little more knowledge and a lot less spookism because hoodoo is everywhere, particularly in households of color,” she says. “It’s in those superstitions that you don’t have a name for.

Well, now you know what it is.”

When asked how the misconception of hoodoo as something “spooky” came from, she didn’t have an answer.

“There’s a lot of witchcraft in the Bible,” she says. “Psalms is a spellbook.

Those songs are spells. A lot of the roots and herbs and astrological rules and numbers, all that shit’s in the Bible.

Somewhere in there with the whole church thing, it got lost in translation.

They’ll tell you not to go to a (tarot) reader because that’s the devil, but at the same time, there’s a prophet in the church. I don’t understand.”

What makes magic work?

Throughout our long conversation, I can’t help but keep thinking about the young woman who came into the shop earlier. Wyatt all but turned her away, telling her she doesn’t need magic to solve her problems.

It’s because Wyatt doesn’t like when people try to use magic as a uic fi instead of addressing how their own behavior is causing their issues in the first place.

“You can complain that your husband won’t screw you, but you don’t cook, you don’t do anything to make him feel amorous towards you. So you come in here to get a dick candle and burn that thinking that’s gone make him screw you she e plains. ll you had to do was just clean the house and take a bath before he comes home. This is the stuff I deal with so then it s li e OK, go ahead, get the candle. Carve his name in it. Whatever.”

She adds, “the hardest thing to do is face yourself. Too many people spend a lot of energy looking outside themselves. It’s like they think magic is

36 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

gonna solve everything and you don’t have to work on yourself, you don’t have to change your diet, you don’t have to do anything.”

It’s true, the answer is often in the mirror, not in a candle or crystal.

Still, Wyatt is selling the products in her shop that she’s telling potential customers not to buy. If it’s true that we don’t need magic then why practice hoodoo and have a metaphysical shop in the first place ren t those things contradictory?

“They are,” Wyatt says simply. “But life is contradictory.”

The root of the issue, as Wyatt tells it, is that most people misconstrue how magic works. You don’t just light a candle, walk away, and think it will somehow make your dreams come true.

It s a continuous thing she e plains. “You gotta continue to work on it, continue to put energy towards it.

Whatever you put energy towards does manifest, and that’s what many people forget. They actually think the candle is a Band-Aid, but that’s not the case.”

She also cautions people to “be realistic” with their manifestations instead of thinking the magic isn’t working if they don t get the e act outcome they were hoping for.

“You know those folks who think they’re going to do this and then hit the $5 million lotto,” she says, shaking her head. “Like I told somebody who did money work when she didn’t get what she was e pecting first of all you ha e to start with gratitude and be grateful for what you did get. Secondly, it might not look how you think it’s going to look. You might not have someone hand you $500, but you might have somebody buy you a bag of groceries.

You might have someone put gas in your car.”

Suddenly, Wyatt stops and starts sni ng the air. hen she sees the confused look on my face, she says, “it smelled like burning oil. It was very strong for a minute. I’ve never smelled that before. I don’t know who that was,

it might have been somebody for you.”

She means it was a spirit or an ancestor. I suppose it’s possible a deceased loved one was coming to deliver me a message, but I never noticed the smell. or a moment she wonders if it was her deceased father “coming in the room,” but she says he’s usually more direct with his messages. or instance when yatt was diagnosed with colon cancer three years ago, her father came to her very clearly in a dream. It was three days before she was supposed to have surgery.

“I was really nervous, I was all down and mopey… and I had this dream,” she says. “I was at a movie theater and they had three or four different inds of popcorn. I couldn t afford the more e pensive popcorn so I was going to just get the plain one. Then my dad appears and he goes, ‘which one do you want?’ I said it’s OK, I’ll just take the plain one, and he was like ‘no.’ e did that thing that he would do. e would holler at me when I wasn t paying attention. e said ette she yells her own name. “‘Which one do you want?’ And I just looked at him and he said, ‘I got you’ and he hugged me really tight. And I woke up and I’m like, I got this.”

Ironically, though she often communicates with her father in another realm, Wyatt doesn’t talk to her mother (who is still living) at all.

“My mother has told me my entire e istence that I m not shit ain t about to be shit, blah, blah, blah. I don’t talk to my mother, because that’s bullshit.

There’s only so much negativity you can take,” she says. “There used to be a song called ‘Ain’t Nothing Gonna Break My Stride’ in the ’70s and I would walk around singing that song. That’s been my attitude my whole life.”

It goes back to what she was telling the young woman earlier. Protect your energy by being careful who you allow to occupy space in your life. o ic people are not welcome, not even your mother.

The Detroit Hoodoo Festival is on Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22 at the Hilton Garden Inn, 26000 American r , ou h el ic e range ro or one ay o or a ac age ha inclu e lunch an a riva e ee an gree i h he re en er ic e is not required to just visit the vendor’s roo la e are che ule ro a o a ou each ay ore in or a ion i availa le a e roi hoo oo e ival co

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

37

Lux Æterna

CULTURE

Rated: N/A Run-time: 51 minutes

Lux Æterna explores ideas of gender, power, and spectatorship on a witchy midnight movie film set.

COURTESY PHOTO

When there’s a lot at stake

By George Elkind

Witches provide the central

thread of Lux Æterna, a 51-minute experimental French-language work by Gaspar Noé that opens at Cinema Detroit this weekend. (Produced in 2019, it seems to have scored a U.S. release in conjunction to his more recent feature, the dementia-centered Vortex, which is currently playing in a brief run at the Historic Howell Theater, but nowhere nearer for the time being).

For a director best known for his e orts to appro imate primal, psychedelic sensory experiences, Noé’s works carry a strong penchant for Brechtian interruption, frequently puncturing their action to step outside themselves and address their viewers. In Lux, this becomes more than a tendency; approximating a character’s experience onscreen is largely besides the point. Here, instead, Noé’s attentions are trained on a near-direct address to the viewer and their own experience throughout, making the metatext – ocused chie y on the e perience o producing and of watching works like Lux the film s primary reason or being.

This might be for the best, as Noé’s never proven much of a naturalist, struggling often to deliver dialogue and characters that feel credible as more than devices, even when taken on their own terms. (In Lux’s scattered subplots, this weak point is evident as ever). He’s long been more at home with evoking more totalizing experiences: sensations like dissociation (Enter the Void),

ecstasy (Climax), or abjection (Irréversible , with each e ort mar ed by a taste for extremity stemming from what feels, at least to this writer, to be coming from a sincere place. Here, in what the filmma er s termed an essay, the entire focus is on the more abstractly experiential process of making and consuming art. The normally freeing pretense o fiction is largely dropped by the end o the film s opening scene.

After an intertitle quoting Fyodor ostoevs y on the supreme happiness an epileptic feels in the moments be ore a fit , a warning regarding the film s ashing lights, and several nods to the anish filmma er arl heodor Dreyer, who dealt both with witches and with female martyrs, we meet two performers on the stage that gives Lux its setting. Finding Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg lounging before a fireplace as actresses basically their real-life selves) on the set of a midnight movie retreading Dreyer’s themes, the film oscillates between split and single-screen framings that spotlight each woman separately or the fire that s before them, carving up the physical space of the movie in what might approximate a multi-camera shooting setup a way o revealing the production of the scene. When Dalle asks early in the film ave you been burned at the sta e , the fire that creates an intimate conversational space for them becomes a kind of portent, blending the film s own narrative material with the actresses’ own recountings (often

38 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

paralleled via neighboring frames) of their experiences as women in the industry. Though pitched languidly, the scene brings a good-humored address to the exploitation, embarrassment, and more surprising rewards of work on set, achieving a sparkling air of candor. Rare for Noé, it allows each actress to breathe, laugh, and gesture freely with dialogue that appears at least semi-improvised; it’s probably Lux’s film s best part.

From that modest peak, Lux Æterna launches into more familiar territory, chronicling the increasingly chaotic behind the scenes o a film set one populated by blithe misogynists, creative egomaniacs, clock-punching technicians, and desperate industrial climbers. or film viewers o the past century, such sel e acing satire won t be too unfamiliar, trodden as it is from works ranging from 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful to 1996’s Irma Vep, albeit with varying degrees of sharpness.

Even so, cinematographer (and regular Noé collaborator) Benoît Debie makes the most o the film s oscillating visual schema, forcing shots arrayed side by side to clash against or harmonize with one another, as the sound mix has them do the same. Moving between dressing rooms, hallways, and alternate sets, most bathed in low-intensity neon light, Lux Æterna toys with ways of addressing its audience as its pace and pulse accelerate steadily throughout.

Such a progression, escalating from the mundane and workaday to the

heatedly abstract, will likewise be familiar to Noé’s own viewers – especially of 2018’s Climax, which saw the film s bac stage drama speeding into an intense, acid trip-aligned whirl and eventual inevitable collapse. With gendered tensions heightening throughout between the film s women per ormers and its largely male heads of crew, Noé works to make Lux’s statements encircle the medium that it’s a part of, along with the industrial dynamics dating to its origins. Addressing various forms of voyeurism, exploitation, and rampant, stratified orms o ine uality, in part by suggesting they may well be eternal, the film s ensuing ight into abstraction could well be construed as a kind of aesthetic cowardice.

When a red-green-blue color scheme erupts into the shoot’s proceedings, it evokes not only three-strip technicolor and the tinted plates that once marked silent films but also more contemporary processes of pixelated digital photography. By suggesting that the medium’s long-running power disparities may be as entrenched as these technologyspanning aesthetic processes, though, Lux’s maker is in a way having his cake and eating it, too, o ering a criti ue of processes he’s pointedly a part of.

There’s a kind of ego, too, to this; by claiming to be part of a grand and often exploitative historical cycle alongside the filmma ers he invo es masters o the form including Dreyer, Jean-Luc Godard, or Luis Buñuel), Noé’s both attering himsel and arguing that he has no higher obligations to his cast and crew than did his many predecessors.

Such two-handed processes are in some way at the heart of satire, though, and this pessimism feels in some way more welcome than the view of the sap artists that suggest history to be some march of progress. In its best moments, Lux’s awareness of the industry’s longstanding power dynamics seems to give it something. In the scenes where its actresses are framed in isolation, away from men – whether together or on the phone — they’re allowed to give the film its most convincing moments, overtaking the weaker elements of what surrounds them both in the film s production and on the screen. In this way, Lux is part of the aesthetic tradition it both examines and claims for itself: certainly a very old one. But as so often has fortunately happened within that vein, the directorial ego at play here and the gender dynamics in play fail to absolve Noé and his collaborators’ work of its best and most a ecting parts.

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

39

Savage Love

CULTURE Q: I

am a 3 7 - year- old heterosexual woman in a monogamous relationship with a het cis male. Let’s call him “ Rick.” e e been to et er or e ears an engaged for two. Our sex went from passionate, fun, and freq uent early in the relationship to nearly nonexistent now. I have gently initiated conversations about how to spice it up — sexy dates, sex toys, new positions, even non- monogamy — but Rick never took me up on any of my suggestions. I encouraged him to get bloodwork done, thinking maybe it was a decline in testosterone or something. I loved him and was legitimately concerned. I also made the pact with myself that I could live with only having sex 4 - 5 times a year because Rick brought so much “ good” to the table. Outside of sex, our relationship is supportive, positive, and fun.

Fast forward: I recently learned that ick as a ro le on an online atin app. W e are not in an open relationship, e en t o offere t at as a ossible solution to our sex woes. After some mild q uestioning, his story unraveled.

He admitted to exchanging sexy pics and videos with more than 2 0 women on the internet over the last few years. He was apparently going into our spare bedroom or bathroom to make and send these videos — sometimes when I was home, sometimes when I was waiting in bed for him. After talking with a friend, she cone in me t at ick s e a isco ere doz ens of sexting convos on Rick’s phone with strangers when they were together.

My q uestions are both general and s eci c to me. First, is it ossible or someone to be incapable of physical intimacy when there is love involved? I ’m no expert, but it strikes me as troubling that Rick can’t make love with me — going so far as to blame it on hormonal shifts — when it’s not biological at all; he j ust re ers to erk off it stran ers. s t is actually a thing? Only being physically attracted to an anonymous, impersonal, meaningless stranger? My next q uestion is: I s there hope for a future with Rick when he is lying to me — a G G G partner who wanted to work through this — and also lying to himself? I think I know the ans er, b t: am better off alone —Sic k O f Ric k ’ s D ic k I mage D o ings

A: Yes, SORDID, some people are

incapable of being physically intimate when love is involved.

There are straight men out there with what’s called Madonna-whore complexes; these men can’t make love with and/ or fuck women they love and respect. These men view sex as dirty and

degrading, and they don’t wanna do dirty and degrading things with ( or to) women they have feelings for. Frankly, I don’t know what would be worse: being married to man that refused to fuck me ( because he respected me too much) or being fucked by a man like that ( because he didn’t respect me at all . On the ip side, there are straight women who seem to have husbandmaterial complexes. There are guys they can see themselves married to and possibly having kids with — husband material, e.g., good, kind, reliable guys — but those aren’t the men they’re excited about fucking. Instead, it’s bad, unkind, unreliable guys that turn these women on.

Oh, and there’s a new type of longterm, committed, romantic partner out there who doesn’t wanna fuck people they love: freysexuals.

A freysexual may love their romantic partner and wanna marry that person and make a life with them, SORDID, but a freysexual doesn’t wanna and/ or can’t fuck someone they have strong and/ or any feelings for. Basically, love is erotic kryptonite to the freysexual.

Being freysexual doesn’t excuse your fianc s dishonesty, OR I , assuming he is reyse ual. imply put, i your fianc is reyse ual and new that about himself — even if he didn’t know there was a word/ bespoke sexual orientation for him — he should’ve disclosed that to you. And if he only just realized it, he should’ve accepted your invitation to renegotiate the terms of your commitment, i.e., ta e you up on your o er to have an ethically non-monogamous relationship. ( For the record: I’m not suggesting that freysexuality isn’t a legitimate sexual orientation — freysexuals already have their own pride ag, and we all now how high that bar is — but I am suggesting freysexuals shouldn’t make sexually-excusive commitments to romantic partners or demand sexually-exclusive commitments from romantic partners.)

Whatever the deal is with your fianc , OR I , weddings are not famous for reviving sexually moribund relationships. So, if you want more than supportive, positive, and fun vibes from your future husband — if you want regular and decent sex on top of all that — don’t marry this guy. But if the idea of being in a companionate marriage with this man appeals to you, SORDID, that’s something you should explore with the help of a couples’ counselor.

Oh, and if sexting women he barely knows is his primary sexual inter-

40 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

By D an Savage

est and outlet, OR I , your fianc already opened your relationship — on his end. There’s no reason you should have to wait to open it on your end.

Q: My partner and I

recently bought a bar in a small town, far from the city we’d lived in, which has been both fun and challenging. Anyway, a couple started coming in and q uickly became very talkative about their personal situation. She’s a straight- presenting women, he’s a bisexual man, they have an open relations i . t rst t o t, , great. I t’s a small community, and I ’m glad they feel comfortable being themselves in our place. But their behavior has rapidly escalated, however, to the man makin comments to staff members that are inappropriate, ranging from crude come- ons to telling one all about how ugly and weird his own dick is. I ’m guessing that shaming himself like that is a kink for him. But we don’t want to hear his confessions. I need to address it, but I wanted some advice as to how.

Shutting down garden- variety horny cis guys is something I have decades of experience with, but I wonder if I should be more delicate here, given their situation. I don’t want anyone to think we are biased, but this behavior is not acceptable, an nee to rotect m staff.

—B o u ndaries A nd Res p ec tf u l T reatment E s c ap e Nu mb s k u ll D u mb as s es P .S. P ublic Service Announcement: Bartenders are not sex workers. I t is laz y and exhausting for people to assume that j ust because someone’s j ob is serving and entertaining you, that they also are game for fucking you or your partner or both of you or you and your friends.

D ouble shame on the ones who also hold a gratuity hostage while you politely reb ff t em. t a ens a lot an nee s to stop.

A: I’m guessing these people started

coming into your bar after you bought it, BARTE ND, because the previous owners 86 ed them years ago. And I predict their bad behavior is going to escalate the longer you hesitate to 86 these motherfuckers yourself.

Q: I ’m a 3 1 - year- old straight woman

with a q uick q uestion. I ’ve been in an onan off a ain relations i it a man since I was 1 8 years old. I ’ve gotten more comfortable dating other men when e re not on. e ere off or t e last year and I had an absolute ball. However, we got back together recently. T he problem is my partner seems insecure suddenly and is constantly worried he’s

not big enough. He sometimes even half j okes about getting surgery to make his dick bigger. T he other night out of the blue he said, “ So, since you’re a lot more experienced now, bigger is better, right?”

I don’t like this. Honestly, his new insecurities are making me feel less attracted to him and I ’m starting to feel like we’ve hit a dead end in our relationship. I s this a sign that we should j ust break up?

—Co mp letely O ver Co mp aris o ns , K ap is c e?

A: It’s either an annoying insecurity

you won’t be able to put up with, COCK , or your on and o again boy riend is fumbling the disclosure of a kink. Sometimes when people want to tell their partner about a kink — a long-standing kink or a recently-surfaced one — they’ll frame it negatively. They’ll point to a “crazy” porn clip they stumbled over or share a “gross” story about something a friend did, COCK , in the hopes that their partner will say, “H ey, I don’t think that’s crazy or gross, I think that’s hot! ” Since people tend to mirror the attitudes of important people in their lives, and since there’s no more important person than a romantic partner, disclosing kinks like this — framing them negatively so you can deny any interest when your partner invariably reacts negatively — is a terrible strategy.

Anyway, your boyfriend is either bringing up his anxiety about the bigger dicks you had during your last o , O , because he s desperately insecure and needs constant reassurance that he’s not inadequate or because it turns him on to think about you being with men with bigger cocks and longs to be told that he is inade uate. o figure out what your boyfriend’s issue actually is here — intolerable insecurity, eroticized insecurity — ask him a direct question: “You ask about other men with bigger dicks a lot. Does it turn you on to think about that? ” If the answer is yes, COCK , you might be able to make that work; a little dirty talk during sex about bigger guys you’ve been with, maybe a hall pass to go get some bigger dick once in a while. If the answer is no, tell him one last time that you’ve been with some bigger guys, yes, but you li e his dic just fine, and you don’t want to talk about it anymore. If he refuses to stop bringing it up, then it s o again.

Ask q uestions@ savagelove.net! Listen to D an on the Savage Lovecast! Follow D an on T witter @ FakeD anSavage! Columns, podcasts, books, merch, and more at savage.love.

metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

41

CULTURE

Free Will Astrology

By Rob Brez sny

ARIES: March 21 – April 19 “The only way to the truth is through blasphemy,” declared Aries author Flannery O’Connor. I appreciate the cheeky sentiment, but I don’t believe that all truth requires blasphemy.

In many cases, rebellion, irreverence, and skepticism may be enough to pry loose hidden and buried information.

Outright blasphemy isn’t necessary.

What does this have to do with you?

Well, I’m hoping you will be feisty and audacious in your quest for interesting truths. As you dig, I invite you to be less than perfectly polite. Don’t be rude or unkind, of course. J ust be charmingly bold.

TAURUS: April 20 – May 20 “I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me,” declares comedian Margaret Cho. I would love for you to summon her level of self-esteem and bravado in the coming weeks. According to my interpretation of the astrological omens, you now have the right and duty to boost your self-worth. All of creation is conspiring with you to develop more faith in yourself. And if you do the work to deepen your confidence and sel esteem, there

will be an added bonus: a health breakthrough. As spiritual author Caroline Myss says, “Belief in oneself is required for healing.” My prediction: You will rouse an enhanced power to get the soul medicine you need.

GEMINI: May 21 – June 20 According to the blogger Artemisiasea, “The grandeur of life is the attempt, not the solution. It’s about behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances; making room for what breathes in the presence of the attempt — in the coming-to-be.” I invite you to embrace that wisdom in the coming weeks, G emini. You won’t be dealing with impossible circumstances, but you may have to navigate your way through fascinating brainteasers and heart riddles. Whatever your destination might turn out to be, enjoy the ride with all the verve you can summon. At least for now, put aside your longing for particular results and instead simply live your life as if it were a magnificent wor o art.

CANCER: June 21 – July 22 It will be in your interest to change more than usual in the coming weeks. I suppose you could wait around passively and scramble to adjust as li e ings challenges your way. ut the better approach would be to make conscious decisions about how you want to transform. Identify the situations that would most benefit rom modification and then initiate the transitions. Rather than depending on fate to provide you with random wake-up calls, choose constructive wake-up calls that are fun and invigorating.

LEO: July 23 – August 22 “If everyone likes you, it probably means you aren’t saying much,” declared politician Donna Brazile. I suspect you will disprove her theory in the coming weeks. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you will have a lot to say; your communications will be even more interesting than usual. And yet, I also expect you will receive extra respect and appreciation from others. While you may articulate ideas that are challenging to some, you will do so with enough charisma to disarm agitated reactions. A winning combination: expressiveness and approval.

VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22 H ave you heard of V irgo adventurer Reinhold Messner? The man is a marvel, and not just because he’s a passionate environmental activist. H e was the first mountaineer to reach the top of Mt. E verest alone, as well as the

42 May 18-24, 2022 | metrotimes.com

JAMES NOELLERT

first to ascend Everest without supplemental oxygen. No one before him had ever climbed all 14 of the world’s peaks higher than 26 ,000 feet. H e has transited G reenland and Antarctica without the aid of dog sleds or snowmobiles. H e also completed a solo trip across the G obi Desert. I propose we make Messner your inspirational role model for the next four weeks. You may not achieve history-making triumphs like him, but you could surpass what you assumed were your limits. I trust that you will break at least one of your personal records.

LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22 “The world is a very puzzling place. If you’re not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else’s mind.” Author Noam Chomsky said that. It’s useful counsel for you right now. I’ll go even further.

I will advise you to relish the healthy pleasures of being both mysterious and mystified. ee out ertile enigmas and be a fertile enigma yourself. E xplore the rejuvenating wisdom o being indefinable and uncategorizable. E xult in the quizzical joys of E ternal Paradox.

SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21 H ave you ever contemplated the beauty of the people and animals you care for and thought, “I would love to give them the strongest blessings I have to give, the smartest love I can express, and the best listening I’m able to provide. I so, corpio, the coming days will be an excellent time to do that. ou will have an e tra capacity to o er exceptional gifts that are useful and inspirational. You will be at the peak of your ability to home in on what your beloveds need.

SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21 agittarian author adeleine L’E ngle told us, “The discoveries don’t come when you’re looking for them.

They come when for some reason you’ve let go conscious control.” That approach isn’t absolutely true, but it may be useful for you to deploy in the coming weeks. I invite you to relinquish at least a modicum of your conscious control. And if zesty discoveries start owing in, consider relin uishing even a bit more conscious control.

CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19 Is it a legend or a true story? cholars disagree about whether Capricorn scientist Isaac Newton really was spurred to formulate the theory of gravity when an apple fell from the tree he was sitting beneath. This much is certain: Newton lived in the home near the famous apple tree. And that tree is alive today, 3 80 years after his birth.

Ripe apples still fall from it. Is there an equivalent landmark or keystone from your own past, Capricorn — where an important insight arose or pivotal event happened? The coming weeks would be a good time to revisit that power spot, at least in your imagination, in quest of fresh inspiration.

AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18 Aquarian poet J ack G ilbert devoted himself to soulful beauty. I swooned when I first read his line, e must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.” I cried for joy when he said, “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.” On the other hand, I suspect J ack may have been overly consumed with his pursuit of lyrical moments. H is girlfriend Linda G regg said, “All J ack ever wanted to know was that he was awake — that the trees in bloom were almond trees — and to walk down the road to get breakfast.

H e never cared if he was poor or had to sleep on a park bench.” I bring this up, dear Aquarius, hoping you will avoid G ilbert’s lack of attention to practical matters. In the coming weeks, I invite you to be your extravagant, idiosyncratic, interesting self to the max. But also be sure to eat healthy food, engage in pleasurable exercise, and get plenty of rejuvenating sleep—preferably in a comfortable bed rather than on a park bench.

PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20 The U berfacts Twitter account informs me that if you were to consume the amount of food equivalent to what a hummingbird eats, you would eat 3 00 hamburgers or 7,800 cabbages per day. To match the amount of exercise a hummingbird gets while burning all those calories, you’d have to do approximately 3 7 bazillion jumping jacks.

You will never do this, of course. But in the coming weeks, you may be more metaphorically hungry than usual. I predict you will be voracious for new information and novel experiences and fresh ideas. Not 3 00 hamburgers or 7,800 cabbages’ worth — but still, a lot.

My advice: H ave fun being insatiably curious and greedy for stimulation.

T his w eek ’ s ho mew o rk : I s there a situation you’re being laz y about?

Should you be more discerning?

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metrotimes.com | May 18-24, 2022

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