![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2020\/05\/FarmingWork.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe pics connect Mary T\u2019s District (she is the District Director) with early memories of Detroit\u2019s\u00a0bankruptcy and led me to re-print a few paragraphs from December 2014. \u00a0 They remind me of frightening times that began in the summer of 2013. \u00a0 The city has turned positive even in the midst of our current Covid challenges. \u00a0Beauty and bravery.\u00a0 D H Lawrence\u2019s short poem frames these times of playful courage, fatigue, and hope.<\/p>\n
Have a blest weekend.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
john sj<\/p>\n
About December 17, 2014<\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cLate December two years ago the Detroit bankruptcy had matured into grinding uncertainties; \u00a0surely for the c. 32,000 Detroit citizens whose futures looked harrowing \u2014 would their pensions, the magnitude of their underfunded status\u00a0becoming obvious by then, be chopped down to $0.75 on the dollar? \u00a0Surely for the Detroit Institute of Arts \u2014 would their world-class collection of treasures be gutted by hungry creditors? \u00a0Surely for the city \u2014 would Detroit lose any shot at a turn toward fiscal integrity if the bankruptcy went sour \u2014 any shot at rebuilding its bus system, its computer system, its water system, its neighborhoods, because the creditor process stripped the city clean until it resembled a carcass instead of a vital place in which people love to live?<\/p>\n
I noticed in yesterday\u2019s Crain\u2019s Detroit Business (Dec 16, 2014), an article observing that Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Rhodes and, doubtless, Mediation Judge Gerald Rosen, had jawboned down the city\u2019s legal bills from the most complex city bankruptcy in US history and freed up another $25 million that could go to pressing needs \u2014 like buses or computer systems or the neighborhoods, to go with the $1.7 billion fund already set aside as part of the Grand Bargain for those same rebuilding purposes. \u00a0No mistake about it, \u00a0Detroit still packs wounds and has a long list of rebuilding projects \u2014> \u00a0but they are projects, which, like the rebuilding of Livernois just outside our McNichols Campus, are starting points with believable futures. \u00a0Last year\u2019s knocking on our doors in the night of fiscal threat begin to look like D.H. Lawrence\u2019s three strange angels. \u00a0Yes, gun-wielding violent people can still slaughter innocent children in place after place, country after country, just as some Taliban tried to murder Malala, Nobel Laureate champion of girls who risk their lives to attend school. \u00a0 Yes, Detroit\u2019s neighborhoods require daily courage to build on a miracle of cross-race and cross-politics mutual risk-taking through all this year of 2014.<\/p>\n
Like the birth of every child, the birth of hope emerges into the world bloody and exhausted . . . \u00a0but pulsing with life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Have a blest day,<\/p>\n
john sj<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thursday December 17 \u00a0\u2014 \u201cIt is the 3 strange angels . .\u00a0. \u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n D. H. Lawrence, of Lady Chatterley fame, wrote poetry as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is the knocking? d. h. Lawrence \u00a011 September 1885\u00a0\u2013 2 March 1930 Friday morning, the older two of Mary Tobacco\u2019s children,\u00a0Anya and Essence, have been pitching in on a large, start-from-scratch vegetable garden, plowing the prairie, planting, fencing it in. \u00a0 Some of the crops will help sustain the family, some will … Continue reading
\nWhat is the knocking at the door in the night?
\nIt is somebody who wants to do us harm.
\nNo, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/D._H._Lawrence<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"