New address for help
The Women’s Survival Center of Oakland County — which helps women and families deal with poverty, divorce and abuse –has moved to a new location in Pontiac. After 16 years, the center left the former All Saints Episcopal Church rectory on West Pike Street and reopened Nov. 10 on the second floor of the Great…
Edible Complex
In his essay, “The Pleasures of Eating,” farmer and author Wendell Berry writes about the “politics of food.” He describes the way food is produced and distributed, examines its content, nutritional value and cost, and explains how all of this affects us. The way to improve the quality of our food, and thereby our lives,…
River Rouge dust up
Why would the city of River Rouge enter into an agreement to expand a waste facility that has a history of environmental violations? That’s the question Maxine Johnson and other Detroit residents want answered, fearing they’ll suffer the consequences of the expansion of S&J Disposal & Recycling, on the border of Detroit and River Rouge.…
Party on, fly off
START YOUR ENGINES This Thanksgiving eve, annually hyped as a bar night of Brobdingnagian proportions, you might consider these off-the-cuff suggestions for your weekend planning. First, head downtown tonight, as there’s nothing better than the late-night parade preview that occurs when they close off Woodward. It’s much better then dragging your sorry ass out of…
Pitch’d
BIG LEG PIECE Detroit’s progressive dance music scene provides more than a few ways to shake off the l-tryptophan haze. For starters, Wednesday night Hamtramck’s Motor Lounge brings back Frankie Bones, the NY hard-house decknician whose Sonic Groove label still fights the power(s). Bones wowed sellout crowds the last two times he made his way…
Past and repast
I am sitting on a beach long after nightfall. The blackness is so complete, the humid air so thick, it seems as if I am completely alone, washed up on the shores of a primordial land. I forget that I’m a tourist on the Outer Banks of North Carolina about to witness the re-enactment of…
Eating in the dark
If aliens were to arrive on Earth tomorrow, no doubt in short time they’d make their way to a shopping mall. And what would they learn there? Lesson No. 1: Americans love to eat. And as we are fast approaching the Season of the Binge, soon you’ll find millions of people waddling a swath through…
Ringmaster
To watch the Jerry Springer movie when you’re not a Jerry Springer fan is an exhausting and humbling experience. Quiet in the middle of an unleashed crowd chanting Springer’s name with a fury reminiscent of the battle cry in Lord of the Flies, you feel like the last reader in the world of the illiterate;…
Fasting down
In the spring of ’73, I spent a week in a cabin in the Cévennes, an isolated region in southern France. For three of those days, in what seemed like an extension of reading old Zen texts and poems, I fasted. I guess the idea was to get rid of all distractions from the primordial…
A Merry War
In Britain, A Merry War was released as Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which is also the name of the 1936 George Orwell novel from which it was adapted. The name change is both understandable — few Americans would know that an aspidistra is a sturdy little plant which Orwell latched onto as a symbol of…
Invisible ingredients
You can’t see it, taste it or smell it. It’s not listed on the label. But there’s a good chance that if you eat something containing milk, corn, soybeans or potatoes you’ve got one of the century’s most controversial food additives on your plate. DNA. It could cause toxic effects, allergic reactions, antibiotic resistance and…
Enemy of the State
An innocent camera records the crime. Successive frame enlargements reveal the criminal. The scene — of decoding through enlargement — brings back memories of similar incidents: the dead body discovered by the carefree photographer in Blow-Up; the replicant’s reflection in the mirror projected on the solitary and obedient screens of Blade Runner. In possession of…
Making ends meet with hunger
Sylvester Jackson wheels a metal basket into Messiah Food Pantry where the 76-year-old senior has been coming every Saturday for about 13 years. She receives a free bag of canned goods, bread, fresh vegetables and sometimes meat, which she shares with her 90-year-old mother. “I take the bus here,” she says. Jackson is one of…
The Cruise
New York City tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch wants to change not only the way you see Manhattan, but how you look at the world. At least that’s the impression left by director Bennett Miller’s idiosyncratic The Cruise. The short (76 minutes) documentary is all Levitch all the time, which is both its strong suit…
Taste the new
Food is like clothing — some items are trendy from one season to the next, some items are classics that will never really change. While some foods, such as red meat and 16-ounce steaks, fall out of fashion, others, such as fondue, come back like bell-bottoms and platform shoes. And then there are the new…
Elizabeth
Elizabeth is a lavish historical epic about personal transformation, showing the metamorphosis of a headstrong princess into the ruthlessly efficient national icon, Elizabeth I. Screenwriter Michael Hirst pits the personal squarely against the political as he chronicles Elizabeth’s ascension and eventual consolidation of power. Looking back 340 years — through the filters of both democracy…
Food for thought
8: number of dishes made for a typical Thanksgiving dinner in an average American family 18.1: pounds of turkey the average American will eat in 1998 6.3: pounds of that turkey which will be consumed during the holiday season 72: milligrams of cholesterol found in a roast turkey leg 90: percentage of turkeys and chickens…
Brazil All Over – Again
Brazil is a country of intoxicating music. You’ll find it everywhere, from the Afro-Brazilian percussion of Bahia to the sexually tinged sambas of Rio. In the 1980s, these sounds played a large part in leading David Byrne away from the Talking Heads to launch both a solo career and a world music record label, Luaka…
Where’s the beef?
Last year, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association announced a $72 million campaign to convince Americans that beef is what we want. In some ways, it was like gilding the Guernsey. Despite public concerns about mad cow disease, bovine growth hormones, cancer and clogged arteries, the cattle industry remains the largest segment of American agriculture. This…
History Repeating
Following its debut album and a series of no-longer-available singles, the Delgados — the Scottish masterminds behind chemikal underground records, home of Mogwai and Arab Strap — quietly step into a sonic spotlight with Peloton. It’s a thoughtful, lightly lush album that is touched by the formidable production hand of Tony Doogan — whose credits…
Melodramas of soul
It’s a brisk autumn night in 1997, and the lobby of the Music Hall is buzzing with anticipation as patrons file in for the latest installment in black popular theater, Why Good Girls Like Bad Boyz. The crowd is stylin’ and it’s obvious that seeing who’s come and being seen are as much motivation for…
Form and Function
UK drum ‘n’ bass pioneer Photek — aka Rupert Holmes — was one of the first producers to strip jungle of its ragga roughneckism and rethink its melodic possibilities using only icy percussion riffs and elegantly skeletal rhythms. No bowel-quaking sub-bass or noisy MCs here, just streamlined rhythm sections that are ends in themselves. Photek’s…
Lovin’ spoonfuls
To write about what you ate (or drank) … is to dream the past alive. Taste it, swallow. Close your eyes. Roll your tongue around in your mouth. You’re there. — Mark Winegardner, We Are What We Ate When in grade school, Summer Krecke looked forward each day to the carefully prepared meal her mother…
Get Down!
When it comes to pop-punk, particularly from the San Francisco Bay area, it’s pretty tough to rock outside the template that stalwart bands on that scene, such as the Mr. T Experience, have expertly cut from the rock cloth. If your band happens to share a label with MTX, forget about it! And say your…
Working poor, working hungry
Joyce Harris sits with her three daughters at a round table at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen eating sloppy joes, mixed vegetables and a Rice Krispies treat for desert. She began taking her daughters there when it opened in her neighborhood last January. “We come here every night,” says the single mom. Many families fill the…
Northern Extremes
The Boxhead Ensemble is a bunch of Chicago- and Louisville-based musicians led by Michael Krassner. After recording a soundtrack to the movie documentary Dutch Harbor in 1997, Krassner and his associates from groups such as Pinetop Seven and Australia’s Dirty Three actually went on the road to perform this evocative music at several of the…
MT gets new owner for new era
By now, most readers have heard that the spate of mergers and acquisitions raging across the alternative newspaper industry has come to Detroit. Art Howe, president and publisher of Montgomery Newspapers in suburban Philadelphia and that city’s alternative City Paper, has signed a letter of intent to purchase Alternative Media, Inc., which includes the Metro…
Brain fat and feminism
It was difficult to imagine this issue of the Metro Times, a food issue without a dieting story, yet it was equally hard to think of a unique approach. Still, I knew I had something to say. I wanted to tell the millions of women who spend gobs of time and money on diets why…
Munchie Music
What with the descriptive title of this disc and most of the proceeds going to NORML, it’s easy to see where this blunted benefit is headed. Assembling an impressive array of talented artists sympathetic to the pot cause, freetheweed floats easily from hard-rock to hip hop to reggae to country and beyond. The highlights are…
Time for our grim reaper
November 4 was not a good day, to put it mildly, for Team Death. Mounting vote totals showed Geoffrey Fieger, former attorney general of assisted suicide, losing overwhelmingly, worse than Howard Wolpe even. Proposal B, which would have permitted snuffaid in selected cases, was creamed by an even bigger margin, thanks to the Catholics having…
Dive-through dining
John Hoffman brags about eating Dumpster dinners served on dived place settings by the light of similarly obtained candlesticks. Through Dumpster diving, Hoffman gets everything needed for a middle-class lifestyle from other people’s rubbish. “The United States is full of idiots discarding perfectly good material wealth,” says Hoffman, who furnished his home from trash cans.…
Outside Lookin’ In
Fans of Jimmy Thackery, a local favorite, will probably enjoy the hell out of this album. Lovers of the blues harp and great slide guitar should also take time to give this one a worthwhile listen — if they haven’t already done so. The boy’s got chops. Guitar chops. Harp chops. Vocal chops. Chops. Chicago-born…
Sidelined at DMC
An agreement reached last week between the Detroit Medical Center and a coalition of African-American doctors and minority business owners has been hailed as a victory for diversity by all involved. But a significant faction of DMC and community activists whose grassroots protest helped bring the issue to a head say they have been completely…
A natural solution
If genetically engineered foods aren’t labeled as such, there’s one way to know you’re not eating suspicious DNA: The Certified Organic label. “Unfortunately, consumers cannot avoid genetically engineered foods except by buying organic foods,” says Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Campaign for Food Safety. When the federal government considered allowing genetically engineered foods to…
Ear Mind I
Ear Mind I is the seventh release of diverse musical material for the Meridian Arts Ensemble. In the past, it has performed the music of composers as wide-ranging as Paul Hindemith, Witold Lutoslawski, Billy Strayhorn, Jimi Hendrix and, most notably, Frank Zappa. The six members of the group include John Ferreri (percussion), Raymond G. Stewart…
