I can't count the times I've biked the Dequindre Cut recently. It's a mile and a quarter of get-away biking paths between Gratiot Avenue and the Detroit Riverwalk.
When I bike, ideas pop highspeed into my head for Parting Glances. (Wayne Besen, who writes "Truth Wins Out" about the misguided Ex-Gay movement, tells me he puts together his columns while lifting weights.)
Dequindre Cut follows long-buried railroad tracks. What's left of the dozen overpass cement support structures is spray-painted. In the bright sunshine the biking valley becomes a multicolored tattoo'd paradise.
My week in review – back pedaled at 10 mph on a secondhand 1982 Schwinn – is here offered under the heading, Hindsight's 20/20. My first journal entry, I call, "Open mouth, insert patent leather high heel pump."
SUNDAY: I'm sitting in on the Metropolitan Detroit Community Church congregational meeting. (MCC-D is rainbow inclusive, joyfully integrated.) Item A: Whether MCC-D should allow gambling as a fundraiser. (Bingo Biblically Revisited.)
Trying to inject levity into a wordy discussion, I facetiously ask: "One supposes low-key gambling precludes holding a leather slave auction?" (Dumb-dumb me. Unintentionally politically incorrect.) Humble pie apologies to my many black MCC-friends. Roland Smith. Moderator "Rose" Mack. Dr. Faith. Gwen. Reggie. Aaron. Others. No regrets to MCC-D S/M members. Sandals and/or Mascara.)
WEDNESDAY: I'm at Affirmations with Leslie Thompson, Kat LaTosh, Maureen Jones, Knoll Larkin. I'm here as gallery curator to discuss how best to offer quality exhibits without meddling censorship, showing images that hold interest and merit for all ages.
(Let's remember: Affirmations is an LGBT center, not a business-owned art gallery. The latter venue might get away with a Tom of Finland exhibit. Affirmations, dependent upon private and individual donors support, must, for financial reasons, be judicious about what gets shown.)
I'm shocked to learn the Center received many hateful, four-letter-worded e-mails. (Hey, would-be art critics! It's one thing to complain. It's another to threaten.) A Town Hall Meeting on censorship issues is planned. Says Executive Director Thompson, "Looking back, the situation could have been handled differently."
ADDENDUM. Among my e-mails, one from Rev. Drew Johnson, gay minister of Cass Avenue Unitarian/Universalist Church on Wayne State's Campus. He offers to exhibit the controversial photos in his church's gallery space. (Thank God for other-worldly, worldly wise Unitarians.)
THURSDAY: Synchronicity #1: I stop at Utrecht Art Store. As I bike into its courtyard, out of the blue I think of a person I haven't thought of for several years. I wonder if indeed he's still alive. Biking there next day, same time, I find him standing sipping coffee. What are the odds?
FRIDAY: Synchronicity #2. I'm paying my AE April bill by cell phone. I decide to pay an extra $100 to cover May. As I'm finishing, my iPhone harp tones a call from Scarab Club exhibition coordinator Treena Ericson. Treena tells me I've won a first prize. $300. Total just paid out.
SATURDAY: I meet up with artist/friend Jon Strand, out biking the Cut. "Where's your helmet?" asks Jon, shaking his finger. Adding two words, "Natasha Richardson." We bike to his Corktown Studio to see his new pointillist painting, "Oracle of the Golden Temple."
Jon has dotted over 1500 precision hours on Oracle since October. The painting has eight layers of hundreds of thousands of color-perfect points. Perhaps a zillion by now. (Jon, who daily bikes an hour, dots about five hours, also finds time to swim 96 laps on alternate days at the downtown Y.)
Different spokes. Different strokes. In or out of helmet (or leather high heel pumps).
