Osler's Razor

On a trip back to Detroit earlier this month, I drove by our old house on Harvard Road.  It was sad to see it boarded up.   Importantly, unlike what you will find in many neighborhoods in the city, it looked like the only abandoned house on the street.  That crumbling sidewalk was where I learned to ride a bike, and the backyard of this house was our baseball field in the summer and hockey rink in the winter.

Discussing the fate of Detroit is a risky venture.  If you emphasize the negative, Detroiters become defensive-- there is a real resentment of the "ruin porn" found in the media.  On the other hand, a rosy depiction of the city and its neighborhoods is largely untrue-- there just are a lot of ruins.   The truth is complex, like all worthwhile things.

In the comments section of yesterday's post about the Detroit Institute of Art and its wobbly status as the city suffers through bankruptcy there were two comments I though were really wonderful, and worthy of a post of their own.

The first was this note by my dad:

Most days, there is a long line of yellow school buses in front of the DIA. They wait for schoolchildren from many districts to pile back into their seats after having been exposed to some absolute wonders. Somehow this happened in the City of Detroit.They have certainly been helped by their neighboring communities. At the same time city workers have plugged along looking forward to retirement.

Both the DIA and the the worker's pension funds have been badly managed in the past. These problems were not caused by art lovers, schoolchildren and workers. We will need more art and the best municipal workforce possible to recover this city.

However, without fresh ideas the system will remain intact that created the problems. $500.000,000 will be spent to keep the status quo rather than to jump start the city. There must be other solutions.

The other was by my wise friend and mentor, Craig Anderson:

I think about this in terms of the sacred, the transcendent and sacred space. Like standing in a great cathedral, or standing in a great natural landscape … there is something transporting and transcendent about great art and great art museums. I love that and I love how art museums make me feel. Art museums always extend me and challenge me to imagine the unimaginable. They often make me feel far better about the human condition … even when they trouble me. And they often get me in touch with my better, more creative self. I love that. I am mindful that this can lend itself to an idealized take on art … yet I think there is a place for all that. And particularly so in imploding urban centers.

Like great cathedrals and like World Heritage Sites, such as the Redwoods … certain things should remain protected and sacred … and exempt from the press of more worldly economics.