Category Archives: The Liminal Times

Hey Detroit: Are You Ready for Some…Football?!


When you’re from Detroit, you get used to losing.

The Detroit Pistons just capped a 28-game losing streak, the longest in sports history. At my college, the University of Michigan, about an hour from Detroit, we used to joke that college football coach Bo Schembechler ate his cereal from a box because he’d lose it in a bowl. When the Detroit Tigers won the World Series in 1984, we nearly burned the city down in celebration (after the mini-riot, the Detroit Free Press ran a political cartoon showing a Tigers fan standing atop a smoldering rubble heap wearing a “We’re No. 1!” styrofoam mitten).

But last week, the Wolverines won their first outright national championship since the mid-1900s — without anarchy. And last night, the Detroit Lions won their first playoff game in eight decades. In other news, dogs and cats are staging a love-in music festival and Republicans believe in evolution.

I’ve never been one for hyperbole, but that’s the most surprising thing in the history of histories. This is a miracle on the scale of loaves and fishes, people. Detroit football fans don’t need sunscreen; they wear paper bags.

But Michigan has held some surprises of late. It elected a Democrat as governor — a female governor at that. Downtown Detroit has enjoyed a resurgence because owning property is the new whip. Homicides are down from 500 a year to about 250. And it has Eminem.

Not that it’s yet time to retire in Hamtramck. I checked the weather today and the temperature was two. American cars remain pieces of shit. I’m told you still don’t want to linger in the Motor City after dark. And it has Eminem.

But given what sports typically means in Detroit, especially football, last night’s victory came straight from the storybooks.

Loaves and fishes.

Open Letter to an Organ Donor (Samuel Flegel 8/31/78-1/11/2000)


My dearest Samuel,

This marks the first anniversary letter I’ve written to you with an ounce of hesitance. Not for any bad news, though there was some. 

I pause because my mother raised me to fear the jinx. But I believe in you more than any superstition, so to hell with it. 

You see, we met 24! years ago today. Which puts us within a calendar year of a QUARTER-CENTURY together. And, parenthetically, me within spitting distance (five months) of 60 effing years old.

Neither milestone seemed feasible when we began our odyssey in 2000. There were only two hospitals in the nation that even attempted pancreatic transplants, and docs said that the organ lifespan averaged seven years, given successful surgery. Throw in the required kidney transplant, and all forecasts or expectations should go out the window, docs said. 

So out they went. It wasn’t hard; when I caught diabetes at 13, the notion of seeing 60 seemed as far-fetched as me dunking. That’s old age. Granny’s sixty, right, from the black and white pictures?

But then we crossed paths, and suddenly I’m touching rim. 

I know it’s you, lifting me during a layup so lil’ slugger can soar. But air is air. Even when it’s getting thin.

And it’s been thin this year. We lost sis, whose last stop came three nights before Halloween. You would have loved her fire; not so much her rain.

And you know about the back/rib break. Sorry for rattling the windows. This house is creaky as get out. 

But here we are, on the 26th of 25 moonlit miles. The home stretch.

I am being melodramatic. Should I reject tomorrow, today would be no less remarkable, if only for all the ground we have broken so far.

Twenty-four years of not being diabetic. Twenty-four years of standing our ground. Twenty-four years of thinking about you Every. Single. Day.

And I ain’t one for final stops. Gimme late charges all day, anyday. 

So let’s sprint the finish, Sam. And leave the gym door open. We’ll run the mystic marathon as long as these heels still kick dust.