Waking in Mordor!

Brother Craig started it. When visiting Windsor ON and looking over the river at Detroit, he would say, “Look, it’s Mordor”. I woke up in Mordor.  Chrysler Building across the street. Grey and dull here in the Motor City.

While this blog is ‘Summer in Chawton’ and it is spring in Detroit, one might be confused. Rationale: 1) Why start another blog by a different name when 'Summer in Chawton' was already familiar? 2) I am at the Society for Arts in Healthcare conference prior to the big jump over the pond to England; why not share what’s going on here before arriving in Chawton?

I am impressed with the little bit of Detroit I have seen so far. I usually equate this to the people one meets going about one’s business (one of the great perks of moving to Nova Scotia, I hasten to add…people are extremely kind). So it is here in Detroit as well - or so I learned getting to and settled into the hotel where I will be staying this week. 

My well-laid plans to take local transit for $2 at 4 pm were kiboshed (one of my Mom’s words) and instead took a taxi for $50 at 11 pm when the flight from Halifax was delayed 5 hours and I got to the deserted-except-for-our-flight, and very beautiful Detroit airport late at night. I am not complaining; a plane needing a repair is far better staying on the ground and causing the rescheduling of travellers than taking off. However, $2 became $60 to take a town car (driven by the extremely kind, Gregory) to get to the hotel. Good-bye to Gregory, hello to fabulous night staff on the front desk. A gorgeous room! A toothbrush delivered by another kind person (for I now recall removing mine from my bag to use just before leaving home). A WONDERFUL bed…a clock radio I cannot figure out - but this is not really a problem in the grand scheme of things, breakfast delivered by another nice person including gluten free toast!!!! Hooray for Detroit food service! 

Early morning TV awful…while I was hoping for updates on what's happening in the world, I heard two things that caused me to turn it off; an ad for investing where the announcer exclaimed “Don’t be part of the 99%; become part of the 1%”…gack! And a show to encourage shopping local where the host said to the camera (when the woman she was interviewing got flustered when asked ‘what colour' - I mean 'color'...this is the USA...'did you buy this in?’), “Oh, so you don’t want your husband to know what you are doing with his money!”. Seriously? What year is it again? Women spending their husband’s money? Assuming oh so many things, but chiefly, that women do not have earning power. 2012!?! I shake my head…and turn off the TV...

Now, off to the first day of a much anticipated conference! First, the use of that hotel issue toothbrush!