As plants and weeds started poking out of the ground, we quickly pivoted priorities to landscaping before it could get out of control. Our mantra is low-maintenance. Anyone who visited us frequently in Warren knows how overwhelming that yard was (double lot, huge hedges, huge beds, and a pond). We can tackle projects, but everything falls apart when it’s time for regular maintenance. We all hate mowing the lawn. Overgrown lawns and hedges were hallmarks of our previous home.

So my plans to sod our backyard disaster here didn’t ring true. We still had ivy around the perimeter and the south side of the yard was still mostly covered by it, but it was largely crushed by the backhoe and subsequent foot traffic in the central part of the yard. Thistles had come last year in force and it took days to beat them back. Sod seemed the obvious solution, but I felt like that much more lawn would put us back into motored lawnmower territory.

I started searching the Internet for backyard landscaping ideas that fell within our Do It Yourself capabilities and tight budget. On March 30, this is the picture I found and immediately emailed to Aaron:

Lots of foliage surrounding a graveled fire pit-centered social space. It was all the great parts of the patio at the Beierman House minus the massive maintenance of the pond and poured concrete (I have a personal vendetta against poured concrete – it is 1950s suburbalicious, which is the opposite of the Sullivan House).

The backyard on April 5, 2013

I described my idea for the yard as “I want it to look like nothing’s changed in the yard in decades – like maybe it’s always been this way.” That meant nearly everything from the Patio section of Home Depot was out. I rolled the old barrel out of the carriage house, used the paint-peeled concrete planters along the house, and reused bricks from the yard and deconstructed chimney to line the ivy beds. I bought natural wood trellises for the giant rose bush so they would weather quickly. Then I stumbled on my best find: used bourbon barrels cut in half to become planters. They looked beat up and filthy, and stank of bourbon. Perfect.

We dumped six cubic yards of pea gravel over commercial-grade weed barrier, installed a rain barrel, and hung 200 feet of 5-watt string lights. We planted perennials in the barrels and anywhere the ivy was bare. A few chairs and a fire pit in the middle, and it’s now the greatest nighttime space of the Sullivan House.

We still have more to do, but the backyard is now an awesome multi-use space instead of an unusable mud pit. Our next adventure is the basement. More on that soon.

As winter descended on us, the windows closed, the neighbors stayed inside more, and I stayed indoors, surveying the neighborhood from behind glass. I’ve noticed that the first thing I do when I see something suspicious is open a window. It’s impossible to hear the tone of conversation, pinpoint a house alarm, or hear the crunching of footsteps when it’s dulled by window panes.

Today, I opened the window to talk to some neighbors checking out their house after an alarm. The chilly breeze swept into the room, but it had the smell of spring to it. “Soon,” it said clearly enough. It reinforced the feeling of winter-long isolation.

My first Michigan summer without central air conditioning is going to be rough. All the high ceilings and fans in the world can only do so much as I work from home. But, I look forward to feeling connected to the neighborhood again. I look forward to knowing which neighbor is passing by, not seeing just another bundle of jackets and hats charging by. The sounds and smells of Woodbridge have been behind glass far too long.

Our contractor Andy was last here in early November. We started easing off the pedal as the cold descended on us and it was time for my bank account to mend itself over winter. It was very odd to not have him around. It was reassuring to have someone else continuing to push things forward even while we were occupied by other work.

Not long after, our electrician Dave returned and started whittling away the final wiring to-do list. Despite my best efforts to keep finding new projects, Dave finished the last of the improvements here today and went on his way. I’m sure I’ll have him back before summer for a few improvements, but the week-to-week regularity of Dave’s eccentric music and colorful cursing is at an end. It makes me pretty sad. I immediately recommended him to all my neighbors – I guess it’s safe to spill the beans now that I don’t need him all the time.

You know it’s been a helluva year when you miss your contractors and gave them birthday presents. Their help has been invaluable.

It’s a slushy mess outside, and the snow keeps falling. I’m still at a financial impasse, waiting for the final heating bill so I can figure out how soon I can afford the rain gutter bill. I expect it to be months longer til I can enlist contractors again, but only four months until we host Expo Icrontic here. I can only hope that with spring weather returns the enthusiasm for helping out here, because year two is looking every bit as challenging as year one.

Yesterday, on the anniversary of closing on this house, I signed another check. This one was to the insurance company. For the first time, the Sullivan House is fully insured. We previously only were able to get fire protection for the purchase price; now it’s a full policy for its vastly-increased market value. It’s still not enough to replace it, and it’s an outrageously expensive policy (the house still isn’t up to code for a better rate), but it feels like a big accomplishment. Like everything else, we made progress. We’re not where we need to be, but we’re miles from where we were.

Yesterday was also the day Aaron brought over the last box from his apartment and turned in his keys. We met for the first time over drinks at the Woodbridge Pub a year ago this month. Tonight, when he finishes his late Friday night shift at a Midtown bar, he’ll be headed to the Sullivan House for the first time. Home to me. Simple, pure happiness.

We still give at least one house tour a week. Sometimes our guest was here a couple months ago, or over the summer, or last spring, or has never been here. I begin my narrative anew and try to remember what’s changed from their perspective. “There was bubbling mold on the chimney, the ceiling was hanging there, cracks everywhere, but have you seen these amazing pocket doors? They’re original!” I’m repeating my story, but I don’t remember where the cracks were. It’s a distant memory, blurred by the time and effort. I look at year-old photos and wonder how we did it, but I know: One step at a time. The next thing. One more hour. One more day with friends, building a future where the past is a lot of great memories, and no one remembers or cares where the cracks used to be.

Image from content.microsoftstore.com

The job posting claims the location is Detroit, Michigan. Sometimes, this means metro Detroit, but I think in the case of Microsoft Careers, they actually mean Detroit—they list other Michigan cities specifically (such as Southfield, as shown in this job search). It’s reasonably safe to assume that a retail store opening in Troy (say, at Somerset Collection) would say Troy, MI. Furthermore, a listing of other Microsoft retail stores around the country shows that in other large metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles, the individual cities are indeed shown on the listings.

A Microsoft Store downtown would be an interesting new anchor location; something other than fashion or Detroit tourist goods would be a valuable addition to our recovering downtown district. A lot of downtown retail is designed around tourists or visitors, but a store like this is something locals and downtown workers would visit.

Why Detroit?

Why not? Detroit has a burgeoning tech scene. Tech and IT startups are popping up all over the place, and the developers, entrepreneurs, engineers, and others who are coming downtown to work or live are all going to be interested in a store like this. Microsoft has a lot of new technology to show off, from Windows 8 to whatever the next Xbox is (most likely to be announced at E3 2013 in June), to Surface tablets, and a hot young tech culture like Detroit is a perfect place for that kind of outreach.

It will be interesting to see where, exactly, this store pops up, but it’s not unreasonable to think it will be on Woodward, especially with the proximity to the M@dison and the upcoming M1 light rail line.

Tonight, at least ten shots were fired from an SUV, and a man was killed on the sidewalk, about a thousand feet from my front door.

Lincoln jumped up from his chair and ran downstairs, asking if we had heard the commotion (we didn’t). He heard the gunshots and saw the SUV speeding south down Avery.

I called Wayne State Police and was told by the dispatcher that they already had several calls about the incident and they were on it, and did I have a description of the vehicle? I did not and they thanked me for the call. By the time I hung up, there were four police cars arriving on the scene; this is less than five minutes after the shooting. Both Detroit and Wayne State Police were on the scene, and EMS was on its way.

I immediately went to a private Facebook group for our neighborhood and asked if anybody knew what happened. Within moments, responses started flooding in.Neighbors from all over the block were asking one thing: is everyone okay? Did anyone get hurt?

Recently, a friend of mine was murdered and I saw how quickly rumors and misinformation about the incident spread, so I will not speculate anything about what happened, who the victim was, what his relationship to the shooters was, or anything else. What I’ve seen so far from people who witnessed it is that the victim was not from around here. That’s the only credible thing I’ve heard so far, so I’ll leave it be at that.

A neighborhood

It would be very easy to say “Oh, a shooting in Detroit… a man gunned down in the street on a Monday evening in a residential neighborhood… what else is new?” and never mention it again.

It would also be easy to say things like “See, Brian? This is Detroit. This is what you moved into… You should have expected this”.

The problem is, my experience with this incident so far has not even remotely jived with expectations. I don’t feel unsafe here all of the sudden. I was not afraid to go out ten minutes after the shooting and load up my car to drive my son to his mom’s house. I was not afraid to talk to my neighbors in the street and see if they heard what happened. I was not afraid to stand on my front porch. I am not afraid now, sitting in my office typing this blog post. I don’t feel like bullets are going to come flying through my window, and I don’t feel like I’m going to be a victim.

The reason I don’t feel unsafe is because the neighborhood mobilized instantly. The Wayne State University Police and the Detroit Police were here immediately. Neighbors were out checking on each other, even though it’s about close to zero degrees outside right now. People on Facebook were checking in on each other. The people whose house got hit by the bullet spray? They took in the victim’s dog (the dog was apparently in the victim’s car). One of the first things I saw on the Facebook group was “What can I do to help?” Someone who lived at the end of our block said they saw the vehicle and offered a more detailed description.

I used to live in Warren, where there was a lot of gang violence that you never read about or heard about. There were a lot of shootings, gunfire in a restaurant that resulted in the death of a 17-year-old waitress, a cop-killing, attempted murder in a coffee shop I used to hang out in, and shots fired in the Warren Police Station, all from the same group of thugs. I don’t know if it was because it was in the suburbs or because the gang members weren’t black, but they just never got reported about. I do know that I felt unsafe after a lot of those incidents, and everything was hush-hush and whispered rumors and innuendo… and I don’t ever remember anyone asking my ex-wife (who worked at the coffee shop) if she was okay, or if we needed anything. For a long time I was worried about my ex at the coffee shop, wondering if one of these thugs would come back to cause more trouble.

I just don’t feel that here, at all. I think because this neighborhood will not tolerate that, and the reason we will not tolerate it is because Detroiters are not afraid. Call them nosy if you want, but my neighbors will be peeking out their windows, calling the police (who have encouraged us to do this) for any little thing that seems suspicious. We will not tolerate thuggish behavior in our neighborhood; hell, we have neighbors who won’t even tolerate people walking in the middle of the street and will ask people to walk on the sidewalks instead. Yes, it can seem a little overbearing and oversensitive, but on cold nights like tonight, we remember why it should be like this.

Woodbridge is like a small town in many ways, but so is Detroit. This stuff hits hard, but if you ask me right now: Do you feel safe? I’m saying yes, absolutely.

Originally, we planned to paint it a strong blue, but stole that color for the upstairs hall when it became apparent we’d already painted plenty of the house orange and needed a different, complimentary color. I think that turned out for the better, because instead we chose a deep green, like a very dark pool table felt. No crazy different colored walls in this room – just solid, dark, and calm. The heavy, gold office curtains from the Warren house were waiting, neatly folded in the foyer.

Priming the pub during our New Years weekend party.

When we were deciding the order to paint things in during our long summer o’ paint, I chose to leave the pub entirely off the list. It wasn’t critical, would be easy to finish later, and provided a “final dirty/construction room” as we finished off the rest of the living spaces. It was where we left the floor covered in tarps, dumped our tools at the end of the day, and stacked our paint cans everywhere. We stored the stove and countertops there until the kitchen was done, and on moving day nothing was moved into it.

It was also one of the spaces that needed the most work. Its walls and ceiling were heavily cracked and peeling, by far the most of any space in the house. The biggest wall was covered in some sort of horrible stucco, extremely rough and impossible to paint. I really wasn’t sure how to approach it.

In the fall, after we’d moved in, Andy sent Phil to patch the ceiling and walls. I scraped loose paint and stucco off the walls. At the start of Oktoberfest, we scraped the nubs off stucco wall. We mopped the floor and put furniture into it for the first time, and it became the prime “chill out” spot for the rest of the event. Everyone loved the room, and it wasn’t even done yet.

Weeks later, I started spreading a light coat of mud over the wall to smooth it out the rest of the way. More scraping, more sanding, more patching. We did it many times over to get the walls into decent condition.

Then, just before the new year, it was time for a tea party.

The pub fully painted. The white globes on the ceiling are from the tea party.

As our guests started to arrive for the weekend and I returned from a week with my family in Pennsylvania, I decided a spackled-wall backdrop was just not going to fly for another event. It was time to get this room in order, so we dug in. I spent two days in that room with a good amount of help from Brian and a rotating group of volunteers. We wiped down the trim and taped it all off, then lathered oil primer on all the walls Saturday. On Sunday, we did three complete coats of paint (the only room in the house that needed three coats, due to the dark color). As it dried, I pulled down all the tape, moved the furniture back in, and by the wee hours of the night we had curtains and a dartboard hung. My pub was complete.

Immediately, rounds of darts began. Pints were drank. Stories shared. The tea party was a smashing success.

My favorite moment of the first night in the pub came when Benson commented on the very bright ceiling light fixture with hanging sconces. “The only thing I don’t like about this room is the lights. We need some pub lighting in here.” With a smug look on my face, I walked over to the antique push-button light switch and rotated the bottom button. The lights faded down to after-hours pub levels. “Pub lights? We got pub lights,” I declared victoriously. Everyone chuckled and conceded the point.

Painted pub, opposite view.

Something very interesting has happened since the pub came alive last week: we started eating at the dining table in it. Just two nights ago, Norm came over for dinner and the four of us ate there. I believe that’s the most people that have eaten together, seated, at ICHQ in the last six years outside of Icrontic events. Brian and Nicole went in there with their dinner last night, and I joined them with my beer to chat a while. Brian finished and played some darts. It really is like having a private pub in our house.

The only thing left unfinished is the ceiling, for which I have special plans: patterned brass tiles between the wood beams to complete the pub effect. That project, however, awaits another day.

Dear DMC Employees:

I’ve got many special memories at DMC, but none more special than from the farewell parties you hosted the last few weeks.

I experienced my first flash mob at the Surgery Hospital, had a rousing send-off with a wonderful children’s choir and the Tigers’ mascot Paws at Children’s Hospital, and received several very “imaginative” gifts at Harper/Hutzel.

The celebrations ran from the humorous “roast” at Sinai-Grace, to the boisterous campaign rally with the corporate staff at Orchestra Place, to a great video from the team at Huron Valley, to a memorable serenade from Bill Restum and Julia Libcke at RIM (thank God that one’s not on YouTube), to the very personal and emotional goodbye from the staff at Receiving.

And I was very touched when Vanguard CEO Charlie Martin and many of the management team from Nashville came down for the final event.

In saying goodbye, I kept thinking that I’ve spent the best 9 years of my life with this team and it’s really hard to see it end. Many of you understood my decision. You likely joined DMC, not because you thought the job would be easy, but because you had something inside you that made you want to help others.

When I see Detroit’s problems, I just can’t sit by and watch the decline any longer. We have a City a half-step from bankruptcy and the only other candidate with a realistic chance of getting elected has never successfully financially managed anything. His admits this, but promises to “hire someone smart” to figure out the finances if he gets elected.

Can you imagine at my hiring in 2004 when DMC was near bankruptcy, if I had said my turnaround plan was to “hire someone” to help me understand the finances? I hate to think where DMC would be today?

I’ve listened to people tell me I can’t get elected because I’m white. I’ve listened to those same people say if I do get elected, it won’t matter, because most Michiganders won’t ever support Detroit’s recovery because most of our citizens are black.

It can get really demoralizing if you believe that stuff.

But I’ve experienced something they haven’t. I got to work for the last 9 years with a team of 14,000 people who were Black, White, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, and every other ethnic group. We worked together to treat patients just as diverse. And working together, we did what most thought was impossible: we succeeded financially by embracing Detroit and building in the City.

I won’t tell you we’ve overcome all America’s racial problems at DMC. But I believe our success has been built around a quality that’s truly inspiring: the great majority of DMC employees see people’s souls first, and see the color of their skin second. I see it every day in our employees as you interact with each other and as you interact with our patients.

And I can’t help thinking: what if Detroiters and our fellow Michiganders came to see each other as souls first? How much better off would our City and State be if we got past the division and distrust and worked together as true partners?

Is this too far-fetched? I’ve just spent 40 evenings in living rooms all across this City and will do 200 more in 2013. As we talk about how to get the violence down, the streetlights on, and the abandoned houses occupied, I find that in every neighborhood in Detroit, distrust and skepticism melt away . Night after night, they’re replaced by hope and enthusiasm.

We start the night interacting as black and white and end each night relating to each other as people.

This experience is deeply inspiring so, starting tomorrow, I’ll be pursuing this full-time. I’m off the DMC e-mail system, so if you have thoughts or advice you want to share, please write me at (redacted). As always, I’ll do my best to answer every e-mail.

As I write this on New Year’s Eve, Washington is allowing us to head over the fiscal cliff, creating another round of financial problems for hospitals. I’m just really glad that Joe Mullany has taken over as CEO—he’s succeeded every place he’s been. I’m glad he’s keeping our outstanding management team and I’m glad we’re part of a strong national company like Vanguard.

But mostly I’m glad Joe is backed by those truly responsible for DMC’s turnaround—the 14,000 employees who never lost faith in what DMC can be.

I can’t tell you how much your kindness and support has meant to me over the years. I won’t ever forget it.

Happy New Year and God bless you.

Detroit is fascinating, wonderful, and terrible. We’ve had our share of ups and downs, and we hear gunshots at night, and there are car thefts and vandalism on our street, but none of us have any regrets about where we’ve moved, and so far at least, the positive far outweighs the negative.

But it’s not like that for everyone. We’re lucky that this neighborhood is among the safest in the city. We’re lucky that we have neighbors that watch out for suspicious activity and that watch out for each other. We’re luck that when we call the police, they show up immediately. Other parts of the city are not so fortunate as us.

A discussion on Reddit today reminds us that while positive growth is happening all over our city, other parts are a terrifying warzone, and the bad guys are winning. We can’t close our eyes to this and pretend everything’s okay—it’s not. Not by a long shot.

It’s hard to say what these people should do. They live literally hundreds of feet from one of the wealthiest areas of the city, yet an apparent drug dealer or gang leader is in charge of that block, and he is calling the shots. He is able to terrorize women and rob people. He is able to unload a gun into someone’s front door, and he is (so far) able to get away with it.

Do they stand firm and continue bravely with their mission to help turn around a distressed neighborhood? Do they ignore the very real physical threat to their lives? Or do they throw the towel in and realize that maybe certain parts of the city can’t be saved by the methods they’re using?

I can’t help but think that an organization like Fireweed would have had a much better run in another, better part of town. The sad fact is, though, that it probably can’t work at 7 and Woodward yet.

For now, maybe all they can do is leave with their lives, let the bad guys have their day, and come back when there is an effective police force that can help. It’s cynical, but their lives aren’t worth it.