Entry 1: Last Call for Ol’ Buick City

I walk through a withered beaten road. I walk because there’s no need to run and I haven’t had to run before. I walk, because no matter how far I go, the city of Flint is always with me. There are some things you can’t bury or put away. I take that with me wherever I go. I wear like a medal for my time served in urban warfare. From drug dealers to prostitutes, to boarded up crack houses, to laid off blue GM workers who can’t make their mortgage anymore.

Flint is the case study of the downfall of capitalism in the US. Perhaps the American Dream isn’t here. I’m sure when the Buick T-model was built, the people behind it had hope. They hoped that a dream would become a reality. People of the city would see prosperous times. We did. When I was younger downtown was vibrant. There were shopping centers all around. In the winter people would ice skate in an arena downtown. It was a nice and safe place to raise children.

Fast forward to 2008, most of those areas are now part of the ghetto, no one has ice skated in downtown flint for more than 20 years now, the roads are filled with pot holes, we’re one of the most violent cities in America, and our mayor is a joke beyond comprehension. It’s sad that I have to leave. Sad because I feel like a captain who’s abandoning his ship. Flint was never the Titanic by any stretch of the imagination but it’s still home.

There’s a something in me that wants the “underdog” to succeed. I’ve been here for most of my life (thank god I live outside the BAD areas), but I guess leaving home and starting anew is something my father had to do as well, but for different reasons. Flint and Michigan, I bid you farewell. Thanks for the harsh lessons of life. Now the next chapter of my life starts in NYC.

John Adams. He was one of our more important founding fathers and helped form the building blocks that this nation is built on. HBO’s new mini-series is based on his life immediately following the Boston Massacre and ending with his death stars Paul Giamatti as Adams. This may very well be Mr. Giamatti’s greatest role to date. Its amazing how he can assume these characters so that you forget you are watching him play a person and begin to believe he is the person. The man is one of the best and most talented actors of the last 15 years and this is rock solid proof of that.

What I have seen so far in the first two episodes – covering up to the Second Continental Congress – has been riveting. I still find it amazing that this group came together and asserted their rights as men against what seemed at the time an unstoppable military force. Things as simple as taxes were enough to start a war and create a new nation. Apathy and cynicism seem to have destroyed the last real rebellious spirit left in the American people recently. What would a man such as Adams think about the suspension of Habeus Corpus and the increasing loss of the civil rights that he fought so hard to protect. This series has come at a pivotal moment in our history and I believe that this spirit needs desperately to be revived in the American people. Idle dissent is killing this country. A republic cannot function if the people it governs are not involved in its workings.

Well acted and produced this series should be show wherever possible. On network television, in classrooms of all ages, everywhere that there is an audience. I feel that it is vitally important. “But its just a TV show” the cynics may say. The ideas behind it and the principles that shaped John Adams the Patriot run through the blood of us all but we are afraid to shed any of it for the cause of liberty and freedom.

Episode 6 – Unnecessary War – airs April 13, 2008 on HBO
Episode 7 – Peacefield – airs April 20, 2008 on HBO