I am not sure why a Free Press editorial would want to say something like "Lansing is a Sad Little Town and should not be the State Capital!" She bad mouths just about everything here including "Lansing Tacos"! Where did she go for tacos? Not Pablos or even Mr. Taco! Maybe she should stay in wonderful Detroit where you can spend an hour or two in traffic each day on the way to work! What fun!
I read that article and Couch's rebuttal to it in the LSJ. It's a just dim-witted poor take the likes of which I've come to expect from today's hollowed-out newspapers. Not many legit journalists out there these days, there's no shortage of this kind of idiocy. I'm partial to Famous Taco myself.
Just a note about the "Sad Little Town" story, someone has come up with a T-shirt with a mittened fist with a star in the middle and the middle finger flipping the bird, and "A Sad Little Town" printed below. You can get one at sadlittletown.com! Pretty funny I'd say.
Of all the things she could have legitimately hit us on - and she hit a few - here basically saying there is no good Mexican food in town is probably the silliest of all. We generally do food pretty well for such a small city; it's one of our strong suits.
I saw a YouTube video about the last beam topping ceremony at the new Hudson Tower in Detroit. It looks like a very nice building with some interesting windows and design features beyond just a glass tower. I also noticed how nicely paved all the street are in downtown Detroit! Another video showed the progress on the Gordie Hall Bridge, it is a very impressive project, Michigan can still build some amazing things. I noticed there are no piers or supports in the water, which is a very good thing.
I'm also a fan of the Hudson Tower's design, it's SHoP Architects, they've done a lot of nice high rises. The Tower on Grand kind of has their aesthetic imo.
Lots of stuff happening in Detroit in general, I loosely keep up on things going on down there and have been impressed.
So, I went and did something I do very rarely: start a thread on Reddit. I made clear my disdain for the plan to tear down Eastern along with support for a mental facility and response from some people truly took me aback. All sorts of people perfectly happy to see the building the go, practically cheering for it. People mindlessly chanting about mental hospital=good without any concern as to where or how its built and disregarding the fact I said I supported it. I'm dumbfounded at the opinions of some, I can only assume some are trolls, many aren't from/don't care about the city and some are just dumb? I gotta say, it's one of those things that makes me lose a little more faith in humanity. Even at their worse the internet, social media and forums skew more intelligent than the general population just due to the literacy requirement, if the kind of opinions and "debate" I regularly see on Reddit and Facebook are anything to go by I just don't know what to think.
That is why I got off a lot of socials, most recently reddit. The comments just had me constantly losing my temper and faith in humanity. That said, it's horrible to hear people in favor of tearing down a historical structure like Eastern. My bet is that you're probably right, they're not really from the area or trolls, but still troubling. Hope this all doesn't end with demolition...old schools are so easy to adapt and reuse.
Yeah, I'm finding a silver lining in that I'm honing my debate skills, learning to avoid using fallacies, keeping on subject, avoiding personal attacks, etc... I've kinda found it helps me hone my own views as well, occasionally seeing somewhere I went wrong. These particular interactions are driving me up a wall but I feel if everyone just lets them own the conversation then who will decisionmakers ultimately listen to? If I get through to one or two people then I've won IMO. Anyways, glad to know others see the same problems.
I quit Facebook a while back, I followed a foraging group, which became political! There would be comments about gathering mushrooms from private and State lands, saying it was anyone's right to gather what they want where they want. They commented on a woman who wondered if she should return eagle feathers that she had found as only Native Americans are allowed to gather eagle and hawk feathers, they belong to them and the State, many were appalled that anyone would even ask such a question, of course you should keep the feathers! I could not believe that a site about mushrooms had wing nuts saying nasty things to people they preserved as liberal because they follow the laws.
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Lots of stuff happening in Detroit in general, I loosely keep up on things going on down there and have been impressed.
Just ranting and sharing frustration
https://www.reddit.com/r/lansing/comments/1dbd5cg/sparrow_wants_to_tear_down_eastern/