The Solstice

I've never been to Detroit, save for a connecting Northwest flight through Detroit Metro. I blog from two thousand miles away in Northern California, where today on the Winter Solstice I can ride my bicycle around town, to work, wherever. It's easy for me to criticize others for their perpetual driving habits because I don't have to worry about three inch thick black ice and where accidentally leaving a window open at night could result in death.

Because it's easy, I will continue to criticize. It's easy not only because I can claim environmental superiority, but also because the big three have done [nearly] everything they could to dig themselves into this hole, a black hole. It is indeed black; black because my family of three is going to be shelling out about $250 ($83 each) to support their cause to potentially get them out of the red. And Detroit will be happy:

That's $83 bucks per Merikan, if we float them twenty five thousand million more dollars we don't have. While the government remains busy employing Merikans in dollar bill making, Chrysler will be furloughing employees for the entire month of January.

I wonder...will their gates swing open come the first of February? With this injection of monopoly money and with a car czar or czarina overlooking their operations, will they develop a sustainable long term business plan? Can they, when government encourages price fluctuations in gasoline that creates Prius demand one day and Ram truck demand the next?



It's been said that Christmas falls about four or five days following the winter solstice, because ancient peoples needed a few days to verify the sun was indeed rising again. After watching it slowly fall for the last six months they celebrated the birth of the sun (the birth of the Son). Today, the sun continues to fall on Detroit, just a few degrees more each day, their nights are longer, their days shorter. Their sun isn't going to start rising tomorrow; it's sinking slowly towards the horizon, someday never to rise again.