The Moth

Just got back from a really cool event that took place at the historical Gem Theater in Downtown Detroit. The theater is something else as it's the largest structure ever to be moved in one piece (well, I've been told that but not exactly sure how accurate the information is ;). Back when they were building the new baseball stadium, Comerica Park, there were a couple of buildings that were within the site limits that if nothing was done would have to be razed. While there were buildings that didn't make it, there was a strong push to preserve two of Detroits historical landmarks, The Elwood Grill and The Gem Theater. They literally hoisted the entire theater up onto rollers and rolled it down the street! It's actually now in a better location closer to the theater district in the city.



Anyway, back to The Moth. I just pulled this from the website and couldn't explain it any better:

What is The Moth?

The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon's Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda's porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first "Moth" evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York. Today, The Moth conducts eight ongoing programs and has brought more than 3,000 live stories to over 100,000 audience members.

Why "The Moth"?

The screen around Wanda's porch had a hole where moths would flutter in and get trapped in the light. Similarly, George and his friends found that the characters in their best stories would often find themselves drawn to some bright light—of adventure, ambition, knowledge—but then find themselves burned or trapped, leaving them with some essential conflict to face before the story could reach its conclusion. So George and his original group of storytellers called themselves "The Moths". George took the name with him to New York, where he hoped that New Yorkers, too, would find themselves drawn to storytelling as moths to a flame. They did. With no advertising, through sheer word of mouth, every show to date has sold out in 48 hours or less.

So, that's the history of the event and the cool thing is, so far, it's only in 4 cities; Chicago, New York, L.A. and The D! The stories were great (all 11 of them) and the gal that won is now off to New York to compete in the championship (or Moth Ball as the event is called ;)

It was also pretty neat being downtown tonight as they're shooting the new Transformers movie just a couple blocks away from where I was. They had this huge space ship looking thing laying in the middle of the street with all these burnt out cars (and probably incorporated one of the burned out buildings as well, haha).

I don't remember a buzz like this in Detroit since I've lived here. It's really cool watching things slowly turn around here and I couldn't be happier for my home town.

So, on a slight downer note, today was a pretty big day for me in that I found out that my private health insurance is going to expire Oct 31st. Yes, the very thing I was paying my hard earned money every month is going to expire because I can't work. Kinda ironic that it's called insurance isn't it? How is it that insurance is allowed to "expire"? It flat out doesn't make any sense and seems a lot like fraud to me. I mean it seems logical if you always stayed current on your payments when you were healthy it should be there for you when you get sick and hopefully be there if you're still sick and can't work right? I upheld my end of the bargain, how is it that the insurance company can just back out after two years? If someone can give me an honest logical explanation, please enlighten me...

Thank God I have the option of going on Medicare. What would I do if Medicare didn't exist? To those that are affiliated with the Tea Party or the Right Wing of the Republican Party, what would you do if you were in my spot? It just pisses me off that people can loosely throw around how entitlements need to be eliminated but the truth is, without them, people like me (and my sister) would be up shit's creek without a paddle. Same thing with Social Security (which I count on every month). If George Bush and the then Republican Congress had their way, they would have written laws that would have encouraged people to invest their Social Security money into the stock market. The same institution, Wall Street which was systematically stripped of all it's regulations/laws led by the former Republican Texas Senator Phil Gramm. So, essentially, mass amounts of money (probably some of mine as I was pretty naive about that stuff back then) would have gone into these crazy unregulated financial scams called derivatives and subsequently lost forever when the mortgage/lending crisis (again caused by deregulation) hit thus sending the economy into the Great Recession.

Again, with the likelihood that these same people are going to be controlling Congress again, I brace myself and shutter to think how much more damage will be done...

I guess you could say that I'm a little disenchanted right now with government being run by big business. The unfortunate thing is we can't vote big business out of office... I'm not advocating socialism or anything like that but I just think there has to be rules to protect the vulnerable from the powerful.

I guess you could say that suddenly I feel kinda vulnerable and I have enough of that in my life already, ugh...

Anyway, I'm not going to apologize for my rant this time, it's just how I see it.

I've got to make the phone calls tomorrow and find out how things are going to change and I'm hoping the financial impact isn't going to be too harsh. No matter what, I will find a way to continue to enjoy my relatively good health right now and of course always stay prepared for things to go the other way...

Now that I've got that off my chest, it's time to wrestle with the dogs for a bit as Chili and I have had a visitor for the last couple of weeks, Gomez or G for short.


How could you turn down a face like that? The people that were watching him previous to me decided that they weren't going to give him back to his rightful owner so I agreed to watch him to prevent this from happening.


He is a handful though after pooping, peeing in my house and today running away three times. Hard to get mad at the little dude though...

Tomorrow should be fun as I'm going to a football game slash cancer fundraiser. My Mom (who's also a cancer survivor) and her very good friend Karen made my sister and I part of the contribution drive and were able to raise a good amount of money for the Cancer Foundation (I think). It's pretty cool to know there are so many people out there donating their time and effort to raise money and awareness for cancer.

And, finally, to those out there that I know are praying for me, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it and whatever you're doing, keep doing it!!