Departure from the D

I am back home after my weekend trip to Detroit and I had a great time seeing my family while I was there. I've lived a number of places and I have said I wouldn't go back to Detroit or anywhere in the state of Michigan to live again because I'd been there and done that. However, after this visit, I opened my mind to the possibility (a small possibility) that I could return to the mitten state. I saw a lot going on in metro Detroit. Detroit itself is still a work in progress and I doubt it ever comes back to the way it used to be when I was growing up there. There's still a lot of decay and poverty in the city, but there are signs of growth also, particularly in the downtown area. I was shocked to see so many white people downtown and at Belle Isle while I was there. Detroit has been a largely black city for a long time and a lot of white suburbanites rarely, if ever, set foot in the city. But things are changing. There was a Tigers game last night and when the game was over (the Tigers won 6 to 5 over the Mets), a lot of those baseball fans headed over to the MGM Casino (where I was last night losing $40 on video poker). It would be nice to see Detroit come back, not just downtown, but in the neighborhoods also, but that may just be wishful thinking. Still, I was happy to see progress being made and the city trying to move forward.