Raw Video - Detroit Fires Leap From Home to Home

Firefighters in Detroit, Michigan, grappled with 85 fires in a four-hour period Tuesday night, officials said.

"A lot of these fires were due to high winds and downed wires," said Karen Dumas, a city spokeswoman.

There were no reports of deaths or injuries, she said.

"We had winds from 30-50 mph and have a number of downed power wires," said Detroit Fire Commissioner James Mack Jr. "We are attributing some of the fires to downed power wires which makes more fires with the wind being so strong."

Mack said that between 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. the fire department responded to 140 calls for wires down before the evening outbreak.

Detroit firefighters received assistance from fire departments in the neighboring towns of Warren, Dearborn and Harper Woods.

"It's a matter of public safety," Dumas said. "We have enough resources to manage our daily demands, but that was an unusual and concentrated number of fires."

There also was at least one report of suspected arson associated with the fires, Mack said. A man in the city's northeast section is being questioned. LINK

Buy an inch of land in Detroit

Today at Institute for the Future, Jerry Paffendorf is telling us about Loveland, his art/game/activism project to sell real land in Detroit, Michigan inch-by-inch, for $1/inch. He already sold the first "colony," a 10,000 square inch grid called Plymouth. He's now selling deeds Via: Kickstarter to the second property, which will be called either Recovery or Hello World. The second property hasn't been purchased yet, so Jerry calls the investments "ghost inches." When you purchase an inch, you get a nice little deed package containing a magnifying glass to better survey your territory. The little money from deed sales goes back into the project. He also hopes to use the "profits" to provide microgrants to other innovative urban development projects in the city. From the Loveland project:

Based in Detroit, Michigan, LOVELAND is all about creative new concepts in micro payments for micro ownership and use of land. It is building frameworks for many people to invest and participate in the creation of something where nothing was before, and to interact with places both in person and online in various unique ways. LINK: Boingboing Via: Vimeo

The Loveland Project (MakeLoveland)

"Inchvesting in Detroit: A Virtual Reality" (NPR)

10 Detroit Facts You Should Know

"First Ever News Radio Broadcast"
Going on air in August 20, 1920, 8MK, later renamed WWJ, is believed to be the first station to broadcast regular news reports. Financed by The Detroit News, 8MK was initially licensed to Michael DeLisle Lyons. He assembled the station in the Detroit News Building. As was common practice in the early days of radio, the Scripps family asked Lyons to register the station in his name in case this rather new technology was only a fad.

Newspaper owners at the time were worried radio might replace newspapers and put them out of business. Almost 100 years later and we’re happy to report both The Detroit News and WWJ Radio still operate today. LINK

Eminem's "Letter to Detroit" for NCAA's Final Four (CBS)

Here is a little clip of Em paying homage to his hometown. It's poetic and pays tribute to Detroit's culture and national impact.

This was aired on Saturday (April 4 2009) on CBS. LINK: Yutube

Jack White’s poem about his beloved Detroit

Michigan Central Station, Detroit
[Creative Commons licensed photo of Michigan Central Station (abandoned) in Detroit by Flickr user Matt Callow.]

Jack White of the White Stripes hurt some feelings back home when he moved from Detroit to Nashville in 2006. Egos were further bruised when he described the Detroit music scene as “super negative” in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in June.

In order to set things straight, he wrote a poem about his beloved Detroit called ‘Courageous Dream’s Concern.’ Click through to the Detroit Free Press for the poem.
LINK; Neatorama