Metro Times 11/23/22

We received responses to our annual Best of Detroit issue, which featured the results of our reader poll.

Always look forward to it. —Mike Lentine, Facebook

The 2022 Metro Times Best of Detroit issue is out sporting a cover and awesome illustrations by the amazing artist, James Anderson! —John Nagridge, Facebook

Saw American for best Coney. Instantly disregarded the whole list. —Herschel Blue, Facebook

Why is there no good restaurants in

Wayne County outside of Detroit? Bruce Heidelmeyer, Facebook

guys are funny!!! Wayne county... Detroit isn’t the only city yet every winner for Wayne county is basically Mich ave Detroit… mmmmm sounds like y’all need to venture out a bit!!! —Kenisa Gail, Facebook

A few I agree with, but most are BS fufu hipster opinions (read popularity contest nothing to do with food) that matter even less than mine. The best places to go aren’t even listed. Let’s keep it that way. Hipsters ruin it for everyone with their pretentious narcissistic BS! —Brian Carrick, Facebook

Have an opinion? Of course you do! Sound off: letters@metrotimes.com.

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the Detroit area.) Most back issues obtainable for $7 prepaid by mail.

NEWS & VIEWS

Dearborn now has a Narcan vending machine

By Alex Washington

THE OPIOID CRISIS affects many communities, and one Detroit suburb is taking action.

Last week, the Dearborn Department of Public Health (DPH) announced the launch of its first Narcan Vending Station.

The vending machine is located inside of the John D. Dingell Transit Center at 21201 Michigan Ave., and will dispense Narcan free of charge.

Narcan, also known as Naloxone and Kloxxado, is a medication used to reverse the effects of opioids, com monly used to counter decreased breathing during an overdose.

“Dearborn is not immune to the pain and devastation of the opioid epidemic,” DPH Director Ali Abazeed said in a press release. “Our work is about reducing harm and bringing

lifesaving interventions to those clos est to the pain. Narcan is proven to save lives during overdose emergen cies. This medication works. Making it readily available without stigma, shame, or judgment is our top priority.”

The machine was donated from Is lamic Center of Detroit. DPH received the Narcan for free under the Narcan Standing Order from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).

“Everyone should carry Narcan, but especially family and friends of those struggling with opioid use disorder,” Abazeed in the statement. “To those in the midst of that struggle, we want you to know that we have your back. We’re here to support you and that’s what this intervention is about.”

Strike possible for food service workers at Detroit’s convention center

By Steve Neavling

FOOD SERVICE WORKERS at Hun tington Place in downtown Detroit are prepared for a “labor dispute” if they don’t get better wages, working condi tions, and health care benefits, union leaders said Monday.

The workers’ contract with Sodexo, a food service company, expires on Nov. 30.

The workers are represented by Unite Here, a 300,000-member union of hotel and food service workers.

“We’re more than ready to get to the table,” Nia Winston, president of Unite Here Local 24, said at a news confer ence. “Sodexo workers need a raise — point blank, period. Sodexo must understand that wages are not keeping up with the cost of living, and workers are not seeing meaningful raises that

Conservationists: Recovering America’s Wildlife Act critical to save species

By Mark Richardson, Michigan News Connection

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS ARE calling efforts over the past half-century to restore the wild tur key population from the brink of extinction one of America’s greatest wildlife success stories.

Conservationists in Michigan are now calling on Congress to pass pending legislation which would help wildlife agencies duplicate those efforts to save hundreds of threatened species. The bipartisan Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would allocate $1.4 billion annually to protect fish, wildlife, and plants for future generations.

John Kanter, senior biologist for the National Wildlife Federation, said it is a matter of scaling up current efforts to protect more species.

“The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is on the cusp of being passed through Congress,” Kanter explained. “That money would go to states, territories

and tribal nations to restore populations of wildlife.”

Wild turkeys had all but disappeared from Michigan by 1900 due to habitat loss and unregulated hunting. According to Michigan State University, population re-establishment efforts between 1919 and 1983 successfully restored the species in every county of the Lower Peninsula, and some parts of the Upper Peninsula.

The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year and is awaiting action by the Senate, where there are more than 40 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.

Kanter emphasized lawmakers urgently need to ap prove the bill before the current session closes at the end of the year.

“Let’s get to species, understand their populations, what they need to thrive before they head towards

allow them to finally catch up. We’re tired of that and we want it to change.”

Sodexo workers at other conven tion centers are preparing for possible strikes. At the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Sodexo workers unanimously voted to authorize a strike. At the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sodexo workers will hold a strike vote on Dec. and Dec. 8.

Sodexo workers at Huntington Place could hold a strike vote if negotiations aren’t fruitful.

“We’ve had a lot of parties the past six months now. We make sure our jobs get done, but I don’t feel appreciation or respect,” said Kiara Smith, a steward employed by Sodexo at Huntington Place. “If we had a raise, I’d be able to pay my bills on time. The company can

extinction,” Kanter advised.

Kanter noted in the 1950s, there were only about 30,000 wild turkeys left in the country, but a concert ed effort by government agencies and conservation groups between 1970 and the early 2000s restored habitat and reintroduced turkeys to places where they had been eliminated. There are currently an estimat ed million wild turkeys across the U.S.

COURTESY PHOTO

COURTESY

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see that I’m a good worker, but I want that to be felt too. The way for the com pany to show they feel that is a strong contract for us.”

Winston said one of her priorities is that the predominantly Black service staff at Huntington Place is treated with respect.

“My understanding is that Sodexo is a company that talks a lot about DEI — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” Winston said. “In Detroit, where the majority of workers at the Convention Center are Black, we are going to be laser-focused on making sure Sodexo’s values extend from corporate staff to the frontline workers who serve food and beverages every single day.”

At its peak, Unite Here represents about 200 employees at Huntington Place.

Unite Here supported workers who went on strike at the reat Lakes Coffee Roasting Co.

Striking workers shut down Lansing Starbucks on Red Cup Day

By Randiah Camille Green

STARBUCKS WORKERS ACROSS the country are participating in a “Red Cup Rebellion” labor strike for the chain’s Red Cup Day.

In Lansing, Starbucks workers shut down the store at 2624 Lake Lansing Rd. after a majority joined the picket line.

“Our goal was to shut it down and we did,” Grace Norris, who works at the shop, tells Metro Times. “We’re trying to show Starbucks that we’re serious and we’re coordinated on a national level.”

More than 100 Starbucks locations na tionwide, including seven in Michigan, have gone on strike on Thursday, Nov. 17 in an effort organized by Starbucks Workers United. It’s being called the Red Cup Rebellion as a clap back to the chain’s Red Cup Day, where customers are given a reusable Starbucks-branded cup.

The Lake Lansing and Kerry Street Starbucks where Norris works voted to unionize 13-3 in June. She says the work ers have repeatedly attempted to meet and bargain with Starbucks for a new contract but the company continues to give them the run-around.

“On Oct. 25 Starbucks agreed to sit down at the table with us and we were so excited,” she says, noting that meetings with Starbucks have been held both vir tually and in person. “What Starbucks does is they come and sit down and say that they don’t like that we’re includ ing bargaining members over Zoom and then they leave, wasting everyone’s time.”

She adds, “We would love to sit down

and bargain with them if they would actually sit down and bargain with us.”

Norris says the union has reasonable contract demands and isn’t asking for anything outrageous.

“One of those things is improved scheduling to make our lives easier but also so customers don’t have such long

wait times because we are such a high volume store,” she notes. “This union fight is as much for us and our store as it is for the customers.”

Workers shut down the Lake Lansing and Kerry Street location around p.m. on Thursday and plan to stay on the picket line until around 10:30 p.m.

So far, 12 Michigan Starbucks have formed a union, joining a wave that began last December when a New York store became the chain’s first union ized company-owned location in the country.

Another location in Royal Oak filed a petition for a union in October.

Detroit’s RecoveryPark ordered to repay $750,000 in loans

By Lee DeVito

DETROIT’S RECOVERYPARK

HAS been ordered to repay $750,000 in Michigan Strategic Fund loans, a new setback for the nonprofit that was once a media darling for its mission to provide farming jobs for formerly incarcerated people.

According to an order from an In gham County Circuit Court reported by Crain’s Detroit Business last week, the order stems from a May lawsuit filed by assistant attorneys general representing the Michigan Strategic Fund that said Recovery Park and its for-profit subsidiary failed to meet a final milestone as part of the agreement. RecoveryPark failed to hire six more employees, as promised, and also missed a deadline to repay the loan in install ments.

“We’re a little confused and frustrated to say the least,” Recov eryPark chairman Pat Crosson told Crain’s. “We met every single mile stone except the last six employees.”

RecoveryPark was founded by Gary Wozniak, a former addict who was sentenced to five years in a federal prison for fraud. After struggling to find work after he was released and sensing the farm-to-table trend gaining popularity in the dining scene, he came up with the idea that customers might be willing to pay a premium for food if they knew it was grown for a good cause.

His story was picked up by national outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and The New York Times, and earned praised from Detroit Mayor Mike

Duggan. Since 2013, RecoveryPark has been raising money to construct eight hoop houses in Detroit to hire formerly incarcerated people and people recovering from addictions, and to ultimately build a larger 1.5acre glass greenhouse as part of a $13 million vision.

The project has yet to materialize. Last year, Metro Times found the RecoveryPark site in disrepair, which Wozniak blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Crain’s, RecoveryPark’s problems started before the pandemic as it struggled with finances, and it petitioned the state for loan forgiveness in 2019.

Nevertheless, Crosson told Crain’s that RecoveryPark is still intends to move forward with the project.

COURTESY OF MATTHEW KAIN

NEWS & VIEWS

The Incision

running for president again. Here’s what you can do to avoid helping his campaign.

By Abdul El-Sayed

Donald Trump is running for president again. Winners don’t run three times in three cycles. Only losers do. And Donald Trump is the Biggest Loser.

But there’s one hitch. Donald Trump is the biggest loser who just about everyone feels the need to pay atten tion to. There is of course the “Trump or Death” crowd who showed up to his Mar-a-Lago announcement yesterday. On the other side, there’s the resistance crowd that is already gearing up to resist the buffoon at every turn. And then there’s everyone else who’s forced to pay attention by a media ecosystem that’s gearing up to monetize the other two.

This time around, we have to stop rewarding Trump-bait. When you see that chyron or that headline about what Trump said or what Trump did this time — don’t click on it. Don’t watch it. In fact, stop reading this article!

… But if you’re still reading, I want to explain why. Trump gamed the entire media ecosystem into covering his ev ery move and utterance. He forged the media — which he claims to despise — into his most powerful weapon. But the real culprit wasn’t the media alone, it was the rest of us who rewarded them so handsomely for covering him. We couldn’t get enough, so they couldn’t

produce enough Trump content. A vi cious feedback cycle took hold.

The clicks and the views, the eye balls and the eardrums — that’s the media business model, after all. Love him or hate him, Trump sells clicks. He’s a self-indulgent narcissist with no shame, no respect for the truth, and an insatiable desire to be in the limelight. Those things make him a terrible person but they also make him a hell of a showman. He’s turned politics into showbiz. That ability to become every newsroom’s assignment editor — to command the attention of his most adoring fans and his most reviled opponents — that’s what made him president.

Stopping that feedback cycle means turning him off, tuning him out — actually treating him like the big loser he is. And if we want him to lose again, we have to rob him of the narcissist’s oxygen: attention.

Make no mistake. Trump is running for two reasons. First, his narcissism can’t let his loss go unavenged. Second, he thinks being a candidate for political office is a helpful asset with which to deflect various incoming legal indict ments related to Jan. 6, his overall effort to overthrow the 2020 election, and the fact that he stole classified documents when his jig was up.

Because those are the only things motivating him, he’s inevitably going to run a campaign on grievance and personal pettiness — for the next two years. If the 2022 midterms are any indication, that’s not a winning politi cal formula. He is, after all, the Biggest Loser.

But ignoring him is going to be hard. There’s the collective PTSD from the trauma of those years — the “Muslim ban,” the love letters with despots, the Mueller saga, the interminable COVID press conferences, the hateful racism in the summer of 2020. All of it leaves us that much more sensitive, that much more attuned to every new sleight.

And Trump is more unhinged than ever. Where his 2016 and 2020 cam paigns always had a certain winkand-nod quality to them, that his supporters were all in on some sort of sick and twisted joke — this Trump is motivated by darker stuff. He seethes at the indignation that legitimately lost his election. And he’ll weaponize that anger in more extreme, more incendiary rhetoric.

But we don’t have to pay attention. So can we not?

Originally published Nov. 17 in The Incision. Get more: abdulelsayed.substack. com.

He’s

We need to treat Trump like the big loser he is.

DAN KECK, FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS

BY JENN DIZE AND AFENI EVANS

IT TOOK FOUR YEARS FOR THE FBI

to release its file on Aretha Franklin. Requested via the Freedom of Information Act in 2018, the heavily redacted documents are filled with racist language and extreme surveillance of the late Detroit-based singer and activist. Based on the agency’s admissions, Franklin never did anything wrong. The overstepping surveillance revealed has shocked the nation, but strikes particularly close to home for Michiganders.

With some documents newly declassified earlier this year, the 270-page file spans the years 1967 to 2007 and shows how the agency subjected the Queen of Soul to the sort of surveillance and interference that was placed on contemporaries like Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, and Angela Davis via an FBI program designed to, among other things, infiltrate, surveil, and disrupt the civil rights movement — and Black lives.

First obtained by this journalist and published in Rolling Stone, documents in the files are written with a clear distrust of the Queen of Soul by the agency, show intense surveillance of her movements and infiltration of Black spaces, and use racist terminology throughout. The FBI seemed intent on linking Franklin to “militant Black power,” radicalism, extremism, and racial violence, according to the documents. Some are questioning how much has changed in the agency’s tactics in recent years, based on available evidence.

The FBI has declined multiple requests for comment for this story.

KEY FINDINGS IN ARETHA FRANKLIN’S FBI FILES:

• An FBI source said Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference — asso-

ciated with Franklin and her minister father Clarence L. Franklin — “has taken a hate America and pro-communist line, which the mass of Negroes will not recognize but which they will blindly follow.”

• Details of the singer’s addresses and phone numbers and that of her team, including famed Atlantic Records producer and executive Jerry Wexler, were tracked and commented on by agents over time.

• Tactics such as false phone calls were made by the FBI as part of an attempt to link Franklin to extremism.

• Unrelated disruptions at events associated with Franklin, such as an unruly audience at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado following a canceled gig, were labeled as racial violence.

• Daily schedules and movements were leaked from within the civil rights movement to the FBI via informants.

• After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the FBI was concerned that Franklin, Sammy Davis Jr., Marlon Brando, Mahalia Jackson, and the Supremes were to perform at a memorial event, saying “of this group, some have supported militant Black power concept and been in forefront of various civil rights movements.”

• The FBI made repeated attempts to link Franklin to extremism or any “radical” movement — but they were never able to do it.

You can download Franklin’s full FBI file at vault. fbi.gov/aretha-franklin.

DETROIT’S SHINING STAR FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

Aretha Franklin was part of Detroit’s fabric from a young age, and quickly became an international sensation. The late Congressman John Lewis, who

passed away two years following Franklin’s 2018 death, said, “If it hadn’t been for Aretha — and others, but particularly Aretha — the Civil Rights Movement would have been a bird without wings.” It was this notoriety as a popular Black singer, along with Frank lin’s monetary and physical support of the civil rights movement, that seemingly raised the FBI’s suspicion.

Of her 1967 track “Respect,” Franklin wrote in her book Aretha: From These Roots, “It [reflected] the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher —everyone wanted re spect. It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. The song took on monumental significance.”

As her star ascended, in 1969, Franklin was arrested for disorderly conduct after a minor traffic accident in Highland Park, and was released after posting a $50 bail. Famously, and to the apparent ire of the FBI, Franklin offered to post bail for activist Angela Davis when she was jailed the next year in connection with an escape attempt of prisoners from a California courtroom. Franklin said, “whether it’s $100,000 or $250,000 … Angela Davis must go free … Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up [for disturbing the peace in Detroit], and I know you’ve got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace … I have the money; I got it from Black people — they’ve made me financially able to have it, and I want to use it in ways that will help our people.”

Additionally, of her constant support, Reverend Jesse Jackson said, “When Dr. King was alive, several times she helped us make payroll. On one occasion, we took an 11-city tour with her as Aretha Franklin and Harry Belafonte … and they put gas in the vans. She did 11 concerts for free and hosted us at her home.

It was for these things, among many other reasons, that the Queen of Soul was beloved above and beyond her talent as a singer.

Franklin’s youngest son, Kecalf Franklin, tells us this in light of the newly revealed FBI documents.

“The Franklin family is very proud of our family’s vast contribution to the civil rights movement,” he says. “My mother and my grandfather both sacrificed and endured hostility, racism, and violence in pursuit of justice for all. My mom had a great love for our people and great compassion for the hardships caused by oppression and racism. So many perceive my mother as an entertainer and overlook her contributions of activism. Over and over throughout her life, my mom used her voice to fight against racism and discrimination...”

Kecalf Franklin and other family members not only have had to endure the FBI’s actions surrounding their matriarch, but are also in an estate dispute held up by legal red tape and politics, which has been particularly distressing.

THE U.S. HISTORY OF RACIST SURVEILLANCE

The Queen of Soul was not the first to be surveilled as a Black artist and supporter of civil rights, and we already have evidence to show similar surveillance is ongoing. A particularly egregious early case by a U.S. government agency came in the form of the now-dissolved Federal Bureau of Narcotics endlessly targeting Billie Holiday for singing “Strange Fruit,” a song about the lynching of Black people in protest against racism and white supremacy.

Between the years 1956 to 1971, the FBI’s civil

rights-targeting activities fell under the program COINTELPRO, through which Franklin was moni tored. Through COINTELPRO, the FBI monitored and surveilled Black activists, leftists, and anti-war proponents, infiltrating organizations and civil rights groups and using tactics such as writing a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. urging him to kill himself. The FBI also led a war on Black-owned bookstores and other “non-celebrity” establishments that had any influence in a community. To the pub lic, largely unaware but with many suspecting, the surveillance was everywhere.

The FBI’s COINT LPRO thrived on infiltration and division and wasn’t limited to those in Detroit with celebrity status like Franklin. In 1970, the FBI sent a false letter as part of a memo titled “COIN TELPRO–NEW LEFT” in an attempt to divide inter ests and allegiances between the leftist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party.

In a now declassified document, the FBI outlined its efforts, saying, “Detroit is drafting an anonymous letter incorporating the suggestion of the Chicago office regarding efforts to further expand the rift between the SDS and the Black Panther Party (BPP). The potential counter-intelligence action mentioned above will be submitted to the Bureau before it is implemented.” Authority to send this letter was granted on Feb. 10, 1970, with a note saying, “The letter would purportedly be from a black militant who has become disenchanted with SDS and who accuses SDS of using blacks. Since the letter may serve to widen the split, it is being approved.”

The fraudulent FBI letter, written as if it were from a Black member of the Black Panther Party, stated, “Since when do us Blacks have to swallow the dictates of the honky SDS? Doing this only hinders the Party progress in gaining Black control over Black people. We’ve been fucked over by the white facists pigs and the Man’s control over our destiny … The damn SCS is a paper organization with a severe case of diarhea of the mouth which has done nothing but feed us lip service … They call themselves revolutionaries but look at who they are. Most of them come from well heeled families even by honky standards. They think they’re help ing us Blacks but their futile, misguided and above all white efforts only muddy the revolutionary waters. … The time has come for an absolute break with any non-Black group and especially those nitshit SDS and a return to our pursuit of a pure black revolution by Blacks for Blacks.”

Following the release of Franklin’s FBI files, Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU’s National Security Project, tells Metro Times: “It’s shameful but unsurprising that the FBI kept tabs on this legendary Black woman, who was an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, during an earlier era of abuses in the name of national security.”

Shamsi continues, “Unfortunately, abuses of this kind still continue today because after 9/11, the Justice Department loosened important safeguards put in place to protect everyone’s rights and privacy. That’s why it’s so important now for the Justice Department to revise its racial profiling guidance and close the loopholes in it that permit the FBI and other federal agencies to carry out bias-based surveillance and investigations.”

In 2011, the ACLU obtained documents that showed the FBI was targeting Arab American and Muslim

communities in metro Detroit, looking for alleged links to terrorist groups. “The use of profiling as a tool to address crime and national security threats is not only unconstitutional, it is ineffective and counterpro ductive,” said Michael German, an ACLU senior policy counsel and a former FBI agent, at the time. “Target ing entire communities for investigation based on erroneous stereotypes produces flawed intelligence.” And last year, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Dearborn man who was added to the FBI’s “No Fly List” after he refused to become an informant for the agency. Critics say the FBI used the list as a way to coerce Muslims to become informants.

DID THE FBI PROTECT ARETHA FRANKLIN ENOUGH?

While the surveillance of Aretha Franklin has captured a lot of attention, questions remain about how the FBI handled threats to her life. In just one example in the files, heavily redacted documents show a man sent a disturbing handwritten letter stating to Franklin and her family, saying, “I’m still in charge of you … your advisors do not know the danger of neglecting what I’m saying.”

Despite the threat, the FBI declined to fingerprint the handwritten letter and the SDNY declined to prosecute

Metro Times spoke to retired FBI supervisory spe cial agent Mark Chidichimo, who was not involved in any investigation to do with Aretha Franklin, for comment on why an FBI office would decline to fingerprint such a letter and why the United States Attorney for SDNY would decline to prosecute.

“For me … if the fingerprints were on file, what harm is it ” he says. “Send it off to the FBI lab … that’s a little bit suspect to me. I’ll be 100% honest with you. When I read that, my first impression was, well, why didn’t they send it off ”

THE FBI’S RACIST SURVEILLANCE OF BLACK PEOPLE NEVER STOPPED

The FBI claims to have been long reformed after it escaped the looming J. dgar Hoover, after

whose tenure it created term limits for directors, but many activists and Black leaders dispute things have changed. In 2019, journalist Ken Klippenstein reported modern, leaked FBI files. The documents are marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive” and “For Official Use Only.” Labels refer to a supposed threat of “Black Identity xtremists” and reference a pro gram codenamed IRON FIST, which uses undercover agents. The term “Black Identity xtremism” created anger and frustration following what happened with COINTELPRO, leading Senator Cory Booker to question FBI director Christopher Wray on use of the term.

Frustrations among modern activists remain high, particularly because of a rise in violent white su premacy in recent years, which some believe receives less focus as an agency target than movements like Black Lives Matter.

In 2020, the FBI’s Black Identity xtremists label was changed to “RMVEs [Racially Motivated Violent xtremists].” Specifically, the documents note anger felt by activists and in Black communities due to “perceptions of police brutality against African Americans,” which is indisputably not just a “perception.”

Of these files and noting their timing, a source now-retired from the FBI tells Metro Times, “I would not be surprised that the reason that Black extremist groups were placed high on the list was an appease ment to the Trump White House.”

In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union and MediaJustice filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to acquire FBI records showcasing the targeting of Black activists — specifically, of what the ACLU has called a “fictitious group of so-called Black Identity xtremists.’”

“The lawsuit enforces the ACLU and MediaJustice’s right to information about a 2017 FBI Intelligence Assessment that asserts, without evidence, that a group of so-called Black Identity xtremists’ poses a threat of domestic terrorism,” the organiza tions said, adding, “The FBI’s creation of a ‘Black Identity xtremist’ threat label is the latest example in a sordid history of efforts to harass, discredit, and disrupt Black activists who advocate against white supremacy and racial injustice.”

‘OUR LADY OF MYSTERIOUS SORROWS’

Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler said of Aretha Franklin, “I think of Aretha as Our Lady of Mysterious Sorrows. Her eyes are incredible, luminous eyes covering inexplicable pain. Her depressions could be as deep as the dark sea. I don’t pretend to know the sources of her anguish, but anguish surrounds Aretha as surely as the glory of her musical aura.”

The FBI found nothing on Franklin, and the public has been shocked as to the depth of surveillance since these files were uncovered. It isn’t possible for us to know how or if the FBI’s actions caused her any of that pain. Of all of this, civil rights activist and author Dr. Cornel West tells us, “The FBI should be ashamed of its illegal and immoral treatment of the Queen of Soul!”

Franklin’s son Kecalf reminds us in light of these documents, “[My mother] demonstrated and supported the civil rights movement in her art, on all platforms, monetarily and spiritually … to achieve civil justice for all.”

HELP WANTED PROJECT ENGINEER

Responsible for all aspects of prod. design and the devel. process of all assigned proj./prog. at our Auburn Hills facility. e Project Engineer will also perform the following duties: Lead chassis and suspension prod. design and the devel. cycle for assigned prog. with supervision; Lead, plan and track engineering activities and design reviews with a cross-functional team; Identify design solutions necessary to meet the required engineering, manufacturing, and nancial targets within program timing; Prepare and maintain up-to-date engineering records according to APQP and QMS requirements and participate and fully understands QMS/ QOS as it pertains to the job and support functions as applicable. Maintain engineering documents, like bill of materials, DVP&R, DFMEA; Initiate and implement continuous improvement suggestions, like VA/VE; Work as part of the design and devel. team by providing design and analysis direction; Participate with the Manufacturing Division to form a multidisciplinary team for review of both prod. and process designs to ensure that DFMEA requirements are met; Meet with the customer one-on-one within the scope of the PD&D process; Host customer PDT meetings and internal meetings to track engineering, manufacturing, CAE, and commercial items; Investigate and meet design, performance and GD&T requirement from the customers. Support the plant team for program safe launch, like solving assembly or quality issues.

Must have a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Must also have twenty four (24) months of Design Engineering experience with auto-industry related processes and standards, such as DFMEA, DVP&R or GD&T. Position requires occasional travel to client sites around the United States.

Send resume and cover letter to: HR Department, Martinrea International US Inc, 2100 N. Opdyke Rd., Auburn Hills, MI 48326

WHAT’S GOING ON

Select events happening in metro Detroit this week. Be sure to check all venue website before events for latest information. Add your event to our online calendar: metrotimes.com/AddEvent.

Wednesday, Nov. 23

Live/Concert

Bit Brigade, Super Guitar Bros pm-midnight; The Sanctuary, 29 2 Caniff St., Detroit; $18.

Cristoph + Spencer Brown pm; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $15+.

Danny Brown: Bruiser Thanksgiving pm-2 am; Russell Industrial Center, 1600 Clay Ave., Detroit; $25.

I Prevail: True Power Tour 6 pm; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $37+.

Koffin Kats pm; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $15.

The Smiths United pm; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $20.

THEATER Performance Musical

Elf the Musical (Touring) 7:30 pm, 7:30 pm, 10 am, pm and 1:30 pm; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $35+.

Hamilton (Touring) pm and pm; Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd, Detroit; $69-$249.

Friday, Nov. 25

Live/Concert

Acronical, Katharsis, Epic Dissapointments, Stonecrest, Henry with ETC, Melodic Canvas, O’Claire, Voniget, Soccer 6 pm; Sanctuary Detroit, 29 2 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $10.

Amon Amarth - The Great Heathen Tour with Special Guests 5:30 pm; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $34-$79.50.

Jawbone / The Paul Einhaus Arrest pm; PJ’s Lager House, 1254 Michigan Ave., Detroit; $10.

Mac Saturn pm; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $19.50.

Mega 80s - Post Thanksgiving Party pm; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $20.

The Deadbeats w/ Zeds Dead pm; Detroit Masonic Temple Library, 500 Temple St, Detroit;

THE DOLLY DISCO: The Dolly Parton-Inspired Country Western Dance Party pm; Pike Room, S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $12.

The New Old, Nick Piunti & The Complicated Men, Black Feather pm; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $12.

Trey Connor, Marqu3tte, Danny Vanzandt, Jake McArthur pm; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $10.

DJ/Dance

David Penn with Marina, Esshaki, Tokka pm; Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $15-$20.

Fast & Loose w/ DJ Nervous Recs + special guests pm-2 am; Second Best, 42 Watson St., Detroit; Free.

THEATER

Performance

Meadow Brook Theatre A Christmas Carol $42 pm, 6:30 pm and 6:30 pm.

Planet Ant Theatre Holy Toledo! A Sketch Original Comedy. $15 advance, $20. Door pm.

Musical

Elf the Musical (Touring) 7:30 pm, 7:30 pm, 10 am, pm, and 1:30 pm; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $35-$75.

Hamilton (Touring) and pm; Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd, Detroit; $69-$249; 313-972-1135; www. thezenithatthefisher.com/.

COMEDY

Improv

Go Comedy! Improv Theater Name This Show $20 10 pm.; Free 11:45 pm.

Stand-up

Opening

The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant Josh Adams Presents: Crowded Comedy Show $10. 8:30-10:30 pm.

Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle Comedian Mike Cronin with Khurum Sheikh and Dave Mishevitz. $20.00 7:158:45 9:45-11:15 pm and 7-8:30 9:30-11 pm.

Continuing is Week Stand-up

The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant $10. 8-9 pm.

SPORTS Hockey

18 November 23-29, 2022 | metrotimes.com

Little Caesars Arena Detroit Red Wings vs. Arizona Coyotes $65-$325.25 7:30 pm.

Saturday, Nov. 26 Live/Concert

Bobby Shmurda Presents The Bodmon Tour with Special Guests pm; The Fillmore, 2115 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $25-$75.

Class of 98 Band, The 90s Party Palooza pm; Magic Bag, 22920 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $12.

Modern Color, They Are Gutting

A Body of Water, Soft Blue Shimmer and Mofie pm-midnight; Sanctuary Detroit, 29 2 Caniff, Hamtramck; 20.

Modern Color, They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, Soft Blue Shimmer, Mofie, Clipboards pm; Sanctuary Detroit, 29 2 Caniff St., Hamtramck; $15.

The North 41 wsg The

Paddlebots, Jacob Sigman 8-11 pm; The Parliament Room at Otus Supply, 345 Nine Mile Rd, Ferndale; $15.00.

Shrek Rave pm; Pike Room, S. Saginaw, Pontiac; $15.

The Plot In You: SWAN SONG NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 6 pm; Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress St., Detroit; $20.

Tribute to FOO FIGHTERSFOREVER FOO pm; The Token Lounge, 28949 Joy Rd., Westland; $10.

THEATER Performance

Harmonie Club The Immersive Nutcracker.

Meadow Brook Theatre A Christmas Carol. $42.

Planet Ant Theatre Holy Toledo! A Sketch Original Comedy. $20 Door 8-10 pm.

Magic of Lights drive-through display returns to illuminate Pine Knob

MORE THAN 2 million lights includ ing a 32-foot tall waving Barbie display will illuminate Pine Knob for this year’s Magic of Lights display.

The drive-through holiday show features more than a mile of animated LED light displays with themes like 12 Days of Christmas, Winter Wonder land, Prehistoric Christmas, and The Night Before Christmas. There are also Mega Tree displays and a drivethrough Blizzard Tunnel to experience, without ever leaving your car.

Magic of Lights opened on Friday, Nov. 18, and runs daily through Satur

day, Dec. 31.

Hours are 5:30-10 p.m. SundayThursday and until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. It’s open on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve with shortened hours until p.m.

Standard passes start at $20 a car for weekdays and $25 for Fridays and Saturdays if you buy online in advance.

— Randiah Camille Green

For more info and tickets, see magi co i ts.com e e ts cl r sto .

COURTESY PHOTO

Musical

Elf the Musical (Touring) Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $35-$75.

Hamilton (Touring) Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd, Detroit; $69-$249.

COMEDY

Improv

Go Comedy! Improv Theater AllStar Showdown $20 10 pm.; Free. Stand-up Opening

Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle Mike Cronin with Khurum Sheikh and Dave Mishevitz. $20.

Continuing is Week Stand-up

The Independent Comedy Club at Planet Ant Cocktail Comedy Hour. $10. 8-9 pm.

University of Michigan Museum of Art We Write to You About Africa. Free.

Bene t Opening

The Loving Touch Old Soul Vintage presents: 5th Annual For the Periods Charity Event. $10 or physical donation pm-midnight.

Sunday, Nov. 27 Live/Concert

K. Michelle 7:30 pm; Sound Board, 2901 Grand River Ave., Detroit; $55-$68.

Saxappeal + The Crü Live 7-10 pm; Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, 20510 Livernois Ave., Detroit; $15.

Sunday Jam Sessions Hosted by Sky Covington & Friends pm-midnight; Woodbridge Pub, 5169 Trumbull St., Detroit; donation.

Wild Pink, Trace Mountains pm; The Loving Touch, 22634 Woodward Ave., Ferndale; $16.

DJ/Dance

Bar Wars w/ Chuck D and TRBLMAKR 10-11:45 pm; Fifth Avenue Novi, 25750 Novi Rd., Novi; $5.

THEATER

Performance

Harmonie Club The Immersive Nutcracker - Detroit.

Meadow Brook Theatre A Christmas Carol. $42.

The Music Hall Lightwire Theatre A Very Electric Christmas $15-$25. pm. Musical

Elf the Musical (Touring) 7:30 pm, 7:30 pm, 10 am, pm, and 1:30 pm; Fox Theatre, 2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit; $35-$75.

Hamilton (Touring) pm and pm; Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd, Detroit; $69+.

Local

buzz

roccoli oe immer

Welcome to a new column about Detroit’s music scene. Got a tip? Hit us up at music@metrotimes.com!

Whiterosemoxie shines: 300 Enter tainment via Assemble Sound artist whiterosemoxie is one of the most promising in the city when it comes to forward-thinking trap that distinguish es itself from the modern Detroit sound coming from the likes of Sada Baby and Icewear Vezzo. In “Wayside,” the blownout bass and delicate piano sample coupled with moxie’s vocal treatment sounds more like a Rodeo-era Travis Scott than anything coming from Detroit contemporaries, but there’s just enough bravado and swagger to make it feel right at home. Beyond the track itself, the video is also spectacular; there’s enough going on to keep your attention without doing too much, the color palettes build upon the brood ing yet boisterous vibe, and the overall execution paints moxie as a champion of the next generation of Detroit rap’s sound. With influences coming from all over and a hometown team of fellow collaborators to be reckoned with, it would seem that we could be witness ing the foundation of one of the next big careers to come out of Detroit right in front of our eyes.

NOLAN drops new single: You may know NOLAN a Nolan the Ninja for his affinity for old-school style beats

and carefully crafted wordplay, having performed at multiple J Dilla tribute shows and worked with artists such as Royce da 5’9”, among others. All that said, his work over the past few years has continued to push the boundaries of his expanding style, and “HOUND STOOTH” certainly builds on that progression. Over a VIBSNDS-pro duced beat, NOLAN effortlessly dances between 808s and ethereal textures with a delivery that exhibits a modern take on lyricism and wordplay while still staying true to his roots. In his own words: “My aim is to always keep things ‘classic’ in my work. In other words, preserve culture. Houndstooth is a classic global design but nobody wears it like a woman does. Not to mention a Black woman! And although the lyrics may suggest some toxicity, this track is really for the ladies!”

SNAFU is catching fire: Detroit has always been host to a flurry of excit ing hardcore punk and metal acts and venues since the invention of the genre in the early 1980s. Of course, you can’t talk about that era without mention ing Negative Approach and its lasting influence on the entire midwest sector (and lead singer John Brannon’s famous snarl). The band still performs live, with Brannon at the helm, and it’s al

ways worth checking out the other acts they share the bill with. Rising local act SNAFU will share such a bill with Neg ative Approach on Dec. 17 at hardcore stronghold Sanctuary. The band has kept up a rigorous live show schedule over the past year, supporting its latest album Exile//Banishment put out in 2021 on Housecore records (another big co-sign for the band from label founder and Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo). If you’re looking for a facemelting, blood-pumping show to thaw you out this winter, get to this gig.

Shells releases cassette of ambient guitar work: On the opposite side of the spectrum from the aforementioned “face-melting” and “blood-pumping,” but also offering a seasonal balm, we have a new release from the prolific Shells. Shelley Sallant has played a crucial role in countless Detroit (and Ann Arbor-area) bands and DIY spaces. Under their Shells moniker, Sallant produces gorgeous guitar-based atmospheric tracks, fit for lounging in a sunbeam while admiring beautiful Michigan snowfalls. Sallant’s newest collection is called “Outside” released on Astral Editions, and features Shells’s signature blend of intricate guitar work built layer upon layer to create captivat ing compositions. You can also check out Sallant’s noisier work as a member of the punk outfits Tyvek or , to hear the full spectrum of their musical offerings.

metrotimes.com

Rising Detroit rapper whiterosemoxie.

UNITED TALENT AGENCY

A pizza that lives up to the hype

By Tom Perkins

For those unfamiliar, Fredi

The PizzaMan is a pizzaiola whose Melvindale shop for several decades could have qualified for “hidden gem” status a small pizzeria just down the street from the dozens of factories compris ing the region’s industrial heart, and an owner who boasts that he has never advertised.

That all changed in early 2021 when Dave Portnoy — the controversial founder of the Barstool Sports site who also moonlights as a popular pizza critic — paid a visit to Fredi’s. The pizza, Portnoy declared, was “the best in Detroit. Hands down, bar none.”

Oh, really That’s a bold statement to make here. The Dequindre Road “Pizza Corridor” is the birthplace of Detroitstyle pizza, and the region may have more slices per capita than any metro area outside of NYC. When you’re talk ing about the best pizzas in Detroit, you are by extension having a conversa tion about the nation’s best pies. And though Portnoy went to University of Michigan, one has to wonder how well he’s acquainted with the likes of Loui’s, HenriettaHaus, and other area heavy weights.

My knowledge of Fredi’s was mostly limited to driving by it on the way to a

nearby vet. The signage advertised goulash, which seemed unique and worth checking out, and I had also heard about Fredi’s in conversation, but it wasn’t until recently that I put together all the pieces. Late to the game, I prioritized a visit to find out if the Fredi lives up to the hype, and what to make of one of the region’s few purveyors of Italian goulash.

The quick verdict Dang, the hype is legit.

Fredi’s game is about thin crust pies that out of the oven are shatter crisp and at times almost cracker-like. A few bites even seemed like a mix of New York-style and New Haven-style. The crust’s bottom bears the leopard print char marks that you’d find in a Neapoli tan pie, and it is an altogether superb foundation.

Importantly, the ingredients Fredi lays across the dough are top-notch. More than one pizzeria I can think of ruins an otherwise stellar pie by using low-grade cheese or toppings. Fredi’s ingredients are all solid, especially the killer sauce, which is what drives an other of the pizzas’ best attributes they are exceptionally bright. I suspect that has to do with the use of highly acidic, mineral-heavy San Marzanos that are

among the world’s brightest. Fredi also seemed to have liberally applied basil, another brightening agent, across everything we ordered. reat idea.

The pizza menu is divided into two sections, margherita and whole. It’s an interesting approach, and the marg does what an excellent marg is sup posed to do — showcase the ingredi ents and their simplicity. Fredi’s has just cheese, sauce, olive oil, and basil. We added tomato, which usually comes standard but has to be ordered sepa rately, and the olive margherita was the same except green olives were swapped in for the tomatoes, producing a very fine, saltier version of the classic.

We also got the Clemenza with spinach, sausage, fresh mozz, and the red sauce, and “The Fredo”, which is Fredi’s take on the Buffalo pie made with hunks of chicken, creamy Buffalo ranch sauce, and basil. It’s among the best Buffalo pies I’ve tried.

oulash is typically known as the national dish of Hungary, but Italians make their own pasta-heavy version. Fredi’s is hearty, a real wintertime comfort dish packed with big hunks of green pepper, onion, beef, and, like everything here, is exceptionally bright, likely owing to the pool of tomato sauce

that the elbow pasta and other ingre dients swim in. The calzone was also excellent, stuffed full of ricotta and Ital ian sausage with red sauce and plenty of basil on top.

Take note that the only way to interact with Fredi’s is to go there. The shop no longer has a phone number, and our attempts to get in touch with him and the waitress via social media to ask some questions for the review were unsuccessful. It’s open daily except Monday from 10 0 a.m. until 5 p.m., or until they sell out, and it gets busy fast.

So is Fredi’s the best pizza in metro Detroit, and, by extension, among the nation’s top pies We’ll stop just short of crowning a new king, but it’s surely part of the conversation, and stands out in a crowded field.

Melvindale’s Fredi The PizzaMan was praised by Barstool Sports. TOM PERKINS

Where to eat on Thanksgiving in metro Detroit if you don’t want to cook

By Randiah Camille Green

THANKSGIVING IS GREAT and all, but sometimes we’re just too lazy to cook. In lieu of our wanting to enjoy a grand feast without slaving away in front of the stove, here’s where you can get Thanksgiving dinner around metro Detroit. We’ve included both dine-in and to-go options, depending on whether you want to venture out or eat at home in your pajamas. Note that some places require reservations and have a cut-off for placing carry-out or ders. (This list will be updated online as we find more. ot a suggestion Send it to eat@metrotimes.com.)

Dine-in

The Apparatus Room: This swanky restaurant in the Detroit Foundation Hotel is offering a family-style multicourse feast for $78 per person from 4-9 p.m. Highlights include juniperroasted venison with baked onion, sunchokes and cranberry wojapi, and a roasted pumpkin salad. For vegans and vegetarians, the restaurant also offers a completely plant-based menu with options like a smoked celery root bake with leeks and mushrooms. Pair it with a mean cocktail (or a convincing nonalcoholic version) from the bar.

250 W. Larned St., Detroit; 313-800-5600; detroitfoundationhotel.com/apparatusroom

Symposia: reektown newcomer Sym posia will be open for dine-in from 4-10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Its regular a la carte menu will be on offer in addi tion to a Thanksgiving dinner of turkey breast, glace de volaille, cranberry and Blood orange chutney, and brioche pain en cocotte for $30.

1000 Brush St., Detroit; 313-962-2323; symposiadetroit.com

San Morello: The Italian fine-dining spot inside Shinola Hotel has a threecourse menu and a la carte menu that will be served from noon-9 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Menu options include wild mushroom risotto, pumpkin agnolotti, squid ink paccheri, short rib braciole, roasted Atlantic cod, and turkey with marsala gravy and smoked squash puree, plus dessert. The prix-fixe menu is $100 per person and

several a la carte takeout options are available including a turkey feast for $95 a person.

1400 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-209-4700; sanmorello.com

Madam: Why choose when you can have it all Daxton Hotel’s Madam has a grand Thanksgiving buffet from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. It includes everything from a carving station with Amish turkey and ham to a mimosa and hot choco late bar. The buffet is $165 for adults, $60 for children ages 6-12, and free for kids under 5.

298 S. Old Woodward Ave., Birmingham; 248-686-7004; daxtonhotel.com

The Whitney: Detroit’s historic restaurant will serve a traditional Thanks giving dinner with turkey and gravy, stuffing, butternut squash bisque, and dessert for $79.95 a person. A vegetar ian option is also available for $69.95.

421 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-832-5700; thewhitney.com

Texas de Brazil: The Brazilian steak house will be open on Thanksgiving day from noon offering its non-stop meat fest and salad bar, plus some holiday classics. Dinner is $49.99. Vegetarians can indulge in the vast salad bar for $31.99.

1000 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-9644333; texasdebrazil.com/locations/detroit

Bravo! Italian Kitchen: Open from

10:30 a.m.-8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day at both its Livonia and Rochester Hills locations. Both dine-in and to-go packages will be available which in clude turkey and gravy, Italian sausage stuffing, veggies, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, focaccia, and pumpkin pie. Dinners feed three people for $105 or six for $192.

17700 Haggerty Rd., Livonia; 734-5915600 | 286 N. Adams Rd., Rochester Hills; 248-375-9644 | bravoitalian.com

To-go

Cucina Lab Torino: For $45 a person, you get all the basics to go including an organic turkey, handmade stuffing, veg gies au gratin, cranberry sauce, creamy mashed potatoes, pumpkin bread rolls, and a caramel walnut pie or Piemontese Patisserie tray. Orders can be placed by phone.

3960 Crooks Rd., Suite 200, Troy; 248-525-9098; cucina-lab.com

Folk: This posh Corktown spot has to-go options including pasture-raised, antibiotic-free turkeys from Pleasant Valley Co-op, fully cooked hams, side dishes, fresh bread and pies from Zing erman’s Bakehouse, and more.

1701 Trumbull Ave., Detroit; 313-742-2672; folkdetroit.com

Marrow: The Eastside Detroit butcher shop and restaurant helmed by Chef Sarah Welch of Top Chef fame is of

fering Michigan-grown turkeys at $7 a pound, smoked ham, and a variety of sides. They also have charcuterie boards ranging from $75 to $100.

8044 Kercheval Ave., Detroit; 313-513-0361; marrowdetroit.com

Hometown Restaurant Group: The folks behind Pop’s for Italian, Tigerlily, One-Eyed Betty’s, and Public House are offering a charitable Friendsgiving Feast for $175. It feeds four people and features half an Amish turkey, mac and cheese and collard greens from Public House, seasonal veggies from Tigerlily, and mashed potatoes from One Eyed Betty’s. For every order of the heat-andserve dinner, a turkey will be donated to Lighthouse MI for families in need. Feasts can be picked up at Pop’s for Italian.

280 W. Nine Mile Rd., Ferndale; 248-268-4806

Hazel’s: If you can handle the turkey, Hazel’s has the sides and deserts taken care of. Some offerings from the Bir mingham spot include whitefish pate, traditional stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese, Sweet Irene’s Pumpkin Pie, coffee cake, and chocolate chip cookies.

1 Peabody St.; Birmingham; 248-671-1714; eatathazels.com

Pink Flamingo To Go: You don’t even have to leave your house to get a Thanksgiving meal from Pink Flamingo To o. The Detroit restaurant is offering single and family-size dinners for delivery and pick-up. Each dinner comes with a main dish, three sides, and dessert. Some menu options are roasted turkey, grilled spatchcocked duck, mac and cheese, cornbread dressing, sunchoke and potato gratin, and salted lavender honey pie. Vegan dishes like wild rice with oyster mush rooms and chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes with miso tahini butter, and a cranberry curd tart are also available. Pickup is available Wednesday, Nov. 23 only starting at p.m. Orders can be placed online.

17740 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-826-1454

COURTESY OF THE APPARATUS ROOM

Damn, now that’s a ‘BIG A$$’ joint

By Lee DeVito

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a holiday gift for your favorite stoner, look no further than Michigan cannabis dis pensary chain Skymint.

Ahead of the holidays, the company has unveiled a hefty 10-inch, 10-gram “BIG A$$” joint. (For comparison, the typical joint contains around 0.3 grams of cannabis. So yeah, that’s a big ass joint.)

The limited-edition doobie is avail able in a variety of strains. Imagine smoking one before Thanksgiving dinner.

Skymint says “it is the perfect gift

for a friend, gift for the fam, or a gift for yourself.”

“We are thrilled to bring back our famous Big A$$ Joint for Holiday 2022,” Brian Bartholomew, Skymint’s vice president of product, said in a statement. “The Big A$$ joint was first introduced for sale last 20 and quickly became a customer favorite. Whether it is for a special Holiday gift, a fun novelty for New Year’s Eve, or just to indulge by yourself, the Big A$$ Joint should help you usher in the joy of the season! Be sure to pick one up soon as these are available for a

limited time.”

The company has a number of other holiday promotions, including 0 off all house-brand THC prod ucts on Tuesday, Nov. 22 and Wednes day, Nov. 23.

Also on Wednesday, all custom ers will receive a limited edition Skymint-branded gift bag with a free pre-roll for all purchases over $25.

Starting Friday, Nov. 25, Skymint has deals all weekend long.

More information is available at skymint.com.

Flint cannabis dispensary license suspended after it sold unregulated products with contaminants

STATE OFFICIALS HAVE suspended the license of Flint cannabis dispensary reen Culture for selling unregulated products that could contain high levels of pesticides, mold, bacteria, and other contaminants.

The business, located at 808 S. Center Rd., Flint, was licensed for both medical and adult-use sales.

“This conduct is a risk to public health and safety and is completely unacceptable,” said Cannabis Regula tory Agency acting executive director Brian Hanna in a statement. “Today we issued a suspension of their licenses, and it is my intention to pursue revocation of these licenses. Other marijuana licensees should take note we will not stop investigating until we clear

the regulated market of this type of activity.”

The suspension stems from an Aug. 27 complaint alleging that reen Cul ture was selling products that did not have a M TRC tag, Michigan’s “seed to sale” tracking system. CRA investiga tors found several products on the sales floor that were untagged during a Sept. 28 visit, and more untagged products were found on follow-up visits on Sept. 28 and Oct. , according to the agency.

The business said it got the products from ACF Labs, an unlicensed entity that does business as Bee Pure Health, in violation of numerous cannabis regulations.

When it tested a sample of the products, the CRA found that more

than 75% contained paclobutrazol (a banned pesticide), nickel (a heavy metal), aspergillus (a type of mold), and/or total coliforms (bacteria) in amounts exceeding state limits.

The products included “MoonRock blunt” pre-rolls that were sold or given away as promotional items to custom ers from Feb. 10 through Sept. 30, 2022.

The CRA says that reen Culture sold or transferred nearly 18,000 ACF Labs products that were improperly handled.

Anyone who experienced adverse reactions after using the products should contact the agency at CRA- n forcement@michigan.gov or by phone at 517-28 -8599.

—Lee DeVito

Highly Casual THC-infused seltzer comes to Michigan

HOLIDAY GATHERINGS

AND outings can be straight-up annoying for those of us who don’t drink booze.

A new THC-infused seltzer called Highly Casual may take the edge off, allowing us to have our weed and drink it too.

The Michigan-born seltzer will hit shelves on Friday, Nov. 18. It’s being brought to us by merald Canning Partners, a joint venture between Pleas antrees and Andrew Blake, who is also the founder of Blake’s Hard Cider.

Highly Casual’s low-dose, nano-emulsified seltzers come in 12 oz. cans with 2 mg of THC each. They come in three flavors strawberry and watermelon, lemon and lime, and blueberry and pineapple.

Four-packs, which retail at $18, will be available at Pleas antrees locations and participat ing stores across Michigan.

Pleasantrees and Blake an nounced their merald Canning Partners project earlier this year. The 17,000-square-foot facility dedicated to cannabis-infused beverage production set up shop in the former Gibraltar Trade Center in Mount Clemens.

Highly Casual is its first release. More info, including a location finder, is available at drinkhighlycasual.com.

—Randiah Camille Green

COURTESY PHOTO

Wed

The long history of Arts Extended

When Black people felt excluded from Detroit’s art establishment, they formed their own group. It could be the longest continuously operating organization of that type.

By Steve Panton

Founded in Detroit in 1952, and currently located in a quiet neighborhood tucked between I-96 and Tireman and Livernois Avenues, Arts Extended is a 70-year-old project that is a contender for the nation’s longest continuously operating Black arts organization.

Arts Extended began as a group for Black arts educators and profession als, inspired by art’s potential to enrich lives but excluded from much of the city’s art establishment. Initially, they

met monthly to discuss topics relat ing to art and collecting. In their early years, they hosted two annual pop-up shows to display their art. The first was a group show of members’ work, and the second was a more commercial exhibition in the run-up to Christmas. They invited their friends and started to develop an educated collector base.

In the late 1950s, they moved to their first gallery, located on the sec ond floor of 100 ast Warren Ave. in Detroit’s Cultural Center, and a couple

of years later, they moved to a streetlevel location at 1549 Broadway St. in Harmonie Park. Opening a gallery on a major downtown thoroughfare, with regular exhibitions and opening hours, was a ground-breaking action for a Black art collective at that time. The building no longer exists, but was situ ated in what is now a parking lot next to the long-standing jewelry business Simmons Clark.

Subsequently, the group had project space in the Book Tower before moving

to the David Whitney Building, where they inhabited two locations, the first of which had previously been the Siden allery. In the Whitney Building, which in the late 1980s was the center of a vibrant Black gallery scene, they were neighbors of eminent Detroit gallerist George N’namdi, and later they would move to the art campus he established in what is now called Midtown. In between were spaces on Mack Avenue near Grand River Avenue and Parsons Street east of Woodward Avenue. Their

Shirley Woodson, Dr. Cledie Taylor, and Marian Stephens.

JEFF CANCELOSI

final move in the city center was a short hop sometime around 2010 to a gallery on arfield Street across from MOCAD.

The group had around 30 members, of whom three remarkable Black wom en artists and educators are especially central to the project’s long history.

Dr. Cledie Taylor was a founding member of Arts Extended in the early 1950s and has been a quietly force ful presence in the Detroit art world since. Widely traveled, she is best known artistically as a metalsmith and sculptor. Dr. Taylor studied with the esteemed metal arts Professor Philip Fike at Wayne State University, with a particular focus on working Niello, a traditional black silver alloy, and she received her Ph.D. in Art History from Antioch College. Now in her mid-90s, she talks precisely and energetically about upcoming exhibitions and new projects such as a “beautifully illus trated” neighborhood newsletter and a library for the Arts Extended archives.

Shirley Woodson was the 2021 Kresge Eminent Artist, Detroit’s major award for artists. In the monograph accompanying the award, Woodson describes the immense impact of joining Arts Extended as a young artist in the late 1950s. “I was suddenly in a professional environment as a Black artist surrounded by other Black art ists,” Woodson said. “It was a moment to be cherished. I can still run through the names.” Woodson also took every workshop she could with Dr. Taylor, including ones on collecting and tradi tional African art, and credits her as a “master educator.”

Woodson was the curator of Arts Extended Gallery from 1965 to the early 1970s when it was located on Broadway Street. During this period, a stop into the gallery became a standard destina tion for prominent national Black cultural figures such as Langston Hughes and Richard Hunt and returning Detroit artists such as Al Loving and Walter Davis. Since the Arts xtended group’s members were mostly work ing day jobs, Woodson’s mother, Celia, became the gallery’s manager, allowing weekday opening hours. Celia Wood son was, by all accounts, a naturally gifted businesswoman and salesperson who did much to create a strong collec tor base for the gallery.

In 197 , Woodson was a founding member of the Michigan branch of the National Conference of Artists (NCA) with her husband, dsel Reid, and five other arts professionals and collectors. They were inspired by the vision of con necting Detroit’s vibrant Black art and activist ecosystem of the time with peer networks in other parts of the country. Now nearly 50 years later, the NCA Michigan is still active, with Woodson

remaining central to the project.

Marian Stephens was a couple of years ahead of Shirley Woodson in the art program at Wayne State University and joined Arts Extended immediately after graduating in 1956. Her elder brother Richard Kinney, another significant Detroit artist and later the highly respected Director of Publications at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, was already a part of the group and “got her in.” Like Taylor and Woodson, Stephens is a highly respected educator who has influenced countless younger artists.

At Cass Tech, Stephens was a mentor to the prominent Detroit artist Sydney James, recognizing her unique talents and even organizing a program of ex tracurricular study with veteran Detroit muralist Hubert Massey. In conversation, James emphasizes just how important their relationship has been over the years, saying, “Marian Stephens provided me with creative nourishment I didn’t even know I needed at the time. She’s a large part of who I’ve become as an artist.”

James, in turn, has become a mentor to a younger generation of women and transgender artists, including Bakpak Durden, who later this month has a solo exhibition at the Cranbrook Mu seum of Art, and Ijania Cortez, who has become one of the city’s most sought after muralists. It is a model of unselfishly paying forward what you have received that has resulted in a deep sense of intergenerational community and an ongoing stream of exceptional Detroit artists.

In conversation, Woodson also identifies “community” as a consistent element running through long-term Black art projects like Arts Extended and the NCA, working to keep them consistently relevant and energized. In these projects, community building is not just a philosophy but a deeply-in grained practice. For example, a recent NCA workshop centered on teaching high school-age artists how to create a portfolio. Leading the workshop were Kresge Art Fellows Senghor Reid and Sabrina Nelson, and Cranbrook MFA

candidate Akea Brionne, a remarkably qualified group of teachers and role models willing to devote their week end to the largely unglamorous task of mentoring the next generation of artists.

Expanding on the background of this phenomenon, Woodson talks about the indefinable “magic of Motown,” mean ing an ongoing and specific creative energy that is welcoming, communitybased, and intertwined with Detroit’s unique social history.

It is a creative community that is both intergenerational and interdisci plinary. As the Arts Extended project grew, they regularly networked with other equally vibrant art scenes in the city, such as writing, theater, music, and dance. In the 1960s and 1970s, the project formed an especially close rela tionship with the poet Dudley Randall and the legendary Broadside Press. The visual artists of Arts Extended provided illustrations for Broadside Press’s publications, and Dudley Ran dall would teach at the workshops and camps that Arts Extended put on for high school students. Poetry readings became a regular feature of the gallery.

In conversation, Dr. Taylor describes how an Arts Extended exhibition titled Call and Response in the David Whitney Building in the 1980s typi fied many of these relationships. The show’s concept was a call for artists to respond to various “broadsides,” the single-page 8.5 x 11 poems for which the eponymous press was known. Taylor remembers the result being a creative tour-de-force that highlighted a swath of dance, jewelry, visual art, and new poetry in response to the original works.

The David Whitney Building during this period was the center of a vibrant Black, primarily artist-led, gallery scene, which, in addition to Arts Extended Gallery and the NCA, included galleries by George N’Namdi, Olayami Dabls, and others. It is probably no coincidence that the first three Black visual artists to win the Kresge Eminent Artist award (Charles McGee (2008),

Shirley Woodson 2021 , and Olayami Dabls (2022)) were not only outstand ing artists but also all gallerists and educators.

To Woodson, this is not surprising; it merely reflects the culture from which they all emerged. Few commercial gal leries or institutions at the time were interested in Black artists. So if you wanted to show your work, you started a gallery. And, if you wanted people to come to see your art, you had to teach them what they’re looking at. And if you wanted to maintain the gallery, you always needed new people, and you associated with those people through common interests, so community building around common cultural goals was inevitably a part of the process.

Listening to Woodson matter-offactly explain this logic, which could also be the de-facto blueprint for orga nizations like Arts Extended and the NCA, it all seems perfectly obvious. But this organic approach is not how the mainstream art establishment, with its tight focus on institutional legitimation and high-value collectors and donors, typically operates, so there is some thing special in the process Woodson describes.

The relationship between the Black art community and Detroit’s art institu tions is in a process of transition. For example, in addition to the 2021 Kresge minent Artist award, Woodson also had a recent solo exhibition at the De troit Institute of Arts, something which would have been inconceivable when Arts Extended began in the 1950s.

How this relationship will shake out is still to be seen. But it doesn’t mean the core values of organizations like Arts Extended or the NCA, which combine a fundamental belief in art’s potential to enrich lives with an aware ness of the need for Black artists to build long-term, community-centered projects outside the institution, are any less necessary.

Someone who is well-positioned to comment on this is Misha McGlown, the Director at the Irwin House Gallery in Detroit and a recent returnee after two decades in New York. Earlier this year, the gallery hosted a talk that featured Marian Stephens and Shirley Woodson in conversation with Halima Afi Cassells and the writer Nichole M. Christian. The discussion covered many of the themes in this article and was the inspiration for it.

In conversation, McGlown emphasiz es the continuing relevance of organi zations like Arts Extended. As she says, “Obviously, a lot has changed since 1952, but grassroots institutions where we can incubate, inspire, and learn from each other are no less important than they were a half-century ago.”

Few commercial galleries or institutions at the time were interested in Black artists. So if you wanted to show your work, you started a gallery. And, if you wanted people to come to see your art, you had to teach them what they’re looking at.

What it means to be nice

By George Elkind

The nominal questions of Banshees of Inisherin would be relat able if the film actually retained them as their focus. “I do worry that I’m just entertaining myself while I stave off the inevitable,” remarks Brendan leeson as Colm Doherty early on, a sentiment that pertains for any film viewer and ultimately everybody else. Opening to the introduction of a sudden rift between two small-town drinking bud dies who’ve been so regular at their lo cal bar they’re effectively conjoined, the two find they disagree on how they’ve spent their time each day. While Colin Farrell’s P draic S illeabh in insists that each day at the bar they’ve been doing “good, normal chatting,” his old friend Colm decides one morning he’s had enough, arguing that they’ve long occupied themselves with something more depressing, superficial, and mor bidly distracting instead. The difference in real life between these poles tends always to be arguable — less rooted in a substance than a feeling. But Martin McDonagh makes no space for even this to sustain itself as a modest form of mystery, thumbing the scales on each of the film’s questions, leaving his viewers for the film’s duration mentally unemployed.

In broad terms, Banshees of Inisherin’s concerns are existential, mak ing it a would-be drama of anticipa tory waiting. But McDonagh lacks the patience for that, introducing crass and hurried escalations of his plot, affecting

the trappings of both taste and delicacy as he does.

Part of that depends on setting. The film, once meant instead to be a poorly written play, situates itself off the coast of Ireland, in the fictional and folksy town of Inisherin in 192 . Lending the film some heavy regional dialect, tra ditional names, and the faintest sense of history, a whiff of political serious ness can easily be caught through it all across the water, whisking away the veil of Banshees’ false modesty.

No stranger to insistent politics, McDonagh opts for something quieter but no smarter here, with the sounds of gunfire from the then-ongoing Irish Civil War carrying between two shores. Drawing a blunt parallel to the unkind actions of two embattled friends, McDonagh pulls this conflict in from history to the film’s periphery to achieve a sense of scope and clout. Like the mainland, the film’s small island is suggested to be riven not only by winding stone walls — but by the brute reality of conflicts between neighbors who might have solved things more peaceably.

But the bulk of Banshees’ focus is more intimate in scale, focused on the triangular drama between Colm, P d raic, and P draic’s sister Siobhan Kerry Condon , who serves as a voice of reason and a mediator of the fresh con flict between the two embattled men. Such roles make familiar burdens for most any actress, and despite Condon’s

efforts, her role serves to do little but accent the obvious childishness of the two former friends. While she plainly isn’t wrong, her declarations of their shared stupidity do little but underline the question of why these characters — whose words, relationships, and psyches as written offer no real space for fruitful ambiguity — should be the object of a work such as this.

But the answer, ultimately, is Mc Donagh’s crassness — and the film’s key dramatic accelerant is all the proof one should need. Recalling Three Billboards’ bursts of histrionic violence, this one involves a threat issued early by Colm that, if P draic pesters him any further, he’ll inflict upon himself continuing and serious, quite grue some, and specific forms of harm. Mc Donagh loves little more than to have a character say they will do something, or that something should happen — and then, through writerly authority, make it so. I’ve never seen a limper twists of plot than the moment in Three Billboards in which Frances McDormand’s character Mildred tells her daughter “I hope you get raped” only for her then spoiler, I guess to find her not only raped but killed. In what passed for some there as dramatic irony, the revelation wasn’t the murder that was the film’s premise but the notion that Mildred had almost, through a kind of foul sentiment, managed to bring it upon her.

As then, in that case, the anticipated

Banshees of Inisherin

Rated: R

Run-time: 114 minutes

injury here proves both grievous and visible but not ultimately deadly , with the clear intent being to dramatize the harm which Farrell’s bleating sad-sack lead inflicts on leason by forcibly re-entering — and re-entering, and re-entering — his life. Having already highlighted the capacity already stated in dialogue for those who think themselves too nice to actually be mean, McDonagh can’t help dramatize it further by having the injury im peril Colm’s practice of songwriting a vocation which offers — aside from a calendar-ready dog — Colm’s only real source of joy.

Seeking a kind of moral balance, McDonagh’s script assigns each man a pet P draic gets Jenny, a miniature donkey as a sign of their ultimate, sadly neglected capacity for tenderness, engaging in a manipulative emotional shorthand fit for a sociopath. The film’s style isn’t any better at masking a sense of naked calculation, heaped with drone shots of verdant paths and coastlines spliced in at every chance a way of working the best assets the film has. Worse still but just as com mon, McDonagh pads the story with interstitial shots of animals in a way meant to express a kind of deeper soft ness, swiping meanwhile from Terrence Malick. But the expression may as well have been grown in a lab and piped in through a syringe — there’s nothing organic or even human about its nomi nally emotional appeal.

The film’s whole running time oozes this same sense of deliberation, just as visible but far more vexing than the closeups we’re force-fed of Colm’s self-inflicted wound. But mountains of this kind of deliberation do not amount to discipline, something McDonagh lacks in both a sense of reserve and approach to form. While dreaming of being Samuel Beckett and Flannery O’Connor both at once, he lacks the skill, balance, and basic command of craft in his own medium to nip at the heels of either. Sweating the silly question of whether we might all be nicer in lieu of engaging with the politically or emotionally real, Banshees finds itself shackled to and wailing about the obvious something that, through his eagerness to pander, McDonagh appears on some level to know. Calculated yet clumsy, insecure but striving, his fixation on niceness betrays a fixation on how enemies — or critics might gently measure their words.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees Of Inisherin

JONATHAN HESSION, COURTESY OF SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES.

CULTURE

Savage Love

The watcher

By Dan Savage

There is more to this week’s Savage Love. To read the entire column, go to Savage.Love.

: Q I’m a married gay man in Southern California. I also have a boy who has his own partner. Both my boy and his partner used to live nearby. But in August they moved to Seattle. The “why” of their move continues to bother me. They didn’t move for a job, or to be closer to family, or any of the other reasons people normally relocate. My boy said it was a combination of the weather and people. The problem, as I see it, is that both my boy and his partner have introverted tendencies — they don’t go out much — so I don’t see how the weather or eo le re ll m e iffere ce.

The bigger issue is that my boy has tried to “pimp” his partner on me throughout our relationship. I usually re ffe is s estio s t o e i t I gave in. His partner and I started to kiss and feel each other up, and it was e. e eir t i t e t i t t troubles me to this day — was how my boy reacted. He watched us with this bizarre look in his eyes, like he was rell etti off o tc i t e t o o us go at it, like some creepy voyeur. His expression freaked me out so much that I ended things and gave some dumb excuse. I recently had an encounter with another person who had a similar experience with my boy. He described how he would cam with my boy and how my boy would always bring his partner in.

My boy had expressed to me on multiple occasions how his partner cannot se l rt ers o is o . t i the real reason my boy moved was to e ti ool i t e o es o e e t ll i m tc or is rt ner. If my thoughts are correct, then my boy did a horrible thing to our relationship. I don’t know much about cuckolds and I’m looking for advice. How do you have a relationship with a boy when that boy’s sole focus is the sexual satisfaction of their partner?

—Confused About Lad’s Departure And Deceit

: A Moving to Seattle for the “weath er” seems a little counterintuitive. But I can see why a pair of introverts might prefer gray Seattle, where I live,

to sunny Southern California. When it’s nice outside, you feel obligated to go outside. But it’s never nice outside in Seattle. We have a rainy season that stretches from November through July (too wet to go outside) and now, thanks to catastrophic climate change, we have a wildfire season that stretches from August through October (too smokey to go outside). So, looking out a window in Seattle you never think, “I should go for a walk and risk a chance encounter with another human be ing,” but rather, “I should go back in the basement and keep playing video games.”

As for the people here in Seattle… even the most extroverted newcomers complain about the “Seattle Freeze.” But if your boy and his partner are just looking for fuckbuddies, well, they’re in luck. The dick up here is damp nine months a year and tastes like smoke the other three, but there’s plenty to go around.

As for the host of other issues you raise…

Look, I’m not your boy, CALDAD, so I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on in his head. But I do feel confident saying he’s not your boy anymore. Not only did he move away (with his partner) and leave you all alone in Southern California (with your husband), CALDAD, but you seem to hold him in contempt — contempt for his motives, his kinks, and his partner — and contempt is a hard place to come back from. So, since you aren’t in a relation ship with him anymore, you don’t have to worry about making this relationship work. (I’m sorry if that seems harsh, CALDAD, but better to hear that from me than from the commenters.)

So, is your ex-boy a cuckold? He could be. Based on your description of his behavior the night you hooked up with his partner, it certainly sounds like he gets off on watching his partner get fucked by other guys. It’s also possible that he shares the dick he’s getting else where with his primary partner. There’s nothing wrong with being a cuckold, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with “pimping” a partner out… so long as 1. your partner wants to be pimped out and 2. you’re not pressuring other guys to do things with your partner that they don’t wanna do.

But if your ex-boy was only interested in you for his partner, CALDAD, he was certainly playing the long game. Establishing an ongoing D/s relationship with a married man when all you really want is someone to fuck your partner in front of you… that seems like an awful lot of effort when rindr is full of men who would be up for fucking your ex-boy’s boyfriend while he watched without him having to go through the trouble of entering into a long-term relationship first. Setting you up with his partner may have been an interest, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it was your ex-boy’s sole interest.

And honestly, CALDAD, I find myself wondering what you expected from your ex-boy when you started to fuck his partner in front of him. Did you think he was going sit there impas sively, with a look of total indiffer ence on his face, not feeling anything in particular? If so, CALDAD, that wasn’t a very realistic expectation on your part. And I suspect if he had sat there looking bored or indifferent, you would’ve found that just as weird and off-putting. If I was fucking some guy’s boyfriend in front of him, CALDAD, I would hope that guy got off on it. Hell, I would call it off if the guy whose boyfriend I was fucking didn’t react like some creepy voyeur.

Frankly, CALDAD, I don’t think your ex-boy did a terrible thing. He was honestly into you, that’s why he was your boy, and he wanted to share his partner with you. If you didn’t want to fuck his partner, you should’ve con tinued to say no. Once you started to fuck his partner, you should’ve wanted (and expected) your ex-boy to enjoy the show.

P.S. On the off chance that CAL DAD’s ex-boy is reading this: Welcome to Seattle! Cuckold or pimp, both or neither, you need to be clearer with your sex partners (in person, online, wherever) about what you’re doing, what you want them to do, and why you want them to do it. There are plenty of guys out there into threesomes, cuck olding, and guys who are pimping out their partners, so there’s no need to be a manipulative-by-default creep, which is how you risk coming across when you aren’t clear about what you’re doing (sharing your partner) and why (you’re a cuck or your partner has no game or both).

Send your question to mailbox@savage. love. Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love.

CULTURE Free Will Astrology

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES: March 21 – April 19

One of your callings as an Aries is to take risks. You’re inclined to take more leaps of faith than other people, and you’re also more likely to navigate them to your advantage — or at least not get burned. A key reason for your success is your keen intuition about which gambles are relatively smart and which are ill-advised. But even when your chancy ventures bring you exciting new experiences, they may still run you afoul of conventional wisdom, peer pressure, and the way things have always been done. Everything I have described here will be in maximum play for you in the coming weeks.

TAURUS: April 20 – May 20

Your keynote comes from teacher Caroline Myss. She writes, “Becoming adept at the process of self-inquiry and symbolic insight is a vital spiritual task that leads to the growth of faith in oneself.” Encouraging you to grow your faith in yourself will be one of my prime intentions in the next 12 months. Let’s get started! How can you become more adept at self-inquiry and symbolic insight? One idea is to ask yourself a probing new question every Sunday

morning, like “What teachings and healings do I most want to attract into my life during the next seven days?” Spend the subsequent week gathering experiences and revelations that will address that query. Another idea is to remember and study your dreams, since doing so is the number one way to develop symbolic insight. For help, I recommend the work of Gayle Delaney: tinyurl.com/InterviewYourDreams

GEMINI: May 21 – June 20

The T science fiction show Legends of Tomorrow features a ragtag team of imperfect but effective superheroes. They travel through time trying to fix aberrations in the time lines caused by various villains. As they experiment and improvise, sometimes resorting to wildly daring gambits, their successes outnumber their stumbles and bumbles. And on occasion, even their apparent mistakes lead to good fortune that unfolds in unexpected ways. One member of the team, Nate, observes, “Sometimes we screw up — for the better.” I foresee you Geminis as having a similar modus operandi in the coming weeks.

CANCER: June 21 – July 22

I like how Cancerian poet Stephen Dunn begins his poem, “Before We Leave.” He writes, “Just so it’s clear — no whining on the journey.” I am offering this greeting to you and me, my fellow Cancerians, as we launch the next chapter of our story. In the early stages, our efforts may feel like drudg ery, and our progress could seem slow. But as long as we don’t complain exces sively and don’t blame others for our own limitations, our labors will become easier and quite productive.

LEO: July 23 – August 22

Leo poet Kim Addonizio writes a lot about love and sex. In her book Wild Nights, she says, “I’m thinking of dating trees next. We could just stand around all night together. I’d murmur, they’d rustle, the wind would, like, do its wind thing.” Now might be a favorable time for you, too, to experi ment with evergreen romance and arborsexuality and trysts with your favorite plants. When was the last time you hugged an oak or kissed an elm?

JUST KIDDING! The coming weeks will indeed be an excellent time to try cre ative innovations in your approach to intimacy and adoration. But I’d rather see your experiments in togetherness unfold with humans.

JAMES NOELLERT

erations of Afro-Cuban women, her ancestors. “These are the stories of a time lost to flesh and bone,” she writes, “a time that lives only in dreams and memories. Like a primeval wave, these stories have carried me, and deposited me on the morning of today. They are the stories of how I came to be who I am, where I am.” I’d love to see you explore your own history with as much passion and focus, Virgo. In my astro logical opinion, it’s a favorable time for you to commune with the influences that have made you who you are.

LIBRA: Sept. 23 – Oct. 22

In accordance with astrological omens, here’s my advice for you in the coming weeks: 1. Know what it takes to please everyone, even if you don’t always choose to please everyone. 2. Know how to be what everyone wants you to be and when they need you to be it, even if you only fulfill that wish when it has selfish value for you. . DO NOT give others all you have and thereby neglect to keep enough to give yourself. 4. When others are being closed-minded, help them develop more expansive finesse by sharing your own reasonable views. 5. Start thinking about how, in 202 , you will grow your roots as big and strong as your branches.

SCORPIO: Oct. 23 – Nov. 21

Even if some people are nervous or intimidated around you, they may be drawn to you nonetheless. When that happens, you probably enjoy the power you feel. But I wonder what would happen if you made a conscious effort to cut back just a bit on the daunt ing vibes you emanate. I’m not saying they’re bad. I understand they serve as a protective measure, and I appreciate the fact that they may help you get the cooperation you want. As an experi ment, though, I invite you to be more reassuring and welcoming to those who might be inclined to fear you. See if it alters their behavior in ways you enjoy and benefit from.

regularly: “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with the aim; just gotta change the target.” In offering Jay- ’s advice, I don’t mean to suggest that you always need to change the target you’re aiming at. On many occasions, it’s exactly right. But the act of checking in to evaluate whether it is or isn’t the right target will usually be valuable. And on occasion, you may realize that you should indeed aim at a different target.

CAPRICORN: Dec. 22 – Jan. 19

You now have extra power to exorcize ghosts and demons that are still lingering from the old days and old ways. You are able to transform the way your history affects you. You have a sixth sense about how to graduate from lessons you have been studying for a long time. In honor of this joyfully tumultuous opportunity, draw inspiration from poet Charles Wright: “Knot by knot I untie myself from the past And let it rise away from me like a balloon. What a small thing it becomes. What a bright tweak at the vanishing point, blue on blue.”

AQUARIUS: Jan. 20 – Feb. 18

In accordance with current astrological rhythms, I am handing over your horoscope to essayist Anne Fadiman. She writes, “I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things, but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.”

PISCES: Feb.19 – March 20

Open Thanksgiving 7pm-2am

VIRGO: August 23 – Sept. 22

In her book Daughters of the Stone, Virgo novelist Dahlma LlanosFigueroa tells the tale of five gen

SAGITTARIUS: Nov. 22 – Dec. 21

Sagittarian rapper and entre preneur Jay-Z has stellar advice for his fellow Sagittarians to contemplate

Over the course of my life, I have been fortunate to work with 1 psy chotherapists. They have helped keep my mental health flourishing. One of them regularly reminded me that if I hoped to get what I wanted, I had to know precisely what I wanted. Once a year, she would give me a giant piece of thick paper and felt-tip markers. “Draw your personal vision of paradise,” she instructed me. “Outline the contours of the welcoming paradise that would make your life eminently delightful and worthwhile.” She would also ask me to finish the sentence that begins with these words: “I am mobilizing all the energy and ingenuity and connections I have at my disposal so as to accomplish the following goal.” In my astrological opinion, Pisces, now is a perfect time to do these two exercises yourself.

This week’s homework: In what process have you gone halfway, and you really should go all the way?

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