The Voices in Frank's Head

Thomas Bray wrote a column for this morning's Detroit News in which he argued that there were some significant paralells between President Abraham Lincoln's handling of the Civil War and President George W. Bush's prosecution of the War in Iraq. You can read his column here . I wrote the following response to Mr. Bray: Dear Mr. Bray: I read your piece in this morning’s Detroit News in which you compared President George W. Bush’s experience in Iraq with President Abraham Lincoln’s prosecution of the Civil War. Your argument was, in my opinion, one of the stupidest pieces of commentary in the entire history of the English language. You simply ignored one of the most fundamental differences between Lincoln in the Civil War and Bush in Iraq . Lincoln had a fairly well-defined reason for going to war in the first place. Yes, he originally stated that he wanted to keep slavery from spreading only to emancipate all slaves two years later as you pointed...

I recently learned a bit more about what Easter is like in my ancestral homeland of the Czech Republic. It turns out that one of their customs is that, on Easter Monday, young boys and men would run around their village; whipping girls and women with whip made of branches from willow tree. http://www.radio.cz/en/html/easter05.html The girls, in turn, would present the boys with a painted egg and sometimes serve them alcohol. Something tells me that if I tried this anywhere in Michigan, it wouldn't be an egg or booze that I was served in response. Oh, well - every culture has their own unique mating rituals that seem odd to everyone from the outside. I suppose this is no different. Anyway, I have to say one thing for the Czechs. Their Easter eggs make the ones that I used to make as a kid look very, very sad in comparison. I don't think I could ever bring myself to actually eat anything that looked this cool and ornate. http://www.radio.cz/en/html/fotogalerie_vejce1.html

I had a chance to go through what is commonly known as the AAA Building (139 Bagley) in downtown Detroit last month. At first, I wasn't going to do an entry on it - but there have been a couple of people asking about it over on the Detroit Yes forum that I figured I had to share a little narrative as well as the photos that I have from it. I went through this building with the owner's son, Matt Pieroni. I hate to admit, but as soon I reached the ugly side of 30, crawling into a building through a window or something like that really lost its appeal. As a result, I'm grateful to the Pieroni family for allowing me the chance to go through their building. For those not familiar with 139 Bagley, it's the only building that is still standing on the block previously occupided by the former Statler Hilton Hotel . It also the building that mysteriously caught fire while the Statler was being demolished. The Pieroni's allege that materials dropped by welders working on...

Shortly after 1 a.m. tomorrow morning, the time will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. I think I'm going to stay up just to experience that one second of perfect time alignment. (Of course, I am completely weird).