From Liquidation to Little Village

 

Sixto Rodriquez Mural, Vernor West, Detroit

I am pleased to have co-authored a presentation for the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers with my son Harvey. It builds on a paper he wrote as a college freshman and is entitled From Liquidation to Little Village: The Arts in Detroit. Anything in these slides that looks like a link IS a link. Our abstract is below.

Early in the twentieth century, Detroit was among the most prosperous and successful cities in the United States, in which a social compact between labor and industry had broad benefits. The later abandonment of Detroit by key industries combined with a political culture of austerity to bring about the city’s economic, demographic, and fiscal collapse. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the city declared bankruptcy and the state of Michigan reluctantly intervened. Among many proposals to resolve the crisis, the most radical envisioned selling much of the artwork that had become part of the city’s patrimony during more prosperous times. This approach was strongly contested and ultimately rejected, in part because of the inherent and abiding value of the arts. More recently, the Little Village project has vindicated those who defended the arts in Detroit. It serves as an example of arts-based community development that has so far avoided the common pitfalls of gentrification.

I took the photo above, which comprises the final slide in our presentation, while exploring the city during the conference. The building is featured in the 2012 film Searching for Sugarman.

ILV Coffee Talk

The Institute for Liberal Values (ILV) is a community of people committed to the free exchange of ideas. I have known it primarily through the involvement of my spouse, a librarian who is a champion of free expression and an expert on obstacles to it.

I am very pleased that ILV has asked me to participate in a few different activities this year. One of them is simply an opportunity for me to talk about the story of coffee and some of its implications. Our Coffee Talk session is streaming today -- Monday, October 21 -- at 7 pm Eastern Time on YouTube.

You can view the slides I used in this presentation in order to follow links that I referenced. You can watch the event recording (47m) on the ILV YouTube channel.

Lagniappe

During the presentation, I mentioned the 2006 film Black Gold: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, and that it depicts a jarring contrast between the prosperous coffee industry and the growers who supply it. I mentioned that it also provides some insight into the workings of commodity markets, but the ILV audience may have been interested to know that the film goes a bit further -- it goes inside a meeting of the World Trade Organization to show how the imbalance between producers and consumers is maintained. I discuss this movie and the film The Girl in the Café in Cups and Summits, a 2012 post on my main blog. 

Cape Verde Climate Leadership: Unlocking Potential

I am honored to be part of this summer's leadership program for Cape Verdean young professionals, which is hosted by the Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verdean Studies. Participants are spending time at both branches of the Institute -- here at Bridgewater State University and also at the Universidade de Cabo Verde in Praia. 

Today's program will begin with a discussion of role of Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) in climate change. We will then visit a few sites in Brockton, originally part of Bridgewater and now our nearest gateway city. We will do this for two reasons: first to discuss some examples of environmental matters generally and second to give the visitors some experience in what many call the Eleventh Island of Cape Verde. Everybody in their archipelago knows somebody who has migrated to Brockton.

Instituto Pedro Pires para a Liderança 

In addition to the slides above, I prepared a short video about a family story we call the Christmas Miracle. It is about the connection between Cape Verde and Brockton. (Note: the CC button in YouTube works pretty well for those viewers who might not fully understand my speaking.)

Humacao to Amazônia

Humacao to Amazônia is a guest lecture I am giving for a combined session of my course on Latin America and my colleague Professor Harris' course on environmental regulations. The slides are offered here for students who wish to follow up on some of the links mentioned in the presentation.

Café no Fogo

NEW: All of my photos from this travel course in one annotated slide show!

After years of preparation and planning, I am leading a travel course on the island of Fogo, Cape Verde -- about 300 miles west of the westernmost point of mainland Africa. Among the island's many fascinating distinctions, it is the only place in the world -- as far as this Coffee Maven knows -- that produces coffee inside an active volcano. This does not mean that the beans are lava-roasted, but it does mean that the farms are in locations that might be displaced at any time by volcanic activity.

On this journey -- jointly sponsored by the Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verdean Studies, the Department of Geography, and the Office of Study Abroad -- undergraduate and graduate students are doing what I most love to do: using geography to understand coffee and using coffee to understand geography. Our travel is also hosted and supported by the national government, the Universidad do Cabo Verde, and the three municipalities of the island: Mosteiros, São Felipe, and Santa Catarina. 

After a very warm welcome from the municipal authorities in São Felipe, we toured the entire island before revisiting each community. Our first in-depth visit is in Mosteiros, the producer of the island's famous coffee. There we are both learning about the local coffeelands and coffee producers and bringing some perspectives from the wider world of coffee. In fact, this post serves in part to provide a convenient link to some of the images we will be sharing during our visit to the Museu do Café.

(Note that the title of the course is represented on the town seal of Mosteiros!)

From the Coffee Maven's too-big trove of imagery, I have selected a few images to begin the discussion around two questions -- Café De Onde - Café Para Onde.

Finally, I include here a link to the amazing work of Carolyn King, a Cape Verde-American graduate student on this course who described her work on a fascinating museum installation on the connections between Cape Cod and Cape Verde. We can also view the exhibit itself at WHOI Seagrant.

A Christmas Carol Advent

My favorite librarian and I planned a bit of a literary pursuit for this December that we are now enjoying -- an Advent countdown based on some of the many versions of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. On most of the 25 days, we are watching a film or television adaptation, with a few special activities also included.

Edward Marin's 1938 Version

We have been planning this for over a year, but at the last minute I decided to write about the experience on our catch-all blog called Perry La Perra. From December 1 to 25 of 2023, I am adding to the same post every day. I include a link here so that we can refer friends to it more easily.

Geochron at Open Lab Night

Fellow geographer Dr. Amey and I are using these slides and this worksheet for our November 8 presentation about the use of Geochron to understand earth's seasons. This is part of the BSU-CASE Open Lab Night.

Learn more about our geography department and its people and programs!