(The gutter that was crushed by Snowmaggedon 2010 has been repaired and painted. The work continues at Refuge Farm. Photo Socotra).

I fell asleep in front of the fire after the Russians departed last night, and the marvelous food I procured at Croftburn Farms on the way down got cooked down into a darkened mass of spinach and cheese on the top of the elective stove. I ate it anyway- local food is too expensive to waste.

It is 19 degrees at the moment as I prepare to lower the flag on the pole out in the circular gravel drive and head north to rendezvous at the Mall at Fair Lakes with some like-minded pals to go to the Dulles Expo Center.

I am not gong to buy anything- I am going to the show as an observer of the current scene, and it is on the way home anyway. Traveling north and south on the weekends, I keep an eye on the skies. It will scrape 50 degrees today and hover in the lower sixties tomorrow. Looking at the week’s forecast, I see that we will stay well above freezing through the first half of the shortest month. We are talking about only weeks of winter left here, and while it is too soon to say that the season is changing, it is entirely possible that we have broken the back of this season of cold and snow.

Even another event like the one to the north of us over the weekend will melt quickly. I should have gone out to inspect for crocus heads, peeking up. The grass in the pastures has an emerald tint to it and that may herald the coming of the other sun- the warm one- and the months of Spring.

Meanwhile, I am going to experience some unique Americana (if fading) with my fellow strict Constructionists. I am sure you saw that Valerie Jarrett and her protégé First Lady Michele Obama were in Chicago to attend the funeral of a pretty young woman who died in the cross fire of gang violence.

I mourn her loss- a wasted life of a young woman of talent and enthusiasm- but the circumstances are interesting. I know the First Lady and her entourage are present to highlight the real majority of victims of gun violence, the residents of our failed inner cities.

I got a book review in the mail yesterday after getting the car unpacked and before scanning the Clarion Bugle’s account of the events of the week in Culpeper. “Detroit: An American Autopsy,” by a fellow Gonzoan named Charlie LeDuff.

I was so intrigued that I purchased the Kindle version the second I finished reading the review, and the combination of starting to read it in the mellow glow of the fire in the cast-iron stove in the living room was responsible for the early slumber.

It has happened again. I have been scooped and out-Gonzoed on the afterlife of my birth city. Charlie had been all over the world, working on this and that, and finally wound up as a staff reporter for the NY Times on the topic of Race in America and then, as a writer for our hometown paper, the Detroit Free Press.

The Freep framed our days and the agenda of the day. Resolutely progressive, the paper walked a fine line in reporting the corruption that dragged down the city under Mayor For Life Coleman Young. There were some things that had to be ignored, and in the nearly half century since the great abandonment commenced, the once magnificent city has plumbed the depths of abasement. Apparently, Charlie accounts for it pretty well, the horror and the hope of some enterprising types who have actually moved back and made parts of the corpse vibrant once more.

Still, there is no law and no order in vast swathes of the old town. Death is common and cheap.

I occasionally write about the demise of the Motor City, since it holds a grim fascination for all of us who came from there. I withhold judgment on whether the death of Detroit is a grim harbinger of what is to come elsewhere in this great land. I expect it contains the seeds of what could come to pass, but it took a perfect storm to kill the city.

Charlie spent ten years inside Eight Mile, so he has paid for the opportunity to comment, as he will. I am a little uncomfortable with the pornographic leering at the ruins by those who are not from there, and a little unsettled by the other sort of gun pornography I am likely to see at the Dulles Expo Center later this morning.

Chicago already has the most restrictive laws regarding firearms of any municipality in the Country. The New York Times devoted extensive coverage to the presence of the First Lady at the funeral service in the Windy City. The paper printed an interactive map showing the origin of some 50,000 weapons scooped up by the Chicago Police Department over the last decade. I was prepared to flinch with the depiction of Virginia as the major supplier- we are, after all, the bete noire for New York Mayor Bloomberg’s obsession with other people’s rights.

Instead, you will probably be as interested as I was in seeing that it is Mississippi that is the largest source of weapons in the Chicago theater of operations. Connecting the dots is not hard. Mississippi is the state of origin for many current residents of Chicago. The great migration of African Americans north at the turn of the last century is captured in epic terms in another fine book that is worth your attention.

“The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson tells the sweeping tale of the six million Americans who fled the south for freedom in the north. “They left all they and took a leap of faith that they might find freedom” in places like Detroit and Chicago. The right to own firearms is one that was nearly as important as the right to vote. It made African Americans full citizens.

Family connections remain, and obviously those connections are used for Chicagoans to both protect themselves and assault others.

That is the tough issue. Detroit has demonstrated one approach. Abandonment came with harsh restriction, and ultimately the end of a great city. Chicago is often billed as “The City That Works,” and it is a magical place still. But the violence goes on, regardless of laws.

Is this not actually a gang violence problem? Suppose it was framed that way. If the gangs were taken down, and the crazies denied access to weapons, would this still be a problem?

Why is it that we start with the denial of the rights of the law-abiding citizens?

Were we to cast this as a mental health, anti-gang problem (could Crips and Bloods actually be interpreted as inverse and unregulated of militias?) problem, we might actually get somewhere, and it might be a cause that all of us could get behind.

I would be interested in that. Perhaps it will be a topic of discussion later this morning.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com