Tuesday, April 1, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Teacher's bias experiment offers us hope
Jane Elliott's heart was heavy as she drove to teach her third-grade class in Riceville, Iowa. It was April 5, 1968, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered the day before. As a white educator, she understood King's fight for equal rights, but she doubted that the children in her small, homogeneous town ever would.

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Day of honor began with a hope for peace
History may tell us that war is inevitable, but women's history offers a different story about war, the quest for peace and the hope for lasting social change.

Thursday, March 20, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Benefactor fights hunger with passion for a problem she says can be solved
Last week, as Dulcie Rosenfeld sat at a high-profile breakfast to benefit Gleaners Community Food Bank, she let her hearty, raisin-packed oatmeal go cold. As the organization's president described the plight of the area's hungry, unabashed tears rolled down Dulcie's face.

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Altar at home can carry our hope for peace
How I ended up going to the movies on Friday to see "The Hunted" is anyone's guess. It's a Hollywood gore festival about a renegade soldier-turned-killing machine. It was more like me to go see "The Quiet American," an artistic film about the United States' early involvement in Vietnam, which I did on Saturday. But it wasn't until Sunday that I realized that, however different, both movies reinforced the same idea: War has no bystanders. In the end, it can make monsters of us all.

Thursday, March 13, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Tragedy helps man find his voice as a poet
There already have been two events in 22-year-old Stephan Johnson's life that have made him stop and ponder the question, "What if . . . ?" One was when his father died; the other was when he became a poet.

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Mister Rogers missed out on cheery times
The year was 1968. America's major cities had erupted in racial strife. The civil rights movement was in full swing. Assassins snuffed the lives of both Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Men and women alike were wearing leather pants. Americans were racing the Soviets to the moon. Our young people protested a war they didn't believe in.

Thursday, March 6, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: When pressed, tend, befriend suits me fine
For years, I thought I was wired wrong. According to basic understanding of human behavior, I should do one of two things when faced with enormous stress. I should be charged and ready to obliterate the enemy, or catch the next flight to Avoidance.

Tuesday, March 4, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: A stranger's kindness hits a high note
Joyce Lemerand is not a big classical music fan. But when her sister, Doris Hill, asked her to go to an evening performance at Detroit's Orchestra Hall last month, she agreed. Besides, Itzhak Perlman was playing, and Joyce loves violins.

Thursday, February 27, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Town's shift on race issue a moving tale
As we bicker over which race gets to attend college and which dies first in war, it's clear that America is a Br'er Rabbit that can't escape the Tar Baby of race.

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Play reminds us of a key antiwar ploy
If the Greek playwright Aristophanes were here today, he might advise us that there's only one person who holds the power to avert war with Iraq. Someone with more knowledge of face-to-face diplomacy than Secretary of State Colin Powell. Someone with more direct access to the president's ear than Condoleezza Rice. Someone who is as wily as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is wacky.

Thursday, February 20, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Wandering Mikey gets safely home, with a little help
When Gary Frundel and Patrick McNames got up on Saturday, Feb. 8, they hoped the day would smile favorably upon them. The owners of Detroit's Birdtown Pet Store had suffered enough losses for one week. They'd attended a memorial service for Pat's brother two days before. Another family friend had died that week, and on Friday they had to put one of their beloved dogs to sleep.

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Sewing up facts on slave quilts
By now, many of us have heard the story of how secret messages were encoded in the colors and patterns of antebellum quilts. As slaves journeyed to freedom on the Underground Railroad, the quilts were hung outside to denote safe houses or to relay other messages.

Thursday, February 13, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Detroit store owners plead for pet's return
Maybe it's his cold, dark eyes. Or the way he smirks, his top lip disappearing into a snarling underbite. Maybe it's his solid build, like a barrel of rocks. Or the way he'd swagger on the corner of Cass and Peterboro in Detroit like he owned the Cass Corridor, and dared anyone to say anything about it.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: On freedom's path
Beside Greenaway Drain in Walled Lake, there's a modern medical office building where the old Banks-Dolbeer-Bradley-Foster Farmhouse once stood. The drain is lined by bare, ice-covered trees, and brown stalks of grass jut from the snowy banks. The din of passing cars sounds like the flow of water that has long since slowed to a trickle.

Thursday, February 6, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: View of world much clearer from space
All we do is fight over who deserves our compassion and who must live without it. Who gets in, and who doesn't. Whom we'll enslave, and who will live free.

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Agony of AIDS is tarnishing Africa's beauty
A year ago, nearly 100 of the world's top photojournalists -- a fifth of them African or African American -- fannedacross Africa to capture the spirit of the world's second-largest continent. The pictures, all taken on the same day, tell of a vibrant, hopeful people and a beautiful, sometimes punishing, landscape:

Thursday, January 30, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Filmmaker captures spirit of black resort
For years, I've heard about Idlewild, that legendary place in Lake County where the brightest stars of the Harlem Renaissance -- including writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston -- romped with the Midwest's black middle class. Albert (Sarge) Johnson imported Philippine horses to open a riding stable there in the 1950s. Famed boxer Joe Louis owned property in Idlewild, and jazz greats -- from Count Basie to Louis Armstrong -- played at the raucous Paradise Club.

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Change, peace begin at home on the porch
There's a principle in urban planning: To reduce neighborhood crime, just increase the number of people who sit on their front porch.

Thursday, January 23, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Message in 'The Hours' both sad, true
"You warned me that 'The Hours' was an emotionally intensive, honest, brutal film, but you should have said, 'Don't go alone.' I broke down in tears at the end. I couldn't move from my seat."

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Lessons from Girl Scouts last a lifetime
If you ask 86-year-old Josephine Ferguson which Girl Scout cookies sell the best, she'll give you a well-researched answer.

Thursday, January 16, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: E-mail name should reflect who you are
Ladies, I'm not asking you to burn your bras or start demanding that people call you "Ms." (though even a library card application now gives you that option). You don't need to rethink the entire institution of marriage or refuse to say you'll obey your husband in your wedding vows.

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Singer Kem shines a light on local talent
You don't hear me complaining about the malling of America -- the fact that you can't distinguish one town from the next thanks to the proliferation of national chains. I take great comfort in the fact that from Pontiac to Palm Beach, you're never far from two all-beef patties with special sauce, a hot venti decaf no-whip mocha and treads and threads at one giant discounter.

Thursday, January 9, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Words may show the path of our history
It might seem strange to focus upon famous last words as we sit here, beneath a snowy blanket of good intentions, at the porthole of a new year. But it's on the deathbed that life is pressed down to its crystalline essence. Famous last words, be they utterances or epitaphs, hold the magic of both hindsight and prediction. They summarize what a particular life was about and provide a tender warning to those of us who go on. Either we live a life of purpose, or we utter last words of regret.

Tuesday, January 7, 2003

DESIREE COOPER: Executives' husbands look for their place
"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn."
-- Gloria Steinem