The second fall of Rome.

One of my first childhood memories is that of a seven foot tall suit of steel plate armor standing at attention with hands sheathed in lobster gauntlets clasped atop the beard of a large battleaxe. The fact that the weapon's butt was resting on the ground didn't make it any less menacing.

It's not something I'd go looking for in Canton Township, but it's been a fixture at a restaurant called The Roman Forum since the '70s. Sadly, Roman Forum is closing down, which isn't surprising. It is flanked by corporate competition, and there is what I would call a "strip" of various theme restaurants, steak houses and fast food joints that spans for miles on the opposite side of Ford Road.

Between this sad development and some of the stories I've been working on, I've been thinking a lot about small independent businesses, downtowns and growth in general. I like to think that living in the Westland area has given me a unique perspective on how a city should not grow.

I like to think of Westland and parts of Plymouth, Garden City and Canton that adjoin our city's borders as individual pieces of a commercial Mecca that has grown in all of the wrong ways.

Once the proud township of Nankin, in the '60s we were the world's largest township after a population explosion that added 70,000 heads to our yearly census reports. Now, my memory doesn't go back that far, since I wasn't born yet, but I do have memories of things other than a menacing suit of armor in an Italian restaurant.

By the time I was five years old, the City of Westland had existed for almost 20 years, after Nankin Township decided to name itself after its mall, partially to stake their claim on the shopping megaplex, which had been a carrot-on-a-stick for a then annex-happy Livonia.

Westland was a nice, quaint place to live. The air was fresh, neighbors had relationships, children rode bikes in the streets and there were many forest areas for children to explore.

As the years passed old houses on Ford and Newberg Rd. disappeared, entire blocks of forestry were cleared for ugly condos and mindless strip malls that house useless commercial zone filler like tanning salons, cell phone stores and dollar stores. And as time went on people became too busy to talk to their neighbors.

We've become a city of retail, restaurants and convenience. Imagine Dexter Village smack dab in the middle of Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti. Imagine never having to drive more than 5 miles both ways to Best Buy, Walmart, Meijer's, Kroger's, Circuit City, Dick's Sporting Goods, Blockbuster, Target or any of four dozen or so corporate chain restaurants.

It sounds a lot better than it is in practice, because for every convenience you sacrifice something valuable. To me that big suit of armor is valuable. These days the big guy looks more comforting than menacing, after coming into Roman Forum for almost two decades. I remember my dad taking my mother and I there and taking pictures with the suit as if it were Santa Claus.

I was taken aback as the manager threw his hands up in the air and gave me the news a couple of weeks ago. The service had been off when I took someone there for a birthday dinner, and to get myself some breaded zucchini. I was hoping the manager would tell me what was going on. I wasn't expecting to hear that the place was locking up for good in two months.

I felt pretty bad. I wondered what I could have done. Maybe if I had ever found a job worth having in the area, I might have frequented Roman Forum more often on lunch breaks.

Now a business that was once the pillar of Canton Township and a hotspot in its heyday will be gone forever, and that tired steel soldier will be discharged for good.

Hopefully the TGI Friday's across the street can gift him one of the many mass-produced pieces of Americana from its walls.

A picture of Marilyn Monroe or Betty Davis could warm the cockles of any old solider's heart. Or are those the kind of frame fair that Red Robin puts out to homogenize the dining experience at their establishment?

Either I had a better memory when I was five or there just isn't as much worth remembering.

It might be time to pony up some dough

Next Monday's Board of Education meeting is going to be very important for the future of the district.

Trustees are going to formally hear, for the first time, bond committee recommendations that will actually be voted on and approved in the coming months. Which recommendations are voted on favorably will define the shape that the final bond proposal takes, both in terms of a dollar amount and which areas of improvement those dollars will be allocated to.

There have been a number of tours and community forums, but Monday would be where I would recommend starting to follow this issue, if you haven't already. It's not really a question of "yes" or "no" to education when it comes down to this issue. Dexter Community Schools are high quality. When is the last time that something of quality benefited from less support?

If you're reading this and thinking of your tax bill, then please realize that this bond will not raise your taxes, but maintain the current debt service that is already being paid on a previous bond issuance, which will be paid off soon.

The only reason I can think of to vote no is to give yourself a tax discount, which is hardly worth letting such fine schools degrade, which will probably be followed by other things soon after.

I highly recommend being at Creekside media center at 7 p.m. Monday.

Writer's Guild strike presents a unique opportunity.

There are two reasons why I hope Hollywood's pens remain unmanned for as many weeks as possible while writers stand out in the cold with picket signs.

1) This is a great opportunity to fix a broken agreement between a group that deserves just as much compensation from DVD and digital distribution sales as everyone else involved. There's no logical explanation behind the idea that writers only get paid residuals from on-air reruns.

The days of "Dallas" season box sets filling up an entire shelf with VHS tapes are long gone. In fact, much like the newspaper business, television is facing great challenges to delivering content and wind is blowing towards online. Why wouldn't a writer want to be compensated from what will be the primary means of delivering content to end users in the future?

2) Maybe if this situation continues, TV shows will dry up and we'll all be forced to watch reality television enough to cause some sort of an uprising. Let's face it, TV is garbage, unless we're talking about Bill Maher, that new CBS show "Cane," or that one show on TLC where the guy eats tree slugs and various other Temple of Doom tasties.

Thank God Maher does his own writing and the slug eater's show is light on the lines.

I figure that an overdose of crap will wake everybody up and more people will starting reading books and newspapers or spend time online visiting their favorite websites and participating in forums and other online community centers.

A box that flashes pictures is looking more and more like cave drawings to me.

Sorry I don't really have anything Dexter related to discuss. There are some things I could talk about, but you'll just have to read next week's Leader. After Monday we should have a new Village President named. That move has the potential to cause some problems, if it's not a certain someone, but we'll just wait and see.

I will leave with on this note. The more I look at the condition of services in the communities that I cover and the county as a whole, the more I realize that something has to be done. Higher taxes? Probably. Consolidation of services? Oh yeah.

It's amazing how ingrained this idea of a kingdom is in the American psyche and how pervasive it is in so many things, several of which are mentioned above.

Man the battlements!

Jeff Daniels, Rock n Roll and a shock.

What a busy couple of weeks it's been.

First, let me just say that I truly wish Jim Seta the best of luck on his future endeavors. There was a lot of debate around our offices and I heard a lot of skepticism over his stated reason for leaving, but I don't think anyone can argue that he wasn't passionate and dedicated.

The big question now is who the council will choose from it's own make-up as his interim replacement. Agree with them or not, the council is fully stocked with intelligent people so I think that situation is a win-win-win-win-win-win (one for each council member).

I got to meet Jeff Daniels a couple of weeks ago for the first time, while I was at the Purple Rose viewing "The Poetry of Pizza." I haven't met many celebrities. I wish I had handled my brief interaction with him. Instead of being goofy and saying, "Why not build a PRTC Dexter?" I would have liked to have said, "I really appreciate your support of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation." I don't think many people know about the MEDC, but they should. I've seen them save a city from future collapse with my own eyes. Maybe he wouldn't have walked away so soon.

My entertainment spree didn't stop at theatre. I had a great time at Deb Marsh's battle of the bands. I was surprised to hear that there was originally opposition to her SPACE program (can't remember the acronym off the top of my head). Essentially, the program allows students who aren't into sports, the marching band or any of those other staid school activities that we typically think of when listing extracurricular to connect with the system. Who wouldn't want to give everybody a chance to find that extra vested interest in the public education system? Apparently some, but that attitude is waning, according to Marsh. I will be keeping on eye on SPACE and reporting whenever I see one of Marsh's efforts quashed.

And now for a random Internet quote that someone said on a forum that made me stop and think.

"The 21st century started with, and I'm going to sound like an idealist here but I don't care, the 21st century started with such promise, much like the 20th century..."

A return and a promise.

I'm committing a cardinal sin here. You won't find this one in the scripture, but as someone who considers himself a new media consumer (someone who watches more Youtube than boob-tube and gets his national news from message boards and newsgroups, rather than the television); it's a pretty serious offense.

Blogging about how bad you have been at updating your blog.

It's sort of like this paradoxical situation that one finds themselves in. You just have to nourish your starving blog with a spoonful of content, but you can't possibly do that without any explanation. I couldn’t just blog about tonight's Chelsea homecoming game and leave it at that. You're going to have some questions on your mind, such as, "Where have you been for two months!"

The answer to that is that I have been subconsciously avoiding this blog. I really hate blogging about news topics. I shouldn't have an opinion about something like the Sloan-Kingsley property or the Public Act 425 agreement that Scio Township is currently chewing on, and yet issues such as these are what dominate my time and thoughts. There are some tertiary aspects of that situation that I have an opinion about, such as Mary Fialkowski's efforts to get her neighbors active and organized in voicing their opinions, but that has more to do with my general support of any member of any community standing up on their own two feet and trying to make a difference.

I can't emphasize enough that you don't have to be an elected official to get in our paper. Extraordinary people, whether they were mandated by a referendum or woke up one morning and started a small scale revolution, will always have my ear and the attention of our readers.

I'm not going to list my other reasons here. I'm just going to say that I promise to make these blog entries more regularly, but there is going to be one caveat. I'm making this thing no-holds barred. What you read here will just be free-form ramblings that spew forth from some funnel that connects to a circuit of squeaky gears and hamster wheels in my head.

Brace yourselves!

Looking forward to my first festival.

This is pretty embarassing, now that I think about it, but I've never really been to a community festival.

At least not like Dexter Daze. Sure, I've popped into the Ann Arbor Art Fair for a couple of hours, once, and my hometown of Westland has a carnival every year leading up to the annual Fourth of July fireworks. The closest I've ever come is visiting the Howell Melon Festival. My brother invited me when he lived there, but I just couldn't see the allure of a melon or a festival about melon(s).

Dexter Daze doesn't exactly give me much to go on from the name alone, but I've heard so many people talk about it that my natural curiousity will inevitably lead me to it, although the promise of a chicken meal with all the fixings doesn't hurt. Plus I hear people in Chelsea mention it too, so there's got to be something to it.

I welcome our readers to send me emails or respond to this post with suggestions of stuff that I should definitely not miss. I've read past stories, flyers, etc to get a feel, but it's not enough. No. I want to hear from people about their actual experiences, so please share.

Fun stuff aside, look for news on some serious additions to downtown Dexter. Projects like the Mill Creek building (Paul Cousins would give me such a pinch for calling it that) and the Dexter Wellness Center. These are the types of obvious next steps in terms of development that I see Dexter Village taking.

Commercial space with residential dwellings really ignite a downtown area, and who doesn't want a gym?

If anyone out there could drop this one in a community planning suggestion box, I would like to see a LaShish or similar Middle Eastern themed restaurant move into the area, speaking of suggestions. The day that I can order a lamb shwarma salad in the village will be one that I will cherish forever.

They who have no name.

If you're not at Monument Park at 7:30 p.m. this Friday to watch local band "Untitled" play, you may be missing out on a rare opportunity, as I don't think these kids will be "local" very long after graduation.

As you will read in this week's edition, they're a group of middle schoolers whose musical talent shows maturity well beyond their 13 and 14 years.

I'd love to rave about them right now, but our coverage this week is, to say the least, extremely comprehensive.

We will also be uploading a recorded performance of one of the band's original songs, so stay tuned to our local video section for that.

Monument Park. 7:30 p.m. Be there.

Flub.

Blunder, faux pas, gaffe, misjudgment, oversight, slight, slip.

These are some of my favorite fancy ways of saying "mistake." The one in the title is number one on the list though. It has that "onomatopoeia" quality. Just like "boom" or "cuckoo" it sounds exactly like what it is.

So the Memorial Day parade last week was a big big (take your pick). I won't mention the business owner's name here, because it has already gotten play on our website and will be in tomorrow's paper. I'm sure he wants to forget about it just as much as I want to forget about that time in sixth grade that I choked during the school spelling bee and asked, "Could you use that word in a sentence?"

I was asked to spell "toothpaste." Doh!

I was nervous, young and would rather be pelted by a million bazillion dodge balls than speak in public. These were my reasons, just as there are reasons for the offending float. It was a poorly produced spoof of a cultural phenomenon that the creator thought would be universally recognizable. Maybe the demographics just weren't there. The American Legion people did say that most of the parade bystanders were parent or grandparent age and the rest were small children, and iPod is aimed at late teens to 20-somethings.

I've taken a marketing class or two in college, and if I recall correctly that's called "not reaching your demographic" due to "misreading the market." Misreading ... that's another synonym for mistake that didn't make my list. Too specific.

Anyone who saw the pictures in the paper or witnessed the parade had the right to be offended, but should forgive after hearing the explanation. After talking to several witnesses, the business owner who made the float, several people at the American Legion and even Village officials, it's clear that there's no bad guy here.

Actually, I would say that the float did a great service to the community. It grabbed everyone's attention, something that is very, very difficult to do these days. Trust me. I work in the newspaper business. We're all about getting your attention.

Based on my conversation with Post Commander Jim Dempsey, there was a lot more wrong with that parade than a misunderstood float. Participant vehicles recklessly cut in line, one of which had a license plate with a Confederate flag on it - not a standard I would carry anywhere near my home in Wayne County.

There was also candy throwing, which I never even would have dreamed of being a problem at a parade. But apparently children have been hit and killed by vehicles chasing candy that wasn't picked up right away, Dempsey told me. I asked Jim an obvious question. Who would you turn to to enforce that? And he said that the very groups and organizations he would need to cooperate with the Legion were throwing candy in the parade themselves. I'm not going to name names, but they know who they are.

Never mind the fact that many of the floats, the iPod float included, weren't even patriotic or respectful to the memory of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice ... who died for this country. Disrupting people's remembrance of them to get that all important attention isn’t just a (take your pick), it's a dishonor.

I have a feeling that Dempsey will squeeze these lemons into lemonade.

If he can get his American Legion post, and possibly others, to tighten up how they handle these parades in the future, and even institute some kind of screening and/or application process, then that's only a good thing.

The antonym of (take your pick).

That's your free mad lib vocabulary lesson for the day.

Sean Dalton
The Dexter Leader

Is this lunch working?

I'm much more pleased with Working Lunch (published in the May 24 edition) than I thought I would be and the response has been consistently positive.

If you're not sure what Working Lunch is, let me take a moment to explain it as it is intended. The direction that we're trying to take this thing in is simple. It's a light-hearted Q&A with people who have unique jobs and backgrounds.

When I sit down with someone for a Working Lunch interview, I want to produce an article that will allow the reader to walk away with an understanding of the person I am talking to - what they do for a living, where they come from and some of the things that have happened to them along the way. I also want the reader to smile, chuckle and perhaps laugh. So expect to get a little bit of who I am or who Don or Ed are when we do these, because a big piece of the puzzle - what drives a Working Lunch – is the personalities on both ends of the discussion.

In all honesty, I have to give credit to a staff writer at sister publication The News-Herald, located in Southgate. Bobby Ampezzan started this whole Working Lunch thing before my time, and over in the Downriver area it has become quite an attraction for our readers, because he has done a fantastic job with it and really set a high bar for us. It is my understanding that there are quite a few people who write in or call him directly to ask, "Who's next?"

I haven't quite gotten to that point with only one of these under my belt, and Mr. Ampezzan has already passed his bicentennial Working Lunch at The News-Herald, but I can see us getting there soon.

One important thing that I would like to point out is that you, the reader, have to help us out by either saying, "Hey! I'm a candidate!" or networking us with people that you think would, even if they might be too modest to admit that they have something special to share. We'll be the judge of that!

Speaking of judgment, I’m not sure if parts of this blog post will be frowned upon. I was advised not to mention where Working Lunch came from, either to avoid looking like I stole the idea (I ate Bobby Ampezzan’s lunch?) or to preserve the “new car smell” of this feature for the Dexter/Chelsea area reader.

I decided to go against that advice and be honest by sharing the tale of Working Lunch, and from whence it came.

Sean Dalton
The Dexter Leader

Of burgers and bond issues.

Burger King’s famous motto is, “Have it your way.”

That’s a philosophy that I can get behind 100 percent. Who wants to have it someone else’s way? Does your neighbor or uncle know you well enough to order your Double Whopper? (That was a trick question, because you shouldn’t eat that junk.)

When it comes to food, I want to have the final say in what I'm eating.

Maybe I'm picky or maybe I just attach this need for authority and control over what I'm paying for. I wouldn’t be exercising my freedom to spend my money how I want if I didn't. There's no way I'm eating pickles.

On May 7, I expected a full house when the Dexter Community School District held its first public bond discussion forum. This was a chance for the community (you) to tell the school district how to prepare the bond proposal. (Hold the land purchases?)

I expected a legion of residents to bear down on Creekside Middle School’s cafeteria, but the thunderous din of marching feet never came.

As was mentioned in the paper this month, I think forty to fifty people showed up, half of which were liaisons representing an organization, such as little league or some other athletic interest. There were, of course, some teachers and members of previous school district committees that were a given. Kudos to those folks for showing up, and their input will be invaluable, but I'm not sure that the whole picture could be gleamed from the feedback collected at the first forum.

Average unaffiliated residents or "taxpayers," as some of the few that showed up identified themselves, were pretty thin on the vine. Admittedly, this isn’t the most contentious of bond issues. The district isn’t asking for new money, but rather asking to renew money that residents were already paying for previous bonds.

It’s just a case of a school district trying to maintain available money that they are legally allowed to collect, as a way to pay for things that the state provided per pupil allowance (which isn't enough to sustain the majority of school districts) can't cover on its own. The alternative is to cut quality programs and services - an alternative that is a losing proposition for the community's children.

It will be interesting to see if people are concerned enough with the district’s needs to come out Monday at 7 p.m. at the same location for the second forum. It's not only important to get out and have a say so the money is spent in the right places, but also so school district officials can get a feel for what the taxpayers will get behind come the election.

Back to the overcooked fast food analogy - If you don’t like mayo, Monday will be the time to speak your peace. Either way, everyone in the district is going to have to take a bite, whether they like what’s between the meat and the bun or not.

Sean Dalton
The Dexter Leader

New push for more online content

I don’t know what my coworkers think of this new push for more online content (see Ed Freundl’s blog), but I think it’s very neat

Most people spend so much time online in chat rooms and on message boards in their off-hours that this shouldn’t be a big deal in terms of time investment. But, as with all new things, we shall see.

Speaking of new things, I’m excited to be the new reporter for The Dexter Leader. I have spent over a year at another Heritage newspaper — The News-Herald — covering some fine communities in the Downriver area, including Trenton, Riverview and Gibraltar.

Last week, and my first week in this office, I was finally able to get out into the community and lay my eyes on the areas that I will be covering, Dexter Village and surrounding townships.

The first thing that struck me on my drive down Chelsea-Dexter Road is how different things are in a more rural area. For example, going the speed limit on some of the quieter roads is an invitation to other motorists to cross the line and pass you.

Being a big fan of Detroit’s Autobahn, a.k.a. I-696, I quickly adapted to my new driving environment.

Once I rolled into Dexter Village I was pleasantly surprised to see a great downtown area. It’s obvious that this is a community that values having the finest things within it, rather than relying completely on neighboring communities to provide all of the recreation, services and products needed for day-to-day activities.

My second visit to the area was to stop into some schools, namely Cornerstone Elementary, Creekside Middle School and Dexter High School, in particular.

I don’t think I’ve seen a more energized and active student body before. Kids were laughing, smiling and just generally having a good time, one and all.

I don’t want to knock any of the schools that I’ve attended, but I don’t remember everyone being quite so happy to be in a learning institution.

I haven’t had the chance to really delve into the details, so I’m hoping that the students in this district have the grades to match their enthusiasm.

That’s basically what it all comes down to for me. Over the next couple of weeks I will be getting to know everyone and everything to the best of my ability, and I certainly hope that our readers will feel free to call me and let me know what is going on.

Sean Dalton
The Dexter Leader