Go ahead and laugh at Detroit. Because you are laughing at yourself.

Speramus Meliora Resurget Cineribus: We hope for better things it shall rise from the ashes.

What our generation failed to learn was the nobility of work. An honest day's labor. The worthiness of the man in the white socks who would pull out a picture of his grandkids from his wallet. For us, the factory would never do. And turning away from our birthright - our grandfather in the white socks - is the thing that ruined us.

There's not much a newspaper reporter can do about dead men. But a newspaper reporter and a cop and a judge can deliver some justice. That's why the founding fathers wrote it up the way they did, I suppose. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Everyone is entitled to those things.

But wanderlust is like a pretty girl - you wake up one morning, find she's grown old and decide that either you're going to commit your life or you're going to walk away.