Design for DIFFA fundraiser

Mania offers no rest breaks. I wake up to watch the sun rise on Lake Huron at 6:30am then start sweeping the walk at 7:30am. I stop short of a full-on landscaping effort. Rick wakes up and starts the coffee. It's not 15 minutes before we have the sketch pad out and get right into a design for the DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation FIghting Aids www.diffa.org) fundraising event at the Center for Creative Studies new Taubman Center (www.centerforcreativestudies.edu). GM gave CCS the old Argonaut building for a dollar or something. It was part of their original headquarters, which the Taubman family restored for the school. The DIFFA event is to be held on the top floor which sports a vaulted ceiling and views of the city. It's gonna be awesome. This is the beauty of adaptive reuse (which should be going on in earnest in Detroit..you know my schtick.) We're sending our son to the new middle school there next year, but I digress.

Hour Magazine (www.hourdetroit.com) is sponsoring the DIFFA event which is a first for Detroit. It usually happens in places like New York and San Francisco, so this is a big deal for our design community, the effort to fight aids and the community at large. Basically designers team up with sponsors to design "fantasy" table settings and then donors get to eat dinner on them. Of course we've known about it since spring, but we've both been too busy to really do anything with it until the deadline is upon us. I get the call from the organizers on Friday as I'm just returning from Brimfield that,"hey, we need to get your design going" ..yikes!! Like the MOCAD fundraiser, we work best under pressure (mania at it's finest) and we sit at the cottage kitchen table this morning to work it out. Then it hits Rick: materials I just bought in Brimfield for a new project he's designing for another local cultural institution would be great for a table setting. If those donors agree, DIFFA benefits while creating a secondary benefit to this other institution! We high-five each other, what GENIUSES!! Just goes to show you how small a big city can be and how crucial building this kind of community is to resuscitating the life force of our beleaguered, beloved Detroit.