conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Detroit, Bak, Hidden with the genre: Arts & Photography, Photography & Video?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Hidden History of Detroit'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first four paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Hidden History of Detroit
  It's 2011, and I think I missed the latest "where we've been/where we're going" check-in by ten years. When we celebrated the tricentennial in 2001, I was a junior in high school and not at all aware that Detroit was celebrating a tricentennial.
  But now is a good time (is there ever a bad time?) to take up the voyage again. When Detroiters talk about history today, it's often to make sense of Detroit's "big mess": a dwindling population, high unemployment, a hollowed-out economy, acres of empty property and an infrastructure desperately in need of repair. How did this happen after we spent half of the twentieth century on top of the world?
  Detroit's history can do so much more than that, though. There's a lot of joy in these old halls (I giggle a lot when I work on this stuff) and plenty to celebrate. There are role models and stories of mortal hubris—like the hot spur and boy wonder Stevens T. Mason, who went toe to toe with the State of Ohio and President Andrew Jackson to deliver Michigan to statehood and whose ambition created a statewide network of roads, railways and canals, effecting a gaping hole in the new state's economy. And there's a reason Re-Elect Pingree posters pop up all over town during election years.
  Two of them created—through sweat, drudgery, obsession, near-pathological attention to detail and humorless dispositions—the definitive canon of Detroit history before 1900.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: two more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Personally? As soon as those people become real to me, I experience a little grief. The peril of making friends in the halls of history is that all of your friends have died. And some of the things they created that were supposed to be eternal—like their cemeteries—have passed from this earth as well.
  Over a few hundred years, a shifting city needs to rearrange itself. To make room for the living, we may have to uproot the dead. Once in a while, we lose track of someone. Sometimes we just build right over the graves. For hundreds of years, Detroiters have written about their cemeteries as if they have been decrepit for hundreds of years.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: For hundreds of years, Detroiters have written about their cemeteries as if they have been decrepit for hundreds of years.. Sometimes we just build right over the graves. Once in a while, we lose track of someone. To make room for the living, we may have to uproot the dead.
  Over a few hundred years, a shifting city needs to rearrange itself. And some of the things they created that were supposed to be eternal—like their cemeteries—have passed from this earth as well. The peril of making friends in the halls of history is that all of your friends have died.Personally? As soon as those people become real to me, I experience a little grief
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But it's good to know that he's there when you need him. When times call for decisive action, tremendous courage or—especially—the energy of a fearless, youthful heart, Stevens T. Mason stands at the ready, silently rallying his public.
  Bates, George C. "By-Gones of Old Detroit." Historical Collections of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, vol. 22, 1894.
  Campbell, Honorable James V. "Biographical Sketch of Charles Christopher Trowbridge." Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, Pioneer Collections, vol. 6, 1884. Reprinted, 1907.
  Hamlin, Carrie. "Old French Traditions." Report of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, vol. 4, 1883.
  Taylor, George, Reverend. "First Visit to Michigan: Some Incidents Connected with Early Methodism in the State." Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, vol. 6, 1884. Reprinted 1907. Accessed at the Internet Archive, archive.org.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: org. When times call for decisive action, tremendous courage or—especially—the energy of a fearless, youthful heart, Stevens T. Mason stands at the ready, silently rallying his public.
  Bates, George C. "By-Gones of Old Detroit." Historical Collections of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, vol. 22, 1894.
  Campbell, Honorable James V. "Biographical Sketch of Charles Christopher Trowbridge." Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, Pioneer Collections, vol. 6, 1884. Reprinted, 1907.
  Hamlin, Carrie. "Old French Traditions." Report of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, vol. 4, 1883.
  Taylor, George, Reverend. "First Visit to Michigan: Some Incidents Connected with Early Methodism in the State." Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, vol. 6, 1884. Reprinted 1907. Accessed at the Internet Archive, archive.But it's good to know that he's there when you need him.