"I think people shop in the suburbs largely to get away from the crime and blight around them, and to be somewhere they can drop their kids off for an hour and know they are safe," he said. 

Whole Foods may do better than he expects, especially if members of the Wayne State and Detroit Medical Center communities take to shopping there on their way home.

Possibly it may even spur surrounding stores in a good way. But I have an uneasy feeling that the odds are against it. In any case, Detroit's independent grocers may not have served their communities perfectly. But they have been there when nobody else has been.

And they also deserve to be heard.

Health care they can't take away: One of the area's more amazing health care stories has been the FernCare Free Clinic, which opened less than two years ago after a group of friends spent years planning and raising money to make it happen.

After starting in a temporary location, they finally got a permanent clinic last fall, in a renovated building at the corner of Paxton and East Nine Mile roads.

They have done their best to do everything right. They treat only uninsured adults between the ages of 19 and 64. They don't treat children or those eligible for Medicaid. If you have a venereal disease, they send you to the health department; if you are in anything like critical shape, they pack you off to the nearest emergency room.

Even so, they never run out of patients. Ann Heler, an amazing and dynamic woman who is the president of their board, says there is always a waiting list, which is not surprising given that there are at least 50 million Americans who lack any health care at all.

Nor is that need ever going away. Even if President Obama's health care law survives our basically right-wing Supreme Court, Heler estimates there will still be about 20 million uninsured without care. Next Thursday, May 24, the rock band Mostly Static is hosting a fundraiser for FernCare, starting at 8 p.m. at the Berkley Front on 12 Mile. Be there, be worse than square, or send 'em a check.

After all, you're more than likely just a pink slip away from FernCare, (ferncare.org) which treats folks from many different towns two Saturday mornings and an occasional Thursday night every month. If you go, tell them some left-wing columnist sent you.

> Email Jack Lessenberry