Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner sentenced Kwame Kilpatrick to up to five years in prison for violating his probation. The judge was pretty hacked off.

“Frankly, your continued attempt to cast yourself as the victim, your lack of forthrightness, your lack of contriteness and your lack of humility only serve to affirm that you have not learned your lesson,” Groner told Kilpatrick. “Clearly, rehabilitation has failed. You have not adjusted well under probation. Probation is no longer an option. This court must now sentence you in a manner that assures that justice will be served. The terms of your earlier probation no longer apply. That ship has sailed. That plea deal was negotiated by your attorneys and the prosecutor. I only approved what I thought was a lenient sentence because everyone, not only your lawyers and the prosecutors, but also the City of Detroit, urged this court to accept the deal so the city could move on. The city wants to move on. You want to move on. So today we will move on.”

There’s a really wonderful story by Mark Stryker in the Detroit Freep today about a new piece of Banksy graffiti art posted on a wall of the old Packard plant in Detroit. The tag shows a stenciled little boy with a can of paint, surrounded by the decades of debris. “I remember when all this was trees,” he says.

A photo of the wall is posted on Banksy’s web site, and Flickr photog Detroit Derek also recorded a new Banksy rat on a wall in Detroit.

Last week, after members of Detroit’s 555 Gallery became aware of the Banksy tag, they got a Bobcat forklift and MOVED THE ENTIRE WALL seven miles to their facilities near the Ambassador Bridge — to keep it from being ruined, they said. Of course, that was kind of the point, but let it not be said that entrepreneurialism is dead in Detroit.

The video below shows 555 Gallery founder Carl Goines discussing the effort.

Favorite quote from the Freep story: “This may be unprecedented, because in most other cities, you wouldn’t be able to take a wall home,” said Luis Croquer, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, which specializes in cutting-edge art. Well, yes. That is a succint summation of the problem.

Packard plant ruin links: There are many, many photos of the abandoned Packard plant, on Flickr and elsewhere. Here are a few:

• Free Press photo gallery
• Photographer John Penrice photo gallery
• Thousands of Flickr images
• If you look at the “Earth” view on Google maps, you can see fascinating 3D imagery of the ruins. Much detail has been obscured, but you can make out graffiti that says “Epic Decay?” on one wall.

Christopher Barger on the outlook for the Tigers from Laurie Mayers on Vimeo.

The Washington Nationals and the Detroit Tigers start their baseball seasons today, the Nationals at home against the Phillies and the Tigers in Kansas City. I am sorry not to be at either stadium on Opening Day, but will definitely catch Pudge Rodriguez in his current home later this season. The Tigers have upset some fans by trading star and all-around nice guy center fielder Curtis Granderson to the Yankees and by paying $8 million for evil aging Yankee/former Red Sox Johnny Damon. In any case, I saw social media evangelist Christopher Barger in Detroit last week (disclosure: client) and asked him about the coming season. (This is my first video; I’ll do better next time with the edits and the unsteady cam.)

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has no plans for big, expensive campaigns to try to get Detroiters to be counted in the 2010 Census, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The city can’t afford it, and Bing feels it’s time to face reality and scale back city services to match its smaller population. The city of Detroit encompasses 139 square miles, about 40 of which are vacant, the Journal said. In contrast, the District of Columbia has an area of 68 square miles. What could you do with those extra 40 square miles? You could farm it, or you could turn it back into the carbon-sucking forest of oak and maple trees that it was before the white people settled it 300 years ago.

To me. it seems, the difficulty is: how do you shrink the geographic boundaries enough so that the city can provide adequate police, fire and city services to its core neighborhoods? What happens to the owner of the one or two last occupied houses left on the east Detroit blocks shown below? Detroit already has 10,000 homes scheduled for demolition.

I applaud Mayor Bing for trying to right-size city services and expectations. But it will surely be an arduous process that will take decades.

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The view from Connecticut Avenue and L Sts, NW, early this afternoon

I did make it out of Baltimore, precisely on time, Monday morning, even though BWI had only one runway open. I arrived in Detroit at noon, 24 hours before the first significant snow of the year in southeast Michigan. Metro Detroit received 8 to 10 inches of snow overnight, so lots of schools got their first snow day. Here are some things that happened in the ensuing anarchy:

• Grocery stores remained stocked with foodstuffs ranging from apple juice to zucchini
• Wayne County had 100 snowplows salting and plowing the roads, so that all main highways and roads were dry by midday
• City buses kept running (at least to the extent that they usually run)
• The People Mover light rail system kept running. Well, it didn’t really have far to go, and it doesn’t really move that many people, but nevertheless …

Alas, my Wednesday afternoon flight to Baltimore was canceled, so I had to buy more clothes and toothpaste.

In the meantime, this just in from a desperate shopper in the mean streets of the District: “It’s grim here. Safeway is shut down. Sign on door says no milk. Police tape around entrance. Roads impassable. Garbage piling up along street…”

The Ypsilanti water tower

The famous Ypsilanti water tower embodies the spirit of the city: stand-up citizenship, hard work, and circumscribed living. But, you might wonder, how does it compare to the Washington Monument?