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Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not… Happy Armistice Day.
I don’t dislike the military. I think we, as a nation, spend far too much on it, and I think that we’d ultimately be better served by investing a great deal of that money on education, alternative...
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Antiques Road Show: historic Ypsilanti edition
A few months ago I received an email from a fellow by the name of Roger Pellar. He’d apparently read my interview with historian Matt Siegfried about Ypsilanti’s Native American past, and was hoping...
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Exploring Ypsilanti’s place on the Underground Railroad: part one
On the evening of December 1, our friend Matt Siegfried, who I interviewed here not too long ago about Ypsilanti’s Native American past, will be at the downtown branch of the Ypsilanti District...
View ArticleNoam Chomsky on Ferguson: “This is a very racist society”
It’s been a several years since it happened last, but someone just used the n-word in a comment on this site, in a conversation about Ferguson. And, to mark the occasion, I thought that I’d share this...
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The New York Times says a special prosecutor should look at the role Bush and...
I’m happy, of course, that the New York Times came out today advocating for the prosecution of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and those in their administration responsible for green-lighting the use of...
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Exploring Ypsilanti’s place on the Underground Railroad: part two
This past November, I posted a lengthy interview with local historian Matt Siegfried about slavery, the fight for emancipation, and the role played by Ypsilantians in that struggle. We covered an...
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Ann Arbor’s proposed “Ambassador” program, while laughably stupid, is the...
I realize that the Ann Arbor DDA’s uniformly mocked “Ambassador” program is likely going to die on the vine, given the overwhelming backlash that we saw last week, but I refuse to just let it go. This...
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“It would be like the nuclear arms race, but with cock-like structures.”
I uttered this sentence last night, and I thought that it should be recorded for posterity…Every year or two since 2003, when Cabinet magazine named Ypsilanti’s historic water tower the winner of it’s...
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The Saturday Six Pack with Mark Maynard: episode two
The second episode of the Saturday Six Pack on AM 1700 was, by all accounts, a success. I was kind of dreading it going in, as I didn’t have much planned for the 7:00 hour, but, as is usually the case...
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Danny Fields… the man who signed the Stooges, discovered the Ramones, and...
Almost a year ago now, I received an email from a reader of this site by the name of Bob Nolan, who, knowing of my love for the Ramones and Stooges, suggested that I talk with a friend of his named...
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Harry Bennett, the killer as artist
I don’t know when we’ll actually get started with it, but local historian Matt Siegfried and I are talking about producing a weekly “Ypsi History Minute” for the Saturday radio program. We’re still...
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Judge Carlton Reeves, sentencing three white men to prison for the murder of...
In the early hours of June 26, 2011, 18-year old Deryl Dedmon, who had been drinking with friends, drove his pick-up truck over a man by the name of James Craig Anderson in Jackson, Mississippi,...
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Apparently I had a revelation in my sleep last night
I found this sitting on the table beside my bed this morning. As it’s in my handwriting, I imagine that I must have written it at some point during the night.While I doubt that beloved local historian...
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SAE, the only national fraternity to have its roots in the antebellum South,...
As I’m sure you know by now, a video surfaced a few days ago of well-dressed, white University of Oklahoma fraternity members singing together on a bus about how there will never be a black person in...
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State Rep Jeff Irwin, talking trees with Ben Connor Barrie, and the Ypsilanti...
This coming Saturday’s show, as always, will be awesome. We’ll start out by talking with Michigan State Rep Jeff Irwin about raising the sales tax to fix our roads, his apparent disdain for daylight...
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“Be very skeptical”… A warning from 1992 concerning the merger of Convention...
In the wake of last week’s post about County plans to shift funds away from the Ypsilanti Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and into the coffers of its counterpart in Ann Arbor, a lot of interesting...
View ArticleArchival footage from 1970 suggests that Ann Arbor was once interesting
As we discussed not too long ago in a thread about Ann Arbor’s proposed “Ambassador” program, there was a time in Ann Arbor’s past when it wasn’t wealthy business owners pushing for their own private...
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Collapse within Ypsilanti’s Thompson Block leaves one worker dead
Just a little more than an hour after Ypsilanti landlord turned real estate developer Stewart Beal took to Facebook to announce that demolition on the Thompson Block’s first floor had begun, word...
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What single thing has had the biggest positive impact on Ypsilanti since 2000
I know it’s a difficult thing to quantify, but, this afternoon, while cleaning house, I started thinking about all of the positive things to have happened in Ypsi since I moved back in 2000, and...
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Ypsi School Superintendent Benjamin Edmondson, vacation memories and...
After a few weeks off the air, The Saturday Six Pack will return tomorrow evening with an all new episode. Our first guest will be the new Superintendent of Ypsilanti Public Schools, Dr. Benjamin...
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