Clik here to view.
Now we know the names of the men whose graves we just walked on in Jamestown
Earlier this month, the family and I loaded up the car and drove south to Savannah, Georgia, making stops along the way at a number of significant historical sites. Among other places of interest, we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My search for the Ypsi Tooth leads me to an interesting Haab’s artifact
My never-ending search for our region’s most enigmatic super villain, the Ypsi Tooth, led me a few nights ago to a long-closed-up building in downtown Ypsilanti. [You can enter said building by way of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Which happened first, the death of Elvis or the Ramones’ first show at CBGB?
Two extremely significant events happened on this day in history – August 16… Elvis Presley was found dead in his Graceland bathroom, clutching the book A Scientific Search For The Face of Jesus, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Columbus gets an axe to the head in Detroit
It would appear, based on the above photo, which was posted to Reddit this morning, that Christopher Columbus no longer garners the same kind of respect in Detroit that he once did… Yes, the bust of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
HP Jacobs, runaway slave turned state senator, doctor and university founder,...
Earlier this year, in the second installment of our interview with local historian Matt Siegfried on slavery, the fight for emancipation, and the role played by Ypsilantians in that struggle, we heard...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Awesome U-M undergrads launch startup to teach American history through the...
The Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation a few days ago awarded a $1,000 grant to Virginia Lozano, an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, who, along with her twin sister Beatriz, created an education...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The desperate need for affordable housing in Ann Arbor, the story of the...
Every episode of the Saturday Six Pack, toward the end, devolves into chaos. It’s been that way since we first started the show. We begin each episode with the best of intentions, but, somewhere along...
View ArticleIncredibly moving video documenting the creation of Ypsi’s HP Jacobs mural
Not too long ago on The Saturday Six Pack, I talked with Ypsi Community Schools (YCS) art teacher Lynne Settles, local historian Matt Siegfried, an Ypsi High student by the name of Paris, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wayfinding in Ypsilanti… if we’re going to do this, let’s do it right
I don’t know how it was decided… maybe someone important got lost on his or her way through Ypsilanti… but word has apparently come down that we need to institute a comprehensive wayfinding system...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The demands of black students at EMU, debunking myths about Rosie the Riveter...
If you haven’t yet listened to last weekend’t episode of the Saturday Six Pack, you should. It was a nearly perfect mix, at least from my perspective, of seriously thought-provoking and just plain...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ypsi Immigration Interview: Lynne Settles
While I’d talked with Ypsi High art teacher Lynne Settles a few times over this past year, about the HP Jacobs mural that she and her students had created on the side of Currie’s barbershop, and other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Saying they “delayed our action plan,” Rick Snyder lays the blame for the...
You have to give him credit for having chutzpah. It took him a few days, but our Governor, with he help of multiple consultants and a few top flight PR firms, is attempting not just to deflect blame...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I just finished my first novel in well over a year, and I’m taking the night off
It took me about over a year, but I finally finished Stephen King’s 849-page Kennedy assassination time travel thriller 11/22/63, and, to mark the occasion, I’m taking the night off to binge watch the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lee Azus on how urban renewal remade Ypsilanti’s Southside
Almost five years ago now, I interviewed a new transplant to Ypsi by the name of Lee Azus as part of our ongoing Ypsilanti Immigration series. Azus, a former San Francisco bookstore owner, as you might...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It’s now been verified. The long lost Prehensile Monkey-tailed Skink video...
Ok, so remember how I mentioned a few weeks ago that an oddities collector in Oregon had written to inform me that he’d somehow procured the world’s only copy of “Fears of Practice”, the 1993...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Olmsted Brothers’ 1913 plan for Ypsi’s stretch of the Huron River
Way back in 2007, after learning that my friend Nat Edmunds was in possession of an original copy of the 1913 Huron River Improvement Plan drafted by influential landscape architects John Charles...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ongoing influence of Ypsilanti’s Pleasuredome
A few nights ago, Linette wanted show me something in the book that she was reading. “It’s the new book by poet Amy Berkowitz,” she said, “and it mentions the Pleasuredome.” She handed me the book,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ypsi High students to honor the contributions of local women throughout...
As you may have noticed, a number of local high school students have been working on a new mural in downtown Ypsilanti these past few weeks. What follows is a brief conversation with their Ypsi High...
View ArticleClik here to view.
You no longer have to take the word of the textbooks, this is what Prehensile...
Remember how, several months ago, I told you that a 25 year old video of my Ann Arbor noise band, Prehensile Monkey-tailed Skink, had surfaced in Oregon, and how music journalist Dustin Krcatovich had...
View ArticleWho are the women in the new Historical Women of Ypsilanti mural?
A few days ago I posted an interview here with Ypsi High art teacher Lynne Settles about a new mural on the subject of local women’s history that she and her students had been working on in downtown...
View Article