• Uncategorized

    Lazy Friday Links

    by  • October 8, 2010 • Uncategorized • 1 Comment

    I have so many questions for you. Like: what’s up this weekend? If you’d only recommend one dweeby field trip, what dweeby field trip would it be? Do you know anything about these “mystery” bones that were found in Ypsilanti in the 1930s? (via the great Ypsi history blogger Dusty Diary/Laura Bien) Have you...

    Read more →

    Summer love hiatus

    by  • August 27, 2010 • Uncategorized • 0 Comments

    On Monday we came home from a long weekend in North Carolina, where cities and towns have pretty names that sound even prettier spoken in a come-hither Southern accent. Charlotte. Chapel Hill. Raleigh. We drove from Charlotte through red hills and mossy vales to a dairy and inn near Siler City, where a friend...

    Read more →

    On Vacation

    by  • July 29, 2010 • Uncategorized • 0 Comments

    The Night Train is on vacation until next Wednesday. We may post a lazy update or two from the beach. We may send a postcard from some old cemetery in Philadelphia. We may not. We’ll miss you!

    Read more →

    Frederick John Fisher, 1878 – 1941

    by  • July 11, 2010 • Uncategorized • 1 Comment

    It’s been a weekend. We went to a big backyard party with bottle rockets and flying champagne corks. We had visitors in town from the Carolinas and we showed them some sights. I think they enjoyed it here, but they brought up some things that challenged me, and I like that about visitors. I...

    Read more →

    Tadeusz

    by  • June 28, 2010 • Uncategorized • 0 Comments

    Here are a few things that really make me happy today. Finally getting some face time with Polish Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, An impromptu Kosciuszko serenade at sundown, Dogs wading in the lagoon near the old Palmer Park lighthouse, Public pools open for business, Biking through Senator Palmer’s untouchable woods.

    Read more →

    June 11, 1805: The fire

    by  • June 11, 2010 • Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, Uncategorized • 3 Comments

    It’s the anniversary of Detroit’s Great Fire of 1805 — early Detroit’s defining moment. The fire destroyed the city nearly completely. After the city burned down, Father Richard (whose church, Ste. Anne’s, had just burned down for the second time in its amazing history) coined Detroit’s notorious motto: speramus meliora; resurget cineribus. We hope...

    Read more →

    Michigan Military Figures: THE ANSWERS EDITION

    by  • June 2, 2010 • Uncategorized • 0 Comments

    After days! of suspense! Here are the answers to our special Memorial Day Michigan military figures trivia game. We might do this again sometime. We might not. It was a little silly, but we had fun. #1 The one & only … General Mad Anthony Wayne. #2 Colonel Jean-Francois Hamtramck. When Mad Anthony was...

    Read more →

    Computer Perfection at the Ford Piquette Plant

    by  • April 27, 2010 • Uncategorized • 2 Comments

    Here they are in Henry Ford’s “Experimental Room.” More tremendous videos, photographs, and some nice introductory words from ME! at singlebarreldetroit.com. And here’s more on the Ford Piquette Plant from your friend The Night Train. Last night I had a dream that, while a forest in Detroit burned down, I met and befriended an...

    Read more →

    Accordions! In Detroit!

    by  • March 17, 2010 • Uncategorized • 4 Comments

    I’m working on new history tour that should be up by, at the very latest, your bedtime (provided I can power through a nasty stomach flu that has rendered me delirious and bedridden).  Meanwhile, may I point you in the direction of this article I wrote about the story of accordions in Detroit? It’s...

    Read more →