November 12, 2009
Detroit History Tour: Campus Martius and Cadillac Square
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November 9, 2009
Changes afoot
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November 6, 2009
Great Lakes Memorial at Old Mariner’s Church
Two summers ago, over watermelon mojitos, I met with Captain Rick Hake of Adventure Charter Boats, who shocked me with stories of violent storms and deadly shipwrecks in the Lakes’ waters.
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November 5, 2009
Will Detroit ever be this good again?
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November 3, 2009
But first: A few thoughts on last night's Mad Men
For a few weeks, I’ve been compiling some Mad Men-iana for the blog — notes and sources and photos, with an eye toward exploring the first few years of the ’60s as they played out in Detroit. Because the perfectly constructed, jewel-like ’60s of Mad Men is the ’60s of Manhattan white-collar professionals and WASPy suburban New York, and its not-WASPy characters and elements — the Jewess Rachel Mencken, the Draper’s maid Carla, even the specter of Dust Bowl Dick Whitman — are there to remind us of the worlds outside of Mad Men’s own orbit. It’s not a fault of the show. But in so many places, like Big Labor, blue collar, black middle class Detroit, the ’60s were experienced differently.
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October 28, 2009
New site, Bought in Detroit, catalogs things bought in Detroit
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October 26, 2009
Avedon at the DIA; Free water at Leopold’s
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October 25, 2009
Deer friend
There is nothing unusual about a deer, I know. They are so populous we need to issue licenses to kill them every year — for their own good. The drive from the southeast corner of Michigan to the western coast of the lake in Wisconsin is measured in deer corpses on the highway shoulder. Most people I know have shot a deer, hit a deer with their car or know someone who has, can dress a deer, eats deer, or once stumbled over a garbage can stuffed with a deer’s carcass whilst playing football in the street.
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October 23, 2009
Soupy Sales, Motown legend in his own right, dead at 83
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October 21, 2009
My old, new town: #3 – “Uncle” Nathan Power
Books lead you to strange places. After learning about the cauldron that boiled Mad Anthony Wayne’s exhumed bones a few weeks ago, I was drawn to learn more about the young Revolutionary War general and his role in the settling of the city of Detroit.
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October 16, 2009
En route
… to Milwaukee – America’s German Athens. It’s our own little Oktoberfest, in which we enjoy the fall foliage along the I94 corridor, perpetrate merriment, visit the Golden Goat Bridge at Apple Holler, brunch heartily and commune with the spirit of the celebrated Captain Pabst.
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October 15, 2009
Save the Deli media whirlwind, OR: My dad is in this book
Yes, I am a vegetarian. Yes, my dad is a meat magnate.
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October 13, 2009
My new, old town: #2 – The woods
In the six weeks or so that I’ve been back in metro Detroit, I’ve been spending at least an hour a day in the woods, walking and thinking (or trying not to think too much).
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October 9, 2009
About this weekend: Vicente Fox is here.
This weekend, Detroit celebrates the grand opening of The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato, a world-premiere exhibition of 36 corpses that were naturally mummified in their tombs about 100 years ago. The exhibition at the Detroit Science Center — aggressively promoted as a highly educational experience — will delve into mummy science, forensics and facial reconstructions and Mexican culture and death lore.
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October 7, 2009
This week on Backstage: Dwellephant!
This is what I love about working on this podcast: meetings of great minds. Illustrator/live artist/smart guy/mystery man Dwellephant dropped by the WMSE studios to talk to Mark Metcalf about art, advertising, graffiti, working on a book with Justin Shady, setting goals for the future and why he trys anything once.
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October 6, 2009
Richard Barnes: Museums, mortality and eternal return
On Sunday we went to Richard Barnes’s lecture on Animal Logic, his installation at the Cranbrook Institute of Science (part of the Artology series, a collaboration presenting “visual and experiential examples of the ways in which art and science frequently parallel or complement each other,” which will hold over creative-types while the Cranbrook Art Museum is closed for renovations).
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