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July 11, 1796: Evacuation Day

July 11, 2011 in History, Holidays | 1 comment

[The Battle of Fallen Timbers]

Hey, Detroit! We are lucky. You know why?

We get TWO Independence Days. (Actually, if you count Canada Day on July 1, which we celebrate with international fireworks, we get three.)

Besides the terrific  festivities we enjoy with the rest of our country on the Fourth, we can celebrate another milestone in our struggle to wrest control from the British: Evacuation Day, July 11, 1796.

Of course, Detroit belonged to the United States, in theory, after the Revolutionary War. But the British retained control of their fort at Detroit, for a host of reasons. In general, the triumph of the Treaty of Paris yielded to years of boundary disputes, diplomacy and intrigue. In the Northwest, a tribal confederacy demanded that the new federal government recognize their claims to the region. The United States didn’t have a military presence here, and George Washington was reluctant to start an Indian war. So the British stayed. And they encouraged the Indians to stay, too.

In 1790, after escalating skirmishes between Indians and settlers, George Washington sent the first offensive to present-day Ohio. Poor training and bad planning led to two massive and bloody U.S. defeats before Washington put Mad Anthony Wayne in charge. His victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near present-day Toledo) ended the Northwest Indian War and rendered British excuses for keeping forts in the region null and void.

The Jay Treaty of 1794 made it official: the British had to leave their western forts, once and for all, by 1796.

And leave they did. On July 11, 1796  British “evacuated,” and the United States raised the flag over Fort Detroit. General Wayne was sick, so he left Colonel Hamtramck in charge. Though it is often reported that Hamtramck personally hoisted the Stars and Stripes, Captain Moses Porter actually did the honors; Hamtramck did not arrive in Detroit until July 13.

Did the British renegade Simon Girty really freak out and ride his horse across the river to Canada when he saw the American boats approaching? Probably not, but that is hilarious.

Most people who lived in Detroit at the time were French, so the transfer of power was received as more of a collective shoulder-shrug than a patriotic triumph. And all of these acrobatics — the defeat of the Western Confederacy, the  imperfect Jay Treaty, the British loss of influence in the Northwest — led to the War of 1812 a generation later, when the British took back our fort. And then burned down the White House.

But that is another story. And a hundred years later, with Detroit full of wealth and people and industry and American optimism, and the British long gone, the centennial of Evacuation Day was cause for celebration indeed.

Wrote the New York Times:

At the approaching celebration there will be a grand parade of all the civic and military organizations … ; patriotic speeches, with politics barred; a riotous waste of powder (for Detroit has been skipping the Fourth of July for several years in view of this event), and fireworks of all nations in the evening.

[American flag illustration from Centennial Celebration of the Evacuation of Detroit by the British, 1896]

Everyone who was anyone in Detroit came out to speechify on the grounds of the unfinished Federal Building, which stood where Fort Detroit used to be. A number of orators tied the Evacuation of Fort Detroit to the last unfinished business of the Revolutionary War. One son of the War of 1812 brought a spyglass that his grandfather swiped from a British ship during the Battle of Lake Erie.

Buildings were decked in red, white and blue bunting. Mayor Pingree invited important visitors from all over the country. They enjoyed lunch on a riverboat, where they were entertained by a mandolin orchestra. Then there was a big military parade.

I am not sure if Evacuation Day was ever celebrated in such a fashion again, but I doubt it. We may not even need to bring it back. But if you need one more reason to have a picnic, drink a glass of champagne, see a mandolin orchestra or set off fireworks on your street today, here it is. Happy Evacuation Day.

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Night Train to Summer Vacation

August 8, 2010 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

So we’re back from out East. We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled tales from Detroit’s history crypt, but today, will you indulge us as we share What We Did On Summer Vacation?

We flew into Baltimore, where I jumped into a waiting car that whisked me to the Delaware coast for a weekend of swimming in the ocean, drinking Dogfish Head and eating buckets of pungent Old Bay-encrusted crabs with friends from college. (The Fiancé, who dislikes beaches, went to D.C. for a few days.) We drove by a lot of lonely historical markers in Maryland’s farm country. I gazed longingly out the window at tiny, toppled churchyard burial grounds. At the beach house, I yammered about Antoine Cadillac, Alexander Hamilton and the War of 1812 until my friends all wandered away, probably to talk amongst themselves about Austrian School economics.

Then I got a ride to Philadelphia, reunited with my betrothed, and settled in for two and a half days of adventures. Really dweeby adventures.

It was my first trip to Philly, but I knew I would love it. Because I’m a lady who loves memorial statues, fusty old buildings, museums, cemeteries and the resting places of historical figures. Though there is much to love about Philadelphia besides those things, Philadelphia not only has those things in spades — it has some of the best of those things in America.

Philadelphia’s Olde City is, literally, an open-air museum. Operated by the National Parks Service, it’s a square mile or so packed with landmarks, historic homes and buildings, museums, gardens, statues of  famous or once-famous people, cobblestone carriage ways and interactive “living history” attractions, like the park rangers working the press in Ben Franklin’s former print shop, storyteller stations and more people in Revolutionary-era garb than you can shake a Patriot flag at.

I loved the Franklin Court museum, a delightfully ’70s-flavored underground hall of mirrors beneath the site of Ben Franklin’s former home. There’s a doll theater that plays a three-act show about Franklin’s role in the war for Independence and the framing of the Constitution. And there’s a bank of telephones where you can dial up famous people and they’ll tell you what they thought about the guy. Above ground, an open, life-sized frame shows you where the actual structure of the house used to stand, and paving stones are engraved with passages from letters to and from Ben and his wife Deborah.

At the portrait gallery at the Second Bank, we saw a few familiar faces, including Tadeusz Kosciuszko, disgraced General William Hull, who surrendered Detroit to the British during the War of 1812, and my own first love, Mad Anthony Wayne, who also turned up later in a relief on the goddamn jaw-dropping George Washington Memorial in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

We didn’t make it to the cemetery early enough to spend much time getting to know anyone, but we paid our respects to Mr. Franklin  and threw a coin on Dr. Benjamin Rush’s grave (why his tombstone was covered in quarters, while Ben’s is covered in pennies, is not a question I know how to answer).

A routine Google search indicates that Daniel Dupuy was a silversmith. I wish we’d had time to take the tour.

On a late night walk toward Center City through Society Hill, we found the illuminated church yard of Old St. Mary’s, where Commodore John Barry, father of the U.S. Navy, is at rest.

In Washington Square, where mass graves were filled with the bodies of fallen soldiers during the Revolutionary War, a Tomb of the Unknown Solider is illuminated by a blazing eternal flame. Above a statue of George Washington, an inscription reads: “Freedom is a light for which many have died in the dark.”

We paused in front of the tomb late at night, gazing into the fire. There’s a theme park quality to Philadelphia’s historic district that sometimes makes it hard to remember (or believe) that giant things really happened there. But the shadowy tomb in Washington Square reminded me of the very serious consequences of American history — consequences that have shot through time, clear through, to my very own, very real life in the world.

For a similar chill of the serious past, you may want to stop by the War of 1812 Dead marker the next time you find yourself on Washington Boulevard in Detroit. Naturally, in Philly, I idly wondered what an open-air history park in Detroit would feel and look like. Now firmly back at work in my daily life, I realize it would be close to impossible, with everything so spread out, so many buildings long gone, and a multitude of noisy freeways barreling over the pathways of our past.

But maybe once in a while we could haul out some of those classic early-model Fords and, you know, just kind of drive them around all day. In period costume. Add a few roaming characters — Who wants to play Father Richard? We need someone with a sword scar. I guess I’m describing Greenfield Village, but how great would it be to see right in the heart of the city?

Also, can we put up a few more statues? That would be terrific.

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Michigan Military Figures: THE ANSWERS EDITION

June 2, 2010 in Uncategorized | No 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 struck with gout and returned to Pennsylvania (where he died), Hamtramck raised the flag over Fort Lernoult on July 11, 1796. He remained in Detroit until his death in 1803. He’s buried at Mt. Elliott.

#3

Alpheus Starkey Williams, a Union General in the Civil War and the subject of a huge, striking equestrian statue on Belle Isle. Williams served as a Democratic U.S. Congressman from Michigan from 1875 until his death in the U.S. Capitol building in 1878. He’s buried at Elmwood. Curious? There’s tons more to know and love about Alpheus Starkey Williams here.

#4

General George Custer.

“We all know Custer died at Little Big Horn. What this book supposes is … maybe he didn’t?”

#5

General (and Governor of the Michigan Territory) William Hull. Hull’s infamy was a result of his flabbergasting surrender of Detroit to the British during the War of 1812. Even the British were surprised. Wrote President Madison’s comptroller Richard Rush: “The nation has been deceived by a gasconading booby.” Hull was tried by court martial and sentenced to death for his blunder. Madison pardoned him. His successor, Territorial Governor Lewis Cass, likely wanted to see him shot.

#6

General Montgomery C. Meigs was Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army during the Civil War. An early assignment for Meigs? He supervised plans and construction for Detroit’s Fort Wayne. Meigs’s later, more famous projects include the Washington Aqueduct and Arlington National Cemetery.

#7

Sarah Emma Edmonds was a Canadian teenage runaway who, disguised as a man, joined the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry. She served as a nurse, a mail carrier and, most alluringly, an intelligence officer across enemy lines. Learn more about her amazing story here.

#8

Ulysses S. Grant was a Lieutenant at Fort Wayne from 1849 – 1851. He lived in a house near Livernois and Fort. Today, Grant’s house is on the State Fairgrounds. More at detroit1701.org.

#9

Defamed General Justus McKinstry, son of Michigan’s amusement king Colonel David McKinstry.

#10

Russell A. Alger, whose former home in Gross Pointe is now the Grosse Pointe War Memorial and whose commemorative fountain in Grand Circus Park was designed by Daniel Chester French. Alger enlisted as a private solider in the Union Army and left the war a brevetted Major General. Later he became Governor of Michigan.

#11

It’s GENERAL FRIEND PALMER! While I was preparing for this post, I learned that the General was the Quartermaster General of Michigan during the Civil War.

#12

General Alexander Macomb, whose family once owned a sizable chunk of land on Belle Isle. After heroism during the War of 1812, Macomb  served as the commanding general of the U.S. Army from 1828 to 1841. His statue is on Washington Boulevard, across the street from the Book Cadillac hotel.

That’s it! Hope you learned something. I did!

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In which Henry Ford tells me to take it easy for a while

April 25, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

This weekend I had a dream that I found an old safe in some empty house. When I cracked it (somehow), I found a bunch of Henry Ford’s old papers and letters (including his high school diploma?) as well as several original documents relating to Anthony Wayne.

So … so … dweeby.

I clearly need to clear my head of local history a little. Luckily for my freelance roster, unfortunately for dorky blogging, I am working through a few tight deadlines this week and next (with a vacation to Milwaukee, my heart’s other home, in between). We’ll be around, but posts will be shorter, sweeter and possibly farther between for a spell.  The Facebook page should be hopping, though. (And we’ve been ONE follower short of 100 for like a week! Come ON!)

Meanwhile, here are a few items of interest that have captured our fancy of late:

No one needs to tell you to visit Sweet Juniper, right? But recently Jim has been writing a lot about this dog cart he built, and his chronicle of their  jaunts around town has really been yanking my heart. I love it. You should read about it.

Perfect Laughter, Detroit’s best art blog, featured one of my dad’s old Opening Day photos in their Starred series.

I heard a rumor on Twitter that Matt Novak of Paleo-Future, a terrific blog about visions of the future that never came to pass, will be on All Things Considered tomorrow. I am hoping that telling you this will help me remember to tune in when 4 pm rolls around tomorrow.

(EDIT: Forgot to mention that, in a counter-intuitive move that just thrills me, Paleo-Future is starting a real, hold-it-in-your hand magazine. You can pre-order the first issue here.)

On Saturday, the fiancé and I old-person’d out and stayed in to watch How the States Got Their Shapes on the History Channel. It was endearing and smart. Today we were totally insufferable at brunch where we yammered on to our helpless dining companion about the skinny part of Idaho, the Oklahoma panhandle, the Mason Dixon line, the diagonal line on Nevada’s western border, Fort Blunder on the Canadian border and OF COURSE, The Toledo War. (Don Faber, who wrote this book, was a guest on the show. And charming.) We would highly recommend you watch this so that the next time I try to assault you at the bar with the story of the lost state of Deseret, you can just say “Yeah, I know Amy, I already saw that.”  It’s based on a book by the same name.

And this article about mammoths, mastodons and the 18th-century American “fossil craze” — and how it reflected European attitudes about North American “degeneracy,” and how American archaeologists, artists, science lovers and hobbyists shot back — was a good read in April’s Smithsonian Magazine, which I tend to keep on my night stand for a month at a time, planning to read it before bed. I never really read before bed, so I have no idea why I do this.

In between deadlines, I’m hoping to spend some time getting back on track with blog research and planning, so if there’s anything you’re curious about, history-wise, in and around magnificent Detroit, please do get in touch.

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Tuesdays with General Friend Palmer: Goose Yokes

March 29, 2010 in Books, History | No comments

(This occasional series on passages dug up in Early Days in Detroit used to run on Fridays. Then I changed my mind.)

I am a little in love with this story tonight. General Friend Palmer begins a chapter dedicated to the early business men of Detroit with the story of Peter John Desnoyers, born in Paris in 1772 and enticed to the United States by a swindler:

Just previous to the French Revolution, a company had been formed in America known as the Sciota Land Co., which opened an agency Paris and offered large inducements to mechanics and artisans of moderate means to invest in its lands. It was represented that they were eligibly located on a large stream called La Belle River, abounding with fish of an enormous size, embracing magnificent forests filled with wild game, that there were no military enrollments and no quarters to find for soldiers.

… After a voyage of 60 days reached Havre de Grace, Md., and thence proceeded to Gallipolis, Ohio, which was said to be within the company’s domains. They arrived there in 1790. Upon reaching this spot they found that the title deeds which they held were worthless, the company of whom they purchased not owning a foot of the land they had sold.

Wow. So, the Desnoyers get all the way here, having sold most of their worldly possessions, without speaking much if any English, without knowing a soul. And they’re completely stranded. Peter J. Desnoyers is 18 years old.

The Desnoyers spent some time with a small community of other French settlers in Ohio, then moved to Pittsburgh, where Peter J. makes the fortunate acquaintance of Michael Dousman. Dousman had heard good things about Michigan and convinced Peter J. to join him en route to the territory, along the same trail covered by Mad Anthony Wayne’s army. (Michael Dousman would later get rich as a fur trader on Makinac Island; during the War of 1812, he was captured by the British, and when he continued to sell goods to their garrison upon his release, he was branded a traitor. More here.) Michael Dousman and Peter J. Desnoyers arrived in Detroit in 1796, when they were both 24.

detroit 1796

(A map of the city in the year Peter Desnoyer came here. Source.)

After some time as an enlisted armorer, Desnoyers — a silversmith by trade — opened a shop with John Piquette in 1803. Two years later, the entire city burned down. According to an article in this Pioneer Society report, Peter Desnoyers hauled all of furniture out to the city limits, near the corner of Jefferson and Woodward, then plunked his five-year-old son Peter under a table to keep an eye on the goods. When that story was reported in the Free Press in 1876, the table was still in good condition and in the younger Peter’s possession.

In the land auction that happened after the fire, Peter bought a lot at the corner of Jefferson and Bates street and re-opened his shop. And what a shop it must’ve been, according to the General:

Mr. Desnoyers was about the first merchant here (that I remember) to keep marbles, the delight of the average boy’s heart in the early days, and I presume they possess the same charm for those of the present day. All the boys attending the old University School on the corner of Bates and Congress Streets nearby used to patronize him extensively. I myself squandered many a penny for marbles at the old gentleman’s store.

Aside from marbles, Mr. Desnoyers kept in his store as great a variety of articles as possible. It was a common remark when a citizen was in quest of an article that was difficult to be obtained elsewhere, that it could be found at Desnoyers’s, which generally turned out to be true. This became so proverbial that on one occasion, a gentleman made a wager with another that he could name an article that Desnoyers could not furnish. It was agreed. They entered the store, and one of them very seriously inquired of the salesman of versatile resources if he had any goose yokes. “Oui, monsieur” was the prompt reply, and he proceeded to a drawer and produced the article asked for. The merriment of the party was beyond reasonable bounds, Mr. Desnoyers entering as heartily into it as his customers.

(ASIDE: In my efforts to find out what a goose yoke is, I have come across this same story about the outrageous wager that a general store would carry goose yokes, one from James Hike’s general store in 1850s Illinois, the other from the Historic Howell Works Company and General Store at the Allaire Village in New Jersey. This must have been some sort of proverbial legend, like an elaborate way to say “everything and the kitchen sink.” Only it’s everything and … goose yokes. And for the record, this is what a goose yoke is.)

The General remembers Mr. Desnoyers as a man of “great perseverance and industry and strict integrity” who nonetheless was not afraid of a really good joke. In 1877, someone whose memory we must take with a grain of salt wrote this of Peter J. Desnoyers, 31 years after his death:

Monsieur Pierre Desnoyers, that fine looking, smiling, sweet-voiced old gentleman whose bon jour! bon jour! would arrest you as the voice of a lute, whose rosy cheeks, fine mouth, pure teeth, and large blue eyes, with that drooping lid, present the portrait of a fine old Frenchman …

The elder Peter J. Desnoyers, who came to Detroit after he lost everything, then lost everything again in the fire, spawned a whole dynasty of high-society Desnoyers with their “elegant, old-fashioned furniture and costly wines” admired by the pleasant company they kept (including the Palmers, by the General’s recollection). In 1835, Peter J. Desnoyers’ daughter Elizabeth married James A. Van Dyke, who served as mayor of Detroit in 1847. Together they bred a whole bunch of Desnoyers Van Dykes.

And it all started with a land scam. So there you have it; now go out, take some chances and make those lemons into ade.

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Valentine’s Day

February 12, 2010 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History, Meditations | 4 comments

st valentines day

(Harper’s Magazine, 1861. Library of Congress.)

I didn’t realize that Valentine’s Day was this weekend until late this afternoon. The fella and I don’t have anything planned, except we might have lunch with an out-of-town friend who’s flying into Ann Arbor to visit his long-distance girlfriend. For Valentine’s Day.

My blog has lately suffered at the hands of a story I’m putting together for the weekly about accordions in Detroit, so the chance to take advantage of an easy editorial plug-in would have been really appealing, had I not completely forgotten that it’s happening in like two days. And everyone knows that despite our 24/7 communications-saturated society, no one really reads blogs on the weekends. Okay, that’s not true. But if you post on the weekend, it doesn’t count. That’s what I was taught in internet school, anyway.

So, in between checking Facebook and not working on my story, I thought about some lesser-known famous romances. Mary Vining and Mad Anthony Wayne? I don’t really know enough about that one to know if it even happened.

mary vining

Captain Frederick and Maria Pabst? A handsome couple, magnanimous citizens, upstanding Germans and good parents, but I don’t really know anything about their love. Just their beer. There’s an arcane story that delights me about Frederick saving Maria from a shipwreck when he was still a Great Lakes captain, but chances are better that Maria’s father, the brewer Philip Best, just wanted Frederick in his camp.

maria

Mostly I’ve been thinking about love affairs that are a little closer to home.

margaret and bill fw

(Family photos courtesy my mom.)

This is my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill in 1963 or 1964. They met on a blind date when Margaret was 19. Uncle Bill used to tell me that Margaret wore all blue on their first night out: a blue dress, blue stockings, blue shoes, a blue handbag. I bet she looked incredible.

Bill and Margaret got married seven years later, at a hunt club in Farmington Hills. They spent the rest of their lives, as far as I could tell, marvelously in love.

My mother was nine years old when they were wed, so she grew up with Bill and Margaret as much as I did. They were like grandparents to me in a lot of ways: Margaret picked us up after school, cooked us fishticks and frozen vegetables or macaroni and cheese for dinner, read to us. But more importantly, she tended to the small, real people growing inside of us. We had conversations with her. We shared ideas, defended convictions, talked about books we liked, boys we liked, places we wanted to see. She was honest, and joyous. It’s hard to even write about her without stooping to tripe; I can walk my brain through every corner of her house,  but the influence she had on my life and the incredible love I still feel for her really overpowers any constructive details I can remember about her besides the last three agonizing weeks of her life.

So thank god for old family photos; I can see them like this, 20 years before I was even born, when they were gorgeous and adorable. Even when they were aging, Margaret grey and papery from decades of cigarettes, Bill bald and permanently sun-leathered, both of them losing their teeth, their love for each other was radiant, and together, they were a pretty beautiful thing to behold.

When Margaret died of lung cancer in 2001, Uncle Bill was permanently wrecked. It took years for him to cut his trips to the cemetery from twice a day to once. When we buried him in 2008, we arrived at the mausoleum to find the flowers he’d taped to the marble wall of her crypt the day before he died, peacefully, while he was napping on the couch.

I have a fiancé now, and it tears my heart out that Margaret and Bill don’t get to meet him — and that he has to settle for an occasional teary (and usually sad-tipsy) monologue from me about how great they were. On our first date, we went to the opera. I tried not to think too much about it, but my favorite vintage shopkeeper talked me into a stunning wool shift dress, with sheer mesh netting at the neck, dotted with tiny sequins.

It’s royal blue.

egglestons

Sometimes it’s so mind-boggling to remember that people who lived in the past really lived, you know? Ate, and drank, looked around, talked to each other, made love, fell in love, had bad days and good days and boring days, and maybe sometimes thought to themselves, how weird is it to be alive?

I don’t know why this is especially resonating with me in the run-up to Valentine’s Day. Maybe because even though it’s hard to understand, emotionally, what it might have been like to live without electricity, paved roads, heat, grocery stores, or to be the commander of an army, the governor of a frontier state, the wife of an aristocrat or the daughter of a beer baron, the capacity to understand a love affair is readily accessible to just about everyone.

Those are my great-grandparents in the black-and-white picture above, dolled up in their Sunday clothes. I don’t know anything about them, not even how they felt about each other, but I’m glad they got it on at some point. Happy Valentine’s Day to them, and to you.

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Happy birthday, General “Mad” Anthony Wayne

January 1, 2010 in History | 3 comments

anthony wayne plaque

On what one might imagine was a cold winter morning in Chester County, PA, on New Year’s Day, 1745, the baby who would become the young, fabulous, decorated Revolutionary War general – and securer of the city of Detroit – Anthony Wayne was born.

If you’ve followed the blog from the beginning, you may realize that my metro Detroit history excursions have given me acquaintance, and later a flowering obsession, with General Anthony Wayne.

As a child, Mad Anthony was hilariously precocious, staging grand battles in the schoolyard, which eventually got him expelled. Here’s a letter from the headmaster to Anthony’s father Isaac:

As a student of books I really suspect that parental affection blinds you and that you have mistaken your son’s capacity. What he may be best qualified for I know not. One thing I am certain of, he will never make a scholar. He may perhaps make a soldier. He has already distracted the brains of two-thirds of the boys under my charge by rehearsals of battles, sieges, etc. They exhibit more the appearance of Indians and harlequins than students, this one decorated with a cap of many colors, others habited in coats as variegated like Joseph’s of old, some laid up with broken heads and black eyes. During noon in place of the usual games of amusement he has the boys employed in throwing up redoubts, skirmishing, etc. I must be candid with you, brother Isaac, unless Anthony pays more attention to his books I shall be under the painful necessity of dismissing him from the school.

I’m writing remotely, from a friend’s apartment in Milwaukee, where the burden of explaining exactly why I love Mad Anthony to people who have never heard of Wayne County, Fort Wayne, Wayne State or Anthony Wayne Street is heavy. It’s hard for me; my love for the General is ineffable, and has very little to do with his technical mastery on the battlefield (which, you know, I don’t really understand at all).

I told the story of Anthony Wayne’s deserved reputation as a high Colonial fop, obsessed with his appearance and his clothes and the presentation of his soldiers. At a parade, once, Mad Anthony was so dismayed by the rag-tag togs of his regiment, he ordered every man to wear an evergreen sprig in his cap to pull the whole spectacle together.

This reminds my friend Andrew of the New York Yankees, whose management demands that the players be well-groomed, clean cut and short-haired.

Happy 265th, Mad Anthony. Thanks for making sure a kid like me wouldn’t have to grow up in Britain.

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How a music blog brought me back to Michigan

December 28, 2009 in Culture, Detroit media | No comments

http://thehoff.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/jackson5_l.jpg

Greetings, team blog readers:

Today I’m taking a reprieve from my usual task of writing about statues and old cemeteries and bringing you something a little different: the story of the music blog that brought me back to Michigan at the end of August.

The best part: it’s also a mix CD.

You can visit the music blog that brought me back to Michigan, read the post and download the mix CD here.

And while we’re talking collateral, you might also be interested to know:

1. That my mom, Joan Ginsberg, is running a comment drive over at her blog, HR University. She’s brand new to the blogosphere, so stop over for a visit if you’re interested in human resource practice, HR and the law, social media and the law, best practices for social media in HR policy or the new wave of human resource philosophy in general (and if you didn’t know there was such a thing, I definitely advise you to learn more, starting with my mom and her blogroll).

If you leave a comment on her blog or my blog (it’s her way of saying “thanks!” for my persistence and enthusiastic suggestions that she get involved with social media) before January 2, she’ll enter you in a drawing for $100 and a copy of Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon.

And you thought the world was upside down when your mom asked to be your Facebook friend.

Seriously, though. Blogging moms are the best moms.

2. That an article I wrote about Jason Stollsteimer of The Von Bondies and The Hounds Below ran in the Metro Times last week. It’s my first byline for Metro Times since they published a poem I wrote in their 2003 Summer Fiction issue, which I think was my first byline ever.

Happy reading. We’ll be back in a couple of days to celebrate the birthday of Mad Anthony Wayne.

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About this weekend: Vicente Fox is here.

October 9, 2009 in About this weekend, metro Detroit, Music | 1 comment

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.

mummies

It’s the first time the mummies have left Guanajuato. They will travel to major museums throughout the country over the next three years, and it’s a coup to have them in Detroit first. They’re also controversial and of course creepy as goddamn (but Mexicans celebrate the dead! Chill, America!), but in a post-Body Worlds society, can anything really shock and awe anymore?

On hand for the grand opening tonight is Mexico’s 6’5” former cowboy president Vicente Fox, former mayor of Guanajuato and all-around strapping, mustachioed ranchero.

vicente fox

I was pretty excited to learn that Vicente Fox was going to be here, but then someone told me that he comes to Detroit all the time.

Also on deck this weekend: a flea market at Historic Fort Wayne to benefit the Detroit Historical Society. Tours of the Fort and the military museums it houses will be available. We hear there is also a bake sale. Fort Wayne, built during the 1840s to protect the United States from a possible British siege via Canada, has never seen a shot fired in anger and has mostly been used as a mustering center, garrison post and supply depot. It’s named for “Mad” Anthony Wayne, the Revolutionary War hero who led the capture of Detroit in 1796.  (He died weeks later in Pennsylvania after contracting gout. Fun fact: he was exhumed and his bones were boiled in a cauldron that is now on display in Erie’s Historical Museum. Creepy as goddamn. But kind of awesome. Halloween road trip?)

mad anthony wayne

I’ve never been to Fort Wayne, and I look forward to seeing this mildly important Detroit landmark for the first time with the added flourish of lots of junk for sale.

(EDIT: Detroit’s Fort Wayne is also, maybe, sort of, haunted.)

Finally, we will not be able to make this show, but we recommend you do: the fantastic keyboard pop trio Lightning Love plays tonight at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor to celebrate the premiere of a new music video. They’re so pretty! Go there!

lightning love

(Photo by Trever Long)

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