Essays
A Blue Bird Lands In Flint And We Do Not Call It Redemption
Even though this is about a bird – miraculous blue jewel, transfiguration in a city backyard – it begins with a crash in the middle of the night.
A Big, Useless Bathtub, Or The Inland Sea
It’s easy to mistake the Great Lakes for the ocean, at first. I’ve brought a few people to see Lake Michigan for the first time, and that’s what they all say: “It looks like the ocean!”
Rustoration: How the Rust Belt Can Show America What it Really Means to be Great
By G. M. Donley Americans sure love to vote for celebrities: Shirley Temple, Ronald [...]
Sorry, So-called Blue States, You Don’t Get to Walk Away
By Tim Carmody In 2016, I voted in my hometown, a Detroit suburb called [...]
Yes, you can do something about Donald Trump
I was sitting at home on January 26, reading the news and having a hard time sitting still. The shock of a new president had not (and still has not) worn off, and story after story was pushing me toward a deeper sense of despair. It was far beyond politics—I grew up in rural Michigan, and Republicans are not foreign, scary creatures to me.
The View from Chicago’s Favorite Suburb
When I moved to Phoenix three years ago I expected to feel disconnected from my Midwestern roots. But it turned out a lot of Chicago had made its way here.
What’s in A Name? Cleveland’s Brooklyn Centre
What’s in a name? In my neighborhood, confusion. Countless lifelong Greater Clevelanders have asked me, “So what part of town do you live in?” and I always begin my answer, “Well, the city calls it ‘Brooklyn Centre,’ but...”
Archie the Talking Snowman
I wasn’t having any of it. My mother brought my older sister and me to Chapel Hill Mall each year to visit with Archie the Talking Snowman. But I wasn’t fooled. Snowmen don’t talk, and I didn’t trust the disembodied voice that floated from above.
Coming Up ‘Down the Hill’ On Peoria’s South Side
At the intersection of State and Washington Streets in the Warehouse District of downtown Peoria, a city of about 116,000 that sits halfway between Chicago and St. Louis on the Illinois River, stands a nine-foot-tall bronze likeness of the city’s most infamous native son.
Slavic Village: A Guide
To visit Slavic Village, preferably wait until a bitterly cold evening in February, and in the dark and the snow, take the I-77 North exit for Pershing Avenue. Turn west, and as the road becomes a dead-end, ignore the sparseness of the streetlights and the horrifying industrial shapes rearing up from the barbed-wire fences on either side of you.
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