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The Tao of Iggy

By |Detroit, Essays|

Unexpected guidance came in the form of a job with yet another Detroit legend, James Osterberg, who if you know anything about rock music, you recognize as Iggy Pop.

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Terranexus in the Rust Belt

By |Essays|

If we are going to care about the environment and preserve natural spaces in the so-called “rust belt,” then we must love rust. We must practice terranexus and accept and even love the chaotic intersection of civilized and natural worlds.

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When There’s Trouble Around

By |Photos|

It’s been nine exhausting years of the Trump era, and we’re due for four more. I maintain that the United States has always been fascist, but it’s now turned a corner and the veneer of democracy is gone. This time around, it’s more ominous.

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A Rust Belt Reporter on Detroit

By |Excerpt|

In those years after I returned to my job as a reporter at the Detroit Free Press from the lengthy newspaper strike in 1997, Detroit was touching bottom. The population was sliding, employers were still leaving, and crime seemed rampant, at least in some parts of the city.

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Turtle Lake

By |Essays|

Those who did it from a distance erased the people’s language. Once they could claim their fiction of terra nullius they flooded in close and put up fences. They erased the history of their conquest and they erased the lake’s history too.

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Martin Luther King in Dayton

By |Essays|

Although the irony is not lost on us that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday falls on the forty-seventh presidential inauguration, EbonNia and Black Palette Art Gallery provide beacons of communal light and hope.... We must remain a kind, resilient people who are not afraid to be vocal and broadcast empathy. We are never too old to learn and embrace new information.

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