February 22, 2012 | 4:58 PM | By Dustin Dwyer
flickr user josephleenovak
A Detroit hipster
Hipsters. What with their mustaches, skinny jeans and bicycles, how are they not just the most adorable creatures in the world? But if there’s one thing they love even more than that navy-blue American Apparel hoodie with the white piping, it’s irony. And where do they most love casting their ironic gaze? On themselves, of course.
Which brings us to this fine piece of bloggery that’s been making the rounds. It’s written by none other than “Austin’s Blogger of the Year,” Lauren Modery.
Modery writes:
Sometimes it feels like there is no place more hipster-plentiful than Austin, Texas …But are other cities unscathed by the beast? Smaller, up-and-coming cities that are like how Austin was before ‘we’ showed up?
She then lists three cities that are not in the Midwest, and gently pokes fun at the hipsters there. I’ll be honest, I barely skimmed this part. But then, Modery gets to her final city on the brink of “hipsterfication,” Detroit:
Continue reading →
February 22, 2012 | 1:44 PM | By Dustin Dwyer
If you share our fascination with all the documentaries made about Detroit, you’ll want to check out this list of the “The 5 Most Inspirational Videos About Detroit,” from BuzzFeed.
The video above is their pick for number one. What about you? What’s the most inspirational video you’ve ever seen about Detroit? Or about your city?
February 22, 2012 | 12:01 PM | By Meg Cramer
Jillian Jones Sisko of Michigan writes:
Letter-writing has always been an important part of my family’s legacy.
My mother discovered her family origins through letters written in the early 1900′s that were found in a desk drawer in an attic in Epernay, France. The letter was written by my grandfather and addresses to his brother. When my mother discovered the letters, she started communicating with her family.
When my oldest sister left for college in the 70′s, my father, Wayne Muren, began writing weekly letters just as my great grandfather did many years prior. The letters served as a source of inspiration for my sister and as well as a blanket of comfort.
After all five children grew up and graduated from college, several moved away. Wayne kept writing letters. To this day, 35 years later, I am blessed to still receive a weekly letter filled with newspaper/magazine articles. The no. 10 envelope that was once delivered to my college dormitory is now a large manila envelope packed with news and information.
Maureen Houston/BND.com
Jillian's mother and her father Wayne with a stack of letters
The letters are sent to not only his children, but also to his 11 grandchildren. The letters are now mailed in large envelopes which accompany 10-20 newspaper clippings to keep the family up-to-date with current events as well as comic strips from a local artist.
This gift of communication is one that I hope will never stop arriving at my door for many years to come. This ritual is now our family tradition.
Who really runs Chicago? According to Chicago Magazine, it is a collection of leaders in politics, business, sports and food.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
Earlier this month, the magazine came out with its list of the city’s 100 most powerful people. It’s a surprisingly diverse list, with some very familiar and not so familiar faces. (Oprah, whose Chicago-based show ended last year, is no longer on it.)
Steve Edwards at our partner station WBEZ recently talked about the list with Chicago Magazine editors David Bernstein and Marcia Froelke Coburn.
We broke down the Top 10 into four categories.
Politics: In a city where politics is in everyone’s DNA, it’s no surprise that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is the most powerful person in Chicago. He’s joined in the top 10 by three other politicians: U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, and President Obama’s campaign strategist, David Axelrod. Continue reading →
The day before Ash Wednesday has many names — Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras. Shrove Tuesday. But all over the Midwest, it’s become known as Paczki Day.
Happy Paczki Day! photo via About.com
From Green Bay, Wis., to Lorain, Ohio, from Calumet City, Ind., to Hamtramck, Mich., people are snapping up the jelly donuts that have their roots in Polish cuisine.
One Chicago bakery alone expects to sell 80,000 paczkis, so we’re going to go out on a limb and predict there may be millions sold in the Midwest on Tuesday. (On a slightly smaller scale, we stopped into Zingerman’s Next Door in Ann Arbor this noon. They had pre-orders for 600. All were gone before dawn.)
Changing Gears has been taking a look at immigrant traditions and culture across the Midwest, but the paczki seems to have transcended its beginnings and become a pre-Lenten staple.
Originally, the paczki (pronounced poohnch-KEY) was meant to use up the last of a Roman Catholic household’s fat and sugar before the Lenten fast began the next day.
Small ethnic bakeries used to be the only place that carried them. (When I was growing up in Michigan, you had to know somebody who could bring them over from Hamtramck, the Polish enclave that borders Detroit.) Continue reading →
February 21, 2012 | 10:55 AM | By Meg Cramer
Rosalyn Park of Minnesota writes:
My parents emigrated from South Korea to Iowa in the early 1960s. My mother struggled with the dualities of raising children the American-born way and being the wife of a traditional Korean man. Every night, she would cook two dinners: a Korean meal for my father, and an American one for us girls.
Over time, as my tastes expanded, I grew to truly appreciate Korean food.
One tradition in particular really epitomizes this shift. Growing up, my mother would make traditional Korean potstickers (mandu) once a year. It was a huge ordeal—everything was made by hand. We’d sit down and make mandu for hours.
Being the last of 3 daughters, I eventually found myself facing this daunting task alone. I’d come home from high school to see the big mandu bowl and be filled with dread—it was like a bad Chinese movie: Night of Three Million Eggrolls. I’d sit at the kitchen counter, hand stuffing each mandu by myself and thinking wearily of the unfair plight handed to Sister Number 3.
Continue reading →
February 20, 2012 | 3:39 PM | By Dustin Dwyer
libraries.mit.edu
MIT's Building 20 was ugly, confusing and never meant to last. But over its 55-year history, the building was home to some of the most important innovations of the 20th century.
In an article published in the New Yorker last month, Jonah Lehrer wrote about the myth of brainstorming.
The myth is that the best way to foster new ideas is to let them spring forth in a group setting, without fear of judgment or criticism. Turns out, ideas, and the people behind them, need to be challenged and questioned.
And the space in which these ideas grow can play a huge role.
Deep into his piece, Lehrer tells the story of Building 20, a ramshackle space set up at MIT during World War II. The space was meant to be temporary. It was built from plywood and covered in asbestos shingles. But after the end of the war sent a flood of new students and researchers to MIT, the building stayed open out of sheer necessity. And, then Lehrer says, a curious thing happened:
Continue reading →
On Monday, there will be word on the new members of a growing collection across the Midwest: vacant churches. The Archdiocese of Detroit is expected to officially announce which parishes will close or be combined with others across a six-county region, and the Detroit News says that could result in 39 fewer churches.
Hobbs & Black Architects are in this Ann Arbor, Mich. church
Vacant churches dot our cities — not just Detroit, in but Cleveland and Chicago, as well. But, like other empty places that we’ve reported on in the Midwest, some are being put to new uses.
One longstanding example is in Ann Arbor, where Hobbs & Black Architects have their offices in the former First Unitarian Church. The imposing stone building at 100 N. State Street was built in 1885, and was used as a church until 1975. Hobbs & Black bought it in 1985, and gave it a painstaking restoration, including a soaring Tiffany glass window.
We’d like to know about other churches in our region that are being put to new use. Please let us know about the ones in your city. And if there are churches sitting vacant, we’d like to hear about those, too.
Tell us how church buildings are coming back to life.
February 20, 2012 | 2:12 PM | By Meg Cramer
Jeff Karoub writes:
I’m half-Arab, but maybe I should best be described as a Detroit Arab-American, because this is the place that helped to shape my family and my family helped shape.
Like any family of mixed ancestry, traditions have been blended and blunted, but being in a place with such a large, diverse population with roots in the Middle East has allowed us to keep things like the food front-and-center in our lives.
I’m grateful for being part of a family that is open to many cultural and religious traditions and I think we are stronger for it.
As my family’s 100th anniversary in the U.S. approached, I thought of its contribution to this place. My grandfather worked at Ford while he served as a Muslim minister and Arab-Muslim newspaper publisher. My father played French horn for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and so many classic Motown records.
All of it inspired a song I recently wrote called “Made by Motown.”
You can listen to Jeff’s song here.
