This week Number One Son has been on a mission workcamp deal. Normally, these trips take high schoolers to run-down, desolate parts of the country, like Indian reservations and Appalachian villages. But this year, that desolate part of the country happens to be my hometown, Detroit. Motown. The Big D. So this week, I’ve felt [...]

Yesterday I drove up to northern Michigan, to drop off Number One Son at Interlochen for his week of sketching, drawing, painting and all around visual excitement. For those who haven’t been up to that school, it’s a campus-like feeling in the pines there, less like a camp than the boarding school it is. Spiffy [...]

Don’t know where the week went (or maybe I do, but aint tellin’), so I apologize for a lack of posting. I even forgot to wish Ernie Harwell a happy birthday, which would’ve been on Tuesday.

At this moment in Chicago, it’s one degree outside. That’s weird to type. Sounds more like geometry than weather. “Two Degrees”, “one below”, “minus two”–yeah, all those roll off the tongue or keyboard. But not “It’s one degree.” Seems like it should lead to more comments or explanation, but it doesn’t. With a couple exceptions, [...]

Earlier this fall, Bryan Gruley released the second book in his mystery series about a journalist in a small northern Michigan town. I liked the first title, Starvation Lake, very much, but like the second, The Hanging Tree, even more. Which is odd because the mechanics of the second mystery are a little less satisfying [...]