A few weeks ago, I signed a one-year lease on a home in Detroit. The signing was a culmination of a long search — of both Craigslist and my soul — to decide where I wanted to plant my roots in Michigan. So, when I put my signature on that piece of paper, I felt relieved. And excited: The house was gorgeous, the price was right, the neighborhood was charming and yet not gentrified, and the city…
This is the final week of classes for many colleges around the state, meaning thousands of students will soon be out looking for summer jobs: waitressing, bartending, landscaping, painting houses—you know how it goes. For one particular born-and-raised Yooper, though…
Editor’s note: We’re taking a break this week, so enjoy one of our favorite essays from the archive. We’ll be back next week with new content. This piece originally ran on May 3, 2011.
I love supermarkets. I love everything about them. Even the things that I probably…
Last year, just ahead of our move back to Michigan from Maine, we asked a handful of friends to get us primed for the return into the virtues of Midwestern life: Big Ten football, the best in processed meats, and people who don’t take themselves too seriously. They…
don’t know about you, but big-time Fourth of July spectacles—with their fighter jet flyovers and crowds jostling for the best position to see the over-the-top fireworks displays—just aren’t for us. Nope, small-town Independence Day celebrations are where it’s at…
We Midwesterners were born for Thanksgiving. It’s the only holiday, after all, where it’s considered acceptable that the number of casseroles equal or exceed the number of guests. Yet for so many of us who have built our adult lives away from home, a classic Michigan…
Technically, it’s only 31 days. But to your itchy, dry skin, vitamin-D-starved cells, and cabin-fever-battered self-esteem, March might as well be that seemingly eternal last mile of a goddamn winter marathon. The snowbirds—i.e., the smart ones—get the hell out of…
I am not sure my family ever really understood what it means to properly camp. For a long time, I thought anything that involved spending the night in a tent and eating food from a cooler qualified as camping. Based on my formative camping experiences, that’s all I had to…