Category: Column
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Village Life: Why I moved to Flint
By Ted Nelson My first experience of Flint was Bishop International Airport. I still wonder about the “International” part. Could it be that Flint itself is another country? Perhaps there are secret flights here in the dark of night — aliens sneaking in from all over the world to benefit from the city’s abundance…
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Village Life: in Flint, there’s always more than one story; there’s always more to come
By Jan Worth-Nelson Some time in the middle of February – by far the longest, the damnedest, the cussedest month of the year in these parts–I got a severe attack of cabin fever. I’d been sick half the winter and between stink bugs, porn stars, scabs of snow everywhere, a terminally ill friend, threats of…
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Commentary: Time to jump-start the new city charter
By Paul Rozycki Last August Flint voters set the city on a new course when they approved the city’s new charter—the first since 1974. In the turmoil over the Flint water crisis, successive emergency managers, and recall elections, the charter sometimes seemed lost in the shuffle. Yet, the Charter Commission produced a significant and important…
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Village Life: Just another drag queen bingo night in Flint cheering things up
By Jan Worth-Nelson Can Flint be any more itself than combining a crowded bookstore, bingo, and a curvy six-foot tall drag queen in red sequins hollering out “B-8, bitches!”? I’ve been here more than 35 years and by now there is nothing much that could surprise me about my adopted hometown. The energy at Totem…
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Review: Sloan exhibit captures persistent intertwining threads of race and housing in Flint history
By Dylan Doherty “An Equal Opportunity Lie,” a new exhibit highlighting the intertwining influences of race and housing in the history of Flint, opened at the Sloan Museum on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 15 and runs until May 28. The title is a quote from Floyd McCree, Flint’s first black mayor, who resigned…
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Gerrymandering Part Three: going to court
By Paul Rozycki Just when you thought you’ve heard enough about gerrymandering, and the ballot proposals to end it—there is one more line of attack. Now the courts are getting involved. Two previous columns in past issues of East Village Magazine (Part One here, Part Two here) have outlined the problems and history of gerrymandering, drawing oddly shaped…
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Commentary: Fixing gerrymandering–Michigan’s ballot proposal
By Paul Rozycki “Politics is more difficult than physics.” – Albert Einstein Last month’s column took a look at the history and techniques of gerrymandering and its impact on American politics. It’s not hard to see that the process of drawing odd-shaped and unfair election districts favoring one party over another is a major problem…
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Village Life: Flint moves beyond ghosts as autumn whispers in
By Jan Worth-Nelson It’s a lovely cool morning, clear and fresh, reminding me of why it’s good to be in the Midwest. It feels like the first day of fall, the light turning slightly mellow, even though it’s only the first of September, and I’m up early going next door where new tenants are moving…
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Village Life: Only slightly in mourning, my husband becomes a full-time Flintoid
By Jan Worth-Nelson If you see my husband Ted around town anytime soon, be especially kind. He is going through a trauma. He’s moving on, after four decades as a Californian, to become a fulltime Flintoid. He’s giving up his cherished “AWRDMKR” California license plate – an artifact of the awards and trophy business he…
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Commentary: Murder a harsh dose of reality in East Village
By Paul Rozycki Some years ago, one of our favorite programs was “Murder, She Wrote,” where mystery writer Jessica Fletcher solved the latest murder in the small New England fishing village of Cabot Cove. At the time, my reaction was that for all of Flint’s crime problems, Cabot Cove must have had the highest crime…
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