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Michigan, hors chemin: summer 2025 favourites
From lazy afternoons on the lake to evening ballgames at Comerica Park, there’s no place like Michigan in the summer. But how to enjoy it if you want to avoid the crowds? Here’s some of the best of Michigan, off the beaten path, in summer 2025.
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Americans are the frog in the pot, part I: Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids is a weird place to call home. Today it’s all breweries and hipsters and weed dispensaries and overpriced apartments. But growing up, it was Bland Rapids. A place so boring and unimaginative that corporations would come to town to trial new products. If the straight-laced, God-fearing people of Grand Rapids, Michigan, will buy…
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The religion of getting
When I was 18, I worked as a barista. It wasn’t a bad job. But I will never forget the trainer, I’ll call him Sean, who—in addition to calling me a “PMS-y woman” during training—one day proclaimed, “I have the greatest job in the world.”
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Life in Bangor, Wales: The Weather
I spent the 2023-24 school year working toward a master’s degree in Arthurian studies—and there’s only one place in the world where you can do that: Bangor, Wales. Bangor is a terrific community and a place I was proud to call home. Like anywhere else in the world, it comes with its highs and lows.…
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Conversation with Max, November 2015
Toward the end of 2015, I recorded a conversation with my adopted mom, Max, about her work helping to organize the response to the AIDS epidemic in Lansing, Michigan. I always rued not having saved a copy of the blog for myself. But look what I found digging through my inbox.
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What next after Michigan Uncommitted campaign?
It’s the day after the 2024 Michigan primary. With 95% of the vote counted, more than 100,000 voters in the Michigan Democratic Primary have voted “Uncommitted” to protest Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
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The road behind, and the road ahead
As I close in on two years since my Lake Superior Circle Tour, I take one more look back at the trip as a whole. In particular, what I would do differently the next time around—and what I would keep the same.
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Lake Superior Circle Tour, 2022: All good things must come to an end
More than a week into my circle tour around Lake Superior, I had experienced so much: a chance encounter with a fox, sunrise over Lake Superior, an ancient arctic canyon. Now, the road was leading back home to Michigan.