Often, a photograph reaches its true potential only in the fullness of time. These previously unseen images from a Cunningham's Drug Store of the 1950s show that neglected negatives can emerge from hibernation to find a second life that is every bit as robust as the first.
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The forcing function of fire
Any public place where people can freely meet can support socialization — with the people you’ve come with, that is. What is missing is some element that allows groups to break out of their self-containment, and interact in a spontaneous, genuine, and uncontrived manner, with people they didn’t come with. On a cold evening, a shared fire pit can be a social forcing function.
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Last exit to Rawsonville
A ghost town has the power to linger on in its own absence -- perhaps through the continued use of a place name, the passing-down of oral legend, or the persistence of wooded hills and feral fallows, cloaking mysterious features that only the legend can explain. Here we take an excursion to such a site.
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The extraordinary, ordinary postcard
Despite the ongoing decline of what many disparagingly refer to as “snail mail,” there remains a segment of the population that has not yet lost touch with its unique qualities, and fears the prospect of losing this supposedly archaic medium forever.
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Below Susterka Lake
Shrouded by the wooded shoulder of a busy blacktop road, a forgotten mill dam retains the flow of a small stream -- as well as the fading summer memories of a generation of truant children.
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Excursion to an unexplained hickory grove
In a sufficiently inattentive world, sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.
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Finding freedom in steamed pasta
When working at home, especially alone, the duties of working and feeding oneself must become integrated. In this article, we'll explore the radical concept of cooking dry pasta like rice, by steaming in an ordinary saucepan -- a culinary heresy that promises to finally free us from the burden of the boiling pot.
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January 6th – a poem
Alternate title: Elegy for obsolete stamps.
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An open letter to the National Weather Service
Dear National Weather Service: This letter concerns the weather forecast product that you issued for Ann Arbor, Michigan, on February 2, 2022.
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Revenge of the wrong-side mailbox
There are two classes of rural homes: those with a mailbox on the same side of the road, and those with a mailbox on the other. As if in passive resistance to suburban sprawl, even a long-demolished farmhouse can haunt its unwanted descendants by "locking in" the side on which mail delivery occurs.
