Flint Artifacts: 1985 Buick LeSabre

How many people left Flint in this car, never to return?

Our Increasingly Poor Suburbs

The Brookings Institution confirms that the suburbs are now experiencing conditions that Flint and other cities have been facing for decades:

"The poor have typically been concentrated in big cities and rural America. Increasing poverty in the New York metropolitan area’s historically affluent suburbs mirrored a national trend detailed in the analysis, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America” by Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program, and Alan Berube, a deputy director of the program.

"The first decade of the 21st century was a tipping point, the authors wrote. Suburbia, they said, is now home to the 'fastest-growing poor population in the country.'"

Flint Artifacts: Sharp Hardware 1950 Catalog

Craig Ferguson, Flint, and Murders

Whoever's in charge of PR for Flint should be in crisis mode after an appearance last night on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson by two local nurses named Christy and Rachel who were vacationing in Los Angeles. Feguson brought the pair up on stage. After complimenting their wardrobes, Ferguson asked a simple question: "What goes on in Flint, Michigan?" Christy's response: "Murders."

The crowd seemed to love it, prompting Ferguson to dole out a mild rebuke: "Excuse me, I just have to talk to the audience...That's not funny. What the hell's wrong with you? Murders? Yeah!" 

You can see the episode here. It's at the very beginning of the show.

Last Christmas: Flint Sends Santa Packing

In Flint, even Santa Claus and his reindeer can lose their jobs. Scott Atkinson of The Flint Journal reports:

The jolly (plastic) old fellow got the ax from the city and will be up for auction along with four of his reindeer. (No word on where the other four, or Rudolph, have flown to.) Like all items up for bid in an online auction on repocast.com for city property on Tuesday, Santa's starting price is $5.

Flint Photos: Still Life with JWilly and Teardown

How to Understand Flint Expatriates Stationed in San Francisco

This is just a joke. Sort of.

Flint Poems: Cheese Lines, Flint, Michigan by Danny Rendleman

Cheese Lines, Flint, Michigan

Gray lines of women at the North Flint Plaza
Waiting their due, surplus cheese and butter
We can't use, the lines that shuffle
Down the weed-split sidewalks,
Past the boarded-up display windows
Of the Fair, United Shirt, Nobil Shoes,
While at the curb monstrous green Buicks
Idle and rust.  The day is overcast,
Threatening drizzle, feinting autumn
And further calamity.  I drive by, this,
My old neighborhood, this shopping center
Our hangout, a pack of Luckies secreted
Behind a loose brick, our leather jackets
With The Royals on the back,
Our pointed Flagg Bros. shoes, and duck ass hair.
We the pioneers.  These the women we went
To school with who never moved away,
Whom we never spoke to, let alone dated,
Or whom we desired, but never let on.

Flint, a city as hard and abrupt as its
Quick-bitten name.  Home of Chevy-in-the-Hole,
Where men like my father got used to days
Etched thin and gritty as Mohawk vodka
And steel shavings in their aching hands
And little wretched patches of back-yards
Where they maybe played catch
With their kids before the noon whistle.
See how easily those women are forgotten?
Even in poems devoted to their bad luck.

— Danny Rendleman

Flint Photos: Shawn Chittle with "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City"

Flint Expatriate Shawn Chittle in New York with his advance copy of Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City.

"Found Michigan" Finds Flint Mayor Dayne Walling

 
Dayne Walling at City Hall in Flint. (Photo by Emily Bingham/Found Michigan)

There's an indepth and compelling portrait of Flint Mayor Dayne Walling by Lou Blouin on Found Michigan, a site that focuses on longform journalism about the Great Lake State. It describes Walling's work to revive Flint, despite the imposition of an emergency financial manager and an array of daunting obstacles.

"In a cash-strapped city, that means Walling can only do a fraction of what he no doubt wants to do. Understanding that things move slowly in city government, lately he’s dedicated himself to making sure future city leaders have things a little better—he’s now leading the charge for a new master plan in Flint, which will guide the city’s redevelopment over the coming decades. It’ll be Flint’s first such vision in more than 50 years—since the plan in 1960, which optimistically projected nothing but explosive growth in the auto industry and corollary fortunes for Flint."

Flint Artifacts: Flint Junior Fire Inspector Badge

Thanks to Toprat1 for this Flint Artifact, presented to him at Cook Elementary in 1956.

Flint Postcards: Buick Factory from the Mott Foundation Building

The Magical Stranger by Stephen Rodrick

 
Longtime Flint Expats readers are already familiar with the amazing writing of Stephen Rodrick, my partner in crime at Powers Catholic High School. We had the improbable bond in Flint of having fathers who were Navy pilots. Steve wrote two of the greatest posts on the blog. L'Affair de Moofla chronicled the high school prank that went a long way toward consigning both of us to mediocre colleges. And William F. Buckley Comes to Flint recounts our night on the town with the conservative icon. (Thank God we weren't born 20 years later; we might have had to hang out with Rush Limbaugh.)

The Magical Stranger is Steve's first book. It will be released on May 14, and it's a powerful story of a son's efforts to come to terms with the loss of his father.

On November 28, 1979, Commander Peter Rodrick died when his plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. He was just thirty-six and had been the commanding officer of his squadron for 127 days. Eight thousand miles away on Whidbey Island, near Seattle, he left behind a wife who never recovered, two daughters, and a thirteen-year-old son who would grow up to be a writer—one who was drawn to write about his father, his family, and the devastating consequences of military service.

In The Magical Stranger, Rodrick explores the life and death of the man who indelibly shaped his life, even as he remained a mystery: brilliant but unknowable, sacred but absent—an apparition gone 200 days of the year for much of his young son’s life—a born leader who gave his son little direction. Through adolescence and into adulthood, Rodrick struggled to fully grasp the reality of his father’s death and its permanence. Peter’s picture and memory haunted the family home, but his name was rarely mentioned.

To better understand his father and his own experience growing up without him, Rodrick turned to today’s members of his father's former squadron, spending nearly two years with VAQ-135, “The World-Famous Black Ravens.” His travels take him around the world, from Okinawa and Hawaii to Bahrain and the Persian Gulf —but always back to Whidbey Island, the setting of his family’s own story. As he learns more about his father, he also uncovers the layers of these sailors’ lives: their brides and girlfriends, friendships, dreams, disappointments—and the consequences of their choices on those they leave behind.

For more information, visit www.themagicalstranger.com.

Flint Photos: Civic Park in 1919?

I'm having trouble identifying the exact location in Civic Park for this photo. Note the older, larger house in the center. It looks very unfamilar. Any ideas? Is this a mislabled photo from The Flint Journal?