Flinty Writers

Jan Worth-Nelson — a novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer, and long-time writing teacher at UM-Flint — was recently named "Flint's Best Writer" by Broadside, a local independent newspaper. It's always nice to be honored for your work, but it's even better when the prize is a lighter, which is far more impressive, useful and Flint-like than a plaque of some sort.

Jan's novel Night Blind is a great way to discover her writing. Here's the Amazon description:

Melanie, a beautiful young Peace Corps volunteer, is murdered one October night in the Kingdom of Tonga. For young American Charlotte Thornton, the killing sets off an unnerving cascade of questions. Charlotte can’t help but wonder if she’ll be able to survive and work in the tense postmurder atmosphere.

She plunges into her job as a public relations officer for a Tongan noble. But during her off hours, she drinks too much at the Coconut Club and awkwardly tries to adapt her sexually bold inclinations to Polynesian customs. After getting thrown out of a party for cavorting naked with Melanie’s ex-lover, she retreats — embarrassed, depressed, and haunted by Melanie’s death — to her Tongan family. She then falls in love with Gabriel Bonner, a married Peace Corps psychologist.

When Gabriel abruptly leaves and an earthquake rocks the area, Charlotte’s life seems as if it is about to collapse. How will she navigate her way through this tropical ordeal, night blind and 9,000 miles away from home?

Autumn Leaves

Any expatriates out there missing Flint in the fall? Look no further than the Night Blind blog.

City management the Don Williamson way

The Kearsley Park Pavillion

Kay Kelly, who is widely credited with reviving the fortunes of Kearsley Park while serving as a city project director, got the ax from Mayor Don Williamson earlier this month.

Kelly told Joe Lawlor of The Flint Journal that she didn't know why she got fired, but she "somehow must have irritated (Williamson)." She added: "(Williamson) doesn't have the best interests of the city at heart. He wants power."

The mayor already has a replacement in mind:

"Mayor Don Williamson is apparently considering a county commissioner for a key parks job, a potential move his critics are calling a political hiring," Lawlor reports.

"Commissioner Miles Gadola, R-Grand Blanc, said he is being considered for the Kearsley Park project director job. Gadola would replace Kay Kelly, who was abruptly fired on Friday after five years in the position.

"Gadola, who said he does not have any parks experience, said he's eager to learn on the job.

"'It's an intriguing job and one that I'm interested in,' said Gadola, who was laid off this year from his position as a city probation officer. Gadola was a victim of city budget cuts."

As usual, the mayor's actions are having financial repercussions:

"The $65,000 Kearsley Park position was paid out of a two-year, $150,000 Ruth Mott Foundation grant that's now in jeopardy.

"Steve Wilson, executive director of the foundation, said the foundation may move the money elsewhere.

"'It's a significant enough change that we would need a new proposal from the city,'Wilson said. 'Our question is why change something that's very successful? All of us are proud that Kearsley Park has been restored and is a very safe park in the heart of the city.'"

Not to worry says Williamson. He promises to fund the position out of his own pocket if the Ruth Mott Foundation pulls out.

The situation prompted Councilman Scott Kincaid to say he believes Williamson wants to give Gadola the job so that the mayor could influence the county board. The Flint Journal's Andy Heller captured reader outrage over the firing. And the move is also drawing fire from Flint bloggers:

"It is infuriating that in a town so often bereft of good news that Kay's remarkable project should have to fight for support, much less be axed," writes Macy Swain on Night Blind. "This is not just knucklehead myopia, this is urban sadism."

Gadola told the Journal that a city job would have no influence on his voting:

"Gadola said he has a 'great deal of honesty and integrity' and he wouldn't allow himself as a county board member to be influenced by a job in city government. He said even though he's worked for the city for 18 years, no one has ever asked him to vote a certain way since he's been a commissioner.

"'It hasn't happened, and I don't have any reason to believe it would happen,' Gadola said."

Night Blind

The flora (and concreta) of Chevy in the Hole. (Photo courtesy of Jar With Most.)

There are Flint residents. There are Flint Expatriates. And then there are the rare individuals that are both at the same time.

Jan Worth-Nelson — who blogs as Macy Swain — teaches at UM-Flint during the academic year and lives with her husband in San Pedro, California during the summers and holiday breaks. It gives her an insider's understanding of Flint mixed with the perspective of an outsider. It also means her blog, Night Blind, offers the duality of Flint and Southern California.

It's an intriguing mix that leads to some fascinating posts. Here's one describing a botanical tour of what was once Chevy in the Hole:

"The site is now a giant brownfield. I find it irresistibly ghostly and haunting.

"I took my 'Green Ink' students there on a bike tour a couple of weeks ago. Increasingly, it seems right NOT to drive a car when paying tribute to this fallen behemoth. Pausing to catch our breath on Bluff Street overlooking the acreage, we didn't have much to say as we took in the concretized channel of the river and the silent expanse where some of the fights of the 1936 Sit Down Strike took place and where millions of cars were banged out on noisy and oily assembly lines. Several mallards noodled along in the brown water. A red-winged blackbird sailed by. A remarkable single cottonwood did its leafy hula. It really is a cemetery.

"The brownfields of Chevy in the Hole are not really brown: there are many green things growing in the cracks and edges. I asked our tour guide, Christina Kelly of the Genesee County Land Bank, what they were. "Just weeds," she said.

"My biology professor friend Tracy Wacker, with her usual bracing candor, said 'The definition of a weed is a plant growing where somebody doesn't want it to. Looked at that way, none of the plants at Chevy in the Hole are weeds, because nobody cares if they grow there.'

"This is just the start of what I have to say, but in quick summary, when Tracy and I walked back to Chevy in the Hole yesterday, scrambled around a chain-link fence and poked around in the humid overgrowth on the cracked concrete and the river bank, she called out the names of least 30 different plants: rumex, chicory, bachelor's button, black nightshade, common mullein, curlydock, dogwood, catalpa, coreopsis, lanceleaf plantain, milkweed, dames rocket, buckthorn, bull-thistle, crown vetch. That's about half of them."

The contrast between the Flint and San Pedro posts shows that even though America has become homogenized by chain stores and strip malls, with bland exurbs defining the look and culture of the country, there are still unique regional differences out there.

"Tomorrow is the Korean Bell's big day — one of only two in the year it is rung. Tomorrow the site at the top of the hill overlooking a wide expanse of harbor and ocean will be crowded with well-wishers, celebrants, politicians and ringers wearing white gloves. Today, it was quiet and enveloped in fog. At first I was the only one there -- what delight to be alone here. Then a hawk getting chased by crows. Then these two gulls. Then a long-haired guy with a long-haired dog. Then three gabby Korean men with a bottle of Windex and a red rag, polishing the plaques — for tomorrow, I suppose. It's one of my favorite places in San Pedro."

And sometimes, in a bar like Harold's Place in San Pedro, Flint and SoCal overlap a little.

"A guy sitting next to us didn't say a word to anybody. He poured beer into his glass an inch at a time and fastidiously sipped, savoring every swallow. But he gave the waitress some money to put in the band's tip jar.

"A round little troll about four feet tall wearing a huge straw hat ambled in with a black bag over his shoulder, hawking...straw hats, as it turned out. Nobody bought. An enterprising madame in lycra and a helmet parked her bike out front and tried to sell Debbie some body wash -- also unsuccessful, but still. The pleasantly unexpressive bouncer came and went. We ordered a second round. More people wandered in in teeshirts, baggy shorts and flipflops. Everybody seemed to know who they were.

"'Howdya like the band?' Debbie asked.

"'They're good. I liked the blues,' I said. I was thinking about other dives I've hung out in — The Tonga Club in Nuku'alofa, Hat's Pub and The Torch Bar and Grille on Buckham Alley, both in Flint, and I was thinking how good it felt to be sitting on Pacific Avenue in Pedro with a row of people bent over their drinks, heads nodding just so slightly to the music, which wasn't totally bad."