GMC Diesel and The World's Greatest Parking Job

If you're going to own a GMC Diesel like this one in San Francisco, it goes without saying you better have some serious parking skills. And the ability to climb out the rear window when you're done.

Flint Photos: Jim Cunningham's Retirement from Buick

When Jim Cunningham retired from Buick, they gave him a starter motor mounted on a plaque, like the thousands he had bolted on to engine blocks every week for 32 years at Factory 36. Thanks to Joe Cunningham for the photo of his father.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Alvin Chang at Vox explores those who stay in their hometown and those who leave.

Those who stayed in their hometown tend to be less educated, less wealthy, and less hopeful. 

They tend to be less open to other cultures and less open to immigrants. 

Ultimately, they tend to be more likely to support Donald Trump. 

But putting those sentences next to each other implies there is something wrong with people who don’t leave home. After all, there’s nothing wrong with people who want to stay close to their family and friends — people who “really value kinship and close ties," as Cromartie put it. 

Still, there are real disparities — political and economic — that emerge from the decision to move away from home, or not. And like so many other disparities, this split is the culmination of several systemic factors that sort us into these groups.

Read the rest here.

Flint Photos: Joel Rash at the Soggy Bottom Bar

Flint Fashion

The Flint Expatriates editorial team always finds some good stuff in San Francisco's consignment shops. Flint fashion for babies.

Always Something There To Remind Me

Lint rollers on sale at Heartfelt in San Francisco. Not to be confused with the famous Helmac Lint Roller of Roger & Me fame.

Flint Artifacts: Flint-Caro Sebewaing Bus Ticket

Corvette in Repose

Flint Photos: Comber's Market in Civic Park, Late '50s, Early '60s

You remember this sort of winter day in Flint. There are a lot of them every winter. Comber's became Double D Market, then a vacant lot. Now it's an urban forest, a ghetto palm arboretum.

Thank you to Bill Comber for the photo.

A Blue Bird Lands in Flint

Jan Worth-Nelson writing about the power of spring in Belt Magazine:

Quotidian comfort: padded downstairs, made two cups of tea in the microwave, turned up the heat, turned off the burglar alarm, pulled up four blinds, one by one: one, two, three in the dining room.

In the kitchen, pulled up number four.
And he was there. Brilliant. Blue. Canary-shaped and perfect, ground feeding alone as if he belonged, pecking calmly at finch feed drop. 

I am not ashamed to say I shouted with joy.

Read the rest here.