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Literacy Tutor Training Sessions Set
By Anne Trelfa An opportunity to become a certified literacy tutor is being offered by the Genesee County Literacy Coalition starting Jan. 30. The Coalition will train volunteers to help adults learn to read, finish their GED process or learn English as a second language. The two-session training program for new volunteers will be held at Trinity United Presbyterian Church 5151 Lennon Road, Flint, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday Jan. 30 and Saturday Feb. 6. Both days are required. Food and beverages will be provided. A $15 book deposit is...
read moreFree course on water crisis offered by UM – Flint
By Anne Trelfa A free course focused on the Flint water crisis begins Thursday Jan. 21 at 4:30 in the UM – Flint Northbank Center. The UM-Flint Department of Public Health and Health Sciences is offering 8 sessions initially throughout the winter semester. Planners say each session will involve students and community in panel discussions with leaders and experts, with all participants learning from each other. “We want to offer this opportunity for dialogue and bi-directional learning so that the ‘experts’ can learn from the perspectives of...
read moreGlobal Film Festival resumes, also features Kildee, Ramsdell, Rao
By Andrew Keast The Global Issues Film Festival continues as usual this month, with another set of cinematic views on people and problems not often covered in the popular media. This, the second half of the Festival’s 14th season, will be held at the McKinnon Theater on the campus of Kettering University, though two of the set’s five films can be seen at the Kiva at UM-Flint as well. The festival is co-sponsored by Kettering, Mott Community College and the University of Michigan – Flint. While the films are aimed at enhancing students’...
read moreBook Review: Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan and the fate of the American Metropolis by Andrew Highsmith
By Robert R. Thomas Like a twisted love affair in which things are not what they seem, living in Flint can be an extremely disorienting hall of mirrors. For 10 years I have been researching Flint’s history, trying to understand my hometown roots and my current residence. Despite having read most of the major books on the subject, my Flint narrative has remained littered with black holes between disconnected tissue. I had more questions than answers. On Nov. 18 in the basement of the Flint Public Library, I discovered some answers. The...
read moreCultural Center plan: Sarvis demolition, Sloan expansion, downtown links
By Nic Custer The Flint Cultural Center Corporation (FCCC) recently updated its master plan with recommendations to demolish the Sarvis Center and several underutilized buildings, connect the street grid, renovate the Sloan Museum, and redesign public spaces between UM-Flint and Mott Community College. The 30-acre campus, which lies just east of downtown, contains five institutions: SloanLongway (consisting of the Sloan Museum, Longway Planetarium and the Buick Automotive Gallery and Research Center), The Whiting, Flint Youth Theatre, Flint...
read moreWat’er we expecting for Flint’s water in 2016? Words for the good news and bad
Let’s hope 2016 is the year we drain the lead out and mop up the water mess – so we won’t be flooded with washed-up water metaphors. (Maybe they’ll just dry up and blow away?)
read moreVillage Life: One sign leads to another, but does “Love Trump Hate”?
By Jan Worth-Nelson Just to be clear, I can’t stand Donald Trump. Back in the late 80s when I’d just started working at UM-Flint, a colleague of mine and I bonded over our extreme disdain for The Donald – we called him The Fat-fingered Vulgarian. We used to stop each other in the hallways to swap hilarities about his latest oily escapades. He was a huge joke to us, a cartoon, cheap entertainment in the face of boring institutional banalities. How I wish for those innocent days again, when he was only a tasteless bowl of kitsch flinging piles...
read more“Tens of thousands” damaged by Flint water crisis, class action lawsuit attorneys contend
By Stacie Scherman A class action lawsuit against key figures in the State of Michigan and the City of Flint is likely to ultimately include up to 30,000 households and tens of thousands of residents seeking compensations and damages from the Flint water crisis, according to attorneys representing the plaintiffs. Those numbers are an evolving estimate of those “who have been injured physically, psychologically, whose children have been damaged, potentially irreparably,” by what has happened, according to Cary McGehee, from Pitt,...
read moreVillage Life: There’s no avoiding family life this season
Column by Jan Worth-Nelson The trouble with holidays, really, is families. The trouble with holidays is how society arm-wrestles us into facing who begat us. Sitting around various dining room tables, the menu rife with clichéd dishes and family histories – and so often histrionics – every year we play out, once again, what we’re like when we’re together. Who doesn’t dread it: the worn-out in-jokes, the one over-exuberant drunk, the prickly narratives of hurt feelings – when she did … what was it again? – the predictable tiresome opinions,...
read moreISIS: What it is–and what it isn’t
By Paul Rozycki Editor’s Note: Paul Rozycyki offered EVM this “bonus” column as a local response to the Paris attacks. In light of what happened in San Bernardino and the President’s remarks in his Sunday night address to the nation, Rozycki’s comments take on even more relevance. After the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris a few weeks ago the reactions were, as you might expect, immediate and angry. The reactions were understandable, but like many fearful reactions, probably wrong. Within hours, several...
read moreThe 12 (or 13) Days of Christmas: a wish list for Mayor Weaver
By Paul Rozycki As Mayor Karen Weaver begins her first 100 days in office with a list of ambitious plans for the city, she and the citizens of Flint have a long list of hopes for the upcoming holiday season and beyond. In that light, here’s a proposed wish list for Flint’s new mayor. May we all find our stockings filled with these wishes granted in the 12 days of Christmas! On the First Day of Christmas: Let’s hope Mayor Weaver finds the most competent and insightful advisors under her tree. With all of Flint’s problems, no person can...
read moreCrews, supporters determined to save, restore Whaley Historic House
By Jan Worth-Nelson Cleanup crews, conservators, restoration experts and numerous volunteers and supporters of the Whaley Historic House Museum have been busy almost around the clock since the beloved Kearsley Street mansion accidentally caught fire and partially burned Nov. 30. Whaley board member David White, president of the Genesee County Historical Society and until recently director of the Kettering University Archives, said about 40 people came forward immediately to help clean up the mess, including employees from the Sloan...
read moreAfter 10 years of Land Bank efforts, Flint’s a demolition “rock star”
By Nic Custer More than 890 Genesee County Land Bank-owned homes in Flint will be demolished over the next two years thanks to $11.45 million recently authorized from a final round of Michigan State Housing and Development Authority’s Hardest Hit Fund. This will bring Flint’s total amount of Hardest Hit funds up to $34.15 million since 2013 and will lead to at least 2,666 demolished properties. Christina Kelly, Land Bank director of planning and neighborhood revitalization, said the organization will have 18 months to spend the money. The...
read moreTransformed by water and politics, Walters fights on
Interview by Ashley O’Brien LeeAnne Walters was once a stay-at-home mother of four. But she was transformed into an advocate for water safety in Flint and across the country after her four-year-old son Gavin got sick—the numbers on his blood tests clearly in the “action” range for lead poisoning. Walters, 37, and her whole family – husband and four kids — experienced hair loss and rashes after the water source changed to the Flint River in 2014. But it was Gavin, a twin with brother Garrett, who had the worst reaction. At one...
read moreLibrary millage win means modernization, “new service focus”
By Nic Custer The Central Park Neighborhood Association October meeting covered a Flint Public Library millage ballot proposal, neighborhood blight, the Investor’s Committee, and upcoming elections. Director Kay Schwartz, Flint Public Library, shared information about a library millage on the November ballot. [Editor’s note: the millage passed by a wide margin in the Nov. 3 election]. Schwartz explained that the millage for 6/10 of a mill would last from 2015 to 2021. It would expire at the same time as the other 1.4 renewable millage, which...
read moreWelcome To Our Village!
Thank you for joining us here at the exciting opening of our new website. We are so grateful to be back online after months of repairs and redesign. It has been a tumultuous year for us, beginning with the death of our founder, Gary Custer, in January, and the crash of our old site last spring. But here we are back, brighter, committed and in what Gary used to call the “East Village state of mind.” That means we’re feisty as ever and devoted to giving you news and great writing generated by volunteer citizen journalists about...
read moreLocal news still matters, even as the “how” changes
By Jan Worth-Nelson I just lost my temper. The trigger was an early morning solicitation to subscribe to the Flint Journal — our hometown paper, right? I asked the young voice with a Southern accent where she was calling from. Missouri, she said. Missouri? “Missouri?” I shouted, “I want nothing to do with a newspaper in my home town that outsources its business to another state!” And I hung up. Okay, so it was an overreaction. For one thing, you should never wake up retired geezers when we’re sleeping in. It’s a luxury we’ve...
read moreIs restoring trust as easy as turning a faucet?
By Paul Rozycki Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships -Stephen Covey Success has a thousand fathers. Failure is always an orphan. -attributed to Tacitus and Count Galezzo Ciano [Editor’s Note: While these are Paul Rozycki’s personal views, they are shared by the EVM editorial board.] With Dr. Karen Weaver’s decisive victory in Flint’s recent mayoral election, most of us might hope that the water issue would...
read moreRestoring a duck decoy
Restoring a duck decoy By Grayce Scholt I touch acrylic paint to neck, to wing following my father’s curve of knife, of brush; I daub an even falser life on this that sixty years before bobbed Judas-like on a Lake Erie bay and living wings would swoop to join the silent flock– Bang! My father’s gun would spit, and dying wings would drop into that split between two worlds. When he came home, his jacket bulging with his prize, he’d lay the ducks before my wondering eyes and all I felt was his immensity. He’d grumble some about the limit,...
read moreBicycle culture rolling around new spokes in Flint
By Andrew Keast and Jan Worth-Nelson If anybody provides evidence that Flint might be transforming itself – from the wheels up — into a bicycle-friendly culture, it’s Danny Moilanen, 28, owner of Vehicle City Tacos and a self-described “social cycler.” In 2012, he and a few of his friends created the Thursday Night Party Ride, an easygoing summertime tour through Flint. It starts at 9 p.m. and pauses every 15 minutes or so for socializing in open spaces such as the parking lot at Kearsley Park or the ramp at Mott Community College. ...
read moreAtwood hosted decades of Thanksgiving sports dramas: ice, snow, mud, diversity, dancing
Atwood hosted decades of Thanksgiving sports dramas: ice, snow, mud, diversity, dancing By Lawrence R. Gustin Editor’s note: Gustin, a Flint native, writer and much-published historian of Flint’s automotive past, agreed to contribute this reminiscence of Atwood Stadium – including the almost 50-year-long series of Thanksgiving Day contests between Flint Central and Flint Northern high schools. In a second piece coming in December, he will describe his attempts to track down and preserve game films from those peak Atwood years. For...
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