Category Archives: History

The Untold History of Zines… Nancy Kangas on Nancy’s Magazine

Nancy Kangas moved from Columbus to San Francisco in the early 1980s. By 1983, she’d launched “Nancy’s Magazine.” Over the course of the next 13 years, she’d put out 13 issues, cementing her place in the history of the American underground press. [above: Nancy Kangas in her San Francisco apartment, circa 1984.] MARK: I’m not […]

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A big “thank you” to all those who died in the Chicago rail yards so that we might have the day off to grill hot dogs… Happy Labor Day

I know it’s probably cheating, but here’s something that I posted over a decade ago on the occasion of Labor Day. If anything, I think it’s even more appropriate today, seeing as how Michigan has since become a so-called “right to work” state, and we now how have an unquestionably anti-worker administration running our country. […]

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Trump nearly doubling his death toll estimate, continues to urge states to reopen despite official White House guidelines

On Fox News yesterday, Donald Trump, after making the ridiculous case that he’s been “treated worse” than Abraham Lincoln, said that, in his opinion, it is now safe to re-open society. He then went on to say that, by the time all of this is over, the COVID-19 death toll in the United States could […]

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Documenting Ypsilanti in the time of COVID-19

Back in 2017, I got the idea that we should designate a weekend to collectively documenting our lives in Ypsilanti. I called the initiative #DocumentYpsi, and the results were pretty awesome. In fact, I was 100% committed, given the response, to make sure that it became an annual thing. But, like so many other things, […]

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The story about my great, great grandfather nearly severing the leg of his brother with an axe

Not too long ago, as you may recall, I shared a few family stories here that had been handed down by my great grandmother’s cousin, Mattie Belle Wise (1892-1992). Well, I’ve got another family story to share with you today. This one, however, comes from my recently-discovered fourth cousin, Stephen Wise. [Stephen reached out to […]

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