Review:  Flint native filmmaker’s latest production puts pandemic focus on frontline workers
Sep13

Review: Flint native filmmaker’s latest production puts pandemic focus on frontline workers

By Harold C. Ford “Private industry really stepped up.” –Erin Brennan, emergency room physician “On the Line” is a refreshing antidote to a steady stream of stories about a chief executive who mishandled a pandemic and lied to the nation about its worst health crisis in a hundred years. A short film, lasting less than nine minutes, its lens is squarely focused on frontliners who have gone above and beyond the call of duty during...

Read More
Low income and marginalized voters face many challenges, Neighborhoods Without Borders panel warns
Sep12

Low income and marginalized voters face many challenges, Neighborhoods Without Borders panel warns

By Coner Segren With fewer than three months until election day, and fewer than three weeks until mail-in ballots begin going out, Michigan voters still are facing a high degree of uncertainty around a national election that will be unprecedented in the modern era. In an effort to educate potential voters, the group Neighborhoods Without Borders hosted a Zoom-based panel discussion Sept. 8 centered on the topic of voter suppression...

Read More
Village Life:  A reclaimed piano reclaims grace in a time of plague
Sep03

Village Life: A reclaimed piano reclaims grace in a time of plague

By Jan Worth-Nelson Some days, no matter how hard you try to stay sane, it’s just too much. Picture me roaming around my house — a sprawling old place with several  routes for pacing and hiding — where we’ve been mostly cloistered,   like any reasonable oldsters shrinking away from COVID-19, since March. Picture me agitated, limbs sort of flapping, arms akimbo from time to time.  Picture me muttering and cussing.  Picture my pandemic...

Read More
Overview: Fifth Flint Youth Film Festival powered through the pandemic, thanks to teamwork and YouTube
Sep02

Overview: Fifth Flint Youth Film Festival powered through the pandemic, thanks to teamwork and YouTube

By Patsy Isenberg COVID-19 has thrown a big hit to performance arts and entertainment.  Visual arts are coming back, now that the FIA and galleries in the area have reopened. Theatre is the most challenging since audience members could wear masks and social distance in their seats but the performers need the freedom to interact with each other on stage. Recorded music continues and artists can still hold concerts if restrictions are...

Read More
Commentary: COVID-19, mail-in voting challenge the USPS, election clerks
Sep01

Commentary: COVID-19, mail-in voting challenge the USPS, election clerks

By Paul Rozycki What would it take to make 2020 the most disruptive year in decades? How about a global pandemic, where the U.S. has more cases than every other nation on earth? How about an economic collapse, with unemployment worse than anything seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s? How about racial divisions more intense than anything since the 1960s civil rights era? How about an election that revolves around the most...

Read More
Funding for Flint Registry to expire in 2021 unless Congress acts
Aug29

Funding for Flint Registry to expire in 2021 unless Congress acts

By Coner Segren Without action from Congress, funding for the Flint Registry will expire in June of 2021, several top Michigan elected officials and a health expert announced at a press conference Aug. 26. Congressman Dan Kildee, Mayor Sheldon Neeley, Senator Gary Peters, and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha all spoke in favor of legislation designed to reauthorize the Registry, which since 2016 has been accumulating data about the effects of...

Read More