View from a grass-roots table: people coming together to cope with Flint water
By Teddy Robertson We sit in a rectangle of tables, old manila file folders halved and then creased so we can write our names and prop them up in front of us. I’ve found my way to the basement of the Unitarian Universalist church for the meeting of a group called Communication/Publication. It’s something to do with water and print media. Jan [Worth-Nelson, EVM editor] has asked me to find out what’s going on. Is there a role for East...
Gray Panthers stalk Flint events: remembering That Weekend (Part I)
By Robert R. Thomas The plan was to take a list of ten events surrounding the Democratic debate at the Whiting and participate in as many as chilly weather and aging bones permitted. My wife Ingrid and I were more interested in the scenes surrounding the main event than the debate itself. We were also interested in participating, not just observing. The opening event was a 2 p.m. rally held by #JUSTICE4FLINT at Willson Park...
Bernie makes it better: remembering That Weekend (Part 2)
By Teddy Robertson The March 6, 2016 Democratic debate is over. That it was held in Flint seems more amazing now than it did the Sunday I stood in a line that snaked around the Whiting parking lot—students, Flint old timers (“I walked to Flint Central 50 years ago!”), guys with union hall physiques and no topcoat, proper ministerial types, politicos in snug-fitting silky suits. I got a ticket through Flint Neighborhoods...
Village Life: Flint’s water story triggers writers’ unease
By Jan Worth-Nelson Scene One: I’m sitting under a yellow umbrella with Andrew Highsmith and my husband Ted in a sunny plaza at a California university. The yellow makes our faces look like we’ve smeared ourselves with dandelions. It’s a chilly but sunny 63. Highsmith has just gone back for seconds on his drink. “This diet black cherry soda is unbelievably good,” he says. I’m finishing my avocado and quinoa salad and Ted is leaning...
Politics of water: blame game, grandstanding, incompetence — and a turning point?
By Paul Rozycki At the end of last year, after our mayoral election, our switch back to Detroit water, and the progress on the Karegnondi pipeline, it seemed that the Flint Water Crisis has peaked. This month I was expecting to say a few words about the primary elections….Trump, Hillary, Bernie Sanders, Iowa, New Hampshire and all that. This should have also been a week when the good news of Amir Hekmati’s release from an Iranian...
Fluttered away like a pack of cards: reflections on Alice in Wonderland and adulthood
By Teddy Robertson When I was about eight years old I was very sick with a fever that must have been unusually high. What caused it or what my mother and grandmother surmised it might be, I don’t remember now. But I was in bed in a dark room, restless and confused. The family prescription was that I needed to sleep, sleep being the general cure-all in household pediatric advice, circa 1953. But domestic illness lore also warned that...
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