If you call yourself a Michigander (or even a Michiganian, which isn’t nearly as fun), you have got to read this book. “Teardown” is by Gordon Young, a classmate of my sister’s at Flint Powers. Gordie is a writer who lives in San Francisco and of the author of the FlintExpats blog. He is a wonderfully skilled storyteller who does a beautiful job of capturing what it is like to be from Michigan, and specifically Flint. That odd sense of pride and disappointment — of having survived and grateful to be gone, yet still finding yourself caring and still connected to the community. It’s really a terrific summer read — hilarious, melancholy, hopeful.

Gordie is coming to Michigan this week for a book tour. Here’s a link to his site. There are also links there for places to go to buy the book. Make a point of coming out to see him. I plan to be at his Wednesday, June 26th visit to Barnes and Noble at Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids (6:30-7:30PM). Hope to see you there!

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 16, 2013

“Seconds tick like boulders whenever you don’t call”
from the song “Greener” by Tally Hall

I love that lyric. I’m not sure exactly what it means — I’m pretty sure it’s saying that life feels heavy and time passes impossibly slowly whenever the guy singing hasn’t talked with his significant other recently. Maybe. Mostly I don’t want or need to know. The more I try to break it down, the less it strikes me.

So, too, with this week’s cartoon, I’m not exactly sure the point I am trying to make. Having the guy deadpan, “Immigrants are gay?” seemed really funny to me. It has something to do with the stereotype of gays moving into and restoring urban areas. I just got done reading the book “Teardown” by Gordon Young about Flint, Michigan and the general theme of the challenges of urban renewal. (See the next blog post for more info on that.) And the has been quite a bit in the news lately about immigration reform and the benefits of immigrants moving into and bringing new life to urban areas. And I think there’s something in there about the similarities and contrasts of these two general groups. I tried like crazy for a couple of hours to rework the cartoon to make more of a direct point. But that only seemed to kill what I found appealing about it. So here it is. Hope it struck you.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 11, 2013

Last week gas prices in Michigan spiked to the second highest in the nation (after Hawaii, which is a bunch of islands with no pipelines). Why did this happen? Was it the changeover of formulas and additives for the summer driving season? Was it production issues at nearby refineries? Was it crude oil pricing instability brought on by some Iranian sneezing? Was it Big Oil squeezing out a bit more profit to demonstrate their authority over us? Was it Obamacare? Was it Obama not caring? Was it Obama colluding with Big Oil to sell Hawaii to the Iranians?

For the Michigan tourism industry, it doesn’t matter how it happened — the fact remains that there’s an obnoxious, smelly guy with an Ohio State-colored belly shirt and banana hammock floating in its pool….

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 2, 2013

Not much to add here, really. At the Mackinac Policy Conference last week, there was much talk about improvements to public education, including guest speakers Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee. It struck me — in ten years when the Democratic president proposes an overhaul to the public education system that includes vouchers and charter schools, it will be interesting to see how exactly Republicans turn on their ideas and decide it had always been lousy, stinkin’ socialism.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 26, 2013

This may appear only to be a swipe at Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (and it is a swipe), but there’s more to it. Mr. Schuette’s reflexive partisan politics seems to me to be ill-suited for a position where he supposedly the legal representative for all Michiganders. So when he went wading into national politics on the recent IRS shenanigans, I felt the need to call shenanigans on him. Actually my first thought was to draw him smooching up to a giant poster in his office of former attorney general and eventual governor and national political pundit Jennifer Granholm (“Oh my darling! We know being attorney general is only a stepping stone to better things!), but it felt kinda creepy, and how many people even remember Jennifer Granholm at this point?

But frankly what I was doing with this weeks cartoon was poking fun at myself. I, too, long at times to sink my teeth into some juicy national topic like the IRS scandal or international topic like Benghazi. But, alas, I am paid to draw about Michigan, and tempting as it is to create some sort of tortured connection between the Arab/Israeli conflict and, say, our wet spring bringing a bumper crop of mosquitos this year (yeah, there is no connection), I should be satisfied with what I have to draw about. So thank you, Bill Schuette! Please keep doing stupid things in Michigan as long as you can until you graduate to a bigger stage!

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 19, 2013

Next week, my daughter Natalina will be graduating from Grandville High School with an excellent public education that has engaged her, challenged her, and prepared her for college and beyond. It has been an extraordinary return on value. The system has served her and her classmates well. A few weeks ago, the Buena Vista school district shut down and ended the school year early for some 400 students. The state and local school board dithered till last week and now have figured a stop-gap way to allow school to complete the year. The system has not served those students well.

Of course there are all whole host of social, political, and economic reasons for why all this is. Which is to say, there is no simple solution to “fixing” Michigan’s public education system. But maybe the first step is admitting that it is difficult and going from there.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 12, 2013

Here’s the backstory:

The Michigan Natural Resources Commission has approved a wolf hunting season this fall for parts of the Upper Peninsula.

The regulations approved Thursday establish a target of 43 wolves to be killed. Michigan has an estimated 658 wolves in the Upper Peninsula overall, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

The DNR recommended the limited hunt as part of a strategy aimed at cutting down on the number of wolves in parts of the U.P. where wolves have attacked livestock and pets. But allowing a hunt will upset a coalition that was formed with the intent of blocking a wolf hunt through a voter referendum. (Click here to read the full article.)

So while I believe all Michigan residents have a right to their opinion and I personally don’t know if a wolf hunt is the way to go, determining the best course of action shouldn’t come down to a popularity contest. Not when my greatest predator concern is for the moles that are making my lawn lumpy.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 5, 2013

I didn’t want to do a cartoon about the bill in the Michigan legislature that proposes to reform Michigan’s automobile insurance laws. Even though it affects me and my family directly, I find it, well, boring. But I decided it was certainly relevant and I should do some research. As I was reading this article, my eyes glazed over when I read the quote from the insurance industry spokesperson. I woke up enough to realize, “This is exactly the problem. These guys depend on knocking me out with their insurance-speak so I don’t realize the money they’re taking out of my back pocket.” It’s kinda like free drinks in a casino. So I lifted the quote word-for-word and used it in Panels 2 and 3.

My new favorite defense for anything is “much of the information is available online.”

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
April 28, 2013

For all of you who live in Michigan, particularly West Michigan, I’m not telling you anything when I say April has been horrific. The second or third wettest month on record, cold, nasty, windy, flooding. The Grand River crested a week ago in downtown Grand Rapids inches from the top of flood walls. Wet basements. Cancelled sports. Closings and postponements. (Grandville actually had a “flood” day off school!) So this cartoon isn’t really so much an editorial cartoon as it is a reflection (and, hopefully, a post-mortem for the crappy weather).

Side note (and in the interest of full disclosure): Somewhere in the archives of my head I remembered doing a similar cartoon. But it wasn’t until I finished this one and sent for printing that I found the cartoon below, which I did for the Grand Rapids Business Journal. Back in 1997, any decent rain would overflow the sewage treatment plant, which would dump nastiness into the Grand River. A huge effort to upgrade the system has largely fixed this, although the record-breaking rains recently did overflow the system. This time, folks were more concerned with the walls of water than a few turds getting loose.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
April 21, 2013

Didn’t break a lot of new ground with this one. Basically, everybody knows in Michigan that we have to do something to fund road repair. The old model doesn’t work anymore because it taxes sales of gasoline and with more efficient cars we use a lot less. Governor Snyder has proposed a solution. Democrats don’t like it because it’s his solution. Republicans don’t like it because it has the work “tax” in it. So …nothing.

My starting point — and what I really wanted to talk about — was the recent failure of the US Senate to pass gun violence legislation. There’s is lots to be disappointed about, but maybe the biggest one for me is that the argument “well nothing can be done about criminals so it is best to do nothing” won the day. It seemed, in a word, pathetic. I had no Michigan angle on that so I ended up with the cartoon you see.

However, there was a group of cartoonists who were able to express their disappointment in a very poignant way. Here’s a short video created for Demand Action Against Gun Violence. It’s only a couple of minutes and definitely worthwhile. Click HERE to see the video on the Demand Action website, with a slideshow of the artwork.