Michigan Girl Quotes

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

Ask that girl who left Tom Lake what she wanted out of life and she would never in a million years have said the Nelson farm in Traverse City, Michigan, but as it turned out, it was all she wanted.

Hannah returns to our booth carrying our drink orders. Or rather, Allie and Dex’s drink orders. Logan and I asked for sodas, but what we get is water. “Where’s my Dr. Pepper, Wellsy?” Logan whines. She levels him with a stern look. “Do you know how much sugar is in a soft drink?” “A perfectly acceptable amount and therefore I should drink it?” supplies Logan. “Wrong. The answer is too damn much. You’re playing Michigan in an hour—you can’t get all hopped up on sugar before a game. You’ll get a five-minute energy boost and then crash halfway through the first period.” Logan sighs. “G, why is your girl our nutritionist now?” I pick up my water glass and take a sip of defeat. “Do you want to argue with her?” Logan looks at Hannah, whose expression clearly conveys: you’ll get a soda over my dead body. Then he looks back at me. “No,” he says glumly.

We didn't think the library was funny looking in it's faux- Greek splendor, nor did we find the cuisine limited or bland, or the movies at the Michigan theater relentlessly American and mindless. These were opinions I came to later, after I became a denizen of a City, an expatriate anxious to distance herself from the bumpkin ways of her youth. I am suddenly consumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.

Iwent to school with African-American girls during my entire adolescence in Michigan and never noticed them as potential girlfriends, never even wanted to meet them. How did that happen? I'm nine thousand miles from home and a pernicious wall of segregation I never noticed in high school suddenly materialises. A young man should travel.

Families are like pieces of art, they can be made from many materials. Sometimes they are from birth, sometimes they are melded, sometimes they are merely time and circumstance mixing together, like eggs being scrambled in a Michigan kitchen.

March 6, 1961 I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass, drums, and sax -- playing in one of the large rooms. A heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air. The host appeared now and then looking pleased, as if he liked seeing strangers in every room, the party out of his control. It wasn't wild, but with a constant flow of people, who knows what they're doing. It became late and I was a little drunk, wandering from one part of the house to another. I entered a long hall and was surprised by the silence, as if I had entered another house. A girl at the other end of the hall was walking toward me. I saw large blue eyes and very black hair. She was about average height, doll-like features delicate as cut glass, extremely pretty, maybe the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. When she came up to me I took her in my arms and kissed her. She let it happen. We were like creatures in a dream. Holding her hand, I drew her with me and we passed through rooms where people stood about, and then left the house. As we drove away, she said her name was Margo. She was a freshman at the university, from a town in northern Michigan. I took her home. It was obvious she'd never gone home with a man. She didn't seem fearful, only uncertain, the question in her eyes: "What happens next?" What happened next was nothing much. We fell asleep in our clothes. I wasn't the one to make her no different from everyone.

hadn’t had any real success but every one of those high school girls knew about my life, and as much as they may have had the story wrong, they wished they were me. In their place, I would have wished I were me, because this unremarkable room with the remarkable view in Middle-of-Nowhere, Michigan, was everything that had ever been written about freedom and possibility.

I was hostile, and I had every right to be. Middle school didn't make any sense. If you were mean, people liked you. If you were nice, people were mean. If you teased girls, they smiled and laughed. If you complimented them, they frowned and walked away. If you were bad in class, you were hailed in the hallway. If you were good in class, you were bullied in the locker room. The pretty girls dated the ugly boys, and the only friends you had were the ones you didn't want.

Can there be true equality in the classroom and the boardroom if there isn’t in the bedroom? Back in 1995 the National Commission on Adolescent Sexual Health declared healthy sexual development a basic human right. Teen intimacy, it said, ought to be “consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable, and protected against unintended pregnancy and STDs.” How is it, over two decades later, that we are so shamefully short of that goal? Sara McClelland, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, writes about sexuality as a matter of “intimate justice,” touching on fundamental issues of gender inequality, economic disparity, violence, bodily integrity, physical and mental health, self-efficacy, and power dynamics in our most personal relationships. She asks us to consider: Who has the right to engage in sexual behavior? Who has the right to enjoy it? Who is the primary beneficiary of the experience? Who feels deserving? How does each partner define “good enough?” Those are thorny questions when looking at female sexuality at any age, but particularly when considering girls’ early, formative experience. Nonetheless, I was determined to ask them.

Communication is not just about words. It’s about body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, even pheromones, all of which can’t be conveyed through social media. Emoticons are very weak substitutes.” And when nonverbal cues are stripped away, it can limit the potential for understanding, arguably the foundation of empathy. When researchers at the University of Michigan reviewed data from seventy-two studies conducted between 1979 and 2009, all focused on monitoring levels of empathy among American college students, they found that students today were scoring about 40 percent lower than their earlier counterparts.

Messiah thought back, his mind floating back in time to the day he’d taken Mo to Stepping Stone Falls to let her high come down. That morning. He’d found out that morning. He had been diagnosed with cancer. It was the biggest reason he had warned Morgan that he would never be able to stay. That he would hurt her. That they would never be. There was no future with him. No wedding. No growing old together. He knew that it would hurt her to only have him for a little while, but that small moment of time that they had carved out was the best days of his life. Those days outweighed every ounce of pain he had ever felt. He looked at his illness as a blessing, because he would have never crossed the line with Morgan if he hadn’t been diagnosed that day. Hearing that he was sick made him want to risk what little time he had left on her. Messiah couldn’t allow himself to die without indulging in an angel. Morgan had been his biggest blessing and he had been her biggest curse. She would never know how sorry he was. He would never be able to tell her. “It’s been awhile. About a year or so,” he said. “You’re 180 pounds. According to your records from your doctors in Michigan, you were 225 at your last visit. You know what that means, right? They should have told you what to look for. The signs. You should have…” “I know,” he said. “I was busy living. I didn’t want to take the time out to die. I found a girl to love me for a little while. It was worth it.” Messiah stepped down and the woman looked at him in stun.

All three of our girls are home now. Emily came back to the farm after she graduated from college, while Maisie and Nell, still in school, returned in March. It was an anxious spring for the world, though from our kitchen window it played out just like every other spring in northern Michigan: wet and rainy and cold, followed by a late heavy snow, a sudden warm spell, and then the spectacle of trees in bloom. Emily and Maisie and Nell ignored the trees and chose to chip away at their sanity with news feeds instead. I finally put an end to the television being on in the evening because after we watched it, none of us slept. “Turn your head in one direction and it’s hopeless despair,” I told them. “Turn your head in the other direction—” I pointed to the explosion of white petals out the window

Would she have enjoyed a more natural parent-child fit if she’d been an introvert herself? Not necessarily. Introverted parents can face challenges of their own. Sometimes painful childhood memories can get in the way. Emily Miller, a clinical social worker in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told me about a little girl she treated, Ava, whose shyness was so extreme that it prevented her from making friends or from concentrating in class. Recently she sobbed when asked to join a group singing in front of the classroom, and her mother, Sarah, decided to seek Miller’s help. When Miller asked Sarah, a successful business journalist, to act as a partner in Ava’s treatment, Sarah burst into tears. She’d been a shy child, too, and felt guilty that she’d passed on to Ava her terrible burden. “I hide it better now, but I’m still just like my daughter,” she explained. “I can approach anyone, but only as long as I’m behind a journalist’s notebook.” Sarah’s reaction is not unusual for the pseudo-extrovert parent of a shy child, says Miller. Not only is Sarah reliving her own childhood, but she’s projecting onto Ava the worst of her own memories. But Sarah needs to understand that she and Ava are not the same person, even if they do seem to have inherited similar temperaments. For one thing, Ava is influenced by her father, too, and by any number of environmental factors, so her temperament is bound to have a different expression. Sarah’s own distress need not be her daughter’s, and it does Ava a great disservice to assume that it will be. With the right guidance, Ava may get to the point where her shyness is nothing more than a small and infrequent annoyance.

Hannah Winter was sixty all of a sudden, as women of sixty are. Just yesterday - or the day before, at most - she had been a bride of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown, very stiff and rich. And now here she was, all of a sudden, sixty. (...) This is the way it happened! She was rushing along Peacock Alley to meet her daughter Marcia. Anyone who knows Chicago knows that smoke-blackened pile, the Congress Hotel; and anyone who knows the Congress Hotel has walked down that glittering white marble crypt called Peacock Alley. It is neither so glittering nor so white nor, for that matter, so prone to preen itself as it was in the hotel's palmy '90s. But it still serves as a convenient short cut on a day when Chicago's lake wind makes Michigan Boulevard a hazard, and thus Hannah Winter was using it. She was to have met Marcia at the Michigan Boulevard entrance at two, sharp. And here it was 2.07. When Marcia said two, there she was at two, waiting, lips slightly compressed. (...) So then here it was 2.07, and Hannah Winter, rather panicky, was rushing along Peacock Alley, dodging loungers, and bell-boys, and traveling salesmen and visiting provincials and the inevitable red-faced delegates with satin badges. In her hurry and nervous apprehension she looked, as she scuttled down the narrow passage, very much like the Rabbit who was late for the Duchess's dinner. Her rubber-heeled oxfords were pounding down hard on the white marble pavement. Suddenly she saw coming swiftly toward her a woman who seemed strangely familiar - a well-dressed woman, harassed-looking, a tense frown between her eyes, and her eyes staring so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart hat was slightly askew and that, though she walked very fast, her trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror which forms a broad full-length panel set in the marble wall at the north end of Peacock Alley. Passerby and the loungers on near-by red plush seats came running, but she was unhurt except for a forehead bump that remained black-and-blue for two weeks or more. The bump did not bother her, nor did the slightly amused concern of those who had come to her assistance. She stood there, her hat still askew, staring at this woman - this woman with her stiff ankles, her slightly protruding eyes, her nervous frown, her hat a little sideways - this stranger - this murderess who had just slain, ruthlessly and forever, a sallow, high-spirited girl of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown.

Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, The True Story of Murder in a Small Town, begins on a steamy August night with two teenagers, brother and sister, on an evil mission deep in a rural Michigan forest. For one desperate moment headlights appear on the lonely access road. Will they be found out? Thus the story of one of state’s strangest criminal cases unfolds. Girl breaks up with boyfriend. He turns violent. She disappears without a trace. Then state police investigators set out on what at first looks like a fool’s journey. The story is colored by a bizarre Ouija board death prophesy and the roles of two psychics, a former practicing witch and a handsome young artist who is suspected of Satanism. The canny and elusive suspect taunts police and seems always to be one step ahead of them. When a key witness is daunted by uncharacteristic injuries, a mysterious medium tells him he is the victim of black magic practiced by the suspect’s grandmother. And when, after eight years, the suspect finally is brought to trial, he is represented by a Roman Catholic priest.

Unless you know in your heart that you can live a life of dignity and honor here, unless you believe that you can pledge yourself to that girl for the rest of your life, then don't stay and add to the tears that have already ben shed in this country. Don't be yet another man who comes here as a Christian only to dishonor the Lord's name.

I can’t believe it,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.” “Neither can I,” Jessica said, eyeballing the door. “And if you’ll just let me by, I’ll go get some help—” “Oh,” Abigail said, with another laugh, “you’re perfectly safe. I’m not crazy.” She held out her hand. “Abigail Moira Garrett de Piaget. Local girl from Freezing Bluff, Michigan. Nice to meet you.” Jessica felt her jaw slip down to land with a figurative thud on her chest. “You’re kidding.” Abigail pulled her hand back and hugged herself, still laughing in a gasping kind of way. “Oh, honey, you just don’t know the half of it.” Jessica could hardly think straight. “You’re from—” “1996. Fell into a pond and resurfaced in Miles’s moat in 1248. It’s a wonder he took me in with the way I smelled.” “Then you’re from—” “Michigan. And what I wouldn’t give for a York peppermint patty about now.

So, I see we meet again.” He offered a smile. Although he could clearly see from her rounded abdomen that she was expecting a baby, he couldn’t keep from noticing once again that she was a lovely woman. “I have to say, we didn’t officially meet,” he continued, trying to put her at ease. “Unless of course you go by the title Frau Maple Syrup.” “I’m Frau Werner. Annalisa Werner.” “And I’m Carl Richards.” He put his arm to his waist and bowed as if he were the grand duke and she a duchess. “I’m Gretchen.” Annalisa’s daughter let go of her oma and turned to him. “Ah, I was expecting something like Raindrop.” He turned to the little girl and bowed to her. “But I like Gretchen much better. It’s a lovely name for a princess.

Carl was cuddling Sophie. He bent to place a kiss on her bonneted head. He didn’t seem to notice that he was the only man holding a baby. And he didn’t seem to care that the other men were witnessing his display of affection for the tiny baby girl. “That man will make a good father.” Frau Pastor took her piece of pie with a smile. “I don’t know why he can’t be the father to your children, dearie. It’s obvious he loves them.

For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” —Isaiah 41:13 (NIV) One day I was standing in line at the store, when a woman tapped me on the arm. “Remember me?” she asked. It was Margo, a girl I’d gone to middle school with. We did the usual those-were-the-days banter and then she said, “A while back I picked your mom up one night on Lahser Road.” My mother was fighting the onset of Alzheimer’s, and she used to get up in the middle of the night, don her Sunday finest, and walk three miles to church in the freezing Michigan dark. I started to thank Margo, but she stopped me. “I thought my life was crumbling,” she said, “that I’d wasted years for nothing. I couldn’t lie in bed crying anymore, so I just threw something on and went driving. I didn’t know what I was going to do. That’s when I saw her.” “Mom?” “We had the most incredible conversation. She said she knew how I felt, that things may seem dark now, but they will get better because God is always near. And she was right. They did. Your mom was such a kind soul and good listener. I will never, ever forget that night.” Mom’s been gone now for a few years. I sometimes wonder about her need to get to church when the hour was darkest. I think she knew what she was about more than we might have suspected and maybe not quite as lost as we assumed. She was searching for something in that cold dark, something she knew was there. My old school friend said she’d never forget that night. Neither will I. Lord, I search for You when the hour is darkest and I am most lost. Direct my steps to You. —Edward Grinnan Digging Deeper: Pss 73:28, 139:7–8; Jn 1:5

She half-remembered a summer's night in Michigan when she was a girl. She had feared she would fall into the sky. "Oh, it's not just us. This is a... cooperative project ofmany galaxies. That's what we mainly do--engineering.

I guess I’m left with only one option.” She spun out of the kitchen into the pantry. “I’ll have to be the one to go and get her.” She stomped toward the back door and banged it open. As she rushed outside, a gust of wind slapped her cheeks. “Where are you going?” Connell caught the door before it slammed shut, and he followed her outside. A hill of dark clouds had pushed in with the growing darkness. She pulled her coat tighter and started toward the front of the hotel, trying to ignore the long shadows of the evening that reached out to haunt her. “I’m heading to the Stockade to see if Frankie’s there.” “You can’t go up there by yourself,” he called after her. “I’m certain God would want me to do whatever I can to rescue the girl, even if it means going by myself.” She picked up her pace, and her boots sloshed through the muddy snow that remained after the past week. She made it only a half a dozen more steps before Connell’s hand gripped her upper arm and dragged her to a stop. “I won’t let you go.” He spun her around so that she had no choice but to face him. “How dare you? What right do you have to stop me?” She jerked her arm and tried to break away. But his hold didn’t budge. “I probably don’t have any right to stop you.” She tugged again, this time harder. “Then leave me alone.” He wavered, almost as if he would let her go, but then with a growl he yanked her against his body. The strength of his grip held her captive. But the hard width of his chest against hers and the nearness of his face—only inches away—held her in greater captivity. For a long moment she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. The crashing thud of her heartbeat and the soft rasp of his breath filled the space between them. His gaze lingered upon her cheek, her chin, her other cheek before moving to her lips. Spring butterflies awakened in her stomach, and she couldn’t keep from studying his mouth, so close, so warm, so firm. But the boldness of such an inspection sent embarrassed heat through her, making her want to duck her head. “Lily,” he whispered. His eyes turned into a forest at midnight. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you. I can’t let you go up to the Stockade. It’s too dangerous.

I’m hoping he comes back with a broken arm.” Oren packed a pinch of tobacco into the bowl of the pipe with his thumb. “Then I won’t have to be the one to break it when he finally gets up enough nerve to touch Lily.” “Oren!” Lily scolded through a smile. Good thing Oren didn’t know Connell already had touched her—even if it had only been brief. “I see the way that man’s been looking at you,” Oren mumbled, adding another layer of tobacco. “Even a blind man could see that he can’t keep his eyes off you.” Her inexperienced heart flushed with pleasure at Oren’s words. “Connell McCormick’s a good boy.” Vera wiped her arm across her forehead, brushing her frazzled hair into greater disarray. “I haven’t met too many boys as good as Connell.” Lily had to agree. She’d never known a man like Connell—someone so thoughtful and considerate. “All I have to say is he’s lucky I haven’t poked out his eyeballs yet for all the liberty he’s takin’ looking at Lily.” “He’s attracted to her,” Vera retorted, never afraid to give Oren the guff he deserved. “You can’t blame the boy. Lily’s probably the prettiest girl he’s ever laid eyes on.” “Well, ’course she is.” Oren packed a last layer into his pipe.

What about you?” he asked, ready to take the focus off himself and his parents. “What kind of mom did you have?” She hesitated. Her hair was unraveled and lay in a glorious display of long dark curls around her face. The muscles in his hands tensed with the need to thread his fingers through the thick locks. Instead he grabbed his ax and poked the fire, sending more sparks flying. “I don’t remember much about my mother,” she said. He stared at the flames, trying to keep a rein on his thoughts about Lily. “She died giving birth to Daisy.” Her voice dipped. “I’m sorry.” He stilled and glanced at her again. Her forehead crinkled above eyes that radiated pain. “My father couldn’t take care of us, and for a few years we were shuffled between relatives. Until he got into an accident at work and died within a few days.” An ache wound around his heart. “After that, no one wanted us anymore. I suppose without the money my father had provided them, they couldn’t afford to take care of two more children—not when they struggled enough without us. So they dropped us off at the New York Foundling Hospital.” She paused, and he didn’t say anything, although part of him wished he could curse the family that gave up two girls with such ease. “We lived at the hospital in New York City until there was no longer room for us. Then we moved to other orphanages.” She turned to look at the fire, embarrassment reflected in her face. “I made sure they never separated Daisy and me. I kept us together all those years, no matter where we were. And finally we had the option of moving here to Michigan. They said families needed boys and girls. We’d get to live in real homes.” The grip on his heart cinched tighter. “When we got here, I thought I was doing the best thing for Daisy by giving her a real family to live with. The Wretchams seemed nice. They lived on a big farm. Needed some extra help—” “So you and Daisy didn’t stay together?” “There weren’t any families needing two almost-grown girls. But I consoled myself that it was only temporary, that we’d only be apart until I could find a good job and a place for us to live.” “That must have been hard on both of you.” “Letting her go was like ripping out a piece of my heart.” He wanted to reach for her, pull her into his arms, and comfort her. But everything within him warned him against even a move as innocent as that. “When I learned she’d run away from the Wretchams, she ripped out the rest of my heart, and it hasn’t stopped bleeding since.

I don’t take kindly to any of you shanty boys touching me,” she said. “So unless I give you permission, from now on, you’d best keep your hands off me.” With the last word, she lifted her boot and brought the heel down on Jimmy’s toes. She ground it hard. Like most of the other shanty boys, at the end of a day out in the snow, he’d taken off his wet boots and layers of damp wool socks to let them dry overnight before donning them again for the next day’s work. Jimmy cursed, but before he could move, she brought her boot down on his other foot with a smack that rivaled a gun crack. This time he howled. And with an angry curse, he shoved her hard, sending her sprawling forward. She flailed her arms in a futile effort to steady herself and instead found herself falling against Connell McCormick. His arms encircled her, but the momentum of her body caused him to lose his balance. He stumbled backward. “Whoa! Hold steady!” Her skirt and legs tangled with his, and they careened toward the rows of dirty damp socks hanging in front of the fireplace. The makeshift clotheslines caught them and for a moment slowed their tumble. But against their full weight, the ropes jerked loose from the nails holding them to the beams. In an instant, Lily found herself falling. She twisted and turned among the clotheslines but realized that her thrashing was only lassoing her against Connell. In the downward tumble, Connell slammed into a chair near the fireplace. Amidst the tangle of limbs and ropes, she was helpless to do anything but drop into his lap. With a thud, she landed against him. Several socks hung from his head and covered his face. Dirty socks covered her shoulders and head too. Their stale rotten stench swarmed around her. And for a moment she was conscious only of the fact that she was near to gagging from the odor. She tried to lift a hand to move the sock hanging over one of her eyes but found that her arms were pinned to her sides. She tilted her head and then blew sideways at the crusty, yellowed linen. But it wouldn’t budge. Again she shook her head—this time more emphatically. Still the offending article wouldn’t fall away. Through the wig of socks covering Connell’s head, she could see one of his eyes peeking at her, watching her antics. The corner of his lips twitched with the hint of a smile. She could only imagine what she looked like. If it was anything like him, she must look comical. As he cocked his head and blew at one of his socks, she couldn’t keep from smiling at the picture they both made, helplessly drenched in dirty socks, trying to remove them with nothing but their breath. “Welcome to Harrison.” His grin broke free. “You know how to make a girl feel right at home.” She wanted to laugh. But as he straightened himself in the chair, she became at once conscious of the fact that she was sitting directly in his lap and that the other men in the room were hooting and calling out over her intimate predicament. She scrambled to move off him. But the ropes had tangled them together, and her efforts only caused her to fall against him again. She was not normally a blushing woman, but the growing indecency of her situation was enough to chase away any humor she may have found in the situation and make a chaste woman like herself squirm with embarrassment. “I’d appreciate your help,” she said, struggling again to pull her arms free of the rope. “Or do all you oafs make a sport of manhandling women?” “All you oafs?” His grin widened. “Are you insinuating that I’m an oaf?” “What in the hairy hound is going on here?” She jumped at the boom of Oren’s voice and the slam of the door. The room turned quiet enough to hear the click-click of Oren pulling down the lever of his rifle. She glanced over her shoulder to the older man, to the fierceness of his drawn eyebrows and the deadly anger in his eyes as he took in her predicament.

I think you’ve taught him his lesson, Oren.” The young lady pushed the barrel away from Connell’s face. “I don’t think he’ll manhandle me again.” When she gave him a “so-there” look and then raised her chin, a spark of self-pride flamed to life in his gut. His mam had always made sure he knew how to treat a girl, but this was obviously no ordinary girl. “If anyone was doing the manhandling, it was you.” Connell rubbed the sore spot on his forehead. “I didn’t ask you to sit on my lap.” Her eyes widened, revealing a woodsy brown that was as dark and rich as fine-grained walnut. The color matched the thick curls that had come loose from the knitted hat covering her head. Oren stood back, tucked his gun under his arm, and tapped his black derby up. His eyebrows followed suit. The girl opened her mouth to speak but then clamped it shut, apparently at a loss for words. A wisp of satisfaction curled through Connell. After the way she’d let the old man humiliate him, he didn’t mind letting her squirm for a minute. But only for a minute. Mam’s training was ingrained too deeply to wish the girl ill will for more than that. He shoved himself out of the chair and straightened his aching back. “Look,” he said, plucking a last dirty sock from his shoulder. “Can we start over? I’m Connell McCormick.” She hesitated and then tilted her head at him. “And I’m Miss Young.” “I sure hope you’ll forgive me if I’ve caused you any . . . discomfort.” Surprise flitted across her elegant, doelike features. “Well now. With that polite apology, how could I refuse to forgive you?” He gave her a smile and waited. The polite thing for her to do was offer her own apology and perhaps even a thank-you for his attempts to save her from Jimmy Neil. But she only returned the smile, one that curved her lovely full lips in perfect symmetry but didn’t make it into the depths of her eyes.

Don’t trouble yourself with me.” The thought of a heavy meal for breakfast made Lily’s stomach churn. “I’ll be happy enough with a cup of coffee—if you have any to spare.” Vera stopped in midswirl and took in Lily’s appearance. “Coffee? My, my, my. You need more meat on your bones, girl. You’ll blow away with the slightest breeze. Don’t you agree, Connell?” Lily glanced to the corner spot, only to find the young man she’d met the previous evening staring at her above spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He quickly looked back at the open book in front of him, but the slight reddish tint creeping up his neck above his collar was evidence that he’d been paying more attention to her than to his books. “I’m sure Miss Young would appreciate whatever you’re willing to provide.” The young man pulled out his pocket watch and peered at it. “Especially considering the fact that breakfast has been over for exactly one hour and twelve minutes.” His hair was neatly combed, except for one sun-bleached streak that fell across his forehead. He’d shaven the scruff from his face, revealing skin that was rough and bronzed from long days outdoors. “Connell McCormick.” Vera thumped her hands onto her hips. “You sure don’t seem to mind when I sneak you an extra doughnut or two. I think half the reason you loiter here in the mornings is because you hope I’ll feed you more.” The faint red streaks climbed up to the base of his cheeks. He didn’t say anything and instead dipped his head and scribbled something into one of his books, as if there were nothing more important at that moment than the page in front of him.

Stuart muttered, “Why don’t you say something?” Connell wanted to, but his lips felt like they were frozen shut. He’d never been all that suave around pretty girls. And not only was this girl pretty, but she had enough spunk to knock a man off his feet—literally. Stuart jabbed his ribs with his bony elbow. “At least go over to her.” Connell couldn’t make his feet work either. Lily stepped into the street and headed in the direction of the next closest tavern. “You big chicken,” Stuart said under his breath.

How much for a picture with the girl?” one of the men called, nodding at Lily. Another man whistled and others chortled. Oren stiffened. He tipped up his derby, and his eyebrows narrowed into a scowl. “I’ve got two rules here today, boys.” Lily stifled a smile. She’d heard Oren’s lecture plenty of times. She could only imagine what he’d say if he found out about Jimmy Neil’s attack of the night before. He’d never let her go anywhere by herself again. Oren pulled his corncob pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at the men. “One—you keep your filthy hands off Lily, and I’ll keep my hands off your puny chicken necks.” Except for the rhythmic ring of hammer on anvil coming from the crudely built log cabin that served as a shop for the camp blacksmith, silence descended over the clearing. “Two,” Oren continued, “you keep your shifty eyes off Lily, and I’ll keep from blowing a hole through your pea-brain heads.” With that, he toed the rifle, which he always laid on the ground in front of the tripod. She saw no need to tell them Oren had never shot anyone, at least not yet.

Lily fought like a lynx caught in a steel trap. She scratched and bit and kicked with a force that took Connell by surprise. Her teeth sank into the sensitive flesh of his palm and forced him to let go. “Calm down, Lily. It’s just me, Connell.” The beginning of her scream died away, and she spun on him, her eyes flashing with fury. “Why did you sneak up on me like that?” “I didn’t mean to.” He brought his smarting hand to his mouth and sucked at the blood she’d drawn. “When you didn’t hear me approach, I thought I might startle you. And I didn’t want you to scream—a sure way to get every shanty boy in the camp to come running.” The tempest in her eyes turned into a low gale. He glanced at the teeth marks she’d left in his hand. “You sure know how to greet a fellow.” “And you sure know how to scare a girl half to death.” “Why exactly were you so scared?” “Because I thought you were someone else.” “And what if I had been someone else?” She paused, her pretty lips stalled around the shape of her next word. “Any number of the rough men from this camp could have followed you out here.” He’d seen the way the men were looking at her, how they hadn’t been able to take their eyes off her from the moment she’d arrived. “What would you have done then?” When she’d run off into the woods after the stupid cat, he’d had to yell at several of the men to stop them from chasing after her. “I would have screamed.” She pulled herself up to her full height, which he estimated to be five feet six inches. “Since apparently I’d get lots of attention that way.” “I’m serious,” he started. But then at the glimpse of the twinkle in her eyes, his ready lecture stalled. He stuck his aching hand into his pocket and pressed his wound against the scratchy wool. “I appreciate your concern,” she offered with the hint of a smile. “But I’m a much stronger woman than you realize.” She’d be no match for any of his strong shanty boys. “You were reckless to wander off by yourself.” He tried to soften his accusation, but he wanted her to realize the constant danger she was in simply by being an attractive woman in a place populated by lusty men. “I strongly suggest you refrain from doing so again—especially if you hope to avoid any further run-ins.

Asia and Cedes were cut from a different cloth. They'd seen and done more than most girls their age. They were born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and brought up in the roughest part of the city.

After parking in the west lot, far from a certain gang member with a reputation that could scare off even the toughest Fairfield football players, Sierra and I walk up the front steps of Fairfield High. Unfortunately, Alex Fuentes and the rest of his gang friends are hanging by the front doors. “Walk right past them,” Sierra mutters. “Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.” It’s pretty hard not to when Alex Fuentes steps right in front of me and blocks my path. What’s that prayer you’re supposed to say right before you know you’re going to die? “You’re a lousy driver,” Alex says with his slight Latino accent and full-blown-I-AM-THE-MAN stance. The guy might look like an Abercrombie mode with his ripped bod and flawless face, but his picture is more likely to be taken for a mug shot. The kids from the north side don’t really mix with kids from the south side. It’s not that we think we’re better than them, we’re just different. We’ve grown up in the same town, but on totally opposite sides. We live in big houses on Lake Michigan and they live next to the train tracks. We look, talk, act, and dress different. I’m not saying it’s good or bad; it’s just the way it is in Fairfield. And, to be honest, most of the south side girls treat me like Carmen Sanchez does…they hate me because of who I am. Or, rather, who they think I am. Alex’s gaze slowly moves down my body, traveling the length of me before moving back up. It’s not the first time a guy has checked me out, it’s just that I never had a guy like Alex do it so blatantly…and so up-close. I can feel my face getting hot. “Next time, watch where you’re goin’,” he says, his voice cool and controlled. He’s trying to bully me. He’s a pro at this. I won’t let him get to me and win his little game of intimidation, even if my stomach feels like I’m doing one hundred cartwheels in a row. I square my shoulders and sneer at him, the same sneer I use to push people away. “Thanks for the tip.” “If you ever need a real man to teach you how to drive, I can give you lessons.” Catcalls and whistles from his buddies set my blood boiling. “If you were a real man, you’d open the door for me instead of blocking my way,” I say, admiring my own comeback even as my knees threaten to buckle. Alex steps back, pulls the door open, and bows like he’s my butler. He’s totally mocking me, he knows it and I know it. Everyone knows it. I catch a glimpse of Sierra, still desperately searching for nothing in her purse. She’s clueless. “Get a life,” I tell him. “Like yours? Cabróna, let me tell you somethin’,” Alex says harshly. “Your life isn’t reality, it’s fake. Just like you.” “It’s better than living my life as a loser,” I lash out, hoping my words sting as much as his words did. “Just like you.” Grabbing Sierra’s arm, I pull her toward the open door. Catcalls and comments follow us as we walk into the school. I finally let out the breath I must have been holding, then turn to Sierra. My best friend is staring at me, all bug-eyed. “Holy shit, Brit! You got a death wish or something?” “What gives Alex Fuentes the right to bully everyone in his path?” “Uh, maybe the gun he has hidden in his pants or the gang colors he wears,” Sierra says, sarcasm dripping from every word. “He’s not stupid enough to carry a gun to school,” I reason. “And I refuse to be bullied, by him or anyone else.

Huyck proved to be an outstanding administrator and, despite his lack of experience, quickly achieved one of the board’s top priorities. By ensuring that the teachers, curriculum, and classroom offerings met the necessary educational standards, he earned official accreditation for the school, a certification that made it eligible for federal and state financial aid.9 Along with his academic duties, he made time to coach the school’s poultry-judging team, which—as the local press proudly noted—“won over six other teams from high schools in larger towns in a recent contest.”10 At the annual meeting of the Michigan State Teachers’ Association in November 1923, Emory was chosen as a delegate to the general assembly and helped draft a resolution calling for the strict enforcement of the Volstead Act—formally known as the National Prohibition Act—“not only to prevent production and consumption of alcoholic liquors, but also to teach the children respect for the law.”11 He was also a member of both the Masons, “the most prestigious fraternal organization in Bath’s highly Protestant community,”12 and the Stockman Grange, at whose annual meeting in January 1924 he served as toastmaster and delivered a well-received talk on “The Bean Plant and Its Relation to Life.”13 Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man with his military training, Huyck was something of a disciplinarian, demanding strict standards of conduct from both the pupils and staff. “At day’s end,” writes one historian, “students were required to march from the building to the tune of martial music played on the piano. During the day, students tiptoed in the halls.” When a pair of high-spirited teenaged girls “greeted their barely older teachers with a jaunty ‘Well, hello gals,’” they were immediately sent to the superintendent, who imposed a “penalty [of] individual conferences with those teachers and apologies to them.”14

In the wake of the Great Famine of 1847, nearly one million immigrants fled Ireland for the United States. Among them was a farmer from Wexford County, Patrick Kehoe. Leaving his wife and seven children behind until he could establish himself in the New World, he first settled in Howard County, Maryland, where he found work as a stonemason. In 1850, he sent for his oldest son, Philip, a strapping seventeen-year-old. The rest of the family followed in 1851. By then, Michigan Fever—as the great surge of settlers during the 1830s came to be known—had subsided. Still, there was plenty of cheap and attractive land to be had for pioneering immigrants from the East. In 1855, Philip Kehoe, then twenty-two, left his family in Maryland and journeyed westward, settling in Lenawee County, roughly one hundred miles southeast of Bath. For two years, he worked as a hired hand, saving enough money to purchase 80 acres of timberland. That land became the basis of what would eventually expand into a flourishing 490-acre farm.1 In late 1858, he wed his first wife, twenty-six-year-old Mary Mellon, an Irish orphan raised by her uncle, a Catholic priest, who brought her to America when she was twenty. She died just two and a half years after her marriage, leaving Philip with their two young daughters, Lydia and a newborn girl named after her mother.2 Philip married again roughly three years later, in 1864. His second wife, twenty-nine at the time of their wedding, was the former Mary McGovern, a native New Yorker who had immigrated to Michigan with her parents when she was five. By the time of her death in 1890, at the age of fifty-five, she had borne Philip nine children: six girls and three boys. From the few extant documents that shed light on Philip Kehoe’s life during the twenty-six years of his second marriage, a picture emerges of a shrewd, industrious, civic-minded family man, an epitome of the immigrant success story.

Alright I'll admit not all Americans are fucking stupid. I have respect for Carl Rogers, for example. Dude puts a lot of stock in Experience. Personal experience. And what has my experience been? Well. Russia was nice. I had two bicycles and girls liked me. What's not to like? Then they drag me here (Michigan). Make me work my ass off because parents are idiots and don't speak English. I don't get any pussy till 22. And now they say I still owe school loans? Honestly, I don't remember much of school. Seems like some kinda scam to me. What is to be concluded from this? Either my father is a piece of shit, or America is a shithole. Maybe both. Experience.

In Michigan—where the State Department of Public Instruction had adopted the slogan “A high school education for every boy and girl in Michigan”7—consolidated schools began to replace the old country schoolhouses in 1919. Not everyone, however, was in favor of this change. The push for consolidation produced heated conflicts throughout the region. Many old-timers felt that the type of schooling they had received was perfectly adequate for their children, particularly for the boys who planned to make their livings as farmers. These opponents also bristled at the prospect of paying higher taxes to fund the fancy new schools. “They simply couldn’t see the sense to more than an eighth grade education,” notes one historian, “and they couldn’t see paying for it. Fine if some people wanted high school education for their children, but let them pay tuition and send their children to the city.”8 Foes of consolidation also argued that it was safer for their children to walk to the nearest one-room schoolhouse than to transport them by wagon or bus “over the generally miserable back roads in the . . . countryside

By 1910—as that year’s census records show—Kehoe was back in Lenawee County, Michigan, living with his father and stepmother and employed as a “farm laborer.”21 There was only one more occupant of the household by that time. In 1902, Philip Kehoe—then sixty-nine years old—had become a father again, this time to a girl named Irene. How Andrew felt about his new half sister is another unknown, though, as one historian points out, his sentiments might be surmised from an incident that occurred not long after his return: “Irene had a pet cat,” the chronicler writes, “and Kehoe killed it.”22

She had never lived in a place so white. She had been the only black girl before -in restaurants, in advanced-placement classes- but even then, she was surrounded by Filipinos and Samoans and Mexicans. Now she looked out into lecture halls filled with white kids from rural Michigan towns; in discussion sections, she listened to white classmates champion the diversity of their school, how progressive and accepting it was, and maybe if you had come from some farm town, it seemed that way. She felt the sly type of racism here, longer waits for tables, white girls who expected her to walk on the slushy part of the sidewalk, a drunk boy outside a salsa club yelling that she was pretty for a black girl. In a way, subtle racism was worse because it made you feel crazy. You were always left wonderings, was that actually racist? Had you just imagined it?

Based on the parts of this... this scene that are not covered in refuse, and the drawings you have done for me, I know you are an artist with talent. Maybe I have old-fashioned views, but I simply don't understand why you would spend your time creating something like this." He shrugged his shoulders. "The sort of art I am used to seeing is more..." I raised an eyebrow. "More what?" He bit his lip, as though searching for the right words. "Pleasant to look at, I suppose." He shrugged again. "Scenes from nature. Little girls wearing filly white dresses and playing beside riverbanks. Bowls of fruit." "This piece shows a beach and a lake," I pointed out. "It's a scene from nature." "But it's covered in refuse." I nodded. "My art combines objects I find with images I paint. Sometimes what I find and incorporate is literal trash. But I also feel that my art is more than just trash. It's meaningful. These pieces aren't just flat, lifeless images on canvas. They say something." "Oh." He came even closer to the landscapes, kneeling so he could peer at them up close. "And what does your art... say?" His nose was just a few inches from an old McDonald's Quarter Pounder wrapper I'd laminated to the canvas so it looked like it was rising out of Lake Michigan. I'd meant for it to represent capitalism's crushing stranglehold on the natural world. Also, it just sort of looked cool. But I decided to give him a broader explanation. "I want to create something memorable with my art. Something lasting. I want to give people who see my works an experience that won't fade away. Something that will stay with them long after they see it." He frowned skeptically. "And you accomplish that by displaying ephemera others throw away?" I was about to counter by telling him that even the prettiest painting in the fanciest museum faded from memory once the patrons went home. That by using things other people throw away, I took the ephemeral and make it permanent in a way no pretty watercolor ever could.

went to school with African-American girls during my entire adolescence in Michigan and never noticed them as potential girlfriends, never even wanted to meet them. How did that happen? I’m nine thousand miles from home and a pernicious wall of segregation I never noticed in high school suddenly materializes before my eyes, ten years after the fact. A young man should travel.

I mean, I just got to a point, where I was unbelievably exhausted. And I didn't really know why. They kept telling me America. such a nice place. So wonderful. Opportunities! But I get to this place where I'm 22. I'm an alcoholic. I got through fucking college. I got a fucking job. This girl says she likes me. but she's fooling around with some married guy I think. SO PEOPLE DONT FIND OUT. that's her logic. 2 Masters degrees. And I just cant fucking do this shit anymore. I'm not doing shit. Really. Until A. things start making sense. or B. they send me back to Russia. just say I'm a spy. I want a book deal. or C. I get to 65 and I can begin to drink continuously again. That's it. period. end of story. I did have one nice year there where I got to do drugs and smash random pussy. in Philadelphia. Yep. Thank you, Accenture. Much love.

Nellie the horse and her trips to town, or a cow named Molly Blue, or the Indian who came out of the woods. I wish you could have known Arleta’s grandma, Mabel. You would have loved her. She was born well over one hundred years ago on a little farm in Michigan. What a long, long time ago! Is it hard to imagine anyone that old ever being a little girl? But of course she was, and she remembered very well. Arleta never saw the little log house where Grandma Mabel was born, but she could imagine how it looked. It had one big room that was warmed by a fireplace and a big cookstove. Her brothers slept in a loft overhead, and Mabel slept in a trundle bed beside her parents’ bed. (A trundle bed is a little cot that slides under a bigger bed during the day.) The cabin sat in a small clearing in the woods, and even though there were no neighbors close by, the family felt safe and protected in its little home. By the time Mabel was ready to go to school, the log cabin had been replaced by the big farmhouse that still stood two generations later when Arleta was a little girl. Arleta’s trips to Grandma Mabel’s old home were so much fun. She explored from the attic to the root cellar, from the barn to the meadow brook. Everywhere she looked, she found a story! The attic was dusty and creaky, but what marvelous things it contained: a funny-looking wire thing that turned out to be something to wear, the button basket—a

A researcher at the university of michigan found that, when asked to talk about good sex, college men are more likely than women to talk about pleasure while the women are more likely to use their partner's satisfaction to measure their own. It's not suprising that young women feel powerful when they feel 'hot'. It's presented to them over and over as a precondition to success. But the truth is that 'hot' tells girls that appearing sexually confident is more important than actually being confident. And because of that, as often as not, the confidence that hot confers comes off with their clothes.

? “What’s up, wifey?” Mina said, grabbing her by the cheeks, then smacking her ass. Seema always felt better about being the child of immigrants when she hung out with Mina, her first-year roommate. The girl had no plans before, during, or after Michigan. She worked in graphic web design, which these days was simply a catchall category for anything not involving finance or escorting. Then again, her parents were so rich she didn’t even have to grow up Asian.