Possibly In Michigan Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Possibly In Michigan. Here they are! All 28 of them:

What I saw in Flint was a microcosm of the way the government treats the undocumented everywhere, making the conditions in this country as deadly and toxic and inhumane as possible so that we will self-deport. What I saw in Flint was what I had seen everywhere else, what I had felt in my own poisoned blood and bones. Being killed softly, silently, and with impunity.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans)
Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all i could think to say, between panting breaths, was, "Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator.
Jim Butcher (Summer Knight (The Dresden Files, #4))
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.
Ann Patchett (Tom Lake)
Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies. But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, 'Yeah. Sure. They couldn’t possibly have made this an escalator.
Jim Butcher (Summer Knight (The Dresden Files, #4))
From a very early age Edison became used to doing things for himself, by necessity. His family was poor, and by the age of twelve he had to earn money to help his parents. He sold newspapers on trains, and traveling around his native Michigan for his job, he developed an ardent curiosity about everything he saw. He wanted to know how things worked—machines, gadgets, anything with moving parts. With no schools or teachers in his life, he turned to books, particularly anything he could find on science. He began to conduct his own experiments in the basement of his family home, and he taught himself how to take apart and fix any kind of watch. At the age of fifteen he apprenticed as a telegraph operator, then spent years traveling across the country plying his trade. He had no chance for a formal education, and nobody crossed his path who could serve as a teacher or mentor. And so in lieu of that, in every city he spent time in, he frequented the public library. One book that crossed his path played a decisive role in his life: Michael Faraday’s two-volume Experimental Researches in Electricity. This book became for Edison what The Improvement of the Mind had been for Faraday. It gave him a systematic approach to science and a program for how to educate himself in the field that now obsessed him—electricity. He could follow the experiments laid out by the great Master of the field and absorb as well his philosophical approach to science. For the rest of his life, Faraday would remain his role model. Through books, experiments, and practical experience at various jobs, Edison gave himself a rigorous education that lasted about ten years, up until the time he became an inventor. What made this successful was his relentless desire to learn through whatever crossed his path, as well as his self-discipline. He had developed the habit of overcoming his lack of an organized education by sheer determination and persistence. He worked harder than anyone else. Because he was a consummate outsider and his mind had not been indoctrinated in any school of thought, he brought a fresh perspective to every problem he tackled. He turned his lack of formal direction into an advantage. If you are forced onto this path, you must follow Edison’s example by developing extreme self-reliance. Under these circumstances, you become your own teacher and mentor. You push yourself to learn from every possible source. You read more books than those who have a formal education, developing this into a lifelong habit. As much as possible, you try to apply your knowledge in some form of experiment or practice. You find for yourself second-degree mentors in the form of public figures who can serve as role models. Reading and reflecting on their experiences, you can gain some guidance. You try to make their ideas come to life, internalizing their voice. As someone self-taught, you will maintain a pristine vision, completely distilled through your own experiences—giving you a distinctive power and path to mastery.
Robert Greene (Mastery (The Modern Machiavellian Robert Greene Book 1))
thepsychchic chips clips ii If you think of yourself instead as an almost-victor who thought correctly and did everything possible but was foiled by crap variance? No matter: you will have other opportunities, and if you keep thinking correctly, eventually it will even out. These are the seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for the next time. People share things with you: if you’ve lost your job, your social network thinks of you when new jobs come up; if you’re recently divorced or separated or bereaved, and someone single who may be a good match pops up, you’re top of mind. This attitude is what I think of as a luck amplifier. … you will feel a whole lot happier … and your ready mindset will prepare you for the change in variance that will come … 134-135 W. H. Auden: “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.” Pay attention, or accept the consequences of your failure. 142 Attention is a powerful mitigator to overconfidence: it forces you to constantly reevaluate your knowledge and your game plan, lest you become too tied to a certain course of action. And if you lose? Well, it allows you to admit when it’s actually your fault and not a bad beat. 147 Following up on Phil Galfond’s suggestion to be both a detective and a storyteller and figure out “what your opponent’s actions mean, and sometimes what they don’t mean.” [Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes “Silver Blaze” story.] 159 You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.) 161-162 Erik: Generally, the people who cash the most are actually losing players (Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan strategy, jp). You can’t be a winning player by min cashing. 190 The more you learn, the harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are—because the flaws that you wouldn’t even think of looking at before are now visible and need to be addressed. 191 An edge, even a tiny one, is an edge worth pursuing if you have the time and energy. 208 Blake Eastman: “Before each action, stop, think about what you want to do, and execute.” … Streamlined decisions, no immediate actions, or reactions. A standard process. 217 John Boyd’s OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. The way to outmaneuver your opponent is to get inside their OODA loop. 224 Here’s a free life lesson: seek out situations where you’re a favorite; avoid those where you’re an underdog. 237 [on folding] No matter how good your starting hand, you have to be willing to read the signs and let it go. One thing Erik has stressed, over and over, is to never feel committed to playing an event, ever. “See how you feel in the morning.” Tilt makes you revert to your worst self. 257 Jared Tindler, psychologist, “It all comes down to confidence, self-esteem, identity, what some people call ego.” 251 JT: “As far as hope in poker, f#¢k it. … You need to think in terms of preparation. Don’t worry about hoping. Just Do.” 252
Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win)
The individual voters featured in this book come from ten counties that switched allegiances from Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016, in the five pivotal Great Lakes or Rust Belt states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Those counties were chosen to ensure as much variety among the population tiers listed above as is possible.
Salena Zito (The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics)
Physicists and cosmologists have explored ideas like these. For example, Fred C. Adams, of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, investigated varying the gravitational constant, the fine structure constant, and a constant determining nuclear reaction rates. He found that about a quarter of all possible triples of these three values led to stars which would sustain nuclear fusion—like the stars in our universe. As he said, “[W]e conclude that universes with stars are not especially rare (contrary to previous claims).”8
David J. Hand (The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day)
On television and on the front pages of the major newspapers, Trump clearly seemed to be losing the election. Each new woman who came forward with charges of misbehavior became a focal point of coverage, coupled with Trump’s furious reaction, his ever darkening speeches, and the accompanying suggestion that they were dog whistles aimed at racists and anti-Semites. “Trump’s remarks,” one Washington Post story explained, summing up the media’s outlook, “were laced with the kind of global conspiracies and invective common in the writings of the alternative-right, white-nationalist activists who see him as their champion. Some critics also heard echoes of historical anti-Semitic slurs in Trump’s allegations that Clinton ‘meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty’ and that media and financial elites were part of a soulless cabal.” This outlook, which Clinton’s campaign shared, gave little consideration to the possibility that voters might be angry at large banks, international organizations, and media and financial elites for reasons other than their basest prejudices. This was the axis on which Bannon’s nationalist politics hinged: the belief that, as Marine Le Pen put it, “the dividing line is [no longer] between left and right but globalists and patriots.” Even as he lashed out at his accusers and threatened to jail Clinton, Trump’s late-campaign speeches put his own stamp on this idea. As he told one rally: “There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. From now on, it’s going to be ‘America first.’” Anyone steeped in Guénon’s Traditionalism would recognize the terrifying specter Trump conjured of marauding immigrants, Muslim terrorists, and the collapse of national sovereignty and identity as the descent of a Dark Age—the Kali Yuga. For the millions who were not familiar with it, Trump’s apocalyptic speeches came across as a particularly forceful expression of his conviction that he understood their deep dissatisfaction with the political status quo and could bring about a rapid renewal. Whether it was a result of Trump’s apocalyptic turn, disgust at the Clintons, or simply accuser fatigue—it was likely a combination of all three—the pattern of slippage in the wake of negative news was less pronounced in Trump’s internal surveys in mid-October. Overall, he still trailed. But the data were noisy. In some states (Indiana, New Hampshire, Arizona) his support eroded, but in others (Florida, Ohio, Michigan) it actually improved. When Trump held his own at the third and final debate on October 19, the numbers inched up further. The movement was clear enough that Nate Silver and other statistical mavens began to take note of it. “Is the Presidential Race Tightening?” he asked in the title of an October 26 article. Citing Trump’s rising favorability numbers among Republicans and red-state trend lines, he cautiously concluded that probably it was. By November 1, he had no doubt. “Yes, Donald Trump Has a Path to Victory” read the headline for his column that day, in which he
Joshua Green (Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency)
That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces. But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, “Yeah. Sure. They couldn’t possibly have made this an escalator.
Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files Books 1-6)
For the time being, however, his bent was literary and religious rather than balletic. He loved, and what seventh grader doesn’t, the abstracter foxtrots and more metaphysical twists of a Dostoevsky, a Gide, a Mailer. He longed for the experience of some vivider pain than the mere daily hollowness knotted into his tight young belly, and no weekly stomp-and-holler of group therapy with other jejune eleven-year-olds was going to get him his stripes in the major leagues of suffering, crime, and resurrection. Only a bona-fide crime would do that, and of all the crimes available murder certainly carried the most prestige, as no less an authority than Loretta Couplard was ready to attest, Loretta Couplard being not only the director and co-owner of the Lowen School but the author, as well, of two nationally televised scripts, both about famous murders of the 20th Century. They’d even done a unit in social studies on the topic: A History of Crime in Urban America. The first of Loretta’s murders was a comedy involving Pauline Campbell, R.N., of Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1951, whose skull had been smashed by three drunken teenagers. They had meant to knock her unconscious so they could screw her, which was 1951 in a nutshell. The eighteen-year-olds, Bill Morey and Max Pell, got life; Dave Royal (Loretta’s hero) was a year younger and got off with twenty-two years. Her second murder was tragic in tone and consequently inspired more respect, though not among the critics, unfortunately. Possibly because her heroine, also a Pauline (Pauline Wichura), though more interesting and complicated had also been more famous in her own day and ever since. Which made the competition, one best-selling novel and a serious film biography, considerably stiffen Miss Wichura had been a welfare worker in Atlanta, Georgia, very much into environment and the population problem, this being the immediate pre-Regents period when anyone and everyone was legitimately starting to fret. Pauline decided to do something, viz., reduce the population herself and in the fairest way possible. So whenever any of the families she visited produced one child above the three she’d fixed, rather generously, as the upward limit, she found some unobtrusive way of thinning that family back to the preferred maximal size. Between 1989 and 1993 Pauline’s journals (Random House, 1994) record twenty-six murders, plus an additional fourteen failed attempts. In addition she had the highest welfare department record in the U.S. for abortions and sterilizations among the families whom she advised. “Which proves, I think,” Little Mister Kissy Lips had explained one day after school to his friend Jack, “that a murder doesn’t have to be of someone famous to be a form of idealism.” But of course idealism was only half the story: the other half was curiosity. And beyond idealism and curiosity there was probably even another half, the basic childhood need to grow up and kill someone.
Thomas M. Disch (334)
Because children of color are much more likely to be exposed to lead at a young age, it is devastating to think about what will happen to an entire generation of Flint children. What promises can you make to a child about the world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years' time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans)
They lived in rural Michigan in the pre-automobile age, and for the most part they had never been fifty miles away from the farm or the dusty village streets; yet once, ages ago, they had been everywhere and had seen everything, and nothing that happened to them thereafter meant anything much. All that was real had taken place when they were young; everything after that had simply been a process of waiting for death, which did not frighten them much -- they had seen it inflicted in the worst possible way on boys who had not bargained for it, and they had enough of the old-fashioned religion to believe without any question that when they passed over they would simply be rejoining men and ways of living which they had known long ago.
Bruce Catton (Mr. Lincoln's Army)
You have to do everything you possibly can to develop your middle tier of talent. It’s your job, as the leader, to make those people do more than they thought they could—maybe more than you thought they could—and put them in the best possible position to help the team.
John U. Bacon (Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football)
Well, well, if it isn’t the little spitfire herself.” Lily glanced up with a start and found Jimmy Neil standing two steps above her. A slow grin spread across his face, and the black gaps where he was missing parts of his top teeth seemed to stare at her. He’d leered at her several times that past week during the meals he’d taken in the dining room. But she’d made a point of ignoring him. And that’s exactly what she planned to do this time too. He moved one step closer, and the stench of the alcohol on his breath filled the space between them. He’d likely already been out at the taverns long enough to drink too much but would continue with the drinking as long as he was conscious. So why was he back at the hotel? “Ran out of money,” he said too softly, as if he’d seen the direction of her thoughts. “The night’s still young, and I aim to get my fill of women.” His eyes glistened with brittle lust. A man like Jimmy Neil didn’t deserve a response, not even the briefest acknowledgment that she’d heard his lurid words. She turned her head and pushed past him in the narrow stairwell. But before she could get by, his arm shot out and blocked her path. “Where you goin’ so fast?” “Get out of my way.” She shoved his arm, but it didn’t budge. She tried to duck under it, but he stuck out his knee. He leaned into her. The sickly heat and sourness of his breath fanned her neck. “Maybe I don’t need to go back out, not when I can have a little spitfire right here, right now.” She stifled a shudder and the shiver of fear that accompanied it. She might have broken free of him last time, but he was drunk now, and there was no telling what he was capable of doing. Better for her to play it safe. She spun and tried to retreat the way she’d come, but his other hand slapped against the wall, trapping her into an awkward prison within the confines of his arms. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere except up to my room with me.” He pushed himself against her in such a carnal way that she couldn’t keep from crying out in alarm. His hand cut off her cry, covering her mouth and smothering any chance she had at calling for help. A rush of fear turned her blood to ice. For an instant Daisy’s sweet face flitted into her mind. Was this the way men treated her sister? How could she possibly withstand such abuse day after day? As if seeing the fright in Lily’s eyes, his gap-toothed smile widened. “It’s always more fun when there’s some scratchin’ and clawin’.” His hand against her mouth and nose was beginning to suffocate her. She swung her head, struggling to break free and jerked up her knee, trying to connect it with his tender spot. But he was pressed too close, and he only strengthened his grip. She tried to scream and then bite him. But she was quickly losing strength in the dizzying wave that rushed over her. Suddenly his smile froze and fear flitted across his face. “Let go of her. Now. Or I’ll shove this knife in all the way.” Connell’s voice was low and menacing. Slowly Jimmy’s grip loosened. She caught a glimpse of Connell, one step down, his face a mask of calm fury.
Jody Hedlund (Unending Devotion (Michigan Brides, #1))
Seo Company MST Technologies Now it’s easy to get traffic, better leads and potential customers with seamless SEO services by MST Technologies. Having your website beautifully designed is not just enough today; you need to fuel it with Search Engine Optimization services. Your brand may have the potential but it’s not necessary that it is reaching the required target group or the possibility can be that your potential clients might contact your competitor. No magic can suddenly skyrocket your site at the top of Google, Yahoo or Bing. But MST Technologies ensures you to fetch you the highly ranked status for your products and business on search engines. Today it has become the most essential part in boosting your enterprise to make it visible globally. You can grab the MST technologies SEO services all over the world. Our successful clientèle is spread worldwide by the name of Seo Arizona MST Technologies, Seo California MST Technologies,SEO New York MST Technologies, Seo Connecticut MST Technologies, Seo Delaware MST Technologies, Seo Georgia MST Technologies, Seo Indiana MST Technologies, Seo Iowa MST Technologies, Seo Kansas MST Technologies, Seo Kentucky MST Technologies, Seo Louisiana MST Technologies, Seo Maine MST Technologies, Seo Maryland MST Technologies, Seo Massachusetts MST Technologies, Seo Michigan MST Technologies, Seo Minnesota MST Technologies, Seo Mississippi MST Technologies, Seo Missouri MST Technologies, Seo Montana MST Technologies, Seo New Hampshire MST Technologies, Seo West Virginia MST Technologies, Seo Wisconsin MST Technologies, Seo Wyoming MST Technologies, Seo Vermont MST Technologies and Seo Virginia MST Technologies. So let your brand cherish the power booster by MST Technologies SEO services. Contact info: 14431 Ventura ,Boulevard #232 Sherman Oaks, CA 91423 Phone : (855) 249-8976
MST Technologies
Oh, how can you say such a thing,” Lily cried behind him. He spun, surprised she’d followed him through the cookshack instead of waiting by the door. Her eyes widened with dismay. At the sight of Lily, Duff’s ambidextrous flipping came to a halt. He stared at her as if she were the first woman who had ever stepped foot in his kitchen. But she had fixed her big eyes on Connell. “With as little sun as we’ve had this winter, how can you possibly wish it away?” “Because we depend upon the ice and snow for production.” “You would begrudge us all the bright and beautiful sunshine so you can earn a bigger profit?” Was he destined to clash with this woman on every issue—even something as insignificant as the sunshine? He sighed and handed her the hot cup of coffee.
Jody Hedlund (Unending Devotion (Michigan Brides, #1))
bear Indian names such as Yukon, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in the north, and Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Arizona in the south. Often these names reflect the tribal names of the people who lived in an area. Such names might be a tribe’s own name for itself, or it might be the name given them by a neighboring group. We have states named for the Dakota, the Kansa, the Massachuset, the Illini, and the Utes. Some are names that describe the land or the water. Iowa is a Siouan word for “beautiful land,” Wyoming derives from the Algonquian for a large prairie, Michigan is Ojibwa for “great water,” and Minnesota is Siouan for “waters that reflect the sky.” The original meanings are often rather straightforward, but translators and local boosters have usually worked to derive the most poetic name possible. Nebraska means “flat” or “broad river” in the Omaha language; this makes it similar in meaning but not pronunciation to the Algonquian term for “long river” that eventually became Connecticut. Ohio means “good river” in Iroquoian languages, and Oregon means “beautiful water” in Algonquian. Kentucky has one of the more mysterious meanings: “dark and bloody ground.
Jack Weatherford (Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America)
The First Water is the Body (excerpt) The Colorado River is the most endangered river in the United States—also, it is a part of my body. I carry a river. It is who I am: ‘Aha Makav. This is not metaphor. When a Mojave says, Inyech ‘Aha Makavch ithuum, we are saying our name. We are telling a story of our existence. The river runs through the middle of my body. --- What threatens white people is often dismissed as myth. I have never been true in America. America is my myth. --- When Mojaves say the word for tears, we return to our word for river, as if our river were flowing from our eyes. A great weeping is how you might translate it. Or a river of grief. --- I mean river as a verb. A happening. It is moving within me right now. --- The body is beyond six senses. Is sensual. An ecstatic state of energy, always on the verge of praying, or entering any river of movement. Energy is a moving river moving my moving body. In Mojave thinking, body and land are the same. The words are separated only by the letters ‘ii and ‘a: ‘iimat for body, ‘amat for land. In conversation, we often use a shortened form for each: mat-. Unless you know the context of a conversation, you might not know if we are speaking about our body or our land. You might not know which has been injured, which is remembering, which is alive, which was dreamed, which needs care. You might not know we mean both. --- What is this third point, this place that breaks a surface, if not the deep-cut and crooked bone bed where the Colorado River runs—a one-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty-mile thirst—into and through a body? Berger called it the pre-verbal. Pre-verbal as in the body when the body was more than body. Before it could name itself body and be limited, bordered by the space body indicated. Pre-verbal is the place where the body was yet a green-blue energy greening, greened and bluing the stone, red and floodwater, the razorback fish, the beetle, and the cottonwoods’ and willows’ shaded shadows. Pre-verbal was when the body was more than a body and possible. One of its possibilities was to hold a river within it. --- If I was created to hold the Colorado River, to carry its rushing inside me, if the very shape of my throat, of my thighs is for wetness, how can I say who I am if the river is gone? --- Where I come from we cleanse ourselves in the river. I mean: The water makes us strong and able to move forward into what is set before us to do with good energy. We cannot live good, we cannot live at all, without water. If your builder could place a small red bird in your chest to beat as your heart, is it so hard for you to picture the blue river hurtling inside the slow muscled curves of my long body? Is it too difficult to believe it is as sacred as a breath or a star or a sidewinder or your own mother or your beloveds? If I could convince you, would our brown bodies and our blue rivers be more loved and less ruined? The Whanganui River in New Zealand now has the same legal rights of a human being. In India, the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers now have the same legal status of a human being. Slovenia’s constitution now declares access to clean drinking water to be a national human right. While in the United States, we are teargassing and rubber-bulleting and kenneling Natives trying to protect their water from pollution and contamination at Standing Rock in North Dakota. We have yet to discover what the effects of lead-contaminated water will be on the children of Flint, Michigan, who have been drinking it for years. America is a land of bad math and science. The Right believes Rapture will save them from the violence they are delivering upon the earth and water; the Left believes technology, the same technology wrecking the earth and water, will save them from the wreckage or help them build a new world on Mars. ---
Natalie Díaz (Postcolonial Love Poem)
In the afternoon, it was Second Officer Lightoller’s turn to answer questions, the first of nearly two thousand he would be asked by this committee and the British inquiry that followed. Throughout his testimony, Lightoller acquitted himself well and skillfully steered criticism away from Captain Smith and the White Star Line even while he considered the American inquiry to be “nothing but a complete farce.” The second officer came to have particular contempt for Senator Smith, whose ignorance of nautical matters led to him being ridiculed by the English press as “Watertight Smith” for asking whether the watertight compartments were meant to shelter passengers. The London Globe called Smith “a gentleman from the wilds of Michigan” who felt it necessary “to be as insolent as possible to Englishmen.” British resentment toward America’s waxing power was captured by the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who wrote in his diary that if anyone had to drown it was best that it be American millionaires. To the English elites, the U.S. inquiry seemed to be yet another example of American muscle flexing. But a Labor parliamentarian, George Barnes, noted more dispassionately that “it may be humiliating to some to have an [American] inquiry into the loss of a British ship but … the average person realizes that Americans get to work very quickly, and the average person, I think, is rather glad it is so.
Hugh Brewster (Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World)
At the White House that morning, Taft had met with Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan, who was also heading to New York for the Carpathia’s arrival. Smith was carrying subpoenas requiring J. Bruce Ismay and the Titanic’s officers and crew to give testimony at a U.S. Senate inquiry into the disaster. The senator had read Ismay’s intercepted “Yamsi” wireless messages that revealed his intention to spirit himself and the Titanic’s crew out of American jurisdiction as quickly as possible. Smith intended to head this off and hand Ismay the subpoena in person, and Taft had offered the senator his full support for the investigation.
Hugh Brewster (Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World)
The government wanted the people of Flint dead, or did not care if they died, which is the same thing, and set in motion a plan for them to be killed slowly through negligence at the highest levels. What I saw in Flint was a microcosm of the way the government treats the undocumented everywhere, making the conditions in this country as deadly and toxic and inhumane as possible so that we will self-deport. What I saw in Flint was what I had seen everywhere else, what I had felt in my own poisoned blood and bones. Being killed softly, silently, and with impunity.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans)
The answer to the polio mystery, also well known, came from Jonas Salk, who was born in New York City of Russian Jewish immigrant parents and eventually was appointed director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (by way of New York University and Michigan). His vaccine weakened the poliovirus with formaldehyde and mineral water. It effectively “killed” the poliovirus. But it was recognizable enough for the immune system to pick it up. Ta-da! It cut the risk of infection in half. The country scrambled to produce and disseminate the vaccine as quickly as possible. Alas, this happy ending comes with an asterisk. The first big batch of vaccine wasn’t properly made. Cutter Laboratories in California, one of the main producers of the vaccine, inoculated more than 200,000 children in 1955, and within days there were reports of paralysis. Within a month, the program was discontinued, and investigations revealed that the Cutter vaccine had caused 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.
Matt Richtel (An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives)
As a result, the distribution maps for plant species don't look the same from interglacial to interglacial. Each climate change creates a new map, with new communities of species living together. Whole suites of species do not pick up en masse and decorously tiptoe south, making sure to keep together. It is rather mad scramble - albeit in geological time. Some of today's ecosystems have not fully bounced back from the last glaciation. One analysis suggested that thirty-six of fifty-five European tree species studied had still not spread out to the edges of their possible ranges. Beech trees are notoriously poky. In North-America they are still moving west across Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Emma Marris (Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World)
four states where the election was contested, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, and possibly other states as well, had created election laws, under the guise of the COVID-19 19 pandemic emergency, without going through the constitutional process of having those laws debated and voted on by the respective state legislatures.
Charles Moscowitz (Toward Fascist America: 2021: The Year that Launched American Fascism (2021: A Series of Pamphlets by Charles Moscowitz Book 2))
Sandy beaches still rim the lakes, but if Lake Michigan, for example, were drained it would now be possible to walk almost the entire 100 miles between Wisconsin and Michigan on a bed of trillions upon trillions of filter-feeding quagga mussels.
Dan Egan (The Death and Life of the Great Lakes)
What promises can you make to a child about the world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years’ time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans (One World Essentials))
More than half of Detroit’s children now attend charters—second in the nation only to New Orleans (and possibly Flint, Michigan)—and 80 percent of these are for-profit.
Katherine Stewart (The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism)