MESICK, MI: In the 1880s Michigan was America’s biggest producer of lumber. Magnificent stands of hard wood and white pine had been purchased on the cheap by timber barons who made great fortunes clear cutting Michigan forests. By 1930 it was gone. But the hard-living men who sweated sawing and hauling giant trees became the stuff of legend like cowboys in the American west. Lumberjacks (they called … Continue reading Dangerous Life of Michigan Lumberjacks
KALAMAZOO, MI: You have to be blind to believe the US economy is rebounding sharply from the corona virus lockdown. There is no “V” shaped recovery. At best it’s a U, with business activity mucking along the horizonal bottom of the “U.” During seven late July days traveling in the Midwest, I visited places where commerce was just barely ticking over. City centers in Cleveland, Detroit, … Continue reading Midwest American Economy on Life Support
Painesville is a pleasant town on Lake Erie just a few miles east of Cleveland. Through it runs the Lake Shore railroad constructed in the mid-19th century, a gateway to the west from Albany, Buffalo and Erie. In 1861 the train carrying president-elect Abraham Lincoln from Springfield to Washington stopped in Painesville where citizens, aware that war was likely, turned out to greet the prairie lawyer on … Continue reading Painesville, Ohio: Past and Present
On May 29 Germany’s Angela Merkel vetoed President Trump’s plan to host this year’s Group of Seven summit in Washington at the end of June. Chancellor Merkel said the still active corona virus made it impossible for her to travel to the US. Merkel’s public declaration did not sit well with the president who envisaged a face to face gathering of global leaders as an electoral … Continue reading President Trump Wants to Expand the G7. Can He Do That?
Ernest Hemingway wrote from his hospital bed in Milan in October 1918 that people dying from the Spanish flu “drowned in mucus, choking, unable to breathe.” At that time the 19-year-old writer was recovering from wounds sustained while he was an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. The same month Hemingway’s physician father Clarence wrote from the Chicago suburb of Oak Park that for … Continue reading The Heartland: Coping with Pandemic Then and Now
Barry D. Wood 