Every time Dr.* Dayne Walling (Flint Mayor 2009 – 2015) speaks to my Environmental Justice class, I learn something new and amazing about Flint, not necessarily germane to the city’s notorious Water Crisis. For example, Flint has successfully regenerated riverfront lands which were once un-tamable brownfields into Chevy Commons. Also, former Governor Rick Snyder refused to set foot in Flint (outside of that press conference) until President Obama came in April 2016 and made him.
*I may as well call him “Doctor;” he’s been ABD for some time now, but COME ON.
We also got a special visit from our recent graduate, Teresa Homsi, who has been working for WCMU. Last August, she filed a series of reports called “Demystifying PFAS,” and stopped by before the Thanksgiving break to catch us up!
Special thank you to Dayne Walling, Teresa Homsi, and everybody else who has stopped by or chipped in to make this another great semester in ENV 300.
Thanks for checking in.
In case I don’t have a chance to update this site before then, Postcards from Irving 6 should be going to press by the end of this week, and you can see me at the Hagaman Memorial Library in East Haven, CT next Tuesday 12/12, for the release party! More details available here, or just scrolling down.
Last week, Casey Croad of Ignite Donuts, a local entrepreneur who’s become a friend, stopped by my Honors Class on Pop Culture/Social Structures to talk about his experiences starting and growing a food business in Mt. Pleasant. This fell perfectly into our unit on foodways, couched with a similar discussion about the cultural life of foods (e.g. Barbecue, Lobster, and others which were, at one time, widely denigrated and are now considered “gourmet”).
The class had a lot of great context to continue our discussion on what Casey dubbed as “brand confusion,” which inspired me to pull into question certain (cough) decisions made by Dunkin’ Donuts to rebrand as some flavorless mush (both aesthetically and gastronomically) called “Dunkin'” in 2019. I maintain my theory that another Casey did a number on them on Saturday Night Live in 2016:
“Cut yer naiis fer God’s sake!”
It also reminded me of my friend Adam Gold, who started the WNY mainstay Funk & Waffles from similar collegiate beginnings in Syracuse. Who doesn’t love a good food-versation? I’m looking forward, later this week, to settling a bunch of Midwesterners ONCE AND FOR ALL whether Pineapples belong on pizza (because the conversation about which city has the best pizza has not been debatable for almost a century, now). Stay tuned.
Almost every semester I’ve taught Environmental Justice, I’ve been fortunate to have Ed and Jane from the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force stop by to talk about JUST HOW BAD Velsicol Chemical Plant truly was for the St. Louis, MI region. I forgot to bring my phone to class on the day that Jane spoke, but here are a pair of photos of Ed sharing some stories from over the years, including a particularly jaw-dropping one about Neil Gorsuch’s mother!
Stay tuned for the coming weeks on the Flint Water Crisis with special guest Dayne Walling (who you probably know about) as well as that always-delightful conversation about how drenched-in-PFAS Michigan is with special guest Teresa Homsi. I’m also polishing my special lectures on the “miracle” of lead, with some actual print ads from the Great Depression that demonstrate how spectacularly loopy everybody was back then.
Have a great weekend!
P.S. If you’re in Central Michigan, come to the Broadway Theatre tomorrow night (Saturday) at 8pm for Trainspotting (1996), which is genuinely one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.
Tyler DePerro, who kickstarted the new iteration of the Historic Howell Theater in Howell, MI 9 years ago and still operates it today, drove up to talk to my Honors Class about the theater and its role in the community. The students thoroughly enjoyed his visit, especially the litany of cakes people had brought to birthday parties at the theater over the years.
Two show-and-tell items that Tyler brought (which you can see in the photo, above) are an old-school film canister (when film was still projected on 35mm prints in most theaters) and a modern hard drive, which contained the 4K restoration of Stop Making Sense. My favorite moment of the day was when I asked Tyler how old he was when he opened the theater, and he said he was 24, just a couple of years out of college himself. One of my central themes of teaching a course about Popular Culture and Social Structures is encouraging students to write their own story and grow their own places; you don’t need decades of experience – you just need a lot of determination and a good community behind you.
Thank you to Tyler for taking the time. For those of you who live in Michigan and haven’t been to the Historic Howell yet, make sure to amend that soon. If you’re around on Saturday the 14th, check out their 11-hour Horror Movie marathon; every movie is great either objectively (e.g. 1973’s The Wicker Man) or in its own way (1984’s Extro).
Thank you again to Ed Lorenz and Jane Jelenek (pictured below) of the Pine River Superfund Citizens Task Force for paying visits to my Environmental Justice class! As always, it’s been a perfect introduction to Michigan’s very sordid history of poisoning and disaster, and I’m “grateful” (if that’s at all appropriate) that the atrocity happening in East Palestine, OH has brought them greater national attention across multiple media.
I’ll be bringing back one of my favorite lectures from my curriculum on the Geography of American Popular Culture. From the poster/site description:
Pop Culture in the United States, like American History at large, must address uncomfortable realities about its past (and present) to embrace what has made it remarkable. Early forms of American music, theater, and eventually film, radio, and television are inextricable from the minstrel show ā generally speaking, mockery of African-Americans by white performers and audiences. However, as with anything in popular culture, the realities, appeals, and most influential performers exist within gray areas. As this lecture argues, much of the most persevering and influential American art ā all the way from The Marx Brothersā Duck Soup (1933) to Childish Gambinoās āThis is Americaā (2018) ā has happened as a reaction to minstrelsy rather than embrace of it.
See you next Thursday, October 20th, at 6pm in DOW Science Complex Room 102 (not Pearce 127, the original location as posted on the Honors site).
In the swirl of information, news, and potential material to use in upcoming courses for the Fall semester, it’s easy for a couple of positive items to fall through the cracks. One recent announcement that made me excited to hear was that my doctoral adviser and friend, Derek Alderman, was selected by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to serve on a special committee on place naming. Derek taught me most everything I know about symbolic violence in place naming, which is still something I regularly teach about. Congrats to Derek and everyone else on the committee. I’ll post the DOI press release from August 9th below.
Derek Alderman delivers a guest lecture on Kudzu to my Cultural Geography class, Sept. 2018.
Secretary Haaland Announces Members of the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names
WASHINGTON ā Today, on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Secretary of the Interior Deb HaalandāÆannounced the members of the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, a federal advisory group to help identify and recommend changes to derogatory terms still in use for places throughout the country.
In November 2021, Secretary Haaland issued Secretaryās Order 3405, which proposed a newāÆFederal Advisory Committee tasked to broadly solicit, review and recommend changes to derogatory geographic and federal land unit names.āÆCommittee tasks will includeāÆdeveloping a process to solicit and assist with proposals to the Secretary to identify and change derogatory names and will engage with Tribes, the Native Hawaiian Community, state and local governments, and the public.āÆA separate federal task force (the Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force) was established by Secretaryās Order 3404 to focus exclusively on the sq-word, a derogatory termāÆin use more than 650āÆinstancesāÆwithin federal land units alone.
“Our nationās lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage ā not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression,ā said Secretary Haaland. āThe Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names will accelerate an important process to reconcile derogatory place names. I look forward to listening and learning from this esteemed group.ā
As directed by the Secretaryās Order, the Committee is composed of individuals who represent Tribes and Tribal organizations, Native Hawaiian organizations, the general public, or have expertise in fieldsāÆincludingāÆcivil rights, history, geography and anthropology.āÆThe Committee also includes four ex officioāÆmembers representing the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, Defense and Commerce.āÆ
The Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names is composed of up to 17 members appointed by the Secretary who represent Tribes and Tribal organizations, Native Hawaiian organizations, the general public, or have expertise in fields including civil rights, history, geography, and anthropology:
Derek Alderman ā Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee
Lauren Monroe Jr. ā Secretary, Blackfeet Tribal Business Council (Blackfeet Nation, Pikuni)
Federico Mosqueda ā Coordinator of the Arapaho Language and Culture Program (Arapaho)
Rachel Pereira ā Vice President of Equity and Inclusion at St. John’s University
Kimberly Probolus-Cedroni ā Historian, Washington D.C
Howard Dale Valandra ā Member, Tribal Land Enterprise Board of Directors (Rosebud Sioux Tribe)
Aimee Villarreal ā Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Texas State University
Elva Yanez ā Senior Advisor for Parks, Land Use, and the Built Environment at the Prevention Institute
The Committee also includes four ex officio members from the federal government. An all-of-government approach will be invaluable as this work is undertaken:
Charles Bowery, Executive Director, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Department of Defense
Meryl Harrell, Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Elizabeth (Liz) Klein, Senior Counselor to the Secretary, Department of the Interior
Letise LaFeir, Senior Advisor, Office of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, Department of Commerce
Members willāÆmeet for the first time in the coming months, andāÆapproximately two to four times per year, toāÆidentify geographic names and federal land unit names that are considered derogatory and solicit proposals on replacement names.āÆCommittee meetings will be open to the public and announced in the Federal Register at least 15 days in advance.āÆ
Happy Almost-May to anyone who has stumbled back here. The home stretch of the Spring semester has put a whole bunch of entries/essays on hold, unfortunately, but there will be a song challenge for May that I’m sure many of you will appreciate (especially a surprising number of millennials).
Detroit rapper Tee Grizzley
A few weeks ago, students in my two sections of GEO 121 (Intro to Globalization) submitted their third paper, which asked them to do a geographic analysis of a song of their choosing. I know I have done this at least once here, but I wanted to keep up the tradition. Here are, in no particular order, the songs which students chose (an asterisk indicates that I assigned this one, per request) for this semester’s music geography paper.
Here, I hold a stack of postcards written by my students in GEO 121 (Intro to Globalization), about to go into the post. As of this writing, they’re on their way all over the country.
I created this mini-assignment in equal parts as a tribute to the US Postal Service as well as a simple lesson on a lost art (or, at least a heavily niched one). So many students told me they had never composed or sent a postcard before. Well, now they have, and their friends and relatives are in for a surprise.
Another semester of Intro World Regional Geography/Globalization = another set of musical geography papers. I always look forward to assigning this piece, and the variety of songs that students analysed always produces a few surprises. I was also fortunate to learn about a few new (to me) artists like Mr. Vegas, and the amazingly-named Tropical Fuck Storm (TFS), and Declan McKenna.
The almost-full list is below, with any multiple submissions in parenthesis. I would make a Spotify playlist if I used Spotify, but you can find any of these in good quality on various online platforms. It bears mentioning, too, that almost every track is available on vinyl in some form from your local/regional record shop, who are likely suffering right now and subsisting on mail orders.
“America: Fuck Yeah!” fromĀ Team America: World Police
Gordon Lightfoot – “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (2)
Sean Kingston feat. Nicki Minaj – “Letting Go”
Mukesh – “Chhodo Kal Ki Baatein”
Evan Legler – “Michigan”
The Monkees – “Pleasant Valley Sunday”
Pink Floyd – “San Tropez”
Kendrick Lamar – “Compton”
The Veronicas – “Change the World”
Men at Work – “Down Under”
Kid Rock – “Detroit, Michigan”
Declan McKenna – “Brazil”
Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – “Empire State of Mind” (3)
NWA – “Fuck Tha Police”
Yusuf Lateef – “Eastern Market”
Alabama – “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta have a Fiddle in the Band)”
The Arcade Fire – “Here Comes the Night Time”
Lee Greenwood – “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Glen Campbell – “Southern Nights”
LCD Soundsystem – “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down”
Sonic Geography 