Michigab

The Guide is 13 years old. And about that bailout money...

2008-11-13T21:26:00.003-08:00

Weird to think that my Michigan Accent Pronunciation Guide is older than a lot of people's kids.

Yes, I started this silliness in November 1995. Wanted to capture some of the unique fun that is our accent. The site's been through several versions - this last one has been around for about 6 years now.

I miss my home state and hear worrying reports of the economy there. I read about the $700BB "Rescue Plan" and the idea that the Big 3 are possibly asking for a piece of the pie. Part of me thinks that using our taxes to rescue the automakers is insane. The other part of me worries about people losing their jobs.

What are your thoughts? Should our tax dollars go to help the state's largest employers? Or did they get themselves into this mess their own selves? Should we keep this massive industry from tanking and protect jobs - or will they blow that money and still be in the same situation regardless?

Is this incompetency or circumstance? Whadaya think?

Love letter from Monroe

2008-10-19T16:11:00.002-07:00

Looks like someone from Monroe (now living in Bay City) is just a leeettle cranky about my website. Here's what he/she had to say:

IP ADDRESS: 75.128.130.33
LOCATION: Bay City, MI
ISP: Charter Communications
MESSAGE SENT: Sunday, October, 19, 2008 at 03:24am

YOU ARE SO FUCKING STUPID! NOBODY FUCKING SAYS THESE THINGS AND YOU NEED TO GET A FUCKING LIFE. HALF OF THESE ARE JUST SPELLED WRONG, BUT SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME WHEN SAID OUT LOUD. SO YOU CAN GO SUCK A COCK AND GO TO HELL. Sincerely - a person from MONROE, and yes, I know how to fucking pronounce the city I have lived in my whole life. It's just like MONday, you know, the day after Sunday? And nothing like MONonucleosis which is probably why your accent is all fucked up.

Monroe, your warmth, civility, positivity and general happiness with life have warmed my heart! I love you too. <3

The seasons come and go... another autumn in Michigan

2007-10-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

"It looks like you haven't updated MichiganNative since 2006!" wrote one person who reached out to me about the site.

While not entirely true, what is true is that I never receive any truly original Michiganisms anymore, and so the Michigan Native site sits as a digital memorial to the Michigan Accent.

But there's obviously a huge desire for community around our great state. It's coming...don't get yer wolverines in a bunch.

In the meantime, some visual relief: Red Delicious apples on the tree at Robinette's Orchards, a Grand Rapids landmark.

Oh, MichiganNative, what to do with you?

2006-10-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

What's up, Michiganders?

WOW, what a nutty week it's been. I got some totally unexpected praise from Jay Nordlinger, managing editor of National Review. I am stunned. And traffic to my silly little page of Michigan euphemisms has quadrupled. Thanks, Jay!

Given the new attention, I've been contemplating what to do with this site. I've been nursing it along, what, ELEVEN YEARS NOW. Started off as a page on AOL in 1995. I am so overwhelmingly busy at work that I cannot give it the time and attention it deserves, nor am I able to respond to all the people that write me. I'm sorry about that, Michipeeps! Work consumes most of my waking hours - bills gotta be paid and the dog needs his kibble, so there ya go.

Please know that I do read every email...I just find it impossible to reply to all. I get emails from people every day, giving me words and phrases they would like added to the Pronunciation Guide. The only problem is, 99% of them are already in the Guide, or are not unique to Michigan. I know, I know...who's got time to read the whole damn thing? And for that matter...who's got time to blog?

So I'm going to pull down the Submit Your Own Addition page and replace it with something different and fun. Keep your eyes peeled.

On being an expatriate...and missing the dirt.

I've been thinking a lot about Michigan lately. I love Washington State, where I currently live. It reminds me of a Michigan with mountains, ocean and bald eagles (which are incredible, by the way). But I miss the sound of robins...lots of robins...in the morning. Finding a turtle in the front yard. The Grand River. Stopping at the WhippiDip in Grand Haven for fries and ice cream on a hot summer afternoon. Driving down the Lodge with the radio blaring, or seeing the sunlight come through the trees on Pierce Stocking Drive at Sleeping Bear. Blowing snowdrifts. And fresh-squeezed cider and fresh-baked doughnuts at Robinette's Orchards in Grand Rapids.

And I miss...and this sounds weird...the smell of the earth in Michigan. That peaty, mossy soil. Something about it smells...comforting.

Is that crazy?

I also think about having left, and the friends and family left behind. My family and high school classmates in GR. They're all great and I miss them, and it makes me wonder, what drove me to become such a gypsy, and for others to permanently settle close to where they grew up? I've definitely got the wanderlust...same stuff that drove my ancestors to move from New York/Vermont to Michigan in the 1830s.

Exploration brings appreciation

An online contact from Flickr came out to Seattle on her cross-country roadtrip of nearly the entire US. Rachel hung out with us at a Flickr meetup, and it was so great to see someone from GR exploring the country. Travelling and living elsewhere makes you realize that there are a lot of really cool places in the US: and that while Michigan is just one of them, it IS unique. I appreciate it more having moved around a lot, and I encourage those of you who are able, to spend time elsewhere to get an open-minded feel for other parts of the US. You may return home or you may not, but you'll definitely notice the things you took for granted.

I hope you all have a great October. Go, carve pumpkins, hand out candy and watch high school football. You're on my mind!

- Eric

Flickr

2006-09-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Statistical smackdown!

2005-11-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

Next time you're at dinner you can astound your friends with these fun statistics about MI:

You may have known that the State of Michigan, 9.9MM people as of the 2000 census, is the 8th most populous US state. But did you know Michigan has more people than the individual countries of Sweden, Bolivia, Somalia, Rwanda, Austria, Haiti, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Israel, Hong Kong (city), Paraguay, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Croatia, Ireland, New Zealand, Bosnia, Costa Rica, Iceland and many more?

The Detroit Metro Area, 4.47MM people as of 2000, has more people than the individual countries of Ireland, New Zealand, Bosnia, Costa Rica, Latvia, Lithuania and more. It's also more populous than 28 of the 50 US states.

Hell, even Grand Rapids, my hometown, has more people in its metropolitan area (MSA) than Rhode Island, Montana, Alaska, Vermont, Delaware, North and South Dakota, or Wyoming, and more than Qatar, the Bahamas or Iceland.

Who says you don't learn anything on this site?!? :)

"Online bloggers are evil!" wailed the print blogger.

2005-10-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

More and more, mainstream journalists and bloggers are starting to look and sound like one another.

See the article here.

LAST. DITCH. EFFORT.

2005-05-24T05:26:00.000-07:00

Hi. My name is Eric Weaver. I'm a 43-year-old advertising executive, and this blog is being repurposed into my Last Ditch Effort.

As a kid growing up in Michigan, I was a popular nerd. I was never encouraged to do anything with sports...in fact, it was very discouraged by my mother. Grades were always top priority, so I never developed any affinity for sweating or the typical eye-hand coordination sports that the other kids were into. I had a very high metabolism so I could eat ANYTHING, and LOTS OF IT, and burnt it off within seconds.

My entire life, I've abused this body. Ate poorly, never drank enough water, and never exercised. During my 20s, I ate McDonald's food twice a day for YEARS, and put away enough Coca-Cola to keep their stock price artificially inflated. Despite this, I stayed relatively slender...wiry, and never overweight, at around 165 lbs. for years. But then, between the ages of 30 and 40, my weight increased to 200 and stayed there. And my cholesterol jumped to the mid 200's.

The kicker happened in 2002. An unbelievably stressful and toxic workplace created a severe heart arrythmia. I'd be working and feel the weirdest feeling in my chest. My heart would stop... for up to 5-6 seconds... and then double-beat to catch up... pump 5 times or so, and then stop again. Each time, I was overcome with a kind of low-level anxiety as I could feel my circulation stop. It's a very very weird feeling and one I wouldn't recommend to anyone!

Scared the crap outta me, and I quit the stressful job, changed my eating habits...sort of. As of the beginning of this year, I weighed 214, cholesterol at 257 and continue to be "thick" in the waist without having a true beer gut.

I have a wife and three children who love me dearly, and finally, FINALLY after all these years, I've come to realize that it's time to stop living in my 20s, time to stop abusing this body, time to get off my ass. I need to make a change in diet and exercise, start monitoring my health and investing the time and effort needed to keep me around for another 40. Because if I don't, at this rate, my body will tell my brain one last time to F*CK OFF.

I hate exercise. HATE IT. Don't know a rep from a burn, an elliptical from a free weight. I hate the competitive and narcissistic environment of gyms and feel awkward and self-conscious there. Every five years or so, I'll go a few times and then quit, wasting months of membership dues. I can't run through airports like I used to. I get winded after very short periods. And I have the extremely untoned look of a Mouse Potato.

But today I begin work on-site at my new client: Nautilus Group. Makers of Bowflex, Nautilus, StairMaster and Schwinn Fitness brand exercise equipment, they are EXACTLY the kick in the ass I've needed. For once my work is tied into my health. And I intend to change it.

This blog will record my efforts to get back down to 170, cholesterol down to acceptable levels, and to change my Red Robin/steak/garlic mashed/martini diet to something that much healthier.

TODAY'S WEIGHT: 201

Time to drive to Portland to kick off my Last Ditch Effort.

Last post

2005-05-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

This is the last post of MichiGab. I've had hundreds of suggestions and comments about MichiganNative.com but almost no discussion about it here. And now I gots me a new job. Gots me no time. Not that more than three people have read this blog...

So this blog is being reborn as something completely different.

And what are blogs, anyway? Worthwhile communication vehicles or drivel that only means something to the writer?

The MichiganNative.com site will be overhauled this summer, with more words, more products and no blog. Stop by anytime.

OFF-TOPIC: Terri Schiavo

2005-03-29T23:35:00.001-08:00

Alright, I know this blog is supposed to be about all things Michigan. But I'm really curious about Michiganders' feelings about the sad travesty that is the Terri Schiavo case. Plus, I just feel compelled to write about this because it's bothering me so much.

There are so many issues surrounding poor Terri Schiavo and her family.

Did Terri really say to her husband that she would want to have life support removed?

Without that consent in writing, should a feeding tube be removed?

Does a husband, should a husband, have more say than a parent? Isn't blood thicker than water?

Is death by withholding food/water truly humane given her physical circumstances?

Is she truly persistently vegetative?

People do come out of comas. It's rare but it happens. Is there hope here for that outcome?

All the people getting airtime over this debacle...Jesse Jackson...Randall Terry...Santorum...are they capitalizing on a family's grief, or is this something that's galvanizing us to the point that they all truly, sincerely want to help?

If they are capitalizing on someone's pain like this, what does that say about us as a nation?

Is Judge Greer corrupt?

Finally, we have three branches of government specifically to act as a series of checks and balances on each other. Each branch has to trust that the others are staffed by intelligent people of good character who have the good of the American Public first and foremost. What happens when one branch seems to cling to a stance that seems inhumane, or cold? Should the other branches step in and bypass the checks and balances?

NO ONE messes with the life of my child.

This is bugging the hell outta me. My gut says: blood is thicker than water. The people who brought you into the world should have final say over their child...not a husband who apparently couldn't wait for Terri and not only got engaged but had two children by another woman. One who rants on and on about being outraged by governmental behavior rather than coming clean about the money he's getting.

No outsider should have any say about my kids, especially one who cheats and seems so freakin' eager to have Terri pass away. If my wife were in the same condition, I would gladly hand over the decision-making to them. She's THEIR child.

And what kind of judge puts a husband before a parent? Should Congress or President Bush get involved? The minute you start bypassing checks and balances you set the precedent to do it again. That is NOT what the Founding Fathers had in mind. The beauty of our system is that it's such a brilliant setup. Yet here, now, there may be a clear legal answer but there's not a clear moral one.

What kind of people are we to starve an invalid to death?

People on other blogs (bloggers and readers) keep trying to make this into a Liberal vs. Conservative issue. It's not. It's about how a society cares for those who can't care for themselves...about what happens to a life, a living person, in our "System"... about how we as a society deal with difficult issues: humanity, privacy, family, love and loss.

This case stinks to High Heaven.

Crazy Kids

2005-03-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

Crazy Kids
Originally uploaded by HerrWeave.

Born to an Ingham County horse-raising family, he was a 22-year-old trolley car conductor, a direct descendent of President John Adams. She was a 20-year-old Irish-American laundress. They met on the trolley and fell in love. She was engaged to another man...he pleaded with her repeatedly, finally convincing her to break it off.

In ten years, he'll help her give birth to their fourth child, put on his hat, walk out the door and they'll never see him again. She'll be saddled with four kids, no real job and they'll be plunged into abject poverty on the dusty plains of South Dakota.

Ladies and gentlemen, my great-grandparents, Frank Pratt and May Hughes.

Skype me, baby!

2005-03-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have to talk about Skype.

I just signed up for this service, which is an extremely inexpensive way to make long-distance calls, particularly if you talk to Europe a lot. If you're talking to another Skype user, it's FREE. If you're talking to a non-Skype user, in some cases it's maybe 2 cents per minute. CRAZY! And with built-in IM, it takes care of a lot of the little piddly communications you might have to make if you do that on a regular basis.

So, make a lot of long distance calls? Check it out. And if you have it, Skype me and say, wassap?

And NO, I don't get anything by promoting this service. I'm just surprised and delighted.

Once a Michigan native, always a Michigan native

2005-02-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

My 11-year-old daughter and I decided to do a roadtrip and are in a hotel in Astoria, Oregon, a picturesque little town at the northwestern tip of Oregon where the gargantuan Columbia River pours into the Pacfiic. If you saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop, this is the town that movie was filmed in.

It's 9:30am, and I've just gotten back from the local Starbucks (PRAISE JESUS, THERE'S A STARBUCKS) with a big-ass venti drip. Coffee's my only addiction, but for the safety of yourself and your family, stay out of my way when I haven't had my coffee. That whole fumbling-around-in-your-purse thing, trying to figure out how to use the debit card reader ("do I use my fingernail or this pencil on the pad?"), and asking the barrista to wash your fruit for you in their sink thing puts you immediately into "harm's way". Clear and present danger, is all I'm sayin'.

Outside the window is a breakwater, a pier and a marina. The water is calm, no waves, and the occasional gull squawks as it flies by. If I just look out the window, it reminds me of a Grand Haven Sunday. But the similarities end there... we're being serenaded, as we have been all night, by a huge herd of sea lions.

Saugatuck, Caseville, Traverse, Charlevoix...wherever you hang out or used to hang out when you were a kid...now add a loud, echoing chorus of "OORT! OORT! OORT! OORT!" to that picture.

They are SO LOUD that their barking and bellows (hugely comical to both of us) are echoing off the steep, pine-covered bluffs behind us as well as off the boats in the marina.

Last night, I got us a pizza from the local restaurant. Had to smile as I talked to the woman behind the counter. Out here, people in the more northern climates (Seattle, Portland, etc.) share some of the phrases we use in Michigan...just without the hard, nasal "aaaeehh" sound we make. I was asking directions, and inadvertantly said, "where's it at?" After she told me, I thanked her, to which she replied "you betcha".

As we were driving down here, my daughter and I were talking about something, and I said, "yeah, they stold it." She's caught me on this several times now, always with the "Daaaaaaad! It's NOT 'STOLD'!"

Funny how my Michigan speech patterns keep returning, no matter where I end up living in this country.

Got any funny Michigan things people rag you about?

Amazing VW ad

2005-02-10T04:41:00.000-08:00

For the last year or so, I've been totally into a new genre of music called "bastard pop", or "mashups". Mashups are remixes that take the vocal track from one tune and lay it over the instrumental track from another, completely unrelated tune...often with fantastic, unexpected results.

VW's ad agency has done their own audio and video mashup with the new UK commercial for the Golf GTI. In the ad, Gene Kelly sings his classic "Singing in the Rain" over a remix by the dance duo Mint Royale....and then his face is digitally remapped onto another dancer and he starts breakdancing and bodypoppin' like a mofo. It is simply AMAZING.

More about how the ad was made here.

Half the blogs that react to this ad seem to feel it's a travesty, leaving comments like "he's nowhere near as good as the real Gene Kelly", "too bad the family sold his soul for donut money", and "the music sucks, the dancing sucks." No imagination, no appreciation for a new artform. The other half seem to feel the way I do: a collective Holy Shit, that's too damned COOL.

Hats off to my former client, VW, and respect to their agency, DDB London, for this incredible ad.

What I want to know is...

2005-01-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

...who's Will and why do we keep firing at him? Who's Bejesus, and why do we keep scaring him?

How's my driving?

2005-01-10T23:20:00.000-08:00

Detroit drivers. Are we not skilled choreographers who can maneuver through impassable places, who can fly between slower cars at 100mph like one of the Blue Angels? Are we not some of the safest drivers on the road, at any speed? Is Detroit not a place where you'll find a shriveled, graying, hunched-over retiree barreling down Twelve Mile at 70mph?

YES, it is, and God love us for being the automotive quarterbacks, the vehicular Baryshnikovs that we are.

So I'm living in Seattle now, which is a little like, "what if you increased the population of Ontonagon, MI, by, say, 3,500,000." Lots of pine trees, beautiful scenery, clean air, clean water....it's great. And of course the food, the shopping, the outdoor recreational opportunities...DAMN. What a great town.

And of course, being on the West Coast, it has the same kind of laid-back, dude-what's-your-hurry mentality of California. Which in many cases can be great. Not so many conflicts here as in Daytwah, for example. People are a little more chill about life in general.

So here's the flip side to this lushly green, soggy paradise: add three-and-a-half million people to dude-what's-your-hurry AND YOU GET TRAFFIC AND DRIVERS THAT F***ING SUCK.

With my formative driving years being shaped on the anarchy that is I-696 as well as the Lodge, I-94 and Southfield Freeway, I can safely tell Michiganders that if you were to drive here, you might have

a) an embolism
b) road rage
c) an uncontrollable urge to knock everyone's slo-pitch ass into the nearest ditch.

Every time I get behind the wheel here, I feel like a New York cabbie on both crack and speed.

How's your driving? Do you drive like a bat outta hell? Are you meek and mild? Was your insurance cancelled in '02? Do you pride yourself at always evading radar and traffic tickets?

How's your driving? Write me.

Hometown pride. Or maybe not.

2004-07-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, I heard a term the instructor called "geocentrism": a belief in the superiority of one's own geographic-colocated group. Whether he used the term correctly or not, his interpretation was that "geocentrism" loosely translated as "hometown pride."

Growing up in Grand Rapids, I was quite proud of my hometown. New buildings, new companies were moving in all the time. Business was booming, and the changes were good. And people were good. Problems? Those belonged to other parts of the country.

The Italians have a word specifically for this kind of hometown pride: camanilismo.

In 1984, a job change took me from GR to Metro Detroit, and back then... man, my friends and I made fun of our newly-adopted home all the time. Not because we disliked the city...we loved it...but more because we had a kind of reverse pride in the fact that it seemed so reviled by other parts of the country. Like, some crazy kind of over-the-top, can't-get-any-worse-than-this pride. Crack Capital, Murder Capital...hell, at least it was the capital of something!

So when my friends and I heard others make fun of Detroit, we'd usually laugh along with them... no harm, no foul... no contest. Who cared?

In 1990, I moved to Cincinnati, and found a whole other layer of camanilismo...extreme full-body pride in their hometown. So when I did my typical, sarcastic thing and made fun of the city ("Cincinnasti! Cincinnazi! Cincinnutti!" - there was plenty to make fun of, believe you me), I found everything from hateful stares to outright physical confrontation...as if their own persona, their own identity, was being assaulted.

All I could think of was, Christ, it's a town, folks... chill out, already...it's not like I'm telling you your kid is ugly or anything.

I bring this up because I get both kinds of emails from visitors to Michigannative.com. I get the Rah Rah I Love Michigan emails, criticizing me for my sarcastic sense of humor and feeling that I'm somehow picking on them personally. And I get the other kind of emails that, like my friends some 20 years ago, also enjoyed laughing at ourselves.

I guess I would just ask the first group to consider that, you're far more than where you live, folks. You're programmed to dig your own tribe, and that's cool, but the world is such a bigger place than Grand Rapids, or Tawas City, or wherever. Be proud of where you're from, but have a sense of humor as well, and realize that there are thousands of "hometowns" out there... all with their own pros and cons.

I'm in Seattle now, but I'll always be a Michigander, and I'll always have pride in my home state. But I'll also call bullshit on overblown geocentrism when I see it.

Thoughts? Which group do you fall in?

Got melk?

2004-06-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

On a May vacation in the Netherlands, and what do I spy on the breakfast table? A carton of melk!

This does, indeed, explain a few things.

Oh how I hate...

2004-01-29T02:15:00.000-08:00

The Word Association subject for today is: OHIO.

"Let's see: agricultural. Backward. Bland. Treeless. Plowed. Slow drivers. Worse haircuts. Hayseed. Ragweed. CincinNAZI. Rivers that catch fire. Appalachian. Farms. Geocentric. Ag Science. Jerry Springer. Uhh...did I mention hayseed?"

HAH!

Michiducks?

2004-01-04T03:31:00.000-08:00

Someone wrote to tell me that a gander is not a duck. Yeah, umm, I KNOW.

Dear Obvious-Impaired: the whole gander/duck thing is commonly known as a JOKE...criminy.

Hippies

2003-07-01T22:23:00.000-07:00

Today's comment from a Seattle native:

"Dude, you need to slow down! Gawd, you drive like a maniac!"

Not sure what his point was...freakin' sandal-wearin', pot-growin', granola-chewin' slo-pitch hippies. :)

A Michiganian in California

2003-01-01T18:15:00.000-08:00

On January 1st, 1999, after several years in other places like Cincinnati, New York, Baltimore, DC and St. Louis, I moved from Washington DC to the sunny Pacific coast in Orange County, California. Thirty minutes after landing, while driving my rented convertible (American-made, of course) down Pacific Coast Highway, top down, 80 degrees on New Years' Friggin' Day, seeing lithe little California surfer chicks on their boards off Aliso Creek beach, my first thought was

THIS DOES NOT SUCK.

Lincoln Mercury had been forcefully relocated to Southern California by erstwhile Ford CEO Jac Nasser in an effort to get the cliquey Dearborn-based management and design teams out to live amidst the most finicky carbuyers in the US: Southern Californians. Lincoln-Mercury's ad agency, Young & Rubicam, saw one of their biggest accounts moving to the West Coast and immediately opened a big office in Irvine to service the account and keep the business. Y&R hired me, relocating me from the DC area to rejoin the fun in "Automotive".

As a former GM employee, I can tell you that automotive world is a relatively closed society. Whole generations will work for "the Plant". Your world becomes The Tech Center, or Dearborn, or Pontiac Truck & Bus. You know the engine specs and body styles by heart, know how to sidestep the cranes and the hi-los on The Floor, talk as much with strangers about cars as you might about sports, and live in a relatively compact, familiar world.

So in 1998/1999, a few hundred Michiganders from Ford and Y&R soon arrived in what to them was alien territory, where "automotive" wasn't the dominant industry of the area. Feeling a little out of their element, most of the transplants immediately banded together into a colony, circling the wagons in the same subdivision in Rancho Santa Margarita, and despite being in this amazing new turf, many ended up spending all their free time together. A long-time expatriate, I watched them, hoping they would "blend" more with the locals. Finally, gradually, many fanned out to explore, and, like me, started to see SoCal as home, rather than another temporary assignment.

New words crept into the transplants' vocabularies, words like "hoochy-mama", "OC", "lookieloo", "boogieboard", "Tevas" and "PCH". French place names like "Mackinac" gave way to Spanish place names like "Avenida de la Aeropuerto" and "Camino de Las Ramblas". Earthquakes replaced tornadoes as the scary reminders of Mother Nature. And suddenly, who to root for? The Tigers... or the Angels?!?

Despite the culture shock, Jac Nasser's brilliant move is history. Lincolns, once the sole domain of realtors and overweight businessmen everywhere, and Mercurys ("I wanna buy a Ford product, but, damnit, I'm VERY DIFFERENT!") are now some of the most progressive cars to come out of the Big Three. Strangely, in November 2002, Ford's new management decided to relocate Lincoln Mercury back to Michigan during 2003.

When you wake up to sunshine every single day, and the ocean breeze and billowing palms make each day feel like a tropical vacation, you start to forget the windshield scraping, ragweed summers, clouds of mosquitoes, township-sized potholes on VanDyke, and salt stains on your shoes. You start to remember and cherish the sound of a robin on a fall morning, the icy blast of January air on the chair lift, the smell of peaty, mossy soil, and true chili dogs from Lafayette's Coney Island.

California became my new home, and, dooode, it rocks. But Michigan? For myself, for several hundred residents of Orange County, and evidently, to Ford management, Michigan will always be Home.