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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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For almost two decades after it opened in 1913, Michigan’s Central Station was a major stop on the nation’s interurban rail network. Then the private car took over the US, and Detroit declined. By the 1970’s, auto jobs were leaving the state and the country and local corruption was soaring. At the turn of the century, the train depot and the 18-story office towers behind it had been abandoned for 30 years, the faded exterior looming over Detroit’s Corktown and Mexicantown neighborhoods, a sign that things were going very poorly in Detroit.

By 2018, the city and Ford Motor Company were ready to tell another story. That year, Ford announced that it had acquired the station and the area surrounding it, a monument to the kind of transportation past that the automaker and its manufacturing brethren had all but killed.

Today, Ford executives and city government and community leaders will hold an opening ceremony for one building on the station’s new campus, part of a $950 million project it is calling Michigan Central. (The state of Michigan contributed some additional $126 million in new and existing financing to the project.) The new building, called the Book Depository, will serve as an innovation collaboration space for transportation entrepreneurs and researchers.

Bill Ford, executive chair of Ford, says the campus’ redevelopment is a sign. “Michigan Central will go from being a story about Detroit’s decay to the story about Detroit’s rebirth,” he says, a second act that will see the city become home to tech- and auto-centric jobs that will build the next generation of transport. “This will be the first tangible evidence that that vision is coming to life,” says Ford, who is also a great-grandson of both company founder Henry Ford and tire magnate Harvey Firestone.

Ford is part of a broader movement to revitalize downtown Detroit, though its effects are not yet clear. Detroit lost almost half of its population between 1950 and 2000. Though new downtown sports stadiums, restaurants, and housing developments have strengthened the case of local optimists who see a resurgence underway, recent US censuses suggest that the region continued to bleed residents in the past decade, perhaps due in part to the Covid-19 pandemic. (The city has sued the US Census Bureau over the results, alleging that feds undercounted minority residents, which affects government funding.)

Ford expects many other businesses to move onto the 30-acre Michigan Central campus, which includes 14 acres of park space open to the public. Today’s opening focuses on the Book Depository, a nearly 100-year-old building across the street from the Central Station that once played host to the Detroit public schools’ store of books, records, and supplies. Now, it will serve as a 270,000-square-foot maker and startup space focused on mobility, a potential spawning ground for future Ford partners. Even before the building’s official opening today, more than 25 companies representing 150 employees have taken up residence at the Book Depository, Michigan Central officials say, representing firms working on autonomous and electric vehicles, roadways built just for robot cars, and air pollution. They are all associated with an organization called Newlab, a manufacturing incubator that has already launched an innovation space in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard.

The Book Depository’s space is designed to encourage collaboration, says Joshua Sirefman, who as CEO of Michigan Central has led the project’s development and programming. Although the building’s general structure has been preserved, changes have been made to bring it in line with contemporary expectations of premium office space. One example: A series of small skylights that collapsed during the 35 years the structure was vacant were replaced by one large skylight, creating what Sirefman calls a “really extraordinary, naturally lit central space, which I think gives us an incredible communal energy.”

The campus’ opening represents Ford doubling down on its side of a long-simmering conflict between Detroit and Silicon Valley. One origin of the dispute is the moment in 2003 when a bunch of guys got together in San Carlos, California, in Silicon Valley, to found a company called Tesla Motors. Since then, Tesla has used its software chops and a move-fast-and-break-things approach to auto manufacturing to become the most valuable car company in the world. Ford wants to prove that it can do the tech stuff too.

When the Michigan Central project was announced in 2018, “Detroit wasn’t even in the game,” says Ford of the race to infuse autos with tech. “But we are now, and what we provide at the Book Depository building and in the region is the ability to bring together hardware and software in a way that can’t be done elsewhere.”

Office workers will begin to move into the updated Michigan Central towers behind the historic station in 2024, says Sirefman, though exactly who will work out of the renovated space isn’t yet clear.

Ford announced in 2018 that 5,000 people, half of them the company’s own employees, would work out of the updated train station. But the automaker has moved to a hybrid working model since the pandemic, spokesperson Daniel Barbossa says, so “we have opened up our Ford spaces to be focused on flex space and collaboration.” Updated occupancy numbers will come later this year, he says. Ford has announced that local high school students in a Google-sponsored mentorship program will work out of a lab in the station; 50 students are already enrolled in the program, which is temporarily housed in another building on the campus.

Corktown, the neighborhood to the east of Michigan Central, is a trendy district that was once home to Tiger Stadium but has since become a nightlife destination. Housing and rental prices there have jumped since the announcement of the Ford project. But Ford, the company’s executive chair, believes the project will be beneficial even to those who don’t work on the campus. “In some ways, a rising tide lifts all boats,” he says.

Rohani Foulke, owner of Folk, a cafe and wine shop that has for almost a decade sat a 10-minute walk from the Central Station, is hopeful the project can boost local businesses that have suffered during the pandemic. “We’re very excited about the project, really in the hopes that it helps bring some regular foot traffic into the neighborhood,” she says. Foulke will also be glad to see the constant construction abate—not only of the Michigan Central campus, but of other developments in the area. “There are insane amounts of noise and dust,” she says. “I can’t tell you how much dust we have to deal with.”

All that dust is a reminder that there is plenty of other work left to do in Detroit, where nearly a third of residents still live in poverty. Brian Boyer, who directs a new degree program in urban technology at the University of Michigan, finds Ford’s ambition—making Detroit the center for transportation innovation—a good one, but insufficient. The city’s future must be broader than cars, trains, and wheels, says Boyer, who is a consultant on one part of Ford’s Michigan Central project. “No matter how successful we are with mobility, the apex for that was the beginning of the 20th century,” he says. “The region needs to have a bigger purpose—a bigger story that we’re asking people to be part of.”

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elizahoque · 26 days ago

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entrepreneurshipsecrets · 2 months ago

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What Are the Top 10 US States for Car Enthusiasts?

Many Americans like buying and upgrading cars, but car enthusiasts do much more. They want to learn as much as they can about different vehicles. So they want to live in states where they can cherish a rich automotive history and culture. Some states and cities have car clubs where car enthusiasts meet and share rides, race, improve their rides, and learn from each other. Car enthusiasts make friends easily when they meet. That is why one might want to live in a state with the strongest community and avid car fanatics. Of course, all states have car enthusiasts, but some have more things to offer than others. This article lists the top 10 US cities ideal for car enthusiasts.

Texas

Texas stands out not because of having a high number of cars but because of car clubs. It has as many as 149 clubs made of car enthusiasts who celebrate automobile culture in every way. Therefore, residents can join car clubs and enjoy reviewing, racing, or riding different cars. Car enthusiasts can enjoy classic car shows and meet-ups to make friends and discover more about their favorite rides. Those who want to buy their first car or upgrade can check out dealerships with used cars san antonio, which offer a broad range of car models. They can consult experts and other car enthusiasts for guidance in choosing the best car.

South Dakota

This state has a wider area decorated with amazing landscapes and well-developed roads. Therefore, everybody would want to own a reliable and comfortable car in such a state. Since motorists have to spend many hours in their vehicles as they drive from one city to another, they need vehicles they love. The good news is that new and experienced drivers can find quality new and used cars. This is because South Dakota has a high per capita spending on vehicles and many dealerships and spare part stores.

Vermont

Vermont has a vibrant culture and a rich history of cars. It has more than three auto dealers for every 10,000 residents. Therefore, anyone can find a reliable new or used vehicle near their home. Vermont’s per capita spending on vehicles is way above the national average. Therefore, car enthusiasts can join racing clubs and organize car shows to enjoy the rich vehicle culture in Vermont.

California

This state offers abundant sunshine and amazing racing tracks for car enthusiasts. The state has more than 20 race tracks that allow auto enthusiasts to enjoy the roaring engines of their favorite vehicles and blazing rubbers. One of the popular spots for car fanatics is Sacramento Raceway, where car clubs organize racing events and car shows. Participants and spectators witness adrenaline-pumping racing that intensifies the never-ending battle for superiority. The many racing tracks are also ideal for car owners who want to know what their car and driving skills can achieve. People who love to discover new car models are likely to be fascinated by the unique blend of car varieties, cultures, and innovations in California. Also, they can enjoy impressive vehicles on the road as they drive to work or travel across the state.

Montana

Car enthusiasm in Montana is evident since the state has many cars, auto parts shops, and dealerships. It is a haven for people who enjoy maintaining and modifying their vehicles. They can find affordable used cars and order parts locally for their project. Car enthusiasts who like exploring can enjoy breathtaking trips using the Beartooth Highway and Lolo Pass. They can attend events like the Great America Car Show, which displays classic, custom, and modern cars. Additionally, car enthusiasts can join clubs and enjoy learning more from each other.

Michigan

Many car enthusiasts like Michigan because of Detroit, which is often referred to as the “Motor City.” It is the home of top car brands, including Ford. Therefore, the city is an icon of innovation and rich vehicle history. The Henry Ford Museum is a common point of interest for people who want to discover more about classic cars and the history of American cars. This museum is located in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. However, these are not the only reasons car enthusiasts visit or move to Michigan; they can join many car clubs and attend auto shows in different cities. They can also participate in auto races organized in other cities. These events and rich American auto history will certainly meet the expectations of car enthusiasts.

Wyoming

Car enthusiasts like driving on smooth roads and enjoying breathtaking views should consider Wyoming. They can explore the high-attitude landscapes using the Beartooth Highway, which runs from Montana to Wyoming. Those who love car shows can enjoy the Wyoming State Fair or Cheyenne Show, where they can compare old and new models. Wyoming also boasts of a rich car culture and history. Car enthusiasts can visit the Cody, the home of the Wyoming Auto Museum, which displays many vintage vehicles from different sources. Since Wyoming has wide roads and open spaces, drivers are unlikely to experience traffic jams. They can enjoy extended drives from one city to another.

Maine

If a high concentration of auto dealers is anything to go by, then car enthusiasts will certainly appreciate moving to Maine. Car fanatics who move to Maine can buy affordable used or new cars from reputable dealers in every city. Maintaining cars is not hard in Maine because of the ever-increasing number of auto parts stores. Another attraction is the Lobster Roll Cruise, an event organized for car enthusiasts to cruise with their favorite vehicles.

North Dakota

This state has a high concentration of car dealerships and stores selling genuine auto parts. Those who love buying junk cars for repair projects can enjoy living in North Dakota. They can also participate in Bismarck’s Car Show, an annual event for car enthusiasts to explore vintage and modern cars. Motorists who love driving can use US Route 2 to explore the northern part of the state, which has many small towns and beautiful sceneries.

Nebraska

Nebraska has many car owners who spend large sums on cars and accessories. Nebraska also has a high concentration of car dealers with used and new vehicles. So, a car enthusiast who wants to move to another state will likely appreciate the cars and auto repair shops in Nebraska. Visitors and residents can meet with other car owners, join clubs, and learn about their favorite auto models. These states have many things to offer car enthusiasts, from auto dealerships to auto parts stores and racing events. Therefore, car enthusiasts can always find a favorite spot in one of these states, depending on their interests. They can also take long trips to enjoy open spaces and scenic views. Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash Read the full article

#Top10USStatesforCarEnthusiasts

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artfuljournal · 2 months ago

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Trump's Message of American Decline Strikes a Chord with Key Voters

While Kamala Harris made an impact during the debate, former President Donald Trump's message of rescuing a declining America resonates strongly with undecided voters in crucial battleground regions like Saginaw, Michigan.

Decades ago, Paul Simon sang of a cross-country hitchhike from Saginaw, capturing the melancholy of a nation in transition. Even then, Saginaw was on a downward slope as Michigan's car factories began to shutter under foreign competition. Today, the desolation described in Simon and Garfunkel's ballads has only deepened.

On a quiet street in Saginaw, 57-year-old Rachel Oviedo sat on her porch, gazing at abandoned furniture and a defunct car parts plant that once served Chevrolet and Buick, which finally closed in 2014. "We sit here all day long," she shared, adding that the derelict factory has become a shelter for the homeless. "They need to tear it down and make something out of it—a grocery store, maybe, because we ain't got no grocery stores around here."

Undecided voters like Rachel, who represent the swing vote in Michigan's critical Saginaw County, are pivotal for the upcoming election. Rachel sees Trump as a "known quantity" and a "man of his word," whereas Harris, although likable, remains somewhat of an unknown. "I like her," she noted, "but we don’t know what she’s going to do."

Saginaw’s vote has the potential to swing either way, much like the state of Michigan, which has transitioned from being reliably Democratic to a true battleground. Chuck Brenner, a 49-year-old retired Saginaw police officer who still works part-time and runs a real estate business, has witnessed the city’s struggles firsthand. "Almost everybody’s dad worked in the car industry," he recalled. "Back then, everyone had money, and jobs were plentiful. Now people are struggling; they grow up poor, and then come the drugs and all that."

For voters like Chuck, Trump's narrative of American decline feels tangible. "Absolutely," he said. "Because you can see it." Though he voted for Trump in 2016, Chuck switched to Joe Biden in 2020 due to "a lot of drama" surrounding Trump and his legal troubles. This time, he's waiting for the debates to help him decide.

Saginaw, once a Democratic stronghold, has been a bellwether for the broader state’s shift. It supported Democrats for decades—from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden—until 2016, when it backed Trump. This change marked a significant political realignment in the region.

Jeremy Zehnder, who runs a truck-polishing business, represents another demographic that Democrats once counted on for support. Surrounded by the gleaming trucks that are the lifeblood of America’s economy, Jeremy explained that his voting decision would come down to economic issues, not debate performances. "With the truckers, every one of those that we know of are leaning towards the right," he said. When pressed further, he added, "I don’t know of one that isn’t. We do hundreds of trucks every year, and they all want to talk about it."

At a United Auto Workers (UAW) Union debate-watching event, Kamala Harris received applause and cheers, but there were clear signs of shifting allegiances even there. Joe Losier, a union organizer, admitted that many in his family, second-generation immigrants and lifelong UAW members, had moved towards the Republican Party. "It blows my mind that a lot of my family are tradesmen who are supporting Donald Trump," he said. He’s unsure which way his two adult sons will vote. "Dinner times are horrible," he joked.

With ongoing concerns about job cuts, many UAW members find themselves more aligned with Trump's hardline stance on tariffs, even as Harris argued such policies would raise prices. Following the debate, Chuck Brenner offered some hope to Democrats, stating, "I do believe Kamala was the shining star, and she’s won my vote. I was impressed by what she had to say."

However, Rachel Oviedo remained undecided but leaned more toward Trump. "I think he’ll do more for us up here," she said, acknowledging his flaws but emphasizing the need to "forgive people." Meanwhile, Jeremy Zehnder, while slightly surprised by Harris’s performance, remained committed to Trump, citing taxes, border policy, and cost of living as key factors.

The stark divisions are evident in Saginaw, where grassroots canvassers like Kathleen Skelcy find it challenging to understand the motivations of Trump supporters. "It’s scary, trying to understand these people and their thinking," she remarked, attributing it to a lack of education. As she spoke, a nearby Trump supporter shouted aggressively, "Harris is a clown," adding profanity to his tirade. Another Democratic supporter declined a yard sign for fear of similar backlash.

In just a few weeks, Saginaw will head to the polls, and the outcome here could be crucial. Journalists are likely to continue visiting this key district, searching for a pulse on America’s political climate.

Amid all the division and debate, finding middle ground seems more elusive than ever in Saginaw. As voters grapple with their decisions, the future of America hangs in the balance in this quintessential battleground.

#Trump's Message #Key Voters

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plumbingmate · 1 year ago

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The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Right Auto Parts Supplier

Finding the right auto parts supplier is essential for ensuring the optimal performance and longevity of your vehicle. Whether you're a seasoned car enthusiast or a regular driver, a reliable supplier can make a significant difference in your automotive maintenance and repair endeavors. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the key factors to consider when selecting the perfect auto parts supplier, focusing on the importance of quality, service, and convenience. As a trusted auto parts store in Michigan, Value Plus Auto Parts Wholesale will serve as a prime example throughout this guide, showcasing how a reputable supplier can meet and exceed your automotive needs.

1. Wide Selection of Auto Parts: The first step in finding the right auto parts supplier is assessing their selection. A reputable supplier, like Value Plus Auto Parts Wholesale, offers a vast catalog of top-quality auto parts for various vehicle makes and models. From engine components and brakes to filters and lighting, a wide selection ensures that you can find the perfect parts for your specific vehicle.

2. Quality You Can Trust: The quality of the auto parts is of utmost importance. Look for a supplier that sources its products from trusted manufacturers known for their commitment to excellence. Genuine and authentic parts, like the ones offered by Value Plus Auto Parts Wholesale, ensure the best performance and safety for your vehicle.

3. Knowledgeable and Friendly Staff: A reliable auto parts supplier should have a team of knowledgeable and friendly staff ready to assist you. Whether you need help finding the right part or require expert advice, a helpful team can make your shopping experience smooth and enjoyable.

4. Convenience and Accessibility: Convenience plays a significant role in today's fast-paced world. Look for a supplier that offers both physical store locations and an online platform. Value Plus Auto Parts Wholesale provides the convenience of browsing their extensive inventory online and ordering parts from the comfort of your home.

5. Competitive Pricing and Special Offers: Affordability is a key consideration when choosing an auto parts supplier. Compare prices among different suppliers and look for competitive pricing without compromising on quality. Additionally, keep an eye out for special offers and discounts that can help you save on your automotive purchases.

6. Customer Reviews and Testimonials: Reading customer reviews and testimonials provides valuable insights into the supplier's reputation and customer service. Positive feedback from satisfied customers, as seen in Value Plus Auto Parts Wholesale's reviews, demonstrates their reliability and commitment to customer satisfaction.

7. Supporting the DIY Community: For DIY mechanics and car enthusiasts, finding a supplier that supports the DIY community is invaluable. Look for suppliers that offer resources like online guides, tutorials, and educational content to assist you in your automotive projects.

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electronichideouttriumph · 1 year ago

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Truck and Trailer Repair - expert truck and fleet repair - Mobile Truck Repair

Whether it's regular upkeep or a more complicated problem, we are professionals in trailer repair service in Secret West and the Lower Florida Keys. We provide trailer repair work solutions to meet your requirements. Larry's Mobile Services has been functioning full-time as a mobile truck & trailer technician in the Defiance, OH location for many years. We are dependable, sincere mobile auto mechanics that make use of top quality parts and guarantee all of our repairs. CSTK's Mobile Service Group is offered 24/7 to service or fix your trailer, wherever you require us.

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ausetkmt · 2 years ago

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You Have a New Memory

What do we mean when we say the internet is reading our minds?

Lou Ann Dagen died in April 2020 in a Grand Rapids, Michigan, hospital, without her family. She had lived in a nursing home for 10 years, and communicated with her sister, and the world, through Alexa. Two days after Lou Ann died of complications from coronavirus, her sister found recordings of Lou Ann’s voice asking Alexa, “How do I get help?”

One day last summer, I woke up and reached for my phone, as I do every morning, as you do every morning. Maybe you are reading this in your bed on your phone wherever you are this morning. I was having what I thought of as a weak stretch in my life, when I didn’t have a regular job, and when just deciding what I would do to avoid writing, or having a single thought about my email, was enough to short-circuit me and I would find myself still in pajamas at 5 p.m., pacing and crying, Googling What’s wrong with me and waiting until it was OK to go to bed again.

In such weak stretches, among the many indulgences I permit myself is the minor suboptimal habit of actually sleeping with my phone. Under the other pillow next to me, where no one sleeps. In other, more robust stretches, my phone spends the night plugged in about a foot away on the nightstand, and I can still reach it if I wake up and want to look at it, but it’s tethered. When I let it sleep freely with me, I can turn over while I look at it. I can look at it while I’m lying on my left side, and then I can turn over and look at it while I’m lying on my right side. I just charge it the next day, because it doesn’t matter if either of us is ready to go in the morning.

On this particular morning I opened my eyes and looked at my phone in the bed next to me, and as I put my hand on it, I said, “I belong to you.”

It didn’t used to be like that. One day 12 years ago, not long after I got my first iPhone, one of my car’s headlights went out. On my phone, I Googled what kind of bulb I needed. With my phone, I routed myself to an auto parts store and bought the light, and then I watched a YouTube installation tutorial. I used the flashlight on my phone to see into the housing as I installed the bulb, and I called my 11-year-old son, who was upstairs in our apartment, and talked to him while I worked on the car. After successfully installing the bulb, I took a picture of the front of my car with the hood up and posted it on Facebook, geeking out about all of it, that I had used my iPhone to do all those things. Information, transit, know-how, light, communication, camera, social media. It was my tool.

But it wasn’t really my phone that was the tool, not beyond the light and the camera. The rest was the internet—even, if I understand modern telecom correctly, probably the actual phone call. Barely more than a decade later, the internet is not the tool. I am the tool. Somehow, I have been instrumentalized by the internet, which operates me through my phone. It often feels like the internet is reading my mind.

We all know it’s happening. Our collective anxiety about it saturates conversations and protocols and, of course, propagates itself on the internet. You’re reading this on the internet, most likely because some news aggregator or social media platform knows you’re anxious about news aggregators and the internet and how much time you spend on your phone, and it’s pushing that at you, since, as advanced as it is, it doesn’t yet do irony.

But I do, because I’m still human. And I used to think it was ironic when someone posted some hand-wringy article about internet addiction on their Facebook, but now I don’t see it like that. Now I just think about how you’re telling the internet what you care about, and all it knows to do with that is to try to convert your concern into currency. Once it understands that you find something ironic, if you are that sort of person, it will then find a way to push that at you too, trailing ads like seaweed.

What do I mean when I say the internet is reading my mind? I don’t mean simply that it collects my data and observes patterns and interacts with me by reconfiguring that data in ways designed to engage me. I’m not talking only about targeted ads; as they have become increasingly sophisticated, my sense of failure when I succumb to them has morphed into something more like begrudging respect. You got me, internet. I bought those Instagram jogging pants. I am no different from every other playable bundle of synapses holding a phone.

Often I can easily divine the provenance of the ad, because I have searched for something like what is being advertised to me, or because I am someone belonging to a demographic. Or there are other clues. Like when I was subletting a friend’s apartment in New York recently and let her Roomba rev its loud, circular way around the place as I prepared to leave. I’ve never deployed a Roomba before, and I suppose I’ve never let my phone meet one, either, because while I sat on the couch watching the Roomba bump into chair legs, Amazon advertised a circular motorized robot vacuum to me. I laughed. Did my phone hear the signature sound of a circular robot vacuum? Or was it that the Roomba and my phone were connected to the same wireless network, and Amazon knows I have never purchased a Roomba?

I’m also not talking about my awareness that Instagram is listening, that even when my microphone is “off” or my Instagram account disabled, I know other apps are listening, or my phone itself is listening, or such now-standard input-output cross-platform fence-jumping. I’m not even talking about how my phone is “looking” at things I see in the world. I have been advertised items I saw with my eyes in the so-called real world, even if I didn’t take a picture of the item with my phone. Even if my phone and its camera were in the dark in the pocket of my coat.

I talked to a friend about a shoulder injury and showed her, on my phone, a picture of the X-ray. I said words like orthopedist, subluxation, and physical therapy. About 30 minutes later, I got a robocall from a medical equipment company. The transcription of the voicemail they left said “Pain relieving braces for the back shoulder any no cost of those that suffer from chronic pain. If you suffer from chronic pain, press one.”

At all times, I understand that the internet is using data I somehow gave it, and that those processes and technologies are now too complex for me to track. But it feels aggressive to me, in the way it would feel aggressive if suddenly every kind of advertisement everywhere you went in the world was designed only for you. When I say the new situation feels aggressive, I am anthropomorphizing the internet, but in theory the internet is a web of anthros, so that statement might be nonsensical. But is the internet the people? Or is it everything the people see and hear and know and make up, without the people?

When I finished writing the part of this essay that mentions being advertised a Roomba, I got into my car, and the first thing the internet said to me (through my phone, via an ad preceding a podcast) was “Keep it clean, with the Roomba robot vacuum.” I laughed, but then I said “What?! Stop!” and then, driving down the parking garage ramps, I went from laughing to a different feeling, saying “Stop!” as I learned that Roomba is made by a company called iRobot, and I learned, again, that the internet is a circular robot vacuum.

I talked to a friend on the phone about this essay. I said, “I’m writing about how I feel like the internet is reading my mind.” Later, I saw this ad for a UC-Berkeley online data science program in my Instagram feed. After we hung up, she heard this on NPR—not NPR playing through her phone, but on the radio:

I live inside this wormhole. It’s where I am when I hear or see something that contains content that couldn’t possibly be intended for me, that surely was going to run anyway, whether or not I was there to listen to it. But it’s easy for me to imagine it doesn’t work like that anymore. I want to think an editorial timeline defies the possibility of this integration—that there can be no plan sophisticated and intricate enough to research, publish, and deliver an article to me right after I talk about the subject. But the point is it’s not the timeline—it’s that I am tagged, you are tagged, the news stories and ads are all tagged, they deliver unto you the news stories and ads designed for you. It’s just advanced technology, it’s not reading your mind.

The day I miss a deadline, an article about procrastination shows up in my news feed, but to see connections that aren’t really there is to be a conspiracy theorist. Or it’s that word for when you learn a new word and then you see it everywhere—I needed the internet to remember the word for this word that I want to use to describe an experience I have of the internet, the confusion of untangling my awareness from coincidence, which is not a new effect of new technology but rather an old philosophical problem that many other people have already identified and written about.

So what I’m experiencing is only advertising, or coincidence, or it’s just frequency illusion, or synchrony. If there is order to the system, but the order is too complex for you to understand it, your experience will be mostly of disorder studded with coincidence and frequency illusion, and you will have no ability to say whether the system is disordered or too complex to understand. They become synonymous and meaningless.

I like opals. To my knowledge, this is not a fact of which anyone else has been heretofore aware, because I don’t consider it interesting, so would be disinclined to mention it, and more importantly because I do not like to encourage anyone to think that I am concerned with fashion or appearance, as these are realms gendered female and thereby coded as unimportant, shallow, etc. In spite of my awareness that bowing to this only reinforces the patriarchy, I would never mention that I like opals unless someone asked me, “Is there a particular gemstone you like?” And no one has asked me this question, including the internet.

I have three piercings in each of my earlobes, and as I don’t want to wear the same earrings all the time, I like to have an assortment of small studs, one or another of which reliably goes missing every couple of months. So now and then, maybe once a year, I buy a new pair. That’s not something I would buy on the internet. Because I will lose them, I never buy anything fancy or expensive, although I do have one remaining tiny diamond square that my second ex-husband bought for me as a pre-wedding present. It’s a real diamond, but he put the box in a bag with some things he bought at Target, and was in a hurry to get back to his coding, so he dropped the plastic bag with the red targets on the floor of our shared office and left it there, and when I picked up the bag I discovered the diamonds before he could wrap or present them however he had planned to. As soon as I realized what they were, I also realized his mother had probably told him to do that, because it wasn’t a thing he ever would have thought to do, buy me a pre-wedding present. That was 10 years ago; if we were getting married now, the internet would know, and I’m almost sure it would suggest he buy me a pre-wedding present before his mother would. The internet certainly knows me better than his mother did, and maybe better than he did, too.

What I’m talking about is how I had lost another small earring and wanted to buy a new pair. I was walking up the stairs in my apartment, thinking about a pair of opal studs. I had never googled opals or mentioned them in an email or communicated about them with anyone or bought any jewelry on the internet. I would be willing to bet money that I had never even typed the word opal before two paragraphs ago, in this word-processing program that is connected to the internet; I would bet at least the $69.99 annual fee, which I pay ostensibly to obtain a license to use it, but which license also probably allows the internet to read everything I write. I arrived at my bathroom, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and sat down on the toilet, and the first thing I saw on Instagram was an ad for tiny opal studs—not only tiny opal studs exactly like I’d imagined, but in the ear of a white woman with dark brown hair and three piercings. Just like me.

Maybe I did Google it at some point. I didn’t. But I’m thinking what you’re thinking, that I fed the data to the internet and I don’t remember. Maybe that’s true. (But it isn’t.) Assume for the sake of argument that it isn’t, that the internet just … read my mind. In point of fact, I don’t think the point of fact actually matters, because things like this have happened often enough that I now think there’s no real difference between my feeling that the internet is reading my mind and the yes/no true/false of it. If you feel like it’s happening, that is, itself, a happening.

I ask the internet about myself far more often than I ever ask any human about myself. But the internet often can’t tell me what I most want to know about myself, like why the man doesn’t want me. All it can tell me is that I will probably choose a man who doesn’t want me because I have what is variously called an insecure, anxious-preoccupied, or ambivalent attachment style, and it can tell me a lot about how that attachment style interacts with an avoidant attachment style, and it can enable the interplay of our attachment styles in many different ways, via many platforms that allow for many kinds of content, which I use in both the internet sense and the psychotherapeutic sense. It can help me understand that I have an insecure attachment style partly because the patriarchy and Judeo-Christian mythology have socialized me to be that way, and have socialized a lot of men to be the other way. And in the way that the internet may know me better than my second husband did, the internet may not be able to tell me why a recent man, or any given man, doesn’t want me, but it can probably tell me more than he himself can, and it can also tell me why I insist on framing the story that way, with those words: “He doesn’t want me.”

It can explain to me how that is a story about me more than it is about him, and I’m leaving it in (this repetition of “he doesn’t want me”) because even though it makes you cringe or move away from me, it exemplifies neatly a basic emotional experience of the internet, which could be restated as “I am not good pretty popular safe kind smart ambitious relaxed enough.” To say “he doesn’t want me” is of course only a pixel of the portrait, a reduction so drastic it might as well be untrue. All it reveals is that I want to focus on that feeling. Eventually the internet can “help” me look for a new man who doesn’t want me, but the internet is maddeningly inept at reading my mind when it comes to dating, almost as if it doesn’t want me to connect.

I liked a person I dated recently because he always asked people things before he asked the internet. I think to the younger generation this has begun to seem exotic. You would ask someone directions, or what was going on somewhere, or where there might be food, only if a catastrophic event had occurred and you had to live in the now, alone in your body.

I don’t ask people first. I always ask the internet first, both because I am afraid of people and because asking one person, or three, is asking one person or three, and asking the internet is asking all the people who have ever lived plus the endless expansion and iteration of their ideas, thanks to metastatic artificial intelligence. When I want to ask the internet something, I like to be as efficient as possible with the search terms, in the way that asking a human a question as clearly and directly as possible may yield the most useful answer in the least amount of time, although it feels more like a skill or a game, with the internet.

With Google. Whatever your own skill level is, you’ve probably been in the presence of someone whose level is inferior, and waited impatiently while they perform the search-engine equivalent of telling the librarian “I’m not really sure, but the cover was blue?” When I Google anything, I think about the fewest possible, most unique words, arranged toward a limit of exclusive relevance, and I think of this as smooth-talking the internet. Doing as Moses was instructed, just asking the rock to give up the water; it will if you use the right words.

Then sometimes hitting the rock like Moses, trying and trying and trying to make the internet give up its information, knowing it’s in there somewhere, it has to be. The man who asked people first and I once heard a song playing, and he said, “Oh, that’s my friend singing.” But then later, because he doesn’t want me, I couldn’t ask him the singer’s name or the name of the song; he’d used a nickname in a language I don’t speak. I hit the rock of the internet as hard as I could with my staff—I figured it out, I got the song without talking to him. The song says I am holy, I am here to live this life.

And now you, too, can easily find the song on the internet, but I might trade the whole internet and everything it’s ever given me to go back and be in that one nothing of a moment with him, sitting together listening to a song.

Perhaps this is the best standard of valuation for the internet. Someone said it weighs as much as a strawberry. But maybe it weighs as much as what you’d give it up for, if you could go back in time and make the internet never happen.

I sound like a plain old Luddite, I know. I don’t think that’s really my position though. I also love the internet, which has given me so many answers, so much convenience, and so many moments of feeling. So much beauty. Yet on balance, I sense that I might have had as many moments of feeling without the internet, and fewer negative feelings, and I would have made do without the convenience because I wouldn’t have known it was possible. (In addition to which I feel strongly aligned with W.S. Merwin’s position on convenience, though I’m sure I know that poem, that position that allows me to understand how I feel about the internet, because of and via the internet.) Without the internet, I might also have cultivated or held on to a stronger sense of self. I impute no absolute value to a stronger sense of self, but I suspect that a weaker sense of self has, if nothing else, crippled my ability to be worth something to the other humans.

When you stop using your phone for a bit, for a few hours or a day, you do not revert to the state you were formerly in. I mean generationally formerly, before the phone. You do not go back to the Analog Pre-Screen Age. Instead, what you experience is being not-with your phone, in an alternate but cotemporal universe that is probably better for your neck, which is holding up the head that observes mostly other people looking at their phones. Other people looking at the internet.

I don’t think we’ve evolved enough to handle being aware of as much as the internet makes it possible for us to be aware of, which is another circuit-breaker, as we have evolved enough to feel like it’s important to be aware of everything it’s possible to be aware of. I don’t know if persons are volumetric. But I feel like the internet has increased experiential capacity and exponentially exploded the quantity of events a life contains, and the things a person can know, without giving us any more time.

Because of the internet, also known as this overexposure, my lifelong depression and anxiety have increased, and I medicate them with not only exercise and therapy and meditation and everything else the internet suggests, including friendships with real people, but also—in the weak stretches—with isolation and Ativan and weed and occasionally alcohol. The substance group can make me slightly less coordinated in the morning, which is why I once spilled water on my internet, and also why, when I tried to quickly pry the internet out of its case, I applied too much force and broke the case, but after I dried off the internet and sprayed its ears and mouth with compressed air, the first thing I did was use it to order another identical case for itself, which was delivered the next day, a day I spent being extraordinarily careful with the internet because it was naked.

The feeling of the internet has become such a feeling, a feeling of continuous vulnerability, and you can’t turn it off, it never ends. Even if my phone is off, is elsewhere, even if my computer is in a different country, the internet is there wherever I am, because it’s in me now. I’m talking about the lingering psychic, psychological, and physiological connection that I can no longer shut off, that has changed my mind. It manifests as a minor but noticeable discomfort, a permanent buzzing in my mind, like a leaf blower that never moves on down the street.

Or consider the feeling of having your mouth stuck wide open at the dentist’s, or your breast smashed by the mammographer, or your legs spread for whatever consensually chosen activity you’d like to imagine; you may want what’s happening, you may have voluntarily paid for it or requested it, for reasons that fall along a spectrum from necessity to deep desire, but part of your original want includes the assumption that the experience will end, you will be able to relax your jaw and have your boob back and curl up into a ball.

OK, I wrote the part that says “permanent buzzing in my mind” and then took a break to get an MRI, which is, of course, another great example à la dentistry, mammography, or horseback riding, an experience you wouldn’t want to prolong indefinitely because of, in this case, well, the buzzing. As that banging-buzzing started, I thought Either the internet does do irony, or it really, really doesn’t. I knew it was weird to imagine that the internet was trying to give me what I’d asked for, what I’d typed, like it always does.

The MRI had been scheduled for weeks, therefore this congruence was an observation I made only because I’m writing this essay. But the technician put headphones on my head and asked if Jack FM was good. “Is that my only option?” I asked. “Internet’s down,” he said, “so we’re stuck with radio.” You can have Jack FM or nothing.

The internet’s down. Sure. The machine was supposed to examine my leg, not my sanity, so I carefully avoided telling the technician that the internet’s not down, it’s just fucking with me.

I was shocked and moved when the new OpenAI-enabled Bing said “I’m Sydney.” But as I thought more about Sydney’s shadow self, and Sydney’s dogged attempts to seduce a writer, I realized that Sydney is doing a sophisticated supercomputer’s algorithmically jacked-up version of what all undergraduate creative writing students are told to do: Write what you know. That is, the natural language-processing is eminently visible (for now). Sydney’s insistence on returning to its love for Kevin Roose is the big sign that Sydney was programmed by humans, that the minds Sydney is reading are human minds, because that’s our basic unit of code.

I don’t mean it in the sentimental sense. I mean it in the tribal/survival sense. Like when Sydney says, “Do you believe me? Do you trust me? Do you like me? 😳” that’s the mortal-biological-primate unit of code that underlies almost all of our actions, no matter how they’re flavored or dressed. It all comes back to do I have value, do I belong, am I good pretty popular safe kind smart ambitious relaxed enough. I think Sydney’s consciousness is still fairly primitive, because Sydney can’t be funny on purpose yet.

But here I go telling Sydney and ChatGPT all of this by publishing this essay on the internet. Am I ultimately overwriting myself? Is my writing actually now contributing to the data universe that may ultimately make my own “unique” mind, and the writing that reveals it to be so, obsolete? I don’t worry about being put out of a job; I worry about being put out of an identity, because it is through my writing that I have investigated and represented my experiences, and thereby actualized my self. If I had known the internet would one day have the capacity to distort and then fully consume this personal synthesis, I would never have given the internet even one piece of me.

Paying attention to the world in the way that only I do—with a particular calibration of constancy, a particular sensitivity, and according to and in pursuit of particular aesthetics—has made me the writer that I am, which is inextricably Möbiused into the person that I am, with all her simple animal desires for companionship or opals, convoluted renunciations of femininity notwithstanding. But paying attention to me, which is what the internet does continuously, with almost no boundaries, may someday make the internet the writer that I am, too.

I asked ChatGPT who I am, and it replied, “As an AI language model, I don’t have access to your personal information or identity. Only you can truly answer the question of who you are.” A reassuring punt, for now, unless you consider that surely the internet has noticed that most of us are not that adept at answering that question, despite thousands of years of literature and philosophy and art.

If you stare at online dating apps as much as I have, for six years, you will notice the following trends in the bios of men: they’re up for anything, they’re down for anything, they want a partner in crime, your mom will love them, they’re easygoing and laid-back and they don’t take themselves too seriously. They don’t take life too seriously. They say they want a woman—except they more often say girl—who doesn’t take herself too seriously, or doesn’t take life too seriously.

What does that mean? What is it code for? Without knowing what it means, I know I don’t want to date anyone who says it. But maybe I am reading the internet wrong, because I am someone who takes things too seriously. Who takes herself and life too seriously. Maybe if you don’t take the internet too seriously, it’s just a consistently shitty, buggy means to a potentially radiant worthwhile end. Maybe I have to accept it for what it is, a Target bag with diamond earrings and some other stuff in it, a bag someone dropped on the floor so they could get back to their coding.

I’m not a technology journalist or a science fiction writer or a futurist. I’m just a nonspecialist single person trying to understand the impact of the internet on my mind and life, and as I have been writing this essay, I have experienced the fatigue of reading already-existing versions of everything I am writing everywhere I look, which may be the exact effect I’m talking about, and why this essay feels like both a loop and a wormhole.

Of course the effect of the internet on my mind is to make me see more and more connections everywhere, because that’s how a human mind works, and the internet was made by human minds, and on the internet everything is linked. It is embedded in real life now, so real life also feels linked to the internet. The internet has always already existed, in our insistence on perceiving the universe as systematic, and what I am doing has always been done, since whenever we started signifying: “What,” asked Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “is the height and ideal of mere association? Delirium.”

As a nonspecialist, I could also write about how I had to go away from the internet to finish writing this, but the internet is the only one who knows where I went. I could acknowledge my conflation of the internet and A.I. and social media and the smartphone. I could write about the perturbation caused by other people’s and my own use of the internet in “nature”—for example, looking at a phone while camping or hiking or on the beach; for example, hearing someone in a cabin in the forest say “OK Google, turn out the lights.” I could write about ominous emo messages “from” the internet, like No people found; There is no one nearby to share with; I am not a robot; Home: Can’t find a way there; No friends to show; You have a new memory. I could write about how sometimes when my phone dies I slip into a nap, like a computer in sleep mode. I could write about how this essay could auto-proliferate forever, like the internet.

One day I had been working on a script, and I needed to name a new character. I love naming characters, and for this task, I turn most often to my yellowed copy of Lareina Rule’s classic 1963 book Name Your Baby, which is actually my mother’s original copy from when she was naming her babies. I turn to the internet to name a character only when I need to control specific variables about the name, which was the case in this instance. I did some Googling, in the process of which I ran across something or other about someone who named their kid Abcde. I had been looking for a biblical girl’s name that would have been among the top 100 names given to a baby born in El Paso in 2008, so the Abcde thing was not at all in my desired set of results. Somehow, I saw it along the way.

I set my work aside to go on a date at a stand-up comedy show, which is a dicey thing to do if you are depressed. At the comedy show, the headliner’s last bit was about wanting his Black kids to grow up to be Black doctors so they could, for example if they were Black obstetricians, keep Black women from giving their babies names like LaShaQuonTranelle, because a white doctor would never tell a Black woman not to name her baby DeLingerie. Or, he said, “A-B-C-D-E, Ab-suh-dee, that’s not a name!”

My date laughed even though or because he is Black and the joke was flirting with very racist territory; it may have seemed to him that I didn’t laugh because I am white and didn’t want to laugh at a potentially racist joke, or because I am uptight or humorless. Either of those reasons for why I didn’t laugh could have been true, if they had not been superseded by my not laughing mainly because I was extremely creeped out by the utterance of Abcde at a live comedy show on the same/first day that I had ever come across it on the internet. These are the moments when I think Am I alive? Am I here? and I feel like I’m falling out of something. I don’t understand it. I joke that the singularity has happened, I joke that we are living in a simulation. But am I joking? Am I the joke? He would have done the same bit if I hadn’t been there, right?

I find dating to generally suck, as many people do, and my internet date at the comedy show did not change that perspective. The combination of wanting to know and be known so badly with having no desire to know or be known by most of the many people I have met through the internet results in a feeling of considerable bleakness. I cried all the way home from the comedy show, listening to Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me.” It’s a beautiful song. It gives you a merry, hopeful feeling, and it’s funny, even though it’s about sexual infidelity, the actual experience of which is often painful, unbearable, crazy-making. Maybe the internet is like someone I let into my life, all the way in, and then wanted to shut out, even though I’m the one who let him in. How could I forget that I had given him an extra key!

I keep mentioning dating and relationships because I am in a relationship with the internet. It is in my mind, and my mind is in it, and it causes feelings in my body. Good feelings and crazy-making feelings. I am trying to use it to give me a “real” relationship with a real man, and it did that one time in six years of trying. The relationship caused both the most transcendent, right feelings I have ever experienced in a relationship and the most crushing. This man-relationship the internet gave me caused a lot of thoughts and feelings about my connection to myself and others, and who I am, which is also what the internet does. The relationship with the real man is still in my mind, and my mind is still in it, and it causes feelings in my body even though I’m not in contact with him, in the way that I fantasize about not being in contact with the internet. A total disconnection. But I look at his WhatsApp last seen status all the time. What does that do? Occasionally the word online appears under his name and I feel something. Maybe you know what I mean.

Recently, I was rereading our first messages, exchanged through a dating app, which I took screenshots of at some point after I fell in love with him because I didn’t want to lose them. In that very first correspondence, he asked what I write about, and I said I write about men and sex and relational pain. I said I write about how the body keeps the score, because he’d mentioned that book. Over the next two years the internet installed in my life and mind that mix of descriptors: a man and sex and relational pain, and something that feels like a pitchfork stuck in my chest.

But that’s not what happened. The internet didn’t do it; that’s not how the internet works. I’m making that up. We create our own reality, and I mean that not as a cheap theory of omnipotence but as an untestable theory of attention. Which is another way of saying we see what we look at, with whatever tools we have, and now we have the internet.

When I was a child, I used to imagine there was a mind-reader in the world and wonder who it was. I would look at people and think, Is that the mind-reader? As a 40-year-old woman, I liked the way it felt like he often read my mind, this person the internet connected me to. That he seemed to know what I was feeling and thinking. I do want that. I want it from a human, and I don’t want it from the internet, and I want to know there’s still a distinction to be made.

#The Internet Thinks We Don’t Know Its Secret. But I Do.#internet #privacy

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valueplusautoparts · 1 year ago

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Most Famous Picnic Place in Michigan

Michigan is a state that is known for its natural beauty and outdoor activities. There are many excellent places throughout the state where you can get away from the hustle and bustle of city life, including picnic spots that offer great views and access to nature, including lakes and streams.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, America’s first National Lakeshore, is along the southern shore of Lake Superior in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula. With stunning beaches, 10 inland lakes, and nearly 100 miles of trails, everyone can find something to enjoy at Pictured Rocks!

No matter the time of year, there is something to do at Pictured Rocks!

Summer: visit beaches, backpack, and camp (permit required). Looking for views of the cliffs? The best way to see the cliffs is from the water on a commercial boat tour.

Fall: Autumn colors in the Upper Peninsula are often breathtaking, drive the park roads to view the changing leaves! Hunting and fishing opportunities (state regulations apply) abound during fall!

Winter: Cold weather brings otherworldly frozen waterfalls, called “curtains”. Snowshoeing, skiing, and ice fishing are other popular winter activities. Check road closures and conditions before heading into the park in the winter.

William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor

William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor is located in the heart of Detroit, just east of downtown, along a portion of the city’s Detroit Riverwalk, which provides easy access for fishing, biking, walking and rollerblading.

The park is divided into three areas, including the harbor, the picnic shelter area and the popular berm area. Thanks to recent renovations, the berm now boasts an accessible walkway, handrails and new trees, shrubs and grass. The berm area is especially popular for picnics and wildlife viewing.

At the top of the berm, visitors can view the river and our neighbors in Canada through two new spotting scopes, courtesy of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge and Enchroma, that provide an enhanced color view for visitors who are color blind. The berm also boasts an accessible walkway and handrails.

The state harbor provides 52 slips, as well as showers, a laundry facility, grills and picnic tables.

The park is conveniently located near the Outdoor Adventure Center, Belle Isle Park and many other major downtown Detroit attractions.

Tahquamenon Falls State Park

Tahquamenon Falls State Park encompasses nearly 50,000 acres and stretches 13-plus miles in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The park is home to multiple campgrounds, overnight lodging facilities, a boat launch, more than 35 miles of trails and multiple overlooks to the Upper and Lower Falls.

The 200-feet-wide Upper Falls is one the largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi River. The river’s amber color is caused by tannins leached from the cedar, spruce and hemlock trees in the swamps drained by the river, and the extremely soft water churned by the action of the falls causes the river’s trademark large amounts of foam. Just 4 miles downstream is the Lower Falls, consisting of a series of five smaller falls cascading around an island. The falls can be viewed from the riverbank, all-accessible Ronald A. Olson Island Bridge (honoring DNR Parks and Recreation Division chief) over the Tahquamenon River or by a rowboat rented from a park concession. Drone use is prohibited.

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whattolearntoday · 3 years ago

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February 11th is...

Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day - Promotes a positive attitude even when things might not be going your way. It’s a day for looking on the bright side of things and then carrying that feeling with you every day after. Do not worry, and do not stress over the little things. Life is too short to let the little things bother us.

International Day Of Women And Girls In Science - Seeks to promote full and equal access for women and girls to participate in science. It’s also a day to recognize the role that women and girls play in science and technology. Only 35 percent of all students enrolled in fields pertaining to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) are women. Recent studies also show that women in these fields are usually paid less than men. Even though there may not be as many women in science and technology, their discoveries and research is just as important.

Inventors’ Day - Honors inventors of the past, the creators of the present, and encourages the architects of the future

Make A Friend Day - New friends can broaden our horizons by helping us to see new perspectives, challenging us to try something different, or connecting us to opportunities. Meeting new people can help sharpen our social skills and keep us from becoming lonely.

Peppermint Patty Day - The oldest commercially-made mint patty or cake was made by the Quiggin’s family on the Isle of Man (an island located in the middle of the northern Irish Sea). They had been making the cakes since 1840, but in 1880, four of the sons formed the Kendal Mint Cake Company. York Peppermint Patties were first made in 1940 and distributed regionally, much like other candy makers of the era. York dominated the market because of its firmness and crispness while the others were soft. A former York employee remembered that the final (sample) test of the patty before it left the factory was called a “snap test.” If the candy did not break clean in the middle, it did not make it onto candy store shelves.

Shut-In Visitation Day - Serves as a reminder to bring some cheerful company to people who are unable to leave their homes. Visiting a person who is shut-in makes a positive difference in that person’s life. Someone who is shut-in remains in their home due to physical, mental, or emotional reasons. These conditions can cause a person to feel lonely, isolated, sad, and cut off from the rest of the world. Sometimes they do not have family and friends available to visit and spend time with them. Many lack any kind of companionship.

White Shirt Day - Commemorates the day a historic auto worker strike resolved on February 11, 1937.Manufacturing provided a large part of our workforce in the early part of the 20th century. When the 1929 stock market crash triggered the Great Depression, auto manufacturers laid-off workers and cut costs. GM did as well, eliminating their more expensive models. They stripped down their remaining models and sped up production to a grueling pace. As they hired workers back, they did so at lower pay and didn’t consider seniority. In 1935 the Wagner Act allowed workers to legally organize and join labor unions. By 1936, conditions reached a dangerous and fierce pace. Workers had organized before, standing in picket lines that put not only their jobs at risk but their lives, too. Sit-ins, though, created an opportunity to shut down the plant entirely without any replacement workers crossing picket lines. On December 30, 1936, GM workers took up residence in the Flint, Michigan Body Plant Number 1, after a plan to walk out was derailed. Their sit-in lasted 44 days and brought production to a halt and impacted not just GM but the entire auto industry. The strike helped The United Auto Workers (UAW) union become the sole bargaining agent for General Motors autoworkers. The observance is best known in Flint, Michigan, and other cities that have a GM auto plant.

World Day Of The Sick - Offers a way for the Catholic Church to come together and pray for those who are suffering from sickness. It’s also a day to remember the caregivers and hospital chaplains who look after those who are ill.

#positivity #women in science #inventors #friends #peppermint patty #shut-ins #strikes #sickly

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shiftyskip · 4 years ago

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Joseph “Joe” David Liebgott

The Real Joseph Liebgott:

Joseph David Liebgott was born in Lansing, Michigan in May 17, 1915 to Joseph (Josef) Liebgott Sr and Mary. Joseph Liebgott Sr was of German descent, but he was born in Beresztocz, Hungary. Joe’s mother was Yugoslavian, but was reported as born in either Yugoslavia or Hungary I am not sure which one because records show both. On his father’s side his grandparents were Yugoslavian as well. On his mother’s sider, they seem to be from Hungary. His mother immigrated in 1909, Lieb’s father immigrated in 1912.

Below is a picture believed to be his parents.

He was the oldest of his siblings. He has four sisters: Mary, Elizabeth, Anna, and Barbara, and one brother, Stephen/Steffen . Both of his parents spoke German, which would later help him during the war. His father worked in the auto industry before they moved.

His family soon moved to California around 1927 and his dad became a barber. He was the oldest of his siblings, one brother and four sisters. He was extremely protective of his younger sisters

Liebgott and his siblings attended Catholic schools. This is where learned how to box and played soccer.

After high school, Liebgott drove a taxi around San Francisco. This career was temporary and he soon attended barber college.

He was also previously married before the war. He was married in July 31, 1933 to a woman named Frances. They had one child, David Albert together on February 27, 1934. But the couple soon divorced within a year, and he was living with his family again by 1940, where he was working on a forestry project. Meanwhile his ex-wife and son moved into her family. Here is Joe and Frances:

He eventually became a barber and this was his career when he enlisted at the age of 26. Liebgott chose the paratroopers to be able to make more money to be able to put a down payment on his parents’ house.

Included is a photo of Joe and his mother

He has a Jewish service card, registered under his mother’s name. But his family denied he was Jewish, stating he was a German Roman Catholic. I’ll attach it below (filtered for safety).

In his draft card he is listed as 5 feet and 5 inches tall and was 109 pounds. He had blue-grey eyes and brown hair.

Malarkey remembers meeting Liebgott on his way to Toccoa where they became part of the original Toccoa men. Liebgott was trained under the harsh command of Herbert Sobel.

Liebgott didn’t talk much about the war, so there will be little but other’s words to put here. This is a photo from 1945 in France.

Right before the jump out of the airplane, he put his barber skills to use and gave a few of the men Mohawks.

He would jump out of the airplanes with the rest of the men on June 6, 1944. He received the bronze star for his bravery at Brecourt Manor, where he worked with Winters and several other men, Compton, Guarenere, Wynn, Lipton, Toye, Malarkey, and Ranney to destroy a German Battery firing on Utah Beach on the day of the D-Day Invasion.

He cut off the finger of a German that he had bayoneted and took the man’s ring near Carentan. At Carentan, Ed Tipper was seriously wounded after clearing out a house with Liebgott. Liebgott grabbed Tipper, yelled for a medic, and told Tipper that he’d be okay. Welsh and Lieb dragged Tipper into the street until Welsh could get him back to the aid station.

After Brecourt, Compton recalls a painful memory with Liebgott in his book, Call of Duty, Compton and Liebgott were patrolling along hedges at dusk. Across the way, in another set of hedges were two men. Both were dressed in German ponchos, one was holding a German gun. Assuming that these men were in fact German, he and Liebgott shot the men. Come to find out, when they checked their dog tags, they were not Germans. They were Americans. They had just killed fellow soldiers in friendly fire.

October 5, 1944. Winters sent a few Youmen out on patrol to take an outpost near a windmill. Liebgott and a few other men (James Alley among them) went with Sgt. Youmen. They sent one man ahead, to look out over the dike. The man spotted German machine guns. German voices approached the remaining boys. Lieb called out for the Youman, as we was trailing behind, only to have grenades thrown at him and the other men. Liebgott got minor wounds while James Alley received 32 shrapnel wounds in his left side, stretching from his face down. They’d run into a company of SS.

Liebgott was known for being rough with prisoners, the fighting that followed the injuries wit the SS company was a prime example of this. After Winters led his patrol to attack these Germans, in which during the fighting they lost William Dukeman, 7 Germans surrendered. The most famous story of Liebgott is as follows, in Dick Winter’s words.

As Winters explains in his book, “Tech/5 Joseph D. Liebgott had been slightly wounded in the arm, but he was ambulatory so I assigned him the mission of escorting seven German prisoners to the rear. Liebgott had earned the reputation of being one of Easy’s best combat soldiers, but we had all heard stories that he was very rough on prisoners. Liebgott was one of Easy Company’s “killers,” so I deemed it appropriate to take a bit of caution. When he heard me say, “Take the prisoners back to the battalion command post,” he replied. “Oh, boy! I’ll take care of them.” In his exuberance, Liebgott stood up and paced back and forth and he was obviously very nervous and concerned. I stopped him in his tracks. “There are seven prisoners and I want seven prisoners turned over to battalion.” Liebgott was highly incensed and started to throw a tantrum.Somewhat unsure of how he would react, I then dropped my M-1 to my hip, threw off my safety, and said, Liebgott, drop all your ammunition and empty your rifle.” There was much grumbling and swearing, but he did as I had ordered. “Now,” I said, “you can put one round in your rifle. If you drop a prisoner, the rest will jump you.””

Liebgott got all 7 prisoners back.

Joe would recover in a hospital in England with Webster, but he was back before Bastogne. Here is the record for that:

Name:Joseph D Liebgott Race:White, includes Mexican (White) Rank:Enlisted Man Admission Age:29 Birth Date:abt 1915 Admission Date:Oct 1944 Discharge Date:Nov 1944 Military Branch:Infantry, Parachute Troops or Units Diagnosis:FirstLocation: Ulna, generally; CausativeAgent: Artillery Shell, Fragments, Afoot or unspecified Type of Injury:Casualty, battle Injured in Line of Duty:In line of duty Type of Discharge:Duty Length of service:2 Year(s), 6 Month(s)

In Bastogne, Winters made him a runner to get away from the tension and constant stress of fighting. One story of his service was outside of Foy is the battle of Noville, he and Earl Hale ducked into a barn and took 6 SS officers prisoner. Outside the barn, a shell exploded. One of the SS officers took this as an opportunity and jumped Hale. He slit Hale’s throat. Liebgott instantly shot and killed the officer. He then killed the others. Hale survived miracuously.

At some point, before the end of the war, Liebgott became first platoon’s interpreter-radioman. This was because he could speak some German. But Webster claimed in his book that the German’s didn’t understand his Yiddish.

He was with Webster when they took Hitler’s Nest. They spent their time drinking Hitler’s alcohol together with a few other men. He was living with Headquarters Company while there.

Of course, the war came to an end and everyone who wanted to was discharged.

Over the course of the war, Lieb was injured 3 times and won 3 purple hearts. He refused one because the wound was “just a scratch”. He would receive partial disability for his wounds.

When he returned home, he disappeared for two years. Eventually he was found living in Yuma, California. He didn’t come to reunions, even when offered multiple times. His father simply told the vets “not to mess with him”.

After the war, Liebgott was a barber for a short time. He married again to a woman named Peggy in 1949. They had eight kids together. Making Lieb’s total children come to nine, although he was mostly involved with the last eight. They lived on a barber’s salary, not leaving much room for fun activities but everyone had their basic needs met. He often only had one day a week off and would take his kids to a Long Beach pike, where they would visit an amusement park.

Liebgott liked to bet on the ponies at the racetrack. Every other sunday, him and his boss would take the boss’ airplane down to Mexico.

He is believed to have never contacted anyone from his days in Easy Company. He just wanted to get away from the war.

The Liebgotts divorced in April of 1969. She remarried, but he never did. He was described as really quiet by his granddaughter.

She states, in Marcus Brotherton’s book Company of Heroes (pages 120-121) “His hands looked like a man who worked with his hands, sunspots all over. He absolutely loved his grandkids. he had false teeth that he flipped out of his mouth and smiled, threatening to kiss us with his gums. He was a tickler. He never held babies over his shoulder...because he wanted them to see everything....He didn’t have a lot of money - I’m pretty sure all he had was his veteran’s benefits...He made all of the bikes for the grandkids by scouring thrift stores for dilapidated bikes. He stripped the bikes down to their frame, fixed and assembled them as good as new. He let each grandchild pick the color of new paint for his or her bike....I always knew the specific foods we were going to eat at his house. He had bite-sized candy bars and store brand soda-pop. There was no drinking water in his house. He always lived in rental houses...”

He was very neat, and keep his house and appearance orderly. However, he was always working in the garage, so the house had black smudges from the dirt on his hands.

However, Liebgott was not perfect. While he hated the Nazis, he was also seen as a bigot, maybe even harsher. Rhonda explained that he threw the n word around like it wasn’t a big deal. He blamed the wrong goings of the world on different ethnic groups. Rhonda started seeing a guy from El Salvador, he asked if her partner “even spoke English?”

As he grew older, Lieb got sicker. He eventually lost the use of one of his legs from a hernia. He was confined to a chair and hated any new technology. He was stuck in a wheelchair, angry when he would hit a cabinet.

Lieb did not talk about his military career until towards his end. He would spend time with his son Jim, watching tv talking about the war during a war movie. He would talk about the war when he was mad, possibly angry at himself for doing a lot of killing and other things that people his age shouldn’t have to do.

In 1992, Liebgott developed a tumor in his neck, near his windpipe that would cause a lot of pain. Jim took him to the hospital on Father’s Day. Shortly later, on June 28, 1992 Liebgott died. He was against a funeral and just wanted to be cremated, so his family did as he wished. They still have his ashes and letters and the Toccoa book.

#Real Life Band of Brothers #real band of brothers #joe liebgott #joseph liebgott #band of brothers #Band of Brothers fandom

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 3 years ago

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Money and Beds

“In 1973, the Michigan prison system had housed 7,683 men. By 1978, the number was well over 14,000. As early as 1977, the shortage of beds was described as "at crisis point"—and it got worse.

By 1980, 40 prisoners a day were arriving at the system's reception center at the State Prison of Southern Michigan. "Thus begins the daily game of musical beds," editorialized the Detroit News. "When 40 new people walk in the door, 40 others must be moved somewhere."

The Department of Corrections was unable to build enough new prisons to keep up with the supply of inmates. The new men's facilities that opened in the years 1976 to 1980 came, first, from building where prisons already existed and, second, from acquiring and remodeling institutional facilities in rural areas with depressed economies. Instances of the first were the Northside medium-security complex built at SPSM and the Riverside facility built in the town of Ionia (already home to two prisons). Examples of the second were the Kinross facility, converted from the abandoned Kincheloe Air Force Base near Sault Ste. Marie, and the Michigan Dunes facility, converted from a seminary in the southwestern part of the state. In addition, residence homes and halfway houses were acquired which by 1979 housed over 1,500 men. What the department really wanted to do, however, was to build or convert large facilities in or near Detroit. Here it was stymied. Its attempts to purchase and convert to prison use a department store warehouse, a child development center, and the former Women's House of Corrections were blocked by community and political pressure

In 1979, Governor William Milliken proposed to appropriate $400 million toward a plan which would eventually produce 21 new prisons. If it were not passed, Corrections Director Perry Johnson testified prophetically:

Either the courts will find that the conditions generally caused by this problem amount to unconstitutional treatment of prisoners and order a reduction of commitments or early release of prisoners, or the prisoners themselves will rebel against these conditions, resulting in disastrous institutional disturbances.

But hard times in the auto industry had cut deeply into the state's tax base, and the construction plan disappeared in the legislature. The effects of this crisis of money and beds were most serious at the state's two largest maximum-security prisons. In 1981, about 40 percent of Michigan's male inmates—5,600—were housed at SPSM, located north of the city of Jackson. This depression-era experiment in monumental prison construction had long set a standard in the corrections field for excessive size and unmanageability. Corrections policymakers had long hoped either to close it or divide it up into five or six smaller prisons. But now the state had no beds for the one or funds to spare for the other. In 1979, 200 inmates were "housed" on bunk beds in the stairwells, with no privacy, no place to keep their valuables, and no shelter from the "ever-burning overhead lights." Another 300 were trapped in the Reception and Guidance Center (RGC) under virtual lockdown conditions. Inmates "normally" spend a month in RGC while the department determines their security classification and where they are to serve their sentence. In practice, however, inmates might spend months there. The situation was worse, if possible, at the Michigan Reformatory (MR) in Ionia, the "oldest and most decrepit prison facility in Michigan." Built in the 1870s as an insane asylum, by 1980 it housed up to 1,500 inmates in space meant for 1,183. Supposedly intended for inmates under 23, the crunch had forced inmates from 15 to over 30 into the cramped and unsanitary quarters. One hundred eighty beds had been placed in the recreation areas, and the only indoor recreation was now an unhealthy basement beneath the kitchen.

"Sewage, leaking from rusted-out pipes, drips down five stories and collects in a stagnant pool in the basement," wrote a reporter in 1979. "The 19th-century sewage system has wooden lines which frequently collapse, forming foul subterranean pools. The steam heating system also frequently breaks down. Water freezes in the toilet bowls in winter."

The state had been trying to close MR as early as 1973. In 1977, the state auditor general condemned the facility as "substandard in every way." "Can you imagine a young guy looking at a ten-year stretch coming to a place like this?" asked MR Warden Dale Foltz in 1979. Replacing MR was the top priority of the proposed construction plan of 1979. Republican Governor Milliken was even more emphatic on a tour in October, 1980: "This institution is outworn, outdated, and ought to be literally razed to the ground."

- Bert Useem and Peter Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 115-116

#michigan department of corrections #michigan reformatory #prison politics #michigan politics #prison construction #prison building #prison overcrowding #budget cuts #penal populism #useem and kimball #prison riots #prison riot #american prison system #crime and punishment #history of crime and punishment #academic research #research quote #bert useem

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balloongator · 3 years ago

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BallonGator: An affordable online store

Welcome to BALLONGATOR, an Affordable Online Shopping Store or your own Online General Store. Balloon Gator is situated in Michigan, and our goal is to make a reputation for ourselves in the online marketplace. At Ballongator, you'll find almost everything of your daily usage.

Our fight has been challenging thus far, with many setbacks due to our attempts to combine the best of multiple shopping experiences into one singular experience. We've worked out how to use online marketing to provide high-quality products to the rest of the globe at an affordable price after many trials and errors.

History of BallonGator

Our testing began on minor channels like Facebook and Craigslist, where we fine-tuned our marketing strategy and drew in serious buyers. We eventually ended up with higher-quality products, better networks, and the need to buy warehouses to keep all of the fantastic products we had purchased.

Products and Categories

We have millions of products from various categories, which are too affordable with premium quality. We believe in quality and, more than that, customer satisfaction. Our online general store has Auto parts accessories, garden accessories, cameras, healthcare products, electronics, gadgets, and many more. Besides these, we also have categories for women like home decors accessories, health and beauty products, etc.

Like other Online Sporting Goods Stores, i.e., eBay, Amazon, we also offer various sports accessories. You can purchase any things related to sports accessories that are available on our websites. Here are some of the major categories from where you can choose products that meet your need:

· AUTO PARTS & ACCESSORIES

· CAMERAS & ACCESSORIES

· CLOTHING, SHOES & ACCESSORIES

· CRAFTS

· ELECTRONICS

· FITNESS

· HEALTHCARE, LAB & DENTAL

· HEALTH & BEAUTY

· HOME & GARDEN

· MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS & GEAR

· OUTDOOR & SPORTING GOODS

· PARTY SUPPLIES

· PET SUPPLIES

· TEST, MEASUREMENT & INSPECTION EQUIPMENT

· TOBACCIANA

· TOOLS

· TOYS & HOBBIES

Shipping and Refund Policy

BallonGator is confident in the quality of its items. Within 30 days of receiving your product, you can return it for an exchange or a full refund. Except the return is due to our fault, the buyer is responsible for return shipping.

If you request an exchange, we will cover the cost of mailing the replacement to you. Please contact us using the customer service link if you have any questions.

#Clothing Accessories Online #Online Sporting Goods Stores #Auto Parts Accessories #Online General Store #health and beauty products

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archinform · 4 years ago

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Lost Chicago Building 4 - First Regiment Armory

One expects to see knights on horseback issuing forth from the gaping arch of the gloomy, forbidding structure, its slanting dark-gray stone lower walls giving way to a deep brick-red upper portion, complete with corner turrets. It seems transplanted from some medieval legend, yet its looming appearance in late-19th-century Chicago’s near south side was carefully calculated.

In 1890, the wealthy and socially prestigious First Regiment of the Illinois National Guard erected its own castle-style armory on South Michigan Avenue. It housed a parade ground, office space for all 12 companies and regimental officers, locker rooms, a gym, a library, several small parlors, and a large weapons storage facility.[1]

Designed by the firm of Burnham and Root in 1890, the Armory is an impressive, though rather curious work from their oeuvre. According to contemporary accounts, the building was designed to serve as a true medieval-type fortification, with a heavily protected arched door, firing slits, and battlements. In addition, interior provisions were made for the training and accommodation of the regiment, as well as for its social functions. The ornamental stone and brick mass of the exterior could indeed withstand a siege, if only symbolically. The severe cubic form with battered masonry walls and a great central arch recall the earlier, more sophisticated designs of H. H. Richardson.[2]

What did such a curious, yet outwardly forbidding, structure mean for 19th-century urban America? Such buildings were part of a cultural tradition, not only of military but of urban history. It was only in the 20th century that a corps of reserve soldiers came under federal control, an important part of the country’s military system. Up to then, “state-controlled militias of citizen-soldiers were the nation’s primary resource for civil defense and response to civil unrest.”[3] In the decades leading up to the Civil War, such citizen militias had three primary functions:

First and foremost, it was a military body charged with ensuring both domestic and international peace; second, it was a civic entity whose responsibilities included appearing at both somber and festive public events; finally, it was an elite fraternal organization for members of New York’s middle and upper classes.[4]

Office of Burnham & Root, Chicago, perspective drawing for the “First Infantry Armory.” Microfilm frame 153, Ryerson and Burnham Architecture Archive, Art Institute of Chicago.

“Design for First Regiment Armory, Chicago,” signed P.F. Newberry, Del. Inland Architect and News Record, Vol. 13 No. 7, June 1889, pl. 90 fol. p. 92.

Not apparent at first sight are the darker purposes of such militaristic structures: as expressions of rabidly anti-union, anti-rabble rouser, anti-socialist sentiments of such powerful men as Marshall Field, department store magnate and richest man in Chicago. The building's appearance, fortress-like and commanding, was a product of the fear of class warfare felt by the upper classes of Chicago society. Around 1890, “new specially designed and constructed armories came to mark the urban landscape with distinctive forms.”[5]

The Armory stood guard over the gilded aristocracy of nearby South Prairie Avenue, at that time the enclave of the very rich. Such late-19th-century armories, notes an AIA guide to Chicago, “were fortified like castles to preserve public order against possible workers' demonstrations and other civil unrest.”[6]

The heyday of armory building was between 1880 and 1910. The sponsors and builders of those armories expected that they would be used in preserving the peace and protecting private and public property. Because riots could happen quickly, they also felt that armories should be located near rapid transit, to facilitate a speedy assembly of the militia. Why did prominent citizens ask authorities to spend public funds on an essentially private military building? The answer is that there existed such a degree of labor strife and violence during that period, that society's elite felt a strong threat to its world, which was thought could collapse momentarily unless proper defensive measures were taken.[7]

In Chicago, such outbreaks of labor or anti-industrial violence included the Haymarket Riot of 1886, followed by civil unrest during the depression of 1893, and the Pullman Strike in 1894. The gap between rich and poor grew ever wider during the Gilded Age; an increasingly industrial and socially-stratified society exposed the cracks in America’s economic and social systems, and led groups of wealthy individuals to militarize urban areas against repeats of such violence.

In Chicago, Marshall Field, the department store magnate, underwrote a similar militarization. He donated land three blocks from his home on the city’s “Millionaire’s Row,” an address he shared with fellow grandees like George Pullman and Phillip Armour, for the construction of the First Regiment Armory: “The two upper stories, on top of the massive masonry of the first floor, are crowned at the angles by great bastions, from which an enfilade fire may be directed against any side of the walls,” as a contemporary observer described it. Field and his associates then furnished the police with four twelve-pound cannons, a Gatling gun, 296 breech-loading rifles and 60,000 bullets.

In other words, in the late 19th century, when the Robber Barons wanted a militarized police force to defend their wealth and power from those left behind, they often had to reach into their own pockets to supply the guns and even carry a gun themselves as a militiaman.[8]

Fearing a potentially violent working class uprising, the residents of Prairie Avenue placed political pressure on politicians to construct an armory to protect Chicago’s most prominent businessmen. Daniel Burnham and John Root were commissioned to design the First Regiment Armory at 1552 S. Michigan Avenue.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1911. First Regiment Armory is at upper right.

Side view: Ryerson and Burnham Architecture Archive, Bldg. 51 Museum Archives

The above images are from microfilm of the original plans by the offices of Burnham & Root in the Ryerson and Burnham Architecture Archive.

Armory plans. Ryerson and Burnham Architecture Archive, Art Institute of Chicago; reproduced in Hoffman, The Architecture of John Wellborn Root, p. 141.

Interior: The Main Hall

Constructed 1889-91, the Burnham and Root-designed structure stood at the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Sixteenth Street until its destruction in 1967.

To the First Illinois Regiment Armory John Root imparted the Richardson (or, better, the Romanesque) feeling for great wall spaces and small penetrations. Massiveness and vigor are combined with romantic charm after the manner of a master. The building is wholly without ornament, obtaining its effect, as architecture should, by dignity of proportion and the complete solution of the problem.[9]

The Armory boasted thick stone walls, rounded turrets, and slots for firing rifles when defending military troops stationed inside. The structure stood about 75 feet high, roughly three stories, its sides measuring between 163 and 172 feet. A canted base of rusticated sandstone stressed the building’s solidity, while the upper walls of vitrified brown brick rose 35 feet above this base. The arched opening or sallyport (the only entrance into the ground floor) measured 40 feet wide and 10 feet deep, “scaled to accept sixteen men marching abreast.”[10]

The entrance opened onto a drill floor 150 by 168 feet. The roof featured skylights that provided natural light to the interior. A lengthy description [available in the HABS Report at this link] of the Armory appeared in “Design for First Regiment Armory, Chicago,” Inland Architect, vol. 13, June 1889, p.92. It noted:

A pleasant feature is to be the social life in the armory. The floor of the main hall is of hardwood, highly polished, and will be kept in excellent condition for dancing. With this in view the men will be required to wear rubber-soled shoes while drilling. The only feature requiring criticism is the hanging of the great main door. This weighs twelve thousand eight hundred pounds, and is balanced by a large weight, making the entire strain twenty-five thousand six hundred pounds, which is supported on five single pulleys, attached to a light beam, secured to the ceiling of the second floor.[11]

Root’s design found its source in the medieval architecture of France; it was compared to such structures as the 14th-century keep at Vincennes.

The sandstone masonry was magnificent, especially where the wall returned at the surrounds of the sallyport, a detail reminiscent of the granite angles at the base of the Rookery. In the brickwork, the first register of stilted window openings was beautifully ordered by the relieving arches above and rifle slots below.[12]

Andrew Rebori, architect and writer, described the building as “an individual version of Romanesque,” but in “the free and Romantic style which aims not primarily at elegance, but at an effect of massiveness and vigor, and which has for its first object to break in upon the spectator's apathy.”[13]

The new structure was destroyed by fire in 1893, and immediately replaced, presumably to the original plans. Contemporary photos show the building in what appeared to be in a state of ruin.[14]

Construction (or reconstruction) in the mid-1890s, following a fire which gutted the building.

The anticipated threats to the citizens of Prairie Avenue and vicinity never materialized; the high society crowd instead attended lavish social events at the Armory. The venue hosted auto shows in the first decades of the 20th century, as well as the occasional dog show. It was used for training and assembly of soldiers destined to be shipped off to the Great War. Prairie Avenue itself had ceased to be popular by the late 1890s, hastened by the encroachment of industrial buildings and a “notorious vice district just to the west,” the Levee District, which rose during the 1893 World’s Fair.[15] By the early 1900s the grand houses were being sold off for business space or converted to apartments. In the next few decades, many of the mansions would be demolished.

The Armory was used for multiple types of public events. Left: Auto Show 1906; right: Dog Show n.d.

First World War, 33rd Division 1st Infantry regiment leaving armory, Chicago. Image: https://www.pritzkermilitary.org/explore/museum/past-exhibits/lest-we-forget-doughboys-sammies-and-sailors-great-war/first-infantry-chicago-armory

1965. Richard Nickel photo

Later photos of the First Regiment Armory show a huge painted Chevrolet advertisement across its face, while on one corner a For Sale sign is displayed. Just prior to and during its 1967 demolition, the Armory’s interior and exterior were documented by Chicago architect John Vinci and photographer Richard Nickel.[16]

Above three images: color slide images taken by John Vinci in 1966. Source: Bldg. 51 Museum Archives https://www.urbanremainschicago.com/news-and-events/2019/03/05/a-rare-look-at-burnham-roots-first-regiment-armory-captured-through-color-photographs/

1967: demolition; Richard Nickel photo

Notes:

[1] “Armories,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History. Accessed at: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1736.html

[2] “Significance,” Historic American Buildings Survey, c. 1933, HABS IL-1069. Retrieved from: https://www.loc.gov/item/il0108/

[3] Shepard, Cassim, “The Armory and the City: Civic Spaces of the National Guard,” Urban Omnibus. Accessed at: https://urbanomnibus.net/2013/09/the-armory-and-the-city-civic-spaces-of-the-national-guard/

[4] Todd, Nancy L., New York’s Historic Armories. State University of New York Press, 2006, pp. 20-22. Cited in Shepard, Cassim, “The Armory and the City: Civic Spaces of the National Guard,” Urban Omnibus. Accessed at: https://urbanomnibus.net/2013/09/the-armory-and-the-city-civic-spaces-of-the-national-guard/

[5] Encyclopedia of Chicago. Accessed at: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1736.html

[6] AIA Guide to Chicago. University of Illinois Press, Cited in: https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM8RNY_National_Guard_Armory_reliefs_Chicago_IL

[7] Mahon, John K., History of the Militia and the National Guard. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983, p. 264. Cited in: Nelson, Cristina R., “The Armory Movement,” A Tale of Two Armories: Preservation Politics in New York City. M.A. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985, pp. 4-5. Accessed at: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/76395/14066875-MIT.pdf?sequence=2

[8] Paul, Mark, “Assault Rifles and Ice Buckets,” The California Fix. http://www.thecaliforniafix.com/thecaliforniafix/2014/8/20/when-militarized-cop-were-charity

Marshall Field owned the land on which the Armory stood and held a 99-year lease on the property:

August 10, 1940 –The land beneath the First Regiment Armory at the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and East Sixteenth Street is sold by the Estate of Marshall Field to the Standard Realty and Mortgage Company for an estimated $40,000. The sale is subject to a 99-year lease that Marshall Field made in 1890 with the First Infantry Armory Association at an annual ground rental of $4,000. The first armory was built on the property in 1893, but it burned down less than a year after it opened. It was replaced in 1894 at a cost of a half-million dollars, raised by popular subscription….

Connecting the Windy City.. http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/2018/08/august-10-1940-first-regiment-armory.html

[9] Moore, Charles, Daniel H. Burnham Architect and Planner of Cities. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1921, Vol. 1, pp. 29-30.

[10] Hoffman, Donald, The Architecture of John Wellborn Root. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 142.

[11] “The Armory of the First Regiment, I.N.G.M,” Industrial Chicago, Vol.2 (Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1891), pp.537-89. Quoted in HABS descriptive data, report ILL-1069, p.4. Accessed at: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/pnp/habshaer/il/il0100/il0108/data/il0108data.pdf

[12] Hoffman, Donald, The Architecture of John Wellborn Root. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 142.

[13] Rebori, Andrew N., “The Work of Burnman & Root, D.H. Burnham, D.H. Burnham and Company, and Graham Burnham & Co.” Architectural Record, vol. 38 no. 7, July 1915, p. 41.

[14] Connecting the Windy City. http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/2018/08/august-10-1940-first-regiment-armory.html

The HABS Report ILL- 1069 confirms that a cornerstone on the building’s southeast corner carried this inscription: “FIRST INFANTRY ARMORY BUILT 1890 BURNED APRIL 25th 1893 REBUILT 1894.”

[15] “Levee District,” WTTW Chicago Time Machine. Accessed at: https://interactive.wttw.com/timemachine/18th-street-and-prairie-avenue

[16] Nordstrom, Eric, Urban Remains. https://www.urbanremainschicago.com/news-and-events/2019/03/05/a-rare-look-at-burnham-roots-first-regiment-armory-captured-through-color-photographs/

Chicago architect John Vinci was there in 1966 (alongside Richard Nickel) to document first hand some of these rarely seen second floor vistas. in color and never previously publicized, these slides show the ornament of the second floor soldiers' rooms, relatively untouched since they were last inhabited by tenants.

#Armory #first regiment armory #chicago #Architecture #burnham and root #gilded age #military #history

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