WobblyReport

Finding an outlet willing to publish my latest piece was a challenge and I'm grateful to Gina at DistillSocial for agreeing to run it. Numerous outlets (ProPublica, for example) expressed concerns that I was misrepresenting myself somehow even though I assured them that I fully intended to do the best work I could in the role for which I was applying. Here's an excerpt: In an online application submitted in late January, I’d truthfully submitted my five most recent employers, three of which are media companies, and other basic background information. Less than a week later I received messages inviting me to call in for prescreening. I called the number provided January 28 in the early afternoon. The GEO Group representative, who speaks with a slight accent from some other continent, asked what qualified me for the position and I leveraged clerical support work for a hospital system, which involved handling and examining many sensitive documents. I mentioned a few other relevant...

I will be gone — but not forever   A brief stint as an editor at an under-resourced community newspaper backwater has come to an end and a new journey as a mercenary, dissident journalist and underground musician has begun.  No regrets.

Federal incentives fuel closer ICE partnerships with police agencies Local law enforcement agreements with ICE not yet impacting operations in Michigan Originally published at  MichiganAdvance.com   /2026/01/08/federal-incentives-fuel-closer-ice-partnerships-with-michigan-police-agencies/ The fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday—after the agent fired through the window of her car—has renewed national scrutiny of ICE’s expanding role and the growing involvement of local law enforcement in federal immigration operations. As federal immigration enforcement expands nationwide, a growing number of local law enforcement agencies, including in Michigan, are entering formal agreements with ICE, potentially reshaping the relationship between federal and local policing. The Minneapolis shooting, reported as ICE officers were attempting to stop a vehicle, has intensified concerns among civil rights advocates about accounta...

This story might as well begin with onboarding at my most recent full-time position a little less than two years ago. Having relocated in order to accept it, I declined to enroll in the employer-offered healthcare insurance plans. I was to be our household's sole income earner until my spouse found work, and considering other more immediate costs (rent, utilities, food, etc.), none of the plans on offer would be affordable, I presumed. Then last fall, after a promotion and a raise, and after my spouse had found steady work, I sought treatment in a local emergency ward after a particularly sustained episode of uncontrollable vomiting. These episodes had been occuring sporadically for the past few years. I'd sought treatment once prior but had recovered quickly enough to be discharged with nausea medication and no specific diagnosis. Last fall, the doctor who reviewed computed tomography scans of my torso concluded that a hernia surgery almost two decades prior caused scar tiss...

We maintained a local focus at the newspapers I co-edited, reporting on what happened in and immediately around our designated coverage areas. Happenings farther off may have received mention if they had a more or less immediate impact on the aforementioned areas. To decide whether to report on activity in the state capitol or even Washington, D.C., we monitored and analyzed other media. Here are my views on some recent, trending Michigan news topics. Data centers Around the state, local residents have been responding to data center construction proposals in or near their communities. Recently in nearby Kalkaska County, residents loudly opposed plans by Rocklocker LLC to develop a data center on 1,400 acres of public land. The company ceased their pursuit of the development after numerous public fora at which residents were overwhelmingly opposed. Developers are meeting similar opposition to plans in Saline Township, Howell and Lansing. Michigan is already home to over 40 data cent...

The first substantial snow accumulation in northern Michigan is an opportunity for myriad adventures and experiences unavailable to Michiganders at any other time of year. Scarcity means value, according to prevailing wisdom, so our experiences at this time of year must be highly valuable. Toward this (ad hoc, in the old tongue), we offer the following valuable opportunities attending the season’s first offerings of accumulated snow and ice. Rediscovering what we had hidden All those cold-weather garments were getting musty and weird in our basements and the backs of our closets. Even the ugly sweaters that are in plastic storage containers functioning as tables and/or shelves are desperate for air and light, despite their nearer proximity to more versatile textiles. Here is one more opportunity to reshuffle — or reorganize, for those of us believing in personal progress — belongings and reassess needs. Some of that summer-wear, too, might be more suited for donation than storage u...

Turkey, Lions and grandmother are the three essential ingredients that make Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. This year’s Thanksgiving celebration is a relatively small gathering for us but all the essential ingredients are here. We’ve brought spring rolls and deviled eggs to this year’s feast. Other family members claimed dibs on all the principal, traditional foods. At least, we assumed so, from fragmented memories of fragmented plans from fragmented conversations. The drawing together of these fragments is what makes a particular Thanksgiving. This year, grandmother’s daughter is hosting. Sister is missing, being at her husband’s family’s Thanksgiving, a bit like when everyone realizes no one is bringing pumpkin pie. Awareness of the lack persists before, during and after the event, which becomes defined both by what is present and what is not. I’d been the first to pull this kind of disappearing act when living and working abroad during the mid aughts. After several years in a row,...

Riding a motorcycle in Northern Michigan during the month of November is neither for the ill-prepared nor the faint of heart. A body must be prepared both for an initial shock and, depending on circumstances, an endurance challenge. A blast of 60-mile-an-hour cold wind, its chilly tendrils reaching into any part of a rider’s outfit that isn’t airtight, testing the layers underneath, tends to cause one’s face, neck and shoulders to tense up. Full-face helmets are the best remedy but I haven’t yet replaced one I left in the Pacific Northwest in 2008. On a solo mission in early October this year, the cold crept up and took me by surprise. Attending a meeting in the southeast of our coverage area led to a return ride to home base after dark on one of the first nights the temperature sank below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). Consistent, unseasonably warm temperatures in the days and nights just prior had lulled me into overconfidence and I was without gloves. Between pockets...

Readers and longtime subscribers have been critical of a few of our recent editorial decisions at the papers I edit and related social media posts have generated heated discussion. So, I thought it would be a good time to give everyone a look under the hood and describe how we decide what to put in the newspaper. Our first priority is to report as much as we can by traveling around the area, taking photographs and talking with people. We are primarily a team of two persons in this regard, covering three rural northeast lower Michigan counties, with a couple of regular, freelance contributors assisting. We rely on invitations, community buzz and personal interest in deciding what to attend. Our next priority is to solicit and curate community contributions and press releases. When coaches and parents of student athletes send us photographs and gameplay details, we take pains to include them. We also work in collaboration with coaches and parents to develop stories from a combination o...

The Immigration Act of 1918, also known as the Alien Anarchists Exclusion Act of 1918, was signed into U.S. law by President Woodrow Wilson on October 16, 1918. It expanded upon the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 to further target anarchists, anti-war protesters and members of radical labor unions. The 1903 law had come in response to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The assassin, Leon Frank Czolgosz, was a 28-year-old born in Detroit to a Polish-American family. Colgocz moved with his family to Alpena in 1880 and to Posen in 1883. He began his working life in a Pennsylvania glass factory at the age of 16. At 17 he found work at Cleveland Rolling Mill Company in Ohio. He worked there through an economic crash and labor strikes in 1893 and more violent strikes in 1898, before going to live as a recluse on a farm his father had bought in Warrensville, Ohio. President McKinley himself was born and raised in Ohio to English and Scots-Irish parents, whose famili...

I tagged along with circa 240 5th graders this week on a farm and forest educational event hosted through a joint effort by a county conservation district, local U.S. Forest Service staff, farmers and other volunteers. Here I am 10 minutes before I found the farm.

The recent preemption and television broadcast restoration of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC should remind us to be clear-headed about our right to free speech in the United States of America in 2025, and in which sorts of media free speech is even possible. As Hamline University political science professor and author David Schultz observed, both Kimmel’s brief suspension and the imminent cancelation of The Late Show on CBS with Stephen Colbert reveal first and foremost “the overwhelming grip of corporate, for-profit media on our public life.” Much of the reporting on Kimmel’s suspension completely omits mention of a $6.2 billion merger that ABC affiliate broadcaster Nexstar plans with Tegna — a merger which requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice. Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which revealed some of its own merger and acquisitions plans earlier this summer, announced Kimmel’s suspension on the stations they manage only hours ...

The prognosis was a natural clearing of the obstruction or, failing that, surgical intervention. The diagnosis, following an expensive computed tomography scan, was a small bowel obstruction caused by eating too many raw vegetables. I had overdosed on salad. The scan revealed a pinch-point in the small intestine caused by scar tissue resulting from a hernia operation almost two decades ago. Too much fibrous material can stop up at this point, causing any solid or liquid material taken orally to become a ticking time-bomb—what cannot go down, must come up. In effect, this meant periods of intense abdominal pain and regurgitation. It started a couple years ago. Ascertaining the cause was a relief, although the bill for 24 hours’ observation and the CT scan will take us a year to pay, at over $400 per month. We couldn’t afford insurance when my employer offered and were not eligible to enroll when my spouse found full-time employment last spring. We’ll be able to enroll in November and...

The events in New York City on September 11, 2001, separate what came before and all that has happened since in American society. The front page of the Heralds and Independent*  all described local residents as “stunned” by the tragedy, when several commercial airplanes were hijacked and crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, causing thousands of casualties. Many first responders valiantly sacrificed their own lives in attempts to rescue those still in the towers while they were still standing, before they both collapsed. Amid the confusion and before the dust had settled, politicians initiated the most significant restructuring of the federal government in modern history, while dubbing 9/11 Patriot Day. The changes were sudden, although the preparations had been long and deliberate. The social climate that helped usher in the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was one of unity and patriotism, but a unity and patriot...

This morning I utilized a generic, OS X native Epson driver to produce two copies of the document shown below with the FX-890 dot matrix printer shown above. 

Michigan’s Public Act 451 purports to require school to begin after Labor Day. Most Michigan schools do not. The law was a gift to the tourism industry lobby, passed by the state legislature in 2005. Educators were against it from the start, preferring local control. Exceptions within the law have allowed most schools that control. Current, local, prevailing wisdom on when to start the school year was not forthcoming last Friday afternoon, a few days before school started in Standish, Au Gres, West Branch and Mio and a few days after students’ first day in Fairview. Phones at administrative offices went to voicemail, sometimes without so much as a ring. The same went for the Michigan Association of School Boards. A representative of the Michigan Department of Education was careful to explain the department only issues waivers to districts that request them and that they do not analyze any resulting data. Off the record, he suggested collective bargaining contracts are influential i...

After Sunday’s 5k jog around the south side of Omer City, around noontime, my body was desperate to shed accumulated heat. The Rifle River Public Access provided opportunity to fully submerge. People preparing for or packing up after a float downriver were bustling around both sides of my vehicle as I returned. Using a towel, I changed into a pair of bottoms with pockets, dropped my key into one of them and locked the car doors, readying to head back down to the river for an extended cool-down. As the door swung shut and the alarm system chimed its activated status, I patted my front pocket and felt instant regret. There on the driver’s seat of the vehicle lay the key. Its friends, wallet and phone, sat in the passenger seat. As I voiced my dismay, the lot around me quickly cleared out and within minutes of the tragic blunder, I was quite alone, with nothing to do but start walking with extended thumb in the direction of the spare key, in West Branch. An Omer resident picked me up not ...

Running shorts On runs, sentences... July was a month of making up for lost training time. My log after 22 days showed more than 92 miles jogged. Here are brief reflections on some of those miles. Rifle River Recreation Area The temperature was close to 90 F (32 C) on July 5 for this jaunty two-miler through the hilly, difficult section of Rifle River Recreation Area’s trails, beginning from the parking area near Grousehaven Lake. The route is fully shaded and runs along several ridges, with the feel of a coastal trail. Two others hiked the route in the opposite direction to my own. The route is easily navigable. More loops, longer ones extending south that I explored last year, are accessible from the same parking area and trailhead. But those were for another day. The lake access was teeming with people relaxing, barbecuing and cooling off. Entry is free with a Recreation Passport, which is available as an opt-in on license plate renewal. Loud Creek Non-Motorized Trail Sys...