DIVIDED LOYALTIES: Live in Michigan, but root for Green Bay? You must be a Yooper. (Photo by Flickr user Mike Morbeck; used under Creative Commons license) If you live in the Upper Peninsula and fly a booger-green and pus-yellow flag from your house, please realize you are grossing us out. And you should move. Back […]
Ron Riekki
Ron Riekki was born and raised in the U.P. His books include “U.P.” (Ghost Road Press), “The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works” (Wayne State University Press), and other books, plays, and chapbooks. He has twice been nominated for Illinois Press Awards for journalism and prefers waffles for brunch. The views and assertions of guest columnists do not necessarily reflect those of Bridge or The Center for Michigan.
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
Why do readers find ghost stories too haunting to put down?
THE HAUNTING: Year after year, season after season, ghost stories are reliable sellers, tapping into our deepest yearnings. (Photo by Flickr user Andrew McFarlane; used under Creative Commons license) I have noticed, at several bookstores, an entire row dedicated to tales about Michigan ghosts with titles like “Haunted Michigan: recent encounters with active spirits,” “Michigan’s […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
In examining U.P.'s issues, Native Americans weigh in
TIME TO TALK: Amidst the Upper Peninsula’s beauty lie problems bedeviling its Native American population. (Photo by Flickr user rosefirerising; used under Creative Commons license) Sometimes I get disappointed in Yoopers when they refuse to discuss the problems we have in the area, wanting to pretend there are none. I’d much rather address them and […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
No Michigan poet laureate? In the U.P., a grassroots campaign
TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR WORDS?: How can a region “by the shores of Gitche Gumee” not have a poet laureate? (Bridge photo by Nancy Derringer) No less an authority than the Library of Congress notes that Michigan has no poet laureate, a shortcoming we share with Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In national benchmarks […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
U.P. natives reveal the good places to eat, without a pasty among them
HAY THERE, PICKFORD: That’s the Main Street Café in the background, but if you show up between July 31 and Aug. 4, you can enjoy Pickford’s Hay Days festival along with the whitefish special. (Courtesy photo/Pickford Community Library) Novelist Jim Harrison once observed that the farther north you travel in Michigan, the worse the food […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
Under the postcard-perfect U.P., a reality only natives see
WHAT DO YOU SEE?: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is a land of grand vistas, but also a land of blood, of joblessness, of heartache, writes Ron Riekki. (Bridge photo/Nancy Derringer) I’ve lived in Mount Pleasant, Oshtemo, Forest Park, Rogers Park, and worked in Chicago, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Oak Park and Mackinac Island. I’m probably forgetting some places. […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.