From the Research Desk

Take a few moments this month to relax with some of your favorite poems, or to discover some new ones.  Stop by the UDM McNichols campus library to pick up volumes of recent Pulitzer prize winners including Gregory Pardlo’s Digest, Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections, and Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars.  For something closer to home, check out Roses and Revolutions, by Dudley Randall, who served as a poet-in-residence in 1969 at what was then the University of Detroit. The...

Stuff happens, and then accumulates. Of course it’s important stuff that you’ll want to use again, else you wouldn’t keep it, right? As long as it’s just a little stuff you can let it lie around randomly and just remember where everything is. Of course, your mother or significant other or even a helpful friend may foul everything up by putting your stuff where it belongs, but otherwise the system works well enough. But eventually there is just too much...

In my continued efforts to locate individuals and groups doing good work for Detroit and surrounding environs, I came upon these.  Please spread the word about them; and even consider joining one of them if you are so inclined.   People’s Potluck Detroit A spinoff of Occupy Detroit, this group holds an educational potluck on the fourth Monday of most months (meaning the next one will likely be on March 28).  The February potluck was focused on the resistance to...

It’s the one of the most notorious dates in history; the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. It’s been immortalized by Shakespeare: Soothsayer: “Beware the Ides of March.” Act 1 Scene 2 Caesar: (To the Soothsayer) “The Ides of March are come. Soothsayer: “Ay Caesar, but not gone. Julius Caesar: Act 3 Scene 1 http://shakespeare.mit.edu/julius_caesar/full.html Almost everyone has heard the phrase “Beware the Ides of March” and they know it means certain doom, but where does all of...