Back down to earth with new job,
Farms resident told her firing story

Far from the glamour of the Oscar telecast Sunday night were men and women watching at home across the nation, rooting for “Up in the Air” to win a few awards. These were the real-life victims of downsizing featured in the George Clooney film, about a man who makes his living doing the dirty work bosses are too cowardly to do – firing people.

One of them was Erin Welsh-Krengel from Grosse Pointe Farms. Welsh-Krengel, 31, was happily toiling as a media planner for an advertising agency which served General Motors when the gurus at the one-time auto giant pulled the plug on her brand.

She planned to watch the Oscars with a few friends, but also plans to be at the Woods branch of the library March 16 at 7 p.m. for a special screening. read more...

City artist is a contender in
Let's Save Michigan Poster Contest

Grosse Pointe City art director and illustrator Margaret Kelly was one of 60 finalists from more than 300 entries in the Detroit Institute of Art’s “Let’s Save Michigan Poster Contest.” She is now in the running for a $1,000 prize to be given to the artist whose work receives the most votes on the Let’s Save Michigan website. 

The competition — sponsored by the DIA and Let’s Save Michigan, a group supported by the Michigan Municipal League — invited artists and designers to create posters that would serve as a “call to action ... to help rally citizens to do the hard work that’s necessary to position Michigan as a state that will thrive in the future.” The only requirement for the designs was that they include the phrase “Let’s Save Michigan.”

Kelly used Detroit’s Joe Louis read more...

Dave's is more than a barbershop;
it's a Grosse Pointe clearing house

Dave Brown wakes up every day at 5 a.m. at his home in New Baltimore. He checks the weather first, to see if it’s a good day for golf, then gives his a wife a kiss and drives about 30 minutes to his barber shop in Grosse Pointe City. 

“Everyday’s a new day,” said Brown, owner of Dave’s Haircutting & Styling shop. read more...

Do new Pointe businesses herald
an economic spring? Let's hope so

A restaurant of the year award, a new grill in the Park, a coney island cafe called Drummy Dogs across from South High School, an alliance of entrepreneurs in the City and a new magazine for the Pointes – all could be signs of an economic spring at the end of a long, cold winter.

Hour Detroit magazine’s designation of the Dirty Dog Café as the Restaurant of the Year for 2010 gives us two such recognized eateries within 100 yards of each other on the Hill in the Farms, the Hill Seafood and Chop House being the other.

Hour’s writer Christopher Cook said this about the magazine’s choice this year:
“Chef Andre Neimanis’ cooking … exemplifies [Nat] Adderley’s aphorism — ‘Son,  jazz is knowing all the rules of music so that you can know how to break them without breaking the music.’"

Neimanis "knows how to break them. And he does so exquisitely to achieve his American bistro menu – taking traditional American dishes, breaking them down and rebuilding them by adding a culinary riff here and there and spinning them forward.”
  read more...

Raise a glass and say 'Scholes,'
for an unsung All-American

Before Clarke Currie Scholes died, he made arrangements for his friends to get together and have a party at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial.

You may remember him over the past four decades as a tall, rugged-looking, white-haired man who took part in Grosse Pointe Theatre productions. In many ways they were his family. 

The man whose name sounds like a Swedish drinking toast died of heart failure at Henry Ford Hospital Feb. 5 with little media note.

The passing of the five-time All-American and three time NCAA swimming champion, who is enshrined in three Halls of Fame, was reported by Tim Staudt, a sports anchor for WILX Television in Lansing. 

“Clarke Scholes, a 1952 Olympic gold medalist, an MSU athletics Hall of Famer, died Friday in Detroit. Scholes, who had heart problems, was 78. (He was 79.)  He won the 100-meter freestyle in Helsinki in a then-Olympic-record time of 57.4 seconds.  He won five NCAA swim titles for Michigan State from 1950-52 and two years ago was enshrined in the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.  He went on to become a manufacturer’s rep after his college days.” read more...

A quilt trip to the Ford House
launches new memories for guests

Since Kathleen Mullins took over as president of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in the Shores, the lovely 87-acre site has been abuzz with new activities, a new mission statement and a new strategic plan.

All were evident in the latest show at the activities center, where a talented calligrapher and an amazing quilting artist have combined their works. The exhibit kicked off with a reception for the two artists — Suzanne Marshall and Eleanor Winters — and drew quilters and quilting fans from across the metro area.

They call the show “Pieced Together — Inspirations in Collages and Quilts,” and it is free and open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Wayne State professors, city officials, retired newspaper executives, attorneys and others mingled during the opening reception, while Mullins jokingly worried that someone might baptize the new carpet with red wine. read more...

On the lookout for local lions,
and a tireless booster moves on

If you travel to +42 degrees, 23.216 and -082 degrees, 53.863, you’ll find a couple of statuary lions. In fact they are the lions flanking the entrance to the Grosse Pointe War Memorial. They recently joined hundreds of other lion statues featured on Waymarking.com.

If you take a picture of yourself with the Alger House lions, you can post it on the site, which is devoted to noting points of interest, historical and otherwise, around the globe. One category is lions, 614 of them scattered across 25 pages. The Alger House lions made the list Jan. 28.

You have to wonder who collects this stuff, organizes and posts it with pictures on websites. Other lions that have made the list include a lion drinking fountain in Lufkin, Texas, the Mitty Monarch in front of Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, Calif., and a couple of lions in front of a fire station in San Jose, Costa Rica. Oh, and a pair of Lions Club lions at Joe Adamo Memorial Park in South Porcupine, Ontario. read more...

Park native found path to teaching
after Wayne State basketball glory

Wayne State University’s all-time single-season scorer, Hall of Fame basketball player Al Ament, has some simple advice for student athletes: Focus on your studies; you will probably never play in the NBA.

In college, Albert Ament, a Grosse Pointe Park native, was the ideal student athlete. He lettered four years on the WSU men’s basketball team as a forward and center from 1985-89. His senior year, he was all-conference, all-academic and runner up for player of the year, leading the team in points with a total of 654, a record that stands today. read more...

Congregational minister speaks on
the power of prayer (but not GPS)

On his way to lecture at the Grosse Pointe Ecumenical Men’s Breakfast recently, the Rev. Richard Yeager-Stiver decided to use his GPS unit to navigate to Memorial Church on the lakefront.

Luckily he didn’t let his new technology dictate his moves. His unit advised him to turn left, which would have put him in Lake St. Clair, so he ignored it. But then the computer-generated directions switched to: You are in the lake, turn right. You are in the lake, turn right.

Yeager-Stiver, who leads the Grosse Pointe Congregational Church in the Farms, arrived safely for his lecture to the men of all faiths who gather weekly to learn about other religions and hear a 20-minute spiritual message.

The minister talked about the power of prayer and its importance in these perilous times. As an illustration he cited an apocryphal story about a Baptist church that started a campaign of petitions and prayers to block a local bar from erecting a new building. The week before the grand opening, as the story goes, lightning struck the building and it burned to the ground. read more...

Bookworms find a new way
to love literature – e-readers

The book has endured in ink-on-paper form since before movable type delivered it to the masses, but for the first time in perhaps centuries, it has some serious competition.

Kindles and other electronic readers are winning the hearts of locals. Many found them under their Christmas trees this year. Sales of electronic reading devices have doubled in the last year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, sponsor of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month. It predicts sales will double again in 2010.

The devices are thinner than magazines and weigh less than a pound. They hold thousands of books, newspapers and magazines and run for a week before needing a battery boost. More than 400,000 books are available for downloading, many for less than $10. read more...