Spring into Summer
Boy's Life, 8 Mile Crawl, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Glen Rice, Hornets Invade the Supreme Court
Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This issue includes the best folk music venues in Ann Arbor, a celebration of childhood, a local food crawl between 8 Mile and 9 Mile Roads, the Fogerty brothers’ band, Michigan’s all-time scoring leader, and the highest court in the land. I hope you like the picks and pics.
Spring is about ready to give way to summer. The Northville Swim Club is open, the Tigers sit atop the American League, and it’s a great time for a walk in the park.
I thought of a better name for the last issue. The title should have been “The Midges of Madison County,” even though Madison, Wisconsin is actually in Dane County.
Also in the last issue, I lied when I said, “As a former Knicks fan in the 60s and 70s, I will root for them this year to win the championship for the first time in 52 years.” I am actually rooting for the Indiana Pacers, one of four ABA teams that made it into the NBA in 1976. Indiana is the former team of Freddie Lewis, subsequently a star for the Spirits of St. Louis, one of the two remaining ABA teams not admitted to the NBA. The Spurs and Nuggets have since won NBA championships, and the Pacers and Nets are former ABA champions. Tyrese Halliburton had a triple double last night to lead the Pacers to a 3-1 series lead. Go Pacers!
Two years ago I presented at the 9th Midwest KM Symposium in Kent, Ohio. On June 13, 2025, I will present at the 10th Midwest Knowledge Management Symposium, back in Southfield, Michigan where the first one was held in 2008.
Roger’s friend and former basketball teammate at Kalamazoo College, Eli Savit, announced his candidacy for Michigan Attorney General. When he clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, he hosted his former teammates (see the photo in this week’s Picture Pun below). They were able to play basketball on the highest court in the land, a converted storage room on the top floor of the Supreme Court building. This went on until they were given a cease and desist order due the noise the bouncing ball made for those on the floors beneath.
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Fave Five 138: Spring into Summer
Magic and Mystery (Boy's Life), 8 Mile Crawl (Tall Trees Café, Ernie’s Market, Jamaican Pot, Peteet’s Famous Cheesecakes, Ritter’s Frozen Custard), CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival), Michigan’s Main Man (Glen Rice), and Hornets Invade the Supreme Court.
Fave Five List: Favorite Ann Arbor Venues
June is a great time for music in Ann Arbor, with both the Ann Arbor Summer Festival and Sonic Lunch about to kick off. I love seeing music at all of these spots.
The Ark - Leo Kottke will perform on June 10, 2025, and I will be there.
Green Wood Coffee House - Ari Hest has just released a new album, and I ordered a copy.
Power Center - Brothers Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith of Dawes will perform as a duo at The Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara on September 25, 2025, but we will not be back there yet to see them.
Sonic Lunch - May Erlewine will perform on July 10, 2025 and I will be there.
Ann Arbor Summer Festival (A2SF) - Chris DuPont and Kylee Phillips will perform in our home on June 7, 2025.
Book Best Bet
The blurb on the cover is from Peter Straub, whom I recently featured: “Just gorgeous. I loved it.” I read this book a long time ago, and I recall how much I loved it, too.
A bizarre murder in an idyllic southern town propels a boy and his father into a world of evil in this World Fantasy Award–winning horror novel. Small town boys see weird sights, and Zephyr has provided Cory Jay Mackenson with his fair share of oddities. He knows the bootleggers who lurk in the dark places outside of town. On moonless nights, he’s heard spirits congregate in the churchyard to reminisce about the good old days. He’s seen rain that flooded Main Street and left it crawling with snakes. Cory knows magic, and relishes it as only a young boy can. One frosty winter morning, he and his father watch a car jump the curb and sail into the fathomless town lake. His father dives into the icy water to rescue the driver, and finds a naked corpse handcuffed to the wheel. This chilling sight is only the start of the strangest period of Cory’s life, when the magic of his town will transform him into a man.
Strongly echoing the childhood-elegies of [Stephen] King and [Ray] Bradbury, and every bit their equal, Boy’s Life represents the finest work of one of the most accomplished writers of modern horror (Kirkus Reviews).
In me are the memories of a boy's life, spent in that realm of enchantments. These are the things I want to tell you.
Robert McCammon delivers "a tour de force of storytelling" (BookPage) in his award-winning masterpiece, a novel of Southern boyhood, growing up in the 1960s, that reaches far beyond that evocative landscape to touch listeners universally. Boy's Life is a richly imagined, spellbinding portrait of the magical worldview of the young — and of innocence lost.
Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for 11-year-old Cory Mackenson — a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake — and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible, haunting vision of death. As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that surround him. From an ancient mystic who can hear the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown - for his father's sanity and his own life hang in the balance.
From Wikipedia: Robert Rick McCammon (born July 17, 1952) is an American novelist from Birmingham, Alabama. One of the influential names in the late 1970s–early 1990s American horror literature boom, by 1991 McCammon had three New York Times bestsellers (The Wolf's Hour, Stinger, and Swan Song) and around 5 million books in print. Since 2002, he's written ten books in a historical mystery series featuring an 18th-century magistrate’s clerk, Matthew Corbett, as he unravels mysteries in colonial America.
Restaurant Recommendations
8 Mile Crawl
I planned a Dearborn crawl with my friends Mark Mitra and Chuck Bradford, but we never made it there. I had read about a place I wanted to try in Ferndale, so we started our crawl there. Mark then remembered a nearby spot in Oak Park whose owner is quite the character, so we headed there next. On the way, we passed a Jamaican spot in Detroit that Mark and I had enjoyed on a previous crawl, so we returned. Chuck then craved sweets, so we headed back to Oak Park for dessert. The shake machine was being repaired, and Chuck wanted a malt, so we finished the crawl at a frozen custard stand in Livonia. All of the spots were along 8 Mile or 9 Mile, or in between.
Tall Trees Café 817 Livernois, Ferndale, MI 48220
Spicy Mortadella Sandwich: sesame seed semolina roll, Calabrian chili spread, buttermilk iceberg salad
Ernie’s Market 8500 Capital St, Oak Park, MI 48237
Ernie’s Monster: 7 meats (ham, turkey, salami, pepperoni, chicken, corned beef, pastrami) and 7 veggies (lettuce, tomato, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, pickle, cucumber)
The Jamaican Pot 14615 Eight Mile Rd, Detroit, MI 48235
Jerk Chicken: Flame-grilled and seasoned with special blend of island spices, with cabbage and plantains
Peteet’s Famous Cheesecakes 13835 W. 9 Mile Road, Oak Park, MI 48237
Turtle Cheesecake: Pecans, chocolate and caramel on top of Peteet’s original 2-layer creamy cheesecake and baked in a chocolate graham cracker crust
Ritter’s Frozen Custard 31227 Eight Mile Rd., Livonia, MI 48152
Hot caramel shake (Chuck’s vanilla malt satisfied his craving.)
Marvelous Musicians
Today is John Fogerty’s 80th birthday. I liked all of the band's hits in the late 60s and early 70s. After hearing Emmylou Harris cover "Lodi," I listened to the original version, and that is now my favorite CCR song. Their songs have held up well for over 50 years.
From Wikipedia: Creedence Clearwater Revival, commonly abbreviated as CCR or simply Creedence, was an American rock band formed in El Cerrito, California. The band consisted of lead vocalist, lead guitarist, and primary songwriter John Fogerty, his brother, rhythm guitarist Tom Fogerty, bassist Stu Cook, and drummer Doug Clifford. These members had played together since 1959, first as the Blue Velvets and later as the Golliwogs, before settling on Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1967. The band's most prolific and successful period between 1969 and 1971 produced 14 consecutive top-10 singles (many of which were double A-sides) and five consecutive top-10 albums in the United States, two of which—Green River (1969) and Cosmo's Factory (1970)—topped the Billboard 200 chart. The band performed at the 1969 Woodstock festival in upstate New York, and was the first major act signed to appear there.
CCR disbanded acrimoniously in late 1972 after four years of chart-topping success. Tom had quit the band the previous year, and John was at odds with the remaining members over matters of business and artistic control, all of which resulted in lawsuits among the former bandmates. John's disagreements with Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz led to more court cases and John refused to perform with the two other surviving members of the band—Tom had died in 1990—at Creedence's 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though the band has never publicly reunited, John continues to perform CCR songs as part of his solo act, while Cook and Clifford performed as Creedence Clearwater Revisited from 1995 to 2020.
CCR's music remains popular and is a staple of U.S. classic rock radio airplay; 45 million CCR records have been sold in the U.S. alone. The compilation album Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits, originally released in 1976, is still on the Billboard 200 and reached the 600-week mark in August 2022. It has been certified 12-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for at least 12 million copies sold in the U.S.
The band’s name's elements came from three sources: Tom Fogerty's friend Credence Newball, whose name they changed to form the word Creedence (as in creed); a television commercial for Olympia Brewing Company ("clear water"); and the four members' renewed commitment to their band. Rejected contenders for the band's name included "Muddy Rabbit", "Gossamer Wump", and "Creedence Nuball and the Ruby"; the last was the starting point, though, from which the band derived their final name. Cook described the name as "weirder than Buffalo Springfield or Jefferson Airplane".
Proud Mary
Lookin' Out My Back Door
Bad Moon Rising
Lodi
My Playlist
Sports Star
Today is Glen’s 58th birthday. I listed him as one of my Five Favorite Michigan Basketball Players. He led Michigan to the NCAA Championship in 1989.
From Wikipedia: Glen Anthony Rice Sr. (born May 28, 1967 in Jacksonville, Arkansas) is an American former professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a small forward, Rice was a three-time NBA All-Star and made 1,559 three-point field goals during his 15-year career. Rice won both an NCAA championship and NBA championship during his collegiate and professional career. In recent years, Rice has taken up mixed martial arts fight promotion as owner of G-Force Fights based in Miami, Florida.
Rice played college basketball for the University of Michigan Wolverines for four seasons (1985–1989), a starter for three of those seasons. He became the school's all-time leading scorer with 2,442 points. He led Michigan to the 1989 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, scoring an NCAA-record 184 points in tournament play, a record that still stands. Rice was also voted the tournament's Most Outstanding Player and was part of the Associated Press All-America second-team, after averaging 25.6 points for the season, while shooting 58% from the floor and 52% from three-point range. On February 20, 2005, Rice's No. 41 jersey was retired during a ceremony at Michigan's Crisler Arena. Rice continues to rank among Michigan's all-time leaders in several statistical categories, including:
1st in men's career points (2,442)
1st in single-season points (949 in the 1988–89 season)
1st in single-season field goals made (363 in the 1988–89 season)
1st in single-season field goal attempts (629 in the 1988–89 season)
1st in single-season three-point field goal percent (51.6% in the 1988–89 season)
2nd in career field goals made (1,003)
2nd in single-season three-point field goals made (99 in the 1988–89 season)
In the 2000 NBA Playoffs, Rice averaged 12.4 points per game while shooting 41 percent from beyond the three-point arc, a career-best for the playoffs. The Lakers defeated the Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, and Portland Trail Blazers in the first three rounds of the playoffs en route to advancing to the 2000 NBA Finals to play the Indiana Pacers. In the second game of the Finals, Bryant suffered an ankle injury, and Rice scored 21 points to help the Lakers take a 2–0 lead in the series. Rice would average 11.5 points a game for the series, including 16 points with 3 shots from three-point range in Game 6 as the Lakers defeated the Pacers 4 games to 2 to give Rice his first and only NBA championship.
1989 Michigan Basketball Highlights
Picture Pun
Hornets Invade the Supreme Court
You've heard of a kangaroo court. This is the Kalamazoo court.
