I was born and raised in Northern Michigan (Cross Village, and later Cheboygan) by parents who moved to the region from cities downstate. By a stroke of good fortune, our home in Cheboygan was located a block from the Public Library, a great place of self-discovery, especially in those pre-internet days. There I explored an interest in Ancient Greek and Roman cultures that, through many twists and turns, eventually led to an academic career in Classics.
Like many young people from our region, I was encouraged to view success as something one had to achieve elsewhere, in the cities represented on our TV screens. As I climbed the rungs of the academic ladder, I moved from one metropolitan region to another — five altogether — and learned much about the cities and minds of men. But, like Homer’s Odysseus (the “man of many turns”), my itinerant life began to feel more like exile, and I became eager to return home — which I did, finally stepping out of the ivory tower at age 40.
I returned home with no fixed plans, other than to follow my innate curiosity and try some new things in mid-life. This project is one of them. After a long absence I still have much to learn about the place I call home — I didn’t come parachuting in to save anybody, or provide answers to things I don’t fully understand.
But I do have strong opinions about what makes micropolitan living wonderful — and how it could be better. I hope to use this platform to promote all of those democratic values that I see expressed here by many other people, and to help them flourish. My posts will include some memoir, some political analysis, some polemical writing, some reflections on ancient Greek democracy (the original micropolitans) — and perhaps even some reporting. The underlying thread is my deep partisanship towards democracy, and my belief that the micropolitan environment is an ideal site for real democratic values to take root.
Micropolitan 