Author Archives: admin

THE 1977 POLICE KILLING OF MCELDON TISDEL

BY JOEL THURTELL She might as well have shot him herself.  The cops did the job for her. The victim was 28-year-old McEldon Tisdel, a black man  living with his family in a nearly all-white village in southwestern Michigan. Through … Continue reading

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Canton ham to celebrate 97th in Arkansas

BY JOEL THURTELL One of the last articles I wrote before I retired November 30, 2007 from the Detroit Free Press featured my ham radio operator friend Hank Kress, whose FCC-issued callsign is K8KBW. We were neighbors — he lived … Continue reading

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THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL — underground at the Free Press

BY JOEL THURTELL Thirty years ago, journalists at Detroit’s two daily newspapers were just waking up to the realities of the merger of their operations into one operation aimed at making a fortune for owners Knight-Ridder and Gannett. No, no, … Continue reading

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Lowell Kelly, UM, ham radio, and Peace Corps

BY JOEL THURTELL Thirty-five years ago, I met a retired University of Michigan psychology professor who was in charge of admitting volunteers to the newly-formed Peace Corps in the early 1960’s. And a former Peace Corps volunteer (Togo, West Africa), … Continue reading

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First Amendment for reporters? Gannett says ‘NOPE!”

BY JOEL THURTELL Screams from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Those authoritarian Chinese booted our journalists! But Trump expelled 60 Chinese journalists from the US. Do foreign journalists have First Amendment rights? Better question: do … Continue reading

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REMEMBERING PATTI

PEPPERMINT PATTI: AUGUST 24, 2005-DECEMBER 2, 2019 Joel Thurtell December 4, 2019. Middle of the night. Sleeping deeply. I hear a dog bark. It is Patti. She wants to go out. I get up, normally, and let her out to pee … Continue reading

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Messaging Ford’s Nazi plants in wartime

“Since the state of war between U.S.A. and Germany I am unable to correspond with you very easily.” — Maurice Dollfus, Ford factory manager in Poissy, France January 28, 1942 letter to Edsel Ford BY JOEL THURTELL Ford Motor Company … Continue reading

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Ford should pay World War II reparations

“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.” — Adolf Hitler BY JOEL THURTELL Did Bill McGraw think for one minute that the city of Dearborn would publish his story about Henry Ford’s hatred of Jews? I was not surprised that … Continue reading

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Wayne County: turn old Ford mills into modern hydro plants

By JOEL THURTELL Instead of selling Henry Ford’s historic former hydroelectric plants to developers, Wayne County could convert the old dams into state-of-the-art, revenue-generating hydro facilities. Wayne County citizens have recently protested the proposed sale of three former Ford-owned mills on the Middle … Continue reading

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Tarascan Surnames in Michoacán

By Joel Thurtell The first of my peer-reviewed academic journal articles about Mexico’s Tarascan society broke important news about an ethnic group that has largely been overlooked by historians. Scholars of Mexican history and anthropology were not previously aware that … Continue reading

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