Detroit River Stories

Detroit's other rivers: exploring the city's buried creeks

Send a text [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1932291/open_sms] In this episode, I talk to Joanne Coutts, an activist and cartographer about her work mapping Detroit's buried creeks. Many of the maps we discuss can be found at her website. [https://www.joannecouttsmaps.com/detroit-waterways.html] As always, if you have feedback for us, want to get involved, share your own story or suggest someone for us to talk to, please reach out to us at drsl-admin@umich.edu.

Working on the Water with Coast Guard Sector Detroit

Send a text [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1932291/open_sms] In this episode, Bailey Flannery and Rachel Wilson talk to Captain Rick Armstrong, Commander of the US Coast Guard Sector Detroit. Our conversation explores the wide range of responsibilities and tasks of Coast Guard, focusing on everything from search and rescue to icebreaking along the Detroit River. If you've ever wondered what, exactly, the Coast Guard does in the Detroit area, this is the episode for you! If you have feedback for us, want to get involved, share your own story or suggest someone else for us to talk to, please reach out to us at drsl-admin@umich.edu.

"A little hard to handle" : Sarah Elizabeth Ray and the Fight for Childhood and Play in Detroit

Send a text [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1932291/open_sms] In this episode, Bailey Flannery and Desiree Cooper discuss how Cooper's decision to "marry Detroit" (by way of marrying a Detroiter) has irrevocably shaped her as a creative and person. This includes her long journalistic career at Detroit Free Press, which led her to eventually interviewing and documenting the life and legacy of Sarah Elizabeth Ray (also known as Lizz Haskell), one of Detroit's long-forgotten Civil Rights leaders.  This conversation covers:   * Cooper and Ray's parallel journeys from the South to Detroit, and how Cooper fell in love with Detroit's "mystique" and "swagger." * The centrality of play and leisure to the civil rights movement, including Ray's own case, which was based on her forced removal from the Bob-Lo boat SS Columbia. (Spoiler: She took her case all the way to the US Supreme Court--and won.) * Ray's lesser-known second act, which centered on protecting childhood through Action House.  * Futures currently realized and in jeopardy along the Detroit River. * Why the Detroit River is laughing at us, and why we should laugh with it.

Little Port, Big Vision : Making Waves in Communities, Climate, and Commerce on the Great Lakes

Send a text [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1932291/open_sms] In this episode, Bailey Flannery sits down with Captain Paul Lamarre III to discuss the winding life path that has led him to become the Executive Director of the historic freighter and museum ship the SS Col. James M. Schoonmaker; the Director of the Port of Monroe; a member of the Board of Directors for the National Museum of the Great Lakes; the President of the American Great Lakes Port Association; and, most importantly, a man who does not waste a single moment and a son who makes his dad proud. Their conversation touches on:  * Paul's childhood on (in) the Detroit River and the long Lamarre family legacy of captaining on the Great Lakes. * How a cancer diagnosis in his twenties brought Paul back to these waterways, inspiring his life's work of championing the histories and futures of the Great Lakes maritime industry. * Relationship-centered leadership and cultural change on the Great Lakes. * How the maritime industry is embracing the responsibility and opportunity of environmental stewardship. * The profound roles small ports like the Port of Monroe are playing in supporting green infrastructure and local economies, creating a "better quality of life and community that surround the waterway." * The Sophia Loren of tugboats.

Black Power (Boating) in the Motor City

Send a text [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1932291/open_sms] Dr. Juanita Lyons and Steven Johnson recount how their father, Albert Johnson, founded the Motor City Yacht Club in 1960s Detroit to help foster a black power boating community when other local yacht clubs were exclusively white. Juanita and Steven also share memories of their childhood spent boating, swimming, fishing--living, really, on the Detroit River and the Great Lakes, as well as how this shaped their passionate adulthood relationships with these bodies of water. They also speak to the dramatic changes they have witnessed in boating culture and policing throughout the years (including "river rage"), ultimately calling us to respect and love the water and others who frequent it.