I hope you will find things among my random thoughts that resonate with you and yours. I'd love to read your reactions in the Comments, and I'll be sure to visit you in return. Best regards, Mary

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Northville, My Home Town

This village of 2,500 people in sourthwest Michigan is located in huge Wayne County which also contains Detroit. Northville's first "land patent" is dated in 1823, placing it 30 miles from Detroit - a journey of three days. Now it takes a half hour for my son to drive from his Northville bakery to suppliers in Detroit.


Great Harvest Bakery Northville, my son's busines.


I moved here 3 years ago after 10 years of visiting from my home in Ohio. I could not resist the double lure of the town's old-fashioned charm and my growing family, so I found an 1893 house just ten minutes' walk from my son's bakery in the tiny "down-town".



Northville is in the northwest corner of Wayne County, the largest in Michigan. It covers 614 square miles, 2/3 the size of Luxembourg at 998 square miles. (It is larger than six other European countries including Vatican City.) It holds several townships, each containing other suburbs, as well as Detroit Metro Airport which covers 11 square miles according to the 2010 census - likely more today. 

For some wonderful tours of Detroit and the area click here: Video Tours  And for more personal views of Wayne County and some current issues you can visit another of my blogs: Mary in Michigan

To whet your appetite, here are some great stills:        




                                             

                      Part of Detroit's Reality Today: Ambassador Bridge to Canada       


            
          



International Freedom Festival, June 2008



I did not realize when I came to live here that my two feet would would be firmly planted in different eras, with 200 years between! Our news contains a jumble of information about Detroit's looming bankruptcy and related lack of public services, the auto industry's resurgence, third-world conditions in the "inner city", and exciting programs of the arts and culture. Not to mention weekly community events from concerts to marches to races, all usually with fireworks over the river.

It's a fascinating place to live, in the middle of "the action" yet as far from it as one can get. For details and pictures of some of it I invite you to visit my personal journal at MARY in Michigan



7 comments:

  1. Oh that's a lovely post, Mary, love looking at your home town. Great link to your other blog. :)
    Loving the A to Z Challenge Maggie@expatbrazil.

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    1. Thanks, Maggie! I'm taking a detour on my quest for better ways to display pictures so I could not do these justice. Between the Picasa update and Google+ picture management some pix on all my blogs (including this one) were deleted when their addresses changed. That means I have to go back even to blogs I link to and find/relink some pictures and slide shows. So for now it's the old standard until everything is rescued. Dang! And right when I should be working in the yard. It's called "education". Cheers, Mary

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  2. The new image display is great. :)

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    1. Can you believe I can't figure out how I did that? I'm sitting here laughing at myself.
      That's OK. It's all part of "the chase". It's bedtime, so my mind will work on it over night and I'll finish instructions in the morning.
      That's how I got thru college - counting on my head to do the work while I slept.

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  3. Welcome to Michigan, neighbor! I'm over in Madison Heights. I love this type of post, because especially when travelling out of state, people give you a certain look when you say you're from Detroit. But that's only because they hear the bad stories instead of the beautiful ones, like this. It's important that other people start to realize there's more to the story that the bankruptcy or crimes.

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  4. Interesting look at your town, great post! I've been through Michighan once, years ago and we just drove around Detroit, not through it. We were visiting my cousin who'd just had a baby. I couldn't begin to tell you what town she lived in though.

    By the way, thanks for visiting my blog. :)

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    1. I've lived in Michigan 4 times, but always avoided Detroit before. Now I'm exploring - you might enjoy some of what I've found on http://mcrmich.blogspot.com/

      Thanks for visiting! Regards, Mary

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