Arts & Culture

We’ve all heard the term “comfort food”. Well how about some “comfort music”?
 
Red Tail Ring  is a duo from Kalamazoo serving up American roots music that harkens back to gentler days, and it’s music that soothes and wraps around you like a shawl.
 
Red Tail Ring is Michael Beauchamp and Laurel Premo and they join us here in the studio.

Listen to the full interview above.

In an era when we dash off a quick email or text message or a tweet, and often just as quickly deleted, the magic of a letter is something that has sadly been eclipsed.

The letter: the construction of thoughts, put down on paper, sometimes typed, sometimes hand-written, with a signature that is distinct and personal. It's something that lives on through the years. You just don't get that with a 140-character tweet.

Today we have a story that proves that letters can pack incredible power long after they have been written, long after the writers have left this earth.

There's a new orchestra starting up in Flint.

For decades, the University of Michigan-Flint has been trying to get an all-student orchestra together.

It shelved the idea back in the 1990s due to lack of interest.

This year, a new student string ensemble is up and running. And that got the music department thinking, maybe this was their year.

That's when emeritus professor Walker Fesmire showed up. He's giving the music department a $100,000 gift.

So this fall, the school’s first-ever all-student orchestra will perform an original piece in his honor.

Let's cross our fingers and hope that spring is here to stay. As the grass gets greener and flowers begin blooming, why not welcome the warmer weather with some light spring reading?

Keith Taylor, a poet and writer, as well as a professor at the University of Michigan, has given us a few suggestions for our spring reading lists.

Don't worry, they're short.

"We should be getting outside, and working in the garden...we don't want to start reading Anna Karenina outside right now," Taylor said.

Maybe you're the type that likes both in conjunction, or perhaps not at all. On this edition of "That's What They Say," host Rina Miller and Professor Anne Curzan talk about variations of speech based on region, called distinctive regionalisms, and how the lines between these colloquial regions aren't as blurred as you may think.

Perhaps the most noticeable of these distinctive regionalisms, especially for Michiganders, regards the phrasing we use when referring to soft drinks. Here in the Midwest, a lot of people say "pop," explains Curzan.  "A lot of the rest of the country says 'soda.' You're going to find that on the East Coast and on the West Coast."

But distinctive regionalisms don't stop at fizzy beverages. Based on where you're from, telling time may even be different.

According to Curzan, "New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware: we're the "quarter-of" speakers. The "quarter-till" speakers: West Virginia, western Virginia, North Carolina, parts of Georgia."

When dealing with big meat and veggie filled sandwiches, "much of the U.S. calls that a sub," explains Curzan. "But in New England, it's a 'grinder.' In much of New York and New Jersey, it's a 'hoagie,' or a 'hero' in Pennsylvania."

Amid all these different variations, a distinctive regionalism dictionary, if one exists, might be needed.