Arts & Culture

The word "fraught," when used alone, is fraught with questions. At least, for some speakers of English.

A couple of listeners have written to us recently, wanting to know if "fraught" can stand on its own. For example, "The situation is now fraught."

Both listeners were under the impression that the word "fraught" should be used with "with," as in, "I was fraught with emotion."

The Detroit Institute of Arts is asking officials in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne County to put a renewal of the museum’s millage on the March 2020 ballot. This request comes earlier than expected: the millage was first passed in 2012, and it was not set to lapse until 2022.

"Spring forward. Fall back." That's how we do daylight saving time. Having run around last weekend turning all the house and car clocks back one hour, we got to wondering: How'd we ever wind up with this thing called “daylight saving time” in the first place?

Local Spins editor and publisher John Sinkevics joined Stateside to share some of the most exciting new music coming out of West Michigan this month. What unites his artist picks this time around, Sinkevics said, are the “compelling stories” they each bring to their music. 

"In the meantime" is a good phrase to use when you're talking about the time between two events. But can you leave out "in the" and just say "meantime?"

A listener named Keisha Nelson tells us that that recently, she's both read and heard "meantime" used on its own.

After working as a correspondent for Time magazine in Europe and South America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Charles Eisendrath came to Ann Arbor.

For 30 years, he directed the University of Michigan's Knight-Wallace Fellowships, a program for journalists. 

But his love of Michigan began further north.

When I walked in, I could see a bottle of rye on the counter. “I can't think that this is going to go badly,” I said to Tammy Coxen of Tammy’s Tastings.

“We do both like rye,” she laughed. The name of the cocktail she was getting ready to mix is The Long Arm of the Law.

Unless you've managed to avoid all sources of media, you've probably heard or read the word "whistleblower" once or twice in the past couple of months.

Whistleblowers have been making headlines a lot lately, both in sports and in politics.

How did Donald Trump vault from the faux-boardroom of The Apprentice into the Oval Office?

A new book called Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America offers some answers. 

Consider the banana. Actually, consider the top banana, because that's the phrase that someone recently brought to our attention.

Professor Anne Curzan says a friend told her she loves the phrase "top banana" because of its theater etymology. 

"I wanted to nod wisely at that moment, like I knew that piece of information, but in fact, I did not," Curzan says.

When you think of a daiquiri, you might think of summer. Tammy Coxen with Tammy’s Tastings thinks the daiquiri has a place in fall too.

“We're in that transitional season. We're still getting hot days but cool nights and so I went with an Autumn Daiquiri today,” she said.

You're lying in bed on one of the hottest nights of the year. Fortunately, you've got a nice, quiet fan on top of your dresser to keep you cool while you sleep.

Suddenly, that fan starts making a noise akin to an angry Rottweiler. You try turning it off and on. You try shaking it. You even try pleading with it, but nothing you do will quiet that fan.

It can't be denied. That fan is on the fritz.

Today it's politicians who sometimes get criticized for being wishy-washy, rather than the soup getting criticized as wishy-washy.

Let's back up a bit.

A listener named Sheryl Knox posed an interesting grammar question recently, but what really caught our eye was this line at the end the email: "Why are people so wishy-washy?"

While we can't answer that particular question, we can certainly take a closer look at "wishy-washy."

It’s fall and there’s a hint of it in the air.

“It’s definitely getting into the season where I like to think about fall flavors in my cocktails,” said Tammy Coxen of Tammy’s Tastings.

Among the bottles in front of her was one of moonshine.

David Feingold has bipolar disorder. He discussed how the disease has shaped his work as an artist and how it contributed to his divorce from his ex-wife. He spoke with his current significant other Becca Buchalter at the StoryCorps mobile booth in Flint.

This Saturday, a ninth-grader from Detroit's Cass Tech High School will board a jet for Mumbai, India. Fourteen-year-old Charisse Woods will represent Detroit at the World Youth Chess Championships. We talked to Woods about how she got her start in chess, and her aspirations to become a National Master, a title very few chess players ever earn.

If you've purchased beer lately, you've probably noticed the local craft beer section has grown in your grocery store. There's been a rapid expansion of the craft brewing industry in Michigan over the past decade. 

Michigan is the fourth-largest beer state in the nation. Currently, there are more than 350 breweries making a huge variety of beers. But some small brewers say that number may not be as big as it could be, and they say state law makes it hard for them to grow their business.

If you totally don't drink alcohol, you could call yourself a teetotaler.

A listener recently asked us about the spelling of "teetotaler." They wanted to know why the beginning is spelled "tee" and not "tea," like the drink?

Dorothy Maxine Keely McClanahan is 95 years old. At the StoryCorps mobile booth in Flint, she and her daughter, JoAnn McClanahan, talked about her memories of growing up in a large family in the city during the Great Depression.

Sometimes people send us questions that we avoid trying to answer. We don't do this to be mean.

The problem is, some questions we get have answers that are too long and complicated to explain within the confines of this segment.

This week though, we're throwing caution to the wind. We're finally going to tackle "between you and I."

After being born to a teenage mother, Sharon Simeon was adopted as an infant. She spent 23 years trying to find her birth mother, Johnnie Mallett Caruthers. At the StoryCorps mobile booth in Flint, Simeon and Mallett Caruthers talked about the roads that led them apart, and eventually, back together.

Agriculture has a long history in Michigan and continues to be one of the state’s top industries. And for one 19th century utopian community in the Thumb, it was half of the equation to living a godly life.