Tulip City Dispatch

 Last winter, I set out on a journey - a budget of $50 to assemble a complete, useable set of golf clubs .  My rules were as follows: Total budget of $50 for everything (including clubs, bag, balls, and tees) A standard, USGA-conforming set...that is, a maximum of 14 clubs All clubs must be in USGA compliance - no mega-sized drivers or "illegal'' wedges The irons must be a complete set - wedges and woods can be piecemeal For the 2022 season, I've added a little hitch:  The set must be period correct from the mid 1990s.  My earliest golf memories were playing at the now-defunct Rolling Hills Golf Course in Hudsonville, MI in 1996, 1997, and 1998, so Part Deux of the $50 Thrift Store Golf Challenge is my attempt to pay homage to those early days.  As such, I've been using a lot of information from Golfclubspec.com , the PGA Value Guide , and 2nd Swing to nail down production dates of clubs.   All that being said, I've got the foundations of a set alread...

The internet is great for a lot of things.  It allows the collective experience of humanity to be recorded and saved for posterity.  It allows collaboration and sharing thoughts across borders and across oceans.  It allows fact-checking, and corroboration of rumors.  Unfortunately, it also allows the dissemination of fake news, vigilante justice, false hype, and some of the worst misinformation grifts humanity has ever seen.  I used public records, freely available on the internet, for the vast majority of the research on this post. The famous Grand Castle in Grandville, Michigan , is polarizing.  It's unique, sure, but some consider it to be an eyesore.  It's certainly a distinctive bit of architecture.  And, because it's so weird, a lot of rumors have sprung up about it. There are entire threads of rumors that have been brought up on the Grand Rapids Subreddit , ranging from accusations of money laundering, to political grift, to covering up str...

 ...or, a brief glimpse into how urban legends can start and spread.  Imgur user kingfi1822  makes a claim in this post on how he purports to have started the legend of Melon Heads in Ohio .  His story is as follows: So, where I grew up in Ohio...we have the Legend of the Melon Heads. Kids used to drive down a lonely road in the woods and see, hear, and feel all kind of weird things, like children with giant heads and glowing eyes etc... Definitely a creepy story and a creepy area... When I was 15, I found a website with local ghost stories and legends...and emailed the webmaster a string of crap that I made up about the Melon Heads. I claimed to be a “long time resident of the area...” and that I’d had personal experience. It was a heck of a story for a 15 year old, and he posted it on the website-along with my email address. For years afterwards, I would occasionally receive an email from someone asking about my “knowledge,” and I would happily recite my made...

There are tons of stories of high school senior pranks.  However, most of them are from someone's older brother or cousin  or a story that was told back in the 70s ; there are very few first-person, verifiable records of certain specific pranks.  This begs the question:  Have these actually happened, or are they just the stuff of urban legend?  There are dozens of Reddit threads , teen magazine articles , and forum threads around the internet if you Google, but I've found very little to actually, factually corroborate these three specific senior pranks: The first one is a rural school wherein a cow is led up to the second floor of the school and left there, because cows cannot walk down stairs.  This is specifically alleged to have happened at Hudsonville Christian in the 1970s, and Unity Christian in the 1990s.  The school administrators try to get the cows down the stairs, not knowing that cows cannot, while the rural students who know better are st...

 Recently, I encountered a situation wherein I was exposed to a person who tested positive for CoViD-19 Omicron Variant...the version that is more highly contagious because of an extended incubation time, as well as reduced initial symptoms.  This was on campus at Grand Rapids Community College.  Part of the requirements here were to report to the college, then isolate while awaiting instruction from health officials at the college. Meanwhile, I was at work in Allegan County while all this was going down.  I was receiving text messages and phone correspondence from GRCC.  Per Allegan County Health Department standards, which my employer followed, I was mandated (still am, TBH) to wear a mask while at work for 10 days after my exposure, but otherwise everything is as normal. Because I've gotten both initial doses of the vaccine, as well as the booster, GRCC sent me a flow chart based on the Kent County Health Department, the State of Michigan, and the federal CDC...

Here's something I haven't done in a long time:  A deep-dive into the Holland City News archive on the Hope.edu website!  Let's take a gander at Christmas time in 1921: "The Christmas Season of 1921 comes to a world which I think we all realize has now set its feet fairly and firmly in the way of rehabilitation and of return to the safe ways of progress and construction. Our own country may well regard itself as peculiarly fortunate both in its own bounteous resources and by reason of the opportunity which it has enjoyed of making its own good fortune and means to help others. At this Christmas Season, I hope and am very sure that our people will return devout thanks for the blessings that have been bestowed upon them, and renew their pledges of service and usefulness of earnest effort and safe advancement in behalf of the best things in life"  The front page of the December 22, 1921 issue of the Holland City News opens with this writing from President Warren G. H...

 Michigan is a punchline for the poor quality of roads.  The state has harsh weather, yeah, but that doesn't excuse the horrible state that our roads get in to.  Governor Whitmer won on her promise to "Fix The Damn Roads," and meanwhile, there's a fillable form to recoup damages from potholes on the State Department of Transportation (hereforth known as MDOT)'s website. My expertise comes from working in a MDOT-certified soils and aggregate laboratory shortly after I graduated college:  In the summer of 2012, part of my responsibilities were to drive around the State of Michigan to various field offices and collect asphalt samples from whatever roads were being paved at the time.  Some of the more notable projects I had my fingers in that summer were M-46/Apple Avenue in Downtown Muskegon, Oakes and Grandville Avenue in Downtown Grand Rapids, Interstate 96 east of Muskegon/US-31, M-231 between Nunica and M-45, M-37 around Brohman, and I-196 between Holland and ...