Jötunn's Journal

I have often thought about how many people grow up in the same world they grow old in. In its early history, this was impossible for those living in Clinton, MI. Settlement of the site began in 1925 after the building of the Erie Canal. Congress recognized the need for communication and settlement between Detroit and Chicago and authorized the construction of a road along what was then the Sauk Trail. The need to settle southern Michigan was also recognized and many land grants were sold, sometimes sight unseen, to settlers mainly in NY state. When the road, named the Chicago Pike, was completed, growth increased at a rate that must have been dizzying. Daily stagecoach services began and were soon doubled, then increased again. By the end of the 1830s, Clinton was the largest wholesale distribution center west of Detroit and it was being served by 10 general stores. To put this in perspective, any child born in Clinton is unlikely to have had time to become a teenager by this date. ...

For many people today cemeteries and graveyards are an unpleasant reminder of our inevitable fates. Most of us would rather not be near them let alone in them. However, they do provide a window into a culture's attitude towards life and it is when we are confronted with death that we are forced to examine what it means to be alive. Perhaps we have the luxury of being able to ignore death for much of our lives today and that is why we have the luxury of ignoring it. Despite the advances in medicine, those living in the 19 th century were still frequently reminded of death the presence of fatal diseases such as cholera and 'consumption' as well as high infant mortality rates, death was far more present then than it is today. Attitudes towards death change from period to period and culture to culture. In the early medieval period the christian church began changing the practice of burying the dead in consecrated ground ie a graveyard. Previously the dead we...

When I first saw this photograph hanging in the restaurant of the Clinton Inn, I thought it was a striking reminder of a time when both airborne vehicles and horse-drawn carriages coexisted. The horse-drawn carriages are there, though difficult to see in this image. It also raised a question: why were there planes flying above Clinton? The aircraft depicted looked very early, not much different from the Wright brothers' original flyer. So why would such a brand-new, novel technology be in a small town like Clinton? Henry Ford had an interest in both Clinton and aviation—was that the link? But where was the airstrip? What event caused two aircraft to be flying at the same time? I returned to Clinton, notebook in hand, to search the archives for answers to this little-known but intriguing story. When I asked one of the owners of the Clinton Inn, his response was both exciting and disappointing: "It's a fake." He explained that he had read an article in a local ma...