Arts & Culture | Thrive Detroit

30Dec 2019 by laurie

A Great Season of Theater: 2019-2020

By Laurie Fundukian Yes, there is life after Hamilton, last year’s smash that was a must-see at the Fisher. Local theaters are in full swing with their offerings, and as the days get shorter and crisper, it’s a great time support them. Detroit Public Theatre, housed in the Max M. Fisher complex along with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, has been producing great theater for a few years now, but you may not yet have experienced this hidden gem. Now’s the time! DPT kicked off their fifth season with Dominque Morisseau’s Paradise Blue, another in her three-play cycle “The Detroit Project.” Detroit 67 (about the protests and violence and how it affected a family that summer) and Skeleton Crew (about Detroit auto workers) were produced in earlier seasons, but Paradise Blue…

26Jul 2018 by Thrive

The Spirit Level: Exposing deeply rooted societal inequity and inequality

Books, Homelessness, Inequity, Poverty

‘The Spirit Level’ author and epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson: “We have to be very vigilant against all the ways that hate is built up” Richard Wilkinson’s work is dedicated to exposing deeply rooted societal inequality and to showing how much better off people are when living in a more equal society. With ‘The Spirit Level’, the book he co-authored with his colleague Kate Pickett, he brought the results of that work to a mass audience. Wilkinson told INSP about the growing problem of inequality and what street papers are doing to combat it. By Tony Inglis “I find this to be quite a daunting audience. I normally speak to academics and people who are more detached from the real world. But I think many people here know the practicalities of what…

26Jul 2018 by Thrive

Melissa Love: Candle Maker by Day, Writer by Night

Books, Business, Enterprise, Life & Community, SLIDES, Uncategorized

Melissa Love is a multi-talented Detroit entrepreneur with three novels to her credit as well as her own candle business. A product of the Detroit public school system, she graduated from Northwestern High School. Soon after, she went on to further educate herself in the medical field. She is a surgical technician and has been in the field for a number of years. She has also worked for the prison system and has been in her current place of employment for 11 years. This proud mother of three grew up around Lee Place near Clairmount and Rosa Parks. Melissa has always loved reading, and after experiencing some urban fiction writing, she began writing her own novels. She describes her writing as “a way for me to be creative in telling…

24Jun 2018 by Martti Peoples

Inspiring and Aspiring from the Heart

Books, Business, Enterprise, Life & Community

Inspiring & Aspiring from the Heart By Denise Ervin RN, BSN, NC-BC What does it mean to inspire and aspire from the heart? Why is it an important part of our overall health and well-being? I started to incorporate heart-centered work into my nursing practice over 17 years ago, and the results have been life-changing. As a nurse, my first instinct is always to teach, so let’s start with the basics. Our body is made up of two hearts, the physical heart and the spiritual heart. The physical heart is about the size of a fist and has four chambers and four values. Its purpose is to pump blood to our vital organs. As we all know, the physical heart is a major organ and…

24Jun 2018 by laurie

Book Review: A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley

Arts & Culture, Books, SLIDES

A Long Way Home Saroo Brierley Many Americans certainly know about and experience poverty and hardship here at home, but the desperate, frightening nature of the poverty in third-world populations can be more of an abstract concept, until one encounters a book like A Long Way Home. It’s the story of five-year-old Saroo, who lives in abject poverty with his family in central India. He and his siblings (brothers Guddu and Kallu and sister Shekila) face a hunger every day that leaves their bellies hollow and protruding, and they forage for food where and when they can. There aren’t social services in little villages in India (or even in the big cities), so they are on their own. Their mother Kamla loves them deeply, but their father is absent, save…

09Jun 2016 by laurie

The Chaperone

Arts & Culture, Books, Uncategorized

A Book Review by Laurie Fundukian Laura Moriarty, who teaches creative writing at the University of Kansas, has written three other novels, but The Chaperone garnered the most critical and fan attention. It was published in 2012 and became a best-seller, but it wasn’t on my radar until my book club selected it this summer. Better late than never! The Chaperone follows the trend of books such as The Paris Wife, Loving Frank, and Z, which give a fictionalized narrative about real people (Hemingway’s first wife, Frank Lloyd-Wright’s mistress, and Zelda Fitzgerald, respectively). The Chaperone looks at the real-life characters of Louise Brooks, who was a silent film star in the 20s, and Cora Carlisle, and focuses mostly on Cora (a “matron” at age 36!), who has the privilege of…