Contributors: March 2011

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Richard Bak

Most baseball fans with an appreciation of the game’s history know of Eddie Cicotte and his pivotal role in the throwing of the 1919 World Series, but the disgraced pitcher’s deep Detroit roots come as a surprise to many. “It’s kind of fascinating to ponder what might have been if Cicotte had remained with his hometown Tigers,” says Bak, a Dearborn-based writer, who wrote this month’s profile of Cicotte. “Would there still have been a Black Sox scandal, only with a different ringleader? Could the heavy-hitting but pitching-poor Tigers have won a couple of pennants in the 1910s with this workhorse in the rotation?” Bak has two books set for publication this fall: Detroitland: A Collection of Movers, Shakers, Lost Souls, and History Makers from Detroit’s Past (Wayne State University Press), a compilation of many of his previously published history articles; and The Big Jump: Lindbergh and the Great Atlantic Air Race (Wiley), which examines the deadly competition to be the first to connect New York and Paris by air in the 1920s.

 

Cybelle Codish

Flying high in a cherry picker to document the installation of solar panels on the nation’s oldest net-zero home was as exhilarating as it was daunting for Codish, a frequent Hour Detroit contributor who’s afraid of heights. “Knowing that you’re documenting part of history trumps the nail-biting fear,” she says. Codish has watched nearly the entire process of the greening of a historic Ann Arbor home beginning a few years ago when she was on hand to see the installation of the home’s geothermal heating system. Of that, she says: “The homeowner is an inspiration to all of us tethered to the grid.” Also this month, Codish shares still images she photographed on a Laguna Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, which are currently on exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in New York. “I’ve been interested in Native American culture for some time,” Codish says. “Having the opportunity to work on the film Grab, and then to have these images in a museum of this caliber feels unreal.”

 

Kim Rosen

Rosen, a first-time contributor to Hour Detroit, lives in 110 year-old-home in Northampton, Mass. After studying advertising and design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she worked several years as a graphic designer until realizing that drawing was her true interest. She received a master of fine arts degree in illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design and now works as a freelance illustrator. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Time, U.S. News & World Report, and The New Yorker. In this issue, she illustrates a story on foreign-language education. “My inspiration was based on the idea that knowledge can take you places far and wide,” she says.