The only prison museum within a walled, operating prison in the nation is in Jackson, Michigan, a town Hillsdale College students typically associate with sushi pilgrimages. Bryan, Ohio, a town smaller than Hillsdale, manufactures Dum Dums, candy canes, and circus peanuts (yes, you read that right). “It’s not really true that we live in the...
After sophomores Owen Fingerhut and RJ Norton and junior Daniel O’Dette heave their calculus books onto a table in the Mauck Hall lobby, they head to the kitchen to spice up their study session with a big pot of homemade chai tea. “It’s 2 inches sliced ginger, 10 cloves, six cardamom pods, 2 teaspoons black...
Anyone driving up M-99 from Jonesville has likely seen the faded Mail Pouch Tobacco advertisement painted on the side of a dilapidated barn. The sign reads “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco. Treat yourself to the best.” Such barns sit on roadsides all over the East Coast, South, and upper Midwest. There are 84 in Michigan and...
After repeated requests from his readers, William Carleton, a 1869 graduate of Hillsdale College and internationally-recognized poet, editor, and lecturer, described the inspiration for his most well-known poem: “Over there to the west, in Hillsdale, there stood in the old days a county poorhouse,” he said. “Sometimes, I used to visit the inmates there and...
Laughter fills the vast expanse of McNamara Rehearsal Hall, bouncing off stacks of chairs, bleachers, paneled walls, and floor-to-ceiling window panes. Stray rays of sunlight escape from unhappy clouds and reflect off the metallic surfaces of a bassoon, a clarinet, a flute, a French horn, and an oboe — tools of the trade for the...