| I'm slowing trying to recover from The Catastrophe.
Here's our About page:
Phil Skaggs (philgoblue)
Editor-in-Chief, Grand Rapids Correspondent, and Grand Poobah of WMR
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I live in East Grand Rapids with my lovely wife, two beautiful daughters (ages 6 and 9), a dog and a cat (isn't that cute). I teach history at a little liberal arts school. I went to the University of Michigan for all post-high school education and therefore I'm a huge fan of the University and all things Wolverine. Born and raised in the 4-letter state below us, I immediately crossed the Maumee River upon reaching the age of maturity and have since been a zelot for the Great Lakes State. Since then I've lived in Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids and also Moscow, Russia and Washington DC. My hobbies include all things U of M, especially football and hockey, coaching little league soccer, and opera (and blogging ... duh). Religiously, I'm an Episcopalian with a large amount of Stoicism and Buddhism thrown in -- so I place a high value on community involvement and civic virtue as the path to enlightenment/salvation.
Politically, I place emphasis on economic populism, social justice and the common good. I started to take politics more seriously than just reading The Nation and complaining in 2004 with the John Edwards campaign -- I ran the small Edwards group in Grand Rapids -- and I remain a proud Edwards Democrat. In 2007 I helped out the David LaGrand for City Commission campaign (won) and led a much larger and more active Edwards group in West Michigan. At the same time, I got more involved with the Kent County Democratic Party and other progressive groups. I was elected to the Kent County Democratic Party Executive Committee in November 2008 and elected Chair of the KCDP in December 2008. Oh, and I helped found the Grand Rapids Drinking Liberally chapter back in the fall of 2007.
I started blogging back in January 2004 at the Edwards blog and that new fangled DailyKos. While I've also participated in MyDD, TPMCafe, and Open Left, nationally, I'm mostly a Kossack. Eventually, I came to lead a group of leading pro-Edwards bloggers which basically dominated DKos and MyDD by the fall of 2006. I got involved with the Michigan blogosphere at MichiganLiberal in the summer of 2006. My first blog was Michigan for Edwards and I also contributed to Democratic Edge in 2007.
Believing that local and regional politics is where the individual can have the most influence, I thought about my adopted region and some things I took away from YearlyKos 2007 and thus I took whatever blogging skills I have and formed WMR in February 2008.
Lisa Geise (LisainManistee)
Editor, North-West Michigan Correspondent
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Aside from being a dedicated Democratic Party activist, Lisa is an otherwise unremarkable housewife in Manistee. Lisa enjoys spending her considerable free time reading, blogging, hanging out with her husband Adam (AikoAdam), playing with their dog Fergus and volunteering for the Manistee County Democratic Party -- she is the County Party 1st Vice Chair -- and various Democratic candidates (she's a major Dan Scripps fan).
Adam Geise (AikoAdam)
Editor, North-West Michigan Correspondent
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Born in Pennsylvania, grew up in Upstate NY (Corning to be exact), in a mostly Republican household and extended family. Luckily my younger sister and I came out of it with our heads screwed on straight and followed the path of liberalism. I am a lifelong Deadhead and Buffalo Sabres fan, so expect these to pop up often in my Open Threads: From The Tubes and Trees. I have been a cook, a dishwasher, a college student, a lifeguard, a summer tourhead, a press operator, and now find myself wearing a suit and tie everyday in my job in casino operations management.
I started lurking on Daily Kos in 2004 while my wife was gaining popularity there (very small if you ask her). I found MichLib and shortly thereafter, BFM. I started my own congressional watchblog The Audacity of Hoek last year after starting to pay attention to the boneheaded things my congresscritter Crazy Pete Hoekstra would say. In 2007-08 I was the "unofficial" blogger for the Dan Scripps for State Representative(SH-101) campaign. I am currently the Chair of the Membership Committee of the Manistee County Dems. My focus is in local and regional politics, especially true Progressive Democratic candidates I can actually get behind...instead of grudgingly voting for them.
Mark Miller (memiller)
Editor, Kalamazoo Correspondent
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Here's a bad picture of me at Yearly Kos in Chicago. Can't believe I didn't meet phil there!
I come from Pennsylvania originally, and after all these years (1983 - Ninah and I just had our 25th Anniversary) here still miss the mountains. I taught in the Kalamazoo Public Schools for some years, and currently work at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, where I do experimental design, statistical analysis, GIS (map-making), database design and maintenance, and report writing for our avian research efforts. I also am a part-time instructor in Astronomy in the Physics Department of Western Michigan University.
I grew up a small-town, "Main Street" Republican, evolved into an arm-chair cold warrior, worrying about throw weights of Soviet missiles, until I finally realized all that was really projection. Switched to a disillusioned Independent when I saw Reagan funding terrorism in central America. Took one look at GWB in 1999 - "Danger - Will Robinson!" - started volunteering for the Democrats. Got excited about Dean in 2003, joined the Party, and started blogging at kos.
Currently I'm Kalamazoo County Democratic Party Candidate Recruitment and Campaigns Chair, on the board of the Justice Caucus, the Kalamazoo Environmental Council, and the Kalamazoo County Environmental Health Advisory Council.
Bill Harris (harris)
Editor, Grand Rapids Correspondent
Peter Bratt (pbratt)
Editor, Numbers and Maps Guru
I'm a GR native, now living in metropolitan Philadelphia. I've worked on a number of campaigns, and was politically active at a pretty young age. I grew up in the conservative Dutch Reformed subculture on the Southeast Side of Grand Rapids, and learned from an early age to argue, and to state one's values clearly. I graduated from Calvin College in 2002, and the University of Michigan in 2004 with my Masters in Urban Planning.
I'm an urban planner by training, and while I'm involved with WMR from a distance, I hope to come back to Michigan in the near future for career endeavors (and my love for all things Michigan, especially politics). |
