I've called Houghton home for close to thirty years.

I grew up downstate in Montcalm County near Coral, came up to the Keweenaw in 1993, met a Houghton girl named Marika, and stuck. We made it home for good in 2005 and raised two kids here, both Houghton High graduates and grown now. These days the house belongs mostly to a black lab named Benny. What brought me up here is what's kept me here—woods, water, and people.

I make my living at Michigan Tech, where I direct the Writing Center and teach in the Humanities department. I also write poems. I've published two books, In the Bone-Cracking Cold and This Is What They Say, served as U.P. Poet Laureate, and was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. I'm proud of my work, but it's just one part of a life that's mostly been about family, friends, neighbors, and this place.

That's why I'm running for Houghton City Council.

City Council isn't about ideology. It's about keeping the lights on, the roads passable, the water clean and running, and the books balanced. It’s about helping to making Houghton a good place to live. Local government should put local people first: protecting affordability, supporting development that's done right and within reach, funding the services people count on, and making sure growth benefits the whole community.

I believe in liberty and personal responsibility, in caring for the land and water, in good schools, in equal treatment under the law, and in local self-government. People should be free to live as they choose, so long as they respect that same freedom in their neighbors. Strong communities aren't complicated: neighbors help neighbors, people get a real say in the decisions that affect them, and officials spend more time solving problems than creating them.

My code is simple: speak plainly, treat people fairly, leave the campsite better than you found it, and eat breakfast at the Suomi at least once a week.