I've barely had a moment free the last several days, and completely forgot that last week was Fire Prevention Week. (A lot of its normal activities, naturally, were curtailed by COVID. Little meanie virus.) So I'm late, and the upcoming week doesn't look all that much better, so I'm partaking in that time honored tradition of reposting a ( Read more... )

     You already heard my pitch for photos relating to our new book project. I just thought I'd throw out the official version of that pitch--the one that we sent out to area news agencies a year ago. Maybe it suffers a bit for being too long winded for modern news, but long winded is what I do. Basically I wanted to give busy editors text, ( Read more... )

Just a week to go until what might be the prime event of the summer, considering all the other events seem to be canceled. Well, no year is perfect, although 2020 must be going for a record.

The Albion Fire Department's annual fish fry is still on, and if you don't think that's an event, you've never seen my reaction when they serve mine up. But we' ( Read more... )

“Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights: A Century or So With the Albion Fire Department

Local firefighting history, illustrated:

http://markrhunter.com/SmokyDays.html

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DQ5NCXS

Proceed from all sales go to the Albion Volunteer Fire Department, so spread the word!

( Read more... )

It's been one heck of a month so far, in a bad way, so we've delayed the debut of our new book cover a little bit. But in the meantime it remains Christmas season! Or so the Elf on the Shelf tells me. How did that little so and so get in, anyway?

My labor of love was a book that I spent a quarter of a century working on, and boy, are my researching ( Read more... )

This article first appeared in the Albion New Era during 2009’s Fire Prevention Week.

Fire Prevention Week is here, a time in which we try to - wait for it - prevent fires. Of course, Fire Prevention Week should go on year round, but if it did we’d have to change the name. So, to give you something you can take with you all year, here’s a quick ( Read more... )

Thirty-nine years ago today (July 14th, since I'm posting this early--or if you're reading it later), I walked into a former auto dealership, past a twenty-eight year old fire engine and a bread truck that had been converted into a rescue unit, and asked to become a volunteer firefighter ( Read more... )

So, I saw a familiar semi trailer on an episode of The Walking Dead last year:


( Read more... )

You know that photo book about the Albion Fire Department, and how it was going to be easy for me because there wouldn't be many words in it?

Well, I just finished the framing document for it. I wrote 12,000 words. It's possible I need to ponder the term "long winded".

When it comes to writing non-fiction, "easy" has never really worked out well for ( Read more... )

You know what I like? Fire trucks.

I also like history.

I'm also a fan of my home town, Albion.

Now, as a person who's been a volunteer firefighter for some 35 years or so, I can safely say I've been a part of all three of those things. And we've combined them all before, in a book Emily and I did called Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights: A Century Or ( Read more... )