statement

THE MICHIGAN DAILY | SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

Mark Schlissel gave me 

writer’s block

P 

resident 
Mark 
Schlissel 

apparently lives in a beautiful 
white 
house 
on 
South 

University and I was going 
to see it. I was going to see it 
because I emailed a professor 

that I needed a building to write about, 
and of the hundreds in Ann Arbor, not a 
single one felt curious enough for a story.

“Break into Mark Schlissel’s house!” he 

wrote.

“Will I be arrested?” I wondered.
“I’m just an Idea Guy!” he replied.
It was an idea, and one I needed, since I 

signed on to write about buildings for The 
Daily’s Statement magazine this semester: 
To turn immobile structures into however 
many 
thousand 
romantically-tainted 

words on a semi-regular basis. When 
I applied, I felt I had a lot to say on the 
subject, and I wanted to force myself to 
write.

The weather was awful the day I first 

set out to see the President’s House. I left 
around noon and faced the September mix 
of warm humidity and cold wind that begs 
both for shorts and a flannel, and doesn’t 
blink an eye at the contradiction. I wore 
neither, and downed a Claritin instead, as 
September not only gifts split personality 
weather but also searing and persistent 
allergies.

See SCHLISSEL, Page 4B

BY MATT GALLATIN, 
STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT