A Cultural One-Two Punch

continued

“Fortunately,” says Stier, “the staff qualifies for unemployment. I’m fifty-eight, and [husband] Tom [Fricke] is going to be chair [of the U-M Anthropology Department], so what do I care? And a lot of the employees here are young enough so they have their careers ahead of them. We’re all going to be fine,” she says firmly. “It’s going to be hardest on Karl.”

She mentions Bella Ciao’s closing—not the first person to feel it as a cultural one-two punch. “But look on the bright side,” she says. "Tios pulled through!”   

[Originally published in July, 2009.]