Happy Hanukkah, everyone! Even if you’re not Jewish, go pick up a jelly donut (here’s why) from DJ’s or Dom’s and some latkes from Zingerman’s. And while it might be a challenge to cut through all the Christmas music, my kids can’t get enough of this totally weird animated mash-up of “Dreidel” and “On Top of Spaghetti.” 

It’s the usual mixed bag of news this week. The Ypsi city council is a mess, U-M is suddenly not the most controversial school in college football, and both a billionaire university donor and a larger-than-life former county sheriff died in their 90s. Also, there’s a very upset lawyer suing the state over the loss of the ultimate U-M-loving license plate.

As I dig last year’s wax out of the menorah, I wish you a warm and tasty Festival of Lights in the week ahead.

– Steve Friess, editor

Michigan football seeded No. 1 after Big Ten championship: With Jim Harbaugh back on the sidelines, the Wolverines shut out Iowa on Saturday for their third straight conference title. The next day, they were paired up against Alabama for the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 for a berth in the national championship game in Houston on Jan. 8. In a welcome switch, the controversy surrounding that game is unrelated to U-M; the College Football Playoff committee’s decision to pick the one-loss Crimson Tide over undefeated Florida State University as one of the four finalist teams sparked days of outrage across the sports media and from Gainesville to the halls of Congress. Meanwhile, Michigan’s success has been lucrative for Harbaugh, who can take some comfort during the continuing NCAA investigation knowing that he has already earned $2 million in bonuses, pushing his compensation for the season past $10 million, USA Today reports.

U-M bars students from holding votes on Middle East fighting: President Santa Ono this week put the kibosh on the effort to ask for a campuswide tally on two questions – posted here and here – related to the ongoing violence between Israel and Hamas. In an email also posted online, Ono called the questions “controversial and divisive” as well as a magnet for “an involuntary and unwarranted amount of outside negative attention on a community whose primary objective is to learn, to teach, to research and to serve.” Seven regents endorsed Ono’s letter to show support for the effort to calm a student body in a constant state of protest since Hamas attacked Israel last month.

Man who made anti-Semitic threats arrested after guns found: Brandon Aaron Roy, thirty-nine, was on probation after being convicted of threatening  attorney general Dana Nessel when police found a twelve-gauge shotgun and a loaded AR-15 in his York Twp. apartment last month, MLive reports (paywall). Roy was sentenced to two days in jail and eight days of community service, as well as a year of probation, in the new case. Roy also recently sent several “disturbing messages” to the Washtenaw County prosecutor’s office that did not rise to the level of arrestable actions, prosecutor Victoria Burton-Harris told MLive.

Four shops hit in Washtenaw Ave. burglary spree: Big Lots, At Home, Wild Bill’s Tobacco, and the DRIP 154 clothing store in Ypsilanti Twp. were broken into in the early morning hours on Nov. 30, WXYZ reports. The owner of DRIP 154 told the TV outlet this was the second time in two weeks his store had been targeted. Anyone with information can call the sheriff’s office at (734) 971-8400.

One dead in Manchester house fire: State police have yet to publicly identify the deceased in a Sunday blaze that destroyed a two-story house believed to have been built in the mid-1800s, MLive writes.  Neighbors said they believe one person occupied the home on Sharon Hollow Rd. in Sharon Twp., about 25 miles southwest of Ann Arbor.

U-M women rugby team wins second straight championship: The club team celebrated Sunday’s 33-17 triumph over Notre Dame College in the finals in Houston via Instagram and Facebook this week. That game capped a dominating playoff run in which the Wolverines beat Southern Nazarene University 30-20 in the quarterfinals and then Northern Iowa 22-15 in the semifinals in St. Louis last month..

Ex-hockey player sues over false swastika claim: Johnny Druskinis, twenty-one, and a friend sprayed a homophobic slur and a penis on the sidewalk outside the Jewish Resource Center in August, according to an AAPD post at the time. Now, the Detroit News reports (paywall), he is suing Liora Reznichenko, executive director of stopantisemitism.org, for claiming that the graffiti included a swastika. The JRC did not prosecute. Druskinis has been dismissed from the hockey team for unspecified rules violations and it is unclear if he was cut directly because of this incident. The defamation suit claims that he “was bombarded with hateful and threatening messages … lost numerous friendships, a prospective offer to join a hockey team at a different university and was essentially confined in his own home.”

The rise of interventional radiology: As a teenager, Shantanu Warhadpande saw radiologists “swooping in and saving” his mother after a blood vessel ruptured in one of her lungs, Trilby MacDonald reports in the December Observer. Now he’s helping advance the fast-developing branch of medicine, using tiny instruments guided by real-time imaging to perform tasks like washing out infections and treating tumors. It’s certainly a far cry from the tumultuous world he was raised in after a drunken driver killed his father, uncle, and grandparents when he was a toddler in India. His mother, a surgeon, worked long hours to support the family before remarrying and joining her new husband to Indiana. Shantanu and his brother were “a couple of short, brown, scrawny kids” in an otherwise all-white school, he recalls, but he assimilated quickly, co-writing a textbook while still in training and, last year, joining the U-M faculty.

Fan sues state over losing “G0BLUE” license plate: Lawyer Joseph Hardig III of Beverly Hills, a sixty-six-year-old U-M alum, filed suit after his vanity plate was reassigned to someone else before what he believed to be the deadline for renewing, the Associated Press writes. He’d had the plates for more than twenty years, taking it over from his father when he died. The new owner of the plates, U-M alum and Ann Arbor resident Jonathan Fine, says he grabbed it “because it was available.” The Detroit News (paywall) says state records show the plates had, in fact, expired because the expiration date was synched to his late father’s date of birth, not his. The flap even made it into the Washington Post (paywall), which quoted Hardig as saying, “For those who are big fans, it’s a cherished item.”

Billionaire Charlie Munger, U-M donor, dies: The longtime vice chair of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway investment firm studied math at Michigan in the 1940s but dropped out to serve as a meteorologist in the Army Air Corps during World War II, the AP writes. In recent decades he was a major donor to the university, most notably the $110 million he gave to fund the $185 million Munger Graduate Residences. Buffett – though not the university – credited him with designing the building, and the Observer reported in 2015 on his vision of cultivating “transdisciplinary learning” by filling its suites with students in different fields.

Ypsi council in turmoil amid resignation, recall drives: Jennifer Symanns, one of three members targeted by a recall effort under way, says she’s quitting one year into her second term representing Ward 2, WEMU reports. Symanns says she’ll depart at year-end because she’s had an increasingly difficult time attending meetings, but she also faced an effort to oust her, mayor Nicole Brown, and councilmember Desirae Simmons. The recall effort is led by former Ypsi mayor Cheryl Farmer, who accused them of  “fiscal irresponsibility” for  voting last month to buy a $3.7 million building for the Department of Public Services. The city’s Election Commission meets tomorrow to review the petition language. If it’s approved, recall proponents will have sixty days to collect the requisite number of signatures to trigger a special election. That assumes they decide to proceed; this week, MLive writes, the council reversed itself, backing out of the building purchase.

TheRide eyes hydrogen-fuel-cell buses to cut emissions: Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority CEO Matt Carpenter next month intends to propose buying two $1.1 million vehicles that turn hydrogen into electricity for EV buses as a pilot program, James Leonard reports in this month’s Observer. Carpenter hopes he can secure federal funding to buy the buses, which are about double the cost of a typical diesel-fueled bus.

Briarwood redevelopment plan approved: Council’s unanimous vote marks a major turning point for the struggling fifty-year-old mall, which now begins a transformation in which the vacant Sears and eight acres of the parking lot will be replaced by a mixed-used complex, according to city documents. The new construction is expected to include a four-story, 354-apartment building plus a grocery store and new retail space. 

Cleanup at Armen Cleaners site resumes: The multimillion-dollar environmental remediation at 630 S. Ashley St., was expected to be finished by last year, but the project was paused to address a problem lowering the water table for excavation and disposal, MLive reports (paywall). Releases of the dry-cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, a known carcinogen, left the ground polluted decades ago, and in 2016 the EPA found high levels of toxic vapor from the migrating plume were getting into a rental house next door.

City gives Old Fourth Ward street to U-M: The university already owns all the property along Cornwell Place off N. Ingalls St., so the planning commission agreed this week to hand over the street easement, according to city documents. The university acquired most of the land on the dead-end street when it bought the former St. Joe’s hospital in the 1970s, then gradually acquired the rest. The School of Nursing now stands on St. Joe’s one-time parking. Vacating the street enables construction of a $12 million child care center for Michigan Medicine workers, among other plans. 

A2 offers $25,000 for bicentennial mural design: Artists have until Feb. 5 to submit proposals for designs for murals to be painted on basketball courts at Bicentennial Park (formerly Southeast Area Park) and Leslie Park, according to the city website. Proposals, which should incorporate the A200 logo, can be e-mailed here, along with a narrative describing the design inspiration, the proposed installation process, the artist’s connection with the community, and an itemized budget. See this document for more information. Runners-up will receive $500.

144-acre farm north of Dexter preserved: Under a $995,000 deal through Webster Twp.’s farmland and open space preservation program, the Orr farm about ten miles northwest of Ann Arbor now has a conservation easement on it, MLive reports. The move creates a 846-acre block of land that remains in private hands but can not be developed. Most of the money came from the Washtenaw County Natural Area Preservation Program, Michigan’s Agricultural Preservation Fund and the federal Agricultural Conservation Easement Program.

Former Washtenaw sheriff dies: Douglas Harvey, who served from 1964 to 1972, was ninety one, MLive reports.  Once despised by campus radicals for his aggressive response to antiwar protests, he is now remembered as a boisterous, larger-than-life personality and devoted U-M fan who insisted that the Michigan fight song, “The Victors,” be played at his funeral. After retiring from law enforcement, he operated Harvey’s Bar in Saline, as well as Able Testing Company in Ypsi and Deep Valley Produce in Howell.

Two locals named to state’s first LGBTQ+ advisory panel: U-M graduate student Kevin Nguyen of Ypsi, who is pursuing a masters in policy and political social work, and Ann Arbor psychotherapist Diane Kreger are among the thirteen members of the new commission, according to a press release from the governor’s office. Nguyen, an intern for Ann Arbor city councilmember Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, was chosen to represent adults under twenty-five. Both were appointed to four-year terms that expire in 2027.

Black Panther takes his place in Mott lobby: Wakanda’s hero now stands in the atrium at U-M’s children’s hospital alongside Wonder Woman, Superman, Spider-Man and Batman after six-year-old Grayson Johnson of Westland unveiled the statue, according to C.S. Mott Hospital’s Facebook page. The boy, in remission from cancer, also pulled a candy cane switch to light the Christmas tree in the hospital’s lobby.

From food truck to budding ice cream empire: Milk & Froth, which began five years ago in a converted mail vehicle, is now serving its cones and other goodies on S. Main, Dave Algase writes in this month’s Observer. Founders Deion Cao and Alexis Matteson are building on their first storefront success in the Buhl Building in downtown Detroit, and it probably won’t be the last addition. “Right now, we’re aggressively scaling up, trying to get more capital so that we can invest in more machinery, invest in more talent,” Cao tells Algase. “We can eventually cut our prices down and compete with the big players.”

Holiday rush in full swing at Chelsea tree farm: Christmas celebrants from across the region have six more days – Friday through Sunday and then Dec. 15 to 17 – to flock to Urquhart’s for full-service tree shopping, but self-service cutting will be available from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. after that until Dec. 24. The 350-acre, three-parcel farm, whose owners were among those profiled by the Observer’s Trilby MacDonald in 2019, was the subject of a glossy CBS Detroit profile this week.

Death closes Izzy’s Hoagies until further notice: Acadia Mercer, a longtime manager of the sandwich shop on W. Stadium, writes in a Facebook post that owner Terry Lahner’s sudden death this week leaves the future of the business in limbo. “I have no idea what comes next,” she writes. “Terry’s mom is the owner and everything is up to her, but I know how much this place means to Ann Arbor and will do what I can to keep our legacy going, and to do what Terry would want.”

Saturday Holiday Pop-Up Art Market benefits the Disability Network: The bazaar runs from noon to 5 p.m. at 3941 Research Park Dr.,  with proceeds going to provide services and support for people with disabilities in Washtenaw, Monroe, and Livingston counties. A wide range of artwork, prints, jewelry, ornaments, cards, and more will be on sale, and there’s a $5 suggested donation for entry. 

The Ark hosts concert fundraiser to save Johnny’s Speakeasy: Tickets are going fast for the Jan. 9 event featuring sixteen Michigan acts including Shari Kane & Dave Steele, Al Bettis, The Sidemen, Misty Lyn & the Big Beautiful, and Wilson Thicket. Johnny’s Speakeasy closed amid a devastating fire in 2022, and the owner’s insurance is offering a settlement he believes is too low, so the money raised will pay attorneys for the historic venue. Tickets, which cost $25, $35, and $50, are available online here. 

Hope Clinic, Dance Marathon eclipse Giving Tuesday goals: C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital is getting $33,000 – three times DM’s target – for music therapy programs, MLive writes. Hope Clinic also had a great Nov. 28, raking in $40,485 for free health care services in downtown Ypsi. That included $10,000 from the employees of Domino’s Pizza.

Donate a coat at the Michigan Firehouse Museum: The Ypsi attraction is accepting outerwear every Friday through Sunday this month for the Secret Santa Society of Ypsilanti, Concentrate writes. The Firehouse Museum is open from noon to 4 p.m. on those days.

By Jennifer Taylor

Friday: Drive through a light show featuring more than 50,000 bulbs, a drive-through tunnel, and a decorated building hosted by the Ann Arbor Baptist Church. Also, a free Christmas cookie, hot chocolate or chocolate milk, and a mini holiday movie showing on a 16-foot screen. 6 to 8 p.m. every day through Sunday. 2150 S. Wagner Rd., Ann Arbor. (734) 995–5144.

Saturday:  Get some holiday shopping done at the Ann Arbor District Library’s Tiny Expo, a show and sale of holiday gifts by more than fifty local artists and crafters. Also, in the Secret Lab, craft activities for all ages including screen prints, pop-up cards, 3D snowflakes, gift tags, and more. 11 a.m.–6 p.m., AADL Downtown. Free admission. (734) 327–4200. 

Sunday: See “Ruddigore,” Gilbert & Sullivan’s wonderfully funny send-up of the conventions of 19th-century melodrama, presented by the U-M Gilbert & Sullivan Society. Set in a fishing village on the coast of England, the story concerns a lonely aristocrat who suffers under his family’s ancient curse: he must commit at least one atrocity a day or face a death of unspeakable agony. The problem is he’s really a nice guy. The score is one of Sullivan’s best, but the work is seldom performed, mainly because of the difficult special effects it requires. Dec. 7-10. 8 p.m. (Thurs. To Sat.) and 2 p.m. (Sat. and Sun.), Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, 911 N. University. Tickets $30 (seniors, $27; students with ID, $15) in advance at the Michigan League Ticket Office, online here, and at the door. (734) 763–8587. 

See the Observer’s online calendar for many more local events. 

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