Everyone's a Critic

“So what went wrong?” people have asked me since the news broke that the giant Borders chain has declared bankruptcy. They’re assuming that because I’m a long-time journalist in Ann Arbor, where the chain...

Kim Richey’s show at the Ark on Sunday, October 17, marked a small milestone for people who keep track of such things: it was notable for its thoroughgoing inclusion of electronic sounds, provided by a keyboardist. Richey...

Many people talented in the sciences also play musical instruments. Hence the creation, nine years ago, of the U-M Life Sciences Orchestra. Its eighty-some members include physicians, med and dental students, engineering alums,...

The weirdly named play Two Point Oh at the Detroit Repertory Theatre (until May 29) was a trip in more ways than one. It meant my leaving Ann Arbor’s fabled “28 square miles” to drive into the “real...

About fifteen years ago I attended, in Chicago, a meeting of the International Wizard of Oz Club. Similar to Star Trek gatherings, these conferences attract devotees of both the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz and the series...

When my book group did the big Chehkov plays last year, I felt disappointed. I’d read somewhere that Chekhov was second only to Shakespeare as a dramatist, but these kvetching bourgeois seemed a far cry from the...

More than twenty years ago, I met a new neighbor while we mowed our back yards. We were amused to learn that we both were editors (not a common occupation, even in Ann Arbor). I’d recently taken over the Ann Arbor...

In mid-February, forty people were waiting their turn to check out a 60-year-old novel from the Ann Arbor District Library. Of course it’s not just any novel–it’s the high school classic Catcher in the Rye. The...

The recent death in the Netherlands of Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and preserved the diary that stirred the conscience of the world, was especially significant to Ann Arborite Irene Butter–a retired U-M...

Quite a few bands from New Orleans come through Michigan on tour, and if the Subdudes have gotten lost in the shuffle for you, be advised that they don’t sound like any of the others. Their starting point was probably the...

Many if not most blues lovers in southeastern Michigan have a John Lee Hooker story to tell, but last month at the Ark the veteran South Carolina folk singer and guitarist Jack Williams had one that was new to most of us. The...

The Travelin’ McCourys and the Lee Boys The Ark, October 18 The Travelin’ McCourys consist of two sons of the legendary bluegrass singer Del McCoury, along with several other veteran bluegrass musicians. The Lee Boys...

I still can’t get over it sometimes–Performance Network is a real Equity theatre. Founded in the early 1980s, it lived on table scraps in that little black hole over on Washington for years and now it’s a...

One of the joys of living in Ann Arbor and within a mile or two of the U-M Stadium is hearing on a football Saturday afternoon the noise of the crowd. You knew Michigan had just scored. And prolonged silence meant things...

“He was the voice of Republicanism in the middle of the radical sixties and seventies,” says John Stephenson about his father, Jim Stephenson, mayor of Ann Arbor from 1973-75. Stephenson infuriated thousands of young...

The Michigan Stadium renovations have now consumed over 400,000 man hours. The project is on schedule and will be completed by next June. The last major piece of the project will be the removal of the old press box. This will...

The show by Little Miss Higgins at the Ark on July 9 stood out from those of other young artists the club has booked lately. It wasn’t very well attended; Jolene Higgins is an unknown in these parts, and long warm evenings...