Ann Arbor Fieldnotes

Yesterday morning while browsing Reddit over coffee, I spied a post about a rally by Ann Arbor Indivisible about ICE. The timing was perfect: we’re running a story about ICE action in Washtenaw in the upcoming issue, so I headed straight for Ann Arbor.

Happy pre-production week! The only people who celebrate pre-production week work for the Observer… and it’s really less of a celebration than a nonstop thrill ride of planning, populating various spreadsheets, editing, assigning photographs, and lots and lots of emails. (And that’s just the editorial side!)

Saw a bunch of cool statues around the physics building, and also a couple of very chunky, very brazen squirrels. 

For the last three years, I’ve been the editor in charge of putting together the Observer’s City Guide. As a result, whenever I drive, bike, or walk through a new Ann Arbor neighborhood, I always end up seeing a place that I knew through email, or through the neat, concise descriptions I’ve painstakingly researched, updated, edited, or written. 

Yesterday was production week! I’m excited about the new issue, and very proud of how it turned out. I was far too busy to go traipsing around Ann Arbor, but I did have one very excellent, very A2 experience.

What an amazing week! So much happened and it’s fast approaching Sunday, so I’m not even going to polish this, just blorp it out on the page.

On Tuesday, I biked to Ann Arbor and started my day with a strong cup of black coffee at the Liberty St. Argus Farm Stop.  It was a lovely, warm, sunny space, the bookshelf to my left was filled with realistic stuffed birds, and a little kid was adorably discerning about which tiny shopping cart he wanted to push around the store. 

October 20 and 21 were production, which means my colleagues and I were at our computers all day, doing the carefully choreographed dance of digital collaboration that results in a new issue of the Observer. The next day was a staff field trip to Stafford, where the Observer is printed. And the day after that, I decided to indulge in one of my very favorite things: a long bike ride.