We’ll Be There With Bells On
Maybe you’ve seen us practicing around Kerrytown or County Farm Park or Concourse Hall. “What are they doing with those sticks?” you might wonder.
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My Town
The Purpose and Value of Culture
“Ever since becoming a parent, I have been thinking a lot about the purpose and value of culture in your life,” says Ma, “and how to intentionally bring Chinese culture into our family’s life.”
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Chasing the Sky Disc
Neither snow nor heat nor holidays stop players from showing up for weekly games organized by HAC Ultimate, which has been meeting regularly for forty years. Extreme cold, though, can be an obstacle. “At ten below zero,” says longtime member John Arkison, a disc that hits the ground “shatters—like porcelain.”
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A People’s History of Art Fair Bingo
Like many beloved cultural institutions, Art Fair inspires a mix of appreciation, vigilance, irritation, dread, and anticipation from those lucky enough to have experienced it. Certain things have a tendency to repeat. Patterns emerge. So naturally, the event lends itself well to that storied pattern-noticing game, bingo.
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Arrivals, Departures, and Pancakes
Ann Arbor’s airport is a hub for more than just flights.
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The Restaurant Kids Are All Right
For many first-generation immigrants, restaurants were about survival, demanding long hours and leaving little room for anything else—something I experienced, our family life structured entirely around the business.
But for these second- and third- generation immigrant restaurant kids of Godaiko, La Piña Loca, and Q Bakehouse, the formula has changed. Though the kinship remains, the experience is evolving.
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Kass Academy
I’m a writer who believes in multiple beginnings. And at the root of one of my origin stories is Jeff Kass’s classroom at Pioneer High School, where I sat nearly two decades ago, age thirteen, and began to love poetry for the first time.
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So You Think You Can’t Dance?
Founded by Werderitsch in 2024, Elemental Ecstatic Dance is inspired by his experience of two decades of Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms classes in California, which combine physical workouts with meditation, along with the West Coast ecstatic dance scene. He combines these two approaches with his own free-form dance history that includes everything from disco roller skating to warehouse parties to grass roots festivals.
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Live to Tell
Public speaking consistently ranks as people’s number one fear. It comes before spiders, the dark, nuclear war, death. Death? Yes, before death.
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Renee Baumunk’s Wild Women Years
What she didn’t know was that this old house on a quiet, tree-lined road would become the birthplace of a beloved, long-running tradition: the Wild Women parties.
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Full Circle
On a windy evening in late October, I sat in the impressive Michigan Union Rogel Ballroom, with its vaulted ceilings, arched doorways, and dark, wood-paneled walls. The event? The 19th Annual Prechter Lecture, hosted by the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program, featuring keynote speaker Ellen Forney and moderated by program director Dr. Melvin McInnis.
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Fixing Barton Dam
When I lived in Ann Arbor back in the 1980s, Barton Dam was barely on my radar. The Huron River was scenic enough from the road: a heron or hawk here and there, maybe a deer ambling just off the shoulder. The dam itself, tucked out of sight from Huron River Dr., might as well have been invisible.
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Sign of the Times
The September ceremony featured speeches both lofty and bitterly political; a serenade from a transgender singer; the dramatic lifting of a white sheet from the marker; and a steady parade of attendees snapping selfies with DeGrieck and Kozachenko. (Wechsler, who lives in Boston, could not attend.)
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921 E. Huron St.
Twenty-two years ago, Bob Materka stood on the balcony of the three-story bed and breakfast he and his wife, Pat, had recently bought, facing the lawn by the Rackham Building. It was Christmastime, and he found his yard lacking. “Gee whiz,” he thought, “we should decorate this in some way.”
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“We Should Be Playing Golf!”
For many years, when I go back to my roots in Ann Arbor, I have been invited to play with a great group of golf enthusiasts. If the weather is good, they are trying to make it to the golf course.
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Talk About Inflation!
An old photo shows my mother, Geraldine, in the middle, at age fifteen, and Irv, age thirteen, on the left and Rolly, age eleven, on the right. The cost to park that close to the stadium was a whopping 25 cents.
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A Boy on a Schwinn
I think my life hit its peak when I had a bike and two dollars in my pocket.
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My Townie Summer
What I have learned from my second summer here is that the city is only quiet if you’re looking in the wrong places. Campus may be quiet, but the city most certainly isn’t.
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Return to Arrowwood
It’s hard for me to grasp that I’ve now lived with my wife, Mary, at Arrowwood Hills Cooperative for five years. It’s been a circuitous and fortuitous journey.
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Louie’s Back
When he grew up, Louie partnered with Mama Dux—a brown mallard—and together they raised twelve ducklings: nine were brown, and three were yellow, soon to turn white. Louie was an attentive father.
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