“I will happily trade Florida’s hurricanes for Michigan’s blizzards,” muttered our son Benjamin as he spent his birthday bolting metal hurricane shutters over the windows of his St. Petersburg townhouse, anticipating a second major hurricane in two weeks.
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Russ told Sam and Ray that they shared something rare: both owned a vintage Toyota FJ Cruiser. Furthermore, Russ had just opened his July–August Car and Driver and found the full-page “What to Buy” column at the end, extolling the 2007–2014 FJ Cruiser.
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My formative years, from grade school through twelfth grade, were spent in a house my grandfather built on Miner St. I can’t imagine a better place to get started in life.
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In early May of 2023, Sarah Stein, general manager of the restaurant Anna’s House, was prepping for the 6 a.m. rush. Her gaze lighted on the pond just beyond the patio. A mother duck glided serenely across its surface, followed by eleven adorable ducklings. One of them immediately stood out: unlike his brown or yellow siblings, his feathers were white.
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As a lap swimmer for more than thirty-five years, I hardly noticed the water aerobics classes at my pool. This was, of course, before I reluctantly joined them.
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In the beginning, long before Mast Shoes consolidated its downtown locations and relocated to its...
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The last time Michigan won the Rose Bowl, New Year’s Day 1998, it had been a dazzling season for...
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Recently, when I was doing household chores, I heard the name “Oppenheimer” coming from the TV. I...
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“This is a gigantic beehive of activity,” says a volunteer proudly as she scurries through the...
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Our property does not quite aspire to having a waterfront, but it is fronted by wetlands. This...
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When Ajumma sent me a text message asking me to call her, I was worried that there was an...
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When my brother Laz and I moved from Rochester, New York, to Ann Arbor in July 1973, we knew only...
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For most of my thirty-one-year career with the FBI, I was assigned to the Ann Arbor office—what...
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In my not-limited experience, when you take your kids to Tiny Lions, no matter how many pep talks,...
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Last month’s Observer included my illustrated article about a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond, where...
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It was 1944, and my father had just arrived for Army duty in Hawaii. An attorney by trade, he was...
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For a couple of years in the early 1970s, I shared a small two-story house on Warner Rd., a dirt...
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As the Observer went to press, the U-M football program looked well positioned in its perennial...
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In 1952, after our parents’ divorce, my infant sister, Bonnie, and I went to live with my Uncle...
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