My Town Archives - Page 5 of 9 - Ann Arbor Observer

A Murder of Crows

Jul 18, 2019 | Community, My Town |

Lifeless creatures began to show up at my house, in ways they never had before, the day after I...

Retail Nostalgia

Jul 10, 2019 | Community, My Town |

I rode the bus past Sears the other day. The lot where my coworkers parked was empty, the...

Angel’s Hat

Apr 3, 2019 | Community, My Town |

I spied it on a basement cleaning excursion last year: that big bag of hair I’d brushed out...

James Joy Miller seemed, in the fall of 1909, to be on the golden path to athletic fame at the University of Michigan. Pity it all came to a sudden crashing end. For this, Miller had only himself to blame.Born in 1886, Miller...

Polar Party

Mar 26, 2019 | Community, My Town |

Early one cold February morning, my neighbor Piotr sent an email to the Murray Ave. mailing list:...

Birds at My Window

Mar 3, 2019 | Community, My Town |

I haven’t always loved birds. For about the first fifty-five years of my life, I was...

Phone Karma

Feb 3, 2019 | Community, My Town |

I don’t know how many times I’ve felt the momentary terror and angst of misplacing my...

Girl Power

Jan 5, 2019 | Community, My Town |

Jessie was nine when she spied her at the Pittsfield library. She gave me a nudge....

Canning for Dollars

Oct 27, 2018 | Community, My Town |

“Drop the bag,” the police officer demanded. He’d caught me wandering through the eager tailgaters at the U-M Golf Course carrying a half-full thirty-nine-gallon Hefty trash bag. “You can’t pick up...

Sam Called Me

Oct 12, 2018 | Community, My Town |

One night, win the spring of 2017, I walked off a railing-less ramp and fell face first onto the...

Locavore vs Carnival-vore

Sep 12, 2018 | Community, My Town |

Having grown up in Ann Arbor, I was eager to show off my frozen custard at one of the city’s premier events, the annual Art Fair. I have owned and run Fluffy Bottom Farms for three years now. Although we’re mainly...

Birders

Sep 8, 2018 | Community, My Town |

Forty years ago my girlfriend and I took possession of Bird Rd. We were determined to make it...

The Train to Chicago

Aug 17, 2018 | Community, My Town |

My life in Ann Arbor began as a U-M freshman, when my mom and I filled her banana-yellow Volkswagen Rabbit with most of my belongings and drove up US-23 from my hometown of Columbus. Unfortunately, she couldn’t chauffeur...

A True Place

Aug 12, 2018 | Community, My Town |

We plan to gather at Island Park. We’ll have a fire in a brazier and invite dance, performance, and conversation among friends. I will present a dance about a firebird emerging from the heart of a tree. Just before the...