Gaily painted circus wagons carrying huge tents and others bearing the menagerie of all types of wild animals travelled through the city streets this morning between the Michigan Central railroad and the Packard St. showgrounds...
Read MoreI learned a bit about shopping for produce from my mother, a housewife of Italian descent. I also was lucky to live in Italy for almost two years, where my neighbor Franca taught me how to shop at the market. In Italy, shopping...
Read More“I gave the first speech about marijuana fifty years ago,” John Sinclair says. But at the Hash Bash in April, Sinclair, seventy-three, left the speeches to comedian Tommy Chong and others. Instead, Michigan’s...
Read More“There is someone you need to meet,” Bill Martin says. On a cold Sunday morning, the developer and former U-M athletic director ushers me into his Lincoln SUV at the downtown Sweetwaters. We head out Newport and pull...
Read MoreThe telephone rang on a Thursday morning. It wasn’t the usual time for calls asking for a donation to this or that charity, so, without too much thought, I picked up the receiver and said hello. The man at the other end...
Read MoreIt seems my appliances and my two cats have grown old along with me. When I moved into my north-side cottage in 1992, the previous owner bequeathed me a new roof, fridge, stove, water heater, and middle-aged furnace.While...
Read MoreFor the fourth time I picked up the ringing phone, praying this time the connection would work. “Sebastian?” I said loudly, knowing that if a connection failed this many times in a row, my son had to be calling from...
Read MoreMark Braun’s nearly 2,000-mile bicycle ride along the Mississippi River almost didn’t happen. Ann Arborites have long known Mr. B for his boogie-woogie, blues, and jazz piano concerts, including, for the past...
Read MoreExcept for the spring of 1991, I have never attended an ice cream social. That year I went to thirteen, without ever tasting ice cream. I was running for the Ann Arbor Board of Education, and it was part of the job.So were the...
Read MoreI was introduced to skateboarding–then called “sidewalk surfing”–on a family visit to California in 1963. I got my first skateboard in 1965 from Beaver’s Bike and Hobby on Church St. So I’ve...
Read MoreLots of colleagues vow to keep in touch when they move on, but one group of former co-workers at Peace Neighborhood Center has actually followed through, holding annual reunions for thirty years now. Even as they’ve...
Read More“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.”—That setting: Catfish Row in Charleston. Mine: Zukey Lake in Lakeland.My maternal grandparents, who lived in Ann Arbor, had a log cabin on a knoll overlooking Zukey...
Read MoreIn weather fair and foul, Noel Roach’s feathered friends find sanctuary in the growing number of birdhouses–sixty-six in June–that decorate the lawn, fences, and flowerbeds of his modest home on Central Ave....
Read MoreOn my bike rides this spring, I pedaled past Mitchell Field and Riverside Park. At Mitchell, four of the six softball fields I played on for years with the Observer’s O Team have been plowed under. At Riverside, where I...
Read MoreOn a cool weekday afternoon in April, the U-M baseball team is about to play Bowling Green at Ray Fisher Stadium. And, as usual, Debbie Bourque, Don Eaton, and Ted Maezes are in the stands. These Ann Arbor parents have been...
Read MoreWhen I was a wee lad back in the early sixties, I was convinced that Beaver Cleaver, of the TV show Leave It To Beaver, lived in our neighborhood, the Lakewood subdivision on the west side of Ann Arbor. I asked my mother to...
Read MoreI’m sitting at my usual table by the window at the Panera on Washtenaw, sipping tea and revising my manuscript. There is a homeless man in a chair in the corner, his belongings stuffed in a ratty duffle bag next to him....
Read MoreI tucked our little boy, Nathan, into bed and went back to the kitchen to button things up for the night. Five minutes later I heard the sobs. I went back upstairs, pulled him into my lap, and asked, “Is it about...
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