When 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...
Read More“Just paint ‘sucker’ across my forehead,” I told my husband. I had just agreed to be the fifty-fifth president of the Ann Arbor City Club.It’s going to be a lot of work, for no pay, for twelve...
Read MoreUpstairs at the Vault of Midnight, customers peruse comic books, toys, and other pop culture knickknacks. Downstairs, past a smattering of superhero posters, past shelves of indie comics, past a room full of board games and back...
Read MoreWhen a theatergoing friend and I finally made it to a production of Detroit’s celebrated Mosaic Youth Theatre, I had an ulterior motive: I hoped we might run into Rick Sperling, Mosaic’s founder and director. I...
Read More“Do you need any tree trimming?”I had just pulled into my driveway when he hailed me: a young man in work clothes and a knapsack, coming up the walk. He handed me a badly Xeroxed leaflet and explained that he was a...
Read MoreI have long been curious about the late Ralph W. Hammett. A U-M architecture professor, he designed many local buildings, including an addition to the Ann Arbor (then Women’s) City Club on Washtenaw, the Congregational...
Read MoreIt’s not like I’m crazy. I would have stayed inside like everyone else.It was the second day after the “polar vortex” hit us. The wind chill was something like forty degrees below zero, and the police...
Read MoreWhen Ohio stole part of Michigan in the 1830s, it was a battle between a state and a territory. We are a state now, and it is past time to reexamine this whole sordid affair.In 1787, the Second Continental Congress enacted the...
Read MoreBy the time I was seven years old, I knew what it meant to be poor. Over time I would grow to hate it, but at that age I didn’t understand why my family was so different from our new neighbors in Ann Arbor. I only knew...
Read MoreI was working in our office studio above the garage one evening when my husband, Miles, came back early from a bike trip to Kroger.”How was your ride?” I asked, without looking up. He didn’t reply....
Read MoreJXN’s REPORT7/20/2012Patient information: Name: JXN. Species: Feline. Sex: MN. Breed: DSH. Birthday: 7/26/2011. Age: 1 year old. Color: Grey. Weight: 10 lbs. 12 oz.Presenting concerns: fever.History: Still febrile, ate...
Read MoreWhen I was a young girl, I spent most of the year dreaming and pining for those wonderful months of summer—days filled with sandy feet and sunburnt noses and evenings spent lying outside, looking up at the sky with my sister and...
Read MoreReturn with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear–well, one of them, anyway–when smoke-filled rooms and hot lead were the stuff of which newspapers were made …For a couple of summers in the early 1970s I...
Read MoreMy wife and I live downtown on the edge of Kerrytown. My brother lives in a suburb of Charleston, SC. We have normal-size homes with relatively normal American lifestyles, in every way but one: my Walk Score is 100 and my...
Read MoreThe guys at the 2013 reunion of the 3/27 Marines were lucky enough to make it home from Vietnam, and maybe even luckier to make it to Weber’s Inn all these years later. But maybe none is luckier than Melvin Cox. “I...
Read More