Community

The Ann Arbor Way of Death

When the baby boomers finish their life’s journey, they’ll find plenty of room in local cemeteries.Even as the United Kingdom tries to cope with its overflowing burial grounds, and some U.S. municipalities have...

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Lucy’s Home

After the parade of chickens, a duck, a box turtle, and a psychotic rabbit, it feels a bit strange to have so prosaic a pet as a dog. We had held out for years against pleading kids, but we were worn down. So when our eldest...

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S.W. Trick building

“I walk past this location all the time and never noticed it until now!” exclaims Cynthia Cipolla. “That’s where I bought my first books … at UM,” writes Natalie Bartolacci. “This...

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R. Goliath Bassoon Studio

Throughout history, there have been some notable rivalries. Thomas Becket and Henry II, Hitler and Churchill, Ali and Frazier, Adbusters and Wall Street. Now to that list you can add Dean McLaughlin and the Fake Ad Czar.For...

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Ann Arbor on the Run

Fair-weather runners sprout each spring the way plants shoot from moist soil in warm sunshine. Out of their winter caves, they squint and stretch and toe out tentatively, jogging in Gallup and sprinting in Buhr, tightrope...

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The Godfather of Main Street

Restaurateur Dennis Serras has springy, iron-gray hair, deep-set eyes, and a bristling moustache that makes him look a little formidable when he’s not smiling. He often is smiling, though, and his toothy grin removes some...

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Hearsin’ Around

Mark Culp’s neighbor in Scio Farms didn’t appreciate his hearse.”First thing I see every morning is a hearse, and I know it’s just for me,” Culp recalls his neighbor grumbling–not...

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Tang’s Touchdown

“It was like watching the countdown of my single life,” says U-M alum Kevin Tang (Engineering, 2003). At last month’s Michigan-Western Michigan football game, Tang stared at the scoreboard as the clock ticked...

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Reba from Aruba

Last spring, Jennifer Vangelatos took her kids and her dad to Aruba. One of the wild dogs that roam the island’s streets quickly adopted them–sitting on the porch chairs, eating cookout scraps, even running with the...

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Deb Gordon-Gurfinkel

Deb Gordon-Gurfinkel addresses a dozen children, ages six to eight, in the community center at Carrot Way, a low-income housing complex off Dhu Varren Rd. A compelling, pixie-like figure with a British accent, she wears a...

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Skateboarder suspense

“We hope to break ground next year,” says Scott Rosencrans of the Friends of the Ann Arbor Skatepark, “and we have several serious deadlines to encourage us.”Very serious deadlines. The city’s...

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First Presbyterian’s move

“When the Session [the church governing body] decided to tear it down and build a church way out there, there was a lot of criticism,” remembered First Presbyterian Church member Paul Lowry in a 2001 interview. In...

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Ant Alley

“I spy, with my little eye,” writes young entrant Saul Vielmetti, “the alley next to Nickels Arcade, home of many ants, large and small.” “Love ’em!!–those giant bugs … crawling in...

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Recall Ed Nimby

“The Fake Ad is on page 74,” Steven Huang wrote, correctly identifying the Fake Ad for a campaign to recall longtime fictitious Ann Arbor politician Ed Nimby. “If it’s ‘all about education,’...

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Concealed Carry

Concealed Carry: Appearing on bulletin boards in places including the Washtenaw Dairy and Stadium Hardware, Dan O’Bryan’s bold-lettered signs stand out among the usual postings for painters and handy people....

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Lane markings on Catherine

Q. How are drivers (and cyclists) to make sense of the new lane markings on Catherine St. between Fourth Ave. and Main? There’s a bike lane down the middle of the street with traffic on either side. Would any sensible...

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Rose Martin’s Struggles

A year ago, Rose Martin, the charismatic former director of Peace Neighborhood Center, incorporated Rose’s Good Company. She says her five-year-old, one-woman charity helps adults who “fall between the...

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Media Moment

Even in Ann Arbor, not everyone has air-conditioning–a truth apparently lost on some young local hoodlums. On a hot night in early August, a couple living on Ann Arbor’s south side were cooling off in their darkened...

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Pat Green

Pat Green is rarely at a loss for words. But even she winces when asked about The Salary.Whenever the Ann Arbor Public Schools’ financial struggles are discussed on local blogs, it’s certain that someone will gripe...

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The Missing Ticket

Jack Briegel lives off a quiet dirt road, in a home he shares with Jeannette, his wife of fifty-three years. If you go straight in from the front door, you’ll enter a living room decorated in Zen-like soft greens and earth...

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