Community

Flash flood on Fourth

University of Michigan students Natalie Eliot (left), Evan Keimer, Jackie Brand, and Caitlin Kozak splashed barefoot in the flash flood pond that formed outside their house on South Fourth Avenue. Later they helped push...

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Family Visit

The Elsifor family has been a part of Ann Arbor for more than one hundred years. My mother died five years ago in February; this June, she would have been seventy-four years old. She died suddenly, but we knew she wanted to be...

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History mystery

A book titled 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Ann Arbor, Michigan (But Are About to Find Out) arrived in town so casually it was almost as if author Horace Martin Woodhouse didn’t care whether anyone read it or not....

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Bus City USA

The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority has a vision for the future–but the present already looks pretty good compared to most places.After a yearlong process that included hiring a national consulting firm, conducting an...

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Recycling blues

On a recent Saturday morning at the Drop-Off Station on Ellsworth, a dozen people doing court-ordered community service milled around a car delivering two old computers for recycling. Business is down at the station–so...

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The Stone School

The bell atop the Stone School Cooperative Nursery, 2600 Packard, still rings as it did when it was a one-room school. The heavy bell is rung by the nursery school students, with the aid of a teacher, to mark the end of the...

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Civil War Medal of Honor

Q. Are any Civil War Medal of Honor recipients buried in Ann Arbor?A. Two are buried at Forest Hill Cemetery: Joseph B. Kemp was honored for capturing a Confederate flag in the Battle of the Wilderness, while Conrad Noll rescued...

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Diorama update

A year after the Native American dioramas were removed from the U-M Museum of Natural History, it looks like homo sapiens won’t be back. Though children were fascinated by the miniature scenes of Indian life, “We...

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South U Grows Up

When the South University Area Association approached city council to request the rezoning of its district six years ago, its argument was simple: existing demand for development was being stunted by restrictive...

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Castle Steak House

We received 137 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for Castle’s Steak House on p. 42 of the April issue. The ad, which referred to the hanger steak the Fake Ad Czar recently discovered on a menu, was a (very) thinly...

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Ann Arborite Steven Ball

“Quasimodo. He definitely looks like Quasimodo,” says U-M freshman Courtney Beleck. Craning her neck while gazing up at Burton Memorial Tower, she’s speculating about who the tower’s bell ringer might...

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Tree Town Murals

April’s I Spy “is a mural of Ann Arbor Veterans,” writes Melodie Marske. It’s “‘Peaceworks Through Art’ by Mary Thiefels,” writes Connie Kerr, “at 112 W. Liberty.” Our...

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Metcalf Modern

Bob Metcalf, at age eighty-seven, is adding a two-car garage to his house on 1052 Arlington. He already has a one-car garage and isn’t currently driving, but he’s building it now because he can’t bear the...

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Meals for Mott

Easter Sunday will be a little brighter for young Mott Hospital cancer patients and families thanks to a promise Ann Arborite Paula Crosby made to herself a decade ago. After her eight-year-old son, John, died of a rare adrenal...

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Owls in Love

If you heard a bird calling in a “descending tremolo” recently, says Francie Krawcke, you were probably eavesdropping on a screech owl’s courtship.”They call when it’s dark during mating season to...

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Huron Hills Reprieve

What a neighbor calls “the barbarian attempt to develop the municipal golf course” has been thwarted–at least for the moment. Faced with two competing proposals for Huron Hills Golf Course–turning it over...

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Collision Course

Jeffrey Stamm, a former tenor with the New York Metropolitan Opera, has used a wheelchair since suffering a stroke five years ago. He says he moved to Ann Arbor last August because he wanted to live in a safe place. At the end...

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Star Power

George Clooney filled every seat on the main floor of the Power Center last month. He was directing a scene for his new movie, The Ides of March, in which he plays an innocent governor who learns the evil ways of presidential...

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Serbian tennis camps

Last month’s Fake Ad for Serbian tennis camps led by Novar Borwebic prompted as many quick returns as a weak serve. In all, 130 Fake Adders spotted the ad, along with several misguided readers who named real ads as the...

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Ordinary Heroes

One recent weekend, I stopped in at the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library bookshop. I was hoping to pick up a cheap used copy of Into Thin Air, a book I had read a dozen years ago but agreed to reread with my nephew...

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