In 1824 thirty-eight-year-old Orange Risdon and thirty-two-year-old Samuel Dexter spent four months on horseback exploring mostly uninhabited land in southeast Michigan. At the end of the 2,000-mile trip, they settled within a...
Read MoreJul 1, 2009 | Community |
Sylvan Township’s water tower looms over I-94. It looks impressive, but it’s a huge white elephant. Designed to serve 1,000 customers, the township water plant currently supplies fewer than 100.While Sylvan has too...
Read MoreJul 1, 2009 | Community |
Faith in Action, a nonprofit that has operated in Chelsea for twenty-eight years, is seeing record demand for its free clothing room and food pantry. Director Nancy Paul says that in the last four years, the number of people the...
Read MoreJul 1, 2009 | Community |
In 1972, Clark and Avis Spike bought 145 rolling acres in Sharon Township and set up housekeeping on a high point. They cut their own trees to build a cabin alongside a pond they dredged, and mowed meandering roads over the...
Read MoreJul 1, 2009 | Community |
Chelsea High School has offered a student newspaper class for thirty years. But outgoing principal Ron Mead’s censorship has killed interest in the Bleu Print, according to faculty advisor Phil Jones, who says the paper...
Read MoreJerry Colone tested trucks at the Chrysler Proving Grounds for thirty-four years. Now, he says, the huge complex southwest of Chelsea is “like a ghost town.”Employment at the grounds has fallen from 700 five years...
Read MoreJun 27, 2009 | Community |
Q: What’s the deal with the narrow sidewalk outside of Hiller’s at Arborland? Two people can’t walk side by side there—how is a handicapped person going to manage? Isn’t there an ordinance about width of...
Read MoreJun 18, 2009 | Community |
It was after my four-year-old son dropped his pants and wiggled in front of the distorting mirror in the play area of Busch’s that I felt the need to limit our public exposure for a little while. So for a few weeks, we...
Read MoreJun 15, 2009 | Community |
Naomi Corera doesn’t look intimidating. Fifty-eight years old and ninety-eight pounds, she is slim and slightly stooped. Yet despite her small stature, her aura of high moral seriousness makes it hard for people to tell...
Read MoreJun 11, 2009 | Community |
In 1982 Eric McGuire was eleven years old and learning to fight at the Ann Arbor Boxing Club. In a photo in the Observer that February, McGuire is a couple of feet shorter than the club’s older boxers. He’s wearing a...
Read MoreJun 4, 2009 | Community |
The Ann Arbor Football Club missed playing in the nation’s most prestigious tournament by a single goal.On May 9, the club’s top men’s outdoor team, AAFC Elite, lost a 1–0 defensive battle at Pioneer...
Read MoreMay 31, 2009 | Community |
Community activist Rose Martin is leading a grassroots effort to help ex-prisoners that in many ways parallels Mary King’s. But while King is a paid contractor of a statewide program and must follow certain guidelines,...
Read MoreMay 29, 2009 | Community |
“If I were you, I’d get a murderer,” says Mary King, matter-of-factly. “Second degree. The murderers have been there for twenty or thirty years—they come out and have a whole new life.”Women...
Read MoreMay 25, 2009 | Community, Event Reviews |
I am still in the kitchen making breakfast when the police sirens begin to sound. The children, who have been running in and out of the house all morning, shout, “The parade is here! It’s starting!”Ann...
Read MoreMay 12, 2009 | Community |
With his shaved head and clerical collar, it’s easy to tell that Charles “Father Chas” Canoy has taken religious vows. But perhaps because of his light brown complexion, people often guess wrong about which...
Read MoreMay 10, 2009 | Community |
On a cold, dark, and drizzly November morning, my wife, Nancy, drove me to the University of Michigan Hospital. It was the final step on a journey that began more than a half century ago, playing with trucks and half-tracks in a...
Read MoreMay 5, 2009 | Community |
“You rode your bike? In this weather?” I hear this greeting many mornings as I stride into work at the 789 Eisenhower building, wearing my helmet and backpack. Often, the amazement from my coworkers is followed by a...
Read MoreMay 5, 2009 | Community |
Swine Flu panic hit its peak the last week of April and beginning of May. Non-stop media coverage had everyone in Michigan and the rest of the United States whipped up into a froth of fear and hysteria, afraid for their very...
Read MoreMay 3, 2009 | Community |
Backpacking Light’s website reports the Ken was found on Saturday, May 2, “and walked out under his own steam.”
Read MoreMay 1, 2009 | Community |
A group of girls examine a rack of brightly colored prom dresses, laughing and talking. It’s a familiar scene during prom season—except that none of these dresses have price tags and they’re displayed not in a store,...
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