Rooster Eviction
Signs by the front door of a home north of Washtenaw read, “The Rooster may crow but the hen delivers the goods” and “An Old Rooster and Young Chick live here.””Those are jokes,” says the man...
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Jim Bagian
Jul 4, 2009 | Community |
The next time you are a hospital patient, don’t be afraid to ask your visitors to wash their hands before they sit down. And your nurse. Yes, and your doctor, too.That’s the word from Dr. Jim Bagian (pronounced...
Read MoreThe Cow Doctor
It’s a brisk but sunny spring day as Jeff Messman pulls his pickup into Dave and Gordon Whelan’s dairy farm near Tipton in Lenawee County. Messman makes the drive from Fredonia to the Whelan farm every two weeks....
Read MoreLocation is Everything
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 MoreWater Cure
Jul 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 MoreGrowing Needs
Jul 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 MoreBack to the Land — with Spirit
Jul 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 MoreScissor Hold
Jul 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 MoreGoing in Circles
Jerry 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 MoreSkinny sidewalk, strange sign
Jun 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 MoreLibrary Scenes
Jun 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 MoreNaomi Corera
Jun 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 MoreTwo Lives in Boxing
Jun 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 MoreSerious Soccer
Jun 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 MoreRose’s Good Company
May 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 MoreMary King’s Mission
May 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 MoreThe Glazier Way Parade
May 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 MoreFather Chas
May 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 MoreAfter the Cold War
May 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...
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