State Budget Slashes Great Start Collaboratives
Washtenaw County will continue to offer services, but others weren’t so lucky.
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Community
The Dude Revue … Reviewed
White Russians will flow April 4 at the Blind Pig for the “Dude Revue,” a celebration of the music of the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult comedy.
Read MoreLetter to the Editor: Teacher Contracts
I am writing as a concerned Ann Arbor community member and AAPS parent regarding the ongoing stalemate in contract negotiations with our teachers. The continued inability to reach an agreement that fairly compensates the educators who serve our students is deeply troubling.
Read MoreApril 2026 Summer Camps and Activities
Campers unite! Get ready for a summer of fun, exploration, and friendship with full-day, half-day, and overnight summer camps. Create the summer you want, and tailor themes to best suit your camper. From clay glazing to star...
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Where the Car Is King
I’ve never been much interested in the inner workings of a car dealership, and since watching the Purple Rose Theatre’s latest play, The Classic King, I can’t say that has changed. The comedy, which runs until March 15, follows four car salesmen on a mission to save their failing dealership. Directed by Jeff Daniels, the show is a world premiere and the first professionally produced play by Richard Johnson. Johnson began playwriting after retiring from a career as an automotive journalist, including serving as editor of Automotive News.
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Charcoal and Chill
When I try to capture, in charcoal, the foreshortened foot of today's model, the drawing looks a bit like a potato. No time to fix it; we're immediately on to the next 5-minute pose.
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Summer Camps and Activities
Campers unite! Get ready for a summer of fun, exploration, and friendship with full-day, half-day, and overnight summer camps. Create the summer you want, and tailor themes to best suit your camper. From clay glazing to star...
Read MoreCaution Tape Around the Gallup Park Sculpture?
Why is this beautiful sculpture surrounded by caution tape at Gallop Park, Huron River? It has been surrounded since it landed. We are waiting to see it free!
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So You Think You Can’t Dance?
Founded by Werderitsch in 2024, Elemental Ecstatic Dance is inspired by his experience of two decades of Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms classes in California, which combine physical workouts with meditation, along with the West Coast ecstatic dance scene. He combines these two approaches with his own free-form dance history that includes everything from disco roller skating to warehouse parties to grass roots festivals.
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Comedian Jacob Barr
“I put my disabilities right out in front,” says Jacob Barr, who, at twenty-eight, has become one of the city’s most distinctive standup comedians. “That was my cheat code when I started. Comedy is mostly straight white guys. Lots of guys have faces like mine, but not bodies like mine. So I use that to my advantage.”
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When Home Isn’t There
A recent report by the Washtenaw County Continuum of Care (CoC), a major player working to coordinate local efforts to end homelessness, paints an urgent picture: as of December 2025, at least 842 people in the county are experiencing homelessness—a 42 percent increase since 2024.
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Fragments Made Whole
Elisabeth Thoburn has covered her home on Silver Lake in Pinckney with second-quality tiles from Motawi, creating a home-sized work of art—and a love letter to local clay.
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Lisa Brush and Jim Frey
Brush and Frey fell in love nearly twenty years ago. They first met less than a mile from the Longshore building, while collaborating on Leslie Science & Nature Center’s shift to an independent nonprofit.
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Townie Homes
The Zillow listings seem too good to be true: A 2-bed, 2-bath, 800-square-foot house on S. Maple for $125,000. A 3-bed, 3-bath 1,372-square-foot townhome on S. Wagner for $225,000. A 3-bed, 2-bath, 1,232-square-foot home on Jewett for $325,000.
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Live to Tell
Public speaking consistently ranks as people’s number one fear. It comes before spiders, the dark, nuclear war, death. Death? Yes, before death.
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Weathering ICE
“You see vehicles that look suspicious with dark windows and [when] you look inside you see [people] in bullet-proof vests and you know, it’s them: its ICE,” says a community advocate who wishes to remain anonymous. “It’s happening in our lovely county. It’s here.”
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John Hilton
Last October, he retired after thirty-nine years as the Observer’s editor.
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Second Chances
After forty-three years, eleven months, and twenty-three days, Billy Cole was released from prison. It was 2019 and he found himself scrambling, trying to find his footing. He took on factory work, delivery work, anything he could find to bring in money and avoid returning to prison.
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Renee Baumunk’s Wild Women Years
What she didn’t know was that this old house on a quiet, tree-lined road would become the birthplace of a beloved, long-running tradition: the Wild Women parties.
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