It seems my appliances and my two cats have grown old along with me. When I moved into my north-side cottage in 1992, the previous owner bequeathed me a new roof, fridge, stove, water heater, and middle-aged furnace.While...
Read MoreThe Moore family believes that the red-and-white “Drive Like Your Kids Live Here” sign may slow traffic a little near N. Lewis and W. McKay streets in Saline, but the real showstopper is Beyonce. Not the...
Read MoreFor the fourth time I picked up the ringing phone, praying this time the connection would work. “Sebastian?” I said loudly, knowing that if a connection failed this many times in a row, my son had to be calling from...
Read MoreOn a Monday afternoon, a group of middle-school boys is bowling at Bel-Mark Lanes. “Way to go, man!” one kid compliments another who’s just knocked down several pins. “Thanks!” the other boy replies...
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“Those windows belong to the Fleming Administration Building!” says Deborah Wyse, a former Ann Arborite now living in Philadelphia.”I’m two thousand miles away,” writes Peter Herbert of Sun City...
Read MoreOnly 73 clever Fake Adders spotted last month’s Fake Ad for the Kalkaska Convention and Visitors Bureau on page 90 of the November Observer. The previous winner’s name, “Karl,” was hidden in the text,...
Read MoreLooking back, it had the simplicity of Grover’s Corners in Our Town. Not that Grandma and Grandpa Mann lived on the typical square block. No, think isosceles triangle–or a piece of cheesecake, a small, narrow...
Read MoreAnn Arbor comics artist Jerzy Drozd has spent most of his career drawing robots, monsters, and other imaginary creatures. So he had to grow some new muscles to pen a graphic novel about the death of president John F. Kennedy.The...
Read MoreOn the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns on the western front of the Great War fell silent, ending four of the bloodiest years in the history of the world.The war demolished empires and...
Read MoreOn a bright and brisk Sunday afternoon in mid-October, Paul Bishop of the Dexter Area Historical Society did what a lot of people watching from the lawn of Gordon Hall would probably love to do for their own homes: he set fire...
Read MoreDeb Ellison lives on 240 acres near Manchester, with a view of the River Raisin. But she’s concerned that her waterfront idyll is threatened. At the end of June, Ellison received a notice in the mail from ET Rover...
Read MoreNovember is a month in which our natural surroundings become progressively more stark. The transition from the splashy colors of fall to a more monochromatic environment sends us looking for something visually satisfying.One is...
Read MoreThe department handles property that has completed its useful life at the university. A small fraction is recycled, sold for scrap, or thrown away, but the vast majority winds up for sale at “Dispo’s” retail...
Read MoreQ. Often, I think maybe around this time of year, I see a large flock of seagulls, a.k.a. herring gulls, looking for food on the big Pioneer High School lawn southwest of the Main/Stadium corner. You rarely see those birds this...
Read MoreIn mid-October, an elderly couple stopped by the U-M’s Briarwood Medical Group for flu shots. They waited for forty-five minutes on a line that went up a long hallway and almost out to the street.”More people have...
Read MoreAsked if he’s ever fazed by the misdeeds he sees as chair of the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board, Jim Cameron laughs. “Yes, I am,” answers Cameron, a practicing attorney in Michigan for thirty-seven years....
Read MoreThe Michigan Department of Transportation planned to reconstruct Michigan Avenue through Saline in 2008, but the funding dried up during the Great Recession. MDOT rescheduled the work for 2018–but this past summer it...
Read MoreAccording to one national survey, Bo ranks forty-first among male dog names. But when Affordable Vet Services in Ann Arbor ranked the frequency of names of their canine patients, Bo came in twentieth. Staffers at other local...
Read MoreIn an astounding feature, “The Empire of Edge,” the New Yorker last month chronicled the bizarre tale of how the U-M Alzheimer’s expert leaked secret drug trial results to Wall Street trader Mathew Martoma....
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