Community

Latania Fair

When there’s a late-night crisis at Alpha House, the local shelter for homeless families, shelter director Latania Fair gets the call. It may be a staff member wondering whether a client needs to go to the emergency room....

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Deconstruction

Soon after Gail Solway–an Ann Arbor pharmacist, massage therapist, and nutritionist–purchased the property at 500-504 Spring Street, she and her architects, Brad and Theresa Angelini, decided that renovating the...

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N. Main Catch-22

City street sweeping vehicles cleaned the beautiful riverside pathway through Bandemer and Argo parks at the end of March soon after the snow finally melted. But they didn’t touch the nearby sidewalk on N. Main, which was...

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WhisperCool

We received 105 entries correctly identifying the April Fake Ad. That’s not a huge number, but not bad when you consider what else all of you Fake Adders had to send in in mid-April. (You do pay taxes, don’t you? Or...

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Miller’s New Look

Wattles, who lives in the 2300 block of Miller, is speaking of the reconstruction that transformed her street last year. From her home opposite Fulmer, she looks out on a small rain garden that she’s expected to care for,...

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The Natural History Museums Annex

“April’s I Spy is the Natural History Museums Annex next to North Hall,” writes Michael McGraw. “Both [are] now slated to be demolished.” It’s “being knocked down to build yet another UM...

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Michigan’s Homeopathic Hospital

In December 1901, University of Michigan professor Royal S. Copeland gave a rousing speech at the opening ceremony of the university’s Homeopathic Teaching Hospital. “The history of medicine is a history of...

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Front Porch: Spring 2014

Saline’s Plymouth RockA playful dog rediscovers a long-lost salt spring.Saline’s name and identity are tied up with salt, yet the actual salt springs that once bubbled up along the Saline River south of town...

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The McCollum-Schmitt House

Q. Every day I pass an old, boarded-up building on the northeast corner of Ann Arbor-Saline Rd. and Wagner Rd. Do you know its history?A. Known as the McCollum-Schmitt House, it was built around 1850 by Stephen Mills, who also...

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Livestrong

When Marie Kuhlman’s breast cancer recurred after nearly ten years of remission, the no-nonsense accountant was determined not to “shrivel up in the house and wait to die.” Instead, she signed up for the Ann...

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Peacemaking Court

“It sounds soft,” admits judge Timothy Connors about the Washtenaw County Peacemaking Court, which was launched last October in his courtroom with the “full engagement of the state court system, with the...

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Friend of the Court

Sarosi, the president of Father Gabriel Richard High School’s junior class, was accompanied by twenty-five classmates, teachers, the school’s chaplain, and its principal. They were there because Matilyn, an honor...

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The Clothesline Lady

It all started with a photograph. The year was 1966, and the photo shows Lawrence’s mother smiling as she leans over her back porch railing with a full clothesline swaying behind her in the breeze. “It was, and still...

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A Flower for All Seasons

Where–in Ann Arbor–can you, no matter what your height, stand directly beneath a flower that soars so high that the very clouds in the sky seem lower than its petals? Where–in Ann Arbor–can you see a...

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SafeHouse’s Budget Crunch

“Sequestration was tough on us,” says Barbara Niess-May, executive director of SafeHouse Center. Cutbacks in several programs that help victims of domestic violence and sexual assault cost the center more than...

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Driving the Drunken Student

Mark Reddock, a Getaway driver since 2000, says U-M Greek groups often charter buses to take members to drinking parties as far afield as Comerica Park in Detroit and Clutch Cargo’s in Pontiac. Getaway gets fifteen to...

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Martin Contreras and Keith Orr

Over coffee one morning last October, Martin Contreras, fifty-four, and Keith Orr, fifty-six, discussed whether they should get married that day. “Let’s do it,” urged Contreras. They had been a couple for...

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Turtle Stewards

Turtles survived the comet that killed the dinosaurs, only to be imperiled by sand volleyball players. The volleyball court is where a snapping turtle laid her eggs a couple of years ago in Scheffler Park. The year before, one...

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Pleya del Sol

We received 90 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for “Pleya del Sol” on page 95 of the March Observer. That was an unexpectedly low number for an ad that our nemesis, Dean McLaughlin, dismissed as...

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