I have long been curious about the late Ralph W. Hammett. A U-M architecture professor, he designed many local buildings, including an addition to the Ann Arbor (then Women’s) City Club on Washtenaw, the Congregational...
Read MoreFeb 6, 2014 | Community |
The 2006 fire that destroyed all the merchandise in its South State Street location didn’t stop it: the board found a better location on South Industrial, along the booming “resale row” with Recycle Ann...
Read MoreIt’s not like I’m crazy. I would have stayed inside like everyone else.It was the second day after the “polar vortex” hit us. The wind chill was something like forty degrees below zero, and the police...
Read MoreFeb 3, 2014 | Community |
Dave Queen noticed the work crews setting up for the NHL Winter Classic a couple days before the big game. “There was this huge event going on down the street, and I couldn’t ignore it,” says Queen, who lives...
Read MoreJeanie Wilson’s day of reckoning came last June. “I must’ve picked up at least ten Costco granola bar wrappers from all over the house,” she says. The mother of three says that that discovery, combined...
Read MoreAt work, local attorney Deb LaBelle deals with grim realities. Four years ago, she won a landmark $100 million lawsuit against the state on behalf of hundreds of women who’d been sexually abused in prison. In December, she...
Read More“Believe it or not, I had already planned my life for the next twenty years once I hit eighteen,” Anistia Thomas says. The “plan” sounds like a combination of teenage pipe dreams: design fashion for...
Read MoreJan 20, 2014 | Community |
When it started in 1972, the proudly uncommercial “free-form” station broadcast at a measly 10 watts, barely enough to reach the city limits. After the station boosted its signal to 200 watts in the eighties, it...
Read MoreJan 17, 2014 | Community |
According to the most recent report by the state Department of Corrections, 878 juveniles were incarcerated as felons in Michigan in 2011. Some as young as eleven, they are growing up in cell blocks.In 2006, local humor writer...
Read MoreWhen Ohio stole part of Michigan in the 1830s, it was a battle between a state and a territory. We are a state now, and it is past time to reexamine this whole sordid affair.In 1787, the Second Continental Congress enacted the...
Read MoreJan 6, 2014 | Community |
On a gray day, consider hunting for hawks. We’ve seen more hawks in Ann Arbor on overcast winter days than at any other time.There may be several reasons for this. When there is no glare from the sun, spotting the hawks is...
Read MoreJan 3, 2014 | Community |
After greeting my older brothers when they came home from Popkins School, I could hardly wait to start kindergarten. The red brick one-room elementary school was on the corner of Plymouth and Earhart roads in Ann Arbor Township....
Read MoreSusan Campbell walks briskly down N. Fourth Ave. with her Pentax camera around her neck, pursuing an older couple who stride arm in arm, bundled together against the cold. She approaches them with a smile and asks if she could...
Read More“Have you ever heard of Michigan Adoption Resource Exchange, www.mare.org?” Joyce Tesoriero asks.She swivels her chair around to her computer. “This is gonna break your heart,” she warns.The screen in her...
Read MoreAndy Sokoly is one of the few white faces in a church on Detroit’s east side. As a woman with a cordless microphone leads a thunderous call-and-response–“Praise him!”–a group of visitors is swiftly...
Read MoreDec 27, 2013 | Community |
Q. Black squirrels are predominant (or perhaps exclusive) in Ontario. A Canadian friend recently stated that she had heard that they have “crossed over” into Michigan. Do you know the magnitude of this black squirrel...
Read MoreDec 26, 2013 | Community |
Thanks to Kevin Mersol-Barg, undocumented Michigan residents will be eligible for in-state tuition starting in January. Inspired by a national immigration activist, Mersol-Barg organized the Coalition for Tuition Equality as a...
Read MoreBy the time I was seven years old, I knew what it meant to be poor. Over time I would grow to hate it, but at that age I didn’t understand why my family was so different from our new neighbors in Ann Arbor. I only knew...
Read More“What’s the game here?” U-M prof Susan Murphy asks as she projects strings of equations and approximations in a crowded classroom in the Dennison Building. Students in this advanced U-M statistics class write...
Read MoreDec 22, 2013 | Community |
Is that a reindeer hiding in plain sight at the Fifth and William corner parking lot? “It’s actually a gazelle,” says Ed Wheeler, the maintenance manager for Republic Parking. “We’ve had it there...
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