Community

The Tooth Fairy

“The building … in the background is unmistakable!” writes Alexandra Burja. “I can spy those teeth-like pillars of the dental school anywhere!” adds Gaia Stenson–the sculpture shown last month...

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Inkin

A healthy 169 Fake Adders spotted the Fake Ad for Inkin, a job search firm for creative types, on page 77 of the October Observer.Many entrants quickly spotted the name of last month’s winner, Jim Pluta, hidden (sort of)...

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Musical Farm

Local folks have known and loved the King family’s Frog Holler organic produce for decades.”It’s the best,” gushes Dexter resident Barry Lonik, land preservation activist and President of Treemore Ecology...

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Bumps of Steel

West-side resident Kent Burkhart was incredulous: shining through a lumpy asphalt patch on Jackson Road were a pair of steel rails. Just east of Grandview, the old interurban railroad had resurfaced. “It’s...

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The Lousmas Say Good-bye

The couple both graduated from Ann Arbor High in 1954–Jack was football captain, and Gratia Smeltzer was homecoming queen. They married two years later, when Jack was an engineering undergrad at the U-M. His mother...

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Miniature Log Cabins?

Q: There’s a cluster of miniature log cabins on Carpenter Road just south of the I-94 overpass. Who built them, and do people still live in them?A. The three cabins and two houses share a surprisingly tranquil...

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River Hero

Standing on a footbridge next to Argo Dam, Laura Rubin likes what she sees: a group carries inner tubes toward the new Argo Cascades, bikers and runners whiz by, a couple of paddleboarders balance clumsily on the pond, a few...

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Crossing the Outback

Nineteen U-M students have been in Australia since August, getting ready for this month’s World Solar Challenge. Though student-run teams have been racing solar-powered cars since 1990, the 1,800-mile run from Darwin to...

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Rivalries

The night before last year’s MSU game, I joined some friends at the Brown Jug. It was only five o’clock on a gray, chilly Friday afternoon, but the restaurant was already packed with students, alumni, and fans. With...

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The Kelsey’s Tiffany Window

“I Spy … the Tiffany window … [in] the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology’s Library,” writes Amber Clark of Ypsilanti. The Kelsey “is a treasure trove for so many reasons!” exclaims Gaia...

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Hirsute Yourself

“Unless the commercial scene of Ann Arbor has changed hugely, the fake ad for this month is for Hirsute Yourself on page 84,” Nishant Kheterpal emailed. “I applaud whoever wrote this one–it was really...

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Performance reviews

The jobs website Indeed. com provides a forum for workers to review previous employers–or, for Ann Arbor company Ipanema Solutions, a staging ground for a verbal firefight between disgruntled workers and their ex-bosses....

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Salaam, Shalom

“It was like a movie,” says Ahmed Hamdi. Seven years ago, when he was twenty-one, men with guns burst into his family’s home in Baghdad. They shoved Ahmed and his father to their knees and pushed their heads...

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Fans vs. moneymakers

“What the fans want, and what the players want, seem to be less and less important,” says John U. Bacon, summing up his new book, Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football. Reached by phone from...

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Hammertoe

Scene One: In the late 1930s my younger sister, Judy, employing all the wisdom of a six-year-old, pushed a pebble up her nose. My mother, try as she might, could not extract the pebble. Our newest family member, Janet, and I...

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Donor’s Remorse

“Can you tell me how to get to the United Way headquarters?”The short answer, to a person on foot at the West Stadium Sunoco, would have been, “farther than you’ll want to walk.”But in hindsight, I...

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Ann Arbor on Ice

What do the painted rock and Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s annual Mud Bowl football game have in common?If you answered that they’re both beloved and messy U-M traditions on Washtenaw Avenue, then you’re right, up to a...

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Backyard Beekeepers

“I hate honey,” says Richard Mendel, the king bee of Ann Arbor’s backyard beekeepers.”But I like bees,” Mendel adds. “They’re the most amazing creature that exists.”Mendel can, and...

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Sports Shrink

Dan Saferstein knows how important sports are to a lot of Ann Arbor kids–and to their families. “In this city, parents have high expectations,” he says. “College [athletic] scholarships become kind of a...

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