A timely repair helps an Air Force veteran in need.After serving twenty years in the air force, Michigan native Dave Kelly semi-retired to Las Vegas. Each summer, he returned to Clio, north of Flint, to help his elderly mother....
Read MoreYou wouldn’t think a simple 1940s industrial building would have much of a history, but 2390 Winewood, the new home of the Ann Arbor Observer, has a surprisingly diverse past: it has housed a manufacturer of trading stamp...
Read More“Be Where Now? Be Hair Now … at the corner of Miller and Ashley,” writes Christine Schopieray in answer to January’s I Spy clue. It’s “the little hair salon at the northwest corner,”...
Read MoreThis year’s Burns Park Players musical production–Anything Goes, a 1930s farce set at sea and powered by the catchiest of Cole Porter tunes–is the neighborhood theater group’s thirtieth outing. The show...
Read MoreIf you live through a winter, is it hyperbole to call it brutal? Probably not for Ethol Fred Nordman, LaVerne Drake, Robert Granville, and other young Washtenaw County men who welcomed January 1919 fighting for their lives near...
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When I was a kid, I had a friend down the street named Kwame whose older brother was mentally handicapped. This gave Kwame license, he felt, to make fun of other mentally handicapped folks he encountered. Of course, if anyone...
Read MoreIn the late 2000s, when Bill Lockwood and Riley Trumbull rented a townhouse near Malletts Creek, they often found stray cats in the neighborhood. “Some of them were lost cats,” recalls Lockwood, “but the area,...
Read MoreSharada and Viswa Kumar started the local Chinmaya Mission in the basement of their home in 1984. Now, 750 families attend the Hindu religious and educational center on Packard in Pittsfield Township.”It has been going up...
Read MoreOn The Tracks is a new monthly music series in Chelsea. It debuted in September and will continue through next May on the first Wednesday of every month in the Chelsea Depot–hence the title.Is it a concert series? Not...
Read MoreIn June 1812, the United States declared war on the United Kingdom. In July, Michigan territorial governor-turned-general William Hull failed to invade Canada. In August, he hastily surrendered Detroit to the British and their...
Read MoreJim Nissen cranks up the stereo until the sound of the Ann Arbor Concert Band fills his two-story living room. He nods along to the music, waves an imaginary baton, and shakes his fists with each staccato burst. Nissen, the...
Read MoreWhen Martin Bandyke started in radio on February 21, 1983, he was a twenty-eight-year-old rock drummer and an import record buyer at Dearborn Music. Three decades later, Bandyke is no longer a drummer or a record buyer, but...
Read MoreIn 1961, Joe O’Neal worked on two construction projects. The first was a dam in Asia worth $300-$400 million. The second was a house in Ann Arbor that cost $39,000.In January of that year, the blond, fit Ohio native added...
Read More“It’s like opening a Christmas gift,” says Rob Hoffman.Recently, Mitch Rosenwasser, executive director of the U-M’s Camp Michigania, handed Hoffman a box of 16 mm movies taken at Michigan’s summer...
Read MoreQUESTION: What non-activity provides a near-perfect getaway? A solid block of time to catch up on your pulp fiction, review for a test, or see that movie that got the rave reviews but you missed while you were preparing for...
Read MoreBuilder Joe O’Neal says he was “mad for a minute” to learn that the New York City marathon was cancelled in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. He was already in the city, ready to run the marathon for his...
Read MoreI lug my heavy hockey bag into the locker room at Veterans Memorial Ice Arena on a Friday evening and join a few of my teammates who are already suiting up. Once I strap on my pads, lace up my skates, and secure my helmet, a...
Read MorePublic bike maintenance equipment will help ease cyclists’ commutes on the U-M campus this spring, thanks to grad student Arielle Fleisher. Fleisher, a student in the School of Public Health, spearheaded the plan to...
Read MoreAs early as 1834, pioneers bought up tracts of government land and began clearing it for farms in what is now the Waterloo Recreation Area. A hundred years later, during the Great Depression, many descendants of these pioneers...
Read MoreU-M basketball coach John Beilein has an unusual problem this year: too much talent.Beilein has four proven players returning, and two of these, point guard Trey Burke and swing player Tim Hardaway Jr., have NBA potential....
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