Community

Over the summer, a river of books flowed through the vacant Secretary of State office in Maple Village. Friendly women in blue “AAUW” T-shirts bustled to take bags and boxes of them from walk-in donors, while others...

At age 103, the Ann Arbor Art Center is looking for only its second paid leader.The first, Marsha Chamberlin, was hired thirty-three years ago to turn the all-volunteer Ann Arbor Art Association into a professional organization....

“I hate Facebook,” says Candi Carver Dufek one early Saturday morning at Sweetwaters downtown. “It’s a waste of time.” But, she says, “Kit made me join it.”So I joined it, and a thousand...

Q. I-94 drivers have noticed the big pole-mounted cameras put up near every local intersection. Who’s watching? And what can they see? I’m all for better advance warning of traffic problems–but it’s a...

“This process has gone on so long!” exclaims Ann Arbor writer Ken Wachsberger. Two decades after he started work on Voices from the Underground: Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, the final...

The effects of our unseasonably warm March weather are readily apparent this fall. Apples are very scarce at local farmers’ markets, and cider mills are importing fruit from other parts of the state–or beyond.Most...

The same week Gloria Thomas’s boss told her that the U-M Center for the Education of Women was going to lose funding for a popular program, she also learned that a former prof, Elizabeth Dusseau, who had recently died at...

As a young girl, Kerrie Ferrell dreamed of becoming the first female major league baseball player. But her local Little League banned her–even though, she says, in neighborhood ball games, “I was better than the...

We asked Lois Kane, sometime Ann Arbor Observer writer, if she could/would write a piece about her husband, Gordy Kane, U-M professor of physics, winning a bet with Stephen Hawking. The bet concerned the existence (Kane) or...

“Lovely,” comments Judy Avery. “How nice of you to provide us with a chance to check out that barn none of us got last month.” The house is known as “The Meadows,” writes Michael Brueger,...

We received 105 entries correctly identifying the 50 Shades of Grey-themed ad for Orrenson’s Paint Store on page 70 of the August Observer. The entries included several from first-time Fake Adders, including Allison...