Canvassing Kemnitz
For many, he’s to Ann Arbor what Toulouse Lautrec is to Pigalle, what Al Hirschfeld is to Sardi’s, or what Norman Rockwell is to romanticized Americana. His renderings–signature views of State St. and the...
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Seventh St.’s Prophet of Sustainability
Matt Grocoff foresees a future Ann Arbor where homes and neighborhoods produce their own energy and drinking water, retain their storm water, and recycle their wastewater.”They call it sustainability,” he says with a...
Read MoreHeavy Traffic 2015
Marilyn Tower started her campaign to slow traffic on Covington Dr. on the city’s southwest side in the spring of 2012. For two years, Tower stood outside her house many school days, carrying homemade signs reading...
Read MoreMark Koernke and Me
Mark and I never really hit it off.I first met Mark Koernke in the late ’80s. Gene Ward, a fellow FBI agent, had asked me to accompany him on an interview of Koernke. We met with Koernke in his basement office at Alice...
Read MoreLurie Terrace at Fifty
Lurie Terrace, a residence for active seniors of moderate means, was a real groundbreaker when it was built fifty years ago. “There were none [like it] to the best of our knowledge” recalls Bob Chance, one of the...
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(Bionic) Eye on the Prize
Dressed in a teal sterile surgeon uniform, Thiran Jayasundera holds microscissors with latex gloves. Sitting, he leans in to stare through a microscope-like lens aimed straight down over a patient’s eye. Backaches. Bright...
Read MoreA Team of Their Own
Some glide on their skates and others wobble, but in early November members of the new Huron/Skyline women’s high school hockey team are finally on the ice for their first week of practice. As Huron sophomore Miah...
Read MoreExit John Hieftje. Enter Christopher Taylor.
“I was very open in 2012 about why I ran for another term,” says John Hieftje the day after the November election confirmed Christopher Taylor will succeed him as mayor. “I wanted to make sure the city got...
Read MoreGrover’s Corners
Looking back, it had the simplicity of Grover’s Corners in Our Town. Not that Grandma and Grandpa Mann lived on the typical square block. No, think isosceles triangle–or a piece of cheesecake, a small, narrow...
Read MoreWashtenaw in WWI
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns on the western front of the Great War fell silent, ending four of the bloodiest years in the history of the world.The war demolished empires and...
Read MoreFree at Last
On a bright and brisk Sunday afternoon in mid-October, Paul Bishop of the Dexter Area Historical Society did what a lot of people watching from the lawn of Gordon Hall would probably love to do for their own homes: he set fire...
Read MorePower Politics
Deb Ellison lives on 240 acres near Manchester, with a view of the River Raisin. But she’s concerned that her waterfront idyll is threatened. At the end of June, Ellison received a notice in the mail from ET Rover...
Read MoreContrarian for Mayor
Ann Arbor elects a mayor every two years. But because local voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, the only election that usually matters is the August primary. Mayor John Hieftje won the last four general elections with at least...
Read MoreAnn Arborites Run for Regent
Near the end of the November 4 ballot, far below the hotly contested races for governor and the U.S. Senate, is another contest: with, arguably, even greater impact on Ann Arbor–two Democrats and two Republicans are...
Read MoreTaking the Pledge
The meeting in July was amazing enough: all four mayoral candidates in the August Democratic primary faced 500 homeless people and their advocates at Genesis of Ann Arbor, the interfaith partnership between St. Clare of Assisi...
Read MoreWhen Water Was Wealth
Ann Arborites cavorting in the Argo Cascades, or communing with nature out by the rapids at Delhi, may not realize that these wonderful spots are actually relics of industrial sites created by the region’s first European...
Read MoreThe Greenbelt at Ten
With its rows of golden corn and deep green soybeans leading to a big red barn, Bur Oaks Farm in Webster Township is a picture-perfect farm.”Crops this year are generally excellent,” emails Tom Bloomer, who bought...
Read MoreShades of 1973
Recently I was given a copy of the official program of the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. I worked the event for John Sinclair’s Rainbow People’s Party.As I was leafing through the program, something jumped...
Read MorePost-Party Politics
Kirk Westphal was puzzled. In October 2013, he got a mass email from Chuck Gelman inviting people to “attend the democratic [party] meeting and support jane lumm or the candidate of your choice. this [meeting] is an...
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