Beyond Fire Lore
“You’ve heard of folklore, right?” asks Larry Collins, Ann Arbor’s new fire chief. “Well, there’s a thing called fire lore. What happens is, over the years, what the old-timers said takes on a...
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Is SPARK Worth It?
It’s there in big type at the top of SPARK’s latest annual report: “13,034 new jobs since 2006.”Sumi Kailasapathy doubts it.”The job creation claims for previous years made by SPARK have proven to...
Read MoreAnn Arbor’s Seven Sisters
When President Obama announced in December that he would normalize relations with Cuba, photographer Jack Kenny and retired attorney Kurt Berggren got to thinking about an official visit with Ann Arbor’s newest sister...
Read MoreAnimal Magic
Kelly Hone spends her workdays with Chico the chinchilla, Badger the ferret, and Snowflake the hedgehog. Mice, chicks, bunnies, red-footed tortoises, Petunia the pot-bellied pig, and Nigerian dwarf goats round out her retinue....
Read MoreSeeing Red in Webster
“It was love at first sight,” gushes Nichole Nilsson. She’s speaking of her first visit to Nixon Farms while planning her September 2013 wedding. “The minute we walked into the barn, we thought this was...
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Millennials in the Country
Brendan McCall and his wife, Lili Kostova, searched for a year and a half for a house to buy. McCall, thirty-two, is executive chef and partner at Mani Osteria and Isalita restaurants, both located in downtown Ann Arbor....
Read MoreDowntown Hounds
If you need a quick doggie fix in downtown Ann Arbor, you’re in luck. There are plenty of pooches, purebreds, and hounds working side by side with their owners who will be glad to oblige–as long as treats and petting...
Read MoreTaken for a Ride
Uber in action is nearly impossible to see. Except for an identifying decal in their rear window, “Uber X” cars look like what they are: privately owned vehicles. But they’re out there. Just ask bar...
Read MoreThe Elephant Under the Rug
“I want you to know that I never considered your father an alcoholic because his drinking never interfered with his job,” my mother-in-law confessed to her sons at the end of her life. Until that day, she had never...
Read MoreClosing the Frontier
Soybeans grew last summer in the fields of the three Nixon properties on the city’s far north side. Deer grazed in the woods, and frogs croaked in the wetlands.In February, the fields, woods, and wetlands lay beneath a...
Read MoreHearth and Heart
Fifteen years ago Andrew Kyte, then a teenager, walked into the workshop of Mike Wolfe, a blacksmith on Ann Arbor’s west side, and wrote his name on the wall above the door. “I wanted to leave my mark,” he...
Read MoreSuper Blogger
In October, someone called “Wolverine Devotee” posted an email message on mgoblog.com. Supposedly sent by U-M athletic director Dave Brandon to a fan, it ended curtly: “I suggest you find a new team to support....
Read More“Our Deer Are Mostly Ann Arborites”
Maurita Holland says the last straw was when the deer ate her rain garden. The retired School of Information prof replaced a patch of turf with a sunken garden of native plants–only to discover that the deer that roam her...
Read MoreCanvassing 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...
Read MoreSeventh 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...
Read More(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...
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