Sue Thy Neighbor
When Nick Delbanco and his wife moved from Vermont to Ann Arbor in 1985, they were drawn to a home near Nichols Arboretum. Just a block away, a short path led to the Arb’s Main Valley. “I felt like a country...
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The Faculty Strikes Back
“The secret bonuses blew me away!”That’s U-M history prof Juan Cole, describing his response to the news that a growing number of university employees–chiefly top administrators–are receiving hefty...
Read MoreRollings Stones
This spring, a white marble three-and-a-half foot statue of the Virgin Mary, along with her engraved granite pedestal, will continue a journey begun early in the twentieth century. In the meantime, Arnet’s Monuments, the...
Read MoreKings of the Road
Recently, Vaughn Butterfield hooked up a 2014 Montana High Country fifth-wheel trailer at Lloyd Bridges Traveland and drove it 2,200 miles to Menifee, California. Butterfield had previously bought two recreational vehicles from...
Read MoreWhat Price Transit?
If Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Ypsilanti Township voters approve the transit millage on the May 6 ballot, property taxes in the three communities will go up $70 a year for every $100,000 in taxable value. That would increase local...
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Michigan’s Homeopathic Hospital
In December 1901, University of Michigan professor Royal S. Copeland gave a rousing speech at the opening ceremony of the university’s Homeopathic Teaching Hospital. “The history of medicine is a history of...
Read MoreEPA Comes Clean
The Environmental Protection Agency’s National Vehicle & Fuel Emissions Laboratory has quietly gone about its business on Plymouth Rd. since 1971, writing emission standards and testing cars and fuels sold in the...
Read MoreA Road Back from Walking the Streets
“Lisa” was ten years old the first time she was sold for sex. Sexually assaulted by her father at an early age, she’d been placed in a foster home in Lansing. But her foster mother was physically abusive, so...
Read MoreA Gravel Mine in Lyndon?
Lyndon Township is between a rock and a hard place.McCoig Materials, which operates seven concrete plants in the Detroit area, wants to open its first sand and gravel mine on 158 acres across from Green Lake. The site is smack...
Read MoreA Cappella Ascending
When you walk into a U-M a cappella event, the audience’s deafening cheers and raucous cries of adoration might lead you to expect a rock god on stage. But the performers are all U-M students, and the performances are...
Read MoreThe Subdivision that Got Away
“The situation was going downhill rapidly,” Dan Ezekiel remembers. It was the spring of 2009, and the Forsythe Middle School science teacher had gone out to 3013 W. Huron River Dr. to meet the property’s owner,...
Read MoreThe Hieftje Era
“I did everything I set out to do,” says mayor John Hieftje of his seven terms in office.Sitting in city hall’s south-facing first-floor conference room the day after the winter’s heaviest snowfall, Ann...
Read MoreKangaroos on Ann Arbor-Saline Rd.
Armadillos in a basement, swans in a pond, sloths on the ceilings, kangaroos in a field, kids in a classroom, an alligator in a van. Is this place a zoo, an animal sanctuary, a traveling circus, or a school?”It’s...
Read MoreBack on Track
A race car crouches in the lobby of Road & Track’s south-side office. “That’s a real McLaren, from ’89,” Larry Webster says. “That thing on the wall is [a body panel] from a real 1966...
Read MoreA $250,000 Election?
In November, Jane Lumm and Kirk Westphal spent over $40,000 between them in Ward Two. Their total nearly doubled last year’s second-most-expensive contest, the $21,000 Democratic primary between Jack Eaton and Marcia...
Read MoreFamily vs. Garbage
Jeanie Wilson’s day of reckoning came last June. “I must’ve picked up at least ten Costco granola bar wrappers from all over the house,” she says. The mother of three says that that discovery, combined...
Read MoreThe Uprising
Just after Thanksgiving, engineering Professor Fawwaz Ulaby posted an open letter to the U-M administration, protesting a plan to eliminate more than 300 jobs in the university’s departments and schools. The online...
Read MoreHeat from the Ground
At work, local attorney Deb LaBelle deals with grim realities. Four years ago, she won a landmark $100 million lawsuit against the state on behalf of hundreds of women who’d been sexually abused in prison. In December, she...
Read MoreWhy Don’t Chiefs Stay?
“I found out when everybody else did,” says mayor John Hieftje of fire chief Chuck Hubbard’s abrupt announcement that he will retire at the end of January. “I don’t know why. I suspect he’ll...
Read MoreFaces of the City
Susan Campbell walks briskly down N. Fourth Ave. with her Pentax camera around her neck, pursuing an older couple who stride arm in arm, bundled together against the cold. She approaches them with a smile and asks if she could...
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