The New Farmers
I don’t eat locally grown food because it makes me feel better, though it does, or because I want to support local farms and the local economy, though I do.I eat locally grown food because it tastes better. Carrots so...
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Is It Art?
On June 7, in public sessions at City Hall, four artists from around the country presented their plans for the new Stadium Boulevard bridges. As a member of the task force reviewing the designs, David Huntoon was...
Read MoreAnn Arbor at the Crossroads
“We’re at a crossroads of politics in Ann Arbor,” says Steve Kunselman, an incumbent city councilmember from the Third Ward on the southeast side seeking a fourth term.”We are at a turning point,”...
Read MoreReinventing Malletts Creek
To grasp the scale and scope of the changes to the Malletts Creek watershed in recent years, visit the two big parks it flows through.Start at Mary Beth Doyle Park on the city’s southeast side. Enter from Birch Hollow...
Read MoreFirst In, Last Out
When residents describe East Ann Arbor, they use terms such as peaceful, quiet, and tranquil. The neighborhoods around the intersection of Packard and Platt have block after block of small, neat homes, many built in the 1940s...
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Lessons in Survival
“The way things are currently structured, it’s inevitable,” says Dexter school board president Larry Cobler. “At some point every school district in the state is either going to be under an emergency...
Read MoreHow Do Kids Connect to Art?
Note: All children were interviewed and photographed with permission from their parents. And in a healthy moment, one artist, Yos Belchatovski, stopped us from taking their pictures until he verified that.”I just like...
Read MoreMarket Share
Not so long ago, farmers markets looked like an endangered species. “Sales are down and fewer farmers are coming to Ann Arbor,” the Ann Arbor Observer wrote in 1988. “Will the market survive to the year...
Read MoreThe Argo Cascades: Wild Ride
The city’s proud of the Argo Cascades–and why not? Since it opened last spring, the aquatic playground has won two design awards and proven enormously popular. River trips increased 57 percent last year, despite low...
Read MoreThe Power of the Blog
Blogging was big in the late ’90s and early 2000s, as an explosion of Internet users cottoned to the idea of sharing with their circle of friends through an online journal. These days, much of that content has migrated to...
Read MorePea Tips and Spicy Pig’s Ear
General Tso’s chicken doesn’t get much respect these days. Those deep-fried chicken nuggets with their brown, sticky sauce have taken chop suey’s place as the most mocked item on a Chinese restaurant...
Read MoreHidden Gems
Washtenaw County is truly blessed when it comes to parks and nature preserves. Our cities, towns, and countryside boast so many that some get almost no visitors at all. Here are three little-known natural areas that are well...
Read MoreThe Last Film Critic
Ryan Michaels, a hyper-articulate, hyper-opinionated fourteen-year-old, has been reviewing movies for the Heritage West newspapers since he was eleven. His critiques appear in the Ann Arbor Journal, Dexter Leader, Chelsea...
Read MoreNew Growth in the Woods
In the mid-1960s, Chelsea architect Art Lindauer hiked into a mosquito-laden woods south of downtown Chelsea. He was sent there by Dr. Michael Papo, a local physician who had outgrown the Chelsea storefront he shared with three...
Read MoreThe Cow Doctor
It’s a brisk but sunny spring day as Jeff Messman pulls his pickup into Dave and Gordon Whelan’s dairy farm near Tipton in Lenawee County. Messman makes the drive from Fredonia to the Whelan farm every two weeks....
Read MoreLocation is Everything
In 1824 thirty-eight-year-old Orange Risdon and thirty-two-year-old Samuel Dexter spent four months on horseback exploring mostly uninhabited land in southeast Michigan. At the end of the 2,000-mile trip, they settled within a...
Read MoreGoing in Circles
Jerry Colone tested trucks at the Chrysler Proving Grounds for thirty-four years. Now, he says, the huge complex southwest of Chelsea is “like a ghost town.”Employment at the grounds has fallen from 700 five years...
Read MoreStepping Fancy
Robin Warner sits just inside the door of the Pittsfield Grange Hall, a simple white clapboard building on Ann Arbor–Saline Road, collecting admission. Gray-haired and dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, he pauses to chat with...
Read MoreTesting the Wind
Richard and Carole Murphy were driving through North Dakota several years ago when they noticed three enormous metal blades spinning slowly in the prairie wind.”We were curious, so I turned around and drove back until we...
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