Back to School 2021
“I am confident that it’s going to work.””On August 30th, you’ll...
Read More
Featured
Rebuilding the MRF
When it opened in 1995, Ann Arbor’s Materials Recovery Facility put the city on the leading...
Read More
The Instant Art Fair
Update: The map in the July 2021 Observer missed two important changes: there is no Art-Go-Round...
Read More
The Double Steal
It took about 5,000 years from the discovery of glass until a process was developed to...
Read More
Getting In
In March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic shut down school buildings across Michigan. No in-person...
Read MoreExiled from Ann Arbor
When the pandemic struck, Caroline Sloss and her husband, Rowan, were living in a brownstone duplex in Brooklyn, New York, with their two-week-old son. “Being near family seemed the safest,” Caroline says, so...
Read More
A Big Year for Small Farms
Ann Arborites were early converts to the locavore movement. Ann Arbor Farmers Market manager...
Read More
Barnacled!
A local musician says he’s parked for years in the lots at First Baptist and First United...
Read More
The Water Lawsuit
Can Ann Arbor raise water rates now to pay for a new treatment plant it hasn’t started...
Read More
Closing the Broadband Gap
“Eeeeven the speed test is slo-o-ow!” laughs Barb Fuller, her audio delayed and video...
Read More
The Last High-Rises?
Ann Arbor’s profile has risen dramatically in the past twenty years. As the U-M added 10,000...
Read More
How the Humane Society Coped with Covid
Jeff Mortimer had no idea it would be so hard to adopt a cat. “My friend who is a volunteer...
Read More
Tipping Point
Jonathan Overpeck saw the climate catastrophe coming. “I started out as a climate...
Read More
A New Valhalla?
Sean Westergaard remembers the first time he explored Valhalla Dr. On one side, all he could see...
Read More
The Pandemic Year
Michigan reported its first case of Covid-19 on March 10, 2020. News of the first infection in...
Read More
Lives of the Poets
One wintry January in 1986 four poets—Wendell Berry, Galway Kinnell, Seamus Heaney, and Donald...
Read More
Staying Alive
On June 27th, 2020, I hopped on my bike to go to the store. I felt so free as I rode through the...
Read More
The Signal of Liberty
Believing as we do that it is morally wrong to continue our fellow beings in involuntary...
Read More
Nightmare at the Psych ER
I lived through a nightmare at the U-M Psychiatric Emergency Room. The pandemic made it worse, but...
Read More