Argo Ultimatum
The future of the aging impoundment off North Main has been debated for years. Rowers want the pond preserved and dredged, while the Huron River Watershed Council advocates removing the dam to restore the river’s natural...
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Deadly season
Just a year ago, a forty-seven-year-old homeless man was found dead at a park-and-ride lot on Ann Arbor–Saline Road. While no one tracks the grim statistics, people in the homeless “business” say his fate was...
Read MoreThe Pentagon’s Pet Projects
An expanse of sky and treetops on North Campus spreads out in the windows behind Wei Shyy as he describes his work designing tiny planes that fly and perch like insects and birds. Talking about an insect’s arms, the chair...
Read MorePast Present
The dirt road to Ray and Karen Berg’s Victorian style home in Manchester takes visitors past farms, cornfields, and rolling green pastures to a light blue Queen Anne perched on a hill. The house and its pastoral setting...
Read MoreTrash Takeover?
Most of the solid waste produced by Ann Arbor households is now recycled-but businesses still landfill 80 percent of their trash.The city doesn’t have much leverage to change businesses’ practices, because its free...
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Winning brand
The city of Ann Arbor is no longer growing—but you’d never know it to look at Ann Arbor SPARK’s renamed website, AnnArborUSA.org. The economic development group’s map of the “Ann Arbor region”...
Read MoreHorse Play
To Ted Kennedy, riding a Clydesdale around Kerrytown is a form of performance art.His performance atop Duncan, on the afternoon following Election Day, was a crowd-pleaser.Duncan’s literally a ton of horse, rescued from...
Read MoreThe Two-Man Judge Race
One election this year won’t be touched by the expected tidal wave of Democratic voters turning out to support Barack Obama: the contest for Fifteenth District judge. The successor to retiring judge Ann Mattson will be...
Read MoreTwo Parks Proposals
They’re not generating anything like the excitement of the state ballot proposals, which would legalize medical marijuana and loosen restrictions on stem cell research. But parks supporters are strongly interested in a...
Read MoreThe Lonely Republicans
Nothing brings out voters like a presidential contest—and even by that standard, the November 4 vote is shaping up to be exceptional. County clerk Larry Kestenbaum says his office is preparing for the largest turnout in Michigan...
Read MoreThe Hatch Act Strikes Again
An obscure 1939 federal law originally designed to curb rampant patronage in the post office, the Hatch Act is now being used as a blunt political object to force candidates out of elections—or jobs.The act’s changed the...
Read MoreStoryCorps
In September the national StoryCorps visited the U-M’s Silver Club enrichment program for folks with dementia. The corps’s goal: recording people’s stories before the memories fade. A Georgia-born...
Read MoreMedical Celebrities
Hey, aren’t you the doc in the commercials?”Robert Bartlett gets asked that a lot these days. The surgeon and researcher has long been hot stuff in his professional world—he invented a life-support system called...
Read MoreCrop Crackdown
In September market manager Molly Notarianni ordered Fusilier Farms to stop selling cherries and peaches at the downtown market. Another grower, Glenn Heim of Chelsea, was expelled outright. The sanctions grew out of a new farm...
Read MoreWindow war
Last spring Heather O’Neal asked the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission for permission to re-place three rotting windows in her B&B, the Eighth Street Trekkers’ Lodge. The HDC made two site visits—and denied...
Read MoreFan photos
They start at the tailgate parties and then head to the stadium while it’s still almost empty. They talk to strangers, photograph them, and move on. And last year about 700 fans paid anywhere from $9.99 to $139.99 to buy...
Read MoreBeer & golf
One of the most rancorous city council decisions this year involved the award of a liquor license to Leslie Park Golf Course instead of a host of private businesses that had applied for it. One applicant, the Kerrytown eatery...
Read MoreIraqi Exiles
The next few months we will see a huge wave,” predicts Anya Abramzon.Abramzon, the executive director of Jewish Family Services, is speaking about refugees from the Iraq War. She says twenty Iraqis and their families have...
Read MorePlanet Marcia
Is Marcia Ottoman insane—or merely unrepentant?The answer will determine how long a sentence the former Dexter Township trustee receives for impersonating a federal prosecutor and for wire fraud.The federal government is arguing...
Read MoreThe Ann Arbor Chronicle
Local news is now being served up daily by an ambitious new publication—but you can’t find it on a newsstand. Mary Morgan and Dave Askins launched annarborchronicle.com on September 2, their wedding anniversary. Morgan, a...
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