Ague in Ann Arbor
Don’t go to Michigan, land of ills;The name means ague, fever, and chills.-Popular nineteenth-century sayingIn September 1824 a twenty-year-old Irish immigrant, Walter Oakman, bought 123 acres of land near Ypsilanti....
Read MoreMar 31, 2009 | Community |
Don’t go to Michigan, land of ills;The name means ague, fever, and chills.-Popular nineteenth-century sayingIn September 1824 a twenty-year-old Irish immigrant, Walter Oakman, bought 123 acres of land near Ypsilanti....
Read MoreMar 30, 2009 | Community |
Every neighborhood in America has a mail carrier, and Ann Arbor’s are no exception. Six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, carriers fan out from the city’s three post offices to walk or drive its 137 delivery...
Read MoreMar 29, 2009 | News |
“My heart just went to my toes,” says Sandy Rupp. The date was January 22, 2007, and she’d gotten word that Pfizer was closing its Ann Arbor labs. The year before, the pharmaceutical giant and its 2,100...
Read MoreMar 28, 2009 | Marketplace |
The late activist attorney Art Carpenter came up with the idea of Kitchen Port forty years ago, when he and a bunch of his friends got tired of going to New York and Chicago to buy high-end cookware. It worked well for a long...
Read MoreMar 27, 2009 | Marketplace |
In January Ben Falk opened Beagle Brain in the spot Ana Banana recently vacated in Nickels Arcade. Falk, one of those lithe, T-shirted, deceptively youthful-looking (he’s thirty-seven) technogeeks, thinks of it as...
Read MoreMar 26, 2009 | Marketplace |
Circuit City closed its Arborland store in March. The company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November but announced in January that it was unable to work things out with its creditors and would be closing all stores.Chris...
Read MoreMar 25, 2009 | Marketplace |
Matthew Hoffmann presses one of his designs into the hands of a customer with such intensity that if you didn’t know he was a jeweler showing his wares, you might mistake him for the kind of nineteenth-century seducer who...
Read MoreMar 24, 2009 | Uncategorized |
What if you woke up one morning and realized that you couldn’t stop noticing red pants? You notice them everywhere–that bag lady’s sweats, that kid’s corduroys, that girl’s tight jeans–red...
Read MoreMar 23, 2009 | Marketplace |
The new McDonald’s that opened on Washtenaw—replacing Boston Market—is not your mama’s McDonald’s, or your toddler’s either. Outside, it’s the familiar golden arches—but inside, the booths are...
Read MoreMar 22, 2009 | News |
The Washtenaw County Home Builders Association has lost about 10 percent of its membership since the real estate bubble burst. “Some felt it was a good time for retirement,” says CEOMaureen Sloan. “Some left...
Read MoreMar 21, 2009 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
One of former Ark program director Dave Siglin’s great legacies is the group of strong, often outrageous roots music personalities he brought to the club—a group seldom seen at most other folk and acoustic music venues...
Read MoreMar 20, 2009 | Community |
“What has surprised you most about life in Ann Arbor?” I ask the women gathered in a small, drab classroom on North Campus.”The man next door mowed his lawn without his shirt!” exclaims a young Japanese...
Read MoreMar 19, 2009 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Bertolt Brecht wrote The Life of Galileo between 1937 and 1939 as a response to Nazi censorship and manipulation of the work of scientists and artists. Among numerous other examples, the Nazis dismissed Einstein’s...
Read MoreMar 18, 2009 | Marketplace |
The late adolescent male is a marvel of nature, with a hypercharged appetite and the metabolism to go with it. One Saturday afternoon at Maru, the new Korean place on East William, we watched in awe as a quartet of athletic...
Read MoreMar 18, 2009 | Community |
Last summer, Deb Adamic was cleaning the ceiling of the U-M Law Library’s reading room when she spotted a cubbyhole where the ceiling beams meet the wall. Reaching in, Adamic felt something loose and pulled out a grimy...
Read MoreMar 16, 2009 | Marketplace |
Thirty years ago this fall, the U-M celebrated the 100th anniversary of its football program. In February an eBay auction offered an original ticket to the kickoff of the centennial festivities, held September 8, 1979, in...
Read MoreMar 14, 2009 | Marketplace |
A lost dog found shelter at Motte & Bailey, Booksellers.”We had the door open on a warm day, and a dog without a leash wandered into the store,” recalls co-owner Gene Alloway. “He ended up curled up under...
Read MoreMar 13, 2009 | Uncategorized |
OMG, he’s back! Poet/musician Rod McKuen, heartthrob of my vanished sixteen-year-old self, will be performing at First United Methodist Church on April 3 as part of its Green Wood Coffee House Series. And though he’s...
Read MoreMar 12, 2009 | Marketplace |
On a Friday night in January, the young crowd at Blue Tractor stood three deep at the bar, their puffy down coats bulking up an already beefy mob and presenting something of an obstacle to the newcomer. But on closer...
Read More