What a Heaven’s For
In Browning’s famous Victorian poem “Andrea del Sarto,” the titular speaker, an Italian Renaissance painter, justifies his way with his art by asserting that “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,...
Read More2010 November
Frieze Building Frieze
“It is like bits of frozen Frieze,” puns Will Hathaway. Hathaway correctly identifies October’s feature (below) as “an architectural detail of the new North Quad Academic Building … on the site of...
Read MoreNightmare on Main Street
Barclay’s clerk Liz Igbawua remembers being a little perplexed when the teenage girl gleefully piling tops and dresses over her arm didn’t bother to try any of them on. But the girl’s indulgent dad murmured...
Read MoreThe Majesty of the Bass
The jazz double bass was long thought of as a rhythm section instrument that defined the basic pulse of a tune while outlining harmony at the same time. This changed with the advent of amplification and with the arrival of a...
Read MoreTaming the Big House
When Richard Frey was a U-M student in the 1960s, he had a friend who brought five bottles of Boone’s Farm wine into Michigan Stadium for every football game. “He’d drink one per quarter, and one at...
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On the Verge
Set largely in a Victorian brothel in wartime, Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy grabs readers at the outset with a terrifying murder. But as with many scenes in a book that is as much about theater as whoring, things are not...
Read MorePioneer’s Track Stars
“Every year is my last year,” Don Sleeman jokes.Sleeman began coaching Pioneer High’s cross-country team in 1968 and added the track program in 1974. In more than four decades, his teams have won six state...
Read MoreMariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan
The mariachi band–perhaps half a dozen violins, a few trumpets, several guitars of different sizes and names, and often a harp or some other instrument–is a common enough representation of Mexican culture to be...
Read MoreAnn Arborite Choi Palms-Cohen
Lately, Choi Palms-Cohen has been juggling two very different roles. At the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Ann Arbor, she spends her days in sales and customer service, helpful but anonymous–taking calls from...
Read MoreElephant Rampage?
“It’s a bad year for Democrats,” says Bill Ballenger of Lansing, publisher of Inside Michigan Politics and onetime Republican state senator. Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum, a Democrat, agrees:...
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