Tom and Russ
“I’ve always been a sucker for talent,” Tom Monaghan told me when I interviewed him for my book, Living the Faith: A Life of Tom Monaghan. “And often I would not see faults.”Finding and inspiring...
Read More2012 October
A Room of One’s Own
Ernest Hemingway composed his novels seated on a cigar-maker’s chair in a converted carriage house in Key West, Florida. Emily Dickinson retreated to her bedroom in Amherst, Massachusetts, to pen over 1,800 poems at a...
Read MoreFurnishing a Legacy
Brothers Jack and Bob Merkel sit in a furniture showroom at the Chelsea store that bears their name–a Main Street fixture since their father Ferdinand set up shop here in 1924. “This is solid cherry,” Bob says,...
Read MoreElection watchers
Ann Arbor’s voter turnout explodes during presidential years: two-thirds more people voted in 2008 than 2010. Yet county clerk Larry Kestenbaum says that, barring some fiasco, the local presidential vote should be posted...
Read MoreA Life-and-Death Puzzle
When Eric Hipple quarterbacked the Detroit Lions in the 1980s, he figures he took at least one shot to the head every time he played. “You get tackled, you get hit, your head bounces–so if nothing else, you see stars...
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From prom to wedding
Diana Holding’s eyes well up when she talks about her daughters growing up and going off to college. “It was really hard letting go,” she said, smiling through tears on a recent cloudy morning as contractors...
Read MoreDon Giovanni
It’s not unusual for modern opera directors to take liberties with an opera’s story, changing the locale or period to a place or time the composer and librettist never dreamed of. Some controversial productions that...
Read MorePianist Fred van Hove
Jazz is an American art form, but in the 1960s and ’70s jazz-related music for the first time became an international phenomenon. Inspired by the more radical players from the homeland, European musicians began to explore...
Read MoreThe LaFontaine Touch
LaFontaine Chevrolet, located exactly on the corner where the March tornado veered north to rip through Dexter’s Huron Farms subdivision, has just been completely rebuilt. But this is not a tornado story. The project was...
Read MoreA Bigger Deli
One thing at Zingerman’s Deli that won’t change when the new addition opens sometime in late October or early November is the entrance through the iconic brick storefront on Detroit Street. Once inside, you’ll...
Read MoreDefying Gravity
Defying gravity is all in a day’s work for flight instructor Johanna Broughton Walker. Broughton–whom many Ann Arborites remember from her decade running the Performance Network Theatre–now owns SkyWalker...
Read MoreWhat’s in a Name?
Around here, maple means those flame-colored trees that line our older residential streets, but over Birmingham way, Maple is another name for Fifteen Mile Road, and it’s associated with a certain preppie-slacker chic....
Read MoreSmart Money
“We’re getting $18,000 out of the endowment fund for scholarships this year,” says Sally Kennedy, chair of the Margaret Waterman Alumnae Group’s endowment committee. “That’s great considering...
Read MoreFrom Church to Fraternity
This fall, the former Memorial Christian Church, on the corner of Tappan and Hill, starts a new life as the chapter house for Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. A clever redesign by Hobbs and Black Architects has turned offices and...
Read MorePay with Square
Jack Dorsey, the thirty-five-year-old co-founder of both Twitter and the smartphone-based payment system Square, doesn’t simply envision a post-plastic world of commerce. He says he lives it every day in San Francisco,...
Read MoreFrom Farm to Market
Family Farm & Home opened August 1 in Pamida’s former space in the Chelsea Shopping Center. The New Chelsea Market recently relocated to the same strip mall, filling in a couple of key vacancies on Chelsea’s...
Read MorePapa John’s
Don Snider was forced to close his Papa John’s pizza franchise on Huron and Division when the building was sold out from under him in September. The gas station-turned-pizza shop and a few adjacent buildings are expected...
Read MoreCourting Generation X
WEMU courts younger listeners with less Coltrane, more Trombone Shorty.The best of times for WEMU, then and now the jazz and local news public radio station of Eastern Michigan University, was during the 1991 Persian Gulf War,...
Read MoreKim’s Leaves Liberty
Kim’s Martial Arts Supply was a family business for forty years. When founder Chong Kim retired, it passed through a daughter and then a cousin. When the cousin wanted to sell it, Orande Burrell, longtime customer and...
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