Family vs. Garbage
Jeanie Wilson’s day of reckoning came last June. “I must’ve picked up at least ten Costco granola bar wrappers from all over the house,” she says. The mother of three says that that discovery, combined...
Read More2014 January
The Uprising
Just after Thanksgiving, engineering Professor Fawwaz Ulaby posted an open letter to the U-M administration, protesting a plan to eliminate more than 300 jobs in the university’s departments and schools. The online...
Read MoreHeat from the Ground
At work, local attorney Deb LaBelle deals with grim realities. Four years ago, she won a landmark $100 million lawsuit against the state on behalf of hundreds of women who’d been sexually abused in prison. In December, she...
Read MoreWhy Don’t Chiefs Stay?
“I found out when everybody else did,” says mayor John Hieftje of fire chief Chuck Hubbard’s abrupt announcement that he will retire at the end of January. “I don’t know why. I suspect he’ll...
Read MoreFlip your Field at UMMA
In a felicitous partnership of intellect and resources, the U-M Museum of Art is letting eminent U-M faculty members curate exhibitions of artworks drawn from UMMA’s vast collection. But there’s a catch: each faculty...
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Choose the Slingshot
Malcolm Gladwell has built an enormous career explaining the obvious in interesting and accessible ways. That is not a criticism. For instance, his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants,...
Read MoreGet Curious, Again
“Seeing some of my old shows, I make myself blush,” says Tanya Veilleux of her plans to once again invade community access cable. Back in the nineties, community access (now CTN) aired ninety-three no-holds-barred...
Read MoreFrom Fashionista to Businesswoman
“Believe it or not, I had already planned my life for the next twenty years once I hit eighteen,” Anistia Thomas says. The “plan” sounds like a combination of teenage pipe dreams: design fashion for...
Read MoreLiterati Finds a Sign
On a cold, drizzly Tuesday in early December, a six-person crew gently eased a distinctive sign into place above the windows of Literati.The sign uses giant versions of old-fashioned typewriter keys to spell out the...
Read MoreHail Hookah Opens on S. Main
In early December Hail Hookah looked like it was about to open. “The owners say next week. I’d guess a little longer than that,” says Amar Dalal, whose company Delmar Restorations has overseen the conversion of...
Read MoreRendez-vous Goes All-Hookah
Rendez-vous Cafe dropped its food service over the summer to invest in hookahs, becoming Rendezvous Hookah Lounge. Formerly Smoka Hookah upstairs and a longtime cafe downstairs, it’s now one big hookah lounge, with...
Read MorePhoto Bust
Glenn Bering has been doing photography for thirty years. Seven or eight years ago, he shot forty weddings a year on film. But the recession and the availability of cheap digital cameras forced him to cut his fees in half. Now,...
Read MoreWCBN’s Big Boost
When it started in 1972, the proudly uncommercial “free-form” station broadcast at a measly 10 watts, barely enough to reach the city limits. After the station boosted its signal to 200 watts in the eighties, it...
Read MoreFrom Caribou to Peet’s
“We’re happy to be here,” says the barrista at Peet’s Coffee & Tea, the laid-back, super-cool California coffee company that has taken over the Caribou coffee shop, which seemed more local though it...
Read MoreYogurt City Opens on Carpenter
Sky Chen, owner of the newly opened Yogurt City in Carpenter Crossings (across the street from Target), noticed that while frozen yogurt is big on campus, there isn’t any to be found out in his neck of the woods....
Read MoreLost Voices
According to the most recent report by the state Department of Corrections, 878 juveniles were incarcerated as felons in Michigan in 2011. Some as young as eleven, they are growing up in cell blocks.In 2006, local humor writer...
Read MoreGetting Creative with Plants
Foodies discovered vegetarianism decades ago, and the local produce movement has been nothing short of wonderful for enhancing the crisp brightness of plant-oriented cuisine. But veganism, which pushes vegetarianism to the limit...
Read MoreTamaki Opens on Liberty
Tamaki opened last month in the former Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. It’s a familiar-looking campus-type restaurant. Owner Frank Cheng has two others in Lansing and East Lansing. They’re built on the model...
Read MoreSaxophonist Colin Stetson
Saxophonist Colin Stetson was raised in Ann Arbor and trained at the U-M. Although his university studies and broad range of performance experience have exposed him to music of every sort, from classical to jazz, Stetson’s...
Read MoreTake Back the Toledo Strip!
When Ohio stole part of Michigan in the 1830s, it was a battle between a state and a territory. We are a state now, and it is past time to reexamine this whole sordid affair.In 1787, the Second Continental Congress enacted the...
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