Bill Harmer Looks Ahead
When voters passed the Chelsea District Library’s proposed millage increase by a 59-41 percent margin in August, CDL director Bill Harmer was thrilled. “I would consider that almost a landslide, really, given the...
Read More2014 September
Real Music
Blues and jazz are built upon the give-and-take of improvisational interplay between musicians. The best way to capture that feeling is to bring players together, set up microphones, and record the piece just as they perform it....
Read MoreStumping the Erudites
Krivtsov, fifty, earned a PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Kharkov in Ukraine, then came to the U.S. on a postdoctoral exchange program. Ford hired him right after he finished his second PhD, in applied...
Read MoreAnn Arborite Arie Lipsky
As the Ann Arbor Symphony rehearsed for a children’s concert, conductor Arie Lipsky was about to give the downbeat for the song “Puppy Love.” Mary Steffek Blaske, the symphony’s executive director, handed...
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An Evening of Beethoven
As if to inaugurate the autumn in burnished splendor, Arie Lipsky and the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra will open their new season with three popular works by Ludwig van Beethoven, a prolific composer who wrote only one...
Read MoreThe Many Flavors of the Jazz Guitar
September of this year has somehow turned into jazz guitar month at the Kerrytown Concert House. The first installment, on September 11, features a trio with the somewhat disconcerting name Thumbscrew, made up of three...
Read More(Not a) burning issue
The city’s in no hurry to hire a new fire chief. Since Chuck Hubbard retired abruptly in January after just two years on the job, two deputy chiefs have run the fire and police departments, with police chief John Seto...
Read MoreThe Commons Cafe is now the Fireside
Au Bon Pain, above, is old news to Laura Seagram. What she really wanted to talk about was the similar change going on at Pierpont Commons on North Campus. There, the university-run Commons Cafe on the first floor has, like the...
Read MoreReal Estate Ripple
The market for low- to mid-priced homes has heated up in Saline, Dexter, and Chelsea, according to three local Realtors. Although the feeding frenzy was most intense in spring 2013–snow delayed the start of this...
Read MoreGreen Zone
Abel, a Detroit attorney, is no enemy of businesses that sell medical marijuana–in fact, he’s executive director of Michigan NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). But he’s pointing out...
Read MoreCampus Renewal
When the incoming freshman class this fall clocked in at about 600 over the expected number, the university struggled to put roofs over heads, frantically enlisting off-campus housing to help out. But no one has voiced any...
Read MoreThe Trials of U-M Football
Michigan football is in the throes of a three-year slide, with last year’s outcome mirroring Rich Rodriguez’s 2010 swan song. In Rich Rod’s third year the Wolverines won seven regular-season games, then lost...
Read MoreThe Crane Wives
The Crane Wives bill themselves as an indie folk group, even deriving their name from an album by one of that genre’s original stalwarts, the Decemberists. But despite the presence of a banjo, mostly acoustic...
Read MoreConsultants of Mid-Michigan
Only 37 clever Fake Adders found the Fake Ad for Consultants of Mid-Michigan on page 29 of the Summer Community Observer.”You were pretty tricky this time separating the word community into ‘COMM. Unity...
Read MoreTools + Fire
It’s “the heart sculpture, Tools + Fire,” writes Johanna Grum about our August feature. David Karl used Google Earth to find Jim Dine’s sculpture on North Campus, and says, “thank you for leading me...
Read MoreThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow
We received 120 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for sleep therapist Remy Knapp on page 77 of the August Observer.”Only one ad qualifies as weird enough, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” wrote longtime Fake...
Read MoreSarah Jarosz
Sarah Jarosz’s first recording was nominated for a Grammy before she even finished high school. Last year, soon after she graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music, her third album also received a Grammy...
Read MoreThree and out
State representative Jeff Irwin figures his chances for winning a third term this November are good. “Ann Arbor is a pretty Democratic town,” says Irwin, a former Washtenaw County commissioner first elected to the...
Read MoreMandolin Orange
The Americana and folk scenes are full of married or partnered couples these days. Mandolin Orange, the North Carolina duo of Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz, follows in the footsteps of the couple that started this trend and so...
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