To start with the good news: Just Bakedrecently became an independent business and, because it’s no longer under franchise rules, can sell anything it wants. In addition to the addicting cupcakes, owner Debbie Baxter has...
Read MoreThe Purple Rose’s founder, Jeff Daniels, has a special relationship to Lanford Wilson, and every time the company produces one of his plays, the program tells some version of the story. Wilson may be best known for his...
Read Morehe year 2015 marks Tchaikovsky’s dodransbicentennial, a fancy way of saying it’s the 175th anniversary of his birth. Vladimir Putin’s government is sponsoring commemorative concerts; Leonard Slatkin and the...
Read MoreCrime fiction (and its best known subcategory, the murder mystery) is one thing; historical fiction with its meticulously researched re-creation of a time period is another. These genres have often been married, with various...
Read MoreThe only newcomer this season at Mark’s Carts is called The Stop. Wei Zhu, one of three partners in the venture, says they’ll be serving jian bing, a Chinese breakfast crepe.”It’s really easy to...
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Tracy Ling and her husband, Ricky Yue, the new owners of Lai Lai on the corner of Ellsworth and Carpenter, are lucky to have a friend like Lily Au to do the kind of cold-call PR work that Lai Lai needs right now: her call...
Read MoreIn January, a task force probing the Washtenaw Community Health Organization told the board that the organization had a $3.8 million hole in its budget. Its recommended solution was just as shocking: close the WCHO, eliminating...
Read MoreBrenda Ratliff used to sell mortgages for Quicken, but after her son, David, was born five years ago, “I was bored,” she says. She had become more of a stay-at-home mom than she intended, because eight-week-old David...
Read More“I gave the first speech about marijuana fifty years ago,” John Sinclair says. But at the Hash Bash in April, Sinclair, seventy-three, left the speeches to comedian Tommy Chong and others. Instead, Michigan’s...
Read MoreKSI Kitchen & Bath moved from Oak Valley to Chalmers Place, the little plaza near Arborland anchored by Elevation Burger (aka “the Vitamin Shoppe mall” after its oldest tenant with the largest sign). An...
Read MoreOn a late March morning at the Arb the temperatures hover in the twenties, but Community High senior Sarah Toner doesn’t seem to mind the cold as she sets off along a trail in the Dow Prairie in search of birds. The...
Read MoreThe late folklorist Alan Lomax, born 100 years ago this past January 31, collected and first recorded a good deal of what has become known as American traditional music, laboriously dragging huge open-reel tape machines around...
Read MoreWe received 160 entries correctly identifying April’s Fake Ad for Stornoway Scotch whisky.Our favorite entry came from someone we hope will never win, for obvious reasons. “The ad is at bottom right corner of page...
Read More“What we have here is a closeup of the neon sign in the window of Encore Records,” writes Elleanor Crown about April’s feature. “I was walking down the street when I found it!” writes ten-year-old...
Read MoreWhen Marios Demetriou does the math for the governor’s proposed 2015-2016 school budget, it sounds good–at first.”All Michigan schools would see an increase in their [per-pupil] foundation allowance of...
Read MoreShinola will open this month, and if anything can resurrect retail on Main Street, this is probably it. It has the deep pockets of an international brand, and that tantalizing, blue-collar eau de Detroit that has captured hearts...
Read MoreJust inland from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula, a field of jagged, white stumps named the Kingston Plains stretches as flat and bare as the nearby cliffs are high and crowded with tourists. Most people...
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