Dec 4, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Inside the elegant 1920s golden marble lobby at the U-M Exhibit Museum, children gather around a folding table to guess how many Brazil nuts are in a jar. A staffer restocks cold apple cider and cookies. A flushed three-year-old...
Read MoreDec 3, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Every good song recital should have a theme, even if it’s only “An Evening with Frank Sinatra.” Otherwise how is the audience supposed to know what it’s in for? So for Joan Morris and Bill Bolcom, the...
Read MoreDec 3, 2008 | Marketplace |
If you think the Michigan-Ohio conflict has gone badly lately, you should see how it started. That’s one takeaway from former Ann Arbor News editor Don Faber’s new book The Toledo War: The First Michigan-Ohio...
Read MoreDec 2, 2008 | Community |
The U-M’s miserable football season tested the patience of first-year coach Rich Rodriguez. Fans who attended practices reported hearing a lot of cussing at the young team members by the head coach and his staff. “Bo...
Read MoreDec 2, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Of the poets who have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature during the last quarter century or so, almost all of them are primarily concerned with history and the individual’s place within the historical swirl. Of...
Read MoreDec 1, 2008 | News |
Just a year ago, a forty-seven-year-old homeless man was found dead at a park-and-ride lot on Ann Arbor–Saline Road. While no one tracks the grim statistics, people in the homeless “business” say his fate was...
Read MoreDec 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien was, of course, Dusty Springfield. Shelby Lynne is, of course, Shelby Lynne. The intersection of these two singers—one a phenomenally popular beehive-haired, blue-eyed-soul...
Read MoreNov 30, 2008 | Community |
It is hard to imagine now just how rare parks were in Washtenaw County in 1972. Ann Arbor and other big towns had their own parks, and there were the Metroparks on the river and the state recreation areas at the northwest edge...
Read MoreNov 29, 2008 | Marketplace |
A family once shut out of Ann Arbor home ownership now has a lawn to mow and taxes to pay. A young couple skipped a starter house and moved straight to a multibedroom family home. And a professional couple saved hundreds of...
Read MoreNov 28, 2008 | News |
An expanse of sky and treetops on North Campus spreads out in the windows behind Wei Shyy as he describes his work designing tiny planes that fly and perch like insects and birds. Talking about an insect’s arms, the chair...
Read MoreNov 27, 2008 | Marketplace |
This is a tragedy in three acts.The setting is a huge, festively decorated L-shaped room in Chelsea’s Clocktower Commons. Adobe walls are adorned with colorful murals, including one of a lady kneading dough who seems...
Read MoreNov 27, 2008 | Marketplace |
I’ll admit right up front that I don’t have much experience with chain restaurants—this summer, my friends had to walk me through a Dairy Queen excursion like a visitor from outer space. But I try to keep an open...
Read MoreNov 26, 2008 | News |
The dirt road to Ray and Karen Berg’s Victorian style home in Manchester takes visitors past farms, cornfields, and rolling green pastures to a light blue Queen Anne perched on a hill. The house and its pastoral setting...
Read MoreNov 26, 2008 | Marketplace |
Andrus McDonald says the name of his new nightclub, the Fifth Quarter, refers to several things: the club’s Fifth Avenue location, the five clubs he hopes to eventually run (a second spot in Lansing is in the works), the...
Read MoreNov 25, 2008 | Marketplace |
Theresa Whitley, who is forty, has spent most of her life arranging flowers. “I’ve been doing flowers professionally at a flower shop since I was thirteen years old, but I’ve actually been arranging flowers...
Read MoreNov 25, 2008 | Community |
A spinning disco ball dapples light on the walls of a darkened room. Travis, a fifteen-year-old with autism, walks toward an illuminated bubble tower. As the tube changes colors, Travis presses his face against it and glides his...
Read MoreNov 24, 2008 | Uncategorized |
First-time Ann Arbor children’s book author Sheila Pursglove found her dream illustrator through a blind ad on Craigslist. “I’m your man,” confidently asserted bily charley (he doesn’t capitalize...
Read MoreNov 24, 2008 | Community |
Thrift- and style-conscious Ann Arborites have long been fans of the weekly Saturday sales at the Kiwanis building downtown. Few realize that on Thursday mornings, the store opens again for a private sale to a select group of...
Read MoreNov 23, 2008 | Marketplace |
Stepping into Bagger Dave’s the first time, I felt as if I were entering a giant time-and-space blender. Take a 1950s soda fountain, add a dash of 1980s sports bar, season with local nostalgia blowups from the 1920s and...
Read MoreNov 22, 2008 | Community |
Ann Arborites are rediscovering the art of preserving their own fruits and vegetables. “Everybody’s doing it,” says Mark Ho¬desh of Downtown Home & Garden. “We normally get in hundreds and hundreds...
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