Stopped. Watched.

Family Learning Institute  spelling bee getting under way. [photo]

Bags of chips from Ann Arbor Tortilla Factory being distributed (free) in front of Verizon with $10 gift card.

Made a couple of passes by this corner in the afternoon. Both times people with clipboards watching, writing, and crossing. Someone is measuring compliance with the crosswalk ordinance. Everyone was stopping as they should each time I went by.

NCRC Guard Geese/Goslings Update.  There are six goslings now, they’re getting bigger, and they’re having family outings! (Link to previous items on the NCRC Guard Geese) [photo]

Robert (vendor #17) sells me a copy of the Groundcover News in front of Cafe Verde, insisting that I remember his name and vendor number.  “Watch for my article in the next issue.”

What a cool project.

Picketing of job site for Zingerman’s expansion project, with signs calling for “local jobs for local workers.”

Community High School jazz musicians playing a drop-in set at Mighty Good Coffee. [photo]

Burns Park students and staff participating in ACES (All Children Exercise Simultaneously). [link]

Groups of students from Forsythe Middle School are on a scavenger hunt to learn more about the downtown. At Peaceable Kingdom, the store’s Jack Russell terrier gets most of the attention.

Ceremony to unveil new fairy vault and ATM at Bank of Ann Arbor includes a guitar-playing fairy and a cluster of pre-school kids who are impressed that the vault door actually opens. Someone leaves a penny at the ATM. [photo] [photo] [photo]

Maintenance of the First National Bank building clock – bottom panel taken off to reveal guts of the clock. [photo] One worker confirms that the time on it is correct, before replacing panel. [photo]

People filtering into the Justice Center – it’s training night for election inspectors.

Just biked past a late-model BMW drop-top coupe with an elderly Amish lady riding shotgun.

The NCRC Guard Goose has goslings!  Little baby Guard Geese! [photo] See previous item: [April 20, 2012]

The Varsity. This seemed like the largest drill bit I have personally encountered. Looks like it is for digging footings to support the 14 stories. [photo]

Two women weeding the gnarly traffic island across from the Ann Arbor Animal Hospital.

In front of Dream Nite Club, a young dude walking in circles around a cluster of objects on the sidewalk that includes a large purple suitcase, a backpack, and other equipment. He appears to be waiting.

Internet Killed the Video Store. Long Friday night line at the Red Box video vending machine.

The new storm water detention pond looks, perhaps inevitably, like a backwater section of Gallup Pond: unsightly wind-blown and pond-scummy organic matter clogging the down-wind corner, with a small amount of wind-blown trash on the bottom. Some places look to have algae blooms, and there are no signs of vertebrate life in the water. Still, the red wings like it (blackbirds, not hockey  players), and if you don’t look at the pond too directly, it looks nice. [photo 1] [photo 2] [photo 3]

This scene is being repeated all across UM’s campus today: Parents taking photos of graduates in cap and gown – this one on the steps of the Michigan Union. [photo]

Thomas  Kinnear, addressing grads of University of Michigan Ross School executive MBA program, contrasts “status quo leaders” with “innovative leaders.” Among the differences: Status quo leaders are good at finding reasons not to act.

Appropriate footwear for University of Michigan Ross Business School executive MBA program graduation was maize shoes and blue nails. [photo]

Intersection still closed after a major accident at about 7:30 p.m.

Cheryl Elliot on the jumbotron at the AAACF annual meeting. [photo]

Amadeus restaurant repurposes a guitar case for its sidewalk sign. [photo]

Two public art commissioners having a pre-meeting confab in the Tasty Green cafe.

Forty-two-year-old button (1970 vintage) from Earth Day. [photo]

This billboard faces Fourth Avenue across the parking lot.  It is not related to the current business.  Must have a history –what is it? “Comes In All Shot, Goes Out ‘Red Hot’” [photo]

“Newspaper Diary: Trompe l’Oeil Photographs” exhibit of Joanne Leonard’s artwork at the UM Institute for the Humanities gallery, juxtaposes newspaper photos with paintings, sheet music and other images in textbooks and children’s books. Powerful, thought-provoking, clever. [photo]

Earth-moving equipment is excavating at the northwest corner, where formerly a dwelling of historic significance but in severe disrepair stood.  It is across the street from a series of candy-colored new houses.