Archive for July, 2008

And the John Commoner blog gives yet another Art Fairs perspective: “You really can’t imagine how big it is. The whole city is consumed by artists, food, music, street vendors, store sales, and people. Shitloads of people. Most of the pictures I took are just of the endless throngs of people, because there are too many bodies in the way to take pictures of anything else. But that’s half the show. The people watching is pretty awesome. Like the 300 pound lady I saw working the booth for the Southeast Michigan Naturists. That didn’t exactly make me want to get naked, but I got a good chuckle out of it.” [Source]

Aimeepalooza’s blog posting on the Art Fairs tries to explain why A2 has the rep as a town of “hippies/Liberals/freaks”: “It has a lot to do with the fact that the University of Michigan is in Ann Arbor and it is a notoriously Liberal campus. It also has a lot to do with Ann Arbor being a main stop for run away teens on their way to San Fransisco…yup those drug taking, anti-war Janis Joplin listening to kids with patchwork bell bottoms of the sixties used to stop for a minute in Ann Arbor.” [Source] 

An Associated Press article, picked up by the Chicago Tribune, reports on the difficulties of returning vets coming back to college. “Nothing Derek Blumke saw during three Air Force tours in Afghanistan prepared him for college life. That was obvious to him during one of his first calls to the University of Michigan, when employees told him they couldn’t answer his questions because he wasn’t yet a student. Later, he found himself wandering the Ann Arbor campus trying to figure out how to use his military benefits to pay tuition.” [Source]

Boston blogger Ari Herzog mentions the leadership of Washtenaw County in a posting on how government should embrace technology: “I look to places like Washtenaw County, Michigan; Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; or the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District in California that regularly use social media to engage citizen feedback on a level unlike anything tried before.” [Source]

Strut Magazine tells folks going to the Art Fairs to check out the “roving bands of mustachioed women”: “To create Random Acts of Art, women decked out with Salvador Dali-esque moustaches will pass out free art to all visitors to the Art fairs who make eye contact. The point? To cultivate absurdity.” [Source]

Toledo Blade writer Wes Booher gives tips on negotiation the Art Fairs. “For most of the year, Ohioans think of Ann Arbor as that town up north,’” he writes, “but for four days every summer the city becomes the center of the art fair universe.” [Source]

BusinessWeek picks up an AP report on expectations that GM will close more plants. There are no details yet, but the article mentions that plants making truck parts – including the Willow Run/Ypsilanti factory – are most vulnerable. [Source]

A photograph of AAPD officer Trudy Sahr, taken in uniform in her patrol car, is posted on the Hott Cops blog. [Source]

Someone on the Labrador Retriever chat board posts about a visit to Ann Arbor and critiques three pet boutiques she found there: Ann Arbor Biscuit Company, Pet Emporium and DogmaCatmantoo. [Source]

More blogging from the Art Fairs: Laurie Simpson takes photos of her visit: “We Ann Arborites love it, but we do like to complain about it. Not the Art Fair itself, but what it does to our daily existence here. It screws it up plenty, that’s what it does – but it’s worth it.” [Source]

Dane Barnes of Ann Arbor scores the publication of a letter in today’s New York Times, responding to a recent David Brooks column. [Source]

The Freep reports on a study by UM researchers that found people in the ER say they understand what they’re told, but usually don’t. Dr. Peter Ubel is lead researcher on the study, which surveyed ER patients at UMHS and St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ypsilanti. [Source]

The blog o2Michigan points to a new video about the Ann Arbor to Detroit commuter train that’s posted on SEMCOG’s site (and YouTube, of course). [Source]

Pretty much every paper in this region, from Detroit to Toledo to Lansing, has something about the Ann Arbor Art Fairs. Here’s a video clip from Fox2 News, which focuses on the heat. [Source]

Artists of the nancyandburt blog report today from the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, and include a photo of Street Art Festival board member Steve Kerr, described as a “Grand Poo Bah of Ann Arbor.” [Source]

Market Watch picks up a PRNewswire release about an upcoming New Enterprise Forum called “Unusual Entrepreneurs Share Wild Success Stories!” [Source]

Patrick Steele of the local software firm SRT Solutions provides links to eight people who’ve blogged about last weekend’s Ann Arbor Give Camp. [Source]

An op/ed by Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie runs in the Northwestern Digital blog. It originally appeared in the Freep. [Source]

Yesterday, Freep business writer Katherine Yung reported on UM’s efforts to spur economic development. Today she continues with that theme, writing about the new Michigan Initiative for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. It’s a partnership among the state’s 15 public universities to create 200 startups over the next 10 years. [Source]

I Need Orange writes of encounters with the wildlife of Ann Arbor. [Source]

Motorsport interviews Ann Arbor resident Doug Kalitta as a preview of the 2008 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series near Seattle. [Source]

Rich Sheridan is a master of media coverage. Today, the Baltimore Sun does a feature article on his Ann Arbor company, Menlo Innovations. Says Sheridan of his business: “It’s kind of like kindergarten.” [Source]

A USA Today article about the NAACP conference and appearances by Obama and McCain cites a UM study on a similar appearance George Bush made at the event in 2000. UM political scientist Vicnent Hutchings is quoted about the findings of the study, which were published in Public Opinion Quarterly. [Source]

Columnist Chuck Landon of The Herald-Dispatch (Huntington, W. Va.) slams Michigan for approving (and partially paying for) football coach Rich Rodriguez’s $4 million buyout. “That means we now know what the going rate for integrity is in the land of Maize & Blue,” he writes. “Remember, this is the same University of Michigan that pompously proclaims that it’s an institution that holds itself to a ‘higher standard.’ Well, from where I’m sitting, UM just dropped the bar so low in this limbo contest about the only thing that still can pass under it is Rodriguez’ ethics.”  [Source]

Ann Arborite Tom Princen responds to a Jane Brody column today in a letter published in the New York Times’ Health section. [Source

The English edition of China’s Xinhua News Agency reports on a new vision screening device, developed at UM, that could detect diabetes at an early stage. This research, reported in the July issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, is getting wide play – the finding is also reported in the Calcutta Telegraph. [Source]

Justin Roepel posts a travelogue of his trip to Chelsea/Ann Arbor, visiting his aunt and uncle on Lake Cavanaugh where, apparently, their neighbors are Lloyd Carr and Jeff Daniels. [Source]

Steve Pierce reports that the deal has closed on SchoolPictures.com’s purchase of the former Ave Maria campus in Ypsilanti. [Source]

M-Bike.org urges cyclists to speak up for advocate for better cycling infrastructure at some upcoming meetings hosted by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG). Locally, there a meeting on Wednesday, July 23, at Washtenaw Community College’s Morris Lawrence Building from 9 a.m.-12 noon (formal presentations begin at 9:10 a.m. and 10:40 a.m.) [Source]

Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje is quoted in an article about bottled water. Says Hieftje: “The idea is to slowly move people away from bottled water. People have perfectly good tap water available to them here.” The article notes that Ann Arbor was among the first cities to ban bottled water at city-sponsored events. [Source]