Archive for November, 2008

The Frito-Lay blue team loads boxes of food in the Food Gatherers warehouse on Wednesday night.

At 7 p.m. Wednesday evening, the offices of Food Gatherers at 1 Carrot Way were fairly quiet, with just a handful of people milling around, chatting and checking out the display of old food products. (Anyone remember PDQ drink mix?)

That scene changed dramatically at 7:05, when the first of four chartered buses started dropping off Frito-Lay sales reps, coming for a marathon volunteer effort to pack food boxes for Thanksgiving meals. By 7:25, the volume level had ratcheted up with roughly 200 people crammed in elbow to elbow, ready to get to work. [Full Story]

On A2geeks.org Dug Song thanks SPARK for providing space at SPARK Central to host Arbcamp 2008 on Thursday, December 18, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. According to the organizing page, “We hope to have [Arbcamp] feed the a2geeks conference in Spring 2009, and test the waters for an Ignite event, perhaps at the Michigan Theater, next year.” [Source]

In our write-up of the Ypsilanti Community Band’s rehearsal, we mis-identified the instrument played by Harold Goodsman Award winner Tom Warner. He plays percussion. On Tuesday, for example, he was playing the chimes. We note the error here and have corrected it in the original piece.

GayWired.com has named Ann Arbor as one of five “surprisingly gay small towns”: “An upbeat college town, the home of Edmund White’s alma mater, the University of Michigan, is a haven of tolerance, just 35 miles west of Detroit (population 115,000). Women drink, play pool, and have dinner at the miniscule, two-level, lesbian-adored Aut Bar. Thrilling restaurants abound and once you’re ready to up the ante, head to gay-friendly club Necto. Ann Arbor is also home to a slew of LGBT groups, from Ann Arbor Queer Aquatics to the Lesbian Moms Network.” [Source]

Environmental coordinator for the city of Ann Arbor, Matt Naud, has uploaded to his Picasa album set a collection of swan photos taken at Dolph Park. [Source]

Downtown Ann Arbor outside the Ann Arbor Art Center.

The juried exhibition “Displaced Spirit” ended Nov. 11 at the Ann Arbor Art Center, but the following day, a small selection of pieces from the show lingered briefly for a few minutes outside the center on Liberty Street. As Cathy Jacobs loaded up a van for transport of her work back home, The Chronicle happened by and had a chance to view her contributions to the show.

The exhibit was meant to celebrate the creative spirit that survives war and genocide. Works for the show were selected from 14 Michigan-based artists who endured forced displacement from their home countries whether directly through their own experience or that of their parents or grandparents. [Full Story]

A major step forward on a public art installation for Ann Arbor’s new municipal center was among several updates at Tuesday evening’s meeting of the Public Art Commission. Another potential project – called SoundFall – is moving ahead with a formal presentation planned in December.

[Full Story]

A Bloomberg News article on the U.S. housing market and rising foreclosures quotes UM adjunct professor Robert Van Order, who is also the former chief economist at Freddie Mac: “Negative equity hurts. It’s a good predictor of default almost all the time.” [Source]

The Chicago Tribune picks up an AP article about UM researchers who have created carbon nanotube images of Barack Obama, which can only be seen in detail using optical or electron microscopes. Says lead researcher John Hart: ”I really didn’t mean it in a political way. It was really for fun. It was a basic demonstration of what we can do with nanotubes.” [Source]

The Web Urbanist site provides photos and brief descriptions of 16 emergency shelter designs, including one by UM professor Allen Samuels: “His temporary huts are made of biodegradable, easy-to-clean, lightweight plastic. The wheels on one end make it easy to move around, and there is even a bit of room to store personal belongings.” [Source]

Photo 1. Say hello to my little friend. A trombone spit valve.

In a battle between a band and a pipe organ to see which can play louder, the lead trombone player in the band clips a white cloth to the spit valve at the end of his slide and holds it aloft as a sign of surrender. That’s not what happened at Tuesday evening’s rehearsal by the Ypsilanti Community Band. For one thing there was no pipe organ in the Whitmore Lake High School band room where the 73-member ensemble rehearses. But the anecdote – told by assistant conductor and organist, James Wagner, during a lull in the rehearsal – is based on a true story from Texas.

The Ypsilanti Community Band could repeat that bit of Texas history when it performs the Finale from the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony at its annual holiday concert, to be held this year on Dec. 11 at Pease Auditorium on the Eastern Michigan University campus, starting at 7:30 p.m. Pease boasts a formidable pipe organ, which will be played by Wagner. The concert, which is a joint endeavor with the Ypsilanti Community Choir, is free (including parking) and open to the public. [Full Story]

People working at The Ann Arbor News are facing some life-changing decisions today: This morning, management at The News and all seven other newspapers owned by the Newhouse family in Michigan announced a massive round of buyouts and plans to consolidate some operations in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. [Full Story]

The Erie Hiker spotted a convoy of Lexus test vehicles in the wild in northern Washtenaw County, and posts several photos: “A blog reader named Dan posted a few comments that gave some indication that they may be the new Lexus hybrids. He even thought that I might have the first live photo of one of the models. Pretty cool.” [Source]

The Freep looks at how recent mortgage aid plans will affect Michigan homeowners. The article quotes Robert Van Order, a UM adjunct finance professor who was chief economist for Freddie Mac until 2003: ”There is an underlying problem they can’t fix with this and that is people who are underwater on their mortgages. More people are going to be in trouble because they have negative equity.” [Source]

Jeannette Gutierrez posts a photograph on her Flickr account of a cool twist on Hope.  [Source]

US News & World Report picks up a Michigan Daily article about a new UM policy that will allow student athletes to get the first pick of classes next semester. Says one ROTC cadet: “There are so many people who are working very hard, paying their way through college, there is no special consideration for them. (The priority registration policy is) basically saying that the athletic department is a step ahead of the rest of the school.” [Source] [Source]

Cranksgiving Ann Arbor posts a promotional poster for its Nov. 23 event, an “alleycat-style” ride/race in which cyclists go to checkpoints at various grocery stores and buy items that are donated to Food Gatherers at the finish line. [Source]

BusinessWeek has named Ann Arbor as the best place to raise your kids in Michigan: “Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, is one of the best college towns in America. It has acres of parks, galleries, museums, restaurants, boutiques, and seven golf courses.” Nationwide, the Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect topped the list. [Source]

Frizt Haeg presents his "Edible Estates" project to a gathering at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library.

In Fritz Haeg’s first slide, shot straight down into his own compost pile, a banana peel was still discernible. “This,” he said, “was what we should be celebrating!” Not banana peels per se, but rather compost – a kind of recycling that does not lose value with each cycle as many of our other efforts do (like, for example, paper recycling).

Haeg was standing in front of about 40 people in the multipurpose room of the Ann Arbor District Library to present his project, “Edible Estates,” which involves installations of … [Full Story]

Greensboro (N.C.) News-Record columnist Jeri Rowe profiles Melvin Kearney, a graduate of North Carolina’s A&T State University who’s now working at the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center in the Army Wounded Warrior Program: ”And as he helps them piece their lives back together, Kearney tells them about his hometown of Tarboro and the A&T degree on his office wall. Then, when he sees a soldier’s face buckle with emotion, he tells them this: ‘Thank you for what you’ve done. I was there. I understand.”” [Source]