From the Teeter Totter to Traverse City

[Editor's Note: HD, a.k.a. Dave Askins, editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle, is also publisher of an online series of interviews on a teeter totter. Introductions to new Teeter Talks appear on The Chronicle.]

Longtime Ann Arbor resident Metta Lansdale was recently hired as director of the Traverse Area District Library in Traverse City. Her first day on the job is today, Nov. 2. I talked to her on the teeter totter just before her move north.

We talked about a range of moving topics – the fact that she’s managed to sell her Ann Arbor house, how she found a place to live in Traverse City, her relationship to the Ann Arbor community, plus how she’s getting rid of the stuff she doesn’t want to move.

And some of that stuff includes books. I was keen to know how a librarian culls her own private collection.

In the mix of talk on the totter, there’s some brief discussion of the tools currently being used by a historic district study committee in Ann Arbor. That committee is examining an area in Ann Arbor south of William Street as a possible historic district, and will eventually make a recommendation to the Ann Arbor city council on that matter.