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As the sky spasmed with lightning in the early hours of April 15, smartphones throughout Washtenaw County shrieked: TAKE SHELTER NOW! Simultaneously, mournful wails could be heard outside—even above the thunder and bullet-hail of rain. Ann Arbor’s twenty-two outdoor warning sirens were making themselves known (​​outside of alerting residents that it's 1 p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month) for the first time since the bow echo thunderstorm in July 2023.

“We had significant clearing during the afternoon, allowing a lot of instability, or ‘storm fuel’ to develop,” writes Alex Melendez, a forecaster for Michigan Storm Chasers, in an email to the Observer. “We also had a lot of wind shear, which is the rapid change of wind speed and direction with height. This allowed the storms to rotate sufficiently for the tornadoes, along with damaging winds.”

Another key factor was a strong “cap,” a layer of warm air aloft that initially prevented storms from forming. “Think of a pot of water on the stove: You put the lid on, and the water starts to boil, but the steam can't go anywhere until you lift the lid,” writes Melendez. “Same thing in the atmosphere—you need a source of lift like a cold front, which we got in the evening, along with the severe weather.”

A common myth among Ann Arborites holds that the city sits in a valley that shelters it from tornadoes. According to Melendez, this is not the case. “There is no doubt that terrain and land surfaces affect tornadoes, but tornadoes have gone up valleys, down valleys, up and down hills all across the U.S.,” he writes. “There was similar advice about tornadoes crossing rivers, and that myth was tragically busted several times in the past.”

According to the National Weather Service, winds from the EF-1 tornado that night peaked at 110 per hour. Touching down near I-94 and Jackson Ave., it caused extensive damage to Bethlehem Cemetery, crossed the highway and continued southeast, ripping off part of the east wall of Vets Park ice rink and scattering the furniture around the pool. It then roared through the West Side, uprooting trees and snapping light poles. Finally, passing over Virginia Park and crossing W. Liberty, it dissipated near the intersection of W. William and Fourth St., leaving the latter blocked in both directions by fallen trees and a section of roof from a nearby building. The remaining winds were still strong enough to send a section of Yost Ice Arena’s roof plummeting to the sidewalk below.

According to Melendez, the last significant tornado to hit Ann Arbor was also an EF-1, which touched down on April 3, 1988.

Surveying the mayhem the following morning (Gretchen Whitmer would declare a State of Emergency on April 17), residents recalled that only a month prior, the City of Ann Arbor had proposed mothballing the decades-old sirens that had alerted so many in favor of smartphone emergency alerts and the City’s own opt-in alert system, A2 Emergency Alerts. On a city website inviting feedback on the proposal, the Office of Emergency Management cited the cost of maintaining the sirens, the infrequency of their use, and that, on their own, they convey no information beyond “danger.” 

And yet many residents could still imagine a scenario where the sirens could be useful—say, if a tornado touched down at two in the morning. After the storm, some Reddit users reported getting phone alerts late, or not at all. Others noted that users will not receive alerts if the phone is off, on Airplane Mode, connected to a VPN, or without service. 

And not everyone owns a smartphone. “While most people have some type of mobile device, the usage and capabilities of those devices vary vastly across age, income, and other demographics,” writes U-M environmental justice professor Tony Reames in an email to the Observer. He cites data from Pew Research Center showing that while 90 percent of U.S. adults report owning a smartphone, that number drops significantly for people who are Black (84 percent), people earning less than $30,000 a year (79 percent), people with a high school education or less (83 percent), and people age 65 or over (76 percent).

“As our experiences with extreme weather and storms increase and intensify, local governments should identify more, and not less, ways to notify residents,” writes Reames.

One Observer reader noted the importance of accessibility. “My neighbor is mostly deaf,” they wrote in an email. “She cannot hear the tornado horns, so I always text her to let her know they went off. The horn is even hard for me to hear, as our apartment complex is quite a distance [away].”

In the end, the City had heard residents’ concerns loud and clear—long before the wind started blowing that night. “We planned on making the announcement on Monday [April 20] with the release of the Administrator's budget, but so folks know now, after public input, we are going to continue to maintain our siren system,” wrote Mayor Christopher Taylor on his Facebook page on the morning of April 15.

Despite the widespread damage, no injuries were reported.

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Downtown Negaunee had gotten a little crusty. 

For years, the commercial corridor along Iron Street was marked by a sense of desolation: cracked sidewalks, vacant and dilapidated storefronts, outdated infrastructure. “There wasn’t much of a streetscape at all,” says Mona Lang, a Marquette-based consultant and former Downtown Development Authority executive director. “It was locally known for the number of bars and not much else.” 

“If you don’t change, you evaporate,” says City Manager Nate Heffron. “And that’s what Negaunee was heading towards, evaporation—becoming a town where buildings are falling down.” 

But—much like the iron ore that had once driven settlement to the area—underneath the surface, a magnetism was waiting to be activated in the community. Connected to the 47-mile multi-use Iron Ore Heritage Trail, which traverses the Marquette Range, the city has a rich outdoor culture that attracts visitors year-round. There was potential. “Downtown was in rough shape, but it had a great future if certain things were concentrated on,” says Heffron. 

In 2020, the digging began. Heffron and the City Council brought in Lang, who helped to restart Negaunee’s DDA. Serendipitously, Revitalization and Placemaking (RAP) grants became available just as the City was beginning the overhaul. “As resources became available, we were able to really do a full, total facelift,” says Lang. “More than facelift—a total, complete re-envisioning of downtown.”  

“We had to fix the bones of the community—water, sewer, electric, all the things that people don’t see but come to rely on,” says Heffron. “We’re not cutting corners. We didn’t want to just slap makeup on it and say, ‘Oh, we’re looking good now.’” 

Things began with a complete water infrastructure replacement project, the funding for which the City was able to tie in with the RAP grant. “I guess you’d call it dumb luck,” says Heffron. “Money due to COVID kind of fell into our lap.” 

“The timing was absolutely perfect,” says Lang. 

Just a few short years later, Negaunee’s revitalized, iron-themed downtown is now the winner of the 2025 Community Excellence Award. What was termed the Downtown Enhancement Project—described by Mayor Craig Ilmonen as “a progressive building of our community”—marks the third placemaking initiative in an Upper Peninsula community that has won the CEA, after the City of Ironwood in 2013 and the City of Houghton in 2024. 

Above ground, Iron Street was remade with wider sidewalks, benches, outlets, phone chargers, bike racks, irrigation, and landscaping that beckoned visitors to linger. Two local businesses, scratch Italian kitchen Strega Nonna and bike shop Love & Bicycles, were both awarded grants by the Michigan Arts and Culture Council to gussy up their façades with murals. 

Downtown has new branding to match its new fittings, honoring Negaunee’s iron-rich history. Its motto, “Forge Your Adventure,” pays homage to the mining industry and hints at Negaunee being a gateway to outdoor recreation. 

Erickson Park, a pedestrian alley that connects Jackson and Iron Streets, is now a winding, leafy, ADA-accessible space, adorned on either end by decorative gates from the city cemetery. “The old gates were just, like, hanging out in the woods,” says Heffron. “I'm like, ‘Why are these here? They're just rotting away. Let's repurpose 'em.’” 

A section of Marquette Street was permanently sectioned off with bollards; thus, Iron Town Plaza was born, a new pedestrian square featuring Adirondack chairs and planter boxes supplied by a local business owner. There are also power hook-ups for food trucks, anticipating any number of events to be held in the square. 

The plaza is decorated with tall, iron columns that provide ambient LED lighting, changing colors as fits the theme or season. Additional lighting is provided by strings of Edison bulbs zig-zagging overhead, giving the plaza a rustic, homey vibe. “It’s just this really neat, inviting place that’s surrounded with landscaping,” says Heffron. “It’s very comfortable and it takes you right to the downtown.” 

Iron Town Plaza faces the Vista Theater, a historic building that had suffered a roof collapse right as planning for the project was underway. Demolition was proposed. “It’s a landmark building in downtown,” says Lang. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you cannot tear it down.’” Eventually, the City was able to secure funding from the state to save the Vista. “It’s going to be slow, but they are working on revitalizing, restoring, and reusing that building,” says Lang. 

Work is expected to begin in fall or winter of 2026. “One day, we hope to bring forward [the rehabilitation of the Vista] as a Community Excellence Award,” says Heffron. 

There’s also Firefighter’s Square, a pocket park that faces Negaunee’s firehouse and was designed to ease traffic and make the intersection safer for pedestrians. The park features an 8-foot-tall, layered statue of a firefighter, made not out of iron but of stacked steel, placed on a concrete slab and surrounded by rocks from a local mine. The impressionistic image honors volunteer Negaunee firefighters of the past, present, and future. Historical plaques around the park tell the history of firefighting in the community. “[The fabricators] are local guys, and they really had a lot of care for the community, so they really put a lot of thought into how this was going to be designed,” says Heffron. 

A ribbon cutting in September 2024 marked the Downtown Enhancement Project’s completion, and scores of people turned out to celebrate. To longtime residents, downtown Negaunee felt like a real place again. “One guy told [Mayor Ilmonen], ‘I used to be embarrassed to tell people where I was from, because the place looked like a dump,’” says Heffron. “And he said, ‘But not today.’ He was crying.” 

Storefronts that once sat idle are being upgraded, drawing people into the new, prettier, more pedestrian-friendly spaces. “When the city invests in itself, private investment follows,” says Heffron. “I always say that it’s contagious,” adds Lang, “One property owner steps up, and then the next property owner follows, and then the next. It’s a domino effect.” State funding has helped as well: thanks to additional RAP grants, two downtown businesses, Samara Floral and The Cone on Iron Street, will be getting façade improvements that will allow them to expand operations. 

With a popular new downtown comes a packed events calendar. Heffron rattles off the list of festivities, including the recent addition of Fall Fest (“We were extremely shocked how well attended it was”); the first inaugural Witches Night Out (“a fun play on a ladies’ night out”); the New Year Eve Meatball Drop, hosted by Strega Nonna, in which a 30-pound meatball is dropped into a massive cauldron of tomato sauce (“it's made on-site, cooked, lowered on a contraption approved by the Health Department, it makes a little flippy-flip into the pot, and then they break it up into little pieces and people eat it”); and, in February, the three-day Heikki Lunta Winter Festival, which includes a skiing and snowboarding contest held downtown in partnership with the Meijer State Winter Games. 

“People remember this town being hopping,” says Heffron, “like all downtowns back in the day, in the 1970s and 1960s. Before all the big mega-stores and everything moved in. And then, the community started dwindling. And now, it’s having a resurgence because we’re reinvesting in our community—in the downtown.” 

Current-day Negaunee is an attractive place, in the literal sense—you’re attracted to the idea of it. Grabbing lunch at Midtown Bakery, sitting at Campfire Coffee Roasters, or enjoying time with friends at Upper Peninsula Brewing Company, one feels magnetically drawn to this place. You can imagine yourself living there—on a recent visit, League staff were checking Zillow listings. 

Lang agrees. “Negaunee has turned into one of those little towns that you go into and say, ‘Oh, I had no idea this was here. This is really cool.’”

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Like many children in the Village of Berrien Springs, Jennifer Marren had loved the playground at Grove Park. “As a child, it felt like the world’s largest wooden castle,” she says. “It was huge. It was so big. There was a big, tall tower. Perfect hide and seek spots. There was this awesome tire swing that kind of draped down, almost the chandelier from Phantom of the Opera. As a kid, you felt like the king of the hill, or queen of the hill, when you got to be on that tire swing—it was such a cool spot.”

After over 20 years, Wolf’s Prairie Playground, overlooking Lake Chapin, had come to the end of its life. “When we decided to take it down, it was a big loss for the community,” says Marren. “It was one of the most treasured spots in our village. Generations have grown up on that playground.”

In 2026, Marren, now Community Engagement Coordinator for the Village of Berrien Springs, was tasked with developing a new playground, worthy of the old wooden palace on the lake. Inspired by looking at her nephews’ drawings, she decided to take the initial design phase to the “stakeholders themselves” —the local kids.

“I made a template on Canva that said, ‘The New Wolf’s Prairie Playground: We’re inviting you to draw your dream playground, and your ideas might be included in the final design,’” recalls Marren. “We had no idea how much impact it would have.”

Now just a few short weeks from its grand opening, what became termed the “Drawn to Play Playground Project” had taken off. It is the Village of Berrien Springs’ entry for the 2026 Community Excellence Award.

Kids of all ages came to draw, from toddlers to middle schoolers. They sketched zip lines, twisty slides, a boat, a lake with a water gun coming off the back, and sky decks. One little girl drew a multicolored rock-climbing wall. “I hope that these children become future architects, designers, and engineers someday,” says Marren. “Their drawings had dimensions—the zip line should be this far off the slide, and there should be a bridge this high.”

Although the kids hadn’t received any prompting along with their paper and colored pencils, across the board one feature kept getting requested: a zip line.

“So, we were like, of course, we have to have a zip line,” says Marren.

The Village partnered with Great Lakes Recreation, which has led the building and design behind the playground. “As a Village, we’ve been so overjoyed that we found a partner that is as passionate about this project as we are,” says Marren.

“They build playgrounds everywhere. But they’ve never seen a playground like this.”

Designers at Great Lakes Recreation, led by Territory Manager Stephanie Habers, took the kids’ drawings and replicated many of the design elements they had illustrated. Lime-green twisty slides rendered in colored pencil became lime-green twisty slides rendered in high-density polyethylene. “We will be the first playground in the state with these custom hand-sculpted pieces,” says Marren. “There’s a little kayak riding a wave. There’s a little camping tent. There’s a life-size campfire.” New swings have been installed along the perimeter, overlooking Lake Chapin. There are two sets of monkey bars.

Great Lakes Recreation is also partnered with the nonprofit Unlimited Play, which helps design inclusive and accessible playgrounds. “We have a school here in town that serves children of all special needs, and so that was very important to us,” says Marren. Natalie Mackay, CEO of Unlimited Play, proofed and reviewed the playground designs done by Great Lakes Recreation to ensure that they met the highest standards of accessibility. The review process has gone through nearly a dozen rounds. “We want to let our community residents and visitors know that we have something for everybody,” says Marren.

For funding, the Village leaned into its community partners. They received a $50,000 commitment from AEP, the electric utility. Marren has applied for several grants and hopes to launch the Public Spaces Community Places matching grant program this month. The Village made its own commitment agreeing to put up $600,000 towards the Drawn to Play project.

Berrien Springs has also been working with Patronicity and MEDC for crowdfunding to cover the final funding gap. “All of our posters have the kids’ drawings on them,” says Marren. “You can see their drawings and then you can see the site now. They’re the ones making this happen. We’re just the ones trying to make it come true.”

“I could not have asked for a better way to engage with our community,” she continues. “To show them that we listen—letting the children know that they have a voice, that it matters, and that if they can share that dream, we can work together to make it reality.”

As a lifelong member of the Berrien Springs community, Marren often gets emotional talking about the Drawn to Play project. “I mean, to see the children’s faces light up right now when they come and see this playground. It’s magical. It’s like Disney World.”

The community ribbon-cutting for the new Wolf’s Prairie Playground will be Friday, June 26. There will be a raffle. Food trucks. Live music. And—best of all—kids will get to play on the playground they designed. “We know we’re not going to be able to keep any kids off of this once the celebration is done,” says Marren.

“I can’t even put it into words. Just seeing them go, ‘Oh my gosh, this is real.’”

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The legend of the Mothman originated in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where between November 1966 and December 1967, locals reported sightings of a winged humanoid creature with huge, glowing red eyes. While skeptics argued that the sightings could be attributed to sandhill cranes or large owls, the incidents led to widespread fear and speculation, some believing it to be an extraterrestrial or supernatural entity. After the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River in December 1967, killing 46 people, theories arose that the Mothman was an omen of impending disaster.

The myth is the jumping-off point for Theatre NOVA’s world premiere of Amber Palmer’s In Search of the Mothman, the first production in an ambitious 2024–25 season (the company’s tenth) of six wholly original shows. The plot, set in the present day, concerns twenty-three-year-old Jordan, who after a series of tragedies quits her teaching job and impulsively relocates from her hometown of Tallahassee to Point Pleasant. She knows nothing about the town, but she’s fascinated by the Mothman legend. She leaves behind her 17-year-old sister, Emily, though she continues to manage Emily’s life from afar, proofreading her college applications and holding her to a rehearsal schedule. Emily is an aspiring professional bassoonist, Jordan an oboist; the girls have a Christmas tradition of performing together for their church.

In a series of vignettes and monologues, the sisters reckon with their present and future, while the tragedies of the past are gradually revealed. There is little room for the narrative to sag; these young women have a lot going on, so much that it threatens to strain the play’s 90-minute runtime. There are questions of sexuality to wrestle with, relationships to navigate, auditions to plan for, traumas to process, dating profiles to refine, and even a dash of the supernatural. Given the sheer number of themes flying around, the significance of the Mothman gets a bit lost in the shuffle, coming back into focus only in the final few scenes.

The sisters are the only characters onstage, and their relationship carries the show. U-M student Carolyn Pierce is excellent as Emily, a sarcastic, insightful, wounded teenager whose expressive face shows every joy and disappointment her young life throws at her, as she struggles with insecurity and the potential loss of her sister. Olivia Kiefer has a more challenging role as her bossy, overachieving, avoidant adult sister, and despite having a lot to say, her Jordan remains something of an enigma.

The direction (by Shelby Seeley) as well as the set and props (by Paul Taylor and Briana O’Neal, respectively) make the most of the intimate space. Pierce and Kiefer are never more than ten feet from the audience, but rarely does the staging feel cramped or airless. Only in one scene did things start to get a bit tight, with audience members craning their necks to see the actresses’ faces. Jeff Alder’s creative lighting suggests a variety of different spaces, and Kennikki Jones-Jones’s sound design is subtle and effective, presenting Emily and Jordan as gifted musicians.

In Search of the Mothman is a meditation on the listlessness of young adulthood; of being borne back ceaselessly into the past; the feeling of being directionless, yet hopeful. Imperfect but thought-provoking, it’s an auspicious start for what promises to be a riveting season of theater at Theatre NOVA.

The Carbide Dock had seen better days. 

The port and industrial site on the St. Mary’s River had been built in the late 19th century. Ownership was transferred from Union Carbide to the City of Sault Ste. Marie in 1962. “The dock was in very bad, ill repair because the last time that they had done anything was in the 1920s, 1930s,” says City Engineer David Boyle. “So, it was falling into the river.” 

By 2016, things had gotten bad enough that the U.S. Coast Guard condemned the dock. “One of the things that we were probably criticized for most was lack of access to our great waterfront,” says Mayor Don Gerrie. “They were mad about the sinkholes, obviously.” 

Redeveloping the multifunctional site, which includes a deep-water port, a freshwater education and research center, and a waterfront park, was a $39 million lift that took years, with funding from and coordination between federal, state, and local agencies. 

“It's probably the largest project that the City of Sault Ste. Marie has had,” says Gerrie. “It had the most involvement and the most help. And we can't even articulate how pleased and happy we are.” Nearly a decade in the making, the revitalized Carbide Dock is the City of Sault Ste. Marie’s entry for the 2026 Community Excellence Award. 

The City secured a federal TIGER grant of $21 million through the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2017, launching the project into its planning phase. “By 2020, most of the design work was done for it,” says Boyle. “We bid it out in 2020. Of course, that was Covid. It came in extremely over budget—double what we had money for. We made a lot of adjustments and cut some things back, and then we went and rebid it again. We were still over budget, but a tolerable range to get going.” 

SmithGroup, an Ann Arbor–based firm, led the way on design. As the project proceeded, the Michigan Department of Transportation contributed funds for things including demolition, while the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) helped pay for engineering work. “Senator [John] Damoose got us about $5 million,” says Gerrie. Boyle rattles off even more sources: “The Department of Wildlife gave us money for all our trees and shrubs. An EGLE grant for our shore power through the Volkswagen Trust Fund—that helped us put all the shore power for the boats and charging stations that we have down there right now.” 

He continues: “We had brownfield money. There were huge buildings in there, but they left all the foundations, so that helped us dig a lot of those out and get rid of them.” Engineers extended the dock face slightly outward and installed steel sheet piles driven roughly 65 feet to bedrock. 

To spruce up Alford Park, the City received funds from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, including a Michigan Spark Grant. Alford Park now offers residents and visitors lighted walkways, an inland pond, dock space, and fishing access along the waterfront. “It's a place for people to go,” says Gerrie. “I noticed last weekend when we had prom here, there were a bunch of families with their daughters and sons taking pictures on the waterfront, in our new park area.” 

The development of Alford Park included collaboration with the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians. “They have fishing rights,” says Boyle. “And they have nowhere available on the waterfront to do that. So, we partnered with them.” 

Nowadays, the Carbide Dock is what Gerrie describes as, “A good meld of commercial, industrial, residential park area—an educational component, too.” The Carbide Dock is also home to the Center for Freshwater Research and Education, operated by Lake Superior State University. The Center works with the U.S. Coast Guard on freshwater spill research and Great Lakes environmental studies. Wetland drainage areas built into the park are used for research projects. 

The commercial port handles bulk shipments, including salt deliveries used throughout the eastern Upper Peninsula during winter. “As we grow and as we get bigger, there is a pad there where we can put a crane so we could offload package ships, big metal containers, and other products, too,” says Gerrie. 

“It brings together a lot of different elements for one project,” he says. “It’s multi-dimensional.” 

Tourism has been positively affected, too. Sault Ste. Marie expects 65 cruise ship visits during the 2026 season, up from 56 the previous year. During the ribbon cutting ceremony in June 2025, one of the largest Viking cruise ships operating on the Great Lakes was docked behind the stage. “A nice, rainy U.P. day,” laughs Gerrie. 

Gerrie considers the Carbide Dock project to be a rousing success. “Everyone has been very positive about it, very energized,” he says. “We have a city of 75,000 in Canada across [the border] from us. We took them to the site, and they raved about it. They said that we have the best waterfront around.” 

“And just—you know—it's been great to see people pull in and park, go down, and watch the ships go by.” 

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UMMA’s Strange You Never Knew is the first solo exhibition from Jarod Lew, a Detroit-based Chinese American photographer who grew up in Ferndale. As an adult, Lew discovered his mother had previously been engaged to Vincent Chin, a Chinese American autoworker. It was this engagement Chin was celebrating in 1982 when he was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two laid-off Chrysler workers outside of a strip club in Highland Park, a notorious hate crime that became a rallying cry for the Asian American civil rights movement. Chin’s killers were sentenced to a fine and probation but no jail time, the judge explaining that the white perpetrators “weren’t the kind of men you send to jail.”

Billed as “photographs of the Asian American diaspora in the Midwest,” Strange You Never Knew is an anthropological study as much as an artistic one. Much of the exhibit consists of Lew’s large-scale photos of Asian American Detroiters, both his own family (his mother is heavily featured) and others inside their homes. The tone is restrained, perhaps a bit uneasy. Children sit alongside their parents and elders, gazing outward, aware of the camera and each other, but there is a tension in their body language and facial expressions. It’s as if the subjects have things they want to say to each other, but can’t. The elders’ chosen environments have a specific feel: inlaid wooden furniture; flashes of gold and bright red; Buddha statues; potted bamboo plants; a pile of shoes next to a garage door. This decor is contrasted with the style of the younger generation: ironic t-shirts, Pokémon dolls, dyed hair.

In the center of the exhibit is Mimicry, a photo series in which Lew took old photos he found at the estate sale of a white family in Detroit and replaced their faces with his own. The series is presented as a carousel slideshow projected onto a screen in a comfortable recreation of a midcentury American living room. These images are occasionally interrupted by unedited photos showing the sort of casual racism Asian Americans have become used to, such as the white family taking part in a “Chinese-themed” party. The effect is comical, disconcerting, strange, highlighting how people of Asian descent have been left out of Detroit’s history.

Humming in the background of all of this is the murder of Vincent Chin, a singularly terrifying event for the Asian diaspora nationwide, but especially in the Detroit area, where the rise of the Japanese automotive industry had been blamed for an economic downturn and rising racial resentment. The final piece of the exhibit is a fascinating, interactive audio-visual installation, titled The New Challengers Strike Back: On one side, a contemporary local newscast featuring a group of white Detroiters smashing a 1978 Toyota Corolla with a sledgehammer in front of a Chinese restaurant. Next to that, an interactive segment of the 1991 classic Super Nintendo game Street Fighter II, in which museum visitors are invited to destroy a car with karate on-screen. The foggy analog audio of the former and the tinny 16-bit music of the latter loop endlessly as you peruse the exhibit, a tense cacophony that suggests both the metaphorical impression the crime left on the Asian community, and a classic Japanese video game echoing through the dens of countless ’90s American households.

A complex marriage of history, identity, and physical space, Strange You Never Knew feels less like an exhibition of individual works and more like a single cohesive piece of art. It can be overwhelming, but that’s the point; if an artwork’s message were easy to convey, the artist would simply write it down. Visitors should give themselves time to dwell in, meditate on, and simply experience the atmosphere as it washes over them, situating them in a hyper-specific place, time, and culture.

A sunny weekend in mid-September saw the grand opening of Broadway Park West. Sitting on seven acres of new green space on the Huron River just north of the Amtrak station, the park connects to the Border to Border Trail via a new pedestrian bridge—eliminating the need for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the less-accessible Argo Dam. 

“To give back twelve hundred linear feet of riverfront in the heart of Ann Arbor—it really is remarkable,” says Stacy Fox, chair of the board of directors of the Lower Town Riverfront Conservancy, a nonprofit founded to manage the new park with a $20 million “enhancement grant” from the Michigan Legislature in 2022. “It was closed off to the public for more than a hundred years.”

In the first half of the twentieth century, the fourteen acres wedged between Depot St., Broadway, and the Huron housed a coal gasification facility belonging to the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company (MichCon). DTE acquired the land in 2001 when it bought MichCon, spending millions of dollars on environmental cleanup and demolition along the river. In 2017, the site was sold to Lower Town Riverfront Partners, who completed the cleanup work. DTE’s CEO at the time was Gerry Anderson, an Ann Arbor resident who retired in 2022. 

“He knew how visible this site was to Ann Arborites, how important that riverfront was to this community,” says Fox. “Public space was a big component of Gerry’s vision. We formed the Conservancy with that in mind.”

The other seven acres of the site will eventually become a mixed-use development that includes private condos, a 180-room hotel, retail space, and around twenty units of affordable housing. The developer is the Detroit-based Roxbury Group, of which Fox is cofounder (with David Di Rita). This arrangement—a park managed by a nonprofit tied to the property’s developer—is a first for Ann Arbor.

Fox is herself an Ann Arborite from way back. Her first job after graduating from U-M was with Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission, as its first assistant director. “Its first director, Bob Gamble, hired me as employee number two,” she says. She helped pass Ann Arbor’s first millage in 1976 and was instrumental in creating the county park system.

Since Broadway Park West is located near the train station and is both on a riverbank and in a floodplain, its development involved input from FEMA, Amtrak, and the ​​Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. Its opening weekend in September (which featured speeches, live music, ice cream, and a “bubble fest”) marked the conclusion of the first of three development phases. The second, which Fox hopes will be finished by late 2026, will see the construction of an 8,500-square-foot timber pavilion with a stage. The third will include the installation of water features, including a splash pad.

For now, Fox is just excited that Broadway Park West is now open to the public. “We’re at an inflection point,” she says. “We have a completed park, and we’re turning it over to the community to … discover this new public space, exactly as we envisioned.”

It all boils down to wanting to know the why. 

For the Village of Elk Rapids, on the shores of Grand Traverse Bay, that was the spark for a program to bridge the knowledge gap between municipal government and the people it serves. “People want to be involved, but we need to bring our language to a certain level where everyone can understand how things operate,” says Leah Moskovitz, former Village Clerk of Elk Rapids. 

That program was the Elk Rapids Citizens Academy, a six-week, hands-on course created to demystify how the Village functions, who’s in charge of what, and how (and why) decisions are made. 

To develop the “curriculum,” Moskovitz researched what village residents were interested in. She scoured Village Council meeting minutes, resident e-mails, and Facebook comments for common themes. She overhauled informational PowerPoint presentations and met with each department head individually to make sure the messaging was clear and accurate. 

The basic agenda set, “I blasted it all over Facebook,” says Moskovitz. “I created an online application and a paper application too, trying to make sure all demographics are included. I also walked up and down our downtown passing out flyers with QR codes on them for businesses to hang up.” The Elk Rapids District Library and Chamber of Commerce also helped publicize the new initiative. 

The first cohort of the Elk Rapids Citizens Academy included 10 participants, a good number for a community of Elk Rapids’ size. The group reflected a mix of ages and perspectives, from parents and retirees to residents who were fixtures at Village Council meetings. “Some of them were there to learn specifically about planning and zoning,” recalls Moskovitz. “Other people came to learn more about wastewater. One person came because they had a relationship with the harbor and wanted to learn more about that.” 

The Academy met for six consecutive Wednesdays in fall of 2025 from 6 to 8 p.m. The first half of each session consisted of a presentation and Q&A with a municipal department head. Where possible, the second half included an on-site tour. Topics included Municipal Operations 101: the council-manager form of government, treasury and finance, planning and zoning, public works, wastewater, harbor operations, police and fire services, the library. “We focused on every department, so there was something for everybody there,” says Moskovitz. Meetings were open to anyone, not just Citizens Academy participants, and some topics attracted drop-in attendees. 

"People want to meet who is behind what's happening,” says Moskovitz. “I got council members involved. I got all the department heads involved. It's really just putting faces to names and creating those connections for them to be, ‘Oh, I've heard of this before. Oh, I know this person now.’” 

At the time of the Academy’s launch, several hot-button issues were gathering energy in the village. One involved the historic Elk Rapids Town Hall, a Township-owned building located within village limits. The Township sought to sell the property and proposed rezoning it to increase its value. Used for performances and gatherings, the building is a beloved community space. When the rezoning request came before the Village Council, “that brought people out in droves,” recalls Moskovitz. “There was confusion among residents about what the rezoning process is: What can be rezoned? What can't be rezoned?”  

Another issue involved aging dams along the Chain of Lakes in Antrim County. The need for repairs raised the possibility of special assessment districts spanning Antrim, Charlevoix, and Grand Traverse Counties. “I asked Leslie Meyers, the Drain Commissioner, to come out and speak on that,” says Moskovitz. “We also did a tour of the hydroelectric plant that wasn't included in the original plan.” 

Antrim County had recently passed a bond for a new public safety center, but some residents remained skeptical about the need. The county sheriff participated in a Citizens Academy session, later hosting a tour of the existing facility as part of an additional, “bonus” session. “I was listening to the residents and they were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm so glad we voted yes for this. I can totally see the need.’ Again, the big thing is people just want to know the why.” 

The Citizens Academy created space to unpack all these issues and more. Cohort members completed surveys and took quizzes to evaluate the sessions, with tricky subjects revisited as necessary. It also served as a recruitment tool: “Throughout these sessions, I would sprinkle in, ‘Hey, if you're interested in helping out, these are commissions that we have open spots for—I'd be happy to connect you with the board or commission chair.’ 

"At the end, one of [the Academy participants] came up to me and said, ‘Wow, I thought I knew a lot about this government, but there's a lot more that I didn't know,’” recalls Moskovitz. “People want to know the why behind things. They get frustrated because they don't know what the process is behind getting an application or a permit approved; why do the rates go up; why certain things happen within municipalities. I just think they wanted someone to listen to them, take their concerns seriously, help them understand what they’re asking about.” 

The Elk Rapids Citizen Academy had the additional benefit of driving a sense of belonging and ownership among residents. “I watched these people over six weeks become friends, start hanging out,” says Moskovitz. “There were multiple layers to this: It was explaining the why, it was creating connection, but then it was also getting people motivated to join and volunteer for the Village.” Two members of the cohort ultimately applied for and now serve on Village boards. 

“I'm just thankful that residents have that curiosity, wanting to learn more about how their town operates and how they want to get involved in everything,” says Moskovitz. “Municipalities can't function without our residents, and I think that this program is a great way to make that bridge.” 

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Throughout his long life, Leon Makielski—Polish American son of South Bend, Indiana; Paris-trained Impressionist; U-M art instructor; friend of Robert Frost—painted tirelessly. At the time of his death in 1974, Makielski’s farmhouse, near the corner of Geddes and Arlington, was full to bursting with portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, over 3,000 in total. His fusion of Midwestern subjects with rigorous European technique won Makielski the title “Ann Arbor’s Monet.”

An impressive selection of Makielski’s landscape work can now be seen at the Michigan Art Gallery in Pittsfield Twp. This exhibit and sale, lasting until May, shows sixty-one paintings, almost all of them landscapes, painted en plein air in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. (The gallery plans another exhibit of Makielski’s European landscapes, painted during his training there between 1909 and 1913, and yet another for his many portraits of U-M faculty and other notable figures.)

The exhibit is a fabulously high-quality clearance sale. “About 80 percent of these pieces came from the farmhouse and from the berry farm,” said curator Elizabeth O’Connell. Leon’s twin sons, Ed and Don, founded the Makielski Berry Farm on Platt in 1955, and Ed carried it on until his death in 2017.

Ed’s widow, Diane Makielski, “passed away in the fall, so [the family is] selling the house. That’s when we came in,” says O’Connell, who runs the gallery for Schmidt’s auction house. “The family hung the paintings floor-to-ceiling in the farmhouse. We had to do very little restoration—it was mostly a problem of dust.”

Makielski studied under Monet at Giverny, and the Impressionist influence is easy to see. His Illinois work, painted in his twenties during summers spent at the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony, practically radiates the lazy warmth of early autumn, with brushstrokes in deep golds and greens, rendering rural Illinois haystacks in a manner reminiscent of Monet’s own Haystacks series. Meanwhile, his work in South Bend shows the Standpipe water tower and the University of Notre Dame’s Golden Dome benevolently looming over the St. Joe river in summer pastel glory, much as La Salute rises over the Grand Canal in Monet’s Venice.

The artist spent the majority of his career in Michigan, however, and it’s during this stretch that Makielski’s landscapes really sing. There is a strong sense of place in them, an appreciation of the character and natural beauty that’s still visible today between Pittsfield’s new subdivisions. In one standout piece, Makielski appears to have placed his easel right in the middle of Jackson Rd. (far less of a death wish in 1923 than it is today), depicting the rear of an automobile as it trundles away from him, under the long shadows of trees and power lines.

Makielski gave up his teaching job in 1927, only to see his waiting list of twenty-seven portrait commissions vanish during the Depression. Fortunately, the federal Works Progress Administration was hiring artists, and a particularly striking and magnetic piece is a six-foot-wide tempera study for a WPA mural that Makielski painted in the Lincoln Consolidated School (now Brick Elementary). It depicts residents gathering for a “work bee” to construct its sidewalks and running track. “It’s one of my favorite pieces,” says O’Connell. “We found it in the attic of the Makielski farm, and it took us several months to get it straightened out because it had warped a little bit.”

The pastoral richness of Makielski’s Michigan paintings demonstrates his fondness for the state, and especially for Ann Arbor, his chosen home. “There’s something in the Michigan pieces where you see his European-Midwest synthesis,” says O’Connell. “The bigness of the sky, that special lushness that you see in Michigan.”

Jim and Kathleen Mangi were married for 49 years. Environmental scientists and college sweethearts, they lived and worked all over the country: Alabama, New York, North Carolina, Washington, Virginia. When Kathleen was still in her 50s, she developed younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease. 

For a few years after her diagnosis, the Mangis remained active in their Northern Virginia community, facing mixed experiences when they went out into public. Eventually, they relocated to Saline, a city of about nine thousand in Washtenaw County, to be closer to their adult daughter, Charlene, who lives 10 miles north in Ann Arbor. In Saline, the Mangis lived in a supportive senior community and Kathleen transitioned to professional memory care. With more time and support, Jim Mangi turned his focus outward. "That gave me the bandwidth to look back and say, Okay, here I am. What can I do to help somebody else?” 

To begin, Mangi offered a public lecture series about dementia and caregiving, free and open to all. "That ran for eight Wednesday nights, and got a consistent crowd of about 50 people,” said Mangi. “That told us there was a lot of interest in this subject of dementia and caregiving.”  

The basics are worth noting: In Washtenaw County alone, there are over fifty thousand seniors. Ten percent of seniors have a form of dementia, including Alzheimer’s. A person with dementia lives an average of eight years following their diagnosis. The vast majority of people with dementia live at home, either alone or with care partners. 

Mangi had the sense that the interest generated at his lectures could be channeled into something. Drawing on his experience with Kathleen as well as national models from the D.C.-based nonprofit Dementia Friendly America, he initiated informal conversations with City officials, senior care workers, and his pastor. He presented a proposal, titled Envisioning a Dementia Friendly Community, laying out the vision of what a dementia friendly community looks like. It included simple best practices for assisting people with dementia in a wide variety of contexts: libraries, home inspections, policing.  

Saline Mayor Brian Marl was there. “At the end of my presentation, Brian stood right up and said, Yes. We should do that,” said Mangi, with a smile.  

The City of Saline soon issued a formal proclamation and invited Mangi’s group to provide dementia awareness training to Saline's municipal workforce. “I want everybody to feel embraced, comfortable, and safe in the Saline community,” Marl said. “That’s my standard since I was sworn in as mayor in January of 2013.” 

That early municipal support helped establish what would become Dementia Friendly Saline (DFS), now operating as Dementia Friendly Services (“to suggest that we are not just limited to the lovely city of Saline,” says Mangi). DFS has grown from a volunteer-led initiative to a part-time staff of six, and now offers education and programming to a range of sectors in the Saline community. One of the original lecture titles has become something of a mantra for Mangi and DFS: It’s a disease, not a disgrace. 

“We need to destigmatize it,” says Marl. “It's nothing to be afraid of; these are human beings. They’re our loved ones, they’re our brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, moms and dads, dear friends who are struggling with a debilitating illness. But we can still provide comfort and care, give them the best quality of life possible." 

Chelsea Harvey joined as the organization’s first employee in 2022 and now serves as director of programming. “The disease itself is a problem, but we also have a cultural problem,” says Harvey. “That’s something we all have the power to do something about. It starts with awareness and education.” 

Most people living with dementia remain in their homes, while still taking part in public life and relying on neighborhood services. That makes it critical, says Harvey, to train not just caregivers but also frontline workers in businesses, churches, banks, and restaurants. “We’re not going to ask a business to make expensive changes,” she said. “We’re going to ask them to slow down, be patient, and understand what people with dementia might need to feel safe.” 

To date, the organization has trained about 50 businesses and agencies in Saline and neighboring communities. Training content is adapted to fit each setting—for example, addressing financial protection when working with banks and realtors, or hospitality considerations for restaurants and theaters. 

One of the group’s most popular programs is the Memory Café, a twice-monthly social event held in a church, community center, or other accessible space, intended for individuals with dementia and their care partners. Coordinated by board member Lori Venable, the program began with six attendees—two of them Venable and her husband, Tom, who has dementia—and now draws between 60 and 70 people per session. “We want people to not feel isolated,” Venable said. “The number one objective is to have fun and to socialize. There's no rules. Everybody can just come as they are. It’s not a respite program where you leave your loved one—it’s an opportunity for both of you to be together.” 

The atmosphere of the Memory Café is friendly, casual, and supportive. The first hour typically features live music or a performer (when I attended, the entertainment was a magician), and the second hour includes interactive activities such as crafts, icebreakers, or chair yoga. “I like to structure it so the first hour is something engaging, and the second hour is more hands-on,” Venable said. “It gives people a chance to talk, to laugh, to connect.” The Memory Café also functions as a low-pressure entry point for information and resources. Refreshments are often provided by local senior care agencies, allowing attendees to casually interact with service providers. 

Another part of the initiative is the Dementia Friendly Screening film series, held by DFS in partnership with the Saline location of Emagine Entertainment, a regional cinema chain based in Troy. These monthly matinees are intended for people with dementia and their caregivers and feature classic movies, particularly musicals (June’s selection is the 1952 Audrey Hepburn–Gregory Peck romp Roman Holiday) in a modified theater setting—lights up, sound down, and a relaxed atmosphere. “We tell people to forget the rules,” Mangi said. “Go ahead and talk during the movie, get up, move around, sing, even dance in the aisles.” The screenings are staffed by DFS volunteers, who help caregivers with check-in, seating, and restroom navigation. The program has since expanded to other Emagine theaters throughout Michigan. “They’re intensely proud of their participation in the Dementia Friendly movie initiative,” said Marl. 

Although a relatively small city, Saline's approach is being felt throughout Southeast Michigan. DFS is consulting with leaders in Rochester Hills, Chelsea, Ann Arbor, and Grass Lake to help set up similar programming. The goal is for people with dementia to be welcome, not isolated, and accommodated everywhere any other resident would be: at City Hall, in stores, at the post office. Says Mangi, “We want to help build communities where people walk toward someone with dementia, not away from them.” 

Kathleen Mangi passed away in early 2025. “I have completed a 17-year caregiving journey with my wife,” says Jim Mangi with great fondness. The work is not yet done. With continued support from Mayor Marl and the City of Saline, DFS continues to refine its programs while helping other municipalities take their first steps. "Just the fact that we know that the City has our back,” says Mangi. "That’s sufficient—and it's extremely valuable.”

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The winner of the 2024 Community Excellence Award was the City of Houghton with Connecting Houghton, a placemaking project decades in the making that transformed the city’s aging downtown and waterfront into a vibrant, accessible, and unique public space through a combination of incremental change, community engagement, and D.I.Y. spirit. 

For years, this city of about 8,300 on the Upper Peninsula’s Keweenaw Waterway had been developing its waterfront, a muddy, hazardous industrial area originally used by trains and freighters hauling copper and coal. “We started acquiring waterfront property in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said Tom Merz, mayor of Houghton from 1996 to 2006 and chairperson of the city's planning commission. “By 1990, most of it was public. The goal was to transform it from a place where kids weren’t allowed to play into the place where you bring your kids.” 

A key development in the project took place in 2006 with the dedication of the new Portage Lake District Library on the waterfront (the old library building is now a community center). "I don't know if this is true, but I'll tell it anyway, because it's a good story,” said Merz. "We're the only library in Michigan where you can drive right up to the dock. We have a sign facing the water on the waterfront, and people can just pull up in a boat and go to the library.” 

In 2015, Houghton’s Beautification Committee began, made up entirely of volunteers (including the wives of both Merz and city manager Eric Waara), which meets on Tuesday nights. “There would be two volunteers some nights, others there would be 11,” said Waara. “It started with a mural, donated plants, gardens. Suddenly more murals are getting painted—it started to build on itself. Someone would thin out their daylilies or hostas, they’d all end up in my driveway, I’d haul them somewhere. The Beautification Committee planted the flowers where there were none before. It was really organic, no pun intended.” 

As the committee worked its magic, the City noticed that Houghton residents were starting to naturally gravitate towards the waterfront. “It was people lingering. Having picnics and just sitting on benches, watching the world go by,” said Waara. 

The ball was rolling, but the City was still hoping to build something more akin to a “town square.” And so, in 2018, they started working with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to secure funding to rebuild the pier, which saw its fruition in what Waara described as “a ginormous gathering space downtown.” Community & Business Development Director Amy Zawada worked with DPW to install firepits, tables, and other amenities to attract even more residents down to the waterfront and its new pier. 

The project had long been hindered by what Waara described as “the 800-pound gorilla that we had worked around for 40 years.” This was a rapidly deteriorating, blighted parking deck that ate up valuable sunlight and tens of thousands of square feet of space. Built in 1978, the structure had its own history as the first municipal parking deck in the Upper Peninsula—but had long since overstayed its usefulness. 

$1.6 million had already been sunk into maintaining the parking deck, with the hope of getting at least a decade of use out of it, but by year eight, it was clear that the City was at a crossroads.  

Instead of spending millions more on repairs, it was decided the best choice would be for the parking deck to come down. Houghton received a $1 million MEDC revitalization and placemaking grant in 2022 and bonded for the demolition and infrastructure improvements. Once the eyesore of the parking deck had been removed, the City was faced with wide-open space that cried out for redevelopment.  

Houghton worked with a landscape architect to create a space designed for people, not just cars, including engineered rain gardens and a universal access ramp to allow pedestrians of all abilities to move between Main Street and the waterfront. Beautification Committee volunteers added plants from the local nursery. DPW took advantage of a mild winter to build amenities along the waterfront, including wooden porch swings, benches, and a “lunch counter” with bar stools overlooking the water. 

Faced with the problem of pizza boxes clogging up garbage cans, Houghton once again got creative. "I looked all over Hell's half acre, every park supply place and Google: Does anybody make something for jamming pizza boxes into? Nope,” said Waara. “Okay! Public Works, here's a sketch. Make something like this. So now we have receptacles on the waterfront, basically a mailbox for your pizza box, that doesn't jam up the garbage cans. Because one pizza box at 4 on Friday afternoon means that garbage can is pretty much out of service till Saturday morning, when the guys come out to empty them.” 

Bolstered by a new Social District, Houghton’s waterfront now has a buzzing events calendar: a growing concert series, Fall Fest, the New Year’s Eve Chook Drop, and Jibba Jabba, a snowboarding competition sponsored by Red Bull and featuring over 30 professional snowboarders (including, this year, eight female snowboarders).  

“We were having placemaking meetings, just kind of a mishmash of community members that would get together to brainstorm stuff,” said Zawada. “Jibba Jabba was something we did a decade or more ago. It was really popular but fell by the wayside. People would say, you guys should bring that back somehow. And at the placemaking meeting we said, let’s do it.” 

The City intentionally left some areas of the waterfront empty as an opportunity for further development. “We're gonna leave this space, see how it feels when it's all done. And then we'll figure out what to do with it,” said Waara. “Once you can stand there and people walk there, you get ideas.”  

“It's like when you have a living room,” added Zawada. “You don't want to jam your living room full of furniture. You leave it open and spacious, and you can do all sorts of really fun stuff.” 

In 2025, Houghton is looking to improve accessibility for boaters and kayakers. The City is also focusing on supporting existing infrastructure, ensuring that the revitalized waterfront stays in great shape for the next half-century.  

“It’s a beautiful place,” said Waara. “You got sunrises, you got sunsets, you got date nights, you got jogging and walking, kids and dogs and people learning how to ride bikes. That was always the intent—we wanted to turn back toward the water as a public resource, instead of just a place to load and unload coal and vegetables.” 

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At the height of El Movimiento—the Chicano/Latino labor and civil rights movement led by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez—a group of mostly Mexican American U-M social work students founded Trabajadores de la Raza, intended to support underrepresented students and promote justice at the university. This group would evolve into the La Raza Arts and Media Collective, part of a vast network of grassroots organizations throughout the country. In UMMA’s glass-walled Stenn gallery, La Raza: Arts and Media Collective, 1975–Today celebrates its fiftieth anniversary.

Bold and colorful, the exhibit commemorates La Raza’s work at the intersection of art and identity activism, using DIY media to challenge and reframe narratives surrounding the Latino experience in the U.S. The pieces on display include drawings, documentary photography, and the group’s academic publication, the Raza Art & Media Collective Journal. (One piece of digital art, apparently meant to be presented on an old-fashioned tube television, was not operating at the time of our visit.) Fans of zines and their history will have a lot to appreciate; that artform, which emerged in the 1970s with the rise of photocopier technology, was embraced by La Raza wholeheartedly.

At times, the historical exhibit assumes more familiarity with its subject matter than is perhaps warranted. A sign lists the names of the founding members, but simple biographies for each would have been helpful. And while all sections have informational plaques in both English and Spanish, we occasionally felt confronted with a thicket of critical theory jargon (“recuperate public memory,” for example) that obfuscated more than it clarified. Newspaper clippings and plaques documenting La Raza’s interactions with a dizzying spectrum of organizations and activists could be difficult to follow. Something as basic as a timeline would have helped to ground things.

Connecting La Raza’s 1970s roots with contemporary activism, the exhibit also features three commissioned works by Latino artists which address themes of cultural identity in dialogue with the present day. Taking center stage is Aztlán del Norte, by La Raza founding member George Vargas (with Stamps professor Nicole Marroquin and Mina Marroquin-Crow). This striking, 15-foot-tall acrylic wall painting mingles Aztec cosmology with imagery of migrant workers from modern-day Mexico, presenting the U.S. as Aztlán, the Edenic ancestral homeland of the Aztec people. Several gorgeous original silkscreen posters, designed by Marroquin, commemorate the collective in a style that evokes the visual language of protests. (Marroquin also designed a black-and-white wallpaper that covers one wall of the exhibit, made up of other La Raza prints.) The largest piece, 2023 Stamps grad Michelle Inez Hinojosa’s The Ribbons, The Future, adorns the floor-to-ceiling windows that enclose the exhibit. This immense tapestry of semi-transparent PVA film evokes interwoven narratives stretching across time.

Small but substantial, La Raza is worth a trip to UMMA for anyone interested in the interaction between art, politics, and social movements. Not just a collection of pretty pictures and bumper sticker–ready slogans, it demands thoughtful focus from its audience. It is a challenging, fascinating, and worthwhile window into an underrepresented chapter of American history that deserves appreciation, celebration, and further work.

Original link.

The shabby, welcoming confines of the Blind Pig, the beloved Ann Arbor dive bar and longtime music venue on First St., are also host to regular late-night gatherings celebrating the offbeat, idiosyncratic world of B movies.

The series is the brainchild of Blind Pig employee Colum Slevin, who started the Burnout Film Society in 2018 with a friend. “We were a bunch of friends who had one-bedroom apartments,” he says. “We all wanted to watch these movies together, but we didn’t have a space to watch them in.” 

They started out at a now-defunct Main St. music venue. “That first year, we were in the fucking hallway, and it was, like, five people,” he says. 

The following year, they moved to the Blind Pig, migrating out onto the patio when the pandemic hit. And so 8 Ball Movie Night was born.

Every other Tuesday, Slevin picks a double feature based on a theme. Sometimes it’s seasonal, such as for the 4th of July or Halloween; other evenings are themed on a specific actor, such as “Carradine Collisions,” featuring David Carradine, “Hole Lotta Love” with Courtney Love, or “Marxism 101,” a night of Marx Brothers films.

He pairs better-known films with more obscure ones. For “High Seas Adventure,” the draw was the surreal 1990s cult classic Cabin Boy starring Chris Elliott. First, though, Slevin showed Czech director Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction, a vivid 1958 semi-animated adventure based on the works of Jules Verne.

“That B-side is the one that I want people to see,” he admits. A pairing of films by Prince featured Purple Rain—but only after he showed Under the Cherry Moon, the musician’s 1986 musical romantic comedy. Though it was poorly reviewed at the time and flopped at the box office, Slevin maintains that “it’s a wonderful movie.” And this way, “you have to actually experience it if you wanna get the ‘sugar-fix’ movie that you’ve seen a couple of times already. … That’s, like, my holy grail for all of this stuff: showing people something that they might not be aware of.”

8 Ball Movie Nights have a homey vibe, with a spread of free snacks and ten to twenty attendees enjoying pitchers of beer. In warmer months, they’re held on the back patio, with the films projected from the roof of the bar onto the gray-painted wall of the office building next door. The atmosphere is loose and funny, with viewers shouting jokes at the screen, Mystery Science Theater 3000–style. There’s a warm camaraderie among the mostly Gen X and Millennial crowd, and a shared appreciation for the unconventional and the unexpected.

Between films, there are trivia contests with prizes for winners after three rounds (a free DVD from Slevin’s large collection, which he brings in a huge tote bag), as well as portable games of mini golf from Ypsilanti-based Putt-R-Round. 

“It’s become this sort of community of friends,” says Slevin. “The response that we’ve had as of late these last couple of years has been so good: just being able to sit down, fuck around, watch something weird and stupid, and just have an experience together.”

Original link.

To write his new orchestral piece, Evan Chambers took a walk in the woods.

Commissioned by the City of Dexter last year to write a composition celebrating the bicentennial of its founding, Chambers, a U-M professor of music, decided to focus on the alchemy that arises from the integration of a town with the natural world surrounding it.

“I’m really committed to writing music that’s rooted in place,” says Chambers. “I’m especially committed to local communities—and not just communities of humans, but communities of life.” He was particularly struck by the way Dexter embraces, rather than pushes away, its natural environment: Mill Creek is a sacred place to [residents],” he says. He appreciates “the way the Huron River integrates into the city, and the fact that they’ve taken such beautiful care of the wetland. A particular kind of human culture arises from that.”

Inspired by this harmonious intermingling, Chambers visited many nature areas around Dexter last fall. Allowing the living world to be his guide, he took a sort of musical dictation from the environment: He captured bird calls, the croaking of tree frogs, and the sounds of acorns falling. At the wetlands on the Sloan Preserve, he listened to insects, frogs, birds, and the sound of the water. “Water has many songs in it, too,” notes Chambers. In the oak-hickory forest at the Miller-Smith Preserve, he marveled at how the shagbark hickory peeled in arcs reminiscent of a thumb piano, and wondered if plucking at it would make a pitch.

The result is a one-movement orchestral piece titled from the woods to the waters and home. About twelve minutes in duration, it’s made up of shorter sections based on places in and around the city of Dexter, and will be performed by the Dexter Community Orchestra.

Chambers found a variety of ways to bring natural sounds in the finished piece. The composition incorporates unorthodox instruments, with orchestra members shaking oak branches and plucking spruce cones. Some sections are more experimental; for a section titled “Branching,” Chambers gathered some smaller branches, laid them on musical staff paper, then used the imprints of the leaves as a guide to trace music onto the sheet. The giant oaks of the Miller-Smith Preserve, which reflect centuries of pre-settlement Native American agroforestry, inspired the section “Song of the Grandmother Oak.”

from the woods to the waters and home concludes with an original hymn. Lyric sheets will be passed out and the piece will end with communal singing. Chambers hopes that attendees will feel less like an audience and more a congregation: full participants in the music, rather than spectators.

Dexter, like all cities, is a dynamic organism made up of human beings who contribute as much to its character as do the architec- ture and the natural environment. Chambers hopes that the piece will inspire a variety of positive feelings, but most of all a sense of community. “There is joy and there is hope and there is a peacefulness,” he says. “But also an enthusiasm, in that we can claim our belonging to a place, and to each other.”