Author: Frank

According to the radio, not only are cicadas on the way (though so far the hype has exceeded the reality), but gypsy moths, European...

Still no cicadas to speak of. Steve says it’s not been consistently warm enough for them to want to come out. I have, however,...

Tony Randall passed on Monday, followed yesterday by Elvin Jones, probably the greatest drummer (never mind greatest “jazz drummer”) who ever lived. Jones was...

No titillating “overheards” from Ambrosia today; just a bunch of employees meeting over cheesecake and listening to their benefits person yack about how awesome...

Before the dandelion adventure, we paid a brief visit to the University of Michigan Museum of Art. (We were thinking of doing part of...

I had this conversation with a friend not too long ago: If you have a ton of books to choose from to read, what’s...

We went to the downtown area today and did some window shopping. West Side Book Shop was one of our stops. I’d never been...

Meanwhile, 140 miles away, in Kendallville, IN, a petition is being circulated to stop a proposed $7.9 million library building. Once the opposing signatures...

On Tuesday night, Frisinger Park was jam-packed with cars and trucks and a girls’ softball team and their parents and boosters. Passing through the...

It was virtually impossible for me to sleep last night. The heat is upon us, and it definitely rises to the top in our...

In between thoroughly (and devastatingly, I might add) trashing the new Wolfgang Petersen “Troy” movie and bemoaning the scariness of having just graduated, two...

Yesterday I was riding one of the Hatcher elevators with an undergrad who was helping a co-worker cart some ficuses somewhere (aren’t ficuses always...

Three weeks ago, NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty recently did a report on Catholics and John Kerry that has raised some temperatures in the blogopshere....

A bicyclist and I came to the same narrow passageway in the sidewalk on Maynard in front of Ambrosia and Madras Masala at exactly...

Speaking of the local election story, the front page article on the subject mentions that Ann Arbor mayor John Hieftje has a Republican challenger...

In today’s Ann Arbor News, there was a huge (why so huge, I don’t know, but it obliterated a far more important story about...

On tonight’s broadcast of The Connection (an NPR-affiliated radio show): Blogs offer a constant rush of political opinion: the gloating, the jeering, and those...

From this morning’s Free Press: Historically, Brood X has sidestepped Wayne, Macomb and most of Oakland counties. They were, however, spotted in Bloomfield Hills...

Nancy Pearl was on NPR this morning, recommending older political novels to serve as an antidote to all of those scary partisan election-year non-fiction...

We’re having regular thunderstorms and thunderstorm forecasts this time of year. Having never experienced thunderstorm season in the Midwest, I find it fascinating. Last...

It amuses me, I’m not sure why, that there are more articles on the upcoming cicada infestation in the Washington Post (a search of...

Seems a little lazier, a little more mellow here than last week (well, except for the freeways, but that’s another story). There were a...

« Lawrence Ferlinghetti is still beating ‘em »: ’… The first plane to hit the first Twin Tower The last plane to hit the...

Downtown was (if possible) more packed today than usual. Must have been the nice weather and lots of out-of-towners. We saw a couple of...

I don’t think it’s a particularly uncommon thing to want to eat out at a restaurant and (if you’re a non-smoker, or if tobacco...

Here’s a familiar one. A newspaper (in this case, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) interviews a handful of undergrads (in this case, at the University of...

Repetitive stress injury workers’-comp costs as a justification for implementing RFID ….. hmmmmm. That’s a new one on me. I can’t say (as a...

As usual, Librarian.net puts it way better (and way more succinctly) than I ever could: Of course, any librarian knows that the best thing...

Nicholson Baker has announced that Duke University Libraries has agreed to house his American Newspaper Repository collection. To make a long story short, Baker...

Humidity was fairly high today (now yesterday). I brought a sweater, but the library complex was strangely warmer. It felt like the first really...

There’s an attention-grabbing Library Journal article about “NextGen” users (born between 1982 and 2002) and their attributes. (Courtesy Creative Librarian.) They’re “format agnostic,” they’re...

There is a website devoted to the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, at which you can view a slide show and order a video...

“Friends” and “Frasier” are broadcasting their final episodes this week and next, respectively. “Friends” I watched occasionally but never really got the point of....

It’s supposed to be over 80 outdoors today. No problem, right? Well, in the past two weeks or so, the huge turn-on-the-air-conditioning project has...

According to this account, seven students from Kalamazoo College were banned from entering Bush’s campaign rally at Wings Stadium on Monday. So much for...

Without going into details, my grades this past term were either as good as or better than I expected. So I came off all...

It’s too disgusting to even link to, but Major League DumbBall is putting ads on the freakin’ bases, for cryin’ out loud. And they’re...

Today was significantly more crowded around campus than yesterday. Not sure why; was Monday the tail end of a three-day weekend? Anyway, it’ll be...

The BBC is all atwitter tonight about the 25th anniversary of the accession to power of Margaret Thatcher (or should I call her Baroness...

My favorite artificial language. [Link courtesy Political Theory Daily.]

All you can do is laugh (unless you’re kicking yourself for forgetting your gloves): The National Weather Service in Detroit/Pontiac has issued a freeze...

My undergrad university’s alumni mag has this article on blogs in its latest issue. Nothing out of the ordinary, that is, nothing beyond the...

It was great to hear Loretta Lynn, God bless her, shock and tweak the boring Melissa Block on NPR today during an interview about...

According to Total Guitar Magazine (via BBC), these are the Top 20 Riffs of All Time: Guns N’Roses “Sweet Child o’ Mine” Nirvana “Smells...

Morrissey at the Apollo????? It’s true. According to a link from Gawker, he’s playing there tonight through Friday. That is truly surreal. It’s sort...

Bush was reportedly in Niles, Kalamazoo, and Sterling Heights today on a “bus tour.” His bus has the slogan “America, Yes We Can” on...

It’s May 3, but the wind was astonishingly cold and biting this morning, so much so that I regretted leaving the house without coat...

It was not empty in Ambrosia this afternoon, but it wasn’t packed, either. The atmosphere was more relaxed than it’s been in a while....

The town does appear to be clearing out. We took a little drive this afternoon. The area around our neighborhood was quiet, way quieter...