‘Just put the last ornament on the living room Christmas tree. Decorating trees is a labor of love, both retrospective and prospective. Our parents gave us an ornament every year, so that we’d have some ornaments when we grew up and had trees of our own. They weren’t, for the most part, fancy. One… Continue reading Christmas Trees
Category: Michigan Stories
Maneuvering
If any season of the year feels like it speeds along, it’s this one between Thanksgiving and the end-of-year holidays. Days are short, activities plentiful, and to-do lists long. It feels like we all have a lot of balls in the air. At our friend Pat’s house, more than balls are in the air. … Continue reading Maneuvering
Tubas and the Barrier
A warm and lovely sound filled the air at Farmers Market this Sunday. It was Tuba Christmas. Somewhere north of forty musicians played a concert of Christmas music on tubas, euphoniums, baritone horns, and sousaphones. The bell of one of the sousaphones even sported a Christmas wreath. As usual, the performers seemed to be… Continue reading Tubas and the Barrier
Dogs and Dishtowels
My husband and I realized with sorrow, yesterday, that the Thanksgiving leftovers are nearly gone. We’ve eaten our way through the special-occasion fuss-and-bother favorite foods. We’ve even finished the treats Cindy brought us a couple days after the feast—homemade sticky buns and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Everything looked gorgeous and tasted so good. All… Continue reading Dogs and Dishtowels
Building
We’ve had our first stick-to-the ground snow. Often, the first real snow of the year is strikingly beautiful, sitting decoratively on branches and the last of the autumn flowers. This snow, not so much. There was enough to need shoveling, and that’s about it. Children, however, think of any amount of snow as raw material… Continue reading Building
Getting Ready
There was a skin of ice on Thurston Pond this morning, as thin and wrinkly as plastic wrap. This first ice of the year is transparent and reflects the trees and sky and clouds the way the pond did before it froze. It will melt later in the day, as the temperature goes up,… Continue reading Getting Ready
Rosebuds
Claire Kitchin Dahl, dressed as Rosie the Riveter, gave a whale of a presentation yesterday at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library this Wednesday. Her topic was the Rosies, all of them, the real women who went to work to support the war effort during World War II, making airplanes, munitions, and other supplies, and… Continue reading Rosebuds
All Hallows
The neighborhood’s most startling Halloween tableau this year occasioned me genuine alarm. Walking the dog, one foggy morning this week, I saw ahead of us a car where it didn’t belong: partly in the street and partly angled up over the curb on the lawn extension. I hurried to see if anyone needed help. When… Continue reading All Hallows
Proud Bones
Last month, Tanya and I went to a talk on barns, at which the presenter mentioned that a barn would be taken down on the twenty-fourth of October. He told us the barn in question was at Parker and Spies (pronounced speez) Roads. And this Monday, the date in question, my husband agreed to go… Continue reading Proud Bones
Light
Georgetown Boulevard in the fall is a contender for most gorgeous street in town, like Awixa in the spring. I was riding up Georgetown with my friend Cindy this week, and she was so much in the thrall of the maples that line the street that she missed our turn. That was on a rainy… Continue reading Light