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There’s been a big brouhaha in Ann Arbor recently because the city’s public art fund decided to spend around $770,000 on a sculpture for the new ($47M) City Hall building.  The sculpture will be by renowned storm water sculptor Herbert Dreiseitl, and advocates of the installation made much of the fact that Dreiseitl is the world’ s leader in integrating public art with proper techniques for storm water drainage.  

Imagine my pleasure, then, when I saw this article in Nature about another one-of-a-kind public artist with scientific profiency.

James Acord is the only sculptor licensed to work with radioactive materials. Formally trained in nuclear physics, he tells Nature why he thinks contaminated nuclear sites should be marked for future generations and explains his obsession with the nuclear age.

via Access : Q&A: The art of transmutation : Nature.

 

Let’s get Mr. Acorn into Ann Arbor for a project at the decommissioned Ford Nuclear Reactor on North Campus. The budget starts at $770,000.

Scandal rocks Ann Arbor.

I don’t think that it’s “hateful” to question the purchase of the HDTV’s…especially when the folks that purchased them went outside of the normal procedures to buy them. Sounds like accountability more that “hatin”. Folks in government-work can’t use public funds as if they work in a privately run business. Just my two cents….and of course the opinion of the auditor.

via Arbor Update: Ann Arbor City Council Retreat Recap.

Wow, I wish the author had spend a little less time patting herself on her back for her love of diversity, and a little more time shedding her  irrational cultural prejudices.

It all started when my husband first asked me to marry him.

I said, “Under one condition, that we never live in the Midwest.”

He agreed. We got married in my parents’ backyard in California in front of 200 relatives and friends, and off we went on a four-year adventure doing anthropology and international development in Kathmandu, Nepal. Upon our return, I thought we would be heading for Berkeley, California, as planned. Imagine my surprise when he insisted that we return to Michigan “for only two, at most, three years,” while he wrote up his dissertation.

We have now been living in Michigan for 19 years.

So what to do with the children? 

My children are well-educated in not only their own cultures (Chinese, Greek, American), but many cultures. We have watched Cambodian dance, played the gamelan, pounded mochi, blown a shofar, learned Thai dance, listened to stories in Arabic, performed Chinese Lion Dance and Chinese Yo-Yo, attended the symphony. We have eaten barbeque in Texas, Mexican food in California, falafel in Dearborn, dim sum in Vancouver, kalua pig in Hawaii.

[How about Metzger's and Bill Knapp's?]

With a strong sense of self and ethnic pride, my children are surprised rather than crushed whenever they encounter racist stereotypes and discrimination. They laugh, “How come those people do not know what Chinese people are really like?”

With this column, I invite you to walk with me and my four children as we go about our “Adventures in Multicultural Living.” 

via The Ann Arbor Chronicle