Ann Arbor For Better Or Worse

Bookmobile Services | Ann Arbor District Library

Friday, June 30th marks the final day of the AADL Bookmobile service in its current form. While we transition our outreach services, we are maintaining deposit collections and broadening service to patrons confined to their homes. This decision was made as part of our 2004-2010 Strategic Plan with the goal of providing more personalized service to a greater number of patrons in a more cost effective and efficient manner.

This is a sad day. I had many happy excursions to the bookmobile with my daughter Kelsey when we lived at University Townhouses in Ann Arbor.

Technorati Tags: bookmobile, aadl, ann arbor

River Gallery - John Schwarz

This is in the lobby of the Ann Arbor District Library and the picture doesn’t do it justice. It is amazingly cool.

Technorati Tags: sculpture, dragons

Consultant paid $372K by schools

The district has paid Baker an average of $124,021 a year for the last three years, his records show. He’s made an average of $75,708 a year for the last three years from the bond and $44,917 from the district’s operating fund. In total, Baker, who started out working for the district as a volunteer, has been paid $372,063 for his work since January 2004.

It’s money well spent, district administrators said. “He’s helped us do a lot of things we didn’t understand,” said Superintendent George Fornero.

Baker is a former IBM executive and a former partner in the local firm Blue Hill Development, which built University Commons for University of Michigan alumni, faculty and staff age 55 and older.

Ann Arbor News Discovers 20th-Century Business Practices

I hate when the News discovers something exotic like the “consultant” and gives it banner headlines.

Today’s Bible verse of the day:

1 Corinthians 15:20-22

“ But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

I decided to look up firstfruits.

Ex 22.29

You shall not delay to offer the first of your ripe produce and your juices. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me.

Time for a trip to The Produce Station!

Chelsea knows tragedy too well

The sisters agreed that Chelsea has suffered more than its share of tragedy, starting in December 1993 when Chelsea High School science teacher Stephen Leith shot and killed school Superintendent Joe Piasecki and wounded the high school principal and a teacher.

Since then, Chelsea has coped with two car crashes that killed three young people each in 2000 and 2001, and the tragedy of a mother who shot and killed two of her children and wounded a third before killing herself in 2000.

“When I tell people outside Chelsea about it, they are really shocked,” Martin said as she and Brennan sat in the busy Zou Zou’s Cafe and Coffee Bar on Main Street in downtown Chelsea.

Translation: Chelsea is a deathtrap.

One of Ann Arbor’s own comes home.

CNN.com - ‘Wonderful day’: Journalist Carroll freed in Iraq - Mar 30, 2006
American hostage Jill Carroll, the freelance journalist released on Thursday after nearly three months in captivity in Iraq, said she was “treated very well” while she was being held.

“They never said they would hit me. They never threatened me in any way,” she said in a TV interview after her release.

Except for the part where they held you prisoner in a locked room for three months and threatened to kill you. Good grief.

Captor, Captive Have Different Senses Of Humor | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
BAGHDAD—Volunteer aid worker Roy Rodriguez, 23, and the man who keeps him caged in a basement in suburban Baghdad have very different senses of humor, Rodriguez said in a video shown on Al Jazeera Tuesday. “He’s into slapstick—he laughs when I take a harsh blow or get kicked down the basement steps,” Rodriguez said. “I’m more of a Seinfeld fan—I see the absurdity in little things, like the fact that an Arabic speaker who coordinates relief efforts in Iraq is this moron’s sworn enemy.” Rodriguez added that he found the reaction to the recent group of Danish cartoons spoofing the prophet Muhammad “sort of funny,” but that his captor “doesn’t see the joke.”

Official Google Blog: A real find
As a librarian and a Googler, I love the “Find it in a library” links we’ve added to many — but not yet all — of the titles in Google Book Search. While we work on getting these links rolled out for the rest of the books, at least one user has taken matters into his own hands: “Superpatron” Edward Vielmetti has written a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that enables him to see which books are available at his local library.

Since Google Book Search is all about helping you discover and locate books you never knew existed, it’s especially gratifying to see people [from Ann Arbor /wfz] like Ed embracing and extending this mission.

Cool. Not only can I see that the Ann Arbor District Library has a copy of the first book I published, I can also see that someone has it checked out right now!

MiamiHerald.com | 03/09/2006 | Shaq, Wade need each other to be winners

Simple math. Dunks are a lot more efficient than jumpers. That’s why Shaq and Tim Duncan have hogged so much of the recent winning with the one aberration being a quirky Detroit team that wouldn’t have won a title if Shaq and Kobe hadn’t short-circuited.

What an idiot.

The Pistons are 47-10. They would have won last year, too, if they hadn’t had the brawl at the Palace, which cost them home-court advantage. Rasheed is 6’11, Ben Wallace might as well be 7’, Tayshaun is 6’9.

Basketball is a 5-man game. You can’t reduce it to simplistic rules like “you need a giant.”

cantonrep.com
And Penn State almost did. A controversial loss at Michigan was the Nittany Lions only blemish. Paterno made sure to take a shot at the timing controversy in Michigan’s favor.

“I get a half hour to speak,” Paterno said. “Lloyd Carr will get 30 minutes and two seconds.”