Everyone's a Critic

This morning there were “approximately 1882” elm trees in Ann Arbor. This afternoon there are “approximately 1881.”

The Michigan Review, the University of Michigan’s historically conservative student newspaper, recently capped off over a decade of slow decline with a hacked website, a hijacked YouTube channel, and a series of ideological and personal conflicts between editors. However, after getting through these troubles The Review has started to slowly grow once again, reimagining its online presence and slowly expanding its staff and article output.

It’s been nearly sixty years since my Ferndale High School classmates—Nick, Jeff, and I—set off on three very different paths during the Vietnam War. 

On a bench outside Pizza Bob’s, two ancients (Class of ’74), watched, fascinated, a stream of U-M students cutting out early from the season’s first football game. Lots of maize and blue, of course, but more specific fashion codes also ruled. 

Omowale: African in origin, from the Yoruba, Meaning ‘The Son Has Come Home.’  Nov 7 2024  …And now our dear friend Omowale John Sinclair has come home. So much has been said and written about his varied life I...

Mel was released from the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in June 2024 after completing a two-year sentence. In this essay, she talks about art–and specifically a print-making class–that helped her express what she...

    The last time Michigan won the Rose Bowl, New Year’s Day 1998, it had been a dazzling season for the undefeated Wolverines. It had also been a spectacular football season for my then three-year-old son and me, but in a very...

My favorite place, Ann Arbor, my grandparents’ house. I go once or twice a year, my whole life. I imagine the smell of the turkey on Thanksgiving Day, prepared by grandma. I imagine the smell of grandpa’s old books,...

Mickey Rooney was marred eight times. He quipped, “Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn’t work out, you haven’t wasted a whole day.” His third wife, the model and actress Martha Vickers, was born in Ann...

At the Sonic Lunch Concert Series Ella Riot playing one day, a band of five, all in their twenties, doing their thing, electro, techno, funk, fusion, rock– don’t know exactly what to call it– and people of all ages...

Mid-morning dawns slow over arbored lawns,Where collegiate airs mix with quirky town affairs.Now traverse Washington & State, downtown cosmopolitan and quaint;Breath stilled at the view long west ‘cross avenues,Sun’s sleepy...