The Dreaded New Year's Resolution

Quite a few people I know make personal resolutions around the New Year, some obligating themselves to more healthful practices, while others become devoted to nixing bad habits.
This is fairly common, even prompting cliche jokes about the prevalence of folks breaking such pledges by February.
I hear much less, however, about people resolving to better the communities they live in, or some small portion of them, as their game plan for January and beyond.
This thought prompted me to ask, here in blog form, if there are any of you out there in Saline and Milan who feel passionately about making a real difference in some way in 2011.
If you have made a New Year's resolution of this kind, get in touch with me at showard@heritage.com.
I know you're out there, as I have met some extraordinarily giving people in both of these great cities.

Unconventional career paths for new graduates

We're considering beginning a new series at Heritage for our Washtenaw County papers, profiling recent college graduates who have taken unconventional career paths due to problems many have come across in finding more traditional jobs.

If you are someone in that general geographic area who has used your own creativity to start a new business endeavor, or joined an unlikely work force, we would like to hear from you.

Of course, if you know of someone who fits the bill, please let us know as well.

You can email responses to showard@heritage.com.

The Big Chill was an event to remember

My wife and I attended 'The Big Chill at the Big House' over the weekend, and the event was, collectively, something I will not soon forget.

We were also able to get two tickets for my mother and father-in-law, both HUGE hockey fans, so to share in their excitement was wonderful as well.

Seeing over 113,000 people sitting outside for three hours in December was pretty amazing. Even though the temperature was in the low 40s when the game began, the weather got much colder as the sun disappeared.

The highlight for me, however, was watching as a B-2 Stealth Bomber flew over the stadium following the National Anthem.

It sort of crept up with little sound, thus the plane's name, and the roar could only be heard after it had flown past.

The Stealth flew fairly close to us, but you couldn't really see any distinguishing features such as a cockpit or landing gear. It just looked like a black triangle sweeping by.

Awe-inspiring to say the least.

116 W. Michigan Ave. comes down

I had a straight shot out of my window last week as 116 W. Michigan Ave. was being demolished.

The owner of the auto shop that sits behind the former residence said he tried to rent the structure out for quite some time to no avail, and that it was blocking his business so that customers were having a difficult time finding him.

Thus, it needed to come down.

So, the building was demolished in a matter of hours, and will now become parking for the repair facility, as they were formerly renting spaces from the church next door.

I was told the home was built in the early 1900s, perhaps 1909, and would like to hear from any of you who might know something about the original family who put it up.

Even if you know of the house being occupied by another family for any significant time span, that would be of interest to.

I did an article on the demo for this week's Reporter, but would like to do a follow up with some context and history of the place.

Send me a message at showard@heritage.com