Many people in southeastern Michigan will be excited to know that after being closed since February 15, 2022, Crazy Wisdom Bookstore reopened on December 1, 2023 under the same ownership of Bill Zirinsky and Ruth Schekter, the couple who have shepherded the store forward over the last 30+ years.
Posts filed under Local
Leaps of Faith--Fall 2023, London Beauty & Misfit Coffee
This column is a look at brave souls who have taken a leap of faith to open their own businesses in and around Ann Arbor. Business owners who are following their dreams and thriving despite the odds.
A Walk in North Bay Park in Ypsilanti
I stood near the entrance to a boardwalk watching an egret do very little. It was nearly motionless amid a cluster of pond lilies that covered the water’s surface. Its shape—long, slender neck, bulbous body—reminded me of the glass beakers we used to mix potions in high school chemistry, it’s white plumage radiant in the afternoon sun.
Joob Activewear — Ann Arbor Clothing Company — Aims For Fair Trade, Climate Neutral Fashion
The hiking pants swished as I walked, hugging my legs as I squatted, lunged, and brought my knees to my chest. Not as tight as a legging but not as loose as a typical hiking pant, they ghosted over my skin, covering it, but not hampering movement a bit. I pushed my hands in the front pockets, felt the tug at the elastic waist, and checked out the zippered back pockets. A barely-there logo of an elephant shimmered near my left hip on the black fabric. I found the fit comfortable. I could wear these pants all day.
Peace, Love, and Cows
There is a feeling of peace in the cowbarns at Goloka Eco Experience in Maybee, Michigan. The farm air feels crisp as it enters the lungs—unequivocally more clear than city air. In this moment, the gentle thud of a heartbeat or thwap of a tail against the ground is one’s only soundtrack against the world. Soft, big brown eyes peer out from underneath impossibly-long eyelashes, begging for pats on the head or scratches at the nape of the neck. Goloka Eco hosts an experience one simply cannot find among the hustle and bustle of regular everyday life--an invitation to be present. To come sit. To forget about time for a while. To cuddle a cow, as volunteer Karunasindhu Nitai Gaura Dasa says, is to form a “meaningful relationship.”
Kindred Conversations: Maurice Archer and Anne Erlewine
The center of Maurice Archer’s big vision starts with dance. He’s known around town as the premier break dance performer, teacher, producer, and owner of A2 Breakdance. He has been bringing his unstoppable energy and expertise to classrooms, after school programs, rec and ed offerings, private parties, intensives, local festivals, and street fairs for years. If you’ve seen the linoleum unroll and a simple boom-box set up for a crew of kid and adult dancers to step in for six step, windmill, kick-up, flare, or a bunch of impressive acrobatic dance moves, then you have seen an A2 Breakdancers’ cipher. A cipher is a circle of dancers, jumping in to share a small mobile dance floor with their handstands, back spins, and fancy footwork before the next dancer tags in.
Conscious Parenting: Ele's Place Ann Arbor--A Home for Healing Arts
Ele’s Place Ann Arbor is a healing center that provides peer grief support for children, teens, and their families in Ann Arbor as well as the surrounding southeast Michigan area, free of charge, for as long as a family needs. Ele's Place Ann Arbor is the only nonprofit in our community dedicated solely to helping children and teens work with, and through, grief in a peer-based setting.
Roadside Marsh
The westbound traffic on Interstate 94 is at a crawl this morning and I couldn’t be happier. It’s a Wednesday and brilliant sunshine glints in my rear view mirror.
Ann Arbor Farm and Garden: Flower Therapy and Community Beautification
Do you like playing in the dirt? Maybe you’re a bit of a novice when it comes to plants, but you enjoy taking walks in neighborhoods that have been enhanced with beautiful flowers, or even learning more about them from an expert. Do you think of ways that plants and flowers can create beauty in a public place in need of some love and care? What about arranging flowers? Are flowers your go to for a loved one suffering from an illness? Would you like to help students who have a passion for botany or in improving the natural environment? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then read on to learn more about Ann Arbor Farm and Garden, an organization that has been giving back to the community for more than 75 years.
Out of My Comfort Zone: Dare to Be with Lauren Crane
I look at a comfort zone like a backyard garden. Plant seeds—let’s say tomato—in rich soil and they’ll grow in fat and juicy abundance. Really cool, you say, this will be my tomato patch forevermore. Not so fast. If you keep planting the same crop in the same plot season after season, you’ll deplete the soil and, sadly, your bushel basket will be bare. But throw in parsnips the next year, plug in peas the year after that, and you’ll keep the soil balanced and fertile, ready for the next good thing. I’ll stop pretending that I have a green thumb and get to the point of this metaphor.
Making Your Own Magic
At age five, Paula Hampton knew that there was something magical about art. The way her mother would hold a pencil to paper and make a face appear on a blank canvas, unaided by anything save her imagination, blossomed a world of possibility in Hampton’s heart.
Brush Monkeys and TreeTown Murals--Beautifying Ann Arbor & Beyond
Ann Arbor has long had a tradition of downtown businesses featuring window paintings on their store fronts during the holiday season. When in 2006 local artist, John Copley noticed a break in that tradition, “I mentioned to Jim Hart of Seyfried Jewelers, that I had enjoyed the holiday window painting that someone had been doing downtown for a while. That year it was not happening. I asked him why and he said, ‘Well, he died. You want to do it?’ And that is where it all began.”
A Walk Within and Beyond: Labyrinths Lead the Way
The bright service-blue sign simply stating “labyrinth” caught my attention as I was driving by St. Barnabus in Chelsea, MI. It was on my literal path, thus destined to be part of my journey that day. Suffice it to say at the start of our walk together in this article, when I stood at the entrance of this 11 circuit, 40 foot labyrinth, I felt a mystical buzz. I was about to embark on a new spiritual entry point.
How York Helped Forge a New Way of Dining Out
When the pandemic started in March 2020, restaurants had to close their doors for a bit of time to re-group. Most were able to provide delivery, no contact pickups, and take-out options. During this time, mobile food folks had an edge. It was truly amazing how food businesses, from farms to restaurants, figured out new ways of operating in a short period of time. York Food and Drink (and many other alternative eateries) made the change successfully and super-fast.
Kindred Conversations: with Hilary Nichols
Where does music begin? When you’re a musician, the search is inward. David Magumba realized that, “Beyond inspiration, you do the work. You make it happen. As a songwriter, that is the effort I am making right now.”
Amy Garber — Promoting Holistic and Psychic Realms for a Quarter of a Century
The Ann Arbor Holistic Psychic Fair became the largest of its type in Michigan as it gave a common arena for holistic practitioners and psychic intuitives to assemble in a mutually respected village for one or two days. Many of the practitioners highlighted in Crazy Wisdom articles have had booths, done readings, or attended informative lectures through these fairs.
Green Living: Bring Your Own Container, Leave with a New Way to Live
It is a song many of us sing every day: the last swipe of lotion on a dry day leaves a container empty; the final drizzle of olive oil escapes the bottle and sizzles on the pan; the old water kettle stops boiling; it is time to throw it all out and start over with something new.
Leaps of Faith: Brighton Light House
You read it right. Brighton Light House (BLH) is three words. That’s because, unlike a “lighthouse,” BLH is not a cautionary beacon on a rocky shoreline—a vision that may have come to mind at first glance. Rather, the light radiating from BLH is one that beckons the community toward it with the sole purpose of providing space for individuals to find, nurture, and shine their own light.
Empowered by Earthella--Ann Arbor's Planet Parade & Action Network
It was a typically beautiful autumn afternoon in Ann Arbor, and I was happily wandering around the Farmers’ Market in Kerrytown, heading toward the People’s Food Co-op. Well, I was mostly happy, aside from that sort of nagging feeling rolling around in the dark back corners of my mind—that antsy sense of restlessness about what’s happening, (and not happening) with our environment, our climate, our depleting soil, our very soul as one entity—human…. “What is really happening here?”
The Creations and Howls of Darryl "Barking Dog" Brown
There is a frenetic energy. There is also a stillness. There is a shape propelling into infinity. There is a cluster of dots, bound so tightly together it makes a heart ache. Here, in this painting, the creative freedom of dreams is restricted only by canvas size. Darryl “Barking Dog” Brown paints to create works that “connect us to the spirit world, through which we may learn to live a more sustainable life on planet Earth.”
