Running Around Town: An Ann Arbor Memoir

This collection of essays shares the observations of an energetic boy living in an anything-but-simple time: the mercurial decades of the 1960s and 1970s in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Running Around Town brings funny and quirky insights into gentle focus, with a lens on the small things in life that bring purpose and make us human.

Our perennially curious narrator describes his small but teeming domain extending to the University of Michigan Diag and the people who influenced him: The clerks at Discount Records who provide musical advice. A cashier who sells him a peace sign necklace at Middle Earth. The folk musicians at The Ark. U-M basketball star Cazzie Russell.

And importantly: A policeman neighbor who bails him out of situational predicaments. And a classmate, a bibliophile, who teaches him to sing in tune and passes him a note in history class at Pioneer High School.

Part coming-of-age impressions, part family and societal portraits in miniature, part love story, Running Around Town is ultimately a tapestry of transformative everyday interactions, woven together with the cultural influences and music of the times.