By Anna Elias | Staff Writer

Pies are wonderful. Warm pie is even more wonderful. Free, sometimes warm, pie is what Sarah Fertig, 27, of Ypsilanti, is handing out at Liberty Plaza on Wednesdays as part of a movement she started: OccuPIE Wednesday.

Fertig and boyfriend Chris Kovac have been handing out free slices of pie on Wednesday’s at 5:30 p.m. since Ann Arbor’s Art Fair back in July.

“We all benefit from things we didn’t build,” said Fertig.

With influence from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “factory speech” and President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment, Fertig now literally gives away her pie to those in more need.

“People say, ‘those welfare moms just want some of the pie.’ But seriously, who doesn’t like pie?” said Fertig.

Reminding people to “pie it forward” is the main focus of the movement, Fertig says. To be able to give to others what you have, as small or as large as the contribution may be, is what she aims for.

The movement has its own “maniFEASTo,” which Fertig hands out with each piece of pie, to share with hungry residents what the slices are all about.

48-year-old Ypsi-Arbor couch surfer, Ted Murray said that eating the pie has reminded him to remember what he can share with others.

“I’ve been looking for somebody to give a few dollars to,” said Murray.

Murray said he has been coming for a slice of pie, each Wednesday, for the past three weeks. He has been clean for one-and-a-half years, and says he tries to help others with sobriety as well.

Murray is joined at the plaza by a sizeable crowd of locals, all hungry for the tasty treats.

On a good week, Fertig and Kovac have served upwards of 50 people, which warranted extra pies from Grand Traverse Pie Co., while colder evenings bring out significantly smaller numbers.

The large amount of foot traffic made the location perfect in Fertig’s mind. She had thought about doing it on campus, but didn’t want to be associated with other student-run events.

She had also thought about “splitting the pie attention” by also handing out slices in Ypsilanti, but couldn’t decide on a location with diverse foot traffic.

“I didn’t want the pie to be about one segment of society,” Fertig said. “Anyone who walks by is welcome to take a slice.”

The couple bakes three apple pies each week to be served to the community. Fertig chose apple pies because the fruit comes in large, five pound bags.

They recently started accepting donations as they had an overwhelming number of people looking to give to the cause.

Cash donations are welcomed along with extra pies.

Fertig is hoping for a big send-off as winter becomes imminent. She says that Nov. 21 will be the last day for pie this year, but hopes the event will continue next year with a new crew as she may be out of state.

“I’d like to see it started with either a new team or more crowd sourced,” Fertig said “I’d like to take OccuPIE on the road. Pull up to a new city every week and show them the movement.”

For the big send-off, Fertig is planning on bringing a slow cooker with warm cider and hot cocoa to accompany the pies. She encourages others to bring a pie – fruit or pot pies – to the last OccuPIE Wednesday for the season.

“If I can share my little slice of pie,” said Fertig, “surely people higher up on the food chain can share their pie too.”

Anna Elias | Staff Writer

Most who are homeless, or homeless within the past year, don’t expect to go to Rio de Janeiro to become an international soccer player. But that is exactly what happened to Dave Altherr.

Altherr, 56, of Ypsilanti, thanks Washtenaw County’s project outreach team (PORT) for everything he has today. They have assisted him with housing, applying for social security disability and treatment for mental illness and drug addiction.

As a part of PORT’s “homeless soccer team” S.S. PORT, Altherr was chosen to go to Rio de Janeiro and compete on the national team for the 2010 Homeless World Cup.

“It’s life-changing for those who do it (street soccer),” said John Stacey, a supervisor at PORT.

 Sober soccer, street soccer, homeless soccer – it’s been dubbed many things, but the support offered in many forms at this community event had an unlikely start.

Sara Silvennoinen, a case manager for PORT, searched the Internet for “homelessness in Finland” following a conversation with family during a visit in Finland. The first thing she saw was the Homeless World Cup for soccer.

Back on American soil, Silvennoinen contacted the first U.S. team to start up that was based in Charlotte, N.C. This was the first year they were looking to expand.

PORT was excited about starting the first street soccer team in Ann Arbor, which they called S.S. PORT. Arrangements were made for Silvennoinen to attend a street soccer conference in North Carolina.

“It’s treatment, but they don’t realize it,” said Silvennoinen.

This wasn’t just about men and women coming together to play soccer who happen to be housing insecure. It was about camaraderie, sober entertainment and most importantly getting those out on the streets in touch with PORT’s services, she said.

With soccer ball in hand, Silvennoinen and coworker Linda Bacigalupi recruited a few guys and went to a local park and played soccer for S.S. PORT’s first practice. The end goal was to go to Washington, D.C. for the Street Soccer USA Cup.

“I like getting people out of their comfort zone,” said Anna Byberg, a former intern with PORT in 2011. “If you get them to come out one time, they’ll keep coming back.”

Byberg started practicing with the team last year as an intern. She has enjoyed practicing with the team so much that she continues to come to practice.

Now, working for Dawn Farms deter center Spera, Byberg is able to help recruit people for the soccer team.

The only requirement to practice with the team is availability. People who are willing to come out to practice during the scheduled times are more than welcome, regardless of housing or financial situations.

To travel with the team, however, players are required to have been homeless within the past year, which also includes transitional housing. Transitional housing typically comes after inpatient drug rehab, which is a safe place to live with other adults trying to stay sober.

Other than difficulties with permanent residence, many of the players have encountered mental illness and struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. Players are required to be sober in order to play with the team, either during practice or traveling for competitions. Players find solace in street soccer as a sober event.

“It’s my outlet to be amongst other people that are not in the criminal element. They have to be sober to begin with,” said Altherr. “It brings a different class of people, most people are recovering.”

Emily, 25, of Ypsilanti, played with S.S. PORT for one year. She asked that her last name not be used in this story. Before she joined the team, she hadn’t played soccer since she was 14, although she loved the sport since she was 5.

Emily was in transitional housing when she joined the team. Prior to getting into transitional housing, she was homeless for six to seven months and struggling with addiction.

“(Street Soccer) helped me get involved with something that was good for me,” Emily said.

She was invited to go to Paris with the national team for a two-week trip to the 2011 Homeless World Cup in Paris. Even though they came in second to last, with a single victory over Malawi, her life is forever changed.

Emily has now moved out of transitional housing and is an intern for a prominent firm in Detroit as a graphic designer. She attributes much of her success to being involved with street soccer.

S.S. PORT is completely funded on donations. On Dec. 8, a Soccerthon fundraiser will be held at Wide World Sports Center located on Oak Valley Drive in Ann Arbor. Teams of about 20 people can rent out field space at $10 per person for one hour and play against themselves. All of the proceeds will be donated to S.S. PORT.

The team is trying to raise $10,000 for walls for an outdoor soccer field on Wide World’s property for spring/summer practices. They practice at Wheeler Park during the warmer months, but would like a more permanent location.

During the winter months, Wide World donates an hour of field time to S.S. PORT for practice each week.

“Wide World has been absolutely amazing to us,” said Silvennoinen. “Without them, we couldn’t do this.”

With so much continued help from the community, homeless soccer in Washtenaw County has been able to stay active since 2007.

“(Street soccer) is gratifying,” says Altherr. “It makes you feel like you’re doing something.”

Despite what the future holds for the recording industry, despite laser readers, mp3 players and the iTunes iStore, vinyl remains increasingly viable in Ann Arbor.

Locals get their demands for analog records met at the city’s several purveyors of recorded music that populate the Liberty Street area of downtown Ann Arbor, citing higher sound quality and greater collectability for the aging albums.

To Anthony Caruso, a general studies major at Washtenaw Community College and resident of Ann Arbor, it’s about sound. Admitting to the convenience of digital mediums, Caruso still prefers vinyl for a more intense listening experience.

“The sound is way different,” Caruso said. “Many albums sound better on vinyl. CDs can’t get the full range. The lows and highs both sound better. If I want convenience, I will go for the iPod. But as technology gets better, the sound quality keeps getting worse. People are starting to see vinyl’s appeal.”

Claiming a recent trend in the reduction of auditory precision in favor of digitized convenience as behind the resurfacing of vinyl’s popularity, Caruso, 22, is irked by the lack of physicality in modern, invisible formats.

“Computer storage is more temporary. It’s more abstract and less real.” Caruso said. “Records are also a cool thing to have, like an artifact. They’re nicer to collect, like Beanie Babies.”

Matthew Bradish, owner of Underground Sounds on Liberty Street in Downtown Ann Arbor, concurs. Witnessing the continued popularity of vinyl among die-hard patrons of his shop, Bradish believes the physicality of records goes beyond the discs themselves.

“People who listen to vinyl have a higher attention span and passion,” Bradish said. “It’s the having to get up off your butt and flip the thing half-way through. If you’re gonna buy a physical format, it’s the one to have. The artwork is bigger and the sound is better without all that compression.”

Bradish has noticed a recent ascension in vinyl sales as current as the Dec. 6 release of the Black Keys’ latest album “El Camino.”

“Sales have increased and record plants have had to increase production,” Bradish said. “The Black Keys was a big vinyl release. The plants can’t keep up. I ordered 20 copies and only got five.”

East of Bradish’s emporium, on Liberty Street as well, Encore Records has been quenching Ann Arbor’s robust thirst for vinyl by the decades. Heavily relying on customer contributions of used records and tapes to fill his shelves, co-owner Jim Dwyer, 48, sees the passage of time, passing the recordings from the hands of one generation to the next.

“The truth is, it never really went away,” Dwyer said. “Sure, the industry really pushed for new formats to resell their back catalogues, but some of us never really got rid of our records. Real collectors want vinyl.”

Over the years, Dwyer has observed modern genres of music encouraging the continued use of analogue recordings.

“Punk bands and hip-hop kept vinyl alive,” Dwyer said. “It was cheaper for the punks to press, and appealing to DJs because they could easily isolate their favorite parts of songs.”

Dwyer believes the continuous popularity of records also results from a nostalgia that youngsters will only be able to wonder for.

“As the baby-boomers get older, more of their records are brought back into circulation,” Dwyer said. There’s a coolness. Young people tend to look back into music history and vinyl seems more authentic.”

Naming artists Creedence Clearwater Revival, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Pink Floyd as his store’s biggest sellers of records, Dwyer believes listeners will enjoy a marriage with the sounds echoing from their needles deeper than any other recording available.

“It’s bigger, it’s better. It has substance to it,” Dwyer said. “You’ll feel more immediacy. It’s nice to know that you have that direct connection with the artists themselves.”

For novice vegans or vegetarians, the holidays can be quite confusing and create a lot of pressure. From being a beginner in the kitchen to telling your family about your new diet, vegans and vegetarians may struggle to satisfy their holiday appetites.

For newly transitioning vegans and vegetarians living in and around the Ann Arbor area, help is just a mouse-click away.

VegAnnArbor, an online meeting place for vegan and vegetarians with more than 400 members, was created in 2008 to help with sharing recipes and experiences.

Organizer of VegAnnArbor, Nicole Leffler, 30, of Ann Arbor, says the best strategy when attending holiday parties this year is to be prepared.

“It saves you a lot of disappointment if you bring your own dish to pass,” she said.

By bringing cooked vegan food to your holiday dinners, Daniel Earle, 43, of Dexter, believes you can avoid the worst part of being a vegan at Christmas dinner.

“Someone slaves over something especially for you during the holidays and one ingredient turns out to be not vegan,” he said. “You’re caught where you want to be gracious, but you have to turn it down.”

Temptation can occur at the dinner table to deviate from one’s belief system. Earle says it depends on personal values.

“If you’re a vegan for ethical reasons, it won’t cave in my belief system,” he said. “If it’s for health reasons, you may be tempted to have a piece of cheesecake just that one time.”

Accounting major Kristy Lawless, 24, of Ypsilanti, finds it easy to stick to her beliefs in the local market. Lawless would rather cook her own meal because it keeps the family tradition alive.

“It’s much easier around here being that I’m from Flint,” she said. “You can get a Tofurkey at the Ypsilanti Co-Op, the Ann Arbor Co-Op or Whole Foods.”

For the traditional celebration, the Washtenaw Voice has compiled some places to pre-order meals and some traditional recipes to get out of the kitchen quickly for your special day.

Josh Chamberlain contributed to this report.

When average drivers find themselves becoming nicely acquainted with a roadside ditch, it’s safe to say they either got really unlucky, or they forgot how to drive with pretty white flakes on the ground.

It happens every year.

“Unfortunately, the general population doesn’t drive well in ideal conditions,” said Don Sherman, 66, the technical director at Car and Driver Magazine. “Put some stress on them, and it’s even worse.”

Megan Devries, 21, an automotive student at Washtenaw Community College, speculates that drivers simply get out of the habit of driving safely in inclement weather.

“People forget how to drive in the snow,” she said, “because in the summer they drive fast and don’t remember to slow down.”

But being ready for winter can be simple.

“It’s a combination of preparation and experience,” Sherman said.

He knows his way around cars and driving, and here are his helpful pointers to keep you safe on Michigan’s winter roadways:

1. Be prepared! The car and the driver must be prepared for the worst winter has to offer.
2. Get good tires. This is the most important part. Spend the extra money to get a set of four snow tires. Get rid of those old bald ones.
3. Gather a few survival items. Have an ice scraper, jumper cables, a means of getting or being towed (such as a tow strap or chain) and something warm like a blanket, just to name a few essential items.
4. Understand the capabilities of your vehicle. “Most people don’t use the majority of their car’s capabilities,” Sherman said. “Getting a feel for it helps people be prepared. People don’t know how to drive to their car’s full capabilities.” He suggests practicing in empty parking spots, or wide open streets. Get a feel for your car’s ABS (anti-lock brake system) when it kicks on during hard braking, or what it’s like to loose control of your vehicle. This will prepare you for when it happens on the mean streets. You don’t want your car to surprise you.
5. Be ready for other people’s incompetence. Not everyone is as gifted as you are behind the wheel. Give them space on the road.
6. Leave earlier than normal. Common sense, but some people forget to allow extra time for driving slower in bad conditions.
7. Car Maintenance. Top off washer fluid, replace old and dried out wipers and check your tire pressure.

This list is only intended as a reminder. Devries says Michigan drivers should try and recall treacherous experiences from previous years.

“Drivers should only be given like two weeks after the snow falls to adapt to new driving conditions,” she said. “After that, people are just dumb.”