Every day, I write a morning blog entry about something in the news or something I've noticed recently and fill it with links. It's my daily links post. 

But links don't only have to refer to website links. Today's links post is all about having fun with — and defining — the word links.

Links as in golf

Links, as a nickname for golf, refers to the courses on which the game was originally played. Unlike the ultramodern hypermanicured turfgrass of the prototypical suburban residence-lined golf course, the old school golf course is defined by grass, not trees. Our August story on Wawashkamo on Mackinac Island tells that story:

"Like its Scottish cousins, Wawashkamo’s links-style layout isn’t defined by trees but by unmowed grassy areas between each of the tight fairways. Balls hit slightly off course usually result in penalty strokes. Bunkers, while few, are placed in areas designed to make a golfer think twice before choosing a club."

Local courses still go by the nickname of links, even when they are carefully groomed.

Link: Comprehensive Golf coverage on AnnArbor.com.
Link: Wawashkamo, a links style course on Mackinac Island.
Link: Ann Arbor golf courses, Pure Michigan.
Link: City of Ann Arbor golf courses at Leslie Park and Huron Hills. Look for the Fall Scramble schedule, and follow @a2parks on Twitter.
Link: The Arborwiki Golf category. Arborwiki is "a collection of Ann Arbor-related information that anyone can freely edit".

Links as in sausage

A link is a single sausage which was originally part of a chain of sausages stuffed into a casing and then tied off or twisted off for further processing. Sausage making is an extremely economical way of using up the whole animal. Vegetarian sausage-making often follows the same principle, where otherwise unremarkable byproducts like okara (soy pulp) are used as filler for soy sausage or as a medium for culturing tempeh.

Link: Rigatoni with sausage and tomato cream sauce, a recipe from my AnnArbor.com colleague Jessica Webster.
Link: Kitchen Chick's review of Copernicus from 2007 notes that its Polish sausages are made in Chicago.
Link: Hannewald Lamb Company brings bratwurst to the Ann Arbor Farmers Market.
Link: The sausage entry on Wikipedia is notable for its thorough international coverage.
Link: Okara Tempeh, Ellen's Kitchen.
Link: Huffington Post on Meatless Monday: The Joy, the Soy, the (Sub-)Culture of Tempeh, quoting Betsy Shipley and Gunter Pfaff:

"It was Michigan, 1980, the previous recession," says a wry Gunter. "You could either drink yourself to death, jump off a bridge or do something constructive. I decided to make tempeh." [...] "I was into sausages," says Gunter. "It was the substitute for my meat habit, my sausage habit. If it wasn't for Betsy and tempeh, I would have been dead a long time ago."

Links as in a directory of web pages

Much like this column collects lists of links to things in Ann Arbor, so have people been putting together link-filled directories of local information since the first hyperlink showed up on the Internet. Long before search engines ruled the Internet, a carefully curated list of references was a good way to navigate to current information.

Here is but a sample of local links pages. Note that you can date most of them by whether they refer to AnnArbor.com or the Ann Arbor News as the local newspaper. A good links list will be updated thoroughly at least annually, and cleaned out at the beginning of every year to make sure that it's still correct enough to be trusted.

Link: Kevin S. Hawkins, University of Michigan Digital Libraries, Ann Arbor Links.
Link: U of Michigan Psychology, Visit Ann Arbor
Link: Yahoo, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Links as in the opposite of rechts

There's nothing that long-time Ann Arborites like more than overhearing someone chattering away in German and assuming that no one around them can understand what they are saying. The long history of German settlement in the area, both in town and in the country, means that generations of townies have picked up just enough of the Muttersprache to pick up on what you are saying.

Link: German Park Picnic, summertime beer garden; it's over for the year, look for it next June, July and August on the last Saturday of the month.
Link: Bach Elementary School.
Link: Philip Bach on Arborwiki. Ann Arbor Mayor 1858-1859; Bach Elementary School is named after him, and is pronounced the way he pronounced his name — "Baw", not "Bock" — in the Swabian dialect.

Edward Vielmetti writes the Links column for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.