In a unified effort to make COVID-19 testing more accessible to our region, the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department, Grand Traverse County Health Department, and Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians are joining forces along with the Michigan National Guard to offer no-cost, drive-thru COVID-19 testing to the public on Monday, Oct. 19, Tuesday, Oct. 20 and Thursday, Oct. 22.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is pleased to announce the delivery of a mobile visitor center to the park—just in time for its 50th anniversary on October 21. The mobile visitor center is a custom-designed van that will help park rangers reach people who don’t usually get to visit the National Lakeshore.
Today we’re featuring the candidates vying to represent Leelanau County Commission District 2 (northern Elmwood Township and Bingham Township), which is currently held by Republican incumbent Deb Rushton. Democrat John Hunter is challenging Rushton, who has held a Commission seat for eight years.
Today we’re featuring the candidates vying to represent District 1 (southern Elmwood Township), which was left vacant by Ansorge. The candidates are Democrat George Bowers, a farmer in Greilickville, and Republican Rick Robbins, a former first responder and law enforcement deputy in Kalkaska.
This particular election season falls during dangerous times. The United States, our democracy, our code of honor, our ability to keep our fellow citizens out of harm’s way, our time-honored identity as a nation of immigrants, all seem more fragile than ever before. At the polls on November 3, or beforehand if you are voting by mail, we must team up and elect Joe Biden as our next president.
I was raised in Shelby by Republicans. In the 1960s my father, Robert R. Wheeler, was the Republican chairman of Michigan’s Ninth Congressional District, stretching from Grand Haven to Traverse City up the shore of Lake Michigan. Republican activism ran in the family: my grandfather Neil Wheeler had been elected state representative in Lansing for one term (two years) in the 1930s.
I have seen some truly painful things while working at Munson’s COVID ward during the Coronavirus pandemic. One of my nurses spent 45 minutes trying to set up a FaceTime chat, a Zoom call, anything that he and the patient’s family could think of so that they could see him and talk to him. They never did get it figured out that day. I hope they managed to before he died the following afternoon.
Twenty-five years from now a future superintendent of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore will open a time capsule stored in a metal lockbox and read a letter written to them by Scott Tucker, the Lakeshore’s current superintendent, on the occasion of Sleeping Bear’s 50th anniversary on October 21.
Glen Lake School is one of the first schools in the region to use innovative, bipolar ionization filters in its ventilation systems to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading inside the building.
The Leelanau School, the private boarding school just north of Glen Arbor, reported in a media release today that no new COVID-19 cases have been found among the student body and staff.