Sometime this month, the 1,364,835th visitor to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in 2012 will arrive at the Dune Climb, hike to Pyramid Point, or perhaps bike the Heritage Trail and enjoy its stunning autumnal beauty. In doing so, that visitor will officially make this the busiest year ever for the Glen Arbor region, the most profitable for local businesses, and perhaps the most hectic one too.
Dorothy Brooks of East Lansing plans to use her Glen Arbor Art Association two-week residency to “write a series of poems (10-15) with Lake Michigan as theme: seen from my own unique perspective.” Brooks has spent many summers in northern Michigan on its lakes, rivers and woods and now wants to “breathe the lake” and absorb and record what she finds.
With a face as weathered as one of the boulders from his fields, and a blunt demeanor to match, Glen Noonan presents a formidable figure in the complex social and geographical landscapes of Leelanau County. This farmer, businessman, political fixture and quiet benefactor to many has plowed his fields, herded cattle, shaken cherries and picked apples, mined gravel, raised seven children with his late wife Ella, been the backbone of some key local government boards, and helped shape virtually every realm of life for the region’s residents for over six decades.
When you walk through the dining room at the Cedar Rustic Inn (by the blinker just north of Cedar) on a warm evening, you pass through the back door into a cozy and charming courtyard that is shaded with umbrellas amid young maples and birch trees surrounded by tomato and lima bean plants, peonies, hydrangeas, and flower baskets mounted on the wood walls. If it’s a Wednesday night you’ll probably see Bob Smith of Glen Arbor sucking on his fingers as he polishes off the full rack of ribs. (He claims that some of his charter-fishing customers from Florida recently brought some of those leftover ribs out on the Mariah for their lunch. When they threw the bones over the side it must have attracted the salmon, because the next several fish they caught had rib bones in their mouths! But that’s a fish story.)
I’m sad to be leaving Amsterdam. Not just because I love my niece and her family and they live here, but because Amsterdam is one of the best places in the world. People are happy here. You only need to walk down the street to feel it. On an overcast winter day with intermittent rain, the buskers in the center of town are playing great music while all around them people are laughing and talking and strolling with their families. You’d think the sun was out.
“Saturdays at the Lakeshore” programs take place every Saturday from Sept. 15 through Oct. 27. Meet at the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center in Empire on M-72 at 1 p.m. to meet the Park Ranger who will lead the hike. Then, car caravan a short distance to where the walk will begin. Each week, a different topic and location in the park will be featured. All are welcome. Each program will be no more than a mile and a half round trip and will conclude by 3 p.m.
After a successful inaugural year, the Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA) will begin its second season of Readers’ Theater with “The 39 Steps”, a fast-paced thriller about spies, secrets, murder and mayhem. Auditions will be held at the GAAA building on Wednesday, Sept. 26 at 7 p.m. for performances on Saturday, Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 2 at 2 p.m.
Growing up in Northern Michigan, piles of snow, icy roads, and short-term power outages were the closest I ever came to experiencing the wrath of nature. Blizzards like the one that hit Michigan in March this year — which shut off power at my parents’ house for a full week after the region received 70 centimeters (27 inches) of snow in about 18 hours — can indeed be dangerous. But, as a kid, they just meant schools were closed for “snow days” filled with sledding and fort building.
Steven Walker of Westerville, Ohio, will make a presentation about his Artist-in-Residence experience at the Glen Arbor Art Association on Thursday, Sept. 13, at 7:30 p.m. Born in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and raised in Richmond, Va., Walker is a prolific and dedicated “nature” artist. He received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and began a career in illustration. Soon thereafter he began teaching at VCU and then pursued his MFA at Marywood University. He began to exhibit his work in galleries and was well received. His many accomplishments include awards in plein air painting and landscape competitions. He won a blue ribbon in the Ohio Plein Air competition. His work is in many private collections such as Boy Scouts of America, Dominion Resources and the United State Air Force. He has been in many solo and group exhibitions.
Matt and Keegan Myers’ M-22 brand is back in the news, but for the wrong reasons. The iconic logo, of course, graces t-shirts, hats, coffee cups, bumper stickers, wine, and other items sold at retail stores in Traverse City and in Glen Arbor. The Myers brothers, who live on Old Mission Peninsula and run the annual M-22 Challenge, have made a killing since trademarking the logo about a decade ago. Sales reached $2 million this year, reports the Wall Street Journal.