The Glen Lake Community Library in Empire will host a series of special events for area students during the week of Spring Break, from March 31 to April 4. Click here to view the library’s planned activities.
An idea born in Suttons Bay has spread across the state. In just 10 years, Kara Gregory’s PoWeR! Book Bags program has grown from concept to some 130 sites in more than one third of Michigan’s counties. It has distributed more than 750,000 books and 120,000 PoWeR! Literacy Bags.
The Bay’s popular Made in Michigan series highlights great films made in the state and provides unique opportunities for audiences to connect directly with the filmmakers and/or special guests through post-screening Q&As. Made in Michigan continues on Sunday, March 29 at 4 pm with All Too Clear. This festival award winner and groundbreaking documentary explores the most significant ecological shift in the Great Lakes since the last ice age. Utilizing cutting-edge, custom-built underwater drones, filmmakers Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert—who will attend the screening—spent over 150 days capturing footage of a world that is becoming “all too clear” due to an army of quadrillions of invasive quagga mussels. This event is presented in partnership with Inland Seas Education Association.
Glen Arbor earned the designation of Tree City USA by the Arbor Day Foundation in late February. A small, but persistent, group of local business owners and residents decided that it was time to ensure Glen Arbor’s recognition of trees as being crucial to the natural beauty of the small town’s scenic corridor/backdrop and the globally rare ecology of the surrounding Glen Lake and Crystal River watersheds. They worked for over a year to gain community support and build a coalition, the Glen Arbor Beautification committee (GAB), and meet the standards of the Arbor Day Foundation.
The Homestead is among a select group of resort properties nominated for the Best Of Hour Detroit awards. The Glen Arbor resort is nominated alongside the likes of the Grand Hotel, Inn at Bay Harbor, Hotel Walloon, Saint John’s Resort and others in the Michigan Resort category.
The Glen Arbor Arts Center’s annual Members Create exhibition opens March 20 at 5 pm with a public reception featuring the work of 31 current GAAC members. A showcase of members’ talent, Members Create runs through May 28. The exhibit includes work in a wide range of media: paint to fiber, clay to metal, sculpture, assemblage, collage and more. It may be viewed in person in the GAAC’s Main Gallery, or online at GlenArborArt.org/EXHIBITS.
When Billy Joel was creating his hit records in the ’70s and ’80s, he wasn’t working by himself. While he wrote the bulk of the material and sang and played piano, he also led a band of top-flight musicians. Now The Lords of 52nd Street, featuring members of those recordings and tours, are performing Joel’s music, including a stop at Leelanau Sands Casino March 20. Guitarist Russell Javors says playing the music again with those who helped create it was a full-circle moment for him. “Lib and I have played together since we were kids, and with Doug since before Billy,” he says of drummer Liberty DeVitto and bassist Doug Stegmeyer.
March 22 is the deadline to submit a vendor application for the Glen Lake Woman’s Club Art Fair. The Art Fair will be held on July 15 at the Glen Arbor Township Hall. This annual, juried Art Fair features artists carefully selected to represent one-of-a kind art pieces for sale at the Township Hall. The Art Fair features artisans in many mediums including pottery, painting, textiles, woodworking, and jewelry.
Schools and most businesses were closed across northern Michigan on Monday as a winter storm continued to move through the region. The storm that started Sunday wreaked havoc Up North, with 31 inches of snow hitting Three Lakes in the northwestern Upper Peninsula while more than a quarter-inch of ice coated trees and power lines across the northern Lower Peninsula. The storm battered the area almost exactly one year after a devastating ice storm toppled millions of trees, knocking out the region’s power grid and leaving thousands of customers in the dark—some for as long as two weeks.
The snow is falling fast and furious. Schools and businesses are closed. Northern Michiganders are arming themselves once more with shovels, snowplows and snowblowers. Nevertheless, the feared ice storm and threat of mass power outages that meteorologists warned us about appears not to have materialized—at least not in Leelanau County.