Leelanau Christian Neighbors will host their annual fundraiser, “Buy the Runway Gala”, on Sunday, July 30, 5–7 pm. This year the event will be held in the beautiful barn at French Valley Vineyard, located at 3655 S French Rd near Cedar.
The Glen Arbor Arts Center’s Coffee With the Authors is a live, conversational interview with local and regional authors about the writing craft and process. This series continues Sunday, July 30, at 1 p.m. with poet Holly Wren Spaulding in a conversation about keeping and banning words. Spaulding, a northern Michigan native now living in southern Maine, published her third book of poems, Familiars, in 2020, as a response to the 2015 deletion of words by the Oxford Junior Dictionary (OJD). The OJD’s deleted words list includes names of flora and fauna, in order to make room for newer words from the world of technology, such as “chatroom” and “bullet point.” Familiars is full of poems about “trees, flowers, magic, touch, memory, erasure, power, and [Spaulding’s] grief over the changing climate.” In her July 30 conversation, Spaulding will talk about the power of words, choosing them with care, and the ways in which she works to keep language vital through her writing. The Glen Arbor Sun interviewed Spaulding prior to her upcoming coffee date at the Arts Center.
The Glen Arbor Arts Center is keeping the lights on a little longer this summer. Late Night Fridays continues Friday, July 28 with an evening viewing of the Members Create exhibit, and demonstrations by Members Create exhibitors Michele Aucello, Mercedes Bowyer, Barbara Greenwood, Jessica Kovan, and Mark Mehaffey. Then painters from across Michigan and the Midwest will converge on Glen Arbor August 4 and 5 for the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s 14th Plein Air Weekend.
The Traverse City Dance Project returns as part of the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s (GAAC) 2023 Manitou Music lineup. The performance is July 29 at 7 pm at Nash Road Red Barn, located at 9805 Nash Road near Maple City. Sponsored by the GAAC and Interlochen Public Radio, and hosted by Pine Street Studios, the Traverse City Dance Project’s performance will feature original choreography, live music, and professional dancers from around the country.
On July 20, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer chose Suttons Bay High School as the venue to sign the state’s record-setting new education budget which allocates $24.3 billion for pre-K through 12th grade during the coming school year. Whitmer said the programs funded by the budget will help achieve education equity across Michigan. The new allowance per student will be $9,608 with more funding for students with disabilities, low-income families and English-language learners. “We know that potential is universal, but opportunity is not,” Whitmer said. “And when we make investments in the education of our kids, we’re creating opportunity for all. This is how we level the playing field. This is how we ensure that every student is prepared to be successful.” “It’s about priority,” Suttons Bay Superintendent Casey Petz told the Sun. “If we’re gonna put our money where our mouth is, this is the place to come. Suttons Bay has an incredibly diverse student population. We have a high-needs population. When a Governor and her team make it a point to come to a place like this, what they’re saying is, ‘We see you. We hear you’.”
TART Trails and Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes will host two summer open houses at the intersection of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail and Glen Haven Road —on Thursday, July 27, from 11 am-1 pm, and Thursday, August 10, from 11 am-1 pm. Community members, visitors, trail users and those interested in learning more about the trail and its Pathway to Good Harbor extension are invited to stop by to talk trails.
Part five of Rebecca Carlson’s Leelanau Farming Family Series features the Steimel family, which arrived in the area in the 1860s from Germany, homesteading shortly after arriving. By the 1881 Leelanau County plat maps, the Steimels held several different properties in and around Suttons Bay.
You never know when a good idea will come to fruition. That’s Paul Hamelin’s take on the upcoming July 27 performance by students from Interlochen Arts Camp and the Aug. 13 performance by Livingston Taylor at the Ridge at Verterra. A longtime supporter of various charitable organizations, Hamelin and his wife Marty pondered what else they could do. The classical music enthusiasts considered the idea of music at their Verterra Winery, but not the typical singer/songwriter performers popular at many such locales. “I’m a fan of symphonic music,” Paul says, noting shows he’s seen at Ravinia and Meadowbrook, the summer homes of the Chicago Symphony and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, respectively.
Leland hosted its first art walk for the Consenses Walks project earlier this month, a challenge for artists of varying mediums living in the same community to work together in an artistic game of “Telephone.” Leland was chosen for the experimental project’s second location by founder Sally Taylor, who led a group of approximately 125 people on a stroll around town to decode the chain of seven artists’ work and find out what common threads wove their way through the links. The adventure began with Leland summer resident and sculptor Charlie Hall’s Infinite Disc, located on the front lawn of the Old Art Building.
Lizzie Brown, a 2021 Glen Lake School graduate and 2023 Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) graduate who is currently enrolled at University of Michigan-Flint, reflects on her recent trip to Guatemala, and what she learned at a model preschool run by Planting Seeds International, a nonprofit with northern Michigan support.