How Leelanau locals equipped Guatemalan first responders

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There is no real government support for Guatemala’s first responders. When they’re not on a fire or ambulance call, they are out in the streets getting donations in coffee cans from passing drivers to fund their meager salaries and minimal equipment. Most of them have to fight fires in jeans and t-shirts. Serious injuries are endemic to their work. When Guatemalan Fredy Maldonado showed Burdickville’s Mike Binsfeld the situation, Binsfeld stepped up the Buckets of Rain commitment to include money for fixing fire station roofs and ambulances, and to provide medicine for the community. Through his efforts and those of Leelanau County resident Kathy Fordyce and her outreach to local firefighters at the Cedar Fire Dept., desperately needed gear is now making its way to Guatemala.

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A Ukrainian refugee arrives in Michigan to meet her grandchildren

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“Come here, my joy, my happiness,” Liubov Shchegelska tells her grandson, Tim, in Ukrainian as the 2-year-old boy plays in the yard outside his parents’ Traverse City apartment. Tim’s parents are Viktor Grebennykov and Diana Grebennykova, natives of Ukraine who moved to northern Michigan in 2019 when Viktor—an Olympian in the 2012 London games—became coach of the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club. Liubov, who is Diana’s mom, could almost tune out the war ravaging her homeland—the conflict that sent her across borders and into the United States just two weeks before—but also allowed her to meet her grandchildren, Tim, and his 4-year-old sister, Ellis, for the very first time. On this day she could almost tune out the war. Almost.

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“Ukrainian people are protecting the world with our blood”

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Lake Leelanau Rowing Club coach Viktor Grebennykov and his wife Diana—both natives of Ukraine who currently live in Traverse City— aren’t hiding news of the war in their homeland from their young children. But they moderate which videos and photos Ellis, 4, and Tim, 2, see on the television and computer screens, even as the Russian military continues its daily shelling of Ukrainian cities. Nevertheless, the children comprehend the human costs of this hellish war, and how it endangers family members whom they have never met but know from frequent video chats.

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Peter Richards: Living his dream adventure

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Peter Richards had an unassuming Leelanau County life, growing up in Suttons Bay, and graduating from Glen Lake High School in 2004. And then it hit: photography entered his life as he entered Northern Michigan University that fall.

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Ecuador to Empire: the Journey of Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate

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Chocolate making is an incredible journey. For Grocer’s Daughter this journey starts in Ecuador. Near the small town of Calceta, in western Ecuador, sits the Fortaleza Del Valle cocoa cooperative. Nearly 900 small, family cacao farms rely on the cooperative to obtain expensive Fair Trade and Organic certifications, carefully process their beans and ensure that they will be sold for a fair, living wage.

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Iranian Arya Khoshnegah recalls his escape to the Leelanau School

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The Leelanau School featured a special graduation speaker during its commencement ceremony on June 3. Alum Arya Khoshnegah, together with his sister Laila, left Iran as teenagers and enrolled at the private boarding school north of Glen Arbor, just before the 1979 revolution that changed the fortunes of their family and their country. Leelanau, which specializes in experiential learning and small class sizes in a beautiful setting, graduated 19 seniors who hail from 11 states. Distinguished alumni have included survivors of wars and natural disasters, children of statesmen and accomplished actors.

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Leelanau Women March on Washington

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The January 21, 2017, Women’s March on Washington, D.C. attracted more than half a million demonstrators to the banks of the Potomac. Writer Anne-Marie Oomen of Empire, and other Leelanau women shared their experiences from that day.

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What government owes Flint’s poisoned immigrant community

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Like many in Flint’s Latino immigrant community, Yaquelin Vargas said she didn’t learn until late January that Flint’s drinking water was lead poisoned. Vargas, a U.S. citizen, said she drank tap water while she was pregnant, and as she first began breastfeeding Lydia, now 8 months old, who suffers from lead poisoning.

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Cottage Names in a favorite place

While the English often name their houses, here in the United States we typically do so only for our seasonal cottages. And the roads of northern Michigan are dotted with endearing cottage names painted and carved into roadside signs. Some signs seem homemade, others look professionally produced. Some are simple; others have elaborate scenic images and distinct fonts. They may refer to family name, the setting, the structure itself, values or preferences. A few declare that this is paradise.

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On the road to Leelanau

The road to our own personal ‘Tour de Leelanau’ started, in a grand sense, around the summer solstice, when we and our bikes pedaled out of the Chicago area with the intention, like so many others, of getting ‘out to the country’ to celebrate the warm months. Earlier, in the spring, while living and working in Los Angeles, we used a program called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) to get in contact with a number of farmers situated up and down the western coast of your great state.

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