We are talking, together, in common and without apparent hierarchy, about the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s idea of the good. We are talking seriously about what it means to seek the good, to live the good life, to address Aristotle’s question on the purpose of being human. I am in Aspen, but all this is making me think about things in Michigan.
A wander through the doors of Ann Derrick’s Glen Arbor Botanicals gallery can produce exquisite results, but not many suspect that a purchase within those doors can change a life. Derrick, who together with husband Brendan Burrows, owns the Good Harbor Grill and the Pine Cone ice cream shop west of Glen Arbor’s main intersection, spend their winters sailing the Caribbean. It is there that they discovered an island and its people, along with a story and a mission that struck their core.
You don’t really know where you’re from until you’ve been somewhere else and come back. That’s because anything is only itself in relationship to some other thing. A day is only a day in relationship to the night. An apple stands for every fruit until you’ve tasted a mangosteen. America isn’t America until you’ve been to El Salvador.
Cedar’s Polka Fest isn’t the only Polish attraction in these woods. The Duneswood Resort along M-109, and right on the popular new leg of the Sleeping Hear Heritage Trail, is a hit with Poles from Detroit and Chicago, and even Warsaw and Krakow. Owner Debbie Rettke began displaying a Polish flag along M-109 last summer because she had employees from the central European nation. Lo and behold, people began pulling off the road to ask her (she recalled in a pronounced Polish accent), “What do you have my flag here for?”
On June 7, actor Ramón Rodríguez was Leelanau School’s youngest ever commencement speaker—by far—and perhaps the one most likely to connect with the senior class, many of whom already knew him on television and on social media. In May, the New York Times wrote of Rodríguez’s “rakish good looks”; a couple days before returning to Glen Arbor he appeared on Conan, and agreed to send more ladies Conan’s way if the late-night talk show host would help the actor get more followers on Twitter.
Concerned area fathers are being asked to meet at the Traverse City Open Space on Thursday evening, May 15 at 6 p.m., to demonstrate a showing of DADS who care greatly about the plight of those fathers and their families who have faced the tragedy of losing their daughters in Nigeria’s horrific kidnapping. The group “Stand with Nigeria’s Dads” hopes to gather 276 Dads — the same number as the girls abducted by Boko Haram — to show their support in a group photo.
By Kathleen Stocking Sun contributor Dear Leelanau, The mournful roosters of Guatemala call out over the waters of Lake Atitlan, “Oh, lost, where are you,” the sound lingering in the foggy dawn. My neighbor’s roosters in Lake Leelanau say, “Cock-a-doodle-doo,” like the roosters in Mother Goose, and the roosters of Thailand scream, “Now, you’ll die, […]
The League of Women Voters Leelanau County (LWVLC) will host the six Leelanau County high school students who participated this summer in the “2013 Freedom Tour” on Wednesday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. at the Leelanau Government Center. The students will be there at 6:30 to meet the audience. Refreshments will be provided.
The Great Lakes Friends (GLF) of Safe Passage will hold its eighth annual fiesta on Saturday, Oct. 19, to help the children and families living and working in the area adjacent to the Guatemala City garbage dump. The fiesta celebrates the commitment of the Great Lakes community to Safe Passage’s educational and nurturing programs, which are helping Guatemalan children find a pathway out of generational cycles of extreme poverty.
On the first leg of his ToTheRockTour across the Upper Midwest and through two Canadian provinces, adventure cyclist Brian Perich arrived in northern Michigan to find the community mourning the death of a local cyclist whose life was taken in a horrific hit-and-run collision in the wee hours of July 5 in Traverse City.