Fresh off the heels of Omena’s mayoral race (this year handily won by nine-year-old, long-haired calico cat named Sweet Tart McKee), Northport will host the 22nd annual Dog Parade on Aug. 11. This march through the village of Northport begins by the Old Mill Pond on 3rd Street and eventually winds its way down to the marina.
Once again, the Port Oneida Rural Historic District awakens from its peaceful slumber and comes alive both Friday and Saturday, August 10-11. Beginning at 10 a.m. each day and running until 4 p.m., visitors are invited to step back in time to actively experience life as it was in this once active community of robust farms of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The fair promotes the preservation of rural traditional skills, crafts, landscapes, and communities of the Upper Great Lakes Region through education and artistic expression.
Local jeweler Pam Meteer Peplinski, who will be showing and selling her work at the Glen Arbor Arts Center in August with the Leelanau Women artists, has just about the deepest Leelanau County roots a non-native can have.
Three years ago, on Aug. 2, 2015, a derecho storm with hurricane-force, straight-line winds pummeled Glen Arbor, destroying forests, knocking out power and changed the landscape for a generation. Then the cleanup, the rebuilding and the landscaping began. For her work on the “Bitter Sweet Lane” property on Glen Lake, local landscaper and gardener extraordinaire Cre Woodard recently won an award from the Michigan Nursery and Landscape Association (MNLA), which honors “those in the green industry that have demonstrated excellence, professionalism and responsible environmental standards.”
Glen Arbor Sun editor, Jacob Wheeler, was seated at the next table at Leelanau Coffee Roasters one sunny Monday recently with his shoes placed by his bare feet; a reminder of another famous Glen Arbor icon, who hardly ever wears shoes, inside or outside—Cherry Republic owner, Bob Sutherland.
Author Larry B. Massie will offer a Michigan history program at the Leland Township Library and Leelanau Historical Society on Wednesday, Aug. 1 at 4 p.m.
When Kasson township was organized in 1865, it was named in honor of Pam Peplinski’s great-great grandfather, and its eldest resident, Kasson Freeman, Jr., who was then 46. Many years later, the annual “Old Settlers Picnic,” held at the beginning of each August in Burdickville at Old Settlers Park, originally commemorated Kasson Freeman’s Aug. 3 birthday, which was coincidentally also the date our first white settlers, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Fisher, landed on Leelanau’s coast in 1854. They decided to celebrate with a picnic, then made it an annual affair.
The Empire Area Heritage Group will hold a program at the Glen Arbor Town Hall on July 31 at 7:30 p.m. about the Sinking of the Dorsey boat The Rescue. Popcorn and water will be available, and donations will support the Empire Area Historical Museum.
Learn about the history of the area through bike, car, horse and wagon tours, and several programs offered by Historic Sleeping Bear, a partner group of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Bike Tours through the Port Oneida Rural Historic District will be offered on Thursday mornings at 9:30 a.m., and Sunday afternoons from 2-4 p.m.
If you were at least 12 years old in 1981, lived in the United States, and were hooked up to major media, you surely heard about it. After a decade’s hiatus, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel agreed to reunite for a free New York City concert to save Central Park, which was in danger of being closed. In an effort to save it, the city put on a series of concerts.