Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore hosted a naturalization ceremony on July 21 for 20 new United States citizens, who hail from 15 different countries. They are white, black and brown; their names and native country religions are Protestant, Catholic and Muslim. Like American immigrants for the last 238 years, they are hardworking, creative and devoted to their new nation.
Air and water temperatures are expected to rise, and lake levels are predicted to decline over time, with longer droughts between heavier rain events. An ecologist explains what scientists believe will happen to our ecosystem in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore area and the single, most important reason behind it all.
Beth Bricker and Cherrie Stege are sisters. They created an art gallery in Glen Arbor. And, their mother may have been a wood elf. What? Ananda Bricker, Cherrie and Beth’s late mother, lived in the woods here, in both the spiritual and literal senses of that verb. It was her natural habitat, and the flowers were her familiars.
When word spread in late March that Jim Harrison, the poet, novelist, master of the novella, memoirist, gourmand, and long-time Leelanau County resident had died at 78 in his casita in Patagonia, Ariz., while writing a new poem, friends and fellow writers responded with instant shock and grief. Jimmy Buffet, Tom McGuane, Phil Caputo, and local luminaries Mario Batali, Doug Stanton, Michael Delp, Jerry Dennis, Pamela Grath, and others soon posted their recollections of the conversational brilliance, the Rabelaisian lust for life, and the prodigious literary output and talent of one of the most unique and gifted humans any of them had ever known. The Glen Arbor Sun published several of these testimonials at that time (see our Memorial Day edition), but one notable great friend to Harrison whom we missed was the writer, rancher and local Glen Arbor character Peter Phinny.
Dennis Taghon laughs a lot. There’s a reason for that. A tragic event in his life altered his perception of what’s important and how to look at life.
Since the Lanphier Observatory was built 40 years ago during the bicentennial year of 1976, visitors to the Glen Lake area and the Leelanau School have oohed and aahed at the wonders of the universe they can see through a 14-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegranian telescope.
Bay Wear celebrates three generations and 25 years By Sue Mabee Jameson Sun contributor The rule was that your chin had to reach above the counter before you could start working. When I was a child, my dad and his brother, Richard, had 13 “Jumpin Jeans” stores north of Detroit. In 1975, when I was […]
When the conversation turns to how the arts are represented in a community, one might point to a museum within the city’s limits; or to a restored movie theater where art house films are screened alongside blockbusters. Those are outward, bricks-and-mortar symbols of a community’s cultural life. But what, then, are the less visible characteristics of a community in which the arts are an integral part?
Ella Skrocki of Empire loves North Bar Lake, not only for its beauty and wildlife but for its dark history. Ella’s grandmother, Faith Lewis, once lived on Lake Michigan near the North Bar Lake channel. She would talk about the “land pirate” who used to live there. Skrocki’s mother, Beryl, passed the tale on to her children. Ella says that knowing this makes it even more fun to paddle and swim there. That may be true for you, too, once you know what happened.
In 2016 there are 14 art galleries in Glen Arbor and Empire, as well as innumerable creative people practicing their craft in the privacy of a home studio. It was not always this way. The locality’s first art gallery was established in 1985, and up until that point, the Glen Arbor/Empire art scene might have been more accurately characterized as an art vignette. But with the arrival of Glen Lake Artists Gallery (GLA Gallery), the foundation was laid for today’s perception of the Greater Glen Lake Area as a place that attracts art and craft makers.