Leelanau County’s “elephant in the room”, the long-shuttered Sugar Loaf ski resort, is back in the news following a quiet autumn season after the eccentric Las Vegas boxer-turned-businessman Liko Smith returned to the West Coast empty-handed. Resort owner Kate Wickstrom has been courted in recent months by at least two suitors, including David Skjaerlund, from Owosso, near Grand Rapids.
The Michigan Land Use Institute works on bold solutions for Michigan’s people and places. This documentary calls on the people touched by the work the Institute does in the areas of thriving communities, local food & farming, energy & environment. The MLUI is a model for any community striving toward sustainability and a prosperous new economy.
This fall marks the 30th anniversary of what has been called “the most widely watched PBS series in the world.” According to one of the show’s co-writers, almost a billion people worldwide have watched “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” and gained an understanding of humanity’s place in the universe, and the paths taken by early astronomers to achieve that knowledge. For 26 of those years, Norm Wheeler has shown all 13 television episodes of “Cosmos” to his high school science students at The Leelanau School in Glen Arbor.
The long walk down the Dune Climb trail to Lake Michigan has blessed hikers with an added gift this fall. Not just the azure waters at the conclusion of the 2.5-mile hike in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — but a shipwreck.
The windstorm that hit Leelanau County this week was the strongest storm ever to hit the continental United States, rivaling the pressure of tropical storms and surpassing the winds that doomed the famed Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975 in Lake Superior.
By Norm Wheeler Sun editor Some of my relatives west of Shelby, in Oceana County, recently had a yard sale, and my mother, Anna Jean Wheeler, scored an old book there about Michigan that used to belong to my grandfather, Neil Wheeler. Neil grew up on a farm east of Hart. His sister Emma had […]
By F. Josephine Arrowood Sun contributor For over 50 years, the tall-case clock has kept time at the old Dillon cottage on Little Glen Lake, its pendulum quietly tracing the passage of the days. But this was no ordinary heirloom passed down by a proud ancestor. The handmade wooden piece, crafted in the popular Victorian-era […]
Fed’s big bucks, local forums build interest in rail transit, freight By Hannah Clark This story was originally published by the Great Lakes Bulletin News Service, a project of the Michigan Land Use Institute. The automobile drove Michigan’s economy for most of the last century. That singular emphasis on cars, though, left the Auto State […]
By Chloe Gribbin Sun contributor The photos mounted on the walls of the Dickinson photo gallery on M-109 are an obvious attraction to those wandering the streets of Glen Arbor. The prints range from black and white to hand tinted, and offer beautiful scenes around the Glen Arbor and Empire area — both vintage and […]
By Glen Chown Executive Director, Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy In Reflections from Glen Springs, author Jody Marquis takes us on a real-life journey of discovery that starts with the healing of damaged shoreland area on the Glen Lakes, not far from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Through this journey we learn not just about […]