With the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s Port Oneida Fair coming up this weekend, folks might notice that the landmark little white schoolhouse just off the junction of M-22 and Port Oneida Road looks better than it did a few years ago.

By Linda Alice Dewey Sun contributor Renovation and expansion is on the docket for the Glen Arbor Park, home of the township’s only public playground and tennis courts. Some improvements are scheduled to commence in late August, regardless of the results of an August 8 bond election. The rest depends on voters. Glen Arbor park […]

It’s the last in a row of private properties along M-109. To the immediate east lies the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Behind looms Alligator Hill. The Fourth of July had come and gone, and things were relatively quiet; the doors to the house were left open to allow the breeze to pass through. An old retriever lay sound asleep in the front of the house. Near him, a pet bunny was safely caged in another room.

During these busy summer days in the Leelanau fields, Marcelino sometimes feels as though he carries the weight of two migrant farmworkers. He once picked grapes, cherries and apples alongside 12-15 other workers, but this year there are only seven splitting their time between two small farms.

One of the most puzzling marriages in Michigan history, perhaps in American history, has to have been that between Henry Schoolcraft and his Native American wife, Jane. Henry, whose name now graces roads, schools, and counties in Michigan, was an explorer who worked for the United States Department of War. He was the Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie from 1823 to 1833. Jane was the daughter of an aristocratic Irish fur trader, John Johnston, and his wife, Ozhaw-Guscoday-Wayquay, daughter of a powerful Chippewa chief.

Last June 22, before Scott Tucker had finished his first week as the new superintendent at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, a vacationer drowned while snorkeling in Loon Lake near the Platte River. Two weeks later, an 81-year-old man from southeast Michigan perished in Big Glen Lake when his boat drifted away while he was swimming. And on Sept. 5, a 21-year-old died when his kayak capsized near Platte Bay in Lake Michigan waters. Three drowning deaths in or near our National Lakeshore.

In recent weeks, the otherwise inconspicuous stretch of grass on the Glen Lake High School football field has drawn an unusual amount of attention as the school board discusses whether to install artificial turf on the field.

On Wednesday, April 5, at noon at the Leelanau County Government Center the Farm Labor Task Force of the League of Women Voters Leelanau County will highlight the impact current immigration policy has on area agricultural employers and their workforce. The forum is titled “Immigration Challenges in Leelanau: Who Will Harvest Our Produce?”

Bergman says he he will vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Gov. Snyder says tens of thousands of Michigan residents could be at risk of losing health insurance.

Northern Michigan’s newest member of Congress, Rep. Jack Bergman, is showing up all over the 1st District — just not always in person. Progressive-minded citizens have unsuccessfully sought an audience with Bergman to voice their concerns about the Trump presidency, the new White House cabinet, the administration’s Russian connection, executive orders that target Muslims, refugees and Latino immigrants, and a potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Instead they have posted “Where’s Jack?” posters on social media and in physical locations in towns across the district.