Sleeping Bear Dunes and other federal employees opened their work emails last week to find threatening form letters from our own government. From a new regime hell-bent on shrinking and neutering our United States government and the crucial services it provides to our citizens and people around the world. Addressed to nearly every public servant, the generic letters question their worth, belittle their service, and encourage all to resign. A simple one word reply to the email is all that’s needed to end a lifetime of service. It is wrong to treat people as replaceable and unwanted tools, but that is the clear sentiment behind the current flurry of messages. Seasonal worker programs like the one that shaped my life are at stake. The federal workforce deserves to know they are appreciated and assured that their work is important.  

“Why do some relocators and seasonal property owners insist on bringing trappings from whence they came to Leelanau County? Whatever happened to appreciative adaptation rather than recreating an incongruous image from elsewhere?” asks writer Tim Mulherin. “Recently, our ever-welcoming Cedar neighbors who lived across the street moved away. Well, the new residents are clearly not from around these parts. Their front yard features a prominently displayed burglars-beware alarm system sign. At night, the property is lit up like a military installation, with floodlighting penetrating surrounding yards—including ours. Perhaps, like my daughter-in-law from Indy, they’re scared of the non-light-polluted dark nights we enjoy here. Maybe the family fears a potential home invasion. Yet the only mammalian predators typically in the vicinity are coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and the occasional black bear—and none of them are looking for trouble with humans.”

The Trump administration, which takes power on Jan. 20, has threatened to deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States. Some of them have lived in our communities for decades and form the backbone of our workforce. Here in northern Michigan, they are integral to our farms and food production. To stand with them, the Glen Arbor Sun is publishing part of the handbook, “Preparing Your Family for Immigration Enforcement,” which was compiled by the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC) and reprinted in our Jan. 16 print edition, with MIRC’s permission, both in English y en Español.

The Bay Area Transportation Authority (BATA) is a public service. It is funded by our tax dollars. It is an essential service, and recognized as such, and that is the reason we have it. It provides transportation to those of us who otherwise would not have it. It allows us to survive. It gets us to the grocery store, the library, and the doctor’s office. Let’s take a minute, stop and think, and ask ourselves this question: would we want our elderly mother, our pregnant friend, our frail and possibly demented grandfather, or our twelve-year-old child, waiting at a bus stop in a storm, and with no shelter? Shelters are basic, like seatbelts.

Kick off the holiday season in Glen Arbor this Thanksgiving weekend with a warm welcome to the annual Holiday Artisan Market, plus two of Glen Arbor’s favorite quirky traditions, the “PJ Party” and the “Bed Parade,” for a weekend full of local creativity, community, and holiday cheer.

The Leelanau Conservancy has unveiled its new logo, which offers a peek through trees and toward a grassy hill with sand dunes, open Lake Michigan, and an island or peninsula in the background. The new logo retains its oval—a nod to the shape of the old logo, which served the Conservancy for 36 years. The old logo featured a ship sailing by sand dune cliffs. “The new refreshed logo feels familiar for our audiences, keeping an alignment with the current logo, but removing elements that do not represent our services,” the Conservancy stated in a press release. “The refresh also captures the scenic character of Leelanau—the ‘peek’ through the trees makes you feel like you are here, in Leelanau.”

In October, the local organization Mideast: JustPeace held a community gathering to talk frankly about the dilemma those of us who care about Palestine and the Middle East face: cast a protest vote, or vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, knowing that things are likely to be worse under Donald Trump. Or at least equally bad. So in this presidential election year, what are we to do? Our choices are poor as far as American policy toward Israel is concerned.

“I am an ordained Presbyterian minister whose Christian denomination has a long commitment to ending the occupation of Palestine. And yet, for most of my life, I never realized the role my fellow Christians have played in the creation of this apartheid state,” writes Rev. Lucy Waechter Webb, a Leelanau citizen who traveled to Washington, D.C., in August together with the Interfaith Action for Palestine Coalition to pray and organize alongside Jewish neighbors on Capitol Hill and protest the Christian United for Israel, which boasts 10 million members and is by far the largest Zionist organization in the United States.

Longtime Leelanau Enterprise reporter Eric Carlson delivered the following address at Old Settlers Park on July 4 as part of the Glen Lake Woman’s Club annual Flag Raising ceremony. Carlson spoke about his career in journalism, both locally and in conflict zones, about the importance (and sometimes inconvenience) of a free press, about civil liberties, and this fraught political moment in American history.

This op-ed by Doug Verellen, former vice president of the Little Traverse Lake Association, addresses previous op-eds published in the Sun last month that express support for the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail’s northeast extension along Little Traverse Lake. The National Park System was founded based on this purpose: “To conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” It’s on the back of their business card. This Heritage Trail Segment 9 initiative is the opposite of that directive, opines Verellen.