Sarah Landry Ryder has come a long way from the 25-year-old restaurant owner and waitress she used to be. Her company The Redheads, which she and her sisters started in 2004, has taken off as another Leelanau business looking to make delicious food with local sustainable ingredients.
On Aug. 1 chef Adam McMarlin, most recently the owner and creator of Wren the Butcher in the Marketplace Center on East State Street in downtown Traverse City, took over the reins of 9 Bean Rows restaurant from Nic and Jen Welty, owners of the 9 Bean Rows Farm CSA and Bakery on M204.
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.”
Mark Ringlever is a man of many interests and skills. He is a boat captain, a fly fisherman and he can do many things with wood. His carpentry and woodwork can be seen in private homes in Leelanau and Grand Traverse County. Recently I caught up with him in his studio at Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor. On the wall were some large drawings of fish. They, he explained, were sketches for a 12-foot-high totem pole he made for a Leelanau County residence. On another wall were prints of fish. He made these when he studied Japanese wood block printing, Moku hanga, at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. Around the studio were piles of wood in intriguing shapes and colors.
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.
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.
As soon as Sarah Dilley and Suzie Viswat are asked what makes up north living so special, they share an almost childlike smile and simultaneously respond, “Lake Michigan.” Thinking that the iconic stone hadn’t really been used commercially all that much, the women began working together, writing down phrases and words that would eventually become their logo for a Petoskey stone inspired retail endeavor: Sleeping Bear Rocks.
Leelanau native Emma Cook, now a fulltime musician who live in Burlington, Vermont, will perform with her band, Questionable Company, at the Manitou Music Festival on Wednesday, Aug. 1 at 8 p.m. The show will be behind the Lake Street Studios in downtown Glen Arbor. The Manitou Music Festival is part of the Glen Arbor Arts Center. Visit glenarborart.org for details. Here’s our interview with Emma.
The Cottage Book Shop and the Glen Lake Community Library will host local author Anne-Marie Oomen on Wednesday, Aug. 1, at 7 p.m. Oomen will present her latest book The Lake Michigan Mermaid, a beautiful “tale in poems” co-authored by Linda Nemec Foster.