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.
His hair. Even as a child, Jonah Powell, who was in my youngest daughter’s class at Leland, had this nimbus of curls that one could see from a long ways away and, of course, admire.
Award-winning essayist Kathleen Stocking will discuss her new memoir, The Long Arc of the Universe — Travels Beyond the Pale, on July 28 at 7 p.m. at the Glen Arbor Art Association, 6031 S. Lake St., Glen Arbor. The summer edition of the GAAA’s “Talk About Art” series brings the Leelanau County writer back to her home turf to discuss the world travels that became this new work of creative nonfiction. “Talk About Art”, now in its eighth year, is a series of free conversational interviews with area artists. No reservations are required.
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.
On Wednesday, July 20, from 10 a.m. to noon, Leonard Thoreson, descendant of Port Oneida’s Thoreson Farm, will speak about his family’s life on the farm. This ROOTStories program of Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear will also include a guided tour of the Thoreson farm, including some of the building interiors which are usually not open for public access. Attendees should meet at the Olsen Farmstead, located at 3164 W. Harbor Hwy (M-22) in Maple City (just three miles north of Glen Arbor). A $5 donation per person will be collected. Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear is also offering horse and wagon tours of Port Oneida on Thursdays at 4:30 and 5:45 p.m. with reservations. PHSB is a non-profit partner of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore preserving and interpreting the historic structures and landscapes. For more information on PHSB and its educational programs visit www.phsb.org.
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.
Meet Chris Touhey and his wife Laura, both 34 and exceptions to Michigan’s “brain drain”. Chris grew up near Glen Arbor (his family lived for a time in a farmhouse near Port Oneida that’s now in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore), left for school in Ann Arbor then spent a decade in sunny southern California. He and Laura moved this past January into a one-bedroom home that he built near the old Dickinson Gallery on south shore of Little Glen Lake. Their daughter Finley was born in February. Touhey, an architect by trade, works for a construction firm that, as luck would have it, is doing a project for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in nearby Peshawbestown.
Singer-songwriter-instrumentalist John Kumjian’s new CD, “Vulnerable,” is particularly poignant in light of his recent health scare. The popular “Mr. K,” as he’s known to hundreds of kids he taught at Glen Lake School, nearly died on the operating table two years ago.
His work is washing windows, but his passion is mushrooms. His dream is to grow them commercially. Cluckey meets me at Art’s Bar on Lake Street in Glen Arbor on a muggy May morning. He’s just come from washing the windows at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church across the street. By reputation and in person, he’s the Glen Arbor version of legendary Johnny Appleseed, a quintessential backwoodsman with good skills, good stories, and palpable integrity, a great window washer and a gifted mushroom finder.