Local storyteller Tom Van Zoeren posted this video about the story, and the muse, behind the new stone bench at Inspiration Point, which overlooks the Glen Lakes. The first half of the 25-minute amateur video shows Empire stone mason Mark Finstad making the bench out of split stone. The second half shows people enjoying the bench in various ways.
James Filkins makes moody, optimistic music that sounds like the natural outpouring of a real guy who has played long enough to have a sound and understand what he’s trying to say with his instrument. Listening to his finger-style guitar tunes, one imagines a languid outdoor scene, enough time to just hang out for a while — days and weeks, even — and the kind of weather that makes everything seem just fine.
Check out this great video from Detroit Public Television’s traveling “Under the Radar” series. You can stream the owners of Cherry Republic and Art’s Tavern, the Deputy Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and Glen Arbor artists Becky Thatcher and Beth Bricker into your homes, thus satisfying your wanderlust.
Ayaka Ogawa has no idea why she went to her grandmother’s house that day. Her mother was there, maybe that’s why. Usually after school she went home to the house where she lived with her parents, her older sister, and her other grandparents. This was in the small town of Hakozaki-cho, a village of 300 with bus service only three times a day. It is near Kamaiishi City, in the Iwate Prefecture, in the state of Tohoku, Japan.
With a face as weathered as one of the boulders from his fields, and a blunt demeanor to match, Glen Noonan presents a formidable figure in the complex social and geographical landscapes of Leelanau County. This farmer, businessman, political fixture and quiet benefactor to many has plowed his fields, herded cattle, shaken cherries and picked apples, mined gravel, raised seven children with his late wife Ella, been the backbone of some key local government boards, and helped shape virtually every realm of life for the region’s residents for over six decades.
I first laid eyes on you over a decade ago. My wife, Susi, and I rented a house on a little beach for a week. The next year it was two weeks, the next year three, then four. I couldn’t resist. I was hooked.
Katy and Matt Wiesen, owners of Crystal River Outfitters, the Cyclery and the M-22 Store in Glen Arbor were named among the region’s 40 most influential people under age 40. The honorees were treated to an exclusive fete hosted by Northwestern Michigan College inside its Dennos Museum Center, as reported this morning by the Ticker.
Being a waitress is like being a duck. That’s right, a duck. You may look like you are gliding along a placid pond, but underneath the surface you are paddling frantically. No matter how fast the food may fly out of the kitchen you must be there to calmly escort it to the table with a carefree smile. This is not to say that waitressing is a horribly hard job only for the fearless. No, during my time at work I have met some of the most amazing people just by taking their orders. You get to know a person intimately and quickly by what they choose to order. You can tell a person’s temperament by how impatient they seem for their food. You can judge character by the way that they treat the waitress, me.
Meeting Taro Yamasaki for the first time, one would never guess that this soft-spoken, bespectacled man with a bit of gray in his beard wasn’t a typical Up North transplant with his slice of heaven amongst Leelanau’s trees, beaches and lake scenes. Then he begins to talk about his life’s work as a photojournalist, whose strong, often beautiful pictures paradoxically convey searing images that indict those who not only perpetrate violence upon their fellow beings, but also those of us who stand by, silent or indifferent or ignorant.
Each summer, while traveling through Michigan’s lake country, I notice a wide and depressing variety of roadkill, evidence of creatures not equipped for encounters with large, speedy machinery and an ever-increasing dissection of pavement across former habitat. I usually also encounter some few fortunate creatures like turtles, which have somehow avoided being struck or smashed — yet who are trapped in the roadway, trying to negotiate their ponderous way across alien terrain.