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Northern Michigan national parks prepare for summer visitors amid staffing, morale concerns
Investigative Article, NewsWith a new tourism season upon northern Michigan, uncertainty remains about how national parks will handle millions of visitors amid lingering staffing questions because of back-and-forth federal workforce policies. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has approximately two-thirds of the seasonal staff it typically needs to welcome more than 1.5 million visitors over the next three busy months. “They’re still trying to get anybody else to accept a job, but it looks like there won’t be many more coming,” said former Sleeping Bear deputy superintendent Tom Ulrich. He added that the true impacts aren’t being felt yet because the park isn’t yet getting 400,000 visitors per month as they do in peak-season.
Descendents of Black pioneers return to Leelanau for film screening
Historical Feature, Upcoming Event“The Search for Anna and Levi: A Lost History of Black Homesteaders in Leelanau County” will show at Leland School on May 31—not at the hamstrung Sleeping Bear Dunes headquarters, as originally scheduled. The Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay initially screened the film in February. Northern Michigan has begun to feel like a second home for Philadelphia resident Carmen Hopson. Ever since she received a life-changing Facebook message in September 2022 from Kevin Brooks, an amateur genealogist based in Grand Rapids, who shared photos to show that their ancestors—hers Black, his White—were neighboring farm owners and pioneering homesteaders more than 100 years ago along Little Glen Lake. “It feels like we’re coming home. This is a place where we will be welcomed home,” said Hopson. The National Lakeshore decided that it could no longer host the screening following the Trump administration’s March 27 executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” that cast this nation’s collective reexamination of historical racism as a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
In Memory, a wall of lights in Empire
Upcoming EventThis winter, in far away Guatemala City’s Central Parque, hundreds of people stood in silent awe as the street lighting went dark and thousands of votives lit the park in honor of the Guatemalan Day of Affection. Inspired by this beautiful moment, Empire township residents Anne-Marie Oomen and Mimi Wheeler thought to adapt the experience here in Michigan for an Evening of Memory during Memorial weekend. On Saturday night, May 24, at 8:30 pm (just before dark) people are invited to write a memorial message to a veteran, loved one, or friend who has passed, and to light a votive in their honor which will then be placed on the Empire Beach Wall at the lighthouse end of the beach.
Northport photo exhibit opens May 23 at Village Arts Building
Upcoming EventThe Northport Arts Association is proud to present the 2025 Northport Photo Exhibit, launching Memorial Day weekend with a public Opening Reception on Friday, May 23 from 5–8 pm at the Village Arts Building. This popular annual exhibit, now in its eighth year, continues to grow in both artistic reach and visual diversity. The Opening Reception is free and open to the public, featuring complimentary appetizers and a cash bar. The exhibit will run from May 24 through June 8, with gallery hours Tuesday through Sunday, 12–4 pm.
Glen Lake Library welcomes author Bonnie Jo Campbell
Upcoming EventThe Glen Lake Community Library in Empire will celebrate and host Michigan Notable Book Award winner and national best-selling author Bonnie Jo Campbell on Saturday, May 24 from 2-3 pm. Campbell will read from, discuss, and sign copies of her highly acclaimed 2024 novel, The Waters. Fellow Notable Author and Empire resident Anne-Marie Oomen will lead the discussion. Books sales are courtesy of Glen Arbor’s Cottage Book Shop.
Marking Anishinaabe trails
Historical Feature, NewsThe Leelanau County and Grand Traverse communities, led by members of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, gathered on May 15 at Clinch Park in Traverse City to celebrate the Anishinaabe Cultural Marker Project. Seven markers celebrating spots along “Old Indian Trails” have already been installed in Suttons Bay near the library, in Leland near the museum, at Northport’s Peterson Park, at Omena beach park, at Hannah Park and Clinch Park in Traverse City, and at the Brown Bridge canoe launch in Grand Traverse County. Two more, in Northport’s marina park and West End Beach in Traverse City, will soon receive their installations, bringing the total to nine.
Glen Arbor Cemetery holds sixth annual Memorial Ceremony
Upcoming EventThis year’s Memorial Day weekend ceremony at the Glen Arbor Cemetery will begin at 10 am on Friday, May 23, and will feature a eulogy of veteran Ruell Welch, one of the four Civil War veterans buried at the cemetery. Poetry by Anne-Marie Oomen will be read, taps will be played by Norm Wheeler, and the Glen Lake School eighth graders will claim the names of those buried at the cemetery whom they each have studied.
Preserve holds Thoreson Farm plein air event for Port Oneida Fair poster
Upcoming EventPreserve Historic Sleeping Bear invites artists to the Thoreson Farm in Port Oneida, for a Plein Air Event on Saturday, May 24, from 9 am to 4 pm. The event is to encourage artists to paint and submit artwork of the farm to be considered for the 2025 Port Oneida Fair poster.
Touring Burdickville’s art studios
Local Personality, Upcoming EventArt is often encountered in curated stillness—hushed in museums, framed behind velvet ropes, and stripped from the context of its making. But what happens when we encounter art at its source, in the textured, paint-splattered, light-filled rooms where imagination finds form? That spirit of transparency, invitation, and intimacy echoes here in Leelanau County in the quiet corner of Burdickville. Along Bow, Lanham, and Fritz Roads, a small but vibrant community of artists has embarked on something extraordinary: opening the doors of their studios to the public. They have come together under the banner of the Burdickville Studio Tour—11 artists inviting visitors into the heart of their creative process over Memorial Day weekend.
Celebrating songs of Leelanau: Jeff Maharry’s “Good Harbor Bay”
Local PersonalityOur story series celebrating songs inspired by Leelanau County and the Sleeping Bear Dunes continues with Illinois resident and summer visitor Jeff Maharry’s homage to Good Harbor Bay. “For years my family has come to Leelanau County in early August and have explored just about every point where you can access Lake Michigan,” said Maharry, a singer songwriter and musician from Homewood, Illinois, near Chicago. He performs solo as well as with his band Falling Stars. “There are amazing spots across the whole peninsula, but there’s something just perfect about Good Harbor Bay so we find ourselves going back there again and again. I wrote this song in the summer of 2010 after we spent a simply wonderful day on the beach, and I can hear the waves and feel the sun on my face every time I sing it.”