Letter to the Editor This July Fourth we celebrated the variety of opportunities that make us unique as a country, and feel it is important to remember the responsibilities that come with those opportunities. The law allows us to celebrate with our own personal fireworks, and that has resulted in both some beautiful displays and […]
The Arbor Gallery, formerly called Old School Gallery and relocated next to the Sylvan Inn on M-109, will hold an artist reception on Friday, July 10, from 4-6 p.m. The Arbor Gallery features the work of Paul Czamanske (Underbark Furniture), Lynn Uhlmann, David Westerfield and Angela Schuler. For more information call 231-633-2057.
The Glen Lake Woman’s Club holds its 44th annual Glen Arbor Art Fair on Wednesday, July 15, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Glen Arbor Town Hall. This event hosts 100 artists carefully chosen to represent most areas of the art world. Applications can be obtained by emailing glwcartfair@gmail.com.
Riverside Shakespeare performs “Measure for Measure” on July 15 at 7 p.m. at Studio Stage in Glen Arbor. Studio Stage is located behind Lake Street Studios. There is no charge, but donations are welcome.
In the realm of really-hard-acts-to-follow resides the 1960 classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Author Harper Lee wrote a singular novel — singular from the standpoints of quality and quantity. All that changes July 13-14 at midnight when Lee’s next novel, Go Set A Watchman, is released by publisher HarperCollins. The arrival of Go Set A Watchman is reason for celebration, according to one Glen Arbor reader.
For years, the tennis courts at the Leelanau School, the private boarding school north of Glen Arbor, sat unused, succumbing to cracks and weeds. High schools stars such as Brian Munroe, Jason Petty and internationally ranked Danish exchange student Dan Valbak once swung their rackets here, and the school routinely competed in the high school state championship. But last decade the Leelanau School all but eliminated its sports program.
Grand Rapids artist Holly Sturges takes viewers on a tour of her secret painting places in “Shhh! Don’t Tell,” new plein air landscapes on view from July 10-16 at Center Gallery, 6023 S. Lake St., in Glen Arbor. A reception to open the exhibition is from 6-8 p.m.
The area in Northern Michigan which is now the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was first inhabited by Native Americans, who lived in small settlements around rivers and lakes. But the village known today as Glen Haven was not a major site of Indian settlement. It didn’t even attract much attention from European settlers until 1857, nearly a decade after the Leelanau mainland had begun to be inhabited. By that time, the opening of the Erie Canal had greatly increased steamship traffic on the Great Lakes, with vessels carrying freight and passengers from Buffalo to Chicago. The need for wooding stations to fuel the ships that passed through the shipping lane reached an all time high, and in 1857, C.C. McCarty, the brother-in-law of Glen Arbor pioneer John E. Fisher, recognized the potential of the Sleeping Bear Bay area to become a major refueling station and a thriving settlement.
It’s common knowledge that the public can walk along the Lake Michigan shoreline. You can walk it anywhere on public property. That means public road ends, or the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The question is: how far from the water’s edge can a person legally walk along private property? This is an important issue, since about 70 percent of Michigan’s “third coast” is privately owned. The answer is unclear, because neither courts in Michigan nor in other Great Lakes states have offered a clear and consistent answer.
The perennially popular Northport Community Band, conducted by Don Wilcox, will perform patriotic favorites on Friday, July 3 at 7 p.m. on the Old Schoolhouse lawn in Glen Arbor. The concert kicks off this year’s Manitou Music Festival.