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Leelanau locals plant seeds, grow cultural exchanges in Guatemala

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Twenty years ago, when Paul Sutherland joined the board of Safe Passage, which launched a school for the children of the Guatemala City garbage dump, he also helped kickstart what has become a dynamic and ongoing relationship between Leelanau County citizens and Guatemala. In the decades since then, local schools have sent students, and teams of volunteers have joined cultural exchange trips to the beautiful, yet economically unequal, Central American nation. Since the COVID-19 pandemic abated, Guatemalan nonprofit Planting Seeds has hosted “service learning” groups from Northwestern Michigan College as well as Leelanau Investing for Teens (LIFT) and Leland High School. Planting Seeds co-director and Illinois native Mac Philips will visit Leelanau County this weekend to raise awareness about the nonprofit and build support in northern Michigan. He’ll visit Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate on Saturday, Suttons Bay Congregational Church on Sunday, and students in Suttons Bay and Leland.

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How Leelanau locals equipped Guatemalan first responders

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There is no real government support for Guatemala’s first responders. When they’re not on a fire or ambulance call, they are out in the streets getting donations in coffee cans from passing drivers to fund their meager salaries and minimal equipment. Most of them have to fight fires in jeans and t-shirts. Serious injuries are endemic to their work. When Guatemalan Fredy Maldonado showed Burdickville’s Mike Binsfeld the situation, Binsfeld stepped up the Buckets of Rain commitment to include money for fixing fire station roofs and ambulances, and to provide medicine for the community. Through his efforts and those of Leelanau County resident Kathy Fordyce and her outreach to local firefighters at the Cedar Fire Dept., desperately needed gear is now making its way to Guatemala.

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Burdickville Boys celebrate John Prine with ode “Six Feet Away”

Here in Burdickville on Glen Lake, Mike Binsfeld was crushed by the news of John Prine’s death one year ago today. Both of Binsfeld’s daughters had just recovered from COVID, Nancy in Colorado and Molly in California, and Mike and his wife Mindy were just emerging from the trauma of not being able to travel to their sick children because of the lockdown and not knowing just why they were sick nor how dangerous the disease could be. Mike woke up the next day with a song sliding around in his head, and so now we have his moving ode to John Prine called “Six Feet Away.”

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The Characters of Burdickville, take 2

The future of Burdickville is now. The engagement of Max Miller to Heather LaBerge is another indicator that the next generation of Burdickville-ians is poised to take over from their parents. Max’s mother Pat Miller lives in the house she built in 1988 on MacFarlane Road opposite the foot of Bow Road inside the corner that used to be an apple orchard, but she has been coming here since 1954. Along with sisters Nancy and Jan and brother Don, Pat now owns and operates the Miller Cabins that their parents bought in 1961. So all of the Millers virtually grew up in Burdickville.

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