News

Features Patrick Sullivan Walter Sbresny is waiting to learn whether he can use a medical marijuana defense at trial.

Part one of a two-part story. Next week, the Express will look at the case of Archie Kiel, who is appealing a 2010 marijuana conviction, and the efforts of Kiel and Sbresny to make Kalkaska County more hospitable for medical marijuana patients through a grassroots political effort.

Features Erin Crowell Suttons Bay mother donates kidney to two-year-old son

Lori Matthews had heard it once before: the unmistakable sound of a mother who had just lost her baby.

“I’ve heard the wailing sound one time and knew immediately what it was. I knew because that sound was now coming out of me,” recalled Matthews, the day her six-month-old son became limp in her arms.

Letters

Give Gitmo back

In last week’s issue Mr. Tuttle called for ending our fruitless blockade of Cuba. This is laudable and sensible.

The blockade has been an abject failure. Fidel Castro has outlasted now nine presidents. More importantly, had our blockade been ended decades ago, communism in Cuba would have been long gone and Cuba would now be a major trading partner and American vacation destination.

It was disappointing, however, that an editorial calling for an end to the blockade didn’t have a word about “Gitmo.” You know, the prison nickname for our Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...

Features Patrick Sullivan How a cigarette butt led police to a group of burglars suspected of selling weapons to Detroit gang. The first person to notice something awry was neighbor Philip Halbritter, who suspected trouble the day before a burglary even took place.

Features Erin Crowell Dean Karnazes has a lot of numbers in his life.  In 2006, he ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days (that’s 26.2 miles per run). In 2011, he ran from California to New York City, or approximately 3,000 miles, averaging 40 to 50 miles per day.

Features Patrick Sullivan

The last time Ernest Hemingway came to Northern Michigan, as far as anyone knows, was in 1947, when he visited a friend in Petoskey and checked on his cottage on Walloon Lake, on his way from Florida to Idaho.

That visit was commemorated in a small news item in the Sept. 27 edition of the Petoskey Evening News, which was reprinted in Michael Federspiel’s book, Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan.

Letters

Jesters insulted

As a peace-loving jester, I am insulted by Stephen Tuttle, who wrote, “Jesters have taken over the court.” For in the past, the jester was the only one who wouldn’t die if insulting the King about stupid wars, payoffs, corrupt policies, and poor leadership.

Today it is money that buys everyone off, even the courts, for judges and lawyers (our last resort) are needy too, and pass the buck to get in on being an elitist or rich. The rich now run everything and peasants can only dream of being an elitist/rich...

Features Erin Crowell David Milarch, the subject of a new book, uses intuition and science in an attempt to save the planet: “Did you know that 98% of our old growth forest is gone?” he asks, a rhetorical question that seems to hang in the air with the puff of cigarette smoke. As we talk in the the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive (AATA) office—a small building located in the village of Copemish—new age music streams from the office speakers.

Letters

No medical marijuana?

When I read Patrick Sullivan’s April 9th article about Lori Montroy, I was shocked to learn that a new landlord was trying to evict this woman for the second time in two years for using medical marijuana to cope with her brain cancer.

Hasn’t she been through enough in the past two years? When I called Steven Wright, Lori’s new landlord on the phone to ask him why he would allow an oxycontin addict or an alcoholic to live in his apartments but not a medical marijuana patient, he said, “Oxycontin and alcohol aren’t against federal law. I promise my tenants a drug free, family environment...

Features Ross Boisonneau “There’s so much to the food industry,” said Brown. “The next weekend (after that fateful family meeting), we went to the farm market at Building 50. The weekend after that the Department of Agriculture showed up. We had no idea you needed to be (licensed).

Features Kristi Kurjan

As the weather warms, add a burst of personality to your closet with brilliant prints, vivid jeans, and bold color-blocked dresses.

Here are just a few ways to have fun with this season’s most wearable fashions:

Bring a burst of energy to a wardrobe with solid staples. It’s called Color-Blocking and is one of the season’s hottest trends. It is loud, bold, intense, and screams spring fashion. Color-blocking consists of mixing solid color combinations, wearing more than one color at once...

Features Patrick Sullivan

A cancer patient whose eviction from her federally subsidized apartment around Christmas of 2009 was halted amid an outcry faces homelessness again.

Lori Montroy, 52, said she has been in a panic since she got an eviction notice last month at the apartment where she has lived since 2008.

Letters

Andrew remembered

Steve, I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of your dear son Andrew. You are right. I would have liked Andrew a lot. A young man who succeeded at the things that truly matter is a loss that shakes the world and is especially devastating to those closest to him.

It sounds like Andrew knew the secret to living life to the fullest. It is found in service to others. May time heal your heart and may Andrew’s memory inspire others to live a life of service. May God Bless You and Keep You.

Linda Krull • Maple City

Features Patrick Sullivan A couple of years ago, the economy looked grim and prospects for the annual boat show in TC looked dead in the water. Who was going to buy a new boat in the middle of an economic meltdown?

'It was ’09 when, at least from our perspective, the industry hit bottom," said Andrew MacDonald, whose company Blue Water Promotions has run the Traverse City Boat Show for seven years. "It was very tough, it was almost panic, and we haven’t seen anything close to that since."

Features Rick Coates When a group of middle school students in Vancouver took tin lids from their lunchroom and started tossing them at trees on the playground, they had no idea they were starting a new sport that would become known as disc golf. Those kids eventually built what they dubbed a “tin lid golf course,” on their school grounds and played most days.