News

Features Rick Coates This past year Bob Seger announced in so many words that it is time for him to hang it up and pass the touring torch on to fellow Michiganders Kid Rock and Eminem. Speculation was that this past spring would be Seger’s last tour.

We have heard before of “The Farewell Tour.” In fact some musicians have had more than one ‘we-are-alldone-touring’ tours. But more often than not, these tours turn out to be marketing ploys.

Features Erin Crowell

“It was a mad scramble,” Skiba said. “Chris ran to the tent and got the rifle. Me and the other cameraman, Jason, sprinted for the cameras and Casey kept calling the moose until he was just a hundred yards away.”

It was day 18 in the Alaskan wilderness and Trent Skiba was hungry. With only small rations of trail mix, granola bars and wild blueberries to tide over the Gaylord native and his group, all four men sat at their campsite—the second day since finishing the caribou, shot weeks before—and waited in the rain for hours, breaking sticks...

Letters

Science & vaccines

I am writing this in response to Heidi Kistler’s letter “Chose not to vaccinate.” While I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Kistler’s views on freedom of choice and the importance of personal research, her logic train derails before it even has a chance to leave the station.

What she calls “fear-based rhetoric” is actually science-based medicine and it is responsible for the high quality of life we enjoy in modern western civilization. The number of ways modern medicine has benefited humanity is rivaled only by the number of logical fallacies in her argument...

Features Al Parker Driving west and north out of Mancelona, it’s not too long before you’re surrounded by a lush green forest where you find the gurgling waters of the under-rated Cedar River.

Features Patrick Sullivan As far as the police and the courts and the prosecutors are concerned, from now on, the case never happened. Go to the courthouse and ask to see the case file. They won’t give it to you. They won’t even acknowledge the file ever existed. The case, by order of a judge, has been erased from history.

Letters

Different strokes...

I read Teresa Baker’s letter to the editor regarding your “My Style” column (Letters, 9/12). I applaud the editor’s comments about fashion creating millions of jobs and how it colors our world. I have a few comments to add.

Teresa, I’m sorry that you have such a problem with what some people will pay for an outfit. I have to say that I can only agree with you if we knew that these people were walking around in $400+ outfits while their children were unfed and their bills unpaid. But, for the sake of your comments and mine we don’t know that. Just like any reality TV show the “My Style” column is a voyeuristic look into other people’s lives and was created solely for entertainment purposes. If you weren’t so entertained you wouldn’t look at it every week.

I have a couple of questions for you...

Features Erin Crowell Eighteen years later, the Remembrance Run returns to Timber Ridge Resort in Traverse City, on Saturday, Oct. 1, where participants will have the opportunity to raise both awareness and funds to help women fight breast cancer, along with other forms of cancer.

Features Patrick Sullivan “It’s destroyed my life, I mean, I was the major breadwinner in the family and I’m not now,” said Whitfield, the former IT director for the school district. “But just imagine how bad I would feel if something really bad was going on and I didn’t raise it.

Letters

Call of the Wind

One sunlit and breezy summer day I had the pleasure of experiencing first-hand the beauty of what a wind farm could be.

Just off 115, south of Cadillac across rolling farmland not so unlike our own Benzie County, windmills stand in exquisite harmony with their surroundings. As I watched those marvels hard at their work it became clearer than ever; these are not things to fear or dread, for as in many manmade creations there is a gentle and artistic grace to them...

Features Adam Fivenson When Rory Block performed at the Bay Theater in Suttons Bay 20 years ago, she probably never dreamed she’d be back two decades later to headline at a local venue which was still in its infancy at the time.

Features Patrick Sullivan The story of how the body of the Traverse City teenager was found in a sand pit on the eve of her 17th birthday was splashed over newspapers across the state, broadcast on television and radio throughout Michigan, and spawned at least four Facebook groups with over 10,000 members.

Features Rick Coates “Considering we host more than 1,000 events a year, most people might not even realize we are having a special celebration going on,” said Amy Reynolds, who coowns the store with her husband, Vic Herman. “The balloons might tip them off and we will have more events going on than we typically do in a given day.

Hot Dates Erin Crowell The Osmond family has spent more than 50 years entertaining audiences across the globe. The Osmond Brothers, a.k.a. Wayne, Merrill, Jay and Jimmy, continue the family tradition of performing pop, rock & roll, country and gospel. They will make an appearance at the Performing Arts Center on the Kirtland Community College main campus, in Roscommon, on Sept. 17.

Letters

The legacy of 9/11

9/11/2001 was a crime, not an act of war. Four women from New Jersey, whose spouses had been killed in the Twin Towers, forced an investigation. Those in power fought the concept, and then stacked the Commission on 9/11 so that the toughest questions would not be asked...

Other Opinions Steven Tuttle There will be much introspection and reflection over the next few days.
We’ll see the horrifying videos of commercial airliners being flown into
the World Trade Towers. We will once again wonder why no one was able to
“connect the dots” and take preventative action. There will be memorial
services and candlelight vigils.
We’ll collectively wonder if we’ve learned anything at all. But as bad as
9/11 was, it’s the decisions we’ve made since that should concern us.
We knew almost immediately a group calling itself al Qaida was responsible
and that the Taliban, then returning Afghanistan to the 16th century they
so love, had aided and abetted them.