Features

Features Rick Coates

This weekend the largest picnic in Northern Michigan will take place. Northwestern Michigan College will hold its 57th Annual Barbecue, Sunday, May 20, on the main campus “under the pines” from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Just how large is the NMC BBQ? It takes 500 volunteers to coordinate all the activities and to feed the 10,000+ expected to attend.

Features Patrick Sullivan Marijuana advocates turn to grassroots campaign

Part two of a two-part story. Last week, the Express examined the case of Walter Sbresny, a medical marijuana patient who faces felony marijuana charges in Kalkaska County and might not be able to use his medical marijuana card-holder status as a defense at trial. This week’s story looks at the case of Archie Kiel, and the grassroots political efforts of Kiel and Sbresny.

Features Erin Crowell

Troy and Erin Curet are living the American dream. They own a four-bedroom home, have two cars, two children – a boy and a girl – and one chocolate Labrador. Both are employed: Troy, a manager at Red Mesa Grill, and Erin, a stylist at Epiphany Salon. It’s a good life, but they don’t want it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Features Ross Boissoneau

Fiery fretwork will be all the rage in Benzie County this week, with two concerts featuring seven guitarists.

First up is the California Guitar Trio, the acclaimed virtuoso group that encompasses surf rock, classical, new age, folk and progressive rock elements. The CGT will be performing at Crystal Mountain’s Conference Center, Tuesday.

Opening the show will be the Younce Guitar Duo, the father and son duo profiled in the Express Jan. 30.