Features

Features Rick Coates It was two years ago this week that Liz (Larios) Horn’s life was turned upside down. What seemed like a scene out of a movie became a reality as U.S. Immigration and Enforcement agents arrived in black suits and vehicles to the home Horn shared with her boyfriend Russell Horn.

Features Robert Downes

Fresh from the recording studio with a brand-new hollow-body Gretsch guitar strapped to her back, couldn’t be happier with the way things are going with her music.

She’s been working on her first CD since July and is currently enjoying the kind of wordof-mouth buzz that is bringing her and a new generation of singer-songwriters to the forefront of the music scene in Northern Michigan.

Features Erin Crowell Like (and unlike) many people my age, I don’t have children. I have a dog. And even though Charley, my four-year-old border collie/lab mix, doesn’t serve to supplement my lack of offspring, she does, however, take the form of a quasi child.

Both require discipline, time, love and poop duty.

Features Patrick Sullivan Tina Marie Stoll faces charges of armed robbery, her fate literally hanging by a hair. She left for Tennessee days after the robbery, but was brought back to Michigan once lab tests confirmed a hair found at the crime scene matched her mitochondrial DNA profile.

Features Patrick Sullivan The race for the Michigan’s 1st Congressional seat is one of the hardest fought in the nation this election cycle, and the result is that Michigan residents from Marquette to Manistee have been besieged with television advertisements from each of them and political organizations working on their behalf.

Features Northern Express Community

If you've ever tried crossing Division Street as a pedestrian, or have endured its half-mile-long traffic jams during rush hour, you know that this is a highway in need of re-invention.

TC Proposition 1 offers a solution 'down the road,' but would involve giving up a strip of parkland along Division. The proposal has aroused passions both for and against. Following are the thoughts of four noteworthy citizens:

Features Patrick Sullivan

It appeared at first to be a crime that made no sense at all. A man was attacked on the side of a rural road in East Bay Township southeast of Traverse City Aug. 12, stabbed over 20 times and left to stagger to a nearby house to call for help.

Features Erin Crowell

For awhile, all I hear is the rustling of dry corn stalks in the wind. Then, I hear the laughter of a child somewhere toward the west. I can’t see anyone, but I know they are wandering like me through this maze of maize.

Features Robert Downes Her 2006 book, “Infidel,” detailed her childhood in the self-destructing nation of Somalia and her subsequent flight to the Netherlands at the age of 21 to escape an arranged marriage to an older man she despised.

Features Patrick Sullivan A 2,000-square-foot home in a subdivision outside of Traverse City and full-time jobs at nonprofit organizations didn’t add up to a satisfying life for Rolf and Mari von Walthausen.

Features Erin Crowell In a rotted-out building in Suttons Bay, Jeff Bryant sifts through a pile of rusted desks, abandoned cabinets, broken windows and molding furniture. A grape vine, with violet berries still attached, snakes through the gaping hole in the ceiling into the collection of junk.

Features Patrick Sullivan Some environmentalists are alarmed after it was learned that thousands of gallons of flowback wastewater from two high-volume, deep-shale hydraulic fracking wells in Kalkaska County was sprayed on roads throughout the region to control dust.

Features Patrick Sullivan John Matthews knows he is an outsider and he knows he might be a long shot in the race for one of three Elk Rapids Village Council seats up for grabs this November.

Features Kristi Kates Petoskey is regionally famed for a lot of things, including its ‘million dollar sunsets,’ Gaslight Shopping District and the Odawa Casino Resort, to name a few. But now, one man and his ambitious small company are aiming to be the Next Big Thing out of P-town. Keith Schmidt and New Focus Creative are calling themselves “Northern Michigan’s only iPhone, iPad, and Android developer"...

Features Rick Coates Recently, I was asked what I thought about service in Northern Michigan and I responded, “it depends on the day.” One day I experience exceptional service, the next day I have a less than satisfactory experience. I wrote an article five years ago giving Northern Michigan a C-minus grade for its service industry.