Robert Downes

Features Robert Downes He was once considered to be one of America’s blandest presidents -- even the butt of jokes in the ‘hipper’ times that came after the 1950s. But revisionist histories of Dwight D. Eisenhower are casting our 34th president in a new role as a wise warrior for peace who may well have saved our skins from nuclear annihilation.

Features Robert Downes

What happens when you take more than 15,000 photos on a city street and spin them into a time lapse video?

For real estate photographer Jason Hulet, the result is a surrealistic portrait of a day in downtown Traverse City that has viewers on YouTube and Facebook awestruck over its psychedelic colors and dreamlike progression.

Scan the accompanying QR code with your smartphone or visit the Video Seen link at northernexpress.com to see for yourself.

Features Robert Downes

Once a week, professional endurance athlete Josiah Middaugh likes to strap on his snowshoes or crampons and charge up one of the Rocky Mountain ski runs in Vail, Colorado.

“Winter is a key training season for me,” says Middaugh, who grew up in East Jordan and has since become one of the top multisport athletes in the world.

Hot Dates Robert Downes Local bluegrass and string-band lovers will have a chance to hear Northern Michigan's new Fauxgrass band this Friday, Nov. 23 when they perform at the InsideOut Gallery in TC.The band has local roots,

Features Robert Downes

Billy Strings was practically born into bluegrass: his mother’s water broke while she was attending a birthday party packed with musicians and baby Billy was born with the echo of guitars and banjos in his ears.

Either that or Billy made a deal with a dark stranger at a lonely crossroads at midnight… Whatever the case, he has an almost supernatural ability on guitar, banjo and mandolin that has set the region’s bluegrass and folk scene on fire.

Hot Dates Robert Downes For a Northern Michigan take on burlesque, check out the Bayside Bombshells troupe this Friday, Nov. 16 at the InsideOut Gallery, TC.Led by "the fearless and slightly mad Twiggy Pop," the Bombshells o

Hot Dates Robert Downes Get Your Blues Challenge OnYou'll be singin' da blues this Saturday, Nov. 10 at the  Northern Michigan Blues Challenge held at the Southside Hideout in Buckley.Up to eight solo/duo acts and six b

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 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 Robert Downes The letter from a drug rehab prison in Minnesota is a long one: 17 pages of handwritten script filled with tortured explanations, stress, and the stale hours of passing time in a federal prison with five years yet to go.

Features Robert Downes Killing 80 pig sows and their piglets in cold blood this spring to comply with a controversial order from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources was the toughest thing Dave Tuxbury has ever had to do.

Features Robert Downes The hottest new tourism trend in Northern Michigan comes on two wheels with a fanny pack.

You can see that trend yourself on any drive along the Lake Michigan shoreline north of Charlevoix, where dozens of cyclists pack the Wheelway Trail each day.

Features Robert Downes They were so wrong. Because today, Internet legal issues have exploded to include everything from online defamation that can wreck your reputation, to the theft of your website’s domain name or on-line infringement of your intellectual property, such as trademarks, copyrights and patents.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Back to the Basics
My dad worked on his father’s farm outside Rockford until he was in his early 30s, just as countless sons had done for thousands of years before him.
He started out plowing the fields with a team of horses, tilling up the arrowheads of the Ottawa and Pottawatomi that my brother and I still own today. Later came a tractor, but not much in the way of a paycheck. Yet with his food and board covered by the farm, Dad was able to throw nearly every cent he earned into savings because there was no greater virtue in our family than thrift.
Dad’s family had survived the Great Depression by dint of the fact that they were able to grow their own food. Their one misadventure was when some desperate people stole a pile of newly-harvested beans.
Mom had lived the dirt-poor life on a farm too. By the time I came along, my parents were what would be considered the “working poor” today. Dad had saved enough to buy a Ford (no car payments, of course) and our family lived in a succession of run-down rental homes.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Those of us who live here were thrilled that ABC’s Good Morning America
show cited the Sleeping Bear Dunes as being the most beautiful place in
the country last week. I myself put a link to the news clip on my
Facebook page to brag about my hometown to friends living overseas.
On the other hand, if you look at other “beautiful” places around the
country -- Carmel, Cape Cod, Bar Harbor, Hilton Head, Jackson’s Hole,
etc. -- it’s pretty clear what happens when you start waving the
figurative red cape in the bull ring of the national media.