Anne Stanton

Features Anne Stanton Pellston’s Palace
Locals love it, but is quiet airport a boon or a boondoggle?
By Anne Stanton
On a Yahoo website, a woman asked how to get from Mackinaw City to the
Pellston Regional Airport without having to pay taxi fare.
A man suggested she take the shuttle bus service, Wolverine Stages, to
Pellston airport. “By the way, when you get to Pellston, you’ll see just
what a $7.5 million log cabin can look like.”

Features Anne Stanton Are you feeling peppy for no good reason these days? Chances are there’s
caffeine in your drinking water. Not to mention trace amounts of hormones,
acetaminophen (Tylenol), herbicides, anxiety medications and antibiotics
(to name a few) that are routinely flushed down the drain and end up
coming back out of your tap.

Books Anne Stanton An Evening with Mary Karr? Author of The Liar’s Club talks about life,drinking, poetry, recovery and God
By Anne Stanton
I have a ritual when trying to find a book of cracking it open and
reading a random paragraph. If I find the writing amazing in at least
one of my openings, I check it out of the library. If the writing
soars on every random page, I buy it.

Features Anne Stanton BioDebate: A point/counterpoint on the biomass issue
By Anne Stanton
A decision on a proposed $30 million biomass gasification plant in
Traverse City will come to a head on April 20 when the Traverse City
Light and Power (TCL&P) board votes on whether to proceed. It’s part
of the utility’s plan to achieve a 30% renewable energy portfolio by
2020.

Features Anne Stanton Kristy Beyer’s Training Blog: From couch potato to the Chicago marathon in six months
By Anne Stanton
When Kristy Beyer decided to run the Chicago marathon last year, she
was a bona fide couch potato. She couldn’t even walk on a treadmill
for five minutes without getting seriously winded.

Features Anne Stanton 100% Renewable Energy? Northport is the little town that thinks it can
By Anne Stanton
Northport Village, population 648 (or so), at the tip of Leelanau County is a perfect little test town for renewable energy with its cluster of homes, quaint stores, a school, an assisted living facility, a marina, and a waste treatment plant—all within a mile of each other. It doesn’t hurt that high winds routinely whip around the village, which sits on the picturesque shoreline of Lake Michigan.
That’s why a group of villagers believes they can achieve an ambitious goal for the town: 100% renewable energy in the future, beginning with two wind turbines that will hopefully go up by the end of this year. Their ultimate goal is to also power outlying Leelanau Township (population 2,139) with renewable energy.

Features Anne Stanton Mind made up on biomass?
By Anne Stanton
Traverse City Light and Power promised residents that it would fully
consider all alternatives before deciding on how to replace 30% of
its coal-powered energy with renewable energy by 2010.
But environmentalists say it looks like the utility has already made
up its mind to build a $30 million biomass plant based on a letter it
just sent out to customers. The head of the utility countered that no
decision’s been made, but added that biomass stands as the most
affordable option.

Features Anne Stanton Best of The Idealists
Two guys plan to run 240 miles across Ethiopia
By Anne Stanton
Hans Voss and Chris Treter aren’t the fastest ultra marathoners in
Northern Michigan, but they certainly qualify as the craziest—and
most idealistic.

Features Anne Stanton Snapshots of RECOVERY
By Anne Stanton
Last week, Northern Express reported on those who found comfort and
refuge in methadone and other drugs, but were ultimately killed or
nearly destroyed by them. As the reporting went along, the Express
also came across stories of recovery and hope for drug addicts and
alcoholics. Here they are.

Features Anne Stanton Sara Caldwell Pays It Forward The 30-year-old opens her home to deeply troubled teens
By Anne Stanton
While most single women in their 20s are playing the dating game and
exploring the night life, Sara Caldwell took a different route. She
welcomed her one-year-old cousin, Cory, into her home as a foster
child and kissed her social life good-bye.

Features Anne Stanton Methadone:the quiet killer
Daniel Pagel, at the age of 21, wasin a downward spiral of his short life. Formerly a fun-lovingsnowboarder, his deepening addiction to drugs wascrushing him.

Features Anne Stanton The Rush to Biomass
Environmentalists plead: ‘Slow down!’
By Anne Stanton
Al Gore wrote recently that we can’t wish away climate change. “We are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere—as if it were an open sewer,” he wrote in a New York Times editorial.
Environmentalists have long embraced Gore’s message. But the alternatives to coal? Not an easy answer. Arguments are flaring nationally because alternatives can also poison, upset, and degrade the environment.
Traverse City is no different. A proposal by Traverse City Light and Power (TCL&P) to build a biomass plant in town was largely opposed in two heavily attended public meetings held two weeks ago. If built, the $30 million plant would burn primarily wood chips culled from the forests in the Grand Traverse region. It would also compete with a number of other current or proposed biomass plants in the region for sources of wood -- a situation which opponents say would put too much stress on Northern Michigan’s forests.

Dining Anne Stanton “Atkins is dead… Pass the bread!”
By Anne Stanton
If you were in the area in 2003, perhaps you saw the bumper stickers printed up by my old friend, Bob Pisor, who founded and ran Stone House Bread in Traverse City.
Pisor, who has since sold the business, was peeved over the Dr. Atkins’ no-carb caveman diet, which has helped people peel off pounds fast. So he struck back with a bit of dark humor.
Despite the temporary hit to bread sales, the Atkins diet did play a vital educational role, said Gerard Grabowski, who with his wife, Jan Shireman, opened Pleasanton Brick Oven Bakery, the area’s first artisan bakery, in 1993.
The gregarious couple, who make their home in Pleasanton, north of Bear Lake, bake naturally leavened bread with organic flour, water and salt. But no yeast. The crusty, chewy loaves are distinctly different in taste and texture than the sugary, squishy, non-crusty bread you’ll find at the grocery store.

Features Anne Stanton The Good Fight:Did nutrition, vitamins and a wife’s love save Greg Holmes?
By Anne Stanton
Greg Holmes remembers reading a Wall Street Journal article in March
of 2004 with more interest than usual. It concerned a Tulane
University medical student with sino-nasal undifferentiated cancer
(SNUC), an extremely rare disease.

Features Anne Stanton Medical Marijuana:Not an easy toke in the park
 By Anne Stanton
 Dan Benac of Cadillac, a legal medical marijuana patient, will facefederal prosecution at a Grand Rapids courthouse next week for thepossession of several joints on tribal land.