Letters

Services beyond abortion

Thanks to Claire Scerbak for her perspective on utilizing tax payer money for education and family services. I have utilized services at Planned Parenthood and all the services I have benefitted from included education and family services.

My spouse and I received our HIV education in order to get our marriage license there. I got my reproductive health care, including birth control and care and follow up when I was diagnosed with precancerous lesions...

Letters

Fracking dangerous alternative

Fresh water contaminated and forever removed from the hydrologic cycle; poisoned air, rivers and streams; gas well leaks and explosions; debilitating health problems including asthma, neurological disease and cancer; dead wildlife and livestock; earthquakes; toxic gas plumes causing families to evacuate their homes; poisoned and exploding water wells; loss of property value and ruined roads from 24-hour truck traffic …

Best of NM 2012 None Megatron earned a blizzard of national attention by posting the best statistical season of his NFL career in 2011. He posted a career high 1,681 receiving yards and 16 touchdowns. In week four against the Dallas Cowboys, Johnson helped rally the Lions from a 24-point deficit to a 34-30 victory by snagging two 4th quarter touchdown passes.

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

It didn’t take long for police to make an arrest after someone broke into a shooting range in May and made off with five semiautomatic handguns.

Break-ins that involve stolen handguns tend to get a lot of police attention, and this one was no exception.

Letters

Penn State's punishment

“...the fundamental chapter of this horrific story should focus on the innocent children and the powerful people who let them down.”

-- Ed Ray, chairman of the NCAA’s executive committee

A months-long coma would have been the only way to have escaped hearing of the tragic events at Penn State. At first, the sickening realization that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually abused at least eight underage boys on or near university property. Then the deep disappointment in learning an investigation by former FBI director Louis Freeh found school officials, including the school president and vice president, head football coach Joe Paterno, and athletic director had known about the allegations of child abuse as early as 1998, but failed to disclose them.

Now the NCAA has handed down penalties that some say are close to a “death penalty” for the school’s football program, including a $60 million fine, four year bowl-ban, loss of some scholarships and withdrawal of wins dating back to 1998. The statue honoring Joe Paterno has been removed by the university. Sadly ironic, the statue’s inscription reads, “Educator, Coach, Humanitarian.”

These appalling events and revelations have shed light on behaviors most people would rather not examine. Yet it also creates awareness of deep-seated cultural attitudes and hopefully a willingness to learn more about ourselves, our society and what we value...

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.

Letters Reagan, Bush & guns... Why the hysteria over President Obama recommending the ban of assault weapons since Reagan and G.W. Bush did the SAME thing?

Guns & young men... Over the past decade, some reoccurring community concerns and thoughts that have come to mind. To me, it seems like we need to have some community reevaluation, rethinking, and changes. What say you?

Guns & the media... I agreed with your Random Thoughts column, re: violence in USA and gun control. Our perceptions are so ingrained about how safe we are here and how dangerous it is in foreign countries.

Slamming MLK Day... It’s too bad that Traverse City’s homosexual community continues their attempt to ride on the coat tails of black history. The majority of the black community do not support homosexuality or gay marriage, and are sick and tired of the sham that the gays and their allies continue to perpetrate on our citizens.

Snyder’s lack of jobs... Will Governor Snyder run again?  Total Michigan employment declined by 11,000 in December; however, the number of unemployed was little changed, edging upward by 1,000. The net impact was a 10,000 worker reduction in the state’s labor force over the month.

A better supreme court... We ask Governor Snyder to give serious consideration to the recommendation of the state’s bipartisan commission on Michigan Supreme Court elections.

Rigging the vote... Gerrymandering is the redrawing of congressional district lines to give one party advantage over the other in elections. Even though Democratic congressional candidates won the popular vote by over a million votes in the 2012 election, it was the Republicans who won the US House and both houses of our Michigan legislature due in large part to gerrymandering.

Features Erin Crowell

Today’s industry trends aren’t lost on Carter Schmidt.

“Selling lemonade? You just don’t make much doing that; and, well, the newspaper boy may have disappeared,” the eight-year-old tells me, a journalist, on the logistics of childhood employment. The third grader at Eastern Elementary School in Traverse City is an entrepreneur, having just completed the milestone of one year in business with his company, Carter’s Compost. The bike-powered, kid-driven kitchen scrap pick-up service has been turning dirt since last April, charging its Traverse City neighborhood customers $5 a month for fresh compost.