Features Al Parker Driving west and north out of Mancelona, it’s not too long before you’re surrounded by a lush green forest where you find the gurgling waters of the under-rated Cedar River.

Features Erin Crowell In May 2005, Jeanne Oleniczak received a package from her brother, Winfred Roy Compton II. In it was a diary written by Compton from 1970 to 1995 describing his life living as a homeless veteran, wandering through the streets of countless cities. With it was a note from her brother telling Oleniczak to do whatever she wanted with it.

Letters

Labels Unfair

This is in reference to the political and religious bantering we are hearing. As I listen and think, I am kind of offended. The labels of right wing evangelicals and left wing liberals and Democrats who are apparently not Christian etc. You see the categories?

I object to being cornered. How can the Catholics be offended by birth control when it seems acceptable to drink and smoke and have other vices which in turn cause death? How can the right wing conservatives get the market on Jesus and God? Do they too prescribe to drugs and alcohol and lust and greed and hatred to those unlike them?

I understand the moral code we are aspiring toward. But until all are ascending into the perfection realm we are all here learning about love. Isn’t love the universal solvent? Yes, love the person, brotherly love, but not the sin.

I am a Democrat who IS a Christian...

Letters

Tuttle right on Time

That article was 100 percent spot-on!

My uniquely effective high school English composition instructor directed his students, with each assignment of a paper that required citations of source material, “If you decide to include Time Magazine in your bibliography, please save me the trouble and go ahead and put a red ‘F’ at the top of your paper.”

His disdain for their editorial standards was total, and appropriately so.

I have my personal nominee for “Time Magazine Nonsensical Cover Hyperbole”...

Letters

No politics needed

President Obama took a huge political risk when he authorized the successful removal of Osama bin Laden from this earth. Most Republicans have been strangely quiet about this until recently, when they now complain that the administration is attempting to politicize the killing of bin Laden.

Journey with me now to a fantasy land where Republicans would successfully resist the temptation to fully politicize the bin Laden mission had it failed.

Bob Ross • Pellston

Festivals tread lightly

I have read the news concerning the cancellation of two festivals that occur in late summer, the Schooner Festival and I believe the Epicurian classic....

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.