Opinion
The Winter We Don’t Talk About
Guest Opinion
By Kate Lewis | Dec. 20, 2025
Winter settles in quietly at first. A gray morning here, an early twilight there, the hum of holiday lights blinking on before most of us are ready. And then suddenly, we’re in it, deep in the season of forced cheer. The shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the smiling. The relentless emotional dance of trying to make everything perfect. The lists that grow longer by the hour. The expectation to feel grateful, joyful, … Read More >>
Christmas Survives Another Year
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | Dec. 20, 2025
It’s about that time when a certain president will declare he has once again saved Christmas. Actually, Christmas hasn’t needed saving since the mid-1600s when the Puritans banned it in Boston because it was not mentioned in the Bible. Since then, Christmas has been on a pretty positive run. Christmas was certainly not the first of the winter festivals, long celebrated as daylight began to magically lengthen or as late fall crops … Read More >>
A New Kind of Advent
Student Guest Opinion
By Tess Tarchak-Hiss | Dec. 20, 2025
It’s the gleeful and gay holiday season, which means two things: tooth decay and seasonal depression! While my sister and I grew up gnawing on daily peppermint Hershey’s Kisses and Santa Claus-shaped dark chocolate, we’ve gradually been drawn to alternative advent calendar ideas that aren’t as horrific for circadian consumption. You know, like a really creative pill dispenser, or a Red Bull advent calendar. (Trust me, I’ll definitely feel like I have … Read More >>
Let’s Change Trashy Traditions
Guest Opinion
By Cathye Williams | Dec. 13, 2025
From the last Thursday in November until the ball drops in Times Square, it’s estimated that we Americans create 25 percent more waste than normal—approximately 25 million more tons of garbage. It comes from consumer goods, gift packaging/shipping, food scraps (including over 300 million pounds of Thanksgiving turkey scraps alone), and extra electricity use for all those pretty lights. In short, we give and get too many things that no one needs … Read More >>
Of Airports and Gravel
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | Dec. 13, 2025
No doubt the entire Grand Traverse region is popular with visitors and prospective new residents. Additionally, people already here travel more, and some now telework from home but have to zoom off to meetings someplace other than their home office. The result is our little airport just keeps getting busier and busier. Founded in 1929 as Ransom Field on what is now mostly Memorial Gardens off South Airport Road, it moved to … Read More >>
What? I Didn’t Catch That
Guest Opinion
By Richard Fidler | Dec. 13, 2025
“I left the clothes in the dryer.” … “What?” “I said I left the clothes in the dryer.” … “What’s on the dryer?” (Raised voice) “I said I left the clothes in the dryer.” … Silence. “Forget it.” Dialogues like that are common in households with hearing-impaired housemates. I should know: I am hearing-impaired. My impairment is quite severe. I have bilateral Meniere’s Disease, a condition characterized by balance issues, tinnitus, and … Read More >>
Pardon Me
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | Dec. 6, 2025
A president’s constitutional power to offer clemency to prisoners, or soon-to-be prisoners, by way of pardon or commutation for federal crimes is absolute with the exception of impeachment. A pardon totally erases a conviction and immediately ends penalties associated with it and clears a person’s record of the offense or offenses. A commutation shortens a sentence but leaves the conviction intact. That power is sometimes suspiciously used. George H. W. Bush used … Read More >>
Housing Zoning Atlas & Community Planning
Guest Opinion
By Yarrow Brown | Dec. 6, 2025
There is so much to celebrate in our region and across Michigan. We’ve made real progress in expanding housing options and acknowledging housing as an essential part of community well-being. Yet the urgency is unmistakable: we must work together to ensure every resident of northwest Michigan has a safe, healthy place to call home. With looming federal and state funding cuts to supportive and deeply affordable housing, the task ahead is significant—but … Read More >>
Teen Apathy in the Political World
Guest Opinion
By Tess Tarchak-Hiss | Nov. 29, 2025
In my third-grade classroom, Donald Trump won the 2016 election. Tension was high in Mrs. Maxbaur’s class; girls galloped across the playground on their imaginary horses, gathering info on everyone to see who would vote for whom. On my made-up mare, I investigated that 14 kids would be voting for Clinton and 14 would be voting for Trump. Well. Shoot. By the time we ripped off our snowpants and muddled into the … Read More >>
Not Quite Peacemaking
Spectator
By Stephen Tuttle | Nov. 29, 2025
Our president continues to insist he is deserving of some sort of peace prize and claims he’s stopped eight wars in his 11 months in office. Now might be a good time to check up on all of that as we enter the season celebrating the actual Prince of Peace. Let’s start with the plan for “peace” in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Or, as President Trump calls it, “Ukraine’s war with … Read More >>
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