Opinion

Bike There — Adventure and Empowerment Await

Guest Opinion

By Gary Howe | May 8, 2021

I don't remember a time in my life when I didn't have a bicycle. I also don't remember anyone teaching me how to ride. My older brothers and sisters must have taught me, but I suspect their pedagogical method was along the lines of "Keep up or stay behind." In reality, they probably ditched me often. But the way I remember it, I not only kept up with them but also bravely ... Read More >>

Is Water a Commodity?

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | May 8, 2021

  There will be one overriding issue in the next couple of decades, one of the few that is literally an existential threat to our future. It isn't terrorism, or white supremacy, or socialism, or Trumpism. It's water, or the lack of it.  The looming water crises — and multiple crises is what this will become — will be the most obvious result of climate change. It has already begun. There is ... Read More >>

Racism is Having a Moment

Guest Opinion

By Isiah Smith | May 1, 2021

It pierced me to my core when I read the local news accounts of the racist Snapchat that several students from TCAPS and other local school districts had exchanged messages on a “Slave Trade” Snapchat group, in which they posted racist, homophobic, antisemitic, anti-disability, and other hateful comments about fellow students. The group assigned bid values to students of color and posted remarks including, “Let’s have another Holocaust” and “All Blacks should ... Read More >>

Do the Math

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | May 1, 2021

We're making some progress against Covid-19, but if this were an athletic contest, we'd still be behind.  Nearly 10 percent of the country's population, almost 32.5 million Americans, have been infected. We continue to assume that number is low, as not everyone, or even most of us, has been tested. We've already lost at least 576,000 of our citizens as we continue creeping closer to the record death toll of the 1918 ... Read More >>

Pipeline Profit Risks Our Future

Guest Opinion

By Barbara Stamiris | May 1, 2021

The 1950s were a heyday for civil engineering. To fuel our growth, we built what was then the world's longest suspension bridge to connect Michigan's peninsulas and an oil pipeline in the waters below. The Mighty Mac is still the pride of Michigan. Under the watchful eye of the state's Mackinac Bridge Authority, it has won awards for engineering and for preventive maintenance. In 2019 it became "the first fully instrumented bridge in the ... Read More >>

Reform School

Guest Opinion

By Hal Gurian | April 24, 2021

Michigan needs to reform its public and charter schools. Both traditional public schools and public charter schools suffer from a lack of accountability and transparency, which only puts our children at risk for a sub-par level of education.  “Michigan K-12 system is among the weakest in the country and falling behind,” contends Education Trust-Midwest, an online website evaluating schools. “White, [B]lack, brown, higher-income, lower-income — it doesn’t matter who they are or where ... Read More >>

Give Reform a Shot

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | April 24, 2021

2020 wasn't a very good year. At all. Aside from the horrific toll of the pandemic and the post-election insanity, we became a lot more violent. Murder rates were the highest in the last two decades, according to the FBI. Other violent crimes increased comparably.  Chicago saw a 50 percent increase in murders in 2020, with 750 fatalities. New York City murders increased by 40 percent; Los Angeles, 30 percent. Detroit had ... Read More >>

Wrong and Expensive

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | April 17, 2021

Tucked away in the southeast corner of Cuba is a natural harbor wedged between hilly terrain. Called Guantanamo Bay — guantanamo means “land between two rivers” in Taino, the language of indigenous Taino people — we leased it from the Cubans in 1900, and the arrangement was codified in a 1903 treaty.  It is home to our Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, the oldest such “overseas” base in our inventory. It's about 45 ... Read More >>

The DIY Lobotomy

Guest Opinion

By Isiah Smith | April 17, 2021

“Did you read the review in The New Yorker of the new Philip Roth biography?” I asked my well-read conservative cousin. (Yes, Black conservatives do exist!) “No,” he responded. “I don’t read The New Yorker; too liberal.” “But Roth is the world’s greatest writer to never have won the Nobel Prize for literature,” I responded. "The New Yorker, first published in 1925, publishes rigorously fact-checked articles. It also sets the highest intellectual literacy standards.”  ... Read More >>

Spring Cleaning

By Stephen Tuttle | April 10, 2021

It would seem winter has timidly departed, probably, so some local spring cleaning is in order.  Traverse City's proposed fish pass project becomes more and more mysterious. No one can yet tell us which fish species will be allowed passage and which, other than sea lampreys, will be stopped. In fact, no one can even tell us what species would swim upstream if there were no barricades at all preventing it. There ... Read More >>