January 17, 2008
Fluffy snow, anyone?
Will this winter be a lion or a lamb?
Old Man Winter suffered a New Year's Eve hangover, and a thaw in early January prompted us to ask that question. But by mid-January the ground was white again (certainly to the delight of little ones skiing at The Homestead resort north of Glen Arbor). Last year featured a brown and green holiday season, a frigid February, and golfing weather by late March. What the heck's going on?
The Glen Arbor Sun will hibernate until Memorial Day weekend, and then we'll give you a postmordem analysis of the winter of '08. Until then, stay warm!
Posted by editor at 02:36 AM | Comments (0)
Lights …. Camera …. Action, for local cinema connoisseurs
By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor
For many, films are an important way to survive the long, cold winter. Northern Michigan is now considered a movie mecca, as folks from all over the world migrate here in the summer to attend the Traverse City Film Festival. In case you haven’t heard, Michael Moore and the TC Film Festival recently purchased and remodeled the historic State Theatre in downtown Traverse City, where they are showing great movies, both new and old, 12 months a year. Don’t forget about the Bay Theatre in nearby Suttons Bay, which airs a “Beyond the Bay” film series once a year, and your local video store (T-N-T Video in Glen Arbor) and the Glen Lake Library in Empire, both of which rent quality flicks. For many, watching movies at home, with popcorn as buttery or salty as you like it, is still the way to go.
A handful of area residents were informally surveyed by phone recently about their movie-watching habits. We thought we would share those results with our readers, some of whom may have an insatiable appetite for all things “movie,” or an indelicate curiosity about their neighbors, or perhaps they just want to hear honest-to-goodness reviews by their peers instead of paid media types.
We asked them the following questions:
Do they watch movies? If their answer was no, we hung up. (No, but the conversation always ended quickly.) If they answered affirmatively, we proceeded with the following questions, not necessarily asked or answered in this order:
The last movie they watched and their impression?
Where they watched it?
How frequently they watch movies?
What types of movies they prefer?
What they think about the newly-renovated State Theatre in Traverse City?
If they have seen a movie at the State Theatre and, if so, what their impression was?
If they have attended movies at the Traverse City (TC) Film Festival?
If they volunteer for the State or TC Film Festival?
If they have attended movies at the Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay?
Kim Mann, Empire
I saw Sweeney Todd; it was very good. I don’t rent movies. I try to go to movies when I can. In winter, I go once a month. If I didn’t live in Empire, I’d go once a week. Sometimes, if it’s an independent or rare movie, I might watch two movies in an afternoon, because it might be two to three months before I get to town. In summer, I go on Saturday afternoons. I volunteer during the TC Film Festival. I think it’s a great idea and I wanted to support it and the community; it’s great to see lots of foreign or art movies in this area. I think it’s (the State Theatre) a great idea; it’s wonderful how it was done and the amount of support that came from the community. My last outing to the Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay was to see “Avenue Montaigne,” a French comedy. I’ve never seen a bad movie there. I know people who carpool from Traverse City for a 3 p.m. show on a Sunday. I like that in this area we can see these independent films that are just wonderful.
Nancy Peacock, Glen Arbor
I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” I didn’t rent it; I own it. I don’t rent movies often. I go to the theatre every Tuesday because it’s 50 cents for a bucket (of popcorn). I think that deal is [offered] at both Horizon and Grand Traverse Cinemas. My sister and I go together. We like action-packed adventure movies and drama. I like scary — not any blood and gore. I haven’t been to the State Theatre, but I’m very curious to see what it’s like. My manager is there this afternoon; she got a gift certificate. I haven’t been to the Suttons Bay film series (“Beyond The Bay Film Series” at the Bay Theatre) or the Traverse City Film Festival. That’s during our busy season; it’s hard to get away.
Mary Turak, owner, The Yarn Shop, Glen Arbor
I fish out old movies on channel 50 and 51, AMC and Turner Classic. I have a lot of old movies I enjoy, like “The African Queen” with Bogart and Hepburn. I love “The Apartment” with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine and “Born Yesterday,” (a 1950 George Cukor film), with William Holden and Judy Holliday — it’s just marvelous. Every line works. I don’t generally go and (rent) movies. I go every so often to the theatre in Suttons Bay. I saw “La Vie En Rose,” a fantastic movie about the French chanteuse, Edith Piaf, an icon. I’m really picky about movies. If I like the sound of it, I’ll go. I read reviews, I talk to people whom I trust. (About the film festival): It’s very hard for me to go … (her friend who used to watch movies with her moved away) … I think it’s absolutely remarkable we have this in Traverse City. (About the State Theatre): I’ve heard fabulous things about it.
Marie Smith, co-owner, The Sportsman Shop, Glen Arbor
I rented “Holiday,” about two girls who just broke up with their boyfriends. It was very, very cute. I recently watched “Miracle on 34th Street,” the new version. It was a (DVD) gift from my sons for Christmas. I saw “A Christmas Story” on TV Christmas Eve. If there’s something on TV, I’ll watch while doing laundry or cleaning. We probably watch one (paid) movie a week at home from Charter or rent from Jean’s (T-N-T Video) on a Friday or Saturday. (About the Film Festival): That time of year, we’re too busy, always working. (About the State Theatre): We’ll make a date soon.
Julianne Rose, Glen Arbor
I watch tons of DVDs. My last movie was “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry”; I took my niece and nephew to a “B” movie at the Grand Traverse Mall. I like comedies. I haven’t been to the Bay Theatre or the State Theatre, not since they reopened. I lived here as a teenager and just moved back to the area in October to be near family. (About the State Theatre): I do hope to get out there and check out some of their shows. I absolutely love thrillers … pretty much any movie that puts you in a situation you wouldn’t ordinarily be in.
Dick Cooper, Honor
We rent DVDs, probably watch one a day, six or seven days a week. It’s an hour to Suttons Bay and 45 minutes to the State Theatre. We’ve bought movies over the years (DVDs and VHS). We have a collection of 150 to 200 old classics: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, a lot of film noir movies, Philip Marlowe — the private detective guy. Old movies seem so much better. Movie today are too loud, start off with chase scenes, there’s not much plot. (With) old movies, the pace was really good, the casting was perfect. I just enjoy watching them over and over again; I probably watch “Key Largo” and “Casablanca” five or six times a year. Jan (wife) can watch them once and she’s ready for something else. I think the State Theatre is going to be the reason we go to town. I think it’s great. I don’t think it would’ve gotten finished if anyone else had taken it on. I think the last movie (seen in a theatre) was at The Bay Theatre a couple of years ago. I like the movies they have up there. I like the Bahles (owners of The Bay Theatre), too. They’re a family that works together. I like what Bob has done with the theatre and the type of movies they show.
Jan Tennant, Honor (Dick Cooper’s wife and real estate agent with Sleeping Bear Realty, Empire)
We resisted Netflix for a long, long time. We actually, for several years, bought quite a few and put them in our rental cottage with a VCR player; there’s no TV reception there. That’s how we built a library of stuff people with kids could watch. Netflix was like a whole new world opening up. We first rented classics that weren’t available anymore or movies we wanted to watch, not own. We rented a few new movies and thought, “Oh, this is why we don’t go to the movies.” A month ago, a light bulb went on over my head: full concerts are available on DVD, like Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. We watch documentaries. It’s fun to read a movie review, write it (the title) down and go online to get more info. (About the State Theatre): We’ve heard it’s quite the happening place. (About the Traverse City Film Festival): That time of year (in Traverse City) is not our cup of tea. When we travel, in the city of Boise (Idaho) there’s an art house called “The Flix” that shows foreign films, art films, and they serve dinner there with beer and wine. I think if I were closer to Traverse City and the State Theatre we would go; it’s just the logistics.
Dave Taghon, Empire
The last movie I watched was at the State Theatre: “Mr. Art Critic.” I’ve seen every one of (local filmmaker) Richard Brauer’s productions, starting with “Sawtooth Island” at The Garden Theatre in Frankfort. I really like what Richard does. I watch about two movies a week, mostly videos my daughter has seen or Fred (his son) recommends. I watched “Christmas Shoes” by Michael Landon’s son and want to see “The Ultimate Gift.” They’re good-feeling shows. I bought “A Christmas Story” and watch it and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Jim Carrey’s version, every year. I like to watch the classics of the ‘40s and ‘50s — Gene Kelly, John Ford movies with John Wayne, Will Rogers, nothing but the best actors and actresses in movies like “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Young Mr. Lincoln,” “Stagecoach,” “Tobacco Road.” I check them out from the (Glen Lake Library). I like nice, quiet movies after closing the (Empire) museum. I particularly liked “Barn Red” (another Brauer production,). It was so nicely done, the photography, the scenery. It takes quite a lot (for Taghon to see a movie at the theatre). (About the State Theatre): Fantastic, beautiful, wonderful, tremendous option. Comfy seats, good sound, big screen, concession lobby’s small, but what a great addition to the community. I watched “Juno” (at the State); what a wonderful little actress that gal that played Juno. What he (Michael Moore) has done, and his people there have done, showing the State Championship for St. Francis (beamed via satellite from Detroit), with the downtown all lively and all the little shops being open, I think it’s great. I’ve not been to the Film Festival, except I took my granddaughter to that big, outdoor screen to watch … “Jurassic Park” … a huge storm with lightning moved in; it was rained out. My son, Fred, takes a week off work and watches 10 to 15 movies. The first time we were exposed to a film festival was in Santa Barbara, Calif. The actors and producers were there. (Dave hasn’t been to the TC Film Festival.) It seems like it’s always the busiest time of year but small production movies are great. (Dave said he hasn’t been to the Bay Theatre in a couple of years — the last time was to see one of Brauer’s movies there.
Posted by editor at 02:28 AM | Comments (0)
Community bids adieu to a deserted downtown at dusk
By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor
Much has been written in the last two months about the astounding six-week, $850,000 renovation and grand reopening of the 540-seat State Theatre in downtown Traverse City.
Benzie County journalist Keith Schneider wrote a piece for the New York Times in December regarding the restoration of historic movie houses and performing arts theaters across the country — and included the 90-year-old State as an example.
The same month, the Detroit News reported the reactions of local business types to the reopening of the State Theatre and to new Traverse City businesses that cater to “upscale tastes,” (think the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, the renovated Opera House, Red Ginger restaurant and Café Habana).
Ron Jolly, WTCM radio host and Traverse City Business News columnist, wrote a January piece about the inspiring spirit of nonprofit event organizers with the vision, leadership, persistence and fearlessness to pull off feats like attracting visitors and their pocketbooks to the area — using scores, even armies, of volunteers. Glen Arbor’s hometown “boy,” Matt Sutherland, co-founder of the Epicurean Classic, was mentioned, as were Michael Moore, Doug Stanton and John Robert Williams, Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) founders, and Michael Moore again in connection with the State Theatre.
To the leaders and hundreds of volunteers of the State, add the many community sponsors, growing list of theatre members and audiences at sold-out and record showings, and the net effect on the energy and sidewalks of downtown is staggering. In fact, the State Theatre board just secured a promise from the City to offer free parking after 5 p.m., seven days a week, in the Hardy Parking Deck, to safely accommodate movie-goers.
When interviewed about the State, people most frequently used the word “community” — whether describing their participation as volunteers and movie-goers or their idea of what the State means to downtown.
As Deb Lake, executive director of the TCFF, charged with assisting Michael Moore with all aspects of theatre operations, said, “Coming down and seeing movies with a group of people who laugh when you laugh and cry when you cry — there’s a real sense of community.”
Or, as Glen Arbor Sun founding editor Jacob Wheeler shared, “I saw Juno there after Christmas and loved both the movie and the State … made me proud to be a part-time, near-Traverse City resident!”
Posted by editor at 02:25 AM | Comments (0)
Democracy Deficit in Michigan
Michigan’s presidential primary election has come and gone. The Republican candidates who graced our state the past two weeks have moved onto South Carolina and Nevada after Michigan native Mitt Romney secured the victory he needed to stay in the race. But the major Democratic candidates were notably absent from the motor state, and ultimately conceded the race — without delegates and without campaign stops — to Hillary Clinton after the New York Senator made the controversial decision to leave her name on the ballot. Michigan’s Democratic voters have a right to be upset about the democracy deficit that unfolded, and it remains to be seen whether the Democratic National Committee will actually re-invite the state’s delegates to the national convention in August, and whether those voters will punish their party in the general election, when the votes for this important swing state will definitely be on the line.
Our Gonzo reporter Paul Berg was able to interview Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer in Lansing Tuesday, as the votes were being counted. Their dialogue follows as a web exclusive for www.glenarborsun.com:
Paul Berg: If Hillary Clinton had withdrawn from this race as she pledged to do, would this primary still be held?
Mark Brewer: Well I don’t know to be honest. In late November, early December, the executive committee of the party made the decision to go forward with this. It was a virtually unanimous decision. We have almost 80 people on the executive committee, and it was unanimous. What that committee would have done, had at that point Hillary Clinton pulled off the ballot, I don’t know. I really don’t know.
PB: Once that decision was made at that committee level, we pretty much were locked into this course of action?
MB: Yes, that committee can change its mind. I don’t have the power to over-rule the committee. Basically I’m a creature — I’m a servant of my state committee. And so once they made the decision that they were going to follow this path, my job was to implement it as best I could.
PB: So there’s no — you don’t have kind of a gut feeling perhaps that a Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel ballot might not have been run?
MB: You know, I just don’t know. You know, it would be really speculative for me to guess.
PB: Well I guess when I first came into the situation I wasn’t certain where culpability lied. I didn’t know what I know now about the sponsorship of the bill. That it was that level decision … Since then, how has your office responded to the flak that you’ve been catching from the voters?
MB: Well we’ve gotten several different kinds of questions. The question about whether we’ll be seated at the convention, I think people worry about it, and it’s frankly the easiest question to answer. We will, for at least two different reasons. First historically, when penalties like this have been imposed on states in the past, they’ve always been lifted before the convention. Second, and it’s particularly true of Michigan and Florida, because Florida’s in the same boat, these two states are so politically important to the Democratic nominee. There’s no way you can be elected President without carrying Michigan, and probably Florida, but certainly Michigan. It’s inconceivable to me that the Democratic nominee will start the popular campaign by refusing the Michigan delegation access to the convention. Some way will be figured out to resolve this so they will be seated. So that’s one set of questions we’ve been answering, that legally we’ll be seated. A second question is, how did the ballot end up this way? And this is what we say we’ve experienced. The legislature passed the bill, the governor signed it. I, in the name of the party, under the law, put all the candidates on the ballot, which is my responsibility. All eight names were submitted. But then the candidates, half of them, pulled their names off, which was their right under the law as well. So that’s how we ended up in this situation.
PB: You could argue it was their obligation under the law given the pledges they had signed.
MB: Those candidates I understand interpreted the pledge to include withdrawing from the ballot. I understand that. Senator Clinton did not have that interpretation. And a final set of questions revolved around — it’s actually two final sets of questions. Why the write-ins don’t count, there are some people that are blaming the party for that, and I keep explaining to them that no, it’s state election law, that unless you give advance notice that you are a write-in candidate, those votes don’t count. That’s been a Michigan law, gosh, for nearly a dozen years I think. It’s obscure, and you rarely see it affecting an election like it’s going to effect today’s. So that’s another state election law to explain, and the final set of questions revolve around “uncommitted.” What does it mean, how will the delegates be elected, how can we try to make sure that they will vote for the candidate that I want them to vote for? So we take people through the process of how they’ll be elected here over the next couple of months and so forth. Those are kind of the four categories of questions we’ve been getting.
PB: Do people have a say in that process?
MB: Oh absolutely.
PB: They elect these delegates?
MB: Party members and precinct delegates, and there are nearly 20,000 people in those two categories now, but anyone can join the party before these conventions at the end of March. We’ll hold congressional district conventions at the end of March, and each of those conventions, they’ll elect delegates, uncommitted, delegates pledged to Clinton, whoever wins at least 15 percent of the vote.
PB: So uncommitted, you could see those precincts, at that level, decide to pledge them to Clinton, or …
MB: I suspect what will happen in a particular congressional district if there are uncommitted delegates, when the party members and precinct delegates gather that morning to elect them, I expect that those candidates will be interrogated. You represent uncommitted, but who are you really going to vote for? And that will determine who in fact gets elected. So it’s going to be a very open and transparent democratic process.
PB: That’s the level where I haven’t seen the word out …
MB: Yeah, and we’ll start to focus more on that. There’s stuff on our website about that, but we’ll focus more on that process once we get past the primary, and completely focus our education efforts on party members and precinct delegates who are eligible to vote.
PB: The process notwithstanding, there are a lot of people here who, even now that I understand it, I still see a rather large miscarriage of democracy and a lack of choice for the majority party in my home state. I was born in Cadillac and raised in Traverse City.
MB: Ah, okay.
PB: I can’t fathom — it hurts my feelings. People want to be able to blame someone. Is Governor Granholm perhaps the place where the buck stops in this game of chicken?
MB: No, I think the blame ultimately lies with Iowa and New Hampshire and this undemocratic system that we’ve got. We moved up to challenge them, and their response was, threaten the candidates to protect their own monopoly going forward. They’ve threatened candidates like that before, Delaware a few years ago, they also threatened candidates and they pulled out of those contests as a result. So I think, ultimately, the blame here is on Iowa and New Hampshire, and their defense of this indefensible system.
PB: I would say that seeing the promises Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee were forced to make, you can see exactly what moving a state like Michigan up in the process does that it wouldn’t have done if this was February.
MB: From that perspective, yes, obviously they’re addressing our issues, which they wouldn’t have done, if we wouldn’t have moved it up. Do we wish the Democrats were here addressing our issues? Yes. On the other hand though, once the primary season is over, Michigan will be a targeted state. Our candidate is going to spend an enormous amount of time here. I suspect they’ll spend some make-up time here, because we’ll insist that they do that. I think come the first of the year, our issues will be front and center.
PB: However, how does the cause of disrupting this monopoly with New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada now I suppose — has that cause been served by this effort? Or does it just look more like a scramble?
MB: I think we’ll advance the cause. There’s been a lot more discussion nationally about this issue. People see Michigan and Florida being punished while Iowa and New Hampshire get to go early. That’s not fair. That’s not right. So I think we advanced the cause. Has it been painful? Yes, but a lot of times, we’re engaging in a form of civil disobedience, and when you do that, there’s usually a penalty associated that you have to suffer along with it. So, again, should we be going through this? Yes. Are we disappointed? Yes. But I think we have advanced the cause of reform. So hopefully in 2012 no state will have to endure what we’re enduring now.
PB: Is there a thought that there should be like a regional lottery? I see four regions in four smaller, perhaps less influential blocs represented now. And that may be by design. That means nothing too large happens too soon.
MB: There’s lots of different reforms out there. Senator Levin’s got a reform proposal. I mean anything would be acceptable for us, so long as no state or states are guaranteed the right to go first every four years. That’s our goal.
PB: To change tradition, which is always difficult ... no one likes to defy the laws of tradition.
MB: I appreciate the tradition, but the question I ask, is if you’re designing a nominating system from scratch with a blank slate, you would not design this system. It’s irrational. And I don’t think you can defend something based on tradition. If we were still basing things on tradition in this country, African Americans and women wouldn’t be voting, for example.
PB: Our next president could come from one of those groups.
MB: For states to resort to tradition to defend their status, I just think that’s a very weak defense. Traditions need to change. They need to be updated.
PB: Is the desperate economic situation that’s been brewing in Michigan since the auto industry expatriated, has that caused Michigan to make this move where say Illinois, or another Midwestern state wouldn’t have?
MB: Well, Carl Levin’s been leading this effort in Michigan for several cycles. So there’s been a consistent effort, it’s particularly timely now given our economic troubles, but I think we would have done this even if the automobile industry was thriving and the state was in great shape because after reform here.
PB: He’s pushed that into the party culture in the state.
MB: In the state, and because he’s been doing this for several cycles.
PB: Since perhaps 2000 or 1996?
MB: Ninety-six, when I first became chair, I know he was pushing for reform then, and I think he was pushing even before then.
PB: I guess going forward from there, do you feel what’s happening now, in January, will hurt the party in November? As far as the GOP having an exclusive, kind of, media for their message and chance to gain new voters?
MB: I don’t think so. I mean I think the fall election’s going to be a choice between two candidates who have very different visions for the future. Change on the Democratic side, and I think more of the same from the Republican side, and a lot of candidate visits, a lot of voter education, a lot of campaigning here, and I don’t think in the end that the results in November will depend on who was campaigning in Michigan in January. I just think that a lot of things will supersede what’s going on now.
PB: That sounds well and good, but if the nominee from the Republican side is John McCain, who has long been popular with Democrats, could this disenfranchise certain Democrats? Or Democrats that are anti-Hillary, could they see Hillary propelled to the nomination by half the delegates of Michigan and have a bitterness?
MB: Each of the Republicans have strengths and weaknesses. It’s going to be a different campaign against Huckabee, or Giuliani, or Romney or McCain.
PB: But McCain still intangibly benefits in the state, because of no Obama or Edwards to vote for, we could see some Democrats propel him to a victory here.
MB: I don’t know. I think they’ll be back here in the fall. This is the Democratic candidate and what he or she stands for, this is the Republican candidate. And frankly, McCain by and large is the candidate of the status quo. He supports the surge in Iraq — he said we could keep our troops there for a hundred years.
PB: The principle architect of the Surge policy …
MB: I mean, when we get to that point, and we’re differentiating between candidates and party positions, again, I think that will be the determining factor in the election. Not the fact that McCain did well here in a couple of primaries. Again, they all have strengths and weaknesses, but I think that will all be subsumed within the fall campaign.
PB: Living in South Carolina and Virginia the past few years, I’ve come to doubt that Hillary Clinton can win a national election … a very strong polarizing effect.
MB: That’s not something I can get into, because I have to stay neutral.
PB: Now [Wednesday] can you come out for Hillary?
MB: No, I will not come out for a candidate. I am unofficially uncommitted. I will not come out for a candidate until it’s clear that they are the presumptive nominee, that they clearly have enough votes to get nominated. At that point, I will probably pledge to that candidate. It’s particularly important for me to stay uncommitted for the next couple of months until we’ve finished selecting our delegates because I have to supervise that process and I don’t want people being suspicious that I’m trying to tilt it one way or the other.
PB: There does seem to have been a kind of political advantage taken by the Clintons, but it seems to be within the language, that they didn’t — that they’re not campaigning by remaining on the ballot.
MB: People made their choices. They interpreted the pledge as they saw fit. They’re all intelligent people with intelligent advisors and they made their choices. Now they’re going to have to live with whatever happens today.
PB: I guess, to wrap up, is there anything you’d like to express about this happening, and what the positives are? I know you’ve iterated that Michigan can move forward in this process, and by taking this penalty now, we’ve done a great service to other states. I want to be able to depict it as something that in the long run is a good.
MB: I think it is. I think it is, and I think there’ll be much more discussion of the unfairness of the system, because now people have seen what has happened. But as Carl Levin said here last week, he and I did a press conference together, another advance, another step on the road to reform would be next summer, when we are seated at the convention, and people will see that these threats by Iowa and New Hampshire are hollow. That even if a state has the audacity to jump ahead of time and threaten their monopoly, they still get seated at the convention. So, I think we have made progress, and painful as it may have been, I wish it was less painful than it’s been, but I think we’ve made progress.
PB: I would rather have seen, instead of Mitt Romney trotting out his memory of himself and his father at Cobo for the auto show, I would rather have seen Barack Obama there to speak to the downtrodden at Cobo, in Detroit, instead of these little trips. I’ve had to follow Romney around to these exclusive little places.
MB: Again, whoever the Democratic nominee is here, they will spend plenty of time here visiting auto plants and comparable venues.
PB: What issues do you think have been neglected during this campaign because of the lack of a Democratic voice? We hear a lot about the economy at least, but …
MB: What we’re hearing from the Republicans are the typical Republican solutions economically that don’t work. Continue the Bush tax cuts and that kind of nonsense, where we haven’t had, because the Democratic candidates aren’t here, we have not had the opportunity to debate the stimulus packages, for example, that all three of them have put together, the health care programs that all of them have put out, I think far exceed what the Republicans have done.
PB: I think crime too. Without Giuliani here there’s been nothing to draw attention to the crime problem in Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw.
MB: Or just talk about urban issues. These candidates have not done anything to address urban issues generally, so no, there are things that could’ve and should’ve been talked about that weren’t because the Democrats aren’t here. Hopefully, again, I hope we can make up for that once we get past the primary.
PB: we’re all riveted to watch and see that. Most exciting election year of my lifetime …
MB: It is very exciting. It’s a very historic time.
Posted by editor at 02:20 AM | Comments (0)
Eating hearty to stay warm
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Just because the fudgies have taken the tourism season south for the winter — or maybe because of it — doesn’t mean those of you sticking around for gritty January-April can’t enjoy good food at the area’s local dining establishments.
Tim Barr reports that you’ll wait no more than 15-20 minutes, if that, for a table on two-for-one burger night at Art’s Tavern on Mondays from 5-9 p.m. As Tim says, “It’s an intimate gathering. This is how everyone gets to know each other during the winter.”
Haven’t gotten your weekly beef fill yet? Walk west through Glen Arbor to Boone Dock’s on Tuesdays for burger night, numero dos. Between 40 and 50 people sometimes show up to enjoy a burger, beverage and fries for $6.75. And come back on Sundays for Boone’s prime rib, starting at $13.75.
Do you pine for Provence this winter? No need to jump on a plane. Guillaume is offering a two-for-one special on Wednesday nights at La Bécasse (the French restaurant in Burdickville is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays), and seafood and a glass of Chardonnay for $17 on Fridays. C’est bon.
Start things off with a free cup coffee at the Foothills restaurant on Thursday mornings, and then come back to Burdickville for a notte Italiano at Funistrada, which offers two pasta dinners and a bottle of wine for $40 on Thursday nights, September-May.
Still in need of fine dining? The restaurant North, between Glen Arbor and Leland on M-22 will serve you dinner and wine for $23 on Fridays and a three-course dinner (soup, salad and entrée) for the same price on Sundays.
If love is on your mind and you need to score points with that special someone, take her (or him) to Maybings in Glen Arbor (open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday-Sunday) for Sweetheart Sundays. Buy your significant other a necklace and you’ll both eat dinner for free.
The neighborhood menu isn’t over yet. The Glen Lake Manor near the Narrows on Little Glen Lake offers $10 nightly specials, Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday. And the Empire Village Inn hasn’t left a single night unaccounted for when it comes to specials for the locals. Stop by after 5 p.m. for 25-cent Super Sliders on Mondays, dinner baskets for $6.50 on Tuesdays, 25-cent mini-tacos on Wednesdays, 25-cent chicken wings on Thursdays as well as $2 domestic drafts and open pool, smelt and fish fry for $7.50 on Fridays, all-you-can-eat pizza buffet for $7.50 on Fridays, and fried chicken dinner for $7.95 on Sundays.
The week’s over and you can’t possibly still be hungry!
Posted by editor at 02:13 AM | Comments (0)
Glen Lake deemed among top 1,000 schools in America
By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor
It isn’t well known that Glen Lake Community Schools, nestled in the hills east of the Glen Lakes, made the list of the top 1,000 schools in the country. Even the secondary principal, Kevin Kelly says, “I didn’t even know about it until I was driving to work one day and I heard it on the radio.” Students, as well, were surprised to hear from their teachers that their collective efforts had been recognized. They hadn’t recalled being inspected or entering a contest. That’s because the schools were ranked by U.S. News & World Report, using freely available information about schools nationwide. Even more surprising is that nearby Frankfort and Leland both made it onto the list of top schools as well, which, Kelly calls, “amazing.”
All three schools were awarded bronze medals. Only the top 505 schools in the country received gold or silver medals — 3 percent of the original 18,790 schools analyzed. The top 6 percent (1,086 schools) were awarded bronze medals, including Glen Lake, Frankfort and Leland. Just think of that, three schools in our area placed among the top 6 percent of schools in the country. Although Glen Lake, Frankfort, and Leland are all public schools, some private schools were also thrown into the mix. Almost all schools except those with religious affiliations were ranked by “a very complicated formula they use to determine scores for all the schools in the country,” says Kelly.
U.S. News & World Report creates a score for each school it analyzes, based on statistics from the school, which are then plugged into an equation to spit out a “magic number” that determines if the school meets certain criteria. Included are the student body’s American College Testing (ACT), Michigan Educational Assessment Plan (MEAP), Michigan Merit Examination (MME) and PLAN test scores, the graduation rate, the number of students enrolled in Advanced Placement classes and the amount of money spent per student per year. All the statistics included were from the previous school year.
What has Glen Lake done to merit this award? “Our lower class sizes are probably the number one contributor,” believes Kelly. “It can be very rewarding for the teachers to have enough time with each student. Also, Glen Lake’s average ACT scores have been going up consistently each year, which is one of the categories looked at by U.S. News & World Report.” But one specific change that Kelly introduced to the secondary school may have a big impact on the student body’s performance.
Last year, Academic Service Centers (ASCs) were introduced to the school day. The ASC is a half-hour block in the middle of the school day that students are given to catch up on homework and ask questions of their teachers. They sign up the week beforehand for which teacher’s room they want to visit and go there for help. Also, the teachers in each room alternate so that they get a break every other day for curriculum planning and catching up on their own work. And when the teachers are not available, several student tutors from Glen Lake’s chapter of the National Honor Society are there to help. The ASCs give students time to do their homework in school and receive the help they need.
But credit should be attributed where credit is due, says Kelly, who feels that the school’s success results from “the dedication of the teaching staff and how they never seem to be satisfied. No matter how good we do, they always want to get better.” Their hard work and relentless ambition has finally paid off in the form of nationwide recognition.
Nadine Gilmer is a junior at Glen Lake School and a frequent contributor to the Glen Arbor Sun.
Posted by editor at 02:10 AM | Comments (0)
Election 2008: A (presidential) race comes full circle
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Cape Coast Castle, a haunting old slavery fort on the Atlantic shores of Ghana, was converted into a museum in the 1990s with help from the Smithsonian Institution and is now a tourist destination for, notably, African Americans to make their ancestral journey homeward and, quite possibly, back to the musty dungeons where their forefathers were held in shackles awaiting the Atlantic Passage.
But what I found most interesting during a visit to Cape Coast Castle in 2002 was a video at the conclusion of the guided tour offering a chronological journey through history — beginning with daily life before the European conquest and ending with modern-day African American heroes in the United States. The local fishermen, who hollowed out felled trees to make canoes and painted spiritual symbols on them, morph into prisoners packed into ships filled to the scuppers, sailing west, toward centuries of plantation slavery. Eventually their faces radiate hope as the video progresses, throwing off the chains, winning their freedom, marching, voting, and morphing into the likes of Frederick Douglas, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali — heroes for both Africans and African Americans, we are to believe.
Yet, sadly, the bond between Africans and African Americans is not so simple, and those two communities haven’t done enough throughout history to help one another. The undertaking by African Americans in the 1820’s to return east and build their own nation, Liberia, proved a bloody failure; middle-class or wealthy African Americans who visit Cape Coast Castle today are called “ubrunis” (white people) by the locals, who perceive them as foreigners; when an African war refugee is resettled in an American city and given government handouts today (this according to my fiancé, who works at a refugee resettlement agency in Chicago), their disenfranchised and jobless ancestral brethren in the neighborhood sometimes react in jealousy.
Could one man heal those deep wounds, simply because of his racial lineage, and simply by becoming the next president of the United States? That’s the question on my mind as African-American Democratic voters line up to cast their ballots this election primary season. Illinois’ junior Senator Barack Obama may need their support to unseat New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whose husband won the overwhelming trust of the African-American community during his presidency in the ‘90s, and to win the general election in November.
Will blacks see Barack as one of their own, even though his father was Kenyan and his mother hails from Kansas? Will they back the candidate who pulled off a stunning victory in white-bread Iowa and has excited young Caucasians across America? Do they even have enough trust in the political system still holding their necks like a noose? And will their votes be counted this time?
A friend of mine, local musician Crispin Campbell asked his African-American friends in Inkster, a downtrodden neighborhood near Detroit, what they thought of Obama’s candidacy (he visited them before the primary season began), and their alarming response spoke volumes about the level of black disenfranchisement in American politics today. “Forget it,” he was told with a shake of the head. “Whites are never gonna let a black man become president.”
This is a community for the most part stuck in a deep, desperate and impoverished rut. The haunting images of black New Orleans’ residents waiting on their rooftops for helicopters (the national guard arrived five days after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city) — or being tear-gassed as they gathered at City Hall in late 2007 for the right to reclaim their homes in the Ninth Ward — is only the tip of the iceberg. As many as one-third of all young African-American males of incarceration age are in prison or on parole, many for crimes as ridiculous as possessing small amounts of marijuana (Iowa, the location of Obama’s first primary victory, by the way, has the largest rate of incarcerating blacks over whites in the nation).
And yet many leaders who represent the African-American community at the grassroots level (not you, Oprah), such as the Reverand Al Sharpton, have yet to back the first bid for the White House by a black man who has a shot at winning in November.
The charges that Barack Obama — his speeches, his message and his politics — are too white (and centrist, and vague) are nothing new. And given the state of the black community, they must be respected. After all, in Obama’s Iowa victory speech, he intentionally mentioned “red states” before “blue states,” and he buried the lines about Dr. King and Selma, Alabama, and water hoses in the middle of a speech that focused more on unity and hope than it did on accountability for racism, illegal wars and unsustainable environmental policy.
That’s because Obama doesn’t just represent hope for African-Americans (and Africans). He represents hope for all Americans (and people everywhere in the world) who are weary of eight years of sucker punches and attacks on the Constitution, and logic, from the Bush administration.
Laura Washington, an African-American columnist for In These Times magazine in Chicago — where Obama’s activism and political credentials were forged — wrote last August: “Playing petty plantation politics may feather a few nests and puff up some chests, but Obama is looking to turn the black political equation upside down. If he goes all the way, black politics will never be the same. That’s a good thing.”
She continues: “The Obama candidacy is dead in the water if he adopts a sectarian agenda. Until now, African-American presidential candidates have made little serious effort to extend their attention beyond the base. This is one big reason why black politicians usually crash and burn when they seek office in white majority districts.”
Obama has already passed that threshold. Just imagine if the American people, black and white, give him the chance to deliver his own “I have a dream” speech from Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, a year from now.
(Editor's note: The print version of this story incorrectly reported that Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. has yet to back Obama. In fact, Jackson, Sr. endorsed Obama on March 29, 2007, and his son, Jesse Jackson, Jr. works on Obama's national presidential campaign. We regret the error.)
Posted by editor at 02:03 AM | Comments (0)
Historic Cottages book on shelves
From staff reports
Rarely seen interior images of 50 cozy summer cottages and narratives provide a portrait of a special place and state of mind evoked by summer cottage living on beautiful Glen Lake. These cottages are viewed against the backdrop of early summer resort life in northern Michigan the first half of the twentieth century. Dietrich Floeter’s duotone photographs and author Barbara Siepker’s captivating historical narratives include personal anecdotes on each cottage. The cottage is shown in its glory and reveals its importance in the lives of its owners and the broader community. In total they document the essence of these wonderful old cottages as well as life and time of bygone years.
These rich cottage images have been captured with care and reverence by Traverse City photographer, Dietrich Floeter. His intention choice of a wide view camera replicates the type and style of camera that would have been used during the time period of the early resort era. Floeter has captured their essence through close attention to light and detail, which he has meticulously set up and framed. Floeter has been a commercial photographer for 23 years, specializing in architectural, industrial and aerial work.
Barbara Siepker has enjoyed learning about the local history since moving to Glen Arbor. She owns The Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor and has interviewed over 75 local and summer resorters.
Paging through Historic Cottages of Glen Lake is like taking a walk through a time warp. Rich images and narratives honor resort and cottage lore and memories in a manner not previously captured in a book. This attractive hardcover book is printed in duotone by the Leelanau Press. It contains over 300 photographs, illustrations and maps in its 224 pages and is priced at $50.
Posted by editor at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)
Shopping Sonnet and American haiku:
Loving to shop, and buying American
By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor
With more than a little guilt, I admit I love to shop. Since my mother introduced me to shopping discount at Robert Hall’s in Muskegon back in the sixties, I have enjoyed it. We are hunter-gatherers, right? That impulse is in all of us. I’m doing the gathering, right, and some hunting, albeit for adornment, but who’s quibbling. Besides this ancient impulse, contemporary research indicates we all enjoy some manner of creative expression. Non-artists find creative expression in four major ways: gardening, home decorating, food and, you guessed it, fashion and personal adornment. By extension then, isn’t shopping a part of creative expression? Well, it is a “making” of sorts. Putting together the right outfit for the right occasion is like writing a good poem. Yes, I am part of the great American epic of shopping.
Recently my young friend, Gretchen, said my love of shopping surprised her. Gretchen explained she associated most shopping and particularly shopping around various holidays, with a kind of ditzy, un-thinking consumerism. I had to think about my glib “hunter/gatherer” attitude. Am I now a ditzy unthinking consumer writer using my hunter-gather-creative-endeavor rationale to cover manic shopping I can’t in all honesty justify? How had I missed this?
I consider my shopping history. In my Bohemian twenties, I was a starving student, a familiar of thrift shops and second hand stores — which I still haunt though not for the same reasons. In my thirties, as my income stabilized, I gave over to spending, not foolishly, but with more freedom than I had in my twenties. During that time, I must admit to more than one occasion of manic, ditsy consumerism. (Yes, what does one do with three Gucci knock-off handbags?) But now, firmly gripped by middle age, I am aware of shopping no less avidly, but with a more poetic approach, apt I hope for a writer. I tend to buy elegant and functional, classy and long-term. With a hint of splash now and then. My shopping used to be free verse, now it’s a sonnet.
Stay with me on this. It’s the metaphor part.
When you write a formal poem like a sonnet, it has a strict structure. It’s not free verse; it’s contained. It has a specific number of lines, rhythm and rhyme, and it’s got substantive meaning. Now I know this is a stretch but if you look at shopping in a certain way, it can be a metaphor for the sonnet. Shopping too is contained and controlled by basic elements: budget, need, and desire — like the formal elements you’d find in a poem. A good sonnet is balanced — it stays with the form. A good shopping event feels the same. If budget is in control, I don’t buy anything. Boring. Too much form. If need is in control, I buy only what is necessary and feel pretty drab about it. If desire takes over, I get a lot of creative satisfaction but I’ve lost control of the budget — the form of the sonnet — and have usually purchased something that will hang in the closet breeding dust mites. It seems pretty obvious that balance is what it’s all about. Honor thy budget (I am the sale queen), buy what you need, put some color in it when you can. Though I must admit to the occasional lush indulgence of an impulse buy, I’ve controlled budget-busting sprees—no more epic credit card bills — with the sonnet of those three elements. Simple, huh?
Not anymore.
We are in a new world. This is not news though we tend to put our heads in the sand about it. And this is where friend Gretchen’s remarks gain purchase — pun intended. As our consciousness of world economies and environmental issues rises, so simple a thing as how we shop becomes a major consideration of how we live as Americans. Shopping for clothing, gifts, food and luxury items now has an immense impact on the economies of the world, this country and our local vendors.
Are we buying our way into self-destruction?
I recently read an article on buying American — or at least buying in the northern hemisphere. OR, (and this may be politically incorrect) not buying “Made in China/Thailand/Indonesia/India/etc” for all the obvious reasons: sometimes unfair labor practices, effects on American workers and economy, unregulated manufacturing practices (just look at the toy industry), and perhaps most of all, the effect on the environment — few controls for chemicals in factories, little pesticide/herbicide limits where they make fabrics or grow food — not to mention the pollutants released and resources destroyed getting the goods here. (American farmers have more limits on their use of pesticide and herbicide than most international growers. Ask for country of origin for your fresh produce and buy local if you can.) These circumstances add yet another element to the sonnet-shopping. What happens is that the epic shopping which became the sonnet spree is reduced to (and the irony of this is not lost on me) a haiku moment — a few lines terse with power.
Here’s an example.
It’s time for my annual trip to buy underwear. It occurs to me to review the underwear I’ve already got. What are the countries of origin for the panties of my past? I rifle through the drawer, using reading glasses to peer at the tiny labels. Wow, my underwear has many countries of origin! China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Vietnam (no surprises there) but also Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica and — get this, an exotic — Portugal. I am amazed at how international my underwear is — it could represent the United Nations right there in one drawer. I have never before noticed my global taste in lace.
It brings the problem of buying American uncomfortably close to home.
But I try. I like to buy my underwear at Macy’s — yes, I know — that American behemoth of a department store. I browse through shelves and racks of satin and frill, checking labels. I find 10 different lines of underwear in all designs and sizes but not one “Made in USA” brand. I can’t quite believe it. I ask the woman at the counter if she knows which panties are Made in USA. She looks startled. She has never been asked this question. We walk among bras and shapewear and slips. She doesn’t find any Made in USA underwear either. She calls her manager. The manager doesn’t know but calls someone else to find out. After a 10-minute wait, the news comes back. No American underwear in this Macy’s. I walk out of the store in shopping shock, empty-handed, wondering where the poetry went. Where can I find clothing (underwear included) that I like but still buy and support American workers, vendors and simultaneously reduce environmental burdens?
I end up at the Cottonseed in Glen Arbor where I confess my concerns to Ann Obershulte, the manager of the store. She doesn’t yet sell underwear but she’s working on it. But when I ask about American brands, she smiles and says, “Oh here,” as if it was simple, and introduces me to Blue Canoe, Earth Creations, BKg & Company, and several others. All Made in USA. She’s made it a mission to find attractive products made in this country.
But she also complicates the issue. She explains that she researches clothing to find products made close to home, but she also looks for manufacturers who use fair trade practices — in many countries. This may include cottage industries and organic materials, or materials made close to the site of assembly where the local economies are supported. So she carries European lines and a couple of Indonesian lines where her research has confirmed that these smaller companies are operating under quality practices. She also carries a few products that are made in China.
So, now I’m left with the more complex elements of fair trade and far shipping coupled with mass vs. small production. How many additional hydrocarbons go into the atmosphere if I buy fair-trade Lithuanian? Even if the company has fair trade practices and supports women in cottage industries, what went in to the water/air to get the products here? And if all the fair trade, organically produced elements are in place, and the products are beautiful and well-made? The price goes up. I buy one Lithuanian piece and one American piece, an American haiku of a shopping spree and far less than if I bought based on price and desire. I feel fine about it. I’m especially comforted by Ann’s dedication to conscious retailing.
I am a person who likes to shop. I buy goods. But I am also a poet and so economy, whether with words or shopping, is a practice I get. Poems often start with questions. In this case, what does it mean to buy “goods?” Good materials, good production practices, good labor practices, safe factories, healthy products, fair wages, safe environmental practices, nonpolluting manufacturing and shipping? I realize all these things now play in to what I buy. I want to do the right thing as much as I want to find the right words. How do I shop with wisdom and practicality? How do I balance need and desire? How do I shop American without breaking my budget? How much more am I willing to pay for a product made here? Twenty percent? Twenty-five? And what if my circumstances changed? What if I didn’t land squarely in that now-vanishing middle-income range? What would I do if could afford the $10 T-shirt made in China, but not the $20 one made in the USA. If I’m clothing a family here in this country, I’m paying attention to those realities. If I buy a new purse made in India, and don’t buy one of Leelanau Trading Company’s lovely currier bags, what is the difference? The currier bag will last a decade, is classic in design, and if anything goes wrong, I can turn to the vender who is a member of my community. I can’t do that with the Indian purse. How much more am I willing to pay for that? But it also means I commit for the long haul — a piece to keep for a long time. And what about gifts? If I gift a small painting by local artist Mary Sharry instead of a huge basket of fruit from Australia and New Zealand, on how many levels do I save? If I give a guest pick-up to Sweeter Song farm as a gift to a friend who comes here once a year, does that person remember to buy local when she goes home? Does it matter?
It all matters. It matters how we think about what and where we spend our money. It matters where it goes and who it goes to. I’m not a spendthrift — despite what my husband might say. I’m also not a fear monger. I don’t want to say that our economy is falling apart because we buy from China — but I know I need to grapple more thoughtfully with today’s shopping poem. I need to address the basic elements again—only this time they are not only budget, need and desire — they are who made it, what is it made from, under what circumstances was it made, where did the materials come from and how did the product get here? How long will it last? What are the quality issues verses the “cheap” issues? I have to address the larger picture — this is an epic poem of complicated sound and sense — or I am going to pay a high price and suffer a greater loss still.
So here are the formal elements I’m putting myself under for this new era of shopping.
1. Check labels and Buy USA if at all possible and as close to home as I can when it’s not. If what I want was made far away, do I need it?
2. Buy local/regional products whenever I can. Buy or make home-made.
3. For gifts, buy from local artists and artisans who make conscious, long-lasting environmentally sound work. Buy true beauty.
4. Decide how much more I will pay for “home-country made” and let my favorite venders know so they may research those companies.
5. Ask venders what lines they carry and if they know those companies’ labor policies or trade practices.
6. Educate myself about companies that have fair trade policies or sound environmental production and let venders know that I am interested.
7. Strive to balance all the elements of “good” in gift-giving, food shopping, adornment.
8. Make the shopping sonnet and the American haiku work with the epic poem of world balance.
9. Buy less, then once in a great while, give in to desire. But not too often.
10. Don’t go back to Macy’s.
Anne-Marie Oomen has written Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields, both Michigan Notable Books, and Un-coded Woman, a collection of narrative poems. She is currently writing a collection of essays Finding (MY) America. She is chair of Creative Writing at Interlochen Arts Academy.
Posted by editor at 01:51 AM | Comments (0)
Upnorthfoodies.com serves small slices of life
By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor
Paula McIntyre of Cedar was tired of hearing bad news about Michigan’s economy. She said most of the stories dominating the news have been reports from the southern regions of the state, where automakers and industry-related manufacturers are struggling or closing their doors. The barrage of gloomy stories especially annoyed her after she read a Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI) “blog” by Andy Guy (“Great Lakes Guy”) that cited a University of Michigan study showing that positive things were happening in the state but not being reported.
“The gist was that we are selling stories about ourselves, and we can choose to tell the good stories, too,” said McIntyre, whose background is in journalism and web site design.
Born and raised in Traverse City, McIntyre spent five years in Ann Arbor working for the Great Lakes Commission as project manager of the Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN), an online source for regional environmental and economic information. McIntyre managed GLIN’s web design and worked with others to build partnerships with agencies and organization at all levels of government. One of her GLIN coworkers later became her business partner in Loracs Creations, Inc., a web development and design company.
Today, McIntyre spends a good deal of time at her Solon Township home, either on the computer or caring for her young son. She and her husband enjoy eating good, local food, and they have been members of community-supported agriculture (CSA) farms for several years. Her distaste for unrelenting negative news, her love of the region, her web expertise and her lack of daily connections with people finally found a positive outlet in www.upnorthfoodies.com, a blog for posting and reading comments about all things edible in northern Michigan.
“A whole lot of ideas were percolating … watching what’s going on with Michigan’s economy … needing an excuse to talk to people … places in Ann Arbor like the Earthen Jar, Tios Mexican Cafe with its wall of hot sauce, the chocolate croissants at Zingerman’s … wonderful (food-related) things happening here.”
Some of her inspiration for the upnorthfoodies.com website came from part-time resident and renowned chef Mario Batali’s donation of a cooking lesson for 12 that garnered $25,000 in a Leelanau Conservancy auction in 2006 and $67,000 in 2007, the Children’s House Montessori School commitment to serving fresh and nutritious foods, the MLUI’s program to connect local farms with schools, and the increasing number of area CSAs.
“I wanted to create a community website and thought it would be cool to have a site that brings it all together.”
McIntyre enlisted the help of her sister, Ann Drury, also a Traverse City resident and a regular blogger on the site.
“She’s a wonderful cook,” McIntyre said. “She’s one of those people who would have nothing in her refrigerator and could make an awesome meal.”
Last September, McIntyre attended the second annual Epicurean Classic (co-founded by former Glen Arbor and current Traverse City resident Matt Sutherland), to talk to people about the idea of a website for northern Michigan foodies. She received good feedback.
“I was still stewing on the idea when three times in the same week I was asked if I was Kathy Gibbons (Traverse City Record-Eagle reporter and columnist).”
That clenched it. Upnorthfoodies.com was launched on October 1— a season McIntyre said might have been ill timed as the harvest was winding down.
“It was easier to find things (to write about) in December than I thought it would be,” she said with a laugh while sharing a list of topics for the fall and winter months, including canning, shopping for local holiday gifts, food and wine events and seed ordering.
What McIntyre would really like to see on the site is more posts from people willing to share a “slice of their life” as a cook, canner, baker, owner or employee of a food establishment, grower, farm worker—anyone who spends time planning, growing, harvesting, preparing or eating local food and drink.
“A lot of people sign up as foodies, not as posters,” she explained. “This is available for them to share a slice of life, to write about a day in their life or to do a little promotion to establish their expertise. For instance, Brian Hosmer, the winemaker at Chateau Chantal (I loved his post) wrote about the Ice Wine harvest, what it entails. I had no idea…”
Since all posts are archived and searchable, the site is poised to become a valuable online resource for sharing regional food experiences. McIntyre and Drury have received encouragement and publicity from Andy McFarlane of Absolute Michigan and Leelanau.com, Rick Coates of the Northern Express magazine, and the owners of the coffee company Higher Ground Trading Co. The latter wrote on its website: “Check out the charming aesthetic and useful content of their new blog (and sign up as a contributor). It’s a great way to support our local farmers and food purveyors.”
As content on the upnorthfoodies.com site grows, McIntyre said they will look more seriously for sponsors. For now, she would appreciate input from potential sponsors on how best to present their information on the site. As for her time and expense thus far, McIntyre would only say, “It’s a labor of love.”
Posted by editor at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)