Category: Behold The Great White North

Bravo to Aaron Dennis, Jacob Wheeler, and all the rest of the Run Across Palestine crew for producing an event and a piece of courageous journalism that matters to the world. In The People & The Olive, a 70-minute documentary that received its premiere Monday night in Traverse City’s downtown State Theatre, Aaron and Jacob join camera, reporting, and story-making skills to explore the dangerous irony of a native people, Palestinian olive farmers, walled off …

Though Detroit’s become a signpost for where the rest of America is heading unless we change our ways right quick, there was a time when it was vital. So vital, in fact, that Detroit produced music so blazingly good that it became a sound track of the American empire at its height. That, of course, was the sound of Motown. Last night The Temptations performed here in northern Michigan.  One of the premier groups that …

In 2004, as “Prairie Home Companion” neared its 30th anniversary, the New York Times said Garrison Keillor, the live Saturday night radio show’s host, was “stapled to something bigger than he is.” That’s about as apt a description of Keillor’s contribution as I’ve read. Last night, Keillor and all of the Prairie Home Companion crew broadcast the show from Kresge Auditorium at the Interlochen Center for the  Arts here in northwestern Michigan. It was a …

BENZONIA, MI — Just as the first flying flakes of snow in October signal the onset of winter here in my hometown, the emergence of the snow white petals of the forest-dwelling trillium are a strong forecast of summer’s welcome warmth. No more so than this year. It’s been an unusually cold and wet spring. The ice didn’t come off Crystal Lake until well into April this year. On April 19 and 20 it snowed …

In 2003, just before major construction began to transform Traverse City’s 19th century psychiatric asylum into the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, Ray Minervini told me that within a decade or so the development would be a mixed use neighborhood with 800 residents, 1,000 jobs, and more than $100 million in residential, retail, and office development. That and other details were published in Traverse Magazine. Today I updated that original article in the New York …