November 21, 2024

Search Results for: Platte Lake

Platte Lake Sets National Example For Solving Toxic Algae

by Keith Schneider2

HONOR — On a bright autumn afternoon Platte Lake is a stirring statement about the excellent condition of Benzie County’s natural resources. Its broad waters are stunning alpine blue. Its shoreline brims with the splendor of maple leaves, a fluttering hoard of yellow, orange, and red.  But more than the fortunate convergence of thick forest and fresh water is at play on and around the 2,500-acre lake. The commanding beauty also is the result of …

Platte River Park, A Natural Resource Treasure, Opens in Benzie County

by Keith Schneider0

HONOR, Michigan — From the place where it slips out of Lake Ann in Benzie County’s northeast corner, Platte River haunts a landscape of forest and open fields, steals past this village of 330 residents, crosses a mighty and silent wetland, fills a big lake, and then, nearly 30 miles from where it started, reaches a curved sand inlet where it empties into Lake Michigan. One of the 49 blue ribbon trout streams in Michigan’s …

Great Lakes Algae Blooms: Lake Erie Respite, Lake Superior Rises

by Keith Schneider0

Not far from where I live in Benzie County, Michigan lies a network of shaded forest trails that end on the broad sand beaches of Lake Michigan’s Platte River Bay. In the distance, the steep flanks of the Sleeping Bear Dune dive to the Great Lake. Across the Manitou Passage the green expanses of North and South Manitou Islands are like the broad backs of giant turtles floating in the water. On clear and sunny …

Ron Gianola’s Masterful Show at Dennos Museum

by Keith Schneider0

HONOR, MI — The one unmistakable element in Ron Gianola’s arresting “Passages” paintings is his command in brush, knife, and single pigment colors to produce abstract images endowed with energy and motion. The Passages collection, which Gianola started about a decade ago, has a readily available narrative expressed by freedom from constraint and realized through free form rhythm. The paintings are a visual declaration, much like Gianola’s other artistic expression as a jazz drummer. The …

How Crucial Was 2022 Election? Thank You Sane America

by Keith Schneider1

BENZONIA – This could have been a miserable Thanksgiving. It’s not. On November 8 sane Americans voted their disapproval for the dreadful politics of MAGA America. Never more so than in Michigan. Even in our three-county corner of the lower peninsula Democrats and sufficient numbers of disgusted Republicans voted to reject election-denying, Trump-supported candidates and re-elect the incumbent Democratic governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. Having cast off the psychic weight of election dread, …

Yvon Chouinard’s Gift to Northwest Michigan

by Keith Schneider0

Earlier this month, last week in fact, Yvon Chouinard announced he and his family are changing ownership and management oversight of their company to enable more investment in securing the global environment. It’s a novel and enlightened business strategy for Patagonia, executed by a man who’s led an adventurous life of real value to the world. I write this to note that Yvon brought his gifts to my home region in Northwest Michigan in 1999 …

The Society of Foolhardy Folly: Anglers and Hunters Against the Environment

by Keith Schneider2

EMPIRE, MI — Days before ice crowded back into Lake Michigan’s Platte Bay late last week, the shallow waters opened and fishermen planted their poles in the soft sand at the mouth of the Platte River and waited for steelhead and maybe a brown trout. Clean, cold water is abundant in our region in large part due to the safeguards contained in the 1972 Clean Water Act, arguably the most important environmental protection statute in …

Earth Day is Boomer Day

by Keith Schneider8

  Perhaps not since the very first one 37 years ago has Earth Day attracted the credibility or the genuinely intense national and global focus that it has this year. Thousands of grassroots celebrations, including the annual march in downtown Traverse City today, are occurring this weekend. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a moderate Republican, introduced a green investment plan and policy strategy for transforming the nation’s largest metropolis into an even more transit-friendly, energy-efficient, environmentally-sensitive place to live and do …