Northern Express

NORTHERN

express northernexpress.com

W O N S & D E E SP ars. O

inary d r o a r t x ne e

ular c g e R . e l r peop

race.

Regula

NORTHERN MICHIGAN’S WEEKLY • January 16 - january 22, 2017 • Vol. 27 No. 3

Visit our Facebook page for more info on the exciting new Bronco and updates on everything Gaylord Ford Lincoln and Ford Motor Company THE ALL NEW LINCOLN CONTINENTAL

gaylordfordlincoln.com • facebook.com/gaylordfordlincoln

1928 S. Otsego Avenue • Gaylord, MI 49735 989.732.6737 Dairy

Produce

Vitamins

Deli

Juices/Smoothies

For a Boost, Get Juiced

Renew, rebuild, and restore your body with a raw juice cleanse.

Our raw juices are loaded with living enzymes, vitamins, nutrients, and taste!

Give yourself three days, and feel the difference.

Detoxify the body’s organs Sharpen mental clarity • Boost energy levels • Improve digestive function • • Strengthen immune system

Normalize body weight Improve sleeping patterns • Balance pH levels • Reduce aches and pains

Clear complexion Improve circulation • Lower blood pressure • Balance blood-sugar levels • Cleanse colon

•

•

•

•

•

•

835 South Garfield Ave. • Traverse City • (231) 941-5221 edsonfarms.com • facebook.com/edsonfarms

2 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

CONTENTS Meet

features

Crime and Rescue Map.......................................7 Drive to succeed: Making auto techs at NMC......9 Speed & Snow..............................................10 Car enthusiasts and their first car.....................12 Winter driving: Speed, caution and snow tires...13 Gear up with the best driving music.................14 Adam Hammer’s restoration dreams................15 Traverse City’s Big Boy comes of age...............19 Leland Lodge wants you to party.....................17 Running with Bigfoot......................................18 Seen.................................................................19

dates...............................................20-22 music FourScore.......................................................23 Nightlife...........................................................25

columns & stuff Top Five...........................................................5

letters HIT SEND! Love what we’re doing here?

Disagree with something you’ve read on these pages? Share your views with a quick letter to the editor by shooting us an email.

Our simple rules: Keep your letter to 300 words or less, send no more than one per month, include your name/address/phone number, and agree to allow us to edit.

That’s it.

Email info@northernexpress.com and hit send!

Dirty Deeds in Washington

As soon as Congress convened, the backward “Party Of Greed” (GOP) launched its radical agenda of dismantling environmental protections and selling our birthrights to the highest bidders behind closed doors.

First they voted to hide their back-room deals by gutting the Office of Ethics and Compliance, to prevent the public learning about their dirty dealings. Fortunately they backed off after loud public rebuke.

Then, first day, House members (including Bergman, Moolenaar and

Huizenga) voted to make it easier to sell America’s public lands to greedy corporate buddies without public hearings or oversight (Michigan’s legislature and Governor have already capped public lands purchases, and moved to sell them off).

We Michiganians are fortunate and blessed to have the most public land east of the Mississippi River -- 7.7 million acres, or 21 percent of our state. Under this legislation, however, we stand to lose access and use of parts of our state forests, game areas, parks, recreation areas, snowmobile and ORV trails, and water/fishing accesses.

Some of our 3 million acres of National Forests, National Parks and Fish & Wildlife Service lands are also at risk of being taken away from us.

The “Government of Plutocrats” also passed HR427 and HR5982 to (unconstitutionally) reverse all executive regulations proposed in the last six months, and to prohibit future rulemaking without Congressional authorization. They would grant themselves unprecedented power to cater to big corporations who evade safety standards, pollute the environment, and game the system for their own profit.

These bills threaten the air we breathe, water we drink, public lands and wildlife we value. They also prevent new public interest and safety safeguards. Congress wouldn’t even have to cast public votes to nullify critical safeguards.

Is this what you voted for? Tell your Senators “No!” David A. Newhouse, Cadillac

Spectator/Stephen Tuttle...................................4 Weird................................................................8 Style.................................................................8 Crossed..........................................................16 Modern Rock/Kristi Kates.................................24 The Reel.......................................................26 Crossword.....................................................27 Advice Goddess..............................................28 Freewill Astrology...........................................29 Classifieds......................................................30

Northern Seen Like nothing you’ve seen before A real-time, 24/7 online feed of social media posts we love from throughout northern Michigan Incorporating Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter An endless scroll of posts, accounts, friends and hashtags we follow Also now available: secure one of the top three positions for your company (ask us at info@northernexpress.com)

Check out Northern Seen at northernexpress.com

Cover photos by Jason Swoboda Motorsports Northern Express Weekly is published by Eyes Only Media, LLC. Publisher: Luke Haase 129 E Front Traverse City, MI Phone: (231) 947-8787 Fax: 947-2425 email: info@northernexpress.com www.northernexpress.com Finance & Distribution Manager: Brian Crouch Sales: Kathleen Johnson, Peg Muzzall, Katy McCain, Mike Bright, Michele Young, Randy Sills, Todd Norris For ad sales in Petoskey, Harbor Springs, Boyne & Charlevoix, call (231) 881-5943 Creative Director: Kyra Poehlman Distribution: Matt Ritter, Randy Sills, Kathy Twardowski, Austin Lowe Listings Editor: Jamie Kauffold Contributing Editor: Kristi Kates Reporter: Patrick Sullivan Contributors: Amy Alkon, Janice Binkert, Ross Boissoneau, Rob Brezsny, Jennifer Hodges, Candra Kolodziej, Clark Miller, Beth Milligan, Al Parker, Michael Phillips, Chuck Shepherd, Steve Tuttle Photography: Michael Poehlman, Peg Muzzall, Kayla Keenan Copyright 2016, all rights reserved. Distribution: 36,000 copies at 600+ locations weekly. Northern Express Weekly is free of charge, but no person may take more than one copy of each weekly issue without written permission of Northern Express Weekly. Reproduction of all content without permission of the publisher is prohibited.

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 3

MUFFINS

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

HAND-CRAFTED O N LY A T Y O U R N E I G H B O R H O O D B I G A P P L E B A G E L S ®

opinion

BY Mark Pontoni

FINE DINING ON LAKE MICHIGAN

GLEN ARBOR

1133 S. Airport Rd. W., Traverse City • (231) 929-9866 www.bigapplebagels.com

WIFI

Open Wed - Sun at 5pm

231.334.2530 - glenarborblu.com

Now with 2 convenient Traverse City locations!

1779 S. Garfield Avenue 231-941-4335

$8 OFF FULL SERVICE OIL CHANGE SPECIAL

No Appointment Necessary (Reg. $37.99. Includes 5 qts conventional oil) – FREE CAR WASH INCLUDED –

NEW LOCATION NOW OPEN!

13638 S. West Bay Shore Dr. 231-642-5665 HOURS: M-F 8-6 • SAT 8-4

Must present coupon.

Not valid with any other offers.

Expires 2/13/17. CODE: NE

Women’s Merrell Encore Ice, $120 Merrell Stone

Chocolate Brown

Plum

Black

144 E. Front St. Traverse City

4 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

Castle Rock

231.947.5091 plamondons.com

This is going to be a very different column than the one I planned to submit earlier in the week. But just hours before I submitted my work, something terrible happened and “Stop the presses!” burned through my brain.

(Cue the heavy organ music) On Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017, we all got to witness the death of something we never thought could die. But there, on our televisions, we witnessed President Barack Obama deliver a eulogy for the American Dream.

There were tears and moments of nervous laughter that often accompany eulogies. For a full hour, the president described the things that have defined the promise of America for over 200 years. He spoke proudly of how our country has overcome many of the challeng-

by-point praise of what makes our country great, while Donald Trump is on the left side mocking each of those points with his narrowminded and destructive plans for our country.

When Vice President Joe Biden and Obama embraced at the end of the speech, it was a moment much like closing the coffin at the end of a funeral. As proud as they must be for what they have accomplished over the last eight years, that knowing look they gave each other spoke volumes about how much our country is to suffer in their absence.

(Pause the organ music for a moment, please.)

As a teacher, I am confronted daily by the challenges students face in achieving things. Big things, little things, things that seem small to me, things that students can’t move past. I often speak about the two op-

I recognized that 100 percent of the things the president was saying were things Donald Trump will attempt to undo during his presidency. es it has faced in striving to make good on Thomas Jefferson’s promise of true equality for all men.

He spoke glowingly of the richness of our culture because of immigration. He praised the vital role of unions in building our middle class. He enthusiastically noted the bravery of people who stood up against the evils of discrimination.

There he stood as the living, breathing embodiment of the American Dream itself: the mixed-race child of a single mother with the audacity of hope. Not once did he take the opportunity to attack his detractors while graciously acknowledging that not all Americans agree with his agenda.

As he worked his way through the long list of his accomplishments during his eight years in office, a profound sadness took over the room. Just as it happens in a church or in a funeral home when the eulogist recounts the events of a person’s life that brought happiness, the listener cannot avoid recognizing that those days died with the person in the coffin. Neither the eloquence of the speaker, nor the joy of those happy memories, can shroud the fact that our world is not better off because someone we cared about has died.

About halfway through his speech, I recognized that 100 percent of the things the president was saying were things Donald Trump will attempt to undo during his presidency. Respect for our fellow man. Respect for international law. The importance of a de-nuclearized world. Opportunity for all. Denouncing torture. Integrity of government. Health care for all. The richness of being a country of immigrants.

With each comment, I smiled meekly at all the things that truly are great about our country and how each of these things is fueled by a vibrant, robust belief in the American Dream. A meek smile is all I could muster because, like being at a funeral, I knew it would be a long time, if ever, that I would feel as good about things as I did remembering Obama’s vision of our nation.

I suppose someone with more tech abilities than me could create a split screen video of Obama on the right delivering his point-

tions every person has when their challenge involves another person. As a coach, I talk often about the two options athletes have in becoming the best they can be.

In both cases, the options can be summed up like this: Make yourself better, or drag your opponent down to your level.

Both methods can be very effective in closing the gap between something you are and something you want to be.

Clearly if the student or the athlete chooses the first option, then both students end up better, regardless of who finishes first.

If they choose the second option, they may “win” but neither of them will be close to what they might have been.

I ask them to think about two mountain climbers tied together with a rope that cannot be cut or detached. There’s enormous fame awaiting the single climber who first reaches the summit. As they begin the climb, they realize that at some point one of them is going to win and the other will be second place. (Think Neil Armstrong and that dude that stepped on the moon second.)

As they near the summit, if one of the climbers is so determined not to be second that he is willing to dig in so that the person tied to him can’t win, the summit will never be reached by either. Worse yet, one of the climbers can make the fatal mistake of sending both climbers to their death rather than fear the indignity of not winning.

(Recue the organ music for the grand finale, please.)

I see the legacies of Obama and Trump tied together in the same way as our mountain climbers. In the balance is the future of our country. Trump is in the position to build on the greatness of Obama’s America, but it comes at the cost of admitting that greatness. In everything he says and does, it seems clear that Trump is willing to toss everyone off the mountain rather than let the American Dream live on. It’s a long way to the bottom. I’ll see you there.

You can read more of Mark Pontoni’s thoughts on education, politics, sports, and family at thegrumblings.com.

this week’s

top five Fraud cases halted A federal court ordered the state’s Unemployment Insurance Agency to stop its aggressive pursuit of questionable fraud cases against thousands of people who claimed unemployment benefits.

Between 2013 and 2015, an automated fraud detection system flagged thousands of files, and state officials aggressively sought repayment and penalties from people who had collected unemployment insurance.

In many cases, the state sought tens of thousands of dollars from people who were already struggling financially, said Traverse City attorney Mark Risk, who defended dozens of people against the fraud claims.

It was later determined that the automated fraud detection system was flawed. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Cleland on Jan. 11 ordered all fraud cases halted until each one is reviewed by agency staff.

Northern Express explored the broken system in the Aug. 16 story “Unemployed and under attack.”

tastemaker Noggin Room’s chopped romaine salad Considering the popularity of trendy chopped salad eateries like Chop’t, Saladworks, Chop It, and Chop Stop — none of which have made it to Petoskey quite yet — it’s no wonder that one of The Noggin Room Pub’s latest menu additions is quickly becoming a big hit.

Noggin Room’s chopped romaine salad is a combination of garden ingredients and Middle Eastern influences: earthy tomatoes, mild red onions and fresh, cool cucumbers sharing plate space with sharp and aromatic feta cheese, nutty chickpeas and toasted sesame seeds. The lettuce is chopped more thickly than at the chain restaurants, which adds a bit of extra chew.

A tangy lemon-herb vinaigrette brings all of these elements together in harmony.

Accompanied by a side of pita bread, this salad makes a great healthy lunch or dinner, and is a nice change-up from the heavy soups and stews that are so prevalent this time of the year.

Find it for $11 inside Stafford’s Perry Hotel, 100 Lewis St. in downtown Petoskey; staffords.com or 231-347-4000.

mahogany jones Brooklyn poet, rapper and cultural ambassador Mahogany Jones will headline the Martin Luther King Jr. Remembrance Day event at the State Theatre in Traverse City at 6 p.m. Monday. The NMC Children’s Choir and rapper Trey Wilcox will also perform. Building Bridges with Music, the Human Rights Commission and the State Theatre are sponsors. Tickets are free and available at the box office. Call 947-4800.

Dog to the rescue A man who slipped, fell and broke his neck when he went outside to get a log for his fireplace on New Year’s Eve was saved by his golden retriever.

The man screamed for help after he fell at 10:30 p.m., but his nearest neighbor was a half mile away and no one heard, said Catherine Dewey, communications specialist at McLaren Northern Michigan.

The Emmet County resident, who Dewey said requested anonymity, was wearing only long johns, a shirt and slippers, and he laid outside for 20 hours in temperatures that got as low as 24 degrees. After a while, he could no longer call for help, but his dog, Kelsey, did not stop barking and laid on her owner to keep him warm. Finally, at 6:30 p.m., a neighbor checked out the incessant noise.

The man was rushed to McLaren’s emergency department where he met his second savior, Dr. Chaim Colen, a neurosurgeon. He was treated for hypothermia and underwent surgery to decompress his spinal cord, a successful operation that returned movement to his extremities.

Named "Best Dance Studio in Traverse City"

Four spacious studios at our state-of-the-art facility

Named "Bestinclude: DanceDance Studio Studio in Traverse City" Named "Best in Traverse City" Classes

Mommy & Me (18 months & up) Home of the Award Winning Company Dance Traverse Creative Movement (Ages 2 & up) Dance Exploration Monday - Saturday • 9 AM - 9 PM Pre-Ballet W Located in the Expan NO g Hipstudios Hop •atatTap Four spacious studios our Four spacious our Preferred Outlet Center Adult P ded rollin n new state-of-the-art facility E rogram state-of-the-art facility Modern • Jazz es! formerly r Class o f Classes include: Horizon Outlet Center Pointe • Ballet Classes include: Mommy & Me (18 months & Up) Mommy & Me (18 months & up) Guy's Classes Home of the Award Winning Company Dance Traverse Creative Dance(Ages (Ages 2 & up) Creative Movement 2 & up) Graded Cecchetti Ballet Examinations Studio Hours Pre-K Ballet Dance Exploration 3811 Marketplace Circle • Preferred Outlet Center Monday - Saturday • 9 AM - 9 PM Musical Theater Preballet Pre-Ballet Traverse City W Located in the Expand N•O Hip Hip Hop • Hop Tap• •Tap Modern Jazz Pilates • Zumba • Cardio Hip e gHopPreferred Outlet Center in www.danceartstraverse.com A ll d u ro lt Prog d 8.15.223045.tcaps En ram Pointe • Modern Ballet ••Jazz Musicalfo Classes! Horizonformerly rTheater Outlet Center Pointe •Tap, Ballet& Jazz Adult Enroll NOW for Winter Classes!

Guy's Classes Pre-School Ballet/Tap combo classes Graded Cecchetti Ballet Examinations 1015 Garfield Avenue • 231.941.4244 3811 Marketplace CircleS• Preferred Outlet Center more!

Musical&Theater

Studio Hours

231-941-4244

Open House August 16th231-941-4244 & 17th from 10:00 to 4:00. Come Join Us! Traverse City

www.danceartstraverse.com Open House August 16th & 17th from 10:00 to 4:00. Come Join Us! Pilates • Zumba • Cardio Hip Hop 8.15.223045.tcaps

www.danceartstraverse.com

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 5

THE FINEST SKI TUNES AND CUSTOM BOOT FITTING, PERIOD. From novice to racer, our professional technicians will get the job done.

24 hour turn around on most services.

231-946-8810 800-346-5788

890 Munson Ave. • Traverse City www.donorrskihaus.com

Celebrating 60 Years!

Warm Vacation?

YOUR N VACATIOEXT BEGIN N WITH U S S!

Time to call Talon!

Booking winter & family spring break vacations now.

Talon TRAVEL AGENCY

TalonTravelAgency.com 231-930-4770 877-211-9377

Old TOwn PlayhOuse PresenT

and

REASONS TO MOVE AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS spectator by stephen tuttle In a few days, a new administration will be seated in Washington. Those now designated to develop our energy policy are either climate change skeptics or outright deniers who intend to facilitate more oil, gas and coal production.

Let’s assume they are right. If our climate is changing, it’s part of some natural cycle having nothing to do with human dependence on fossil fuels. So, what do more gas, oil and coal mean since it’s not impacting the climate?

First, we have to get the stuff out of the ground.

More than 50 coal mines still operate in the United States, providing fuel for nearly 600 coal-fired power plants. They have consumed 1.4 million acres of land, much of it in open pits that strip away mountain tops.

The waste, often simply dumped down a hillside, has dammed, rerouted or polluted 2,000 miles of headwater streams.

pipelines. We have a lot of them.

We have 207,000 miles of liquid pipelines, 300,000 miles of gas transmission lines and 2.1 million miles of gas distribution lines. According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, we average about 300 pipeline “accidents” spilling about 3 million gallons of crude annually at a cost of about $5 billion.

Now that we’ve mined, drilled and transported our fossil fuel bounty, we have to burn it. We do so in our vehicles and power plants. We get most of our electricity, heat and cooling from 557 coal-fired and more than 7,000 gas-fired power plants. All of it generates emissions.

According to the EPA, our power plants alone produce 1.925 billion metric tons of air pollutants annually. The average passenger vehicle produces 4.75 metric tons of pollutants every year by itself. Transportation, in fact, is the leading source of air pollution.

Even if our dependence on fossil fuels has no impact on our climate, it certainly impacts our environment.

Extracting oil, gas and coal despoils the land, threatens and pollutes our water and endangers the men and women doing the hard work of mining and drilling.

Miner’s nOrTh

The Groundbreaking Musical

COMPANY Stephen Sondheim George Furth

January 13 - 28 231.947.2210

www.oldtownplayhouse.com www.mynorthtickets.com

6 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

In the last decade, mining accidents have claimed 77 lives. The greater cost comes in the form of pneumoconiosis, more commonly called black lung disease.

On average, it kills about a thousand miners and former miners annually, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The Environmental Protection Agency calculates the total human and environmental cost of coal mining at $74.5 billion a year.

Then there’s oil. The most recent oil discoveries, including a massive find in Texas, will all require hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking, to extract the oil trapped in shale formations. A slurry of water and chemicals, lots and lots of water and chemicals, is pumped into those wells under high pressure to break up rock formations and release the oil.

Each fracking well requires between 2 million and 6 million gallons of water.

Another 60,000 gallons of chemicals are added. (Not all states require disclosure of the chemicals used, but the EPA has identified 325 different chemicals, 25 percent of which are known carcinogens.)

That solution then becomes a toxic waste product that is disposed of in deep — as in several thousand feet deep — injection wells under extremely high pressure.

In both Oklahoma and Texas, where fracking is widespread, small earthquakes are now commonplace. Geologists believe the pressurized waste injections are creating or opening small fault lines causing the quakes. No one knows if larger seismic activity is likely.

We have to move the gas and oil. The fastest and most economical way is through

All that air pollution isn’t so good for us. It is especially bad for people with chronic conditions like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5 million workdays are lost and nearly 40,000 people die annually as a direct or indirect result of airborne pollutants.

So pervasive are emissions from fossil fuels that all of us, including toddlers, have traces in our lungs, according to the CDC. Even if our dependence on fossil fuels has no impact on our climate, it certainly impacts our environment. Extracting oil, gas and coal despoils the land, threatens and pollutes our water and endangers the men and women doing the hard work of mining and drilling.

Transporting the fuel isn’t much safer, and spills can quickly become environmental catastrophes. That happened here in 2010 in Calhoun County when an Enbridge pipeline ruptured, and 1.1 million gallons of especially nasty oil spilled into Talmadge Creek and then flowed into the Kalamazoo River.

Clearly, we can’t simply do away with fossil fuels. But we can, and have been, doing a better job of exploiting renewable alternatives. Maine, for example, already produces two-thirds of their electricity from renewable sources, and solar is now an economically viable alternative in sunnier climes.

It’s a fact land, air, water and human beings are negatively impacted when we extract, transport and burn fossil fuels. That should be reason enough to continue moving away from them.

Crime & Rescue STUDENTS OK AFTER BUS CRASH An Inland Lakes school bus with 43 students aboard crashed into a van that was stuck in the snow and a pickup truck that had stopped to help. No one was injured.

A 52-year-old Indian River man lost control on the icy road, crossed the centerline and crashed into a snowbank. A 52-year-old Alanson man came upon the disabled van and stopped to help, Cheboygan County Sheriff Dale Clarmont said.

The school bus driver, a 59-year-old from Wolverine, came out of a curve to see the two stopped vehicles and was unable to stop.

Deputies were called to White Road near Indian River after school Jan. 10. Another bus was dispatched to pick up the students.

SUSPECTED BURGLARS BEHIND BARS Two suspects were arrested after an investigation into several Missaukee County break-ins.

Missaukee County sheriff’s deputies arrested 23-year-old Manton resident James Atwood and 25-year-old Cadillac resident Cody Davidson on Jan. 4. Each face three counts of breaking and entering.

The break-ins occurred in late November and early December and involved a storage building in Caldwell Township and two homes in Lake and Norwich townships. Numerous items were stolen, including two chainsaws.

The suspects admitted their involvement in the crimes “to varying degrees,” Detective Sgt. Mike Walters said in a press release.

by patrick sullivan psullivan@northernexpress.com

on North Omena Point Road at 1:47 p.m. Jan. 6.

Deputies found that a 26-year-old Northport woman’s Chevrolet Suburban had slid off of the road and struck a tree with two boys, ages 7 and 8, in the back.

The woman said a deer ran in front of her vehicle. The deputy could smell alcohol and determined that the woman was intoxicated and had taken prescription medicine.

The woman was arrested, and the children were placed with their grandmother; one of them suffered a minor injury in the crash.

BUSY DAY ON THE INTERSTATE Sheriff’s deputies, state police and Tuscarora Township Police responded to nearly two dozen crashes on a section of Interstate 75 in just a matter of hours.

The crashes occurred Jan. 7 south of Indian River between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. after a storm system settled in and caused slippery whiteout conditions, Cheboygan County Sheriff Dale Clarmont said.

For a while, the freeway was shut down, and every tow truck in the region was busy hauling away cars. In some cases, vehicles crashed into other vehicles. In other cases, drivers veered into ditches to avoid crashes.

The only serious injury that was reported was a 20-year-old downstate man who lost control, drove into the median, rolled over and struck several trees. He was extracted from his vehicle and taken to McLaren Northern Michigan in Petoskey for treatment.

TWO WOMEN DIE IN CRASH Two women died in a head-on crash near the Manistee River.

The driver of one of the vehicles, 41-year-old Mesick resident Rebecca Quade, lost control as she drove south and crossed the centerline, crashing into an oncoming vehicle driven by a 52-year-old Irons man. A passenger in the second car, 77-year-old Irons resident Jacquelyn Ursum, was also killed in the crash.

Wexford County sheriff’s deputies said it didn’t appear that either of the victims wore seatbelts.

Deputies were called to the crash on M-37 north of Mesick at 3 p.m. Jan. 8.

emmet cheboygan

CAR GOES INTO UTILITY POLE A driver who failed to stop at an intersection caused a crash that injured two people in Cadillac.

A 24-year-old Cadillac woman drove south into the intersection, failed to stop and crashed into a car headed east driven by a 32-year-old Cadillac man, pushing that car into a utility pole, Sgt. Jeff Izzard said.

The driver of the southbound car and her 36-year-old female passenger were taken to Munson Hospital Cadillac to be treated for minor injuries. Police responded to West Division Street and Seneca Avenue at 7:50 p.m. Jan. 7.

CHILDREN TAKEN IN METH RAID Child Protective Services workers tipped off police after they suspected a young Interlochen couple of making methamphetamine.

That led Traverse Narcotics Team officers to get a search warrant and raid a Betsie River Road home Jan. 5 where they found a 28-year-old man and his 22-year-old girlfriend and suspected drugmaking materials.

During the search, two young children were removed from the home by CPS workers and were taken to Munson Medical Center to be checked out for exposure to hazardous chemicals.

TNT officers found meth-making components in a camper on the property, according to a press release. The man was arrested on unrelated misdemeanor warrants.

Detectives said they would seek additional charges.

DEPUTIES: WOMAN ENDANGERED CHILD A woman was arrested when she was found to be drunk after crashing in Leelanau Township with two children in her car.

Leelanau County sheriff’s deputies responded to a car that crashed into a tree

CIGARETTE BUTT LEADS TO JAIL A 24-year-old Gaylord man found himself in jail on account of a cigarette butt and unpaid child support.

The man was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over by state police in Houghton Lake because he threw a cigarette butt out of the window.

When the man’s name was checked for warrants, it was discovered he was wanted in Otsego County for unpaid child support and was arrested.

charlevoix

antrim

otsego

Leelanau

benzie

manistee

grand traverse

wexford

kalkaska

missaukee

crawfor D

roscommon

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 7

Loose laces

by candra kolodziej

STREET STYLE Leading Economic Indicator The salary the Golden State Warriors pay to basketball whiz Stephen Curry may be a bargain at $12 million a year, but the economics is weirder about the prices Curry’s fans pay on the street for one of his used mouthguards retrieved from the arena floor after a game. One used, sticky, saliva-encased teeth-protector went for $3,190 at one August auction, and SCP Auctions of California is predicting $25,000 for another, expelled during the NBA championship series last June. ESPN Magazine reported “at least” 35 Twitter accounts dedicated to Curry’s mouthguard.

Cultural Diversity In parts of Panama, some men still fight for access to women with the ferocity of rutting male elks. The indigenous Ngabe people mostly keep to themselves in rural areas but have surfaced in towns like Volcan, near the Costa Rican border, where in December a reporter witnessed two men fist-fighting to bloody exhaustion on the street in a typical “Mi Lucha” (“my struggle”), with the loser’s wife following the winner home. As the custom loses its cachet, only about a third of the time does the wife now comply, according to the website Narratively. (Bonus: It’s an ofteneasy “divorce” for the Ngabe -- for a fed-up wife to taunt her husband into a losing fight, or for a fed-up husband to pick a fight and take a dive.)

The Continuing Crisis ■ Over a six-year period (the latest measured), drug companies and pharmacies legally distributed 780 million pain pills in West Virginia -- averaging to 433 for every man, woman and child. Though rules require dispensers to investigate “suspicious” overprescribing, little was done, according to a recent Drug Enforcement Administration report obtained by the Gazette-Mail of Charleston -- even though half of the pills were supplied by the nation’s “big three” drugmakers (whose CEOs’ compensation is enriched enormously by pain pill production). Worse, year-by-year the strengths of the pills prescribed increase as users’ tolerance demands. (West Virginia residents disproportionately suffer from unemployment, coal mining-related disabilities and poor health.)

■ University of Kentucky professor Buck Ryan disclosed in December that he had been punished recently (loss of travel funds and a “prestigious” award) by his dean for singing the Beach Boys classic “California Girls” for a lesson comparing American and Chinese cultures -- because of the song’s “language of a sexual nature.” The school’s “coordinator” on sexual harassment issues made the ruling, apparently absent student complaints, for Ryan’s lyric change of “Well, East Coast girls are hip” to “Well, Shanghai girls are hip.”

■ Because the 2015 San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack that killed 14 and seriously wounded 22 was a “workplace” injury (in that the shooters fired only at fellow employees), any health insurance the victims had was superseded exclusively by coverage under the state’s “workers’ compensation” system -- a system largely designed for typical job injuries, such as back pain and slip-and-falls. Thus, for example, one San Bernardino victim with “hundreds

of pieces of shrapnel” still in her body even after multiple surgeries and in constant pain, must nevertheless constantly argue her level of care with a bureaucrat pressured by budgetary issues and forced to massage sets of one-size-fits-all guidelines.

Wait, What?

(1) The Las Vegas Sun reported in December that Nevada slot- and video-machine gamblers left almost $12 million on the floor during 2012 (i.e., winning tickets that remain uncashed for six months, thus reverting to the state), running the fiveyear total to nearly $35 million. (2) The pre-game injury report for college football’s Dec. 31 Citrus Bowl included two University of Louisville linebackers, Henry Famurewa and James Hearns, who were out of action against Louisiana State because of “gunshot wounds.”

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

Latest in Vending Machines: (1) Passengers awaiting trains in 35 stations in France now find kiosks dispensing short stories to pass the time. A wide range of selections (even poetry!), in suggested reading-time lengths of one, three and five minutes, can be printed out for free. (2) The only U.S. vending machine for champagne is now operational in the 23rd-floor lobby of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Las Vegas. Moet and Chandon bubbly can be purchased with $20 tokens sold at the front desk.

New World Order Recent Awkward Apps: (1) The Kerastase Hair Coach (a “smart” hairbrush with Wi-Fi, monitoring brush strokes “on three axes” to manage “frizziness, dryness, split ends and breakage”); (2) The still-in-prototype “Kissenger” (with a “meat-colored” rubbery dock for a smartphone that the user can kiss and have the sensation transmitted to a lover’s receiving dock over the internet); (3) The Ozmo smart cup (to “effortlessly” “empower you with a platform for better hydration choices” in your water and coffee consumption -- with software for other drinks coming soon!) (Bonus: Old-school users can also just drink out of it.); (4) The Prophix toothbrush (with a video camera so you catch areas your brushing might have missed); (5) Spartan boxer briefs (stylishly protecting men’s goods from Wi-Fi and cellphone radiation).

SAMMIE ROVINSKY White Lake

KAITLYN BUNTING Traverse City

Leaving your laces untied isn’t lazy; it’s a footwear trend. Want to pull it off? You’ll need an insouciant attitude and to follow some basic rules: 1) If your laces are dangling in the slush, you’re doing it wrong.

2) If your boots are lined with fur or funky fabric and you flip them open to show it off, you’re doing it right. 3) Tall socks are cool, so pull them up.

Unclear on the Concept In December the European Union’s 28 nations reached what members called a historic agreement to thwart terrorists: a ban on private citizens’ possessing semi-automatic weapons -- but exempted terrorists’ firearm of choice, the Kalishikov assault weapon. (Finland vetoed inclusion of the AK-47 because of concerns about training its reservists.)

Least Competent Criminals A December post on the Marietta, Georgia, police department’s Facebook page chided a shoplifter still at large who had left his ID and fingerprints (and inadvertently posed for security cameras). The police, noting “how easy” the man had made their job, “begged” him to give them some sort of challenge: “Please at least try to hide.” Suspect Dale Tice was soon in custody.

8 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

JOE COLBURN Northport

JULIE VERELLEN Traverse City

Student Jeffrey Voight and instructor Wayne Moody in the automotive shop at Northwestern Michigan College.

DRIVE TO SUCCEED: MAKING AUTO TECHS AT NMC

By Kristi Kates Cars just aren’t what they used to be.

And that’s great news for students of Northwestern Michigan College’s automotive service technology program.

Instructor and program coordinator Wayne Moody has been working with NMC since 2001, when he was invited to teach classes part time on transmissions, the specialty of his Traverse City shop, D&W Auto and Transmissions. In 2005, the college asked him to go full time as department head, and Moody’s been at NMC ever since.

He keeps his shop running as well.

“I have two lives,” Moody joked. “You would not believe the hours I keep — it’s not uncommon to go by my shop at 1 a.m. and see the lights still on. It’s not that I’m really here for the money, although they pay well enough — but as a shop owner, you can actually make more money. I’m here, as are most of my instructors, because we want to do it. There’s a need, and we want to help. So, it’s as much a contribution to the community as it is a job.”

This, perhaps surprisingly, is the lifestyle of many auto technicians; the passion for the trade is a lot deeper than many people might expect. And right now, the industry is offering an excess of jobs for a deficiency of auto technicians, so it’s a good passion to have.

“There’s never been a greater need for automotive technicians,” Moody said. “Most people don’t work on their own cars; the skill set required these days is so much more.

Dads don’t work on their own cars anymore, so less people are growing up knowing how to do these things.”

Cars are also lasting longer and longer, he added. “When I was a kid, if you got 100,000 miles out of a car, that was really a lot. If the car didn’t rust out first, by 100,000 miles the

engine was definitely done. Now there’s a lot more need for repairs, and they’re much more expensive.”

Several automotive career paths are available at NMC, starting with what Moody called the “top tier,” an associate’s degree of applied science majoring in automotive technology. The associate’s degree encompasses all eight automotive areas recognized by the state of Michigan. “If you acquire certificates and/or a degree in all eight of these, you’re considered a master automotive technician,” Moody said.

The eight — automatic transmissions, manual drivelines, suspensions, brakes, engine repair, electrical, engine drivability (ignitions/fuel injection/tune-ups), and HVAC (heating and air conditioning) — can also be broken up into several certificates rather than degrees. These include a master’s certificate, which is all of the technical training minus general education; an electrical and drivability specialist certificate; and a hybrid specialist certificate (hybrid technology and facility management are also included in the main automotive technology degree).

“The beauty of all these skills and certificates is that they’re stackable,” Moody said. “For instance, you could get one of the certificates, put it in your pocket, and go to work at an auto shop. Then continue coming here and working toward other certificates, and ultimately toward the full degree, if that’s what you want. This process gets students to actually start working quicker.”

NMC’s automotive service technology program offers what is generally a two-year degree, although with many of Moody’s students also working, he said many will stretch that workload out to longer, up to three years. NMC has sent hundreds of new automotive technicians into the workforce

since the program started back in the ’60s; Moody couldn’t even estimate how many.

While plenty of them stay local, working at auto shops and car dealerships around the area, others achieve even bigger dreams in this new world of auto tech.

One of NMC’s graduates is currently in Chicago, working for Tesla on its line of innovative electric cars; another, Eric Dies, is in Charlotte, N.C., where he works on buses as a diesel technician for the Charlotte Area Transit System.

“The biggest thing I found helpful at the NMC program was all of the hands-on experience,” Dies said. “I’d also been to the University of Northwestern Ohio, but their automotive program is only a six-week course.”

Dies stayed with the NMC program full term and departed with a complete degree, starting his new job in North Carolina just two days after he graduated.

“That was especially great because I’d assumed that once I was out of school, I would probably be changing oil for $10 an hour for a long time before I made any progress,” Dies said.

“Most people in the automotive program are scared they’re going to invest all their money in schooling, and that’s where they’ll end up. But I was wrong.”

Steve Krueger is a success story who stayed local; he was an older student who had spent most of his working life in manufacturing until the recession hit him hard in 2009. He returned to school at the age of 54, got retrained in the NMC automotive tech program, and departed with his degree.

Krueger is now working as an automotive tech at Fox Grand Traverse, a local Ford dealership in Traverse City.

“The NMC program and instructors are amazing,” Krueger said. “So many of the in-

structors run their own shops, and you just can’t beat that kind of knowledge; for realworld experience, those guys are it. There’s so much potential in this business if you work hard and show ’em what you can do.”

Moody said that he currently has employers wanting to hire his students at any level, with any experience, just to fill the holes in the automotive tech industry.

“These employers will often work around the student’s school schedule, might pay for their tools to help them get started, or even pay for part of the student’s tuition,” he said. “The old convention of mechanics being ‘grease monkeys’ really isn’t true anymore. It’s never been an easy job by any means, but today it’s very high tech. And there’s an enormous, critical lack of technicians right now, which may sound bad but is actually an opportunity, if you consider supply and demand.”

And this is one career where the investment is definitely a solid foundation for a future.

“Locally, for students who have yet to acquire any experience at all, you can start at $12 an hour with partial benefits,” Moody said. “A lot of these people quickly move up into the $25 an hour range, and some auto technicians in our region are hitting $100,000 a year, which is pretty good for here. The other great thing is that you can take this training with you anywhere in the state, country or world,” he added. “Just about anybody who goes through this program can be a success.”

To find out more about NMC’s automotive service tech program, visit nmc.edu or call 231-995-1300.

Kristi Kates is a contributing editor and freelance writer.

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 9

Jimmy Pelizzari and Kate Stevens bounce off a snow bank in their Mazda 323 GTX at the Sno Drift Rally last year. Scott Rains photo

SPEED & SNOW At the Sno Drift Rally in Montmorency County, regular people team up to race at high speeds across treacherous terrain

By Patrick Sullivan The passenger in a rally race might have the tougher of the two jobs. All the driver has to do, after all, is drive.

Sure, it’s challenging to keep control at 90 or 100 mph on straightaways and to lose as little speed as possible on the corners, but it’s the codriver who takes heavy doses of Dramamine to make sure the car doesn’t fly off the road.

Being the navigator means feeding the driver constant information about the course from a binder that has every turn and crest in the trail mapped and rated. It takes a kind of stamina that’s not required in other sports.

“You’re reading for 300 miles in a car that’s bouncing all over the place. And you’re not in control of it, so your body isn’t anticipating it in the same way,” said Kate Stevens, who will codrive with her boyfriend, Jimmy Pelizzari, at this year’s Sno Drift Rally in Montmorency County on Jan. 27 and 28. “There was a race recently where I know in the night stages, every one of the co-drivers were really, really ill because it was very turny and dark.”

SPARK PLUG OF LOVE Pelizzari and Stevens have competed in 10 races together, and last year they finished third in their class at Sno Drift.

Their first race was the October 2014 Lake

Superior Performance Rally in Houghton. Pelizzari had bought his race car, a 1988 Mazda 323 GTX, the winter before, and the person he recruited to navigate unexpectedly dropped out.

Stevens, who grew up in a car family, jumped at the chance to be co-driver, but she didn’t exactly know what she was getting into.

“The person who was supposed to codrive with him bailed out at the last minute, and I said, ‘Well, if you can teach me to read notes in the car on the way there, I’ll do it,” she recalled. “How bad could it be?”

Reality set in as they drove into the Upper Peninsula. Stevens learned that the Houghton race has the reputation of being the most grueling of the Rally America events that take place around the country each year. She’d never sat in the Mazda. The car wasn’t even outfitted with a co-driver seat until they reached the base of the Keweenaw Peninsula. She had to learn fast.

“And off we went,” she said. “And it took basically three stages of me wanting to bury my head and cry before I finally was able to say, ‘OK, I’m finally starting to get the hang of this, and starting to get over the car sickness a little bit.’”

Stevens, a science teacher at Northport Public Schools, said she learned how to dose Dramamine. She said she also got a lot of tips from other drivers and co-drivers, and she couldn’t believe how welcoming everyone was.

10 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

A CAR IN ARKANSAS If you watch a YouTube video of a Rally America race filmed from the cockpit of a car, you see how intense the relationship is between the driver and the co-driver. The codriver constantly announces the next turn or the next hill and provides a numerical value of the severity of each change. Everything happens in a blur narrated with a staccato stream of numbers and letters. It isn’t one person telling another person to make a turn; it’s the codriver yelling at the driver about the condition of the road they are going to reach literally in the next second.

What makes Sno Drift special is that it happens on snow-covered roads. Most of the Rally America races happen on dirt roads in warm weather. That means Sno Drift drivers benefit more from smart driving than from horsepower.

Pelizzari, a Traverse City native who works as a freelance event planner, got into racing while he was a student in New York City and got a job with a company that arranged drives in exotic cars. He started hanging out at the track and got hooked.

He’d grown up aware of rally racing. It was something he always thought looked fun.

When he moved back to northern Michigan, he decided he needed to make a jump.

“I always wanted to go rallying,” he said. “I met some friends that wanted to do it and, we

found a really cheap car.”

He found the Mazda on a rally car website.

It represented a cheap entry into the world of rally racing and was sitting in a U-Haul parking lot in Fayetteville, Ark. It was too tempting to pass up.

“The price kept coming down, so during the polar vortex, I drove down in a van and picked it up and drove it back up in a day,” he said.

SO FAST AND SO SLOW The race happens in sections that take place over two days. Each section consists of race segments of 20 or so miles, separated by transit segments to the next starting line. On the race portions, drivers are released every minute based on their ranking and drive their cars as fast as they can go. In transit between segments, drivers are on open public roads and have to obey traffic laws. If they go too fast and arrive at a starting line early, or they drive too slow and arrive late, they get penalized.

Another detail that makes Sno Drift interesting: The cars must be street legal. That means racers can’t use studs on their tires.

They have to buy their snow tires at the store, just like everyone else.

It’s also very noisy inside these cars.

The driver and co-driver communicate over an intercom set up in their helmets. Pelizzari said his car came with an old, halfway

broken intercom, and they’ve since upgraded so that they can hear each other.

“The car is totally stripped down, so there’s no sound deadening or anything. We run a catalytic converter, but otherwise there’s no muffler,” Pelizzari said.

The engines aren’t that big or loud. Most of the noise comes from the road. That makes Sno Drift relatively quiet, on account of the snow. Still, rally cars are completely stripped of almost everything that’s not in service of safety or going fast. The dashboard binnacle?

Gone. Air conditioner or stereo and speakers?

Forget it. The cars do feature some accessories ordinary cars don’t have, like roll cages and six-point harness belts. There are fire extinguishers and first aid kits.

Pelizzari said the roll cages on a rally car are stronger than they are on other race cars that run on tracks and are unlikely to crash into anything head-on.

“In a rally car, you’re going a hundred and you hit that tree and you come to an immediate stop,” he said. “The tree usually doesn’t move, so the cages need to be much more significant.”

ANOTHER LEVEL Not all Sno Drift racers are as scrappy as Pelizzari and Stevens, who are their own mechanics and depend on help from friends.

Ryan Thompson, owner of Thompson Racing Fabrication of Maple City, will be the crew chief for four or five cars at this year’s Sno Drift.

His niche in the rally business is taking care of cars for owners who don’t have the time or the skills to take care of them themselves.

“They’ve got enough on their plate that they would just as soon pay me to handle that for them,” he said.

Thompson used to work in construction management, but when work slowed in 2008, he started to tinker with race cars. His business just kind of grew up around him. He was working downstate when, three years ago, he realized he could locate his business anywhere he wanted, so he moved to Leelanau County.

“People just more and more kept asking, ‘Hey can you do this? Hey, can you do that?’” he said. “I didn’t set out to build this business.

It more or less built itself.”

Today, he builds roll cages and other boutique items for racers. He also services performance cars.

When he was younger, he drove in rally and drag races. Today, the 38-year-old still competes in races, but he’s not driving.

He helps some clients get their cars into raceready condition and runs a crew of mechanics during the race weekend to keep them going. He’s got one client who keeps his car with Thompson and doesn’t touch it until race day, someone he calls an “arrive-and-drive” client.

“We deliver the car to the race, he shows up, he jumps in the car, he races for the weekend, and he goes home,” Thompson said. “He pays me to take care of everything.”

BONFIRE PUT ON ICE This is Sno Drift’s 20th year in Montmorency County. One tradition that’s grown up over those years has been put on hold for 2017.

Saturday’s final stage has run through an area that over the years has come to be known as “Bonfire Alley.”

“Once the rally started getting bigger, (people who live on that route) would throw parties at their house,” said Alex Berger, Sno Drift spokesman. People started to build fires to keep warm, and over time there were more and more and larger and larger fires. “As you’re driving down the stage, you see bonfire after bonfire after bonfire, for miles at a time.”

It was an amazing spectacle, but the fun got out of hand.

In recent years, the fires and parties were getting too big, and some spectators were throwing snowballs, rocks and bottles at cars.

Sno Drift doesn’t have enough volunteers to ensure the safety of that stretch, Berger said, so the route has been changed so that Bonfire Alley won’t happen this year.

Pelizzari and Stevens communicate over an intercom set up in their helmets.

“These drivers are driving at the best of their abilities, but one thing hitting their windshield could cause a big incident,” Berger said.

He said the viability of Bonfire Alley will be revisited again next year.

Enthusiasm is a good problem for an event like Sno Drift to have, as long as volunteers can keep spectators from throwing things at cars.

While rally racing is a niche sport, Berger said it attracts 8,000 drivers, volunteers, crew and spectators to the remote county each year.

Montmorency County Sheriff Chad Brown said the race brings a great crowd and few problems. He didn’t think it was a bad idea to take a year off Bonfire Alley, though. That segment had been getting harder and harder to patrol.

Brown was elected sheriff in November and has been with the department for a dozen years.

“That’s always our most challenging stage to police and keep safe,” he said.

He said he’s never followed auto racing and doesn’t know that much about it, but he thinks Sno Drift is great and a lot of fun.

“It’s amazing to watch, and it’s great for the county,” Brown said. “It’s an international event — we get people from literally all over the world.”

IN MEMORY OF SUBARU LOVER Rally racing isn’t exactly safe. Crashes are common. It’s rare, but drivers and co-drivers are sometimes killed.

The most recent Rally America participant to die was Elk Rapids native Matthew Marker, who was killed in an event in Washington state.

Marker’s death inspired his friend Dylan Helferich to get more serious about rally racing.

The Williamsburg resident had a Subaru that he liked to tinker with, and Marker’s death moved Helferich into action.

“After he passed away, I decided that I should probably build my own car and do what I want to do — he always told me I could do it,” Helferich said.

Marker died in May 2011 while driving in the Olympus Rally at age 31. He loved Subarus and always dreamed of getting a Subaru sponsorship. His death prompted friends and family to try for a Guinness World Record for the

largest Subaru parade in his hometown in 2012.

“Matt was probably one of the most willing-to-help people I’ve ever met or known,” Helferich said. “Racing was a big thing for him, and he decided he wanted his own team and he just built a car by himself.”

Today, Helferich is 26 and works as an auto technician at Dave’s Garage in Traverse City.

He is getting ready to race in Sno Drift again this year with his co-driver, Drake Dunigan, in a 2000 Subaru Impreza.

He said rally racing is so thrilling because you hurtle through twisting trails at incredible speeds, and the only thing keeping you on the road is the word of your navigator.

“You don’t know what’s coming up. It’s not like you’ve memorized it,” he said. “It’s almost a hundred percent in their hands, once you trust them. If they give you the wrong number or the wrong letter, you could be in some big trouble.”

‘WOW, THIS IS GORGEOUS’ The race makes for an intense weekend for Stevens and Pelizzari. One that makes it hard for them to return to their day jobs.

“For four or five days, you’re just so intensely either working on the car or making sure everything’s right. Stressing out. Worrying about something or another. Needing to be somewhere at a certain time,” Pelizzari said. “And then once you’re done, it’s kind of awful.”

“Yeah, and I think that on the navigator, co-driver side, there is a tremendous amount of organization involved,” Stevens said. “From where to be when at what time with what materials. And I would say crew and driver maybe aren’t as good with the organizational skills, so it’s kind of gotten to be a joke, like the team mom, keeping the tools together and keeping the trailer organized and keeping the car organized. You know, if I leave our notebook behind somewhere, if I misplace our timecard, that’s the end of our day.”

To endeavor in such a dangerous activity in such a remote environment makes for a tight community.

“The person behind you is your first aid if you slam into a tree. So, people walk up to each other and say, ‘Hi, nice to meet you. We’re the car ahead of you. We’d like to know your names. Because you’re going to be saving us if

Kate Stevens

Jimmy Pelizzari

we crash,’” Stevens said. “The community for me is what sticks, and part of that rally hangover is going back to that real life. It’s tough.

You’re amped up for four or five days, and then you have to go back.”

But then again maybe the best part of the sport is that it happens on faraway trails that snake through rugged, pristine woods.

“It’s amazing. I mean, there are times when, I shouldn’t say this, but you’re driving down this road at a hundred miles an hour and you should be totally focused, but I mean, you look around, and it’s like, ‘Wow, this is gorgeous,’” Pelizzari said. “That happens with pretty much every rally.”

Where to watch

Schedules and spectator guides that include maps of where to park and where to watch can be found at sno-drift.org. The cafeteria at the Atlanta High School will be open Friday and Saturday for food and hot drinks, said Mary Shiloff, race registrar.

On Saturday afternoon, there will be a “Super Special Run” at the Lewiston gravel pit that’s designed to offer spectators better-than-normal views of the action. Almost all of the race segment should be visible from the viewing area.

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 11

2

1

4

3

5

1. John Russell in 1966 with his first car, a 1930 Model A, which he purchased in 1962 for $50. He found it in the woods off East Bay and dragged it home.

2. Tim Schmidt and his 1972 Dodge Challenger Rallye, circa 2006.

3. Bev Carrol and her 1985 Monte Carlo SS. 4. Bill Lovett and his first Porsche.

5. A 1962 Olds Dynamic 88, the same model and color as Tim Schmidt’s first car.

CAR ENTHUSIASTS AND THEIR FIRST CAR

By Ross Boissoneau For many people, their first car is a wellused machine, something that will (hopefully) get them from point A to point B. A beater, in the parlance. But what about those for whom a car is more than just transportation? Those who grew up worshipping automobiles before becoming members of the many car clubs or actively involved in the industry surely had some sort of wonderful collector vehicle as their first car, right?

Well, maybe sometimes. Most of the time, though, not so much, as you’ll see below.

John Russell, Twin Bay British Car Club, Traverse City Russell’s first car was a 1930 Ford Model A pickup. Classic, right? Turns out he dragged it home from where it had sat for years in the woods off East Bay and had to work on it before it would even run. He had time, though, as he got it when he was 14.

“My brother and I were supposed to be sharing a Model A from Beulah. My brother could drive (and did), so my dad said to find another one,” said Russell.

“I found it sitting in the woods. The roof looked like Spanish moss. I asked, ‘Does it run?’ The owner said, ‘It did when I parked it.’”

Russell said while towing the car back to his home on Sixth Street, he and his dad were pulled over by a state trooper. He was asked if he was going to make it a hot rod or restore it, and when Russell said it would be all-original, the trooper accompanied them back home. The two became friends, and stayed in touch for years.

Prominent among Russell’s other cars is a 1953 MG TD, hence his membership in the club. He purchased it in 1968 from Ed Grace in Elk Rapids and has owned it for 49 years.

Tim Schmidt, Northern Michigan Mopar Club, Gaylord “What got me interested in collector cars

was growing up in that era,” said Schmidt, referring to the 1960s. “The cars rolling out of the high school parking lot were pretty cool. Some from the ’50s, some from the ’60s, some real muscle cars.”

The youngest of six kids, Schmidt said he got a lot of hand-me-downs. That includes his first car, a 1962 Olds Dynamic 88.

“My sister’s husband had bought it for her. She drove it for a couple years,” he said.

Schmidt got a great deal on it, though there was a reason for that. “It was free. I had to fix it before we could get it home.” And it wasn’t just a case of jumping the battery — he had to replace the front A-frame, getting one from a local junkyard.

“It was a big car, a four-door with tons of chrome. The dash was all kinds of chrome. The steering wheel was a work of art.” It had a 397 V8 four barrel and, according to Schmidt, “It would go down the road pretty good.”

It sounds as though that was something he was familiar with. “I wore out a lot of cars when I was young,” he said with a laugh.

After a couple years, he moved on to a Pontiac GT-37, which he described as “between a LeMans and a GTO. It’s kind of collectible now. That car would really rock down the road,” Schmidt said. He went on to describe other cars he had, as well as a lengthy diatribe on the ones that got away.

He eventually became a Mopar enthusiast, a term used originally to refer to “motor parts” for Chrysler vehicles, which has now passed into broader usage among car enthusiasts as a reference to Chryslers in general.

His Mopar vehicles have included a 1948 Dodge Business Coupe, and a 1972 Dodge Challenger E body 340 Rallye. He still owns the latter and drives it every summer.

Bev Carrol, TC Classics and Customs, Traverse City “I’ve always been a car enthusiast,” said Carrol. “My dad figured I should know

12 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

whatever was going on with a car.”

So, she learned everything from how to change her oil and tires to setting the timing and the distributor.

Her first car was one that was passed down from her father: A 1978 Mercury Monarch. “It was 10 years old. I got it in 1988. It was in good shape, with less than 75,000 miles on it.”

It was silver gray with a half-vinyl top, a burgundy interior and woodgrain trim. “It had an AM/FM stereo, and I think it had a tape deck, a cassette or maybe 8-track.”

Ah yes, the old 8-track tapes. Carrol said she used the car to move back home to Northville from Ann Arbor. “I crammed everything in it, tied a mattress to the top.”

She doesn’t think it was entirely altruistic on her parents’ part, however.

“I think it was a bribe to get me to move back to the northwest suburbs of Detroit,” she said. “My parents waved the car in front of my nose. We’ll give you a car.” Then, the kicker: “Oh, yeah, you owe us a thousand dollars.”

John McLeod, Classic Instruments, Boyne City Like Russell, McLeod got his first car two years before he could legally drive. “My first car was a ’68 Plymouth Fury. My dad bought it brand new. It was a family car,” said McLeod, who today runs Classic Instruments, dedicated to providing car collectors with the instrumentation for their classic automobiles.

Of course, a family car wasn’t McLeod’s first choice. But without enough money to get any of the cars of his dreams, he was happy to buy the Fury from his father. While it was a typical family car, when he got his hands on it, McLeod set about transforming it, with bucket seats, new carpet, a new air cleaner, cassette deck and yellow spark plug wires. “I drove that car for a long time: my first job, school — it was my first taste of freedom.”

Asked how cool he thought the car was,

McLeod responded enthusiastically: “To me at the time it was a 10.”

McLeod actually kept track of the car for many years.

“I wound up selling it to a friend. It ended up in Detroit, then back to Boyne City and a guy we knew. Six months ago, I ran into one of the guys (who’d owned the car), and he said he’d lost it.”

Bill Lovett, Street Legends Car Club, Charlevoix Lovett has been a car guy his whole life.

“I got the genes from my dad, who spent his career with Ford,” he said. The young Lovett would sit on the curb in front of his house and watch the cars go by.

“I was attracted to cars in magazines. I started doing a scrapbook,” he said.

Lovett moved from Detroit to Pittsburgh, where his father was transferred, before moving back to Michigan.

“We lived two miles from the Ford test track. When I was nine or 10 we would ride bikes there with friends. We learned when they (drivers) stopped for a cigarette break, and we’d go talk to them.”

Lovett’s first car was a 1939 Ford coupe. “It was in the back row of a used car lot in Mt. Lebanon (Pa.). It was not a shining example. I was in love with a 1940 but couldn’t afford it. It took a little over a year to get it running.”

So, he was easy to convince when his father offered to sell him his 1951 Mercury.

“That was like a Cadillac to me.”

Not only is Lovett a member of the Street Legends, he’s a member of the Porsche Club of America. And while that 1939 Ford is long gone, he still has his first Porsche.

“It’s in the garage covered right now. In 1972 a 914 cost $4,000, and a 911 (the car he really wanted) was $8,000. That was a year’s salary.”

Ross Boissoneau is a freelance writer.

Snowplows can cause whiteouts when they hit drifts. It’s best to be cautious when driving near. Ross Boissoneau photo

Winter driving: Speed, caution and snow tires

By Ross Boissoneau It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but ice and snow make it the slipperiest, whiteouts the hardest to see in, and temperatures certainly make it the coldest. Winter is not for the faint of heart, and for drivers it presents numerous challenges.

How do you make the best of it then?

We talked with several experts about how to approach winter driving. One thing they all agreed on was the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

First things first, according to Dave Surowitz, general manager at Marathon Automotive in Traverse City. That means prepping for winter long before snow flies. “The timing of prevention (means doing it) before we get to winter. Check the cars before winter gets here. Inspect it in early fall,” he said, mentioning things like the battery, spare tire, coolant level and spark plugs. “It reduces the stress level.”

That’s true for both those driving and those who love them. Surowitz points to college students, who probably aren’t thinking about getting their car winterized in August when they leave for school. Checking a car for any possible problem before winter hits can save time, money and lives.

He also swears by snow tires. “It’s always safest and best to put a set of winter tires on,” he said. “There’s a winter-rated all-season tire, but nothing beats snow tires.” He estimated only a third to half of the customers at Marathon invest in snow tires. He does understand they are an expense not everyone can afford. For those who can’t afford a second set of tires, he suggested getting the best tires they can afford, regardless of the season. “Good tires are a must.”

John McLeod is a police officer with Boyne City, as well as the owner of Classic Instruments, which provides instrumentation for classic autos of all sorts. He agreed that the first, best and most important step is making sure your tires are the best they can be. “First, get snow tires. That makes a good two-wheel drive (vehicle) drive like four-wheel. If not snows, make sure the tires are in good shape and have the proper air pressure.”

McLeod also extolled the virtues of having a safety kit in your car. “A blanket, flares — that kit you got from dad,” he said with a laugh. “Especially extra clothing or a blanket.

You’ve hit a deer, the car can’t run, and it’s freezing.”

He also advised against getting out of the car to try to fix something, particularly on a busy road. “There’s not always enough room.

Don’t go outside and work on it. Safety is the No. 1 issue. Call 911, call the police, call a

wrecker. You’re not bothering the police,” he said, noting they’d much rather go on what might turn out to be an unnecessary call than have to deal with injuries.

Those sentiments are echoed by state police Trooper Ron Rabineau. The 27-year veteran, who has spent his career in Gaylord, said that with slippery surfaces and reduced visibility, it’s more important than ever to pay attention to the road rather than whatever is going on inside the vehicle. “Pay attention to driving. Focus,” he said. There are so many distractions today, starting with just the basic equipment. “There are lots of distractions with standard equipment: climate control, speed, radio.”

Add in the challenges presented by passengers or cell phones, and you have even more potential for disaster. “I’m a parent of three teen drivers. I speak from experience,” he said.

When it’s snowing and/or blowing, he said visibility is of paramount importance. “Keep your headlights on, and keep your windows and windshield free of snow.” And if you suddenly find yourself in a whiteout, don’t stop.

“Try to keep moving slowly. The guy behind you doesn’t expect you to be stopped. Turn on your flashers.” In other words, see and be seen.

Brian Gutowski, engineer/manager at the Emmet County Road Commission, said snow and wind means visibility can get pretty bad. That’s a problem all around. “If you see a snowplow, back off. When a plow hits a drift, snow will cover everything and cause a whiteout. When you can’t see us, we can’t see you.

Leave plenty of space,” he said.

When snow is accumulating and drifting in the roadways, the local road commission is your best friend. But even those huge snowplows may have a hard time keeping up when blizzard conditions hit. “When there’s lots of snow, roads will drift shut. It’s hard to keep up.”

Making things worse is that when it does get windy, the road commissions use less salt and sand. That may seem counterintuitive, but the blowing can do two things, both of which are detrimental. It can scatter the salt and sand, making it ineffective. Worse, he said the salt can cause and attract moisture, which when cold will simply refreeze, making it worse.

One last bit of advice comes from all of them, in different words. “Keep your speeds down,” said Rabineau.

“If you’re in a hurry, don’t go,” said McLeod.

And from Surowitz: “Nothing replaces caution.”

Ross Boissoneau is a freelance writer.

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 13

Gear up with the best driving music

Traverse CiTy

231-929-3200 • 4952 Skyview Ct.

Charlevoix

231-237-0955 • 106 E. Garfield Ave.

www.schulzortho.com

By Kristi Kates Are you ready for a road trip? For those who love to travel — especially those who aren’t big fans of winter weather — this is prime time for loading up your suitcase and hitting the highways in search of a warmer, or at least different, temporary destination. The drive to travel is a magnetic one, for wandering vagabonds and seasonal vacationers alike — but either way, you can’t go on a road trip without music. So, here are our picks for a Michigan-themed mix list you can easily collect via iTunes or customize through Spotify.

Crank up the volume and go!

M83, “Go!” The name of this French band echoes that of a Michigan highway, and the song title itself gives you a push directly out into your road trip, so what’s not to love about this starting song? With lyrics about traveling, arriving, running away, re-turning, and meeting at the station, “Go!” covers pretty much every aspect of a road trip besides your unfortunate choices of gas station food.

Stone Temple Pilots, “Interstate Love Song” Want to get anywhere in Michigan?

Unless it’s just around town, you’d best prepare for a long drive, whether down U.S. 131, 31, 2, or the spine of our state, Interstate 75, which takes you downstate to Detroit and beyond. I-75 will most likely also be your route of choice to Florida sunshine, with STP yowling this roadworthy song in the background about abandonment and trains.

The Proclaimers, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” Similarly, the distances between destinations in Michigan can be pretty vast — not as big as the plains out West, granted — but far enough to crank this hit by a pair of Scottish brothers right on up to 11, so you can let everybody in the car sing along with that massive refrain at the top of their lungs until you get to the next rest stop.

Sammy Davis Jr., “Hello, Detroit” Sammy D. meanders confidently through his always smooth vocal tones as he name-checks a shortlist of stops throughout the Motor City, from Greektown to Motown.

This tune is also quite well-mannered with its vintage feel, making it our pick for keeping your carload calm as you sit in yet another traffic jam on Interstate 96.

“Glee” cast, “Don’t Stop Believing” Okay, there technically isn’t a real place called “South De-troit” as bellowed in this classic rock tune by ’70s rockers Jour-ney

14 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

(the band’s lead singer wrote the lyric because “South De-troit” sounded “poetic”), but thanks to the tune’s revival as a single from the TV show “Glee,” it’s become an anthem for never giving up. Our instructions: Cue this one up every time someone in the car asks, “Are we there yet?”

Guided by Voices, “Motor Away” With a churning intro that sounds like a car revving up its engine, this track by northern Michigan-based multi-instrumentalist Tobin Sprout and his bandmates is low on pro-duction value (think: garage) but big on hook, with its slightly off drumbeat and quirky melody. It’s often described as a song about freedom — and what’s more freeing than the open road?

Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk” A good groove inside the car is as important as smooth roads outside, and Mars has been crafting some of the best modern grooves in pop music over the past few years (not to discount Ronson’s own abilities setting a beat). This smash mashup of hip-hop and Motown is perfect for car dancing while you’re highway driving, whether you’re zipping by tall buildings, bill-boards or confused livestock.

Bright Eyes, “Another Travelin’ Song” You probably wouldn’t want a whole lot of perennially mopey Conor Oberst on your road trip, unless you enjoy travel-ing along in a slog of regret, but this singular track is in great audio form for road tripping with its country ambiance and traveling theme, and the tune’s so cheerful you’ll be able to (mostly) forgive the increasingly downtrodden lyrics.

Sufjan Stevens, “Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)”

Michigan expatriate Stevens (now a resident of Brooklyn, N.Y.) originally hails from Petoskey, which is probably where he found the time to memorize the long list of Michigan cities that careen through this psychedelic-folk tune. Bonus: Stevens also sings “Chicago” if you’re heading to the Windy City. He also offers another song called “Alanson, Crooked River,” an-other oh-soMichigan melody that features appropriately icy synths.

Talking Heads, “Road to Nowhere” One of the great things about driving in Michigan is the fact that we still have so many unspoiled places here. Destinations are all fine and well, but if you have a hankering to just get out into the middle of no-

where, put on this track with its galloping refrain (yes, we know you’re in a car, not a horse, but still), and head up to the wilds of the Upper Peninsula or out into mid-state farmlands.

Cake, “The Distance” This propellant song from the verbose California band can be applied to many things: achieving your goals, running a foot race, horse racing, or yes, a road trip, with many of the lyrics lending themselves particularly well to driving cars, although you might not want to take the line, “He’s going for speed” too literally unless you’re spoilering for a ticket.

DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, “Summertime” It’s not summer yet, but this always-fun tune from Will Smith and his cohort is just right for reviving that feel of a much warmer northern Michigan in mid-July, as you hop onto U.S. 131 to head to a festival, picking up a pint of fresh farm-stand cherries along the way. “Pop in my CD/ And let me run a rhyme/ And put your car on cruise/ ’Cause this is summertime.”

Broken Bells, “The High Road” This track from Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and The Shins’ James Mercer is really about traveling through life, but who says it can’t also be applied to setting tires to road? “The high road is hard to find,” Mercer sings — making this an apt anthem for the next time you find yourself lost on a twotrack or heading the wrong way down one of Grand Rapids’ one-way streets.

Arcade Fire, “No Cars Go” The impeccable rock harmonies of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne and the speedy instrumentals are what make this track stand out amidst the other songs on “Neon Bible,” even though this is more of an arriving-atyour-destination song than a traveling song.

It even accompanied an episode of “Top Gear” back when “Top Gear” was cool, so it’s got that added cache as well.

The Go-Go’s, “Vacation” This ’80s classic says it all with its title — if you’re heading out for a road trip vacation, the chiming intro to this bubbly track by the wildly successful girl band quintet is perfect for that effervescent feeling of escape you get as you finally pull out of the driveway. “Vacation, all I ever wanted/ Vacation, had to get away.”

Kristi Kates is a contributing editor and freelance writer.

ADAM HAMMER’S RESTORATION DREAMS

By Kristi Kates Legos, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars weren’t merely toys for a youthful Adam Hammer. As a kid, playing with miniature cars was his favorite pastime; by the age of 15, he’d taken things full-scale by buying his first vehicle, a 1994 Ford Ranger. By turn, the Ranger itself was more than just a truck.

“At 15 years old, I purposefully bought a stick shift so I’d be forced to learn how to drive one,” Hammer said with a laugh.

He also considered it a chance to start learning a trade that he’d wanted to be part of for as long as he could remember.

“My dad raced cars for a while,” Hammer said, “and when we lived out in New Jersey, he’d always take us across to Manhattan to the New York Auto Show so we could go and see the new models. I’ve just always, always been interested in cars.”

After high school, Hammer attended McPherson College in Kansas specifically for its four-year program in auto restoration. In the summers, when many of his fellow students were taking time off, he never strayed far from the cars, taking a summer internship in California with a Duesenberg expert, and spending the next two summers back in New Jersey interning for Rolls Royce and Packard experts. “That was the biggest value of school, really,” he said. “Meeting people, networking and finding out what the collector car industry had to offer.”

Hammer departed McPherson with a degree, and more; he met his wife, Tabetha, through that same program. “She had her own interests in vehicles,” he said. “She’d started restoring old tractors in her teens.”

When his wife got a new job, having been recruited by Hagerty in Traverse City, the Hammers moved to Michigan, and Hammer spent six months doing odd jobs around the region, mostly working for body shops.

“During that time, I saw a real need for high-quality auto restoration,” he said. “The question had always been, ‘Can I really have a full-time job doing this?’, and the answer was very much yes — you can have a long, full-time career restoring cars.”

Once Hammer had the lay of the land in Traverse City, he set up his own auto restoration shop, renting space from MFD Classic Motors, a local specialty vehicle storage company. His business name came from a set of tools used for shaping sheet metal. “I’d actually thought of the name back when I was in college,” Hammer said, “and since now both my wife and I have an interest in vehicle restoration, it seemed fitting.”

When Hammer launched Hammer and Dolly Auto Restorations five years ago, it was on a shoestring. But while he may have lacked

finances and equipment, he had confidence in his own abilities.

“I had my tool box, with the tools I’d purchased from college. I had a bench, a handful of machines my dad had given me from his own auto shop — a drill press, a sandblaster and a solvent tank — and I had about $5,000.

That was it,” he said.

Hammer and Dolly grew slowly, from job to job, with Hammer continually reinvesting the money he was earning, only taking enough to pay the bills and upgrading his shop and equipment with the rest. He worked by himself for the first full year.

“I didn’t necessarily know for sure the business would work up here in Traverse,” he said, “but in my six months of freelance work here, I’d seen a lot of project cars, and body shops are equipped differently than a restoration shop.

So I could see how my processes and my education would differentiate my restoration shop from a typical automotive body shop.”

Since he began the business, Hammer’s seen hundreds of cars roll through his shop, most being minor to middling projects, and a couple dozen being major restorations. His favorite cars to work on are vehicles of the late ’20s to early ’40s.

“Because while the cars were extremely drivable and comfortable during that time, they all had idiosyncrasies that made each unique to its manufacturer,” he explained. “For instance, late ’20s Lincolns had an air compressor built off of the side of the transmission so you could air up your tires right from your own car. I’m fascinated by details like that.”

He also cites the ’20s and ’30s, especially, as the real evolution of vehicles, when engineers were starting to put extra effort into constantly improving the cars’ characteristics and special features.

“Back then, multiple cylinder engines like V8s and V12s, engines that we’re impressed by today when we see them in supercars, were just normal in production vehicles,” Hammer said.

“I have an engineering and mechanical mind, so I really like to see how things like that came about, and how they work.”

The current floor of the Hammer and Dolly shop looks like a who’s who of collector cars: a 1940 Packard, a ’47 Hudson, a mid-’50s Jag XK120, a 1950 Cadillac, a ’66 Mustang, and an old Model T. “We’ve got a little of everything, and every car is different,” Hammer said. The average length of time a car spends in the shop can be from a week for small repairs, to several years, depending on the size and complexity of the job.

Hammer and Dolly just wrapped up its first complete restoration, a 1956 Chevrolet Nomad two-door wagon that had been built in Kansas

City and then left to age in Denver; its owner had built a protective garage right around the car when it could no longer be driven. The Nomad sat for years until Hammer’s client bought it.

“The Nomad had no engine or drive train — it was basically a rolling body and interior,” Hammer said. “We had to source all of the parts for the car and completely rebuild it. It took four years, which is a very lengthy timeline, but we worked on every single component of that car. Now it’s just like it was when it rolled off the line, complete with its original colors of Crocus Yellow and Onyx Black paint.”

Another vehicle that’s caught Hammer’s particular interest is the ’47 Hudson, back at Hammer and Dolly for its second round of work; Hammer relayed the Hudson’s history with enthusiasm.

“I really enjoy this car — it isn’t incredibly significant or worth a lot of money, but it’s just so interesting,” he said. “It’s basically built of leftover parts from before World War II, so it has a lot of pre-war styling cues even though it wasn’t out until 1947.”

“What happened is that the company was making production bodies and engines for the ’42 Hudson, but because metals were at a low availability when the war hit, they had to stop producing cars and go to work for the war department. Then once the war was over, they still had all the pieces they’d made in 1942, so they said, well, let’s make this car. They were essentially making ’42 Hudsons in 1947, so that was the ’47 Hudson — and then their next new model car didn’t come out until 1949. You might recognize the ’49 Hudson from the cartoon movie “Cars,” as that’s what the car character of Doc Hudson was in the film,” he said.

With each car having its own unique history, design, schematic, parts and quirks, the challenges are endless when it comes to restoration, whether the job is as small as a paint touch-up, or as extensive as that ’56 Nomad.

“The toughest thing is probably the fact that sometimes parts just aren’t available,” Hammer said. “So when you can’t buy them, you have to make them — but a lot of times, the people who were experts at making these parts are retired or no longer around. So you’re constantly trying to research and figure out the best solution for both time and money considerations.”

These days, Hammer has more than just himself to rely upon to work through those challenges, and to realize his clients’ automotive dreams. In addition to the support of his wife, he also has a full complement of employees, six fulltimers soon to be seven. The biggest thing he sees in Hammer and Dolly’s future is more growth.

“My passion for cars has only grown since I fixed up that Ford Ranger for the first time,”

Hammer said. “Now, I’d love to see us become one of the foremost recognized restoration shops in the country. I’d like to have our cars competing on the shores of Pebble Beach (the Concours d’Elegance collector car show in Monterey, Calif.) — that’s the highest level of classic car restoration showing. That would be the point at which I could say I’ve arrived. And that’s how good I want our restorations to be.

It’s not even that I want Hammer and Dolly to grow in size, necessarily — but I want us to always grow in quality.”

Hammer and Dolly Auto Restorations is located at 1701 Park Drive in Traverse City. For more information, visit hammeranddolly.com or call 231-947-3850.

Kristi Kates is a contributing editor and freelance writer.

ADAM HAMMER’S CARS

When Adam Hammer isn’t working on other peoples’ cars or driving his day-today vehicle, what is he driving for fun? Of course we had to ask. ’66 Ford Mustang “That car was my grandfather’s — I restored it in college, and I was really hurrying to get it done because it was supposed to be our wedding getaway car!” (Spoiler: He got it restored in time.) ’68 MGB Roadster “The MGB was a project car that my dad picked up. It’s a neat little car.” ’94 Ford Ranger Yes, Hammer kept the very first vehicle he ever bought. “I put a V8 in it.”

Modified dirt track car “That car was purpose-built just for dirt racetracks; it’s a complete custom chassis with a Chevy drive train. It has no potential to be on the road, but it’s great for racing.”

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 15

Is Christianity an essential belief system or a philosophy?

Bill’s statement “Am I a Christian?” Nicholas Kristof asked evangelical Christian pastor the Rev. Timothy Keller in his New York Times op-ed a couple days before Christmas. At issue was Mr. Kristof ’s skepticism over long-standing doctrinal beliefs and whether his doubts preclude him from being Christian.

“Tim, I deeply admire Jesus and his message, but am also skeptical of themes that have been integral to ChristiRev. Dr. William anity — the virgin birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and C. Myers Senior Pastor so on.” at Presbyterian The question of “essential beliefs” has long been a chalChurch of lenge for Christians. Peter and Paul disagreed over Gentiles.

Traverse City My own denomination was born in a little event called the Protestant Reformation. Even within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we don’t always agree on “essential beliefs.”

This is a concern. Jesus knew “a house divided against itself would fall.”

Striving for unity among believers, within congregations, between denominations, even with people of other faiths is essential for the welfare of our witness. But there is room for doctrinal difference. There is room for conversation and growth. There is room for A LOCAL PASTOR grace. “People of good faith can disagree on consequential matters.”

Rev. Keller offers a reasoned and compassionate defense of the foundational Christian beliefs raised by Kristof ’s questions. His line of demarcation is the Apostles’ Creed.

“In general, if you don’t accept the Resurrection or other foundational beliefs as defined by the Apostles’ Creed, I’d say you are on the outside of the boundary.”

Rev. Keller stands on solid theological ground. Many Christians share his beliefs on the importance of doctrine. The Apostles’ Creed remains authoritative for most Christians today. But I’m not sure it is the best way to answer Kristof ’s question.

If you were to ask me, “Am I a Christian?” I would simply ask, “Do you love Jesus Christ and will you serve him?”

Gary’s statement Regular readers of this column recognize that my primary objection to the teaching of the Christian religious belief system, especially to children, is that generally the teachings are presented as facts.

I recently listened to an interview on NPR, and the speaker was recalling her childhood. She discussed how she had lived in fear of doing anything that could potentially offend her Christian God. She was taught and firmly believed Gary Singer Gary helps that if she did not behave in a certain manner that she would businesses with spend eternity engulfed in the flames of hell. I remember feeltheir Internet ing exactly the same way when I was in Catholic grade school. marketing.

Today I look back upon that time as one of fear, not joy. I He was raised a suspect that speaker does, as well.

Catholic.

I also suspect neither she nor I would have experienced the same trepidation had these beliefs been presented to us as what they actually are — philosophical. Philosophy is defined as a theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behavior. Isn’t that exactly what religion purports to be?

Most religious leaders today would be uncomfortable with the term philosophy when used to describe their firmly enATHEIST DEBATE trenched religious beliefs. For them, their belief in a God and afterlife is so certain and unyielding that it far exceeds philosophical texture. But, certainty conveys that on some level there must be evidence to support those feelings. Religion offers none.

Extreme fundamentalist Christians are certain that Noah crammed two of every type of animal, insect and every other life form onto a boat. They all survived the “great flood” in perfect health, without eating each other, and began reproducing. More liberal Christians dismiss all of that as the fantasy that it is.

In fact, most religious leaders such as priests and ministers cannot agree on even the most fundamental tenets of their religion. I would suggest there is no similar group in existence in the world, other than another religion. The fact that no theistic religious sect can agree on its most basic precepts is acknowledgment that the entire basis for its existence is fatally flawed.

Religious groups would have an easier time attracting others by doing away with the threats and simply presenting their beliefs for what they are: theories.

CROSSED

Gary’s reply Bill, the phrase “solid theological ground” is, to me, oxymoronic. There is nothing solid about it. All of Christian theology is based upon unsubstantiated stories and reconstructed history. Contrast that with global warming where abundant empirical research provides irrefutable evidence that it is both human-sourced and accelerating. Over 95 percent of scholarly publications between 2004 and 2015 agree it is man-made. The other 5 percent are likely paid to disagree.

Please show me any religious belief with 95 percent of religious scholar agreement. The virgin birth of Jesus? Maybe most Christians believe that, but none have a shred of evidence to support those beliefs. What you and they have is faith, and that is a wonderful thing. Nevertheless, in the face of all sorts of new and interesting discoveries about the origins of your religion, Christians continue to deny all of it.

Why is the fastest-growing religious belief system in the U.S. “none”? Many haven’t had a bad experience with a church. We simply don’t buy into the teachings just because someone told us we must or else.

AND A LOCAL

Bill’s reply Gary, scientists don’t agree! Consider global warming or ever-changing recommendations in women’s health or that fifth dentist who never chooses Trident!

Should we ignore all science because of disagreements on consequential matters?

The teachings Christians find authoritative are 2,000 years old.

Disagreements in interpretation are inevitable. As new scientific information comes to light in areas such as archaeology, anthropology or biblical studies, most Christians adjust their thinking accordingly.

We don’t agree on everything, but we agree on what’s important. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Salvation is a gift of God’s grace, through faith, secured in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The highest form of faith is to love God and neighbor with all we are. I’m always saddened to hear of people, such as yourself or the woman interviewed on NPR, who’ve had a bad experience in the church. But you’re the exception, not the rule. Should we close the schools because some students have a bad experience? You believe our beliefs are foolish fantasies, but offer no evidence, only opinion.

Agree statement While Gary and Bill disagree on the essence of faith, they do agree on the importance of living our professed beliefs with integrity.

16 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

Leland Lodge is combining outdoor winter activities, food and music at its first Party in Your Parka event.

Leland Lodge wants you to party — in your parka

By Kristi Kates The warm oranges of a roaring fire contrasting with the icy blues of snow and ice.

Laughter drifting along the chilly breeze as the soft shhhh of sleds and skis can be heard sliding down the hill. And energetic live music encouraging guests to dance while they’re still suited up in snow boots and parkas.

That’s the vision the staff of the Leland Lodge has in mind for a new event launching this year — Party in Your Parka, a festive winter celebration aiming to bring a whole new set of guests to the property.

“We seem like a seasonal place to most people,” said Katelyn VanVreede, Leland Lodge’s events manager. “Many of them don’t even realize that we’re open in the winter. So, we wanted people to know that not only are we here, we actually have a lot of activities to offer.”

VanVreede developed the plan for the inaugural Party in Your Parka with her fellow staffers at Leland Lodge: lodging manager Patti Shaffran, executive chef Richard Witham and Tony West, the manager of Leland Lodge’s in-house restaurant, Bogey’s.

“We all came up with the idea together,” Shaffran said. “It was a really good collaboration between all four of us.”

But it’s the great northern Michigan winter that’s the star of this show.

“Because of where we’re located, it’s all about the snow, ice and fun casual winter sports,” VanVreede said. “The space we have here allows us to offer an ice skating rink, great sledding and plenty of cross-country skiing on our golf course.” (Bring your own skates, sleds or skis.)

Once guests get their fill of winter activities, they can refill the ol’ gas tank with some great food, including hearty chili, savory pork sliders and hot chocolate served outdoors, plus an indoor buffet of Lodge favorites.

You’ll find movies playing indoors next to a roaring fireplace; outdoors, a “cauldron fire” will invite guests to make their own s’mores. And whether you’ve just kicked off your ski gear or are still stomping around in moon boots, Party in Your Parka’s music will

get your feet moving directly to the dance floor of the heated outdoor tent.

The first performer will be Clint Weaner from 2-5 p.m. Weaner, a northern Michigan import from Portland, Ore., is promoting his new studio album, “Drive Fast, Take Chances,” and will be performing as a solo act.

From 6-10 p.m., The Broom Closet Boys will pump up the volume even more with popular covers that range from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Queen to Miley Cyrus.

“Those boys are local favorites, they play all kinds of great old rock ’n’ roll and current music too,” Shaffran said.

If you’re having too much fun to leave, the Leland Lodge is offering discounted lodging rates for the weekend (call the Lodge to inquire); but if it’s just a day jaunt you’re looking for, all of this fun can be had for just $10 per person, which includes two food or beverage tickets. And don’t forget to wear your snazziest parka to vie for the top parka prize.

Party in Your Parka will take place on Jan. 21 at Leland Lodge, 565 E. Pearl Street, Leland.

The party will run from 2-11 p.m. For more information, or to reserve tickets, visit lelandlodge.com or call 231-256-9848.

Kristi Kates is a contributing editor and freelance writer.

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 17

Running with Bigfoot A winter race for everyone

the best...

sizzling fajitas marvelous margaritas burritos • chimis • wraps quesadillas • tacos enchiladas • children’s menu & fresh homemade salsa!

Petoskey, Lansing, Mt. Pleasant, Gaylord and two locations in Traverse City.

18 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

By Kristi Kates Inspired by summertime runners looking for a comparable winter workout, Randy Step, co-owner of specialty running gear stores Running Fit, launched the Bigfoot 5K and 10K snowshoe running events in 2011, and found the race the subject of immediate attention.

“With over 400 participants the first year, we were on the map,” Step said. “In fact, we were contacted by the USSSA (United States Specialty Sports Association) to host the National Snowshoe Championship, and we did so in 2012.”

Bigfoot has been the Midwest qualifying event for the National Snowshoe Race ever since, giving racers a chance to make the U.S. team and compete in the World Snowshoe Championships at Saranac Lake, N.Y. “All that said, the elite racers are a small but exciting part of the Bigfoot event,” Step said.

“Ninety percent of the participants are just out there stumbling through; smiling, laughing and enjoying a fun physical day in the beauty of winter in the great north woods.”

Step was inspired to start the Bigfoot series when he himself experienced snowshoe running for the first time.

“About 10 years ago, I read an article about several world-class runners who were praising the benefits of getting in runs on snowshoes,” he said. “Smaller, lighter versions of the classic wood and web snowshoes came on the market, and I was immediately hooked. Before then, when a bit of snow hit I would put on the cross-country skis. But once I put in a run on the snowshoes, I never pulled out the skis again.”

Snowshoe running, Step explained, is just like running, but under more challenging circumstances. If you’re a complete novice to the sport, no problem — Step said that

anyone can participate by simply strapping on the snowshoes and giving it a try, and you’ll likely burn plenty of calories too.

“It’s a kick-butt, hard workout that fulfills my running passion,” he said.

With 700 participants expected in this year’s Bigfoot, Step said that the event has a good shot at being the largest snowshoe race in the U.S. “Obviously this isn’t a large sport, but it’s pretty cool for Traverse City to be on top,” he said.

Five age groups will be in friendly competition for awards in both the 5K and 10K races in a full day’s worth of activity.

Registration takes place early around a roaring fire at Timber Ridge Resort’s log lodge; the course itself is an off-trail run with hills, logs to jump and branches to duck under.

Suggested gear includes running/trail shoes, snowshoes (a limited amount of snowshoes are available to rent if you don’t have your own, but be sure to sign up early), and waterproof or breathable pants, gloves and hat. Unless it’s unseasonably warm that day, which is unlikely in northern Michigan, be prepared to be doused in snow.

After the race concludes and everyone warms up, the second half of this celebration of snow sports begins. The overall male and female winners will carry off 40-inch high Yeti trophies, and everyone who participated is invited to stick around for hot eats and to share their snowshoe running stories.

“The highlight of the event for most of us is the incredible post-race chili furnished by Traverse City’s Slabtown Cafe and Burgers, served fireside in the warm and wonderful lodge at Timber Ridge,” Step said.

The 2017 Bigfoot Snowshoe Race will take place Jan. 21 at Timber Ridge Campground in Traverse City. For more information and/or to register to participate, visit runsnow.com.

1

4

6

3

2

5

7

NORTHERN SEEN 1. Members of Petoskey’s own Thrive 45 young professionals group gathers at Petoskey Brewing.

2. Owner Leanna Collins shows off the stage at the newly renovated Torch Lake Cafe.

3. Walt Muellenhagen and Dr. Ramona Pleva pause for a smile at Recess.

4. Adam Kelley, Andrew Martin, Matt Meyer, Stephen Daly, and David Curtiss braved the snow to plot world domination at the Thrive 45 gathering in Petoskey.

5. Shanley Harrigan, Meghan Kratochvil, Lindsay Nisbett and Haley Bordvold of The Center for Plastic Surgery enjoy Recess at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City.

6. Carrie Brown and Libby Struik start off the new year with a jump into West Bay at Bryant Park, TC. 7. TVC Airport Executive Director Kevin Klein in surrounded by Recess prize winners Tom Cowell and Meg Holmes.

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 19

jan 14

saturday

TC 250 VINTAGE SNOWMOBILE RACE: Held at Interlochen Eagles. The race starts at 1:30pm, with kids races from 10:30am-12:30pm. Find ‘2017 TC 250 Enduro’ on Facebook.

-------------------BOOK LAUNCH PARTY: 2-4pm, Horizon Books, TC. “She Stopped for Death” by Elizabeth Buzzelli. horizonbooks.com

--------------------

DIVE DEEP INTO SELF-EXPRESSION: Using drama, movement, sound, storytelling & contact. 10am-1pm, TC. $10 suggested donation.

231-421-3120. meetup.com/InterPlay-TC/

--------------------

CLIMATE ADVOCATE TRAINING: 9am-noon, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Grand Traverse, TC. Free. Sponsored by the Green Sanctuary Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Grand Traverse. RSVP: 231-499-9197.

-------------------BACK PORCH COFFEEHOUSE: 7pm, Charlevoix Senior Center. Featuring Conrad Gold & John Hoaglund. $10 suggested donation. A circle jam will follow the performance.

231-622-2944.

-------------------WINTER HIKE: 10am, Fruithaven Nature Preserve, Frankfort. gtrlc.org

-------------------WINTER WARM UP: 10am-5pm, the Wineries of Old Mission Peninsula. Enjoy comfort food creations paired with wine. Tickets: $20 advance & $25 day of (if available). wineriesofomp.com

--------------------

FREE ARTS & CRAFTS DAYS: Noon-3pm, Gaylord Area Council for the Arts, Downtown Gaylord. Today is puppet mania. gaylordarts.org

-------------------GOOD ON PAPER IMPROV: 9-10:30pm, GT Circuit, TC. Tickets, $10. Find ‘Good on Paper Improv’ on Facebook.

-------------------SNOWSHOE HIKE & WINTER WILDLIFE WITH TOM FORD: 9am, Boardman River Nature Center, TC. natureiscalling.org

-------------------NORTHERN MICHIGAN CAMPING & RV SHOW: Jan. 12-15, The Ellison Place, Gaylord. Today’s hours are 9am-9pm. Admission is three non-perishable food items or a cash donation. rvshowofthenorth.com

-------------------KIDS MOVIE NIGHT: 7:30pm, Aspen Room or Alpine Room, Treetops Resort, Gaylord.

Tonight will feature “Cat in the Hat”. Free. treetops.com

-------------------CHRIS BUHALIS: 8pm, The Elks, Cadillac.

Presented by Gopherwood Concerts, this Detroit native brings his thought provoking lyrics that inspire the grassroots activist in us all. Advance tickets: $12 adults, $6 students (13-18) & free for kids 12 & under with adult.

Door: $15, $7. mynorthtickets.com

--------------------

FREE TANGLING ART CLASS: 10am-noon, Interlochen Public Library. Create designs from doodling. For adults. Register: 231-276-6767.

--------------------

SATURDAY PROGRAMMING: Winter Wildlife.

10am-4pm, Boardman River Nature Center, TC. Free. natureiscalling.org

--------------------

BAYSIDE TRAVELLERS CONTRA DANCE: 8-11pm, Twin Lakes – Gilbert Lodge, TC. Music

by Dag Nabbit. A contra-dance lesson for beginners will take place from 7-7:45pm. $11 adults, $7 students & $9 members. dancetc.com

-------------------JAN. COMMUNITY SLEDDING NIGHT: 5-8pm, Kiwanis Park, Harbor Springs. This free family party includes sledding, pizza, crafts & games. 231-526-0610.

-------------------“COMPANY”: 7:30pm, Old Town Playhouse, TC. Tickets for this Tony Award-winning show are $28 adults, $15 youth under 18. oldtownplayhouse.com

ANNUAL DOWNTOWN CHILI COOK OFF: 11am-3pm, Park Place Dome, Downtown TC. DTCA’s only fundraiser. Area restaurants cook up their special recipes & attendees sample them & vote for their favorites. downtowntc.com

jan 15

january

14-22

sunday

BIG SING BENEFIT: 3pm, Central United Methodist Church, TC. TC Sings!

Community Choir presents a benefit concert of a cappella favorites from around the world. Admission is free; donations accepted to benefit Northwest MI Community Action Agency. tcsings.org

send your dates to: events@traverseticker.com

--------------------

TRAVERSE AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY PROGRAM: 1-2:30pm, McGuire Room, Traverse Area District Library, TC. JoAnne Cook will speak about the history of the Odawa Anishinabek people from the GT region. 995-0313.

-------------------THE BAY FILM SERIES: 2pm & 5pm, The Bay Theatre, Suttons Bay. Featuring “Sunset Song”. Tickets, $9.50. thebaytheatre.com

-------------------NORTHERN MICHIGAN CAMPING & RV SHOW: Jan. 12-15, The Ellison Place, Gaylord. Today’s hours are noon-5pm. Admission is three non-perishable food items or a cash donation. rvshowofthenorth.com

-------------------“COMPANY”: 2pm, Old Town Playhouse, TC. Tickets for this Tony Award-winning show are $28 adults, $15 youth under 18. oldtownplayhouse.com

--------------------

JAMES KEELAGHAN: 4pm, Sleder’s Family Tavern, TC. Folk & roots music with this legendary Canadian singer/songwriter. Tickets: $20 advance, $25 door. 947-9213.

-------------------SUNDAY SKIING FOR FAMILIES: Held on Sundays from Jan. 15 – Feb. 5 at 2pm, Grass River Natural Area, Bellaire. Donations appreciated. Call ahead to reserve kids’ XC skis. grassriver.org

jan 16

monday

MLK REMEMBRANCE DAY: 6pm, State Theatre, TC. Headlining this event is Brooklyn poet & rapper Mahogany Jones. An ambassador for the US State Department, Jones just returned from state department tours in France, Germany, Indonesia & the Middle East. The NMC Children’s Choir & young TC rapper Trey Wilcox will also be featured. Sponsored by Building Bridges with Music & the TC Human Rights Commission.

Family friendly. Tickets are free; available at State Theatre box office or call: 947-3446.

-------------------PETER, PAUL & MARY REMEMBERED PRE-TOUR WARM-UP CONCERT: 6-8pm, Bud’s Coffee, Ice Cream & Food, Interlochen. $8 adults, $4 children under 14, with a maximum family cover of $25. Tickets available in advance at Bud’s or at the door.

-------------------PEACE DAY PROGRAMMING: 11am-3pm, Great Lakes Room, Great Lakes Children’s Museum, TC. Featuring hands on peace activity stations & special story times. greatlakeskids.org

--------------------

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY ACTIVITIES: Held at NCMC, Petoskey. 11:30am: Workshop luncheon: “Our Changing Community”. 6pm: Presentation by Tom Appel, civil rights advocate. 7:30pm: “Selma” will be shown, followed by a discussion. Info: ncmich.edu

--------------------

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY CONCERT: 1:50-3pm, Pathfinder Gym, 11930 S. West Bay Shore Dr., TC. This free concert includes music

by Mary Sue Wilkinson, Pat Niemisto, Justin “Stovepipe” Stover & Pathfinder students.

20 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

In preparation for their January Florida shows, Peter, Paul & Mary Remembered will perform a “dress rehearsal” at Bud’s, Interlochen on Mon., Jan. 16 from 6-8pm. Jim Hawley, Doc Probes & Donna Probes will transport you back to the early 70’s with their authentic replication of Peter, Paul & Mary. $8 adults, $4 children under 14, with a maximum family cover of $25. Tickets available in advance at Bud’s or at the door.

Students will be accepting canned goods, personal hygiene articles & infant care items to benefit Father Fred, Goodwill & Leelanau Christian Neighbors. thepathfinderschool.org

-------------------TC ARTIST & GALLERY NETWORK BRAINSTORM: If you are an artist or gallery owner with ideas that will make TC a more vibrant art community, come to this event from 7-9pm at Higher Art Gallery, TC. 231-252-4616.

-------------------THE BAY FILM SERIES: 6pm, The Bay Theatre, Suttons Bay. Featuring “Sunset Song”.

Tickets, $9.50. thebaytheatre.com

-------------------HERE: SAY STORYTELLING: 7pm, The Workshop Brewing Co., TC. “2BR/2BA” (stories about roommates). heresaystorytelling.com

jan 17

tuesday

Dark & Stormcloudy Film & Beer Series: “Spy Time” will be shown at the Garden Theater, downtown Frankfort at 4:30pm. Admission is $7, plus each movie ticket purchaser receives a $5 Stormcloud Brewing Co. token. January’s beer is Anacleto.

Beer is not served inside the Garden Theater.

The Jan. Beer Dinner takes place at 6:30pm at Stormcloud Brewing Co., pairing Spanish cuisine with Stormcloud’s handcrafted beer. stormcloudbrewing.com

-------------------MEETING OF BEFORE DURING AFTER INCARCERATION: 7-8:30pm, Pine Grove Church of God, TC. Find ‘BDAI Help for Incarcerated, Before/During/After Incarceration’ on Facebook.

--------------------

EDUCATIONAL PRESENTATION: 7pm, Grow Benzie, Benzonia. “Pygmy Elephants, Orangutans, & Sun Bears, Oh My! The disappearing wildlife of Borneo”. Free. amaliaexplores.com

CITIZENS’ CLIMATE LOBBY TC: 6:308:30pm, Central United Methodist Church, third floor, TC. citizensclimatelobby.org

-------------------GT HIKING CLUB ANNUAL MEETING & AWARDS: 7pm, Boardman River Nature Center, TC. northcountrytrail.org/gtr/

-------------------THE BAY FILM SERIES: (See Mon., Jan. 16)

jan 18

wednesday

ZONTA CLUB OF TC LUNCHEON MEETING: Noon, Hagerty Center, TC. Celebrating a scholarship winner & also featuring a speaker from the NMC flight program. Cost: $16; includes a lunch buffet. zontacluboftc.org

--------------------

BUSINESS AFTER HOURS: 5-7pm, Cambria Suites, TC. Free for TC Area Chamber of Commerce members; $15 for others. tcchamber.org

jan 19

thursday

HARBOR HISTORY TALK: 5:30pm, History Museum, Harbor Springs. Featuring Bob Sweeney of the Mackinac Bridge Authority. $5 adults, free for Historical Society members. Reserve your spot: 231526-9771.

--------------------

DARK & STORMCLOUDY FILM & BEER SERIES: “Spy Time” will be shown at the Garden Theater, downtown Frankfort at 7:30pm. Admission is $7, plus each movie ticket purchaser receives a $5 Stormcloud Brewing Co. token.

January’s beer is Anacleto. Beer is not served inside the Garden Theater. stormcloudbrewing.com

BUSINESS AFTER HOURS: 5-7pm, Pour Public House, Petoskey. $7 members, $12 not-yet members. business.petoskeychamber.com

-------------------SWIRL: 5:30-7pm, Crooked Tree Arts Center, Petoskey. Featuring food & drinks by Bayview Wine Trail & Shorts Brewing, & music by Jeff Pagel. Tickets: $15 advance, $20 day of. crookedtree.org

-------------------AAUW JANUARY GAME NIGHT: 5:30pm, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, TC. aauwtc.org

--------------------

VALENTINE CARD MAKING: 3-5pm, SCRAP, TC. Cost, $5; includes materials for up to 4 cards. scraptc.org

-------------------“TRUE COST”: A documentary about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, & the impact this is having on our world.

Presented by The Fibershed & The Leelanau Community Cultural Center at the Old Art Building, Leland at 6:30pm. Followed by a panel discussion with local entrepreneurs.

Free. oldartbuilding.com

--------------------

JANUARY GEEK BREAKFAST: 8am, Bubba’s, TC. A casual monthly community-driven networking event for tech-minded people to discuss topics like social media, digital marketing, design, & more over bacon, eggs & coffee. geekbreakfast.org/cities/traverse-city-mi

-------------------TRAVERSE AREA CAMERA CLUB MEETING: 7-9pm, Presbyterian Church, 701 Westminster Rd., TC. Featuring Tom O’Hare, meteorologist for TC 9&10. For info email: tcphoto@aol.com

-------------------24TH ANNUAL MACKINAW CITY WINTER FEST: Jan. 19-22. Featuring an Amateur & Professional Snow Sculpting competition, sleigh/wagon rides, Outhouse Races, Poker Walk, Chili Cook Off, Euchre Tournament, Ice Fishing Tournament, & more. mackinawcity. com/24th-annual-winter-fest-144/

--------------------

“COMPANY”: (See Thurs., Jan. 19)

jan 21

saturday

FEAST & FILM: Wild Foraged Food Potluck & Film Showing: 5:30pm, Martha Wagbo Farm & Education Center, East Jordan. Bring a dish to pass.

RSVP: 231-536-0333.

-------------------JB DAVIES & DAN HOUSE, FINGERSTYLE GUITAR: 7:30pm, Red Sky Stage, Petoskey. Tickets: $10 advance, $15 night of. 231-487-0000.

-------------------ROY TAGHON EMPIRE SNOWMOBILE DRAG RACE: 8:30am-5pm, Empire Airport.

Admission for spectators: $5 adults, free for ages 15 & under. Find ‘Roy Taghon Memorial Empire Snowmobile Drag Race’ on Facebook.

-------------------FAT CHANCE FAT TIRE BIKE RACE: Noon, Crystal Mountain, Thompsonville. Takes place on Otter Loop near Kinlochen. Choose 90 minutes or 45 minutes of fast, flat & wide open laps. Info: crystalmountain.com

-------------------52ND ANNUAL MOOSE JAW SAFARI: 10am, starting at Harbor Springs Skating Rink.

Registration, 8:30am. An easy ride that will take two hours with 15 minute stops. Ride scenic trails on the way to Larks Lake. Info: business.petoskeychamber.com

-------------------PARTY IN YOUR PARKA: 2pm, Leland Lodge. Featuring live music by Chris Weaner & Broom Closet Boys, sledding, ice skating, indoor & outdoor winter activities & more. 231256-9848.

-------------------DOG GONE FUN DOG SHOW: 1:30pm, EJ Civic Center, East Jordan. Registration, 1pm. $5/dog. Proceeds benefit the Charlevoix Area Humane Society.

--------------------

--------------------

‘WE GOT THE BEAT!’: 11am-noon, Traverse Area District Library, TC. Move to the beat with TSO Principal Percussionist Robert Sagan & Kindermusik while exploring percussion & rhythm with hands-on musical fun. traversesymphony.org

friday

MARCH IN TC: “We Are Watching”: Noon, corner of Cass St. & Grandview Parkway, TC. Held in conjunction with the millions of women across the country who will rally together on the day after inauguration. Bring signs & dress for weather.

At 1:45pm you will head to Workshop Brewing Co. for follow-up speakers. 231-360-1065.

--------------------

FREE TRAINING IN RAPE AVOIDANCE & SELF-DEFENSE: 9am-3pm, The Rock Youth Center, Kingsley. For seventh through tenth grade girls. Free on a first-come, first-served basis to those who reserve a spot by calling: 231-263-7000. Lunch will be served. Parents are welcome to attend.

HEART & HEALING ART: “Mindful Painting”.

7pm, John & Marnie Demmer Wellness Pavilion & Dialysis Center of McLaren Northern Michigan, Petoskey. Free. northernhealth.org/classes “COMPANY”: 7:30pm, Old Town Playhouse, TC. Tickets for this Tony Award-winning show are $28 adults, $15 youth under 18. oldtownplayhouse.com

jan 20

HORIZON BOOKS, TC EVENTS: 10-11am: Story Hour – “Mice”. 8:30-10:30pm: Live Music with Songwriters in the Round featuring Dan Kelchak, Les Dalgliesh & Sandy Blumenfeld. horizonbooks.com

TADL FRIENDS RECEPTION: 2-4pm, McGuire Room, Traverse Area District Library, TC. Honoring Carolyn Moehle for her years of service as Gift Shop manager, & saying goodbye to the Library’s Gift Shop. tadl.org/friends

-------------------AN EVENING WITH MEMBERS OF THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC & INTERLOCHEN: 7:30pm, Corson Auditorium, Interlochen Center for the Arts. Free. interlochen.org

-------------------36TH ANNUAL SNO-BLAST: Starts at 4:30pm at the East Jordan Middle/High School Cafeteria. Today includes a Chili Supper & Crowning of Winter Knight & Belle of the Blizzard. ejchamber.org/events/winter/sno-blast/

--------------------

NEW YEAR! NEW YOU! GET ORGANIZED!: 1pm, Petoskey District Library. Expert Connie Huizenga will teach you simple tips to declutter for the new year. Register: petoskeylibrary.org

-------------------24TH ANNUAL MACKINAW CITY WINTER FEST: (See Thurs., Jan. 19)

--------------------

--------------------

-------------------DEPOT DINNER CONCERT: 6-8pm, After 26 Depot, Cadillac. Featuring Chris Winkelmann & Zak Bunce. Tickets, $20 advance or $25 at door; includes dinner & concert. 231-468-3526.

-------------------HISTORY SNOW SHOE HIKE: 10am, Grand Traverse Lighthouse, Northport. grandtraverselighthouse.com

-------------------36TH ANNUAL SNO-BLAST: East Jordan. Today includes the Classic & Antique Snowmobile Show, Blessing of the Sleds, Antique/Vintage/ Classic Snowmobile Ride, Softball in the Snow Tournament, Dog Gone Fun Dog Show, & much more. ejchamber.org/events/winter/sno-blast/

pairing at participating wineries along the Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail. Tickets, $20/ person. $5 from each ticket is donated to local food banks coordinated by Leelanau Christian Neighbors. mynorthtickets.com

-------------------“COMPANY”: (See Thurs., Jan. 19) -------------------WINTER HIKE: 10am, Arcadia Dunes, Arcadia. gtrlc.org

-------------------WOODY PINES: Presented by Blissfest. 8pm, Crooked Tree Arts Center, Petoskey. Woody combines country blues, jugband, hokum & hillbilly jazz to create his American roots music.

John Cragie will join him with his deep humor & witty songs. Tickets: $15 adults, $7 students for members, & $20, $10 non-members. blissfest.org

--------------------

ROBIN LEE BERRY & GLENN WOLFF: 7:30pm, Redheads Café & Tasting Room, Lake Leelanau. Berry is an eclectic songwriter, singer & guitarist with roots in jazz & contemporary folk music. Wolff is a bassist who has recently added slide guitar & dobro to their duo performances. Tickets: $15 advance, $20 door. 231-256-7720.

-------------------BIGFOOT 5K & 10K SNOWSHOE RACE: 9am-noon, Timber Ridge RV Resort, TC. A hilly off trail run with logs to jump & branches to duck. Register: runsnow.com

jan 22

sunday

MOSTLY MUSIC: The Big Bands: 7-9pm, The Leelanau School, Glen Arbor. A lecture with Bob Foskett with recorded examples of the continuing metamorphosis of the jazz big band in American music. Presented by Glen Arbor Art Association. Admission, $12. glenarborart.org

-------------------DARK & STORMCLOUDY FILM & BEER SERIES: “Spy Time” will be shown at the Garden Theater, downtown Frankfort at 2pm. Admission is $7, plus each movie ticket purchaser receives a $5 Stormcloud Brewing Co. token. January’s beer is Anacleto. Beer is not served inside the Garden Theater. stormcloudbrewing.com

-------------------36TH ANNUAL SNO-BLAST: Starting at 7am at the East Jordan Sno-Mobilers Club House.

Featuring the Sno-Lovers Breakfast, Interpretive & Interactive Guided Ski/Snowshoe Hike, Mid-Winter Classic Fishing Tournament, & much more. ejchamber.org/events/winter/sno-blast/

-------------------TREETOPS BRIDAL EXPO: 1pm, Convention Center, Treetops Resort, Gaylord. Meet local vendors, win prizes, take a tour or attend a mini-class. Admission: $5 at door or $3 in advance. treetops.com

-------------------24TH ANNUAL MACKINAW CITY WINTER FEST: (See Thurs., Jan. 19)

--------------------

INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE: 2pm, Helena Township Community Center, Alden. Featuring author & Dr. Katherine Roth, MD. 231-331-4318.

--------------------

“COMPANY”: 2pm, Old Town Playhouse, TC. Tickets for this Tony Award-winning show are $28 adults, $15 youth under 18. oldtownplayhouse.com

ongoing

24TH ANNUAL MACKINAW CITY WINTER FEST: (See Thurs., Jan. 19)

HELP PRESERVE HICKORY HILLS: $1 of every pint of Double H Double IPA purchased at Jolly Pumpkin, TC through Jan. will be donated to the Preserve Hickory Campaign. preservehickory.com

KIDS MOVIE NIGHT: 7:30pm, Aspen Room or Alpine Room, Treetops Resort, Gaylord. Tonight will feature “Stuart Little”. Free. treetops.com SIPS & SOUPS: Noon-5pm. Soup & wine

WINTER WALK WEDNESDAYS: Walk to school every Weds. this winter through March 15. elgruponorte.org/winter/walk SNOWSHOES, VINES & WINES!: Explore the

---------------------------------------

--------------------

easy to moderate trails at Black Star Farms, Suttons Bay & then warm up with a glass of mulled wine & a bowl of chili. Held every Sat. & Sun. through Feb. 25-26 from noon-4pm. blackstarfarms.com

-------------------SUPPORT NORTE! For the month of Jan., Morsels Espresso + Edibles, TC will feature a unique morsel, “bocado” with dark chocolate cake with signature Norte! orange frosting & blue sugar sprinkles. For each one sold, Morsels will donate $.25 to Norte! at the end of the month. morselsbakery.com

-------------------SUNDAY SKIING FOR FAMILIES: Held on Sundays from Jan. 15 – Feb. 5 at 2pm, Grass River Natural Area, Bellaire. Donations appreciated. Call ahead to reserve kids’ XC skis. grassriver.org

-------------------SUNDAY SNOWSHOE HIKES: Meet at the Michigan Legacy Art Park trailhead, Thompsonville at 2:30pm on Sundays through Jan. 29. $5/adult. Free for youth 17 & under with paying adult. michlegacyartpark.org

-------------------SNOWSHOE, WINE & BREW: Sundays through March 5, Old Mission Peninsula, 10:40am-noon. Park at Jolly Pumpkin to board the TC Brew Bus & start your trek. $20. tcbrewbus.com/events

-------------------ICE SKATING GAMES: Saturdays through March 11, 1-3pm, Harbor Springs Sk8 Park/ Ice Rink. Find ‘Harbor Springs Sk8 Park’ on Facebook.

-------------------FREE COMMUNITY CLASS: Every Weds. at 7:30pm at Bikram Yoga, 845 S. Garfield Ave., TC. bikramyogatcgr.com

--------------------

SATURDAY SNOWSHOE HIKES AT SLEEPING BEAR DUNES NATIONAL LAKESHORE: Held on Saturdays through March 11.

Meet at the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center, Empire at 1pm. Free, but reservations required: 231-326-4700, ext. 5010.

-------------------OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS: No dues, fees, weigh-ins, or diets. Meeting Tues. at 12:15pm; Thurs. at 1:30pm; Fri. at 8am; & Sat. at 10:30am. Call Pat: 989-448-9024; Tom: 231-590-8800; or Genie: 231-271-1060.

-------------------ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS - YOUNG PEOPLE’S MEETING: Fridays at 8pm, Grace Episcopal Church (basement), TC. www. district11-aa.org/

--------------------

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS - OPEN SPEAKER MEETING: Saturdays at 8pm, Munson Medical Center (basement), TC. www. district11-aa.org/

-------------------SECULAR A.A.: THURSDAYS: The Porch, TC, 5:30pm. Fridays: By the Bay Alano Club, TC, 7pm. SecularAAinMichigan.org

--------------------

COMPULSIVE EATERS ANONYMOUS - HOW: Held every Thurs. from 5:30-6:30pm at Friends Church, 206 S. Oak Street - at 5th Street, TC. For more info: traversecityCEAHOW.org

-------------------YOGA 1-2: With Kelly Stiglich 500-ERYT at GT Circuit, TC on Tuesdays at 5:30pm. $10 suggested donation. gtcircuit.org

-------------------ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS (ACA): 5:30-7pm, Thursdays in the basement of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, TC. For those who seek to address the residual effects of having been raised in dysfunctional household. adultchildren.org

-------------------OM GENTLE YOGA: With Kelly Stiglich 500-ERYT at GT Circuit, TC on Saturdays at 10:30am. $5. gtcircuit.org

-------------------MCLAREN NORTHERN MI DIABETES SUPPORT GROUP: Meets the second Mon. of each month from 7-8pm at the John & Marnie Demmer Wellness Pavilion & Dialysis Center, Petoskey. northernhealth.org/wellness

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 21

Mon -

DEBTORS ANONYMOUS: 12 Step Meet-

Ladies Night - $1 off drinks & $5 martinis

ing. Held on Tuesdays from 7-8pm at Munson 4 Color: Health Center, east door, Room G, PMSCommunity 583 Green PMSTC. 7459 For Light info, Blue email: tcdajp34@gmail.com PMS 7462 Dark Blue PMS 7413 Orange

closed at 9pm

--------------------

Tues - $2 well drinks & shots OPEN MIC WITH HOST CHRIS STERR

Wed - Get it in the can for $1

with SKINNY & FRIENDS

Thurs - MI beer night $1 off all MI beer

w/ DJ FASEL

“Where Friends Gather” Featuring Super Greek Food in a Relaxed Atmosphere

Happy Hour: Harvey Wallbangers Then: DJ DANTE (NO COVER)

Fri Jan 20:

Fri Jan 21: DJ Dante (No Cover)

TUESDAY NIGHT

TRIVIA starts at 8pm

2012

WIN GIFT CERTIFICATES!

Sun Jan 22:

KARAOKE (10PM-2AM) 941-1930 downtown TC check us out at unionstreetstationtc.net

214 E Front St • Downtown Traverse City

231-946-8932

Art is how we decorate space.

Music is how we decorate time.

ADOPTION SATURDAYS: Pets Naturally, TC hosts one dog & one cat from the Cherryland Humane Society on Saturdays from 11am2pm. www.petsnaturallytc.com

--------------------

INDOOR FARMERS MARKET, THE VILLAGE AT GT COMMONS, TC: Held in The Mercato on Saturdays through April 29 from 10am-2pm. thevillagetc.com

--------------------

CTAC ARTISANS & FARMERS MARKET: Fridays, 10am-1pm, Bidwell Plaza during good weather, or Carnegie Building, Crooked Tree Arts Center, Petoskey. crookedtree.org

-------------------BLISSFEST JAM SESSIONS: Every Sun., Petoskey. Bring your along or listen. www. redskystage.com.

2 Color: 1-4pm, Red Sky Stage, PMS 7459 Light Blue PMSinstruments 7462 Dark Blue or just sing

--------------------

BOXING FOR PARKINSON’S: Parkinson’s Network North meets at 10am every Mon. at Fit For You, TC for these free sessions. gtaparkinsonsgroup.org

--------------------

“JUST FOR US” BREAST CANCER SUPPORT GROUP: Meets the first Tues. of every month from 6:30-8:30pm at the McLaren Northern MI John & Marnie Demmer Wellness Pavilion & Dialysis Center, Petoskey. 800-248-6777.

--------------------

Greyscale: K 100% / K 75% SONG OF

THE MORNING, VANDERBILT: Free yoga classes, Tues. – Fri., 7:30-8:30am. songofthemorning.org

-------------------Buying Collections & Equipment 1015 Hannah Ave. • TC 231-947-3169 • RPMRecords.net

WESTBAYBEACHRESORTTRAVERSECITY.COM

Fonts: Gotham Black / Century Expanded

615 EAST FRONT STREET | TRAVERSE CITY, MI 49686

PETOSKEY FILM THEATER: Showing international, indie, art house & documentary films on Wednesdays, Fridays & Saturdays.

Carnegie Building, 451 E. Mitchell St., next to Crooked Tree Arts Center, Petoskey. Donations welcome.

For schedule find ‘Petoskey Film Theater’ on Facebook. 231-758-3108.

-------------------DEPOT COFFEEHOUSE: Fridays from 6-7:30pm at After 26 Depot Café, Cadillac. Enjoy coffee with dinner or dessert while listening to live entertainment. 231-468-3526.

art H E AT U P W I T H O U R

Events all

Winter!

JAZZ every Thursday BLUES every Friday BUILD YOUR OWN BLOODY MARY BAR every Sunday starting at Noon

FRIDAY FISH FRY

4-9pm • $14.95 all you can eat

PRIME RIB SATURDAY

Dinner 4-9pm • 12oz $16.95 or 16oz $20.95 22 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

ANNUAL FURNITURE, FIBER, PHOTOGRAPHY, & SCULPTURE EXHIBITION: Jan. 20 – Feb. 24, Oliver Art Center, Frankfort. An opening reception will be held on Fri., Jan. 20 from 5-7pm. oliverartcenterfrankfort.org

-------------------6TH ANNUAL GRAND TRAVERSE ART BOMB: Through March 25, Right Brain Brewery, TC. Artists of all media in & from the GT region will display & sell their work commission-free. Opening Reception will be held on Jan. 14; Encore Reception/Art Bomb Prom on Feb. 11; & Closing Reception on March 25.

Featuring live music & performance art. facebook.com/GrandTraverseArtBomb

-------------------THROUGH THE WINDOW, ALL MEDIA: Through March, Three Pines Studio, Cross Village. threepinesstudio.com

-------------------MIDWEST TWILIGHT: This painting by Glenn Wolff has been installed on the south wall of the Omelette Shoppe, Cass St., TC. dennosmuseum.org

--------------------

PROTECTION: This Woodland Indian screenprint by Jackson Beardy is installed on the east wall of Cuppa Joe, 1060 E. Front St., TC. dennosmuseum.org

--------------------

GAYLORD: - Black & White with a little Red Exhibit: Jan. 17 – March 4. A reception will be held on Sat., Feb. 11 from 5-7pm.

- Artful Afternoons: Every Weds. through April 26 at 1pm. Free. gaylordarts.org

--------------------

HIGHER ART GALLERY, TC: - Call for Artist Submissions: For the spring show “Sacred Spaces”. Deadline to apply is Feb. 20. Visit higherartgallery.com for info.

- Call for Jewelers: For a market event: Valentines Day Jewelry show on Feb. 5. Call 231-252-4616 or email higherartgallery@gmail. com for info.

- Open Mic Night to Begin in February!: Seeking music, storytelling, poetry, spoken word, performance art, magic & more. Submit your idea to be a part of it. Please submit your info & performance medium to: higherartgallery@gmail.com

--------------------

CROOKED TREE ARTS CENTER, PETOSKEY: - Crooked Tree Photographic Society Exhibit: Runs Jan. 19 – March 17 in the Atrium Gallery.

Featuring diverse digital works from more than 30 members.

- 2017 Juried Photography Exhibition: Runs Jan. 19 – March 23 in Gilbert Gallery. Juried by renowned photographer Howard Bond.

Includes works selected from 140 submissions.

- Tinker, Tailor, Welder, Weaver: The Art of Assemblage: Runs Jan. 19 – March 23 in Bonfield Gallery. An opening reception will be held on Weds., Jan. 21 from 2-4pm. crookedtree.org

-------------------CROOKED TREE ARTS CENTER, TC: - Hygge: A Winter’s Glow: This multimedia exhibition celebrates all the ways those in the northern latitudes embrace & find contentment during the winter months. Runs Jan. 14 – Feb. 25 with an opening reception on Sat., Jan. 14 from 2-4pm.

- Art History Talk: Fridays through March 17, noon-1pm. Each week will cover a decade of the 1800’s. $5 suggested donation. crookedtree.org

-------------------DENNOS MUSEUM CENTER, NMC, TC: - Permanence & Impermanence: Iceland – a Land of Temporal Contrasts. By Jean Larson.

Runs through Jan. - Grandmother Power: A Global Phenomenon: The works of renowned photographer Paola Gianturco. Runs through Jan. dennosmuseum.org

NORTHWESTERN MICHIGAN BESTSELLERS For the week ending 1/8/17 HARDCOVER FICTION

Harry Potter & the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, & John Tiffany Arthur A Levine Books $29.99 Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Doubleday $26.95 Night School by Lee Child Delacorte Press $28.99

PAPERBACK FICTION

Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman Washington Square Press $16.00 Gales of November by Aaron Stander Writers & Editors $17.95 Warped Ambition by Debbie S. Tenbrink Red Adept Publishing $15.00

HARDCOVER NON-FICTION

Lose Your Belly Diet by Travis Stork, M.D. Ghost Mountain Books $25.95 Hillbilly Elegy by J D Vance Harper $27.99 Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman Farrar, Straus and Giroux $28.00

“MAKING ART TOGETHER”: The Northport Arts Association hosts this open studio every Thurs. from 10am-1pm in the Village Arts Building, Northport. northportartsforall.com

PAPERBACK NON-FICTION Storm Struck by Robert Campbell Mission Point Press $22.50 Good Hike by Tim Keenan Mission Point Press $16.95 Great Lakes Island Escapes by Maureen Dunphy Painted Turtle $29.95

GAYLORD AREA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS,

Compiled by Horizon Books: Traverse City, Petoskey, Cadillac

--------------------

FOURSCORE by kristi kates

Vaults – “Caught in Still Life” – V Records

Capitalizing on the success of the inclusion of their track in this year’s annual John Lewis advertisement in the U.K. are this London band, whose electronica outings have proved nearly as viable commercially as Moby’s were in his heyday. And therein lies the problem; pushing the production to such a heavily polished level squeezes all the life out of many of these tracks.

Both “Midnight River” and “Cry No More” are fairly catchy for the most part, but the flawless sonic patina leaves it all a little cold.

231.642.5020 1 7 5 2 U S - 3 1 E A S T B AY T R AV E R S E C I T Y, M I SMOKEANDPORTER.COM

Olly Murs – “24 Hrs” – Epic

The London Evening Standard called Murs “pop pleasantness personified,” and that’s a pretty apt description for what the “X Factor” finalist is offering up on his latest album. Another word that comes to mind is “safe,” but that’s not necessarily a derogatory term; if you’re a fan of R&B and funk-lite, then this might just be your deal, from the conventional groove of “Read My Mind” to the anthemic “Back Around,” which amps itself up to be a tune perfectly positioned for next summer’s car stereos.

Little Mix – “Glory Days” – Columbia

Speaking of “X Factor,” this is the first successful group to have been spewed from the maw of the massive show, and this new collection of girlpop tracks sticks to the usual themes of happy relationships, possible relationships and broken relationships, complete with a guest appearance from one of the current kings of said songs, Charlie Puth (“Oops”). But while they’re obviously working on it, many of the tracks have weak spots, meaning they’re not quite the cool kids in this genre yet (see: Spice Girls).

DNCE – “DNCE” – Republic

This group burst out of the gate with the frivolous single “Cake by the Ocean,” pushing through the boy-band stigma of bandleader Joe Jonas’ former project to stake a claim as a newbie electrobubblegum band ready for action. The album furthers their cause with decently entertaining tunes that prove the band has focus while not taking itself too seriously; standouts include the soonto-be party anthem “Pay My Rent,” the ’80s hook of “Zoom,” and surprisingly different ballad “Almost.”

THURSDAY

Trivia nite • 7-9pm

FRIDAY FISH FRY

All you can eat perch $10.99

FOOD & DRINK SPECIALS for all Home Team Sporting Events.

231-941-2276 121 S. Union St. • TC. www.dillingerspubtc.com

231-922-7742 121 S. Union St. • TC. www.dillingerspubtc.com

EASTFIELD PARTY STORE MISSES YOU! Come see our new location, our vast inventory, our craft beers, our many wines Great parking!

231-946-7747

831 GARFIELD - TRAVERSE CITY Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 23

MUSTARD PLUG, HEATERS HEADLINE ICE JAM Grand Rapids ska band Mustard Plug is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary as a band, and you can catch the Plug smack in the middle of all this frivolity at the first-ever Ice Jam charity music fest, coming to Grand Rapids on Jan. 28. Ice Jam, which will take place at Perrin Brewing Co. in Comstock Park, will run from 2-8 p.m. in a heated tent that will house an outdoor stage featuring live performances from K-Zoo funk band The Mainstays, Michigan rockabilly duo Jesse Ray and the Carolina Catfish, local punkers I Believe in Julio, and Grand Rapids psychedelic rockers Heaters. The fest will also feature bonfires, games and a cigar-rolling lounge, and its admission fees will serve as donations to the nonprofit organization Kids’ Food Basket. Get more information and tickets at perrinbrewing.com.

In other ticket news, if you managed to snag tix to the Cool Beats @ The Corner concert series at Rockford’s Corner Bar — well, prepare yourself for a refund instead of a concert. Rockford city officials pulled the plug on the events due to zoning and capacity issues, so Corner Bar is issuing refunds through brownpapertickets.com for the future shows that were scheduled in the series: The Ragbirds on Jan. 28, The Crane

MODERN

Mustard Plug

ROCK

BY KRISTI KATES

Wives on March 4, and Brian Vander Ark on April 22.

Movement 2017, the annual EDM fest that helps kick off summer in Detroit, has revealed phase one of its roster for this year, of which the highlights so far are the confirmation of English house music legend Carl Cox and the appearance of The Belleville Three, the upstart collaboration between Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May. Also in the starting lineup are Earl Sweatshirt, River Tiber, DJ Seoul, Factory Floor, Death in Vegas, Adam Beyer, Danny Brown and Carl Craig, so even this early in the game, EDM fans have a lot to look forward to.

In big festival news on the opposite side of the country, the lineup for the 2017 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has been announced, with Radiohead, Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce as headliners. Also on the bill for this spring are Future, The xx, Bon Iver, New Order, The Head and the Heart, Bastille, Justice and Lorde, who is returning after a short absence from the music biz. This year’s Coachella will be happening on two weekends, April 14-16 and April 21-23; tickets and more information at coachella.com MODERN ROCK LINK OF THE WEEK The Meridian Winter Blast in Detroit

is moving from its usual February date to Jan. 20-22 to coordinate with this year’s North American International Auto Show in the Motor City. Guests who attend the auto show’s final weekend at Cobo Hall will also be able to snag free same-day admission to Winter Blast, which will offer up DJs spinning tunes, an ice bar and live music (acts to be announced) to around 30,000 people each day. To keep an eye on the lineup and get more information, visit the official site at winterblast.com.

MichiBUZZ Grand Rapids’ newest concert venue, 20 Monroe Live, is now set to open next month, with several concerts already booked heading into February, including Trombone Shorty (Feb. 1), Umphrey’s Magee (Feb. 2) and Shinedown (Feb. 4). … Detroit rapper Big Sean just announced that he’ll release a new album called “I Decide” on Feb. 3. … Bluesy Bay City singer-songwriter Scott Baker also has a new album out, called “Community

Aspire,” which features guest appearances from Andy Reed, Larry McCray and Norah Jones band member Adam Levy. … The 2017 Electric Forest Festival just added two more acts to this year’s roster: Flume will be performing on the second weekend only, and Dillon Francis will throw out sets on both weekends, June 22-25 and June 29 to July 2. … And The Griot Music Lounge has just opened on Forest Street in Detroit, making it the city’s first vinyl-focused jazz bar.

ROCK TRIP With a brand-new album (“WALLS,” an acronym for “We Are Like Love Songs”) and a brand-new, mysterious video for their single “Find Me,” Kings of Leon are, as Buster Poindexter would say, “hot hot hot,” so now’s a great time to catch their raucous, sharp live show at the Fox Theater in Detroit on Jan. 22.

Comments, questions, rants, raves, suggestions on this column? Send ’em to Kristi at modernrocker@gmail.com.

RANDY’S DINER IS THE PLACE FOR OUTSTANDING BURGERS! Open 6am-9pm Monday-Saturday

how Car S e!

In Jun

We are proud to present natural, authentic, and ethically-sourced handicraft. Our offerings include local and American-made work, as well as imported goods, allowing us to show unique and affordable gifts, jewelry, decorative accessories and entertaining accents.

In The Village at Grand Traverse Commons 231.932.0775 | sanctuarytc.com 24 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

20th Anniversary 1997-2017

Visit Randy’s Diner and try one of our top five burgers:

5. BLT Egg Burger 4. Mushroom Swiss Burger 3. Guacamole Bacon Cheddar Burger 2. Rodeo Burger AND OUR NUMBER ONE BEST SELLING BURGER THE JALAPENO POPPER BURGER! Nothing’s Finer Than Randy’s Diner!

VISIT OUR FACEBOOK PAGE FOR NEWS & SPECIALS.

1120 CARVER STREET, TRAVERSE CITY 231 946-0789

nitelife

Jan 14 - Jan 22 edited by jamie kauffold

Send Nitelife to: events@traverseticker.com

Manistee, Wexford & Missaukee

• 522 - MANISTEE Tues. -- Karaoke Thurs., Fri., Sat. -- DJ • AFTER 26 DEPOT - CADILLAC 1/21 -- Chris Winkelmann & Zak Bunce, 6-8 • BUCKLEY BAR - BUCKLEY Fri. -- DJ Karaoke/Sounds - Duane & Janet • CADILLAC SANDS RESORT Porthole Pub & Eatery:

Thurs. -- Live music SandBar Niteclub: Fri. & Sat. -- Phattrax DJs Fri. -- Karaoke/line dancing, 8:30 Sat. -- Dance videos, 8:30 • COYOTE CROSSING - HOXEYVILLE Thurs. -- Open Mic Sat. -- Live Music • DOUGLAS VALLEY WINERY MANISTEE Sun. -- Live music, 1:30-4:30pm

• FAMOUS FLYNN'S MANISTEE 1/20 -- Cheryl Wolfram, 7-9 • HI-WAY INN - MANISTEE Wild Weds. -- Karaoke Fri.-Sat. -- Karaoke/Dance • LOST PINES LODGE HARRIETTA Sat. -- Karaoke, dance videos

-

Grand Traverse & Kalkaska • 7 MONKS TAPROOM - TC 1/18 -- The Joe Wilson Trio, 7:30-10:30 1/19 -- Mike Moran, 7:3010:30 • ACOUSTIC TAP ROOM - TC 1/17 -- Open & Un-mic'd w/ Ben Johnson, 7-9 Tues. -- Open & un-mic'd w/ Ben Johnson, 7-9 • BUD'S - INTERLOCHEN 1/16 -- Peter, Paul & Mary Remembered Pre-Tour WarmUp Concert, 6-8 Thurs. -- Jim Hawley, 5-8 • FANTASY'S - GRAWN Adult Entertainment w/ DJ • GT RESORT & SPA - ACME Grand Lobby: 1/20-21 -- Blake Elliott, 7-11 • HAYLOFT INN - TC Thurs. -- Open mic night by Roundup Radio Show, 8 Fri. - Sat. thru Jan. -- The Cow Puppies • HORIZON BOOKS - TC 1/20 -- Songwriters in the Round w/ Dan Kelchak, Les Dalgliesh & Sandy Blumenfeld, 8:30-10:30 • LEFT FOOT CHARLEY - TC 1/20 -- Mountain Gloom Mountain Glory, 6-8 Mon. -- Open mic w/ Blake Elliott, 6-9 • LITTLE BOHEMIA - TC Tues. -- TC Celtic, 7-9 • MT. HOLIDAY - TC T-Bar: 1/20 -- Nick Vasquez • NOLAN'S CIGAR BAR - TC 1/20 -- Windy Ridge Trio, 8-10 • NORTH PEAK - TC Kilkenny's, 9:30-1:30: 1/13-14 -- Reverend Right

Time & The First Cuzins of Funk 1/20-21 -- Brett Mitchell & the Giant Ghost Mon. -- Michigan Team Trivia, 7-9; Toxic Trivia, 9-11 Tues. -- Levi Britton, 8-12 Weds. -- The Pocket, 8-12 Thurs. -- 2 Bays DJs, 9:301:30 Sun. -- Geeks Who Drink Trivia, 7-9 • PARK PLACE HOTEL - TC Beacon Lounge: Mon. -- Levi Britton, 8:30-11:30 Thurs. - Sat. -- Tom Kaufmann, 8:30-11:30 • PARKSHORE LOUNGE - TC Fri. - Sat. -- DJ • RARE BIRD BREWPUB - TC 1/16 -- Open Mic/Artist Night, 7:30-11:30 Tues. -- Trivia night, 7 • SAIL INN - TC Thurs. & Sat. -- Phattrax DJs, karaoke, dance videos • SIDE TRAXX - TC Weds. -- Impaired Karaoke, 10 Fri.-Sat. -- DJ/VJ Mike King • SLEDER'S FAMILY TAVERN - TC 1/15 -- James Keelaghan, 4 • STREETERS - TC Ground Zero: 1/14 -- UpChurch The Redneck w/ River Melcher, 8 • STUDIO ANATOMY - TC 1/21 -- Comedy Night, 9 • TAPROOT CIDER HOUSE - TC Tues. -- Turbo Pup, 7-9 Thurs. -- G-Snacks, 7-9 Fri. -- Rob Coonrod, 7-9 Sat. -- Chris Dark, 7-9

Sun. -- Kids Open Mic, 3 • THE OL' SOUL - KALKASKA Weds. -- David Lawston, 8-12 • THE PARLOR - TC 1/17 -- Clint Weaner, 7:3010:30 • THE WORKSHOP BREWING CO. - TC 1/14 -- Local DJ Night: Clark After Dark, 8-11 1/20 -- Local DJ: David Graves' New Vinyl, 8-11 1/21 -- After Ours, 8-11 1/22 -- Big Dudee Roo, 7-10 Mon. -- Rotten Cherries Comedy Open Mic, 8-9:30 Weds. -- WBC Jazz Society Jam, 6-10 • TRATTORIA STELLA - TC Tues. -- Ron Getz, 6-9 • TRAVERSE CITY WHISKEY CO. - TC 1/19 -- Paul Livingston, 6-8 • UNION STREET STATION TC 1/14 -- G-Snacks 1/17 -- Open mic w/ Chris Sterr 1/18 -- Skinny & Friends 1/19 -- DJ Fasel 1/20 -- Happy Hour w/ Harvey Wallbangers, then DJ Dante 1/21 -- DJ Dante Sun. -- Karaoke, 10-2 • WEST BAY BEACH RESORT - TC View: 1/14 -- DJ Motaz, 9-2 1/20 -- Jon Archambault Band, 7-9:30; DJ Shawny D, 9-2 1/21 -- DJ Motaz, 9-2 Thurs. -- Jazz w/ Jeff Haas Trio & Laurie Sears, 7-9:30

Antrim & Charlevoix • BRIDGE STREET TAP ROOM - CHARLEVOIX 1/14 -- Nathan Bates, 8-11 1/15 -- Pete Kehoe, 6-9 1/17 -- Nelson Olstrom, 7-10 1/20 -- Jabo Bihlman, 8-11 1/21 -- Kellerville, 8-11 1/22 -- Chris Calleja, 6-9 • CELLAR 152 - ELK RAPIDS 1/14 -- Jim Moore, 7:30-9:30 1/21 -- Turbo Pup, 6:30-9:30 • JORDAN INN - EAST JORDAN

Tues. -- Open Mic w/ Cal Mantis, 7-11 Fri. & Sat. -- Live Music • MURRAY'S BAR & GRILL EAST JORDAN Fri. & Sat. -- Live Music • QUAY RESTAURANT & TERRACE BAR - CHARLEVOIX Weds. -- Live jazz, 7-10 • RED MESA GRILL - BOYNE CITY 1/17 -- Buddha Sweet, 6-9

• SHORT'S BREWING CO. BELLAIRE 1/14 -- Turbo Pup, 8:30-11 1/15 -- Ron Getz Trio, 8-10:30 1/21 -- The Moxie Strings, 810:30 1/22 -- Short's Battle of the Bands Week 1, 4-6:30 • VASQUEZ' HACIENDA - ELK RAPIDS Acoustic Tues. Open Jam, 6-9 Sat. -- Live music, 7-10

Enjoy a variety of soft rock, oldies, ballads, & original music from vocalist Cheryl Wolfram at Famous Flynn's, Manistee on Friday, January 20 from 7-9pm.

Leelanau & Benzie • BELLA FORTUNA NORTH - L.L. Fri.-Sat. -- Bocce e DeRoche, 7-10 • BLACK STAR FARMS - SB Third Weds. of ea. mo. -- Jazz Café w/ Mike Davis & Steve Stargardt, 7-9 • CABBAGE SHED - ELBERTA Thurs. -- Open mic, 8 • DICK'S POUR HOUSE - L.L. Sat. -- Karaoke, 10-2 • FALLEN TIMBERS - HONOR 1/14 -- Hard Luck Kings, 9:301:30 • JODI'S TANGLED ANTLER BEULAH Fri. -- Karaoke, 9-1 • LAKE ANN BREWING CO.

- LAKE ANN 1/17 -- Dune Brothers, 6:30 • LAUGHING HORSE THOMPSONVILLE Thurs. -- Karaoke, 9 • LEELANAU SANDS CASINO - PESHAWBESTOWN Tues. -- Polka Party, noon-4pm • LUMBERJACK'S BAR & GRILL - HONOR Thurs., Fri., Sat. -- Phattrax DJs, karaoke, dance videos • MARTHA'S LEELANAU TABLE - SB Weds. -- The Windy Ridge Boys, 6-9 Sun. -- The Hot Biscuits, 6-9

• ROADHOUSE - BENZONIA Weds. -- Jake Frysinger, 5-8 • ST. AMBROSE CELLARS BEULAH 1/14 -- Great Lakes Graham & the Fiddleman, 6-9 1/20 -- After Ours, 6-9 1/21 -- Syd Burnham, 6-9 Thurs. -- Open mic night, 6-8 • STORMCLOUD BREWING CO. - FRANKFORT 1/20 -- Jake Frysinger, 8-10 1/21 -- Dot Org, 8-10 • WESTERN AVE. GRILL GLEN ARBOR Fri. -- Open Mic Sat. -- Karaoke

Emmet & Cheboygan • BARREL BACK RESTAURANT - WALLOON LAKE VILLAGE Weds. -- Michelle Chenard, 5-8 • BEARDS BREWERY - PETOSKEY Weds. -- "Beards on Wax" (vinyl only night spun by DJ J2xtrubl), 8-11 • BOYNE CITY TAPROOM 1/14 -- Sean Bielby, 7-10 1/20 -- Chris Koury, 7-10 1/21 -- The Shifties, 7-10 • CAFE SANTE - BOYNE CITY 1/14 -- Under the Moon, 8-11 Mon. -- Nathan Bates, 6-9 • CITY PARK GRILL - PETOSKEY 1/14 -- The Galactic Sherpas, 10 1/21 -- Ari Teitel, 10 Grooveable Beat Lounge: 1/15 -- DJ Franck, 9 • DIXIE SALOON -

MACKINAW CITY Thurs. -- Gene Perry, 9-1 Fri. & Sat. -- DJ • KNOT JUST A BAR - BAY HARBOR Fri. -- Chris Martin, 7-10 • LEO'S TAVERN - PETOSKEY Weds. -- Karaoke Night, 10-1 Sun. -- S.I.N. w/ DJ Johnnie Walker, 9-1 • MOUNTAINSIDE GRILL BOYNE CITY Fri. -- Ronnie Hernandez, 6-9 • MUSTANG WENDY'S HARBOR SPRINGS 1/14 -- Michelle Chenard 1/15 -- Chris Koury, 11-2 1/20 -- Winter White Party w/ Michelle Chenard, 7-10; Johnnie Walker after 10

1/21 -- Bill Oeming • OASIS TAVERN - KEWADIN Thurs. -- Bad Medicine, DJ Jesse James • STAFFORD'S PERRY HOTEL - PETOSKEY Noggin Room: 1/13-14 -- Mike Struwin 1/20 -- Sean Bielby 1/21 -- Pete Kehoe • STAFFORD'S PIER RESTAURANT - HS Pointer Room: Thurs. - Sat. -- Carol Parker on piano • UPSTAIRS LOUNGE - PETOSKEY 1/14 -- Becoming Human CD Release "Expansion Pack" wsg Graves Crossing & 3 Hearted 1/21 -- 3 Hearted

Otsego, Crawford & Central • ALPINE TAVERN GAYLORD 1/14 -- Jim Akans, 7-10 1/20 -- Joshua Rupp, 7-10 1/21 -- Mike Ridley, 7-10 • MAIN STREET MARKET GAYLORD

7-9:30: 1/14 -- Brighter Bloom 1/20 -- Adam Hoppe 1/21 -- Lee Dyer • TIMOTHY'S PUB GAYLORD Fri.-Sat. -- Video DJ w/Larry

Reichert Ent. • TREETOPS RESORT GAYLORD Hunter's Grille: 1/13-14 -- Risque 1/20-21 -- CP2

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 25

The reel

by meg weichman

la la land

I

In marvelous Cinemascope and like a Technicolor dream comes “La La Land” — a swooning love letter to a bygone era of studio filmmaking that will make your spirits soar and your heart sing. The wonderstruck giddy glee of MGM’s Freed Unit pictures of the ’40s and ’50s combines with the thoughtful drama and candy-colored confections of Jacques Demy (“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “The Young Girls of Rochefort”) to bring the story of a couple of dreamers, actor Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), as they navigate the unforgiving landscape of Tinseltown. With the most contemporary of artistry and sensibilities, 31-yearold wunderkind director Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash”) will make even the musical-averse believe in its vitality, proving his film to be more than a nostalgic artifact. And that the script is so hilarious, affecting and true; that the costumes and visuals are so bold, beautiful and bright; and that the music

by Justin Hurwitz is so catchy and lovely — it feels like we got impossibly lucky. But when you pull it apart, “La La Land” isn’t perfect. It drags in sections and is rather predictable. Yet these shortcomings are hardly noticeable in the face of the sheer amount of joy and pleasure it delivers. It all comes down to the fact that for the two hours you get to bask in “La La Land’s” sun-kissed rhapsody, you’ll have a smile on your face.

It’s sheer cinematic bliss you won’t want to end.

‘HIDDEN FIGURES’ This might not be the greatest “cinematic” achievement you’ll see this year, but gosh darnit if it isn’t one of the most enjoyable and rewarding. From the incredible performances and ebullient spirit, to its warm tenacity and overflowing heart, this is Hollywood entertainment at its finest — gleaming, accessible and delightful with a message that both illuminates and inspires. It’s not just feelgood, it’s feel-great.

“Hidden Figures” tells the extraordinary true story of a trio of impressive and brilliant African-American women whose incredible contributions to NASA have long gone unheralded.

Working at the Langley Research Center in the segregated South of the early 1960s, all three were known as “colored computers,” using adding machines to run the complex calculations needed for space travel.

It’s a view of NASA heroics entirely absent from histories surrounding the Mercury program. I had no idea these positions existed, let alone that they were filled by women.

We enter at a time when the Soviets are ahead in the space race. White men in short-sleeved shirts and tight haircuts work around the clock to invent the math needed to send an American into space. Feeling the pressure, the head of the Space Task Group (Kevin Costner) is searching for someone, anyone, with skills in analytical geometry.

That someone he finds is Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson).

Without the preferred feminine uniform of pearls and with the only colored bathroom a half mile away from her new desk, Katherine is thrown into a room of people who won’t drink from the same coffee pot as her, bristle as she checks their work, and fight her at every turn. But numbers don’t lie, and math prodigy Katherine sure as heck knows her numbers.

Then there’s Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), fed up with doing a supervisor’s work without the title or pay. She receives no assistance from her supervisor (a perfectly prickly Kirsten Dunst), but after seeing the new IBM mainframe going in, she makes herself indispensable.

And finally we have Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), a spitfire who wants to be an engineer and won’t let her husband, or the fact that the school where she needs to take the night classes in order to do so is segregated, get in her way.

You’ll marvel, mouth agape, at the sexism and racism they face, and also at the way they handle it with such savviness and grit. What this particular story does so wonderfully is

make plain how bigotry hinders progress and achievement by wasting time and excluding talent on the basis of something as ridiculous as gender and skin color.

The soul of the story though is the women’s friendship. And while their relationship is undoubtedly dramatized for the screen, this is the best kind of plot device — one that structures the script for optimal enjoyment because the camaraderie is so genuine and gratifying.

Otherwise the dramatic excess is kept to a minimum. It never gives in to the white-people-seeing-the-err-of-their-ways treatment similar Hollywood depictions fall victim to. And the performances are of such smarts that cloyingness is kept at bay.

And boy do we ever have fabulous, luminous performances. Henson is so marvelously gentle and demure you’ll find it impossible to believe she is Cookie on “Empire,” and with her second powerhouse role in a year (see “Moonlight”), musician Monae has become a true acting force.

With his pure, character-driven storytelling style, director Theodore Melfi (“St. Vincent”) doesn’t try anything ambitious, but with a story as incredible as this and with characters as ambitious as this, he doesn’t need to.

Ultimately told in an unsurprising way with a highly conventional arc, it’s still unlike anything I’ve seen before. The predictable scenes of Katherine working out math problems on a chalkboard are anything but cliched, and the third-act suspense driven by John Glenn’s historic space flight helps makes this one of the most organically exciting and feeling “genius” films.

And when it comes to getting a history lesson from this year’s crop of “prestige” films, would I rather watch this infinitely charming gem, or trod through the serious and artful “Loving”? A million times over, I’d choose this. And in the end, that makes “Hidden Figures” all the more resonant and impactful.

I mean who would’ve dreamt that a film about black female mathematicians would top the box office? That alone is worth celebrating.

So you know what? On second thought, while it may not be the most artistic or serious film, this is a great movie. Great because of its inclusivity, positivity, and a host of other reasons so numerous you’ll need an astute mathematician to tabulate them all.

Meg Weichman is a perma-intern at the Traverse City Film Festival and a trained film archivist.

26 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

‘PASSENGERS’

W

ith two of the hottest and most likeable stars in the galaxy (Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt), a primo Christmas release date, and super-compelling premise, “Passengers” showed so much promise. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by the mystery behind why two people woke up out of hypersleep 90 years too early on a spaceship headed to a privatized space colony, essentially stranding them “Castaway”style in space, except Wilson’s a woman and not a volleyball.

That’s a film I want to see, and that’s a film I still want to see, because it’s definitely not the film I saw. Within the first 15 minutes, the writers reveal they couldn’t write themselves out of that fascinating setup, and the intrigue as to why they woke up completely vanishes. In fact, there’s no real mystery except why anyone agreed to make this. Without any specific spoilers, the central conceit is one of extremely poor taste. It’s like Stockholm syndrome in the rapiest way. But despite this creepy turn of events, we are still supposed to believe in the great love between Pratt and Lawrence, a position made even more difficult since they have zero chemistry. There is a riveting moral dilemma here, it’s just too bad it’s explored in the most superficial of ways. I wanted to know so much more about this world: the privatized space travel and colonies, what Earth was like, everyone’s reasons for leaving earth for Homestead II, but instead I got to spend the movie with two dullards making goo-goo eyes. With the cheesiest dialogue, situations so patently ridiculous I kept expecting a dream sequence reveal, and deus ex machina after deus ex machine instead of actual development, this is a trip you won’t want to take.

office christmas party

Y

ou can count on it every year, a Christmas-themed comedy. And this time instead of a traditional family setting, we’re mixing it up with the surrogate families of the workplace. The office in question here is the Chicago branch of Zenotek, some vaguely techy tech company that’s been told on the evening of its holiday party that 40 percent of the staff will be let go. Zenotek’s only hope is landing a big client, but the team including T.J. Miller, Jason Bateman and Olivia Munn botch the meeting, and their Hail Mary plan is to throw the old-school businessman they’re courting an epic office Christmas party. Tedious sitcom tropes follow.

This film’s greatest fault is not that it’s bad, it’s actually fairly watchable (this isn’t some patently offensively waste of time).

It’s just that for a film built upon the promise of unfettered bacchanalian debauchery, it doesn’t rage all that hard. No, it plays it safe with guarded jokes — like preemptive editing for TV — that make for an uninspired, middle-of-the-road disappointment. And its greatest feat is that it could render so many hilarious people so forgettable. As far as the central characters go, only Kate McKinnon’s parrot-loving, wacky HR eccentric Mary leaves an impression. But even the great McKinnon underwhelms, and you’ll only laugh dutifully out of habit, just like you would at your co-worker’s jokes at your real office Christmas party. But remember, this isn’t your office Christmas party, and you’re under no obligation to go. So, the only reply you need to give to an invitation to see this movie is your regrets.

DOWNTOWN

TRAVERSE CITY 7 Golden Globe Wins!

Downtown Suttons Bay www.thebaytheatre.com ~ 271-3772

LION SUNDAY 11:15 AM • 4:30 • 7:30 PM MONDAY 12:30 • 8:30 PM TUE & WED 1 • 3:45 • 6:30 • 9:15 PM THURSDAY 12:45 • 3:30 • 6:15 PM

(PG-13) (NR)

(PG-13)

•••••••••••••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••

Japan

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN SUNDAY 2 PM

Tribute to Debbie Reynolds by TCM - Tickets $8/$7 Members

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRDNR MONDAY 9 AM FREE for MLK Day!

MLK DAY CELEBRATION MONDAY 6 PM GIGINR WEDNESDAY 10:30 AM

Sat 4 & 7 • Sun 7:45 Mon/Tue 3:00 • Wed 1& 7 Thu/Fri 7:00 • Sat/Sun 4 & 7

THEY LIVER THURSDAY 9 PM

SUNSET SONG

FREE Live Music Event featuring Mahogany Jones Oscar-Winning Musicals Month! - 25¢ matinee

It Could Be Worse Night with Workshop Brewing in the House! - $5

DOWNTOWN

“Jonesin” Crosswords

"Sweet!"--getting that glazed-over look. by Matt Jones ACROSS

DOWN

1 Put in stitches 5 Andreas opener 8 Cogitates, with “over” 13 Antioxidant berry in fruit juices 14 Nervous twinge 15 Like a game’s tutorial levels 16 Considered only in terms of money 19 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America bestowals 20 Bird that runs 35 mph 22 Dating site datum 23 1986-to-2001 orbiter 24 Hi-___ graphics 26 Like “The Polar Express” 28 “Ain’t happenin’” 30 “Friends” friend 31 Filet mignon cut 35 Foul, as weather 36 Number sometimes decoded as “Z” 39 Friedlander of “30 Rock” 42 Amish, e.g.

43 “Buy It Now” site 47 ___ of troubles 49 Ashley and Mary-Kate, for two 51 Christmas tree choice 52 Fall back, tidewise 54 Quirky comic Philips 55 Unagi, at sushi bars 56 It’s provided by guild members 60 Advice that the four long entries with circles failed to follow 63 Baby garment with snaps 64 Word heard by Marge a lot, I imagine 65 Extreme aversion 66 ___ Martin (007’s car) 67 Part of MS-DOS (abbr.)

68 Fairy tale preposition

1 Trump tweet ender, often 2 Prefix before friendly or terrorism 3 Brownie ingredients, sometimes 4 Khartoum’s river 5 Uphill battle 6 Supermarket section 7 March Madness gp.

8 Cheese companion 9 Exploitative type 10 Retired hockey great Eric 11 “Dig in, everyone!”

12 High-class group, for short?

15 Hubble after whom a space telescope was named 17 “I’ve got ___ feeling about this!”

18 “Born on the Fourth of July” locale, briefly 20 “To ___ is human” 21 “Little Red Book” chairman 25 James Bond, for example 27 “Como ___?” (“How are you?” in Spanish) 29 Horns that are really winds 32 Iron-___ (T-shirt transfer patterns) 33 London or Brooklyn ending 34 Home of Times Sq. and Columbus Cir. 37 Brings by cart, perhaps 38 Bovine quartet 39 Peanut butter brand for “choosy moms” 40 Instances of agreement 41 Hackers’ hangout that’s tough to find via search engines 44 Keg attachment 45 “I’d like to buy ___” (request to Pat Sajak) 46 Armani competitor, initially 48 “I’ll have ___ Christmas without you” (Elvis lyric) 50 “Rio ___” (John Wayne flick) 53 Ask for a doggie treat, perhaps 54 Judy Jetson’s brother 57 “Make ___!” (Captain Picard’s order) 58 Some PTA members 59 Aloha Stadium locale 60 Morgue acronym 61 Judge Lance played by Kenneth Choi on “American Crime Story” 62 First number shouted before a ball drop, often

IN CLINCH PARK

SUNDAY & MONDAY 1 • 4 • 7 PM TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY 12:30 • 3:15 • 6 • 8:45 PM THURSDAY 1:15 • 4 • 6:45 • 9:30 PM 231-947-4800

(UK) (R)

THE BAY FILM SERIES January 15-17 Sun 2 & 5 • Mon & Tue 6

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 27

DEBTORS ANONYMOUS 12 Step Meeting in Traverse City

Does this sound like you?

Signposts on the Road to Becoming a Compulsive Debtor 1. Becoming unclear about your financial situation; not knowing account balances, monthly expenses, loan interest rates, fees, etc.

7. Living in chaos and drama around money; using one credit card to pay another, bouncing checks.

2. Frequently “borrowing” items, such as small amounts of money and failing to return it.

8. A tendency to live on the edge; living paycheck to paycheck, writing checks hoping money will appear.

3. Poor savings habits. Not planning for taxes, retirement or other predictable items.

4. Compulsive shopping; being unable to pass up a “good deal,” making impulsive purchases.

5. Difficulty in meeting basic or personal obligations.

6. A different feeling when buying things on credit than when paying cash.

9. Unwarranted inhibition and embarrassment in what should be a normal discussion of money.

10. Overworking or under-earning; working extra hours to pay creditors, using time inefficiently.

11. An unwillingness to care for and value yourself; living in self-imposed deprivation in order to pay your creditors.

12. A feeling of hope that someone will take care of you; someone to always be there to rescue you.

tion a New c o L WEEKLY MEETING Loca w e e im N T N e w w Ti tion TUESDAYS, 6:30-7:30PM Ne me Traverse City, MI Cowell Family Cancer Center (Munson) Room 1073 Sixth and Madison Street For more info: John P at tcdajp34@gmail.com

the ADViCE GOddESS Is It Something I Wed?

Q

: Two of my girlfriends just got divorced.

Both recently admitted to me that they knew they shouldn’t have gotten married at the time but did anyway. Just this weekend, another friend -- married for only a year and fighting bitterly with her husband -- also said she knew she was making a mistake before her wedding. Can you explain why anyone would go through with something as serious and binding as marriage if they have reservations?

— Confused

A

: Consider that in most areas of life, when you’re making a colossal mistake, nobody is all, “Hey, how about a coronation-style party, a Caribbean cruise, and a brand new-blender?”

But it isn’t just the allure of the star treatment and wedding swag that leads somebody to shove their doubts aside and proceed down the aisle. Other influences include parental pressure, having lots of married or marrying friends, being sick of dating, and feeling really bad about guests with nonrefundable airline tickets. There’s also the notion that “marriage takes work” -- meaning you can just put in a little emotional elbow grease and you’ll stop hating your spouse for being cheap, bad in bed, and chewing like a squirrel.

However, it also helps to look at how we make decisions -- and how much of our reasoning would more accurately be called “emotioning.”

We have a powerful aversion to loss and to admitting we were wrong, and this can cause us to succumb to the “sunk cost effect.” Sunk costs are investments we’ve already made -- of time, money, or effort. The “sunk cost effect” is decision researcher Hal Arkes’ term for our tendency to -- irrationally, ego-servingly -- keep throwing time, money, or effort into something based on what we’ve already put in. Of course, our original investment is gone. So the rational approach would be deciding whether to keep investing based on whether the thing’s likely to pay off in the future.

A way to avoid the sunk cost trap is through what psychologists call “prefactual thinking” -thinking out the possible outcomes before you commit to some risky course of action. Basically, you play the role of a pessimistic accountant and imagine all the ways your plan could drag you straight down the crapper.

28 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

But don’t just imagine all the awful things that could happen. Write out a list -- a detailed list.

So, for example, if you sense you could be mak-

adviceamy@aol.com advicegoddess.com

ing a mistake by getting married, don’t go all shortcutty, like “get divorced!” Parse out the itty-bitties, like “figure out how the hell to find a decent divorce lawyer”; “get lost on the way to the lawyer’s office and stand on the side of the road weeping”; and “start working as the indentured servant of a bunch of sorority girls to pay the lawyer’s retainer.” Yeah, that kind of detail.

Making potential losses concrete like this helps you weigh current costs against the future ones.

This, in turn, could help you admit that you and your not-entirely-beloved might have a real shot at happily ever after -- if only the one of you in the big white dress would bolt out the fire exit instead of walking down the aisle.

Expiration Dating

Q

: I’m a 32-year-old guy using dating apps. I was in a long-term relationship that ended badly, and I’m not ready for anything serious right now. I get that many women are ultimately looking for a relationship. I don’t want to ghost them if they start getting attached, but saying from the get-go that I just want something casual seems rude and a bit presumptuous.

— Conflicted

A

: Not everybody likes to spoon after sex.

You like to slip out of the house without being noticed.

It isn’t presumptuous to explain “from the getgo” that you aren’t ready for anything serious; it’s the right thing to do. Lay that out in your online profile (or at least in your first conversation) so women are clear that you’re an aspiring sexfriend, not an aspiring boyfriend. Consider, however, that research by anthropologist John Marshall Townsend finds that even women who are sure that casual sex is all they’re looking for can get clingy afterward -- to their great surprise. Townsend explains that women’s emotions evolved to “act as an alarm system that urges women to test and evaluate investment and remedy deficiencies even when they try to be indifferent to investment.”

Ghosting -- just disappearing on somebody you’re dating, with no explanation -- is dignityshredding. If a woman does end up wanting more than you can give, you need to do the adult thing and tell her you’re ending it. Sure, that’ll be seriously uncomfortable for both of you. But keep in mind that bad news is usually the road to recovery, while no news is the road to randomly running into a woman everywhere, including your shower.

aSTRO

lOGY

JAN 16 - JAN 22

BY ROB BREZSNY

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Some guy I don’t know keeps

sending me emails about great job opportunities he thinks I’d like to apply for: a technical writer for a solar energy company, for example, and a social media intern for a business that offers travel programs.

His messages are not spam. The gigs are legitimate. And yet I’m not in the least interested. I already have several jobs I enjoy, like writing these horoscopes.

I suspect that you, too, may receive worthy but ultimately irrelevant invitations in the coming days, Capricorn. My advice: If you remain faithful to your true needs and desires, more apropos offers will eventually flow your way.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Are you more

attracted to honing group dynamics or liberating group dynamics? Do you have more aptitude as a director who organizes people or as a sparkplug who inspires people?

Would you rather be a Chief Executive officer or a Chief Imagination Officer? Questions like these will be fertile for you to meditate on in the coming weeks. The astrological omens suggest it’s time to explore and activate more of your potential as a leader or catalyst.

responded, “To generalize is to be an idiot; to particularize is the alone distinction of merit.” So I may be an idiot when I make the following generalization, but I think I’m right: In the coming weeks, it will be in your best interests to rely on crafty generalizations to guide your decisions. Getting bogged down in details at the expense of the big picture -- missing the forest for the trees -- is a potential pitfall that you can and should avoid.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Czech writer Bohumil

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): ): An eccentric

Frenchman named Laurent Aigon grew up near an airport, and always daydreamed of becoming a commercial pilot. Sadly, he didn’t do well enough in school to fulfill his wish. Yet he was smart and ambitious enough to accomplish the next best thing: assembling a realistic version of a Boeing 737 cockpit in his home. With the help of Google, he gathered the information he needed, and ordered most of the necessary parts over the Internet. The resulting masterpiece has enabled him to replicate the experiences of being a pilot. It’s such a convincing copy that he has been sought as a consultant by organizations that specialize in aircraft maintenance. I suggest you attempt a comparable feat, Taurus: creating a simulated version of what you want. I bet it will eventually lead you to the real thing.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The weather

may be inclement where you live, so you may be resistant to my counsel. But I must tell you the meanings of the planetary omens as I understand them, and not fret about whether you’ll act on them. Here’s my prescription, lifted from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden: “We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.” And why does Thoreau say we need such experiences? “We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, to witness our own limits transgressed.”

CANCER June 21-July 22): Welcome to

the most deliciously enigmatic, sensually mysterious phase of your astrological cycle.

To provide you with the proper non-rational guidance, I have stolen scraps of dusky advice from the poet Dansk Javlarna (danskjavlarna. tumblr.com). Please read between the lines: 1. Navigate the ocean that roars within the seashell. 2. Carry the key, even if the lock has been temporarily lost. 3. Search through the deepest shadows for the bright light that cast them. 4. Delve into the unfathomable in wordless awe of the inexplicable.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): What exactly would

a bolt of lightning taste like? I mean, if you could somehow manage to roll it around in your mouth without having to endure the white-hot shock. There’s a booze manufacturer that claims to provide this sensation. The company known as Oddka has created “Electricity Vodka,” hard liquor with an extra fizzy jolt.

But if any sign of the zodiac could safely approximate eating a streak of lightning without the help of Electricity Vodka, it would be you Leos. These days you have a special talent for absorbing and enjoying and integrating fiery inspiration.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Eighteenth-century

painter Joshua Reynolds said that a “disposition to abstractions, to generalizing and classification, is the great glory of the human mind.” To that lofty sentiment, his fellow artist William Blake

Hrabal penned the novel Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age. It consists of one sentence.

But it’s a long, rambling sentence -- 117 pages’ worth. It streams from the mouth of the narrator, who is an older man bent on telling all the big stories of his life. If there were ever to come a time when you, too, would have cosmic permission and a poetic license to deliver a onesentence, 117-page soliloquy, Libra, it would be in the coming weeks. Reveal your truths! Break through your inhibitions!

Celebrate your epic tales! (P.S.: Show this horoscope to the people you’d like as your listeners.)

ScORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): When Pluto

was discovered in 1930, astronomers called it the ninth planet. But 76 years later, they changed their mind. In accordance with shifting definitions, they demoted Pluto to the status of a mere “dwarf planet.” But in recent years, two renowned astronomers at Caltech have found convincing evidence for a new ninth planet. Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown are tracking an object that is much larger than Earth. Its orbit is so far beyond Neptune’s that it takes 15,000 years to circle the sun. As yet it doesn’t have an official name, but Batygin and Brown informally refer to it as “Phattie.” I bring this to your attention, Scorpio, because I suspect that you, too, are on the verge of locating a monumental new addition to your universe.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The

tomato and potato are both nightshades, a family of flowering plants. Taking advantage of this commonality, botanists have used the technique of grafting to produce a pomato plant.

Its roots yield potatoes, while its vines grow cherry tomatoes. Now would be a good time for you to experiment with a metaphorically similar creation, Sagittarius. Can you think of how you might generate two useful influences from a single source?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) The word

“naysayer” describes a person who’s addicted to expressing negativity. A “yeasayer,” on the other hand, is a person who is prone to expressing optimism. According to my assessment of the astrological omens, you can and should be a creative yeasayer in the coming days -- both for the sake of your own well-being and that of everyone whose life you touch. For inspiration, study Upton Sinclair’s passage about Beethoven: He was “the defier of fate, the great yea-sayer.” His music is “like the wind running over a meadow of flowers, superlative happiness infinitely multiplied.”

PIScES (Feb. 19-March 20): If I’m feeling

prosaic, I might refer to a group of flamingos as a flock. But one of the more colorful and equally correct terms is a “flamboyance” of flamingos.

Similarly, a bunch of pretty insects with clubbed antennae and big fluttery wings may be called a kaleidoscope of butterflies. The collective noun for zebras can be a dazzle, for pheasants a bouquet, for larks an exaltation, and for finches a charm. In accordance with current astrological omens, I’m borrowing these nouns to describe members of your tribe. A flamboyance or kaleidoscope of Pisceans? Yes! A dazzle or bouquet or exaltation or charm of Pisceans? Yes! All of the above.

An award winning community where

Nature is Your Neighbor

Community Features:

• Outdoor pool • Community lodge • Community activities • Pets welcome • Snow removal, lawn and home maintenance services available • City water and sewer • New, pre-owned & custom homes from the $70’s to the $100’s

Stop by… you will never want to leave!

For more information call:

Charleen - 231.933.4800 or Cindy at 231-421-9500 www.woodcreekliving.com

Located on South Airport Road, just west of Three Mile, in Traverse City

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 29

NORTHERN EXPRESS

CLASSIFIEDS EMPLOYMENT EVENTS COORDINATOR Right Brain Brewery seeks qualified individual. Duties include coordinating on- and off-site events, media/webpage/hewsletter updates, merchandise ordering & inventory. FT EOE http://www.rightbrainbrewery.com/pages. php?tabid=1&pageid=548&title=Careers BILLING COORDINATOR VP Demand Creation Svcs is looking for a full time Billing Coordinator. Duties to include but not limited to: Job reconciliation, Monthly reporting, Annual contract management and analysis, support estimating and purchasing departments. Candidate must be detail oriented, a strategic analytical thinker, possess strong computer and communication skills and work well in a team environment.Print Knowledge beneficial. Email cover letter and resume to: HRM@villagepress.com CUSTOMER SERVICE REP-CIRCULATION DEPT. VP Demand Creation Svcs is looking for a Part Time (30 hrs/week) CSR for our Circulation Dept. This position requires strong computer and data entry skills, and attention to detail. Strong phone skills are required to handle calls from subscribers and members.

Further responsibilities include: email correspondence, entering orders, troubleshooting and responding to subscriber/member issues. Must have the ability to work with multiple interruptions and in a team environment.

Email cover letter and resume to: HRM@villagepress.com.

STATE AND BIJOU THEATER PROJECTIONIST Theater Projectionist State & Bijou Now Hiring Movie Theater Projectionist - Looking for a special person with a true passion for excellent presentation and a love for movies to work as full time projectionist at two very special movie theaters, the State Theatre & Bijou by the Bay. https:// www.stateandbijou.org/content/openpositions APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS TECHNICIAN Pediatric Clinic seeking ABA techs w/ min HS diploma, experience w/ children; special needs ideal. Strong interpersonal and organizational skills desired. Duties include applying behavioral principles to teach children w/ autism to acquire language, self-help, and social skills.

Hrs vary-after school hrs preferred-will train.

Send resume by 1/20. EOE tcofficemanager@ childrenstherapycorner.com ECOMMERCE AUCTION MANAGER @ Shopgwmi.com Goodwill Industries of Northern Michigan is looking for an eCommerce Auction Manager to join our GOOD team in Traverse City! The position is responsible for the effective and efficient operation of the eCommerce department through the posting, follow through, follow-up and customer service on all items posted and sold on shopgwmi.com and shopgoodwill.com.

Responsibilities also include supervising, training and motivating eCommerce staff, as well as achievement of eCommerce operation’s revenue & expense goals. Full time w/benefits.

STYLIST NEEDED The Beehive Salon, Elk Rapids is hiring a part or full time stylist. No clientele needed. Aveda sales commission based pay. Contact Nikki at 231-342-5852 or nikki49648@yahoo.com

HEALTH SERVICES

OTHER

BODY-MIND THERAPY A powerful integrative approach to personal growth and healing, incorporating bodywork, dialogue, movement, and a range of holistic therapeutic modalities.

Fosters lasting growth and change by addressing your whole self - body, mind, and spirit. For more info, contact Lee Edwards of SoulWays, 231-421-3120, www.soulwayshealing.com

SEWING, ALTERATIONS, mending & repairs.

Maple City, Maralene Roush 231-228-6248.

REAL ESTATE

MAKE YOUR FLOORS GREAT AGAIN! With a new look for the new year from Bodamer Brothers Flooring. All carpet and vinyl products are now 40% off. Plus, with 0% - 18 month Same as cash financing, you can enjoy your floors now and pay for them later. No waiting for your tax refund this year, get into Bodamer Brothers today! 3000 Garfield Rd. N. just south of S. Airport rd. Traverse City.

30 ACRES-LEELANAU COUNTY-BINGHAM TWNSHP 30 Acres cleared - AG USE ONLY, tilled and maintained annually. Great for Hops, Malt or Vineyard. In the heart of Leelanau Wine Country! See Zillow link for details. NO Agents. http://www.zillow. com/homes/fsbo/Suttons-Bay-MI/mmm_ pt/2113083602_zpid/27337_rid/44.959879,85.619802,44.89437,-85.736532_rect/12_zm/

BUY/SELL/TRADE HONDA CIVIC 2008 FOR SALE. Snow tires, new all-season tires, moonroof, cruise, power, 71,000 mi. $6,900. 231-392-4216

easy. accessible. all online.

Log on to submit your classified!

northernexpress.com/classifieds Easy. Accessible. All Online.

30 • January 16, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

LOCALLY FARM RAISED Black Angus, No-Hormones, Non-Fertilized Grass Fed, Non-GMO Grain Finished, Butchered-Quarters (approx 100 to 124 lbs): Please call 231-3302028 or 231-388-3836

™

National Writers Series

announces its aMaZInG 2017 season one!

Join us for a conversation with: Friday, February 10

John Donvan & Caren ZuCker

Friday, April 28

Wednesday, June 7

“A chilling expose” ~ Sebastian Junger

Bestselling author of Gulp and Sniff

erIC FaIr

New York Times bestselling authors

Consequence: A Memoir

In A Different Key: The Story of Autism

Wednesday, May 3

Monday, February 27

Pulitzer Prize Winner and NYT bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge

Beth MaCy

Author of National Bestseller Factory Man

True Vine

elIZaBeth strout Anything is Possible

Friday, May 26

Saturday, April 15

anDrea Petersen

#1 NYT bestselling author Nathchez Burning

On Edge - A Journey Through Anxiety

GreG Iles

Mississippi Blood

New York Times bestselling author

Mary roaCh

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War

Sunday, June 25

JulIa Glass National Book Award author of Three Junes

A House Among the Trees

Friday, July 7

W. BruCe CaMeron New York Times bestselling author

A Dog’s Purpose

For more information visit: nationalwritersseries.org or CityOperaHouse.org All eventS At City OperA HOuSe • Buy the Book at a discount at the city opera house website!

Northern Express Weekly • january 16, 2017 • 31

Introducing the NEW Players Club At Odawa we pride ourselves on providing the best gaming entertainment experience possible, with dozens of table games, hundreds of the most popular slot machines, and best in live entertainment and special events. And now we’re taking it even further with our new, more rewarding, Players Club. Join for FREE today.

32ODA-4354_1/2 • January 16,Express_12-28_10.375x12.25.indd 2017 • Northern Express Weekly Northern 1

12/16/16 4:55 PM