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Michigan has high rates of diabetes and obesity, but there are plenty of ways to

GET HEALTHY NORTHERN MICHIGAN’S WEEKLY • January 9 - january 15, 2017 • Vol. 27 No. 2

Warm Lights in The Village

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2 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

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questionable Trump nominees. How do we do that? We keep the investigations and information flowing on these people. Support your local media. Renew subscriptions, advertise, and write articles and letters to the editor. A free, accurate and fact-based press stands between us and fascism.

CONTENTS

features

— W.D. Bushey, Elmwood Township Crime and Rescue Map.......................................7

We should be so lucky

letters Take a look at curriculum

Regarding the comic in the Dec. 19-26 issue by Ruben Bolling that showed Trump being ruled by Putin/Russia: If you’ve been paying attention, you will know that we’ve been using the Russian model (also used in China) of education since 2010, here called Common Core, so this made me laugh.

It seems fine if a public-schooled eightgrader has no idea what nine times eight is, or how to do long division, and is told what to think and how to think it (especially regarding history).

I’m not talking just here in Traverse City or surrounding areas, I am talking nationwide.

I know of one mom (from Indiana) whose daughter is 14 and wants to be a veterinarian, but will not be able to take zoology in high school because her test scores showed she’d do better in another career. This is one mom, from one school, but it’s happening everywhere.

In Michigan, it’s called the P-20 system (prenatal to workforce). They are dictating to her what she will do with her life. We’ve just been going on with our lives, like there’s nothing wrong with it. This is how they do it there, folks. They don’t want smart kids, they want kids who do what they are told, without question. Now all of the sudden we’re worried about Putin.

I’ve been worried. Nice to see you all come on board. Maybe take a second look at your child’s curriculum, in detail, and maybe start talking to other moms and dads in other places about their public school experience to see what is really going on. That is all.

— Kelley Vilenski, Interlochen

When will we ever learn?

If we are to become better humans, we must come to grips with the reality that war does not solve conflicts. The U.S. has blood on its hands for endless wars of aggression around the world, and now the saber rattling against Russia and China is accelerating.

As one line in the Pete Seeger song goes, when will we ever learn?

Will we ever learn not to glorify the

military? We can honor veterans and still abhor war. Will we ever learn to define and address problems created by the greed of arms dealers, the love of power, and narcissistic ideas of exceptionalism?

Will we ever learn that weapons of war are not entertainment, that they are used to kill and maim real people, including defenseless women and children?

Will we ever learn to listen to the needs of others around the world, to share, and to cooperate?

Will we ever learn to walk in each other’s shoes, to learn and appreciate other cultures?

It is only through education and diplomacy, empathy and understanding that we will ever find peace.

— Ann Rogers, Traverse City

A pox on our Democracy

In a few days, we witness the inauguration of a president and the installation of a first family. I will accept neither. For people who say, “Get over it, move on, let’s work together, all unite,” I say blah, blah and blah.

Be a resister. Here’s what we are getting: a misogynistic man lying about almost everything; a man who is vengeful (he would like to sue the press — to hell with the First Amendment); a man with no boundaries, a crotch grabber who makes fun of the handicapped; a shameless, despicable, amoral person who surrounds himself with similar types.

We are getting a first lady soft-porn artist with whom the magazine industry will have a field day, a son who likes to shoot large animals while they are standing still, and a daughter who is wiggling her way into the first lady’s job.

We are losing a president who made our country a better, safer place to live. A man who made good decisions: He saved GM and Chrysler; created health care for 30 million people; supported marriage equality and other laws Republicans wouldn’t touch.

He is a charismatic man of integrity and high moral standards. We have a gracious and involved a first lady who should be the envy of her detractors. Add two wonderful, intelligent daughters and we have a model first family.

This election was a pox on our Democracy.

We need to fight the incoming cadre of

Over the last eight years the Dow more than tripled, 11 million jobs were created, and unemployment fell below 5 percent. Energy production rose to a new high. Gas prices fell.

The auto industry was saved. Bin Laden was killed. Illegal immigration fell. Thirty million more people got health insurance, and people with pre-existing conditions got coverage. And the deficit was substantially reduced.

There were some missteps, too. We should have done more in Syria, though exactly what isn’t clear. We should have done something to reduce the number of foreclosures. The Affordable Care Act startup was messy, and some premium increases on the exchanges have been too large. And the economy grew at a relatively slow annual rate.

Policy issues aside, the Obamas behaved admirably. There was no self-dealing. There were no scandals. Barack and Michelle are terrific parents. Obama never traded on fear and loathing. He released his tax returns.

He never praised dictators, mocked disabled people, bragged about grabbing women by their privates, or issued angry tweets.

Overall, Obama got some important things done — despite congressional gridlock — while comporting himself with tremendous class.

We should be so lucky for another four years.

Out of shape and at risk................................10 ‘Just trying to get through the week’................12 Cooking class..............................................13 Lineup set for National Writers Series...............15 Wacky races the norm at winter festivals..........18 Traverse City’s Big Boy comes of age...............19 Seen.................................................................20

dates...............................................21-23 music The persistence of Chris Buhalis......................14 Michigan music fans to pick Winter Wheat.......16 On the road again with Jay and Molly...............17 FourScore.......................................................24 Nightlife...........................................................26

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

Spectator/Stephen Tuttle...................................4 Weird................................................................8 Style.................................................................8 Modern Rock/Kristi Kates.................................25 The Reel.......................................................27 Advice Goddess..............................................29 Crossword.....................................................29 — Tom Gutowski, Elmwood Township Freewill Astrology...........................................30 Classifieds......................................................31 Pain for the middle class How are a group billionaires with their personal agendas going to represent middleclass, working Americans?

Consider Trump’s pick for head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt. He is a denier of climate change contrary to 97 percent of climate scientists.

Betsy DeVos, his choice for secretary of education, has a history of opposing public education. If Trump’s secretary of labor bulldozes the National Labor Board, there goes workers’ rights and the right to organize unions freeing corporations from rules that prohibit discrimination in hiring, paying, promoting and firing workers.

With new tax cuts for corporations and the super-rich, the budget for human needs will “take a hit,” and our national debt will skyrocket. Deregulation of corporations will encourage more pollution of the environment.

Trump’s senior adviser, Steve Bannon, is an extreme conservative, and his website trades in conspiracy theories.

The pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, is opposed to the Affordable Care Act. How long will it take to replace it — months or years? The Republicans are willing to throw 20 million families under the train when they repeal the Affordable Care Act. They have no new plan to help those families. The pain in part will fall on those rural Americans that voted Republican who will lose their health care and can’t afford the higher premiums.

Corporate America will more likely defend its cash cow with little or no concern for those families that depend on the lower premiums and tax credits that they receive under Obamacare.

Because of our election system, a minority of angry Americans chose Trump, and he gives Putin, former head of the KGB, a pass over those who have been dedicated to serve America.

If this is making “America Great Again” — for whom?

Northern Express Weekly is published by Eyes Only Media, LLC. Publisher: Luke Haase Editor: Allen Johnson 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 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.

— Ron Dykstra, Beulah

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 3

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4 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

The past few weeks have seen the sharpest criticism of Israel by the U.S. in decades.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s Dec. 28 speech attempted primarily to blame Israel for the continued Israeli-Palestinian impasse. It came a few days after a rare U.S. decision not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution that asserted Israeli settlements have “no legal validity.”

That resolution also effectively classified Judaism’s holiest site, East Jerusalem’s Western Wall, as “occupied territory.” This doublewhammy by the Obama administration was too much even for the British — normally Israeli critics — who felt compelled to have the new British prime minister reject Kerry’s remarks.

Kerry cited the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank as the primary threat to the realization of a “two-state solution” — one Jewish state, one Palestinian, co-existing peacefully in the land between the Mediterranean and Jordan. Kerry’s strongest attacks were reserved for those Israelis who have given up on the two-state solution and now envision a one-state solution.

In the one-state scenario, Israel controls all of the West Bank (where today reside about 600,000 Jews and 2.5 million Arabs). But the Palestinians are granted self-rule in the urban areas where they are concentrated and where few Jews reside. The Palestinians would elect their own leaders, run their own municipalities and have their own police force, as they already do in much of the West Bank, but Israel would be in control and Jewish settlements would continue to grow. This vision of a one-state future is not likely to satisfy Palestinian aspirations for statehood, nor silence Israel’s critics.

Kerry blamed Israel’s ultra-Orthodox religious minority for pushing Israel’s government toward the one-state option. In reality, a majority of religious and secular Israelis are looking for new solutions that provide real security. Israelis are tired of endless war just as, no doubt, Palestinians are fed up with living under occupation.

But is the two-state solution even still alive?

Right now, there are no serious peace talks underway. There are many substantive reasons for this, and the acrimonious relationship between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one.

But I would argue that the principal reason for the lack of progress is political.

Netanyahu leads a fragile coalition government that is dominated by right-wing parties, several of which support annexation of all of the West Bank. For settlers who moved there for economic reasons, and for the ultraOrthodox, who view Judea and Samaria as part of “greater Israel,” relinquishing the West Bank to the Arabs is unthinkable.

Israelis of every stripe cite security as their No. 1 concern in any solution. Prominent rightwing party leaders like Naftali Bennett (leader of the Jewish Home party) point to Gaza as one negative example. After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, elections were held that brought Hamas — an organization labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. and 32 other countries — into a ruling coalition with the comparatively moderate Palestinian Authority.

But after bloody street battles, Hamas expelled the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza became a terrorist stronghold. Hamas built bomb factories and launched rocket and suicide attacks on the nearby Jewish villages and towns in Israel proper. A violent Israeli retaliation against such attacks in 2008-09 drew widespread international condemnation.

Bennett and other right-wing Israeli politicians argue that a similar fate awaits Israel

if the Palestinians gain control of the West Bank. Radical Islamists would quickly take over and besiege all of pre-1967 Israel. Even if Hamas could be kept out of the West Bank, the record of the Palestinian Authority leadership in harnessing terrorism is not good.

Kerry acknowledged Palestinian “incitement” of terror attacks but only paid lip service in his speech to the fact that Palestinian leaders had praised, rather than condemned, the Palestinian attackers. They named public squares after the “martyrs” and condoned their “sacrifice.”

In Palestinian schools, children are taught to glorify the terrorists and to hate Israelis.

Kerry’s brief acknowledgment of this failure of Palestinian leadership did not do justice to how their failures affect Israeli Jews and their willingness to trust any negotiated settlement that relies solely on Palestinian enforcement.

Looking around their “neighborhood,” Israelis see chaos near the Golan Heights, in Syria, in Lebanon and in the Sinai, where terrorist groups linked to the Islamic State organization and al-Qaida compete for dominance. Even liberal Israeli Jews agree that if the West Bank were to become a battleground for these factions, Israel would be under constant attack.

Beyond these “facts on the ground,” what makes Kerry’s sharp critique even more inexplicable is its timing. Based on Presidentelect Donald Trump’s campaign statements, his administration envisions a very different relationship with Israel. Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is an orthodox Jew who is committed to settlement expansion and who has written that the “two-state solution is an illusion.” Both the ambassador-designee and the presidentelect have also called for the U.S. Embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Now, the Trump administration will have to weigh whether allowing more settlement expansion and moving the embassy — moves that will please the Israeli right wing — might trigger a backlash against the U.S. and Israel.

Right now, the Middle East is mired in a Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict in which IsraelPalestine is not the central issue. But moving our embassy, ignoring settlement expansion or acquiescing in Israeli annexation of all or part of the West Bank might well shift the Arab world’s focus from their inter-Arab conflicts to one in which Israel and the U.S. are in the crosshairs.

Moderate and progressive Israelis (40 percent of Israeli Jews) fear that Trump could inflame what is presently a relatively quiet situation on the West Bank without apparent gain.

Future Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, is an experienced student of Arab affairs and likely to warn Trump that we don’t need to further upset an already-unstable region by drastically altering our Israel policies. He will likely counsel Trump to protect our current extensive economic and military ties to the Arab states. That would argue for going slow on any changes vis-avis Israel and leaving the Palestinians in their current limbo.

Whether Trump will also go so far as to pressure the Israelis not to seize the opportunity of his first days in office to annex part or all of the West Bank, and whether he will ignore a long-standing congressional mandate to move our embassy will be among his earliest challenges.

Jack Segal served as counselor for politicalmilitary affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1988-1991. He and his wife, Karen, cochair the International Affairs Forum.

this week’s

top five Go take a (winter) hike Just because it’s cold and snowy outside doesn’t mean it’s not a good time to enjoy what northern Michigan has to offer.

The Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy will host six winter hikes on Saturdays over the next two months.

“Many locals have never visited our beautiful preserves, and we love taking the time to give them a guided tour,” A view from Green Point Dunes. said Art Bukowski, outreach specialist. “These places are just as beautiful in winter as they are in summer.”

Bring big boots or snowshoes for these free hikes; plan on being out for a couple hours.

There is a hike Jan. 14 at 10 a.m. at the Fruitland Preserve on Herron Road in Benzie County. For more information, or to learn about the other hikes, visit the events page at gtrlc.org.

hot club of cowtown Hot Club of Cowtown, who was picked by Bob Dylan to tour with him, will play hot jazz and western swing at Freshwater Art Gallery and Concert Venue in Boyne City at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13. Tickets are $25. For more information, visit freshwaterartgallery.com. Photo courtesy of Nick Barber at Celtic Connections.

Songs and dinner for After 26 Two veteran northern Michigan musicians will perform solo shows to benefit the After 26 Depot in Cadillac.

Chris Winkelmann and Zak Bunce will perform at the restaurant Jan. 21 from 6-8 p.m. Tickets cost $20 in advance and include dinner.

Winkelmann is a founding member of the Traverse City roots band Soul Patch, and Bunce is a multi-instrumentalist who’s played with musicians all over Michigan.

After 26 is a nonprofit that gives disabled adults a place to work and some structure and meaning in their lives. The restaurant’s name refers to the age when state-funded education programs are no longer available to people with a developmental disability or cognitive impairment.

bottomsup tandem cider’s switchel While switchel is now being called a “hipster’s drink,” the original beverage — made of water mixed with vinegar and seasoned with ginger and sweetener — actually has roots far deeper than your local barista’s beard.

Although it may have originated in the Caribbean, New England takes credit for it today. Switchel has long been a popular summer drink out East, especially for farmers, as the drink offers hydration without the stomachache that can sometimes occur when one combines hard work, hot weather and plain cold water.

In northern Michigan, Tandem Ciders is offering up its own version of switchel.

It’s one of two nonalcoholic soft drinks the cidery makes in addition to hard ciders.

“Our switchel is made with our own house-made apple cider vinegar, plus lemon juice, honey and soda water,” said Sarah Arnebeck, Tandem Ciders’ tasting room manager. “The fact that it’s lightly carbonated makes it a little different than the traditional switchel.”

Tandem’s switchel does carry a vinegar flavor, as you might expect, but the citrus and sweet honey push it toward an aftertaste that settles more like an exotic iced tea.

“It’s delicious and different,” Arnebeck said.

If switchel is a little too unusual for you, there’s always Tandem’s ginger ale, crafted from a recipe brought in by co-owner Dan Young, who developed it when he owned a brewery in Massachusetts.

Both sodas are available in carry-out glass jugs: a “howler” size (32 ounces) for $6, or a “growler” (half gallon) for $12, each with a $3 deposit on the jug.

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Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 5

NOMINATIONS AND POLLS spectator by stephen tuttle Every president-elect is faced with the immediate problem of hiring and nominating many people for many jobs. Many, many jobs; nearly 7,500, including nearly 1,500 requiring Senate confirmation.

Many positions will go to career bureaucrats who at least have some idea of what they’re doing. Some will go to presidential pals and major campaign donors. We’ll never even hear of most.

We will hear much about President-elect Donald Trump’s 15 cabinet nominations, those at the top level of government. Every new president includes a surprise or two in that group, and there’s usually someone facing a confirmation fight.

Trump, true to form, has made several surprising choices, and there may well be more than a single confirmation battle on the horizon. The highlights:

attorney general nominee. It won’t be his first confirmation hearing.

Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions for a federal judgeship, but accusations of racism, which he has always denied, derailed his confirmation. Those old claims will likely be rehashed. He’s also virulently anti-immigration, even opposing visas for highly educated and highly skilled immigrants.

Sessions will also have to explain why he thought the Supreme Court gutting of parts of the Voting Rights Act was a “great day for the South.”

Then there’s retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has been tapped to be Trump’s national security adviser, a position not requiring congressional approval and typically shielded from its prying inquiries. It’s a shame because those would have been interesting hearings.

We need a final election postscript regarding the polls.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the inaccuracy and unreliability of polling. How could they have been so wrong?

They weren’t.

Let’s start with Michigan’s own Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice for secretary of education. She and her husband and her father have contributed lavishly to Republican and conservative causes over the years. Nothing unusual in that; major donors are rewarded by both parties.

DeVos is also known as the queen of vouchers. She has worked for years, in multiple states, trying to pass voucher laws that would allow taxpayer money earmarked for public education to go directly to parents to be used for private, parochial, charter or even home schooling.

DeVos will likely be confirmed, but we already know fiats coming from the feds concerning education are not well received at the state level.

Secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, might face stickier questions, especially concerning his relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin.

He partnered with a Putin-backed Russian oil company and then put the headquarters in the Bahamas to avoid U.S. taxes.

Some Republican senators have already expressed significant skepticism about his chumminess with a country that acts like the Cold War is still percolating.

Treasury secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin is likely to face his own opposition during confirmation hearings.

Mnuchin was a Goldman Sachs executive during the time the firm helped create the housing crash and ensuing recession.

He then bought mortgage lender Indymac, changed the name to OneWest Bank and became known as the Foreclosure King of California, famous for ruthless foreclosure policies. OneWest’s mortgage subsidiary foreclosed on 38,000 homes in California in just seven years, including nearly 40 percent of all reverse mortgage foreclosures in the country.

Mnuchin will have questions to answer.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is Trump’s

6 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was forced out and retired a year early for an allegedly ineffective management style that included fabricating facts to support his theories.

He has publicly claimed there are cities in Texas and Florida enacting Sharia law (no city anywhere in this country is doing any such thing), there are signs on our southern border in Arabic guiding terrorist infiltrators (there are no such signs) and that members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team were part of a pedophile ring (no they weren’t). Good grief.

Those are just the highlights of an eccentric group of Trump nominees. The confirmation hearings have the potential of some real political theater.

We need a final election postscript regarding the polls. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the inaccuracy and unreliability of polling. How could they have been so wrong?

They weren’t.

Most final national polls had Clinton ahead by two to four points. She won the popular vote by about two points. That’s pretty accurate. Statewide polls weren’t far off, either.

Here in Michigan, for example, Clinton maintained a double-digit lead throughout the summer. As the leaves began to turn, it became eight points, then six, then four, then within the margin of error. Had the election been Nov. 15, the polls conducted on the 8th would have likely shown Trump ahead, as he then was.

By the time polling numbers are released, they are almost always days old, a snapshot of last week’s opinions. The final poll, on Election Day, revealed a tipping point several swing states had been trending toward for weeks. The fact that those trends weren’t widely reported doesn’t make the polling inaccurate.

Doesn’t make the polling inaccurate.

Crime & Rescue SMOKE CAUSED SNOWMOBILE PILEUP Smoke that billowed from a damaged snowmobile clouded visibility and caused a crash that piled up six sleds and injured three drivers.

An 18-year-old downstate man stopped on a trail south of Indian River because smoke was pouring from his engine compartment, Cheboygan County Sheriff Dale Clarmont said.

The smoke limited visibility and led to a chainreaction crash at just before noon Dec. 31. Six snowmobiles piled up in the crash, and three drivers were injured, including the 18-year-old with engine trouble and two other downstate men, ages 49 and 55.

The three were taken to McLaren Northern Michigan in Petoskey for treatment of injuries that were not life-threatening.

FRAUD CHARGE SOUGHT FOR DAUGHTER A teenager who used her father’s credit card to buy a plane ticket to Germany could face fraud charges.

The 18-year-old’s father received a call from his bank Jan. 1 about the $1,200 purchase, and he alerted the airport as his daughter’s flight was boarding. Transportation Security Administration agents pulled the girl from her flight at Cherry Capital Airport as the plane readied for takeoff.

Traverse City Police investigated and said the parents requested their daughter be prosecuted for fraud.

PAIR OVERDOSE IN VAN Police found overdose victims after they got a call about two people passed out in a van.

Wexford County sheriff’s deputies were called to the Beacon and Bridge gas station on M-115 in Clam Lake Township at 9:22 p.m. Dec. 28.

A man, 46, and woman, 20, were found breathing but unresponsive; their condition along with the presence of drug paraphernalia led responders to suspect drug overdoses.

Deputies administered Narcan, an opiate overdose reversal drug.

The Midland couple refused treatment at a hospital and are expected to face drug charges.

TWO KILLED IN CRASH Two women were killed when the pickup they were in crashed head-on with a semi.

The 25-year-old driver from Davenport, Fla., and 41-year-old passenger from Gaylord were killed on M-32 near Gingell Road in Otsego County at 6:55 p.m. Jan. 4, state police said.

Two juvenile passengers were taken to Otsego Memorial Hospital and are expected to recover.

The truck driver, a 53-year-old Gaylord man, was not injured. Troopers said weather was a factor in the crash.

DRUNK AND SPEEDING WITH KIDS A woman who was pulled over for traveling 101 mph in a 55-mph zone was arrested for child endangerment.

State police said a 32-year-old Mancelona woman was drunk and was driving with two children in her vehicle.

The woman was pulled over in Kalkaska County at 10:40 p.m. Dec. 28. She was taken for a blood draw at the Kalkaska Memorial Health Center and then to jail. The children were turned over to their stepfather.

by patrick sullivan psullivan@northernexpress.com

POLICE RECOVER STOLEN HANDGUN Boyne City police investigated after someone broke into a car and stole a handgun.

The owner filed a report Dec. 24 saying that the handgun, cash and a weekend bag filled with clothes were taken in a break-in.

Police identified a suspect and tracked him to a house. They found the bag nearby, covered in snow, but the handgun had been removed. Officers got a search warrant for the residence and found the weapon inside.

The suspect was not at the house, but a warrant was issued for his arrest.

NEW YEAR’S EVE CRASH CLAIMS ONE A 22-year-old Indian River man died after he lost control of his car in snow and crashed into an oncoming vehicle.

Tyler Hoobler died at the scene, which happened when he lost control of his 2005 Chevrolet Corsica on South Straits Highway in Wilmot Township at 4:49 p.m. Dec. 31, Cheboygan County Sheriff Dale Clarmont said.

The other driver, a 27-year-old Mackinac Island woman, had minor injuries. Two passengers in her 2012 Ford F-150 were not injured. Everyone wore seatbelts, and alcohol was not a factor.

RUNAWAYS’ ROAD TRIP CUT SHORT Two teenage girls who decided to mark the new year with a road trip got picked up

by Indiana state troopers just hours after one of their moms reported them missing.

The girls — ages 15 and 16 — took a car owned by one of their families and left a note saying that they wanted to travel, said Capt. Randy Fewless of the Grand Traverse County sheriff’s office.

A parent came to the law enforcement center at 9 a.m. Jan. 2 to report them missing, which caused the sheriff’s department to put out a multistate “be-on-the-lookout” bulletin for the vehicle and the girls. That’s how police in Indiana spotted them at around noon and took them into custody.

CRASH CLAIMS YOUNG SKIER A 10-year-old Illinois girl died after she crashed into a tree while skiing at Crystal Mountain.

The accident occurred at 2 p.m. Jan. 1 during a group ski lesson on an intermediate ski trail.

The girl, one of three students in the class, was skiing ahead when she lost control and struck a tree, according to the resort. The girl was wearing a helmet.

The ski instructor immediately contacted ski patrol, and emergency responders arrived in an effort to revive the skier. She was taken to Munson Medical Center and then DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids where she died the following day.

VISIT TO JAIL ENDS IN JAIL A man turned up drunk for a morning breathalyzer test on New Year’s Day. The 22-year-old Texas man was court-ordered to take the test because of a previous arrest, and when he showed up at the Leelanau County Jail on Jan. 1, staff determined that not only had the man been drinking, but that he’d had too much to drive.

A road deputy determined that the man had driven himself to the station in a 2011 GMC pickup truck and put him in jail for operating while intoxicated.

JACKKNIFE CRASH INJURES TWO A van and a semi tangled in an early-morning crash. M-66 was closed for two-and-a-half hours Jan. 4 as deputies investigated the 4:37 a.m. crash, Missaukee County Sheriff Jim Bosscher said.

Investigators determined that a semitruck driven by a 46-year-old Marion man was likely traveling too fast, crossed the centerline and struck an oncoming van driven by a 49-year-old Lake City man, causing the trailer to jackknife.

Both drivers were extracted from their vehicles and hospitalized in stable condition.

emmet cheboygan charlevoix

antrim

otsego

Leelanau

benzie

manistee

grand traverse

wexford

kalkaska

missaukee

crawfor D

roscommon

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 7

Coziness

by candra kolodziej

STREET STYLE Too-Much-Reality TV Russian producers are planning the sofar-ultimate survivors’ show -- in the Siberian wilderness for nine months (temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit), with 30 contestants selected after signing liability waivers that protect the show even if someone is raped or murdered. (Police may come arrest the perpetrators, but the producers are not responsible for intervening.) The show (“Game2: Winter”) will be telecast live, around the clock, beginning July 2017 via 2,000 cameras placed in a large area full of bears and treacherous forest.

Producers told Siberian Times in December that 60 prospects had already signed up for the lastperson-standing prize: the equivalent of $1.6 million (only requirements: be 18 and “sane”).

(Bonus: The production company’s advertising lists the “dangerous” behaviors they allow, including “fighting,” “murder,” “rape,” “smoking.”)

Roundup From the World’s Press ■ With car-camel collisions increasing in Iran’s two southern provinces, an Iranian government ministry is in the process of issuing identification cards to each camel, supposedly leading to outerwear license “plates” on each of the animals. Authorities told the Islamic Republic News Agency the registration numbers are needed if an accident victim needs to report the camel or to help trace smugglers. (No actual U.S.-style license plates on camels have yet made the world’s news photographs.)

■ Martin Shkreli became the Wall Street bad boy in 2015 when his company Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the right to market the lifesaving drug Daraprim and promptly raised its typical price of $18 a pill to $750, but in November, high schoolers in the chemistry lab at Sydney Grammar in Australia created a molecular knockoff of Daraprim for about $2 a tablet. Their sample of “pyrimethamine” (Daraprim’s chemical name) was judged authentic by a University of Sydney chemistry professor. Daraprim, among other uses, fights deadly attacks on immune systems, such as for HIV patients.

■ Gazing Upon Nature as Nature Calls: To serve restroom users in a public park in China’s Hunan Province’s picturesque Shiyan Lake area, architects gave users in toilet cubicles a view of the forest through ceiling-to-floor windows. To discourage sightseers who believe the better view is not from the cubicles but into them, the bottom portion, up to the level of the toilet, is frosted -though that stratagem probably blurs only a pair of legs, seated. (CNN reported in October that China has at least one other such restroom, in Guilin province, viewing distant mountains.)

■ Oops! Organizers of the Christmas Day caroling program at the Nelum Pokuna theater in Colombo, Sri Lanka, drawing thousands of devout celebrants, were apparently confused by one song title and innocently included it in the book for the carolers. (No, it wasn’t “Inna Gadda Da Vida” from a famous “Simpsons” episode.) It was “Hail Mary” by the late rapper Tupac Shakur -- likely resulting in the very first appearance of certain words in any Christmas service publication anywhere.

■ Officials of the Ulm Minster in Ulm, Germany, the world’s tallest church (530 feet high), said in October that they fear it might eventually be brought down -- by visitors who make the long trek up with a full bladder and no place to relieve themselves except in dark alcoves, thus eroding the structure’s sandstone.

A building preservation representative also cited vomit in the alcoves, perhaps as a result of the dizzying height of the view from the top.

(News of the Weird has reported on erosion

damage to a bridge, from spitting, in Mumbai, India, and at the Taj Mahal, from bug droppings.)

■ The Dubai-based Gulf News reported in November that 900 Kuwaiti government workers had their pay frozen during the current investigation into no-shows, including one man on the payroll (unidentified) who reportedly had not actually worked in 10 years.

Another, who had been living abroad for 18 months while drawing his Kuwaiti pay, was reduced to half-pay, but insisted he had asked several times for assignments but was told nothing was available. (Gulf News reported that the 10-year man is appealing the freeze!)

■ Prosecutors in Darlington, England, obviously take child “cruelty” seriously because Gary McKenzie, 22, was hauled into court in October on four charges against a boy (whose name and age were not published), including passing gas in the boy’s face. The charge was described as “in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health.” He was on trial for two other slightly harsher acts -- and another gas-passing, against a different boy -- but the judgment has not been reported.

■ World-class chess players are famous for intense powers of concentration, but a chess journal reported in October that top-flight female players have actually been disqualified from matches for showing too much cleavage as they play, thus distracting their opponent (according to Ms. Sava Stoisavljevic, head of the European Chess Union). In fact, the Women’s World Chess Championship, scheduled for February, has decreed that, since the matches will be held in Tehran, all contestants must wear hijabs (leading a U.S. women’s champion to announce she is boycotting).

■ News You Can Use: German Horst Wenzel, “Mr. Flirt,” fancies himself a smooth-talking maestro, teaching mostly wealthy but tonguetied German men lessons (at about $1,500 a day!) in how to approach women -- but this year has decided to “give back” to the community by offering his expertise pro-bono to lonely Syrian and Iraqi refugees who have flooded the country.

At one class in Dortmund in November, observed by an Associated Press reporter, most “students” were hesitant, apparently divided between the embarrassed (when Wenzel informed them it’s “normal” to have sex on the first or second date) and the awkwardly confident (opening line: “I love you. Can I sleep over at your place?”). But, advised Wenzel, “Don’t tell (a German woman) that you love (her) at least for the first three months (because) German women don’t like clinginess.”

■ Undignified Deaths: (1) A 24-year-old woman who worked at a confectionary factory in Fedortsovo, Russia, was killed in December when she fell into a vat of chocolate. (Some witnesses said she was pouring flour when she fell; others say she fell while trying to retrieve her dropped cellphone.) (2) A 24-year-old man was decapitated in London in August when he leaned too far out the window of one train and struck an extension on a passing train. Next to the window he leaned from was a sign warning people not to stick their heads out.

KASEY MARR Grand Rapids

KRISTA SONNE New York

2016 was a rough year — too many hard corners and not enough soft curves. So, it’s no surprise that one of 2017’s first style trends is all about comfort. Soft, touchable fabrics, muted colors, and all kinds of layers transform the long, dreary experience of winter into a dreamy enticement to hunker down, relax, and be cozy while we wait for spring.

A News of the Weird Classic (February 2013)

In November (2012), Tokyo’s Kenichi Ito, 29, bested his own Guinness World Record by a full second (down to 17.47 seconds) in the 100-meter dash -- “running” on all fours.

Ito runs like a Patas monkey, which he has long admired and which (along with his selfdescribed monkey-like face) inspired him nine years ago to take up “four- legged” running.

He reported trouble only once, when he went to the mountains to train and was shot at by a hunter who mistook him for a boar.

8 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

HEIDI NICHOLAS Traverse City

GRACE LOFTUS Traverse City

IDEAS. OPINIONS. LEADERS. 2017 Opinion Writer Lineup

Northern Michigan’s Newspaper

CARLIN SMITH

Emmet County Supports a pro-business agenda I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you, we are in charge of our own attitudes. (Charles Swindoll)

STEVE TUTTLE

Grand Traverse County Registered Unaffiliated Voter “Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.”

ISAIAH SMITH

Grand Traverse County Independent “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

CHRISTIE MINERVINI

Grand Traverse County Critical Thinker, Independent Voter “We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.” (Will Rogers)

MARK PONTONI

Emmet County Proud Progressive “Where fair and balanced came to die.”

JACK SEGAL

Grand Traverse County Progressive Internationalist “Ending the violence is never a bad strategy. “

TOM KACHADURIAN

Grand Traverse County None Of The Above “People can only be found in what they do.”

AMY HARDIN

Grand Traverse County Progressive “Our great democracies still think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” (Bertrand Russell)

MARY KEYES ROGERS

Grand Traverse County Equally Disgusted By Both Parties “The world is run only by the people who take the time to show up”

CHRISTOPHER STRUBLE

Emmet County “Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.”

GRANT PARSONS

Grand Traverse County Milliken Republican Democrat “One never knows, do one?”

(Fats Waller/Tony Berry)

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 9

OUT OF SHAPE There’s a push on in northern Michigan to get people who are prediabetic into a program meant to modestly change their lifestyle and significantly reduce their chances of getting diabetes.

DIABETES AND POVERTY

While rates of diabetes in northern Michigan don’t exactly correlate to rates of poverty, they do in the region’s two most developed cities, Traverse City and Petoskey, which see below-average diabetes and poverty rates in the counties where they are located. Meanwhile, Kalkaska County experienced higher-than-average rates of diabetes and poverty. Amanda Woods, coordinator of the Northern Michigan Diabetes Initiative, said that people in rural, impoverished areas are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes because they lack the income to spend on healthy foods and are isolated from places where they could buy fresh fruits and vegetables. That makes them much more likely to live on a diet of cheap, processed food and therefore more likely to develop obesity and diabetes.

SOURCES: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Census Bureau.

By Patrick Sullivan Kathy Rogols didn’t do much for several years after a doctor told her she was prediabetic. The status was a looming specter in her life, but on her own she found it tough to make the changes she knew she needed to make.

A year ago, the 58-year-old Fife Lake resident received a letter about a prediabetes class she could enroll in that her insurance provider, Priority Health, would cover.

“I knew I was headed toward diabetes if I didn’t do something about it,” Rogols said.

The first class met March 15. Today, Rogols is 40 pounds lighter and feels worlds better.

“It’s been a miracle,” she said. “It’s just been very supportive. I needed some motivation, I think, and I really wasn’t thinking that I needed to do the low-fat diet that we follow” to lose weight to prevent diabetes.

Classes meet almost weekly for the first six months and then monthly six more times after that.

Priority Health is the first (and currently only) insurance provider in Michigan that covers Diabetes Prevention Program classes, but Medicare will begin cover to them in

2018, and some program providers offer discounts or scholarships to people with prediabetes who aren’t covered for preventative care.

The prevention program, which is sanctioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has been in development for decades, has only recently become widespread.

Priority, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC want to see the program expanded in Michigan because the state has higher-than-normal rates of diabetes.

Michigan has the 22nd-highest prevalence of diabetic adults in the country, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. It’s the seventhleading cause of death in the state.

LEARNING HOW TO EAT AGAIN For Rogols, the hardest part of the program in the early days was getting used to keeping track of everything she ate. She had to track every bite and write the fat content in a diary.

She said she started using an app to keep track of what she eats, and it’s been an eyeopener.

“I mean, you can sit there and eat your

10 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

Location

Diabetes rate (2013)

Poverty rate (2009-2013)

Antrim Benzie Charlevoix Cheboygan Crawford Emmet Grand Traverse Kalkaska Leelanau Manistee Missaukee Otsego Roscommon Wexford

9.4 9.4 7.6 9 8.1 7.3 7.6 10.6 8.9 8.4 9.3 8.8 9.9 9.3

15.4 13.3 13.3 17.8 16.8 10.9 11.7 16.3 11.2 16.9 15.1 13.5 22.2 18.6

Michigan United States

9.2 9

16.8 15.4

meal, and it doesn’t seem like you’re eating very much. But the content of what you’re eating — you put butter on everything and there’s a lot of fat and cholesterol in butter,” she said. “We were eating popcorn and putting butter on that, every day. You know, wow.

That’s amazing. And so we’ve really cut down.”

Rogols learned how to measure portion sizes and make sure she’s not eating too much.

She learned how to eat at restaurants and how to deal with the struggles posed by friends who didn’t understand what she is up against.

“People will still ask me, ‘Are you still on your diet?’ And it’s not a diet. It’s a lifestyle change,” she said. “And I try to explain that to them. This will be a way of life for me. And I am always going to be prediabetic. I may not look prediabetic, but I am prediabetic.”

Now that the changes have been made and new habits have been formed, Rogols said adhering to the new way of life isn’t a hardship. She’s gotten used to eating in a different way.

Rogols and her husband, Kevin, still go to the same restaurants; they just pay a lot more attention when they order.

Kevin is not prediabetic, but he wanted to lose weight and be supportive, so he’s fol-

lowed the program’s guidelines too.

ONE IN THREE ARE AT RISK The goal of the program is modest — after a year, each patient should have lost 5 to 7 percent of body weight. Patients should also get 150 minutes of exercise per week.

Study after study have proved that those two benchmarks can show huge returns, said Kandi Jezak, senior clinical program manager with Priority Health.

The program is for people who are at risk for Type 2 diabetes, which develops because of poor diet and lack of exercise.

“The biggest causes for Type 2 are brought on by lifestyle,” Jezak said. “So if you are overweight, if you’re sedentary, the foods that you eat, those all come into play to develop Type 2, because Type 2 is preventable.”

Michigan experiences higher rates of Type 2 diabetes, Jezak suspects, because Michigan also has high rates of obesity.

There is also a correlation between diabetes and bad diet, which means the disease is prevalent in poor, rural areas where cheap processed food is plentiful and grocery stores with good selections of fruits and vegetables are too far away or too costly.

Jezak said diabetes is on the verge of be-

Kathy Rogols

coming an epidemic in the state.

Around a million people have diabetes in Michigan, she said, and as many as 2.6 million are thought to be prediabetic.

“That is about one in three adults who are at risk for diabetes or have prediabetes,” she said. “It’s going to be one in three who have diabetes if there’s not change to people’s lifestyles.”

What’s more, out of the third of adults who are prediabetic, it’s estimated that only 7 percent of them are aware of their condition.

“The other 93 percent have no idea that they’re prediabetic,” she said.

HIGH SUCCESS RATE Priority has made it a policy to focus on chronic disease with preventative care. That makes sense for a health-care provider — it’s far cheaper to prevent a disease than it is to treat one, but Jezak said her company is interested in improving health overall.

“Our mission is to improve the health and lives of our members, as well as the communities that we’re serving,” Jezak said. “Obviously, costs are rising and rising and rising.

If something doesn’t stop or intervene, then costs for the country are going to be high.

So, prevention is key.”

Jezak said Priority began covering the program a year ago, and at least eight classes have started with an average of 15 students since then. The program costs the provider around $500 per patient.

The cost of the program is miniscule compared to the cost of treating a case of diabetes, which the American Diabetes Association estimates is $13,700 per year, said Amanda Woods, coordinator of the Northern Michigan Diabetes Amanda Woods Initiative, a collaboration of Munson Healthcare, Priority Health, local health departments and Michigan State University Extension.

The success rate for the prevention program is impressive and long lasting. Woods said there is a 58-percent reduction in the rate of Type 2 diabetes among patients who complete the program. Perhaps even more

WHERE TO GET HELP

If you think you might be at risk of prediabetes because of weight, diet, lack of physical activity or family history, talk to your doctor or search online for the CDC Prediabetes Screening Test. For information about the Diabetes Prevention Program through the Northern Michigan Diabetes Alliance, visit nmdi.org. impressive, positive results hold on five years after completion, she said.

The secret of the program’s success may be the modest demands it places on participants.

“Those little changes, they just keep accumulating, and then they start telling their friends, and their friends’ family and it starts to catch on,” Jezak said. “People say, ‘What are you doing? Oh, my gosh you look great; you’ve got more energy.’”

CLIMBING STAIRS: BEFORE AND AFTER With only a couple of months of meetings left, Rogols said she will miss the program when it’s done.

She plans to stay in touch with her group.

She also plans to investigate becoming certified to teach the class herself because she is now a passionate believer.

“I’ve always struggled with a roller coaster weight problem all of my life. I’ve had varioussized clothes in my closet. I mean, I won’t tell you what sizes I’ve had in my closet, but I’ve always been on a roller coaster,” she said. “And in going to this class and just having the support and listening to other people, it’s just been that motivation that I’ve needed.”

The 40 pounds she’s lost is well over what was called for in the class, but she hasn’t quite reached her personal goal. Despite the progress, her blood sugar level remains in the prediabetic range. Nonetheless, she wouldn’t reverse course even if it fell out of range. On the other hand, her cholesterol is way down and she feels like a new person.

“I can go up the stairs now without being out of breath,” she said. “I would take a flight of stairs and I’d just have to rest. I didn’t want to go out of the house because I didn’t like the way I looked. I didn’t like the way I felt.”

Annual DTCA Fundraiser

Saturday, January 14 Park Place Hotel • 11 am to 3 pm

TICKETS AT DOOR Sampler of Eight: $10 Bowls: $4 Pepsi Products: $1.50

Aerie Restaurant • Betty’s Hot Dish • Bayside Market • Blue Heron 2 • Burritt’s • Francisco’s • The Franklin • Minervas Morsels Espresso + Edibles • Munson • Olives & Wine • Oryana-Lake Street Cafe • Red Mesa Grill • Scalawags Whitefish & Chips

The Downtown Chili Cook-Off is an annual fundraiser for the Downtown Traverse City Association & contributes financial support toward community events such as Friday Night Live, Holiday Events, The Celebration for Young Children, and the many free events offered in Downtown Traverse City.

downtown traverse city l downtowntc.com l 231.922.2050 #downtowntc

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 11

By Patrick Sullivan

Jesse and Brooke Beardslee’s daughter, Alexandra, has Type 1 diabetes.

Brooke estimated health-care costs for Alexandra reached $35,000 in 2016.

KAYLA KEENAN/FOR THE EXPRESS

Ryan Dobry Hunt had to cancel the first interview.

She’d agreed to meet to talk about her nonprofit that helps people who are financially struggling with Type 1 diabetes.

But she had a blood sugar emergency.

A malfunctioning insulin pump caused her to get too much of the synthetic bloodregulating hormone, and she woke up with a dangerously low blood sugar level, which caused her to voraciously eat in an effort to get it back up. She wound up eating too much and found herself with a blood sugar level that was perilously high.

“When you get this up and down and up and down in a day, it fatigues you, it weakens you, it affects your cognitive thinking,” Dobry Hunt said. “I don’t dare drive my car anywhere (in that condition) for fear that I might have an accident behind the wheel. I certainly don’t want to hurt somebody else.”

Dobry Hunt, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1977 at the age of 23, knows the ups and downs of struggling with the disease. That’s why she started a nonprofit to help people overcome the financial, physical and emotional hardships it brings to their lives.

NOWHERE TO GO Dobry Hunt is comfortable now — her insulin pump was under warranty and she was rushed a new one; she’s got insurance that covers most of her expenses and can afford the cost of the rest — but there was a time when she struggled.

She remembers being a single mom who was trying to get started as a country music DJ, a job that pays little enough to make it a challenge for someone who is single and healthy.

“There were times when I was taking from the rent money just to buy the supplies to stay alive,” Dobry Hunt said. “When I got to a position in my life where I was comfortable financially, I wanted to help other people that were in the same position, because there was really nowhere to go.”

She started the Ryan Dobry Diabetes Charity in 2000 with her husband, James Hunt, a Traverse City attorney. It’s a modest nonprofit that holds an annual golf fundraiser and another event or two each year to raise money to help people who are having trouble paying for the cost of Type 1 diabetes treatment.

Type 1 diabetes strikes out of nowhere, often in children, unlike Type 2 diabetes, which is tied to lifestyle. The origin of Type 1 diabetes remains a mystery. That means the people who get it and their families are often left scared and feeling alone.

Dobry Hunt’s charity has sent children to diabetes camp, donated supplies to struggling patients, and supports northern Michigan health clinics and diabetes education at Munson Medical Center.

The charity also holds group support meetings every month for people with Type 1 and their caregivers. The December meeting saw 21 people attend.

“In the 15 years, we’ve had good years with donations and we’ve had bad years with donations,” she said. “This started with a handful of my friends and it’s still just a handful of my friends. Everybody works.

Nobody gets paid.”

SO MUCH TO PAY Diabetes care is expensive. The costs pile up every day and add up month after month and year after year.

One source of frustration and anger among diabetes patients is the incredibly high cost of the one thing they need to stay alive — insulin.

‘Just trying to get through the week’ Type 1 diabetes care is expensive and unending. For people who need it, there is a little bit of help out there.

“When I was diagnosed in 1977, I paid $7 for a bottle of insulin, and now it’s about $300 a bottle,” Dobry Hunt said.

The cost of test strips to measure blood sugar, the insulin pump, and the materials needed to make it work add up to additional hundreds of dollars per month.

Much of her costs are covered by her insurance. For diabetes treatment alone, Dobry Hunt estimates she pays $944 per month, including her insurance premium. That doesn’t include doctor’s office visits or the medications she has to take for secondary health problems that are caused by diabetes.

She used to have a more expensive health plan that covered more of her costs; she’s experimented over the years with different kinds of plans. She said she’s determined that it’s important to have good health insurance because diabetes spurs other health problems that require even more medical treatment.

Dobry estimates she pays $15,000 per year in health care costs because of diabetes.

She said that cost would double or triple if she didn’t have health insurance.

“It’s a tough disease to deal with. When I was diagnosed in 1977, I certainly thought that by 2000 we would be on the road to a cure, and here it is, almost 2017, and there’ve been a lot of news on social media regarding an artificial pancreas, but what they’ve come out with are a couple of different types of insulin pumps, but they are not an artificial pancreas,” she said. “It would be great. It would be great to make the disease go away.”

CRUSHING HEALTH CARE COSTS Brooke and Jesse Beardslee’s 7-year-old daughter Alexandra was 3 when she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

12 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

It’s been emotionally and financially trying ever since. Brooke estimates the healthcare costs for her daughter in 2016 reached $35,000. Fortunately, her husband has good health insurance and they are responsible for just a fraction of that.

“I can’t imagine if he didn’t have good insurance, how it would be,” she said. “If we didn’t, I don’t know. It would be very, very difficult.”

For example, Alexandra is eligible for Medicaid because she suffers from a chronic disease, which helps the Beardslees supplement some of the co-pays for doctor’s office visits and insulin.

If they didn’t have primary insurance and had to depend on Medicaid alone, they would be swamped in monthly bills because Medicaid won’t cover the costs of supplies for Alexandra’s insulin pump or her blood sugar monitor, which she needs in order to be able to go to school.

“I find it crazy that they don’t pay for that,” Brooke said. “If that’s all they have for insurance, Medicaid won’t help cover that for people, and I really think it should.”

Alexandra is doing well despite the tough circumstances.

“She has a really good personality, so that helps,” Brooke said.

Beardslee met Dobry Hunt when she came into the dentist office where Brooke works and they started talking. The Beardlees have found a lot of comfort in her charity’s monthly meetings.

“We do enjoy going; we don’t even always talk about diabetes,” she said. “I think knowing everybody’s in the same boat helps.”

THRIVING DESPITE DIAGNOSIS Aubrey Chartier was the first child the

nonprofit sent to diabetes camp.

That was 15 years ago. Today, Chartier is 23 and has been accepted to medical school. She wants to become a pediatric endocrinologist.

She believes having diabetes will make her better at treating children with the disease. She said her doctors never really understood what she was going through.

“I think there might have been one dietician later in my adolescence (who had diabetes), but no, my doctors didn’t have the same perspective that I did,” Chartier said.

Chartier said it was a big deal to be able to go to camp with other kids with diabetes.

“I think the biggest thing was realizing I wasn’t the only one with diabetes,” she said.

“At the time in Traverse City, I was like the first person to teach my school system how to deal with it. I went to support groups, but no one was my age.”

Camp was a revelation. She attended for seven years and made good friends she was able to relate to in ways she couldn’t with most other people.

Being able to go to camp and having a very supportive family enabled Chartier to thrive despite her diagnosis.

She said that Dobry Hunt, whom she’s remained close with, taught her how important it is to help people who are struggling to cope with diabetes. Sure, it’s fine to donate to research organizations that are searching for a cure, but until that cure comes, there are people who are suffering.

“It’s one thing to look for a cure and all that kind of stuff, but it’s a completely different ballgame to help families with the challenges they deal with,” she said. “It’s like, yeah, a cure would be great, but I’m kind of just trying to make it through this week.”

Cooking class participants keep this cookbook, which includes cooking tips and dozens of healthy recipes.

Cooking class helps people make healthy food choices

By Sheri McWhirter Dieticians Michelle Smith and Jane Rapin said food knowledge and cooking skills matter for proper health, particularly among those who can least afford to purchase whatever groceries their families may need or even want.

“It’s important. Everybody needs to eat,” Smith said.

The pair of nutrition educators for Michigan State University Extension in Traverse City is seeking interested participants for a public education program titled Cooking Matters. It’s a free six-week course planned on the national level by nonprofit Share our Strength, an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger across America. In Michigan, MSU Extension offices partner with Detroit-based Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan.

Participants come away from each class with new recipes and fresh nutrition information, such as how and why to choose healthy foods and how to plan meals with a proper balance of food groups. Additionally, participants learn about portion sizes; how to decide between fresh, frozen or canned vegetables; food safety measures; reading nutrition labels; and how to substitute healthier options for various recipe ingredients. The idea is to teach these concepts and how to incorporate them into daily life choices, said both Smith and Rapin, the latter also a certified diabetes educator.

Perhaps the largest hurdle, they agreed, is to show participants how healthy groceries can be acquired on a limited budget. That means actual raw ingredients, not boxes of processed food filled with preservatives, salts and chemicals.

“A myth is that eating well costs a lot.

Cooking Matters shows that you can make a healthy meal for your family on a budget; it teaches how to eat healthy on a budget,” Rapin said. “I like that there is a nutrition component.

It teaches participants why you might make certain choices about food.”

It’s not just a drab lecture about food groups and counting calories, either. Participants get the chance to cook, beginning with basic lessons such as how to safely carry kitchen knives and disinfect food preparation spaces.

“We have a beautiful new kitchen to use for the program,” Smith said.

The Community Kitchen at BrickWays, a nonprofit residential facility on Barlow Street for adults with developmental disabilities, was funded through a grant from Rotary Charities of Traverse City. The kitchen comes with multiple cooking stations, an electric stovetop and oven, a stocked pantry, and plenty of pots, pans and cooking utensils.

The first Cooking Matters classes in Traverse City involved residents at BrickWays and

their family members, but now the idea is to offer the program to the general public. “Bringing the community in and having interaction with residents at BrickWays would be great,” Smith said.

Sherry Opper, housing manager and assistant director at the BrickWays facility, said the program is ideal for those on fixed incomes.

“Teaching people how to eat healthy and cook for their families on a budget — how to make their dollars stretch — that’s the whole point,” Opper said.

Smith further explained that’s why those living on limited incomes are especially encouraged to apply, both so the local effort can meet federal Supplemental Nutritional Food Assistance Program-funding guidelines and because those participants likely will benefit the most from the program. Requirements call for at least half the roll call to involve participants who qualify for such benefits, but income levels are not a factor for the other half of each class roster.

As it turns out, many adults today don’t actually know how to prepare food from scratch, Smith said.

“It’s the basic skills of knowing how to cook. It’s taking the time to learn how to cook,” she said. “They learn why it is important to eat fruits, vegetables and leaner proteins.”

Participants take home free groceries in order to again make each session’s example meal at home for their family members after they’ve taste-tested the food in class. They even take a field trip to a grocery store in order to learn in person how to make the best choices while shopping, both nutritionally and financially.

Rapin said the program’s national statistics show families consume more home-cooked meals that are healthier for them after a member completes the Cooking Matters program.

Additionally, the research shows families involved with the program more often choose foods that contain whole grains, include leaner proteins and are lower in both sodium and fat.

MSU Extension in the local five-county region also offers Cooking Matters for Teens through public schools and recently became certified to offer Cooking Matters for Families.

Those interested in the program can contact Smith at 231-922-4823 or smithmmk@anr. msu.edu by email. The MSU Extension office is at 520 W. Front St. in downtown Traverse City.

Those who live outside Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska and Leelanau counties can inquire with their own MSU Extension offices about Cooking Matters and other available nutritional programs. Cooking Matters sessions have been offered in Boyne City, Manistee and Petoskey.

Sheri McWhirter is a freelance writer.

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Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 13

The persistence of Chris Buhalis

By Kristi Kates Michigan musicians are nothing if not tough. While adversity can strike anywhere, somehow it can seem a little more severe when you’re trying to write songs throughout winters that can last in excess of six months, or keep up with a day job that’s focused on labor that’s more physical than mental.

Ann Arbor singer-songwriter Chris Buhalis knows that sheer persistence is at the crux of the matter if you’re going to survive the Michigan music scene; perhaps he more than many, based on what happened to him during the re-

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cording of his new album, and how he coped with a drastic turn of events.

“In 2013, I started recording my latest record,” Buhalis said. “I’d run into (bassist and Jack White sideman) Dominic John Davis at the Harvest Gathering in Lake City the previous summer, and he asked me when I was going to record another album, and he offered to play on it. I’d been thinking of recording for many years, and I knew I had to make it happen.”

Buhalis booked studio time at Big Sky Recording in Ann Arbor, with “incredible” engineer Geoff Michael set to work behind the boards. He also enlisted Davis, percussionist Michael Shimmin and “The Voice” finalist and

fellow singer-songwriter Joshua Davis to go into the studio with him.

“The production was by committee,” Buhalis said. “I didn’t send the band any tapes of the songs — we just went into the studio, went through the songs and worked out arrangements, then cut them. We recorded live with the idea of re-recording vocals later. In two days, we cut eight songs and had a session set up a few weeks later to finish all of the main recording.”

Then, that twist of fate arrived. Working his day job in between recording sessions, the fingers of Buhalis’ left hand were severely injured in a table saw accident, and recording came to a grinding halt.

“It took me almost two years of surgeries and occupational therapy to get back to playing guitar,” he said. “Finally, I got Dominic and Mike back in the studio — Josh was too busy at this point — and we went in and cut another three songs to finish the recording. Then, I had my old friend Jeff Plankenhorn come up from Texas and lay down the guitar solos.”

The result was “Big Car Town,” the culmination of Buhalis’ entire musical life up to this point.

He’s been singing his entire life; started as a kid, picked up the guitar when he hit 20, and then took that guitar and a Woody Guthrie songbook with him while he hitchhiked around Alaska for a couple of summers. “I started writing songs shortly after (that trip) and have continued to write them for the last 25 years,” Buhalis said.

As is never easy for musicians, Buhalis struggles to describe his sound, instead choosing to let the songs speak for themselves.

“I write songs, and I play them,” he said simply. “Folk, Americana, singer-songwriter — those terms have all been used to describe my music, and I have a hard time arguing with any of them — or choosing any one over the others.”

“Big Car Town” addresses things that Buhalis has seen going on in Michigan and across America.

“The characters in the songs are the working people I’ve known all of my life,” he said.

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“People who built this state, who built this country. It deals with the American Dream and the way that people band together to survive when that dream is not realized.”

Those aforementioned characters are sharply drawn with depth within Buhalis’ lyrics, which are translated through his folksy strumming and vocals — one moment reminiscent of John Mellencamp, the next a more plaintive Dan Fogelberg. The little throwaways at the end of some of his vocal notes are almost Dylanesque; but the rest of the phrasings are all Buhalis’ own, uncomplicated and straightforward.

One character of note is Buhalis’ father, who’s represented in the track “Daddy Worked the High Steel.”

“That song is a favorite of mine and many others,” Buhalis said. “I wrote it for my dad who was an ironworker in Detroit for 35 years — he taught me the value of work, honesty and standing up for what is right.”

Another song called “Whiskey Six” deals with rum-running civilians trying to scratch out a living in a Prohibition-era Motor City; another has a lumberjack as its protagonist.

Many of the songs take place in Michigan or the Midwest, and for Buhalis, that’s completely intentional, as is the album’s title — all of it is an ode to the place he’s from, the state whose stages welcome him from as far south as his hometown, and as far north as Cadillac, where he’ll be playing this month.

“I’m excited to return to Gopherwood,” Buhalis said. “I’ll be playing songs off both of my records and some new songs; I love playing live and interacting with the audience, and Gopherwood is such a great place to share music. I’ll be playing and singing from the heart, will show up on time, and will even wear a clean shirt,” he said.

Chris Buhalis will be in concert at 8 p.m. Jan. 14 as part of the Gopherwood Concert Series. For tickets ($12 advance adults, $15 at the door, $7 students), location and more information, visit gopherwoodconcerts.org.

LINEUP SET FOR NATIONAL WRITERS SERIES

By Clark Miller The winter/spring lineup for the National Writers Series promises a challenging blend of outstanding fiction and nonfiction. Awardwinning authors will discuss their work on topics as far ranging as autism, two boys who were turned into sideshow carnival attractions, the not-so-well-hidden dramas of small-town life, the controversies surrounding “enhanced” interrogation practices at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, what dogs teach us about life, and the science of humans at war. All events take place at 7 p.m. at City Opera House in Traverse City.

Feb. 10 The season kicks off with Emmy-award winning journalists John Donvan and Caren Zucker, authors of New York Times best-seller “In a Different Key: The Story of Autism.”

Based in part on their own family experiences, Donvan and Zucker trace how the diagnosis and treatment of autism evolved from the early days when confinement in mental institutions and heavy medication regimens were the norm. “In a Different Key,” which The Wall Street Journal selected as one of the best books of 2016, sympathetically portrays the ongoing fight for understanding and respect waged by autistic people, their families and advocacy groups.

Feb. 27 The true story of the enslavement in 1899 of two African-American boys — both albinos — forms the backdrop for author Beth Macy’s much-publicized national best-seller, “Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South.” Taken from their home and made to play the role of circus sideshow attractions for decades, George and Willie Muse were billed at times as the

“Ecuadorian cannibals” and “ambassadors from Mars.” When the circus finally came to their hometown of Roanoke, Va., in 1927, the brothers were reunited with their mother. But in many ways, that is just the beginning of the story.

April 15 The thriller “Mississippi Blood,” a novel of the 1960s South (and the final installment of New York Times best-selling author Greg Iles’ “Natchez Burning” trilogy), portrays how a racist past can haunt the social structures of the present. The main character, Penn Cage, a former prosecuting attorney, sets out to clear his family name, avenge a death and expose organized racism — impassioned pursuits that culminate in a stunning conclusion.

April 28 In a chilling confessional regarding his role at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, former intelligence contractor Eric Fair asks Americans to look closely at governmentsanctioned “enhanced” interrogation practices. Fair, a devout Christian, has expressed remorse for his treatment of Iraqi prisoners.

In interviews with National Public Radio, he put it bluntly: Whether or not torture is effective “shouldn’t matter to anyone in this country. ... Torture is wrong, and Americans — all Americans — should know better.”

He will be interviewed by retired Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert, a former commander of Guantanamo who has called for the closing of that prison.

May 3 Readers of Elizabeth Strout’s earlier novel “My Name is Lucy Barton” will get an update on many of that highly popular book’s small-town characters — each of whom has a compelling story to tell. In her

latest work, “Anything is Possible,” Strout, a New York Times best-seller and Pulitzer Prize winner, writes of love, loss and hope — especially as experienced by the “pretty Nicely sisters.”

May 26 Wall Street Journal health writer Andrea Petersen employs heart and head in her nonfiction work “On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety.” An angst-filled life is a subject Petersen knows well. She unflinchingly reveals her own struggles with paralyzing fears about driving, going to movies and even licking envelopes. But “On Edge” is more than autobiography. Along with a discussion of yoga retreats and hiking, Petersen includes a discussion of the neuroscience that may someday give hope to millions.

June 7 Called by one pundit “America’s funniest science writer,” Mary Roach has made a career out of giving excellent answers to some very strange questions. Her previous titles, such as “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” and “Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex,” as well as “Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void,” make it clear that this is a writer who entertains while educating. Roach’s latest work, “Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War,” asks such off-key questions as: what does caffeinated meat taste like? and why is diarrhea a threat to national security?

The answers Roach gives have made her a New York Times best-selling author.

June 25 National Book Award winner Julia Glass’ appearance at the National Writers Series coincides roughly with publication of her

latest novel, “A House Among the Trees.”

When beloved children’s author Mort Lear dies unexpectedly, he leaves everything to his devoted assistant, Tommy Daulair. Even though she thought she knew the man she has served for so many years, Tommy learns there is much more to Lear’s (and her own) story. Glass is the author of the best-seller “Three Junes” as well as “And the Dark Sacred Night” and “The Widower’s Tale.” Guest host will be David Ebershoff, who discussed his four books, including “The Danish Girl” and the best-seller “The 19th Wife,” during the 2016 National Writers Series season.

July 7 With his work “A Dog’s Purpose,” Petoskey native and now nationally syndicated humor columnist W. Bruce Cameron brings his unique perspective to a topic near to his heart — the lessons we can learn from our canine friends. Scheduled for release this year in movie form, “A Dog’s Purpose,” which Publishers Weekly called “a tail-wagging three hanky boo-hooer,” has as its narrator the once-feral and often reincarnated dog, Toby. Cameron has established a reputation as one of America’s funniest writers.

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists named him columnist of the year in 2011, and in 2006 he won the Robert Benchley Society Award for Humor.

In addition to bringing nationally known authors to town, the National Writers Series, a nonprofit, organizes youth writing programs and raises college scholarships for aspiring writers. Guest authors often visit area classrooms. For ticket information please go to www.nationalwritersseries.org.

Clark Miller is a freelance writer.

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 15

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Michigan music fans to pick Winter Wheat

By Kristi Kates As summer slowly shifts into fall each year, the Wheatland Music Festival, like so many other music and arts festivals in Michigan, opens its gates to welcome fans of a wide range of music genres, from folk and bluegrass to rock, Celtic and country, for concerts, dances, jam sessions and workshops.

2016’s 43rd edition of Wheatland included performances from an esteemed roster of talent, among them Red Tail Ring, The Go Rounds, Asleep at the Wheel, Solas, The Gibson Brothers and Adonis Puentes.

With the arrival of winter, the majority of the music festivals go into hibernation, and fans are left with far fewer choices. The solution? Drive down to Grand Rapids to enjoy Winter Wheat, the off-season (indoor!) edition of Wheatland’s music extravaganza that picks up where the summer left off.

Winter Wheat 2017 is only the eighth annual incarnation of the off-season festival, a precocious sibling to the main Wheatland fest’s 44 years. But with a heavy focus on made-in-Michigan talent, there’s already enough draw to schedule 12 hours of music at Grand Rapids’ popular nightclub The Intersection, where Winter Wheat will run from 12:30 p.m. until midnight, complete

with food vendors on-site.

This year’s festival will include two stages, the Showroom Stage and the ’Stache Stage, with just 20-minute changeovers between performances. The Showroom Stage will feature performances from The Costabella Cloggers, Fauxgrass, The Palooka Brothers, Cabildo, Mark Lavengood’s Bluegrass Bonanza, Madcat’s Blues Journey, and K. Jones and the Benzie Playboys; over on The ’Stache, you’ll hear great music from Blue Water Ramblers, Hawks and Owls, Olivia Mainville, Stella, and Drew Nelson and Highway 2.

In addition to simply enjoying the live music, festivalgoers can try their feet at square dancing, Cajun dancing or square dancing, all of which can be antidotes to cabin fever. There’s no chaff here; this Wheat is the very best that winter has to offer.

Winter Wheat 2017 will take place starting at 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 14 at The Intersection, 133 Grandville Ave. SW, Grand Rapids. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, $15 with student ID. For more information, visit www. wheatlandmusic.com or call 989-967-8561.

Kristi Kates is a contributing editor and freelance writer.

Three acts not to miss 1. Fauxgrass This lighthearted Grand Rapids quintet claims to be “unclassifiable” as far as music genre, and in many ways it is, with seasonings of pop and jazz infusing progbluegrass with a fresh zip. But at its core, the band is very much about the bluegrass sensibility, which relies on top-notch musicianship and the ability of all five musicians to concurrently sit their sounds precisely in the pocket, which makes you feel like you’ve heard all of their tunes before, even if you’re new to the band.

2. Olivia Mainville Mainville is only a couple of years into her music career, but this emerging artist already has drawn plenty of attention from her Michigan contemporaries (Don Julin and The Appleseed Collective among them), several of whom contributed to her debut EP. Her sound is quirky and naive but unique, with hints of complexities yet to come; If Stevie Nicks, Norah Jones and Sufjan Stevens customized a teen singer, it’d be Mainville.

3. Cabildo The name means “town hall” in Spanish, and Cabildo is certainly capable of drawing people together. The West Michigan Latin music collective fuses folk, rock, meringue, ska, cumbria, funk and salsa into a setlist of sharp original tunes and covers of songs from popular South American rock bands. If you’ve never heard any Latin American alternative pop music, let Cabildo be your introduction; when the band plays the super-catchy melody of “La Ola,” don’t be surprised if you find yourself suddenly yelling, “Encore!”

16 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

Photo Dave McGowan

On the road again with Jay and Molly

By Kristi Kates Folk music act Jay and Molly know how to make good use of their mobile phone. The couple are always focused on some-thing musical, whether it’s working at their Asho-

kan Center for music and dance education, or, as is the case most weekends, heading out to play live shows — and this makes them tough to track down for interviews.

So it’s over their phone speaker while they drive back home from Albany, N.Y., that the latest chapter of their story as ac-

claimed traveling musicians unfolds.

Express last spoke with Jay Ungar and Molly Mason back in 2014, when they performed at The Dennos Museum in Traverse City, and they’re returning to The Dennos for their next tour stop Up North.

If you’re unfamiliar with these talented performers, well, you might not be as unfamiliar as you think. The Emmy-nominated musicians — Ungar on fiddle, Mason on fiddle and acoustic bass guitar — met by chance 30 years ago at a club in New York state, while Ungar was busy with his own band and Ma-son was heading to Minnesota to be part of the house band for a thennew Garrison Keillor show called “A Prairie Home Com-panion.” They kept in touch and later joined forces both musi-cally and romantically, marrying in 1991 and performing to-gether in various projects.

Since then, Jay and Molly’s music has been included in sev-eral NPR shows and a handful of movie soundtracks including “Legends of the Fall” and “Brother’s Keeper.”

Perhaps most notably, their track “Ashokan Farewell” was chosen as the main theme music for Ken Burns’ acclaimed PBS documentary “The Civil War.” But lately, their music has taken an even more personal turn than usual. The pair were putting together a playlist of some songs to offer in support to friends who were going through some medical issues when they discovered that Mason was hav-ing issues of her own.

“We found out that I had to have brain surgery,” she said. “So the songs then became useful to me, too.” The surgery was years ago, and Mason said that she’s doing much better these days. “So we thought that now is a good time to put all of those songs together again, and get them out there to help other peo-ple.”

The resulting album, named “The Quiet Room” after a space in the hospital that Ungar used to retreat to while Mason was getting her treatments, is part bestof compilation and part new tracks. The tracklisting isn’t quite finalized yet, but the album is scheduled to hit outlets in February 2017.

“It’s an album specifically put together for healing,” Ungar said. “So these are songs that people have pointed out to us as having a healing component to them. We’re thinking of it as more of a spiritual medicinal album than as a conventional al-bum.”

After a difficult 2016 for many, Ungar said that the timing of the album is going to be ideal.

“It’s arriving when more people need such things, healing things and good sounds,” he said. “Our shows often get people singing and dancing, so these are all chances for people to con-nect in real-time, not just on Facebook or the internet. Real-time connections are more rare, so we’re happy to provide op-portunities to do that.”

“It seems more important now than ever to make music,” Mason added. “So hopefully this album will be an important use of our music, to draw attention to issues or causes, bring people together, and help make them happy. And we’re really looking forward to coming back to The Dennos as part of that.”

Jay and Molly will be in concert at The Dennos Museum’s Milliken Auditorium at 8 p.m.

Jan. 13. For tickets ($27 in advance, $24 for museum members or $30 at the door), visit dennosmu-seum.org; for more information on the artists, visit jayandmol-ly.com.

Kristi Kates is a contributing editor and freelance writer.

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 17

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Wacky races the norm at winter festivals

Outhouse racers in Mackinaw City will compete for a first-place prize of $1,000.

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Indian River Winterfest, Jan. 13-15 Whether you arrive by foot, car, crosscountry skis or snowmobile (the venue is easily accessible by both roads and trails), you’ll want to be in Marina Park for Indian River’s annual Winterfest.

You might also want to bring a chair, if you enjoy a little friendly competition. One of the festival’s highlights is its Run-WhatYa-Brung Ski Chair Race, a quirky event that finds fearless winter athletes strapping skis onto chairs in a bid to outrace their friends across the snow.

Teams of no more than four compete in this wacky race, with one person required to sit in the chair for the ride, and the rest supplying the human power to make the newfangled ski chair go.

“You see just about everything in that race — dining room chairs, folding chairs, it’s just crazy,” said Rachel Vizina, the Indian River Chamber of Commerce’s events director. “We have a round ice rink at the festival with a kind of snow track around the outside of it, so they race the ski chairs around that, and they can get going pretty fast.”

A wide range of classic and vintage snowmobiles are another one of the festival’s big draws; they’re on display throughout the event and are judged by a team of local experts for best in show.

“Those are very different-looking than the snowmobiles we use today,” Vizina said. “Last year, one was so old it just looked like a box on skis — I’d never seen anything like it. It may have been the oldest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Once you’ve raced your chair and viewed the winter transportation of the past, you can enjoy festival raffles, a poker run and a slate of children’s activities, then indulge in some hearty food from Wilson’s River’s Edge Restaurant, which will be serving up portable hot entrees and soups.

And in the evening, it’s all about the live music. Friday night’s Winterfest entertainment will feature The Decoys, while Saturday’s concert will be The Remedees; both bands will take the stage from 7-11 p.m.

For a complete schedule and more information, visit irchamber.com.

Mackinaw City Annual Winterfest and Outhouse Race, Jan. 19-22 The sight of an outhouse in this day and age is rare under most circumstances. So seeing an overload of outhouses careening down a street in the middle of a tourist town

18 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

is a surprise of epic poo-portions. But the latter is exactly what happens during Mackinaw City’s Annual Winterfest and Outhouse Race — the retro toilets take to the Shepler’s parking lot in a bid to outrun each other.

“This is the 24th year for our outhouse race,” said Becky Yoder, events coordinator for the Mackinaw Area Visitors Bureau. “It’s definitely one of the most popular events at the Winterfest.”

Each outhouse is set upon skis that must measure 6 feet in height. Teams consist of five people — four to push and pull the outhouse through the race course, and one who is required to ride inside during the proceedings.

“The person inside can usually see out, but not always,” Yoder said. “Each outhouse has to have a toilet seat and toilet paper of some kind,” she said.

While only four outhouses win awards, a couple dozen usually enter, making for quite the spectacle. The outhouses participate in a parade before the actual race, and then once it’s go time, everyone fights to get their outhouse moving as fast as possible in pursuit of the $1,000 prize for first place (additional prizes include $500 for second place; $250 for third; and a $100 prize for best in show).

“All of the outhouses are homemade, and there are always so many different styles,” Yoder said. “It’s just a really fun and funny thing to watch.”

While the outhouse race is Winterfest’s main attraction, there are plenty of additional activities to enjoy. There’s a big chili cook-off that awards both judges’ choice and people’s choice, and for the cost of a $2 Winterfest button, you can do your best Guy Fieri impression and try them all.

Rounding out the fun are sleigh and/or wagon rides (depending on the weather), arts and crafts, a euchre tournament, amateur and professional snow sculpture competitions, and an ice fishing tournament.

And after the day’s events are over, you can celebrate those long winter nights with your newfound festival friends at two evening parties, one with live music at O’Reilly’s Irish Pub, and the other a reception for the outhouse racers at the Dixie Saloon with a DJ and dancing.

Bonus: Both bars have indoor bathrooms.

For a complete schedule and more information, visit mackinawcity.com or mackinawouthouserace.com Kristi Kates is a contributing editor and freelance writer.

Traverse City’s Big Boy comes of age Big Boy has been known for American comfort food, like the Classic Big Boy cheeseburger with two beef patties, since 1936.

The landscape on U.S. 31 around Traverse City’s Big Boy has changed significantly since it opened in 1977.

By Janice Binkert For anyone who grew up back in the midto late 20th century, the image of a chubby cartoon kid in red-and-white checked bib overalls sporting a faintly James Dean-like pompadour — and holding high a doubledeck cheeseburger almost as big as his head — brings back fond memories.

Mom and dad would pile the whole gang into the family station wagon and head over to their local Big Boy restaurant, where they would tuck into said cheeseburger, officially known as the Classic Big Boy, or another menu staple like the Famous Slim Jim, both accompanied by a heap of fries, washing it all down with a hand-dipped chocolate malt or ice-cream float. Dessert? A generous piece of strawberry pie smothered in whipped cream. Those were the days.

But definitely not bygone days: The Big Boy restaurant chain, founded in Glendale, Calif., in 1936, celebrated its 80th anniversary last year. This year, Traverse City’s Big Boy will mark its 40th anniversary, and its enduring popularity suggests that a whole new generation has embraced this iconic brand. In fact, Traverse City’s Big Boy is the fifth-busiest franchise in the entire state of Michigan, sales-wise (out of nearly 100).

LIFE WITH BIG BOY Mark Hamlyn, who helmed Traverse City’s Big Boy for those four decades (he retired in December), basically grew up in the corporation.

“I’ve worked for Big Boy since I was fourteen,” he said. “My uncle was their president at the time, based in Warren. I used to take a bus to downtown Detroit from the suburbs and worked at a Big Boy near the bus depot busing tables. Eventually I moved up to working as a cook, and continued part-time during high school and college. I’ve worked in their restaurants, their commissary and their shipping department, and in 1972, I

became partners with my uncle’s daughter — my cousin — and we opened two franchises in suburban Detroit and ran them for about four years. We sold them when I moved up here and to open this store in 1977.”

While Hamlyn was obviously the longest-term member of his team, he had several veteran staff members.

“Debbie has been here for the past 35 years, Deborah for almost 30, Nadine and Bonnie for 16 years each, and Case for about 12,” he said. “It’s good, cohesive team. The best piece of wisdom I ever got was years ago, when one of our regular customers told me, ‘Mark, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t come in here for you. I come in here because Debbie and Deborah know how I like my eggs.’ I never had an ego issue, but I realized then that my main job was to hire and keep good staff, offer benefits, whatever it was to avoid turnover.

Customers like the familiarity, and they like to know that they can depend on the consistency of our food and our service.”

THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY Speaking of eggs, with its policy of “buy local” whenever possible, Big Boy uses exclusively large-grade AA Michigan eggs that are hormone-, antibiotic- and steroidfree, sourced from a farm in Martin. Eggs, not surprisingly, feature prominently on the four-page breakfast menu that includes everything from Belgian waffles to three versions of potato pancakes, six versions of hot cakes, and country fried steak, as well as Build Your Own Blockbuster Breakfast and Build-Your-Own 3-Egg Omelette sections — just for starters. Oh, and there’s the World Famous Weekend Breakfast and Fruit Buffet, which is free for kids 5 and under with any adult breakfast buffet purchase.

And as if that all didn’t provide enough options, years ago, Hamlyn started offering a breakfast special — another separate menu card — and leaves the coffee pots right on the tables. These practices are not standard

at other Big Boy franchises, but Hamlyn knows his customer base, and corporate was fine with the changes.

“They allowed me the flexibility to do things a little different in my market if I thought it would be good for business. Breakfast is my busiest time every day of the week, and even more so on Sundays,” he said.

Over the years, the chain made some concessions to changing tastes and health concerns, Hamlyn said, “But let’s face facts, Big Boy is known for comfort food. And when they partnered up with Weight Watchers for a while, they almost went bankrupt. So what they decided to do is make sure that there are healthy items on the menu, but to ensure that those products are also used in other parts of the menu, so they remain fresh.”

LOCATION, LOCATION “I’ve been lucky in that I stayed excited about my work all those years, and I appreciated the fact that corporate was adamant that we as franchisees support our communities.

Our local store has been involved in the annual Cherry Festival and Film Festival, and we do charitable donations and fundraisers throughout the year. We’ve also supported local football teams, the Salvation Army and the Cherryland Humane Society. Traverse City is where I live, where I spent my career, and where my wife and I now plan to enjoy our retirement. I care about this town.”

Hamlyn points out that the landscape around the Traverse City Big Boy has changed significantly since 1977.

“It was just us and Meijer, who came in that same year. U.S. 31 was a two-lane road at the time. This property was an old Grant’s department store that had shut down — there was no water, just sewer. We bought it on a whim, tore the building down, and built a new one, thinking it could be a good location. It turned out to be a fantastic location.

Who could have predicted that this corridor would develop like it has? It has been great

for business. I honestly feel that this Big Boy will be around for a long time to come.”

The Traverse City Big Boy is located at 3828 U.S. 31 South. Open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 7 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. For more information, call 231-941-7430.

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 19

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4

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NORTHERN SEEN 8

1. Logan and Keri Christian rang in the new year at Olives and Wine in Traverse City.

2. A group of friends celebrated 2017’s arrival at Firefly in Traverse City.

3. Greg Fuller and Mary Bea McWatters showed off some owl art at North Perk Coffee in Petoskey.

9

4. Deirdre and Nate warmed up at Traverse City’s Earthen Ales on New Year’s Eve. 5. Marlaina Norgan and Laura Mason visited the One Oak Bride soft opening in Traverse City.

6. Fireworks lit up the night sky to ring in the new year at the CherryT Ball Drop in Traverse City.

7. Musicians got in the holiday spirit along Front Street in downtown Traverse City.

8. Carlin Smith and Nikki Devitt of the Petoskey Regional Chamber of Commerce shared a moment with Drew Smith at Stafford’s Perry Hotel in Petoskey.

20 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

9. Kelly Copeland, Kathy Copeland, Dick Copeland and Ken Deitch were in attendance for Drew Nelson’s performance at the Freshwater Art Gallery and Concert Venue in Boyne City.

jan 07

saturday

WINTER HIKE: 10am, Green Point Dunes, Benzie. gtrlc.org

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“CLARINET SWING KINGS” WITH DAVE BENNETT: 7:30pm, Crooked Tree Arts Center, Petoskey. Tickets: $25 CTAC members, $35 non-members, & $10 students. crookedtree.org

-------------------CROSS COUNTRY WINTER TRAIL DAYS: Try snowshoeing & cross-country skiing for free at Boyne Mountain, Boyne Falls. There will be a half-hour group lesson & free rentals.

Must register: 231-549-6088.

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KIDS MOVIE NIGHT: 7:30pm, Aspen Room or Alpine Room, Treetops Resort, Gaylord. Tonight will feature “Happy Feet”. Free. treetops.com

-------------------STAND-UP COMEDY: 8:30pm, Old Town Playhouse, TC. Featuring “Today’s Master Storyteller” Norm Stulz. Tickets, $15. oldtownplayhouse.com

-------------------NEW YEAR’S MOONLIGHT SKI: 7pm, Grass River Natural Area, Bellaire. Self-guided ski on groomed trails. Bring a headlamp. $5 suggested donation. grassriver.org

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8TH ANNUAL WINTER TRAILS DAY: 10:30am-2pm, Timber Ridge Resort, TC. Presented by TART Trails, Vasa Ski Club, Einstein Cycles & Timber Ridge Resort. Includes free trail access, introductory ski lessons, fatbike demos, guided snowshoe hikes & use of equipment rentals. Free, but must register in advance: traversetrails.org/event/wintertrailsday2017

jan 08

sunday

TALK ABOUT ART: 2pm, The Leelanau School, Glen Arbor. Featuring Kaz McCue, who has spent the past 25 years working in the arts as a visual artist, educator, curator & arts administrator. Free. glenarborart.org

-------------------CROSS COUNTRY WINTER TRAIL DAYS: Try snowshoeing & cross-country skiing for free at Boyne Mountain, Boyne Falls. There will be a half-hour group lesson & free rentals.

Must register: 231-549-6088.

-------------------ANNUAL DOWNTOWN BRIDAL SHOW: Noon-4pm, City Opera House, TC. Featuring 30 wedding vendors & a Bridal Fashion Show.

Find ‘Downtown Bridal Show’ on Facebook.

-------------------BUCKETS OF RAIN BENEFIT: Featuring Dennis Palmer performing from 4-6pm at the Acoustic Tap Room, TC. Tickets, $10. Through the construction of urban gardens on abandoned city lots, Buckets of Rain diminishes urban blight, rekindles hope in struggling neighborhoods, brings fresh vegetables into the neighborhoods, & feeds the homeless through partners. bucketsofrain.org

jan 09

monday

SOUP & BREAD: 6-8pm, The Little Fleet, TC. Benefits the Northwest Michigan Ballet school. thelittlefleet.com

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WRITE-IN WITH MICHIGAN WRITERS: 6:30pm, The Parlor, TC. This event is for writers who get inspired to produce by having others around. Get some poetry or prose into your notebooks or laptops, & mingle with other writers.

-------------------WINTER TRAILS DAY: TART Trails has teamed up with the Vasa Ski Club, Einstein Cycles, the Record Eagle & Timber Ridge Resort to offer FREE trail access, introductory ski lessons, fatbike demos, guided snowshoe

hikes & free equipment rentals for those looking to try a new winter activity. 10:30am-2pm, Timber Ridge Resort, TC. Must register: traversetrails.org/event/wintertrailsday2017

january

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

HOME ORGANIZATION & DE-CLUTTER DISCUSSION: 7pm, Peninsula Community Library, Old Mission Peninsula School, TC. Featuring Erin Simon, whose company, Clutter Funk, organizes, stages & designs for clients in TC. peninsulacommunitylibrary.org

jan 10

tuesday

07-15 send your dates to: events@traverseticker.com

CHEBOYGAN LGBTQ FRIENDS GROUP: 6pm, Cheboygan Area Public Library, downstairs. Find ‘LGBTQ friends in Cheboygan, MI’ on Facebook.

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GT HUMANISTS MEETING: 7pm, Traverse Area District Library, TC. Featuring a presentation by TC Police Chief Jeffrey O’Brien. 231392-1215.

jan 11

wednesday

JANUARY WINTER GETAWAY RECESS: 5-7pm, Cherry Capital Airport, TC. Join The Ticker for socializing, food, beverages & a chance to win two United Airlines travel vouchers & a Shanty Creek Resorts stay & ski package. Presented by Remax Bayshore Properties. Admission, $10. Find ‘January Winter Getaway Recess’ on Facebook.

-------------------GT BAY AREA STROKE CLUB MEETING: 2:30-4:30pm, The Presbyterian Church, 701 Westminster Rd., TC. Learn about neurological rehabilitation. munsonhealthcare.org/strokeclub

-------------------BUSINESS AFTER HOURS: 5-7pm, Gaylord Regional Airport. Food provided by Alpine Catering.

jan 12

thursday

WINTER SPEAKER SERIES: Zequanox Study. Noon, Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, Downtown Petoskey. Free. watershedcouncil.org

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BENZONIA ACADEMY LECTURE: 4pm, Benzie Area Historical Museum, Benzonia. Brian McCall will speak about the origins of World War I. Donations accepted. benziemuseum.org

-------------------NORTHERN MICHIGAN CAMPING & RV SHOW: Jan. 12-15, The Ellison Place, Gaylord. Today’s hours are 2-9pm. Admission is three non-perishable food items or a cash donation. rvshowofthenorth.com

-------------------HEALTHY EATING SUPPORT GROUP: 6:30pm, TC Senior Center. Featuring registered nutritionist Carol Bell. $5. 922-4911.

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JANUARY BUSINESS AFTER HOURS: Enjoy local wine, activities & viewing the galleries of the Leelanau Studios at the GT Regional Arts Campus, TC at 5:30pm. leelanaustudios.org

-------------------CHURCH WOMEN UNITED: GT area women are invited to this meeting that includes a program by Skip Brown of Freedom Builders.

11am, Cottage Café, TC. Call for reservations: 938-2864.

-------------------SUPPORT GROUP: 7-8pm, Thirlby Room, Traverse Area District Library, TC. Hosted by Spot On Skills ADHD Counseling for parents of children struggling with ADHD or ADHD symptoms. Free. 231-383-8222.

The Dennos Museum Center, NMC, TC welcomes Jay Ungar & Molly Mason on Friday, January 13 at 8pm. This acoustic duo’s music has been played on “A Prairie Home Companion,” & film soundtracks such as “Legends of the Fall” & “Brother’s Keeper”. Tickets: $27 advance; $30 door, & $24 museum members. dennosmuseum.org

jan 13

friday

HORIZON BOOKS, TC EVENTS: 10-11am: Story Hour – “Good Night”. 8:3010:30pm: Live folk, roots & blues with the Jim Crockett Trio. horizonbooks.com

-------------------HOT CLUB OF COWTOWN: 8pm, Freshwater Art Gallery, Boyne City. Playing hot jazz & Western swing, this band was picked by Bob Dylan to tour with him. Tickets, $25. freshwaterartgallery.com

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

LUNCHEON LECTURE: 11:30am-1:30pm, Library Conference Center, NCMC, Petoskey. “Great Lakes Center for the Arts”. Cost, $10 – includes lunch. Reservations required: 231-348-6600.

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COMMUNITY DANCE: 7-9:30pm, East Jordan Civic Center Gym. Featuring the Jordan Valley All-Stars Band. $10.

-------------------NORTHERN MICHIGAN CAMPING & RV SHOW: Jan. 12-15, The Ellison Place, Gaylord. Today’s hours are 2-9pm. Admission is three non-perishable food items or a cash donation. rvshowofthenorth.com

-------------------UNCORRECT COMEDY PRESENTS DAVE LANDAU: 8:30pm, Streeters, TC. This stand up comedian has been seen on Last Comic Standing. Tickets: $10 advance, $15 door. groundzeroonline.com

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

-------------------JAY UNGAR & MOLLY MASON: 8pm, Dennos Museum Center, NMC, TC. This duo’s music has been played on “A Prairie Home Companion,” & film soundtracks such as “Legends of the Fall” & “Brother’s Keeper”. Tickets: $27, $24 for museum members, & $30 at the door. dennosmuseum.org

jan 14

saturday

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

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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.

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 21

january

07-15 Nancy Stagnitta

Laurie Sears

Every Thursday

January 12th

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

-------------------GOPHERWOOD CONCERT: Featuring singer/songwriter Chris Buhalis. 8pm, Cadillac Elks Club. Tickets: $12 adults, $6 students in advance, & $15 & $7 at door. mynorthtickets.com

-------------------FREE ARTS & CRAFTS DAYS: Noon3pm, 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

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

Elizabeth Sexton Rivers January 19th

Every Thursday

TC Sings Community Choir

7-9:30pm

January 26th

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

Gluten Free Burger Buns Now Available!

20th Anniversary 1997-2017

Car Show every Summer!

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

Nothing’s Finer Than Randy’s Diner!

VISIT OUR FACEBOOK PAGE FOR NEWS & SPECIALS.

1120 CARVER STREET, TRAVERSE CITY 231 946-0789

22 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

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ALCO SPEA Munso distric

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COMP Held e Churc For m

“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

ongoing

ART HISTORY TALK: Fridays, Jan. 13 – March 17, Crooked Tree Arts Center, TC from noon-1pm. Each week will cover a decade of the 1800’s. $5 suggested donation. crookedtree.org

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

-------------------WINTER WALK WEDNESDAYS: Walk to school every Weds. this winter, beginning Jan. 11 at 8am through March 15. elgruponorte.org/ winter/walk

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

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

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

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., beginning Jan. 7-8, through Feb. 2526 from noon-4pm. blackstarfarms.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

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

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

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

Visit Randy’s Diner for breakfast, lunch or dinner!

Gyros, Cod, Subs, Soups, Salads, and much more!

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

ALCO PEOP Episco distric

is three non-perishable food items or a cash donation. rvshowofthenorth.com

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

-------------------“COMPANY”: (See Fri., Jan. 13) -------------------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

sunday

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

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

-------------------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. Held on Sundays from Jan. 8-29. $5/adult. Free for youth 17 & under with paying adult. michlegacyartpark.org

-------------------SNOWSHOE, WINE & BREW: Sundays, Jan. 8 – March 5, Old Mission Peninsula, 10:40amnoon. Park at Jolly Pumpkin to board the TC Brew Bus & start your trek. $20. tcbrewbus. com/events

-------------------ICE SKATING GAMES: Saturdays, Jan. 7 – 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, Jan. 7 – 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.

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

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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

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

DEBTORS ANONYMOUS: 12 Step Meeting.

Held on Tuesdays from 7-8pm at Munson Community Health Center, east door, Room G, TC. For info, email: tcdajp34@gmail.com

-------------------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., 1-4pm, Red Sky Stage, Petoskey. Bring your instruments or just sing along or listen. www. redskystage.com.

-------------------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.

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

-------------------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.

Mon -

art

6TH ANNUAL GRAND TRAVERSE ART BOMB: Jan. 7 – 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

Ladies Night - $1 off drinks & $5 martinis closed at 9pm

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

Wed - Get it in the can for $1

with DJ FASEL

Thurs - MI beer night $1 off all MI beer

w/ CHRIS STERR & RON GETZ BAND

Fri Jan 13:

Happy Hour: JOE WILSON TRIO Then: G-SNACKS

Fri Jan 14: G-Snacks Sun Jan 15:

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

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

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.

- Call for Artists: 1st Mark Makers Competition: Calling all acrylic painters to battle it out in front of a supportive live audience in 3 rounds of friendly painting competition. We are looking for 6 artists. DEADLINE to apply is January 10. The event is to be held at Higher Art Gallery, TC on January 27. For details on how to apply please visit: higherartgallery.com - 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: - Back to School: CTAC Teachers’ Exhibition: Runs through Jan. 7 in the Atrium Gallery. 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. 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

SPORTS BAR & RESTAURANT dates deadline: every tuesday, for the following week’s issue events@traverseticker.com

Try our NEW sampler platter with this coupon $7.95 (reg.$14.95) Expires 1/31/17

221 E State St

•

statestreetgrilletc.com • 231-947-4263 Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 23

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Watch the snow fall

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Various artists – “Moana” soundtrack – Walt Disney

As if Lin-Manuel Miranda hasn’t had a big enough year with the raging success of his Broadway musical “Hamilton,” now he’s penned a set of ridiculously catchy tunes for the new Disney animated film “Moana” (alongside an equally on-point score by Mark Mancina). Paying careful homage to the Polynesian influence of the storyline, Miranda’s writings include the zippy “You’re Welcome” as performed by The Rock; the comically devious “Shiny”; and “We Know the Way,” sung by Miranda himself. Layers of island vocals and hooks that are sweet without being syrupy complete this captivating island picture.

Various artists – “La La Land” soundtrack – Interscope

In this new film of Hollywood hopefuls, the music is as much a character of its own as those of aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz musician Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) in that the music links the film’s many vintage moments together, giving them heft and a golden L.A. glow.

The other surprise is the fact that both actors actually sing quite respectably on the soundtrack, most effectively on the more expressive songs like Mia’s “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” and Sebastian’s showpiece, the wonderful “City of Stars” which will surely be a contender for Oscar music.

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GAYLORD 989-732-2422 • PETOSKEY 231-347-3015

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Various artists – “Sing” soundtrack ” – Republic

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24 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

Think of “American Idol” with talking, singing animals as contestants, and you’ve got the elevator pitch for “Sing.” The album, however, is a different story; once the revamped pop songs are pulled away from the cute animated visuals, they become merely middling karaoke, with more weighty tracks by artists like Leonard Cohen and David Bowie sounding especially out of place. The one standout is Reese Witherspoon’s unexpected dance-floor version of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”; it’s rendered with so much cheerful abandon you’ll forgive her for turning it into EDM-lite.

Thomas Newman – “Passengers” soundtrack – Sony Classical

While the movie itself has become burdened with a little controversy, the score manages to stand on its own within — or without — the storyline, dynamically weaving lonely woodwinds and piano through electronic-based compositions like “Hibernation Pod 1625” with its slight minor tones and “Crystalline” with its abandoned feel.

Newman only invites orchestral elements in to add a more vast sense of scale appropriate to the “lost in space” setting; the result of his careful choices frequently elevates the film, and by itself, the soundtrack is an emotional and affecting listen.

MODERN

SOUTHBOUND FOR SPRING BREAK? CHECK OUT OKEECHOBEE

ROCK

BY KRISTI KATES

been used in a film trailer.

Fifth Harmony, who recently performed at December’s iHeart Radio Jingle Ball to help iHeartRadio celebrate the holidays, chatted with radio host Elvis Duran after their set and revealed that the girl group is just about ready to start working on a new album, which will be their third.

This is great news for fans who became a little panicked when members started pursuing solo projects, but never fear — the group plans to have the new set ready for mid-2017 and says the new tracks are going to be lit.

Lorde, who’s been in-studio quietly working on her much-anticipated sophomore album, just surfaced unannounced in New York City at Webster Hall for a celebrity talent show, where she performed a cover of Robyn’s “Hang With Me” alongside additional performances from fun.’s Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry and the band Bleachers. She joined in a finale group performance of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way.” Lorde’s new album has no release date yet but is expected in mid-2017.

Michiganian music fans who are Florida-bound this spring break will be happy to find out that the Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival in Okeechobee is returning for another year, with a super-hot roster on the way for the weekend of March 2-5. Returning to the fest is the PoWow!, which brings musicians of different genres together into a superband to play covers of crowd favorites. Last year’s PoWow! included a performance from Miguel, John Oates (Hall and Oates), Mumford and Sons, Skrillex, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, all on the same stage, all at once.

With this year’s performance lineup including Kings of Leon, The Roots, The Lumineers, Griz, Snails and Anderson .Paak and The Free Nationals, who knows what could happen. For more information, check out okeechobeefest.com.

Rihanna is temporarily stepping away from music to act as an alien dancer in the upcoming Luc Besson (“The Fifth Element”) sci-fi epic “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” an adaptation of a 1960s-era French comic book. The film, which stars actor Dane DeHaan as the hero Valerian, snagged plenty of buzz at the last San Diego Comic-Con and managed to acquire a remix of the Beatles song “Because,” marking the first time a noncover from the Beatles has

MODERN ROCK LINK OF THE WEEK A video filmed in 2015 in Jackson, Wyo., during Detroiter Jack White’s acoustic tour has surfaced and includes both a short talk from White about writing music and a

mournful, rare acoustic performance of the track “The Rose with the Broken Neck” on which he collaborated with Dangermouse.

Check it out at tinyurl.com/jnpqmf5.

MichiBUZZ Detroit neo-soul duo The Ethnics, made up of TIMO 1 2 and dimes A/V, are prepping some shows to promote their new album, “Recently.” … Grammy award-winning jazz-pop crossover artist Norah Jones has just announced a show at the Fox Theater in Detroit, which will be happening on May 23, with tickets already on sale. … St. Andrews Hall in downtown Detroit is set to welcome a quartet of bands for a big show on Jan. 11: August Burns Red, Protest the Hero, ’68 and In Hearts Wake. … Michigan boaters who have adopted the track “Sailing” as their unofficial anthem might be interested in Christopher Cross’ upcoming show at the Forest

Hills Fine Arts Center in Grand Rapids on Jan. 13. … Also on Jan. 13 and also in Grand Rapids (but of a completely different genre), Indiana lo-fi indie rock band Hoops will be cranking things up at The Pyramid Scheme.

ROCK TRIP Burn off some of those excess calories from the holidays and get your skank on at a massive ska-punk show at the Royal Oak Music Theatre in Royal Oak on Jan. 12 — you’ll get those Doc Martens warmed up with opening sets from Direct Hit!, Ballyhoo! and Anti-Flag, then it’s onward and skaward for the rest of the night with California outfit Reel Big Fish. Get tickets and all the info at royaloakmusictheatre.com.

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

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Presented by Re/Max Bayshore Properties

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 25

nitelife

Jan 7 - Jan 15 edited by jamie kauffold

Canada's legendary singer/songwriter James Keelaghan is known for his "finely crafted stories & his commanding performances".

This Juno Award winner & Canadian Folk Music Award winner will play Sleder's Family Tavern, TC on Sunday, January 15 at 4pm. Tickets: $20 advance, $25 door. 947-9213.

Send Nitelife to: events@traverseticker.com

Manistee, Wexford & Missaukee

• 522 - MANISTEE Tues. -- Karaoke Thurs., Fri., Sat. -- DJ • 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, 1:304:30pm • 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 1/11 -- Levi Britton, 7:3010:30 • ACOUSTIC TAP ROOM - TC 1/8 -- Buckets of Rain Benefit Concert w/ Dennis Palmer, 4-6 Tues. -- Open & un-mic'd w/ Ben Johnson, 7-9 • BUD'S - INTERLOCHEN Thurs. -- Jim Hawley, 5-8 • FANTASY'S - GRAWN Adult Entertainment w/ DJ • GT RESORT & SPA - ACME Grand Lobby: 1/6-7 -- Blake Elliott, 7-11 1/13-14 -- Blake Elliott, 7-11 Aerie: 12/31 -- John Pomeroy, 7-11 • HAYLOFT INN - TC Thurs. -- Open mic night by Roundup Radio Show, 8 Fri. - Sat. thru Jan. -- The Cow Puppies • HORIZON BOOKS - TC 1/13 -- Jim Crockett Trio, 8:3010:30 • LEFT FOOT CHARLEY - TC 1/13 -- Jeff Brown, 6-8 Mon. -- Open mic w/ Blake Elliott, 6-9 • LITTLE BOHEMIA - TC Tues. -- TC Celtic, 7-9 • NORTH PEAK - TC Kilkenny's, 9:30-1:30: 1/6-7 -- Sweet J Band 1/13-14 -- Reverend Right Time & The First Cuzins of Funk 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, 8:3011:30 Thurs. - Sat. -- Tom Kaufmann, 8:30-11:30 • PARKSHORE LOUNGE - TC Fri. - Sat. -- DJ • RARE BIRD BREWPUB - TC 1/7 -- Seth Bernard Trio 1/9 -- Open Mic/Artist Night, 6-9 1/11 -- Jeff Haas Quartet w/ Don Julin, Jack Dryden & Randy Marsh Tues. -- Trivia night, 7 • ROVE ESTATE VINEYARD & WINERY - TC 1/13 -- TC Celtic, 5-8 • 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 1/13 -- Comedy w/ Dave Landau wsg Jr. Williams & MC Christopher O'Non, 8 Ground Zero: 1/14 -- UpChurch The Redneck w/ River Melcher, 8 • 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 1/10 -- Clint Weaner, 7:3010:30 • THE WORKSHOP BREWING CO. - TC 1/7 -- Brett Mitchell, 8-11 1/13 -- Turbo Pup, 8-11 1/14 -- Local DJ Night: Clark After Dark, 8-11 Mon. -- Rotten Cherries Comedy Open Mic, 8-9:30 Weds. -- WBC Jazz Society Jam, 6-10 • TRATTORIA STELLA - TC Tues. -- Ron Getz, 6-9 • UNION STREET STATION TC 1/7 -- Skin & Friends 1/10 -- Open mic w/ Chris Sterr 1/11 -- DJ Fasel 1/12 -- Chris Sterr & Ron Getz Band 1/13 -- Happy Hour w/ Joe Wilson Trio, then G-Snacks 1/14 -- G-Snacks Sun. -- Karaoke, 10-2 • WEST BAY BEACH RESORT - TC View: 1/7 -- DJ Motaz, 9-2 1/13 -- The Sweetwater Blues Band, 7-9:30; DJ Shawny D, 9:30-2 1/14 -- DJ Motaz, 9-2 Thurs. -- Jazz w/ Jeff Haas Trio & Laurie Sears, 7-9:30

Antrim & Charlevoix • BRIDGE STREET TAP ROOM - CHARLEVOIX 1/7 -- Chris Koury, 8-11 1/8 -- Chris Calleja, 6-9 1/10 -- Sean Bielby, 7-10 1/13 -- Eric Jaqua, 8-11 1/14 -- Nathan Bates, 8-11 1/15 -- Pete Kehoe, 6-9 • CELLAR 152 - ELK RAPIDS 1/7 -- Jessica Dominic, 7:309:30 1/13 -- Blair Miller, 7:30-9:30 1/14 -- Jim Moore, 7:30-9:30

• 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

26 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

1/10 -- Third Groove, 6-9 • SHORT'S BREWING CO. BELLAIRE 1/7 -- Fauxgrass, 8:30-11 1/13 -- Rollie Tussing, 8:30-11 1/14 -- Turbo Pup, 8:30-11 1/15 -- Ron Getz Trio, 8-10:30 • VASQUEZ' HACIENDA - ELK RAPIDS Acoustic Tues. Open Jam, 6-9 Sat. -- Live music, 7-10

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, 9:30-1:30 • JODI'S TANGLED ANTLER BEULAH Fri. -- Karaoke, 9-1 • LAKE ANN BREWING CO. LAKE ANN 1/10 -- Jim Crockett w/ Pat Niemisto,

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 1/7 -- Alfredo Improvisational Quartet, 6-9 1/13 -- Saldaje, 6-9 1/14 -- Great Lakes Graham & the Fiddleman, 6-9 Thurs. -- Open mic night, 6-8 • STORMCLOUD BREWING CO. - FRANKFORT 1/7 -- Awesome Distraction, 8-10 1/13 -- Chloe & Olivia Kimes, 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 • CAFE SANTE - BOYNE CITY 1/7 -- A Brighter Bloom, 8-11 1/12 -- Michelle Chenard, 6-9 1/13 -- Nelson Olstrom, 8-11 1/14 -- Under the Moon, 8-11 Mon. -- Nathan Bates, 6-9 • CITY PARK GRILL PETOSKEY 1/7 -- Polar Bear Recon, 10 1/10 -- DJ Shawn Peterson, 9 1/13 -- Not Quite Canada, 10 1/14 -- The Galactic Sherpas, 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 1/7 -- Nelson Olstrom 1/13 -- Jeff Bihlman

1/14 -- Michelle Chenard 1/15 -- Chris Koury, 11-2 • OASIS TAVERN - KEWADIN Thurs. -- Bad Medicine, DJ Jesse James • STAFFORD'S PERRY HOTEL - PETOSKEY Noggin Room: 1/7 -- Kellerville 1/13-14 -- Mike Struwin • 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 Doors, 9

Otsego, Crawford & Central • ALPINE TAVERN GAYLORD 1/7 -- Adam Hoppe, 7-10 1/12 -- Mike Ridley, 7-10 1/14 -- Jim Akans, 7-10 • MAIN STREET MARKET GAYLORD

7-9:30: 1/7 -- Sweet Tooth 1/13 -- Acoustic Bonzo 1/14 -- Brighter Bloom • TIMOTHY'S PUB GAYLORD Fri.-Sat. -- Video DJ w/Larry

Reichert Ent. • TREETOPS RESORT GAYLORD Hunter's Grille: 1/7 -- Risque, 9-1 1/13-14 -- Risque

The reel

by meg weichman

‘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.

‘LA LA LAND’ 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.

She works as a barista on the Warner Brothers lot, tantalizingly close to the dream factory that keeps her at arm’s length. He’s a stubborn jazz purist who wants to open his own club and take out the atrocity that is a “samba and tapas” place located in a former hallowed hall of jazz greats. Through a series of delightful meet-cutes, they fall for each other. He then encourages her to write and produce her own one-woman show, and he gets a gig that brings him success, but not on his terms, and suddenly their storybook romance gets a hearty dose of reality.

In case it wasn’t clear, this is a musical — a musical in all its full-on singing and dancing glory. And if the musical is predicated on the idea that when the emotion becomes too great for speech you sing, then “La La Land” brings a depth of emotion in a series of musical numbers from its dazzling opening in an L.A. traffic jam to its magnificent conclusion paying tribute to the ballets in films like “An American in Paris” that is so sublime it marks an absolutely stunning cinematic achievement and is the clear front-runner for best picture at the Oscars.

After all, it is the movie musical that most epitomizes Hollywood’s Golden Age. The musical might as well be Hollywood writ large, best embodying the magic of the movies in the public imagination. Yet the Hollywood musicals embedded in “La La Land’s” DNA are all but archaic, with only Broadway adaptations or arty exercises in generic experimentation making their way to the silver screen today.

This, however, is neither a revisionist take on the genre — it’s too earnest and sweet; nor a derivative one — it’s too fresh and dynamic.

With the most contemporary of artistry and sensibilities, 31-year-old 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.

Chazelle’s ineffable touch makes magical

realism seem natural, brings sophistication to the corny storytelling you may remember, creates characters with honest-to-God depth, and spectacle that dazzles without going over the top. Somehow, “La La Land” manages to do grand, exhilarating exuberance as well as it does grounded, character-driven romance.

And while there are oodles of references to movie musicals of yore, it never feels oldfashioned, never feels like pure homage. It’s effortlessly modern yet still feels like it’s set in a time when you really could be “discovered” in a drug store. I thought I would never see another movie that had the same “glorious feeling” of old movie musicals, but this captures it. Now if only we could bottle it.

See, the movie musical is what made me fall in love with film. And while this is everything I personally want in a movie, right now it’s also everything we all need in a movie.

Because after seeing “La La Land,” I truly understand what it must’ve been like to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance on air during the Great Depression, hear Judy Garland’s stirring voice during World War II, or why the nostalgic “That’s Entertainment” compilation films (slogan: “Boy, do we need it now!”) were such a success at the height of Vietnam.

Basically, while I’ve always loved these kind of pictures, they’ve never fed my soul the way “La La Land did,” arriving at the perfect moment to give us some uplift and muchneeded escape.

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.

Then there’s Gosling and Stone, who have a sparkling chemistry that ranks with the greats, but they’re not exactly the strongest singers or dancers. Yet their performances are completely first-rate and effervescent with their imperfections making everything all the more relatable and alive.

And when you pull it apart, “La La Land” isn’t perfect either. It drags in sections and is rather predictable. But 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.

And isn’t that what we all want out of a trip to the picture show?

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

Eddie Re

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.

‘moonlight’

W

hereas some filmmakers would seem to have to toil to achieve the emotional impact and feeling of “Moonlight,” for director Barry Jenkins it seems to have emerged fully formed out of a delirious, poetic dream.

He has structured his film in episodic sections that chronicle a man at three different points in his life (played by three different, yet completely cohesive actors). And the result is an unforgettably brilliant and timelessly beautiful comingof-age story about a gay, African-American boy growing up with his drug-addicted mother in 1980s Miami. There’s not much action to speak of, but even the smallest moments and gestures — dancing in gym class, lighting a cigarette for his mother, asking a simple question — carry an unbearable weight of significance. In one second it ravishes you with its artistry and then turns around and makes rubble of your heart.

There’s next to no violence, and hardly any sex, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of a film that destroys or aches more.

There’s no way to sugar coat it, this is a challenging work. It will leave you gutted and exhausted, but also renewed and restored. This is the movie you didn’t know you were waiting for. And out of its rigorous specificity comes a universal humanity and piercing familiarity about our most basic needs: for connection, for touch, for love.

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 27

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28 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

the ADViCE GOddESS Meme Streets

Q

: My girlfriend of six years is breaking up with me. My question is: How do I let our friends and my family know? I’m thinking a mass email telling my side of the story. Then I wouldn’t have to have the same conversation over and over with different people.

— Glum

“Jonesin” Crosswords

"The Best of 2016"--yes, there were some things. by Matt Jones ACROSS 1 Hairless on top 5 Had in mind 10 Backstage access 14 Lyft competitor 15 Tree with chocolate-yielding seeds 16 “At Last” singer ___ James 17 Red gemstone 18 Singer whose “Blonde” was Esquire’s #1 album of 2016 20 Late Jeopardy! contestant Cindy with an inspiring six-day streak (despite treatment for Stage 4 cancer and running a fever during taping) 22 Cries of exasperation 23 Clubber Lang portrayer in “Rocky III” 24 Shrewd 25 2016 animated movie with a 98% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes 27 El ___ (Peruvian volcano) 29 Furniture wood 30 Puts on, as clothes 31 One way to find out 32 Founder of analytical psychology 34 “Spy vs. Spy” magazine 36 With 38-Across, 2016 headline that ended a 108-year streak 38 See 36-Across 42 LBJ’s VP 43 Self-defense system with throws 44 “Westworld” airer 45 Beverage brand whose logo is two lizards 48 Dandified dude 49 Copier paper orders 51 Newfound planet similar in mass to Earth (from National Geographic’s “6 Science Discoveries Worth Celebrating in 2016”) 54 “S” on the dinner table 55 “Inside ___ Schumer” 56 “Blueberries for ___” (Robert McCloskey kids’ book) 57 Donald Glover dramedy called “the best show of the year” by the New York Times 60 What Bertrand Piccard flew around the world using clean technology (one of BBC’s “Four good things that happened in 2016”) 63 Mascara ruiner, maybe 64 “A horse is a horse” horse 65 “SNL” producer Michaels 66 Former Montreal ballplayer 67 Cong. gathering

68 Key near the quote marks 69 Goulash, e.g.

DOWN 1 They may get stuck to hikers’ socks 2 Lie adjacent to 3 Movie millionaire sought by a same-last-named “Dude” 4 Deadpan style of humor 5 “Back to the Future” hero Marty 6 “My Name Is ___” (Jason Lee sitcom) 7 Obamacare acronym 8 “___ of the North” (1922 silent documentary) 9 2020 Summer Olympics city 10 Chest muscle, slangily 11 “Resume speed,” to a musician 12 Be the headliner of 13 Seasonal mall figures 19 East, to Ernst 21 Actor Wood of “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” 25 Follow a jagged path 26 Bookie’s calculations 27 Cheese’s partner 28 “Kinda” suffix 29 Yoko who loved John Lennon 33 “I’m not touching that!”

34 Pretend pie ingredient 35 Opposite the mouth, in biology 37 Party mix cereal 38 Coffee holder 39 “And then ...?”

40 Watson’s creator 41 Head-shaking replies 43 “You had one ___ ...”

45 Hiccups, e.g.

46 At least 47 Actor Peter and singer Susan, for two 48 Jokey Jimmy 50 Cheers up 52 Jerusalem’s home: abbr.

53 Syrup flavor 54 Take the wheel 57 A BrontÎ sister 58 Record, in a way 59 Get your ducks in ___ 61 Freemium game interrupters, perhaps 62 Curator’s canvases

A

: Sending a mass email is a great way to get some piece of information out to everybody — from your best friend to 1.4 million people on Twitter to three random drunk dudes who really shouldn’t be on their phones at their boss’s funeral in Estonia.

The ability we have online to dispense a little information to a whole lot of people, immediately, effortlessly, is about the coolest thing ever — and the Frankenstein monster of our time. As I write in “Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck,” because all the groovy new digital tools are so fun and easy to use, we often “fall back on what’s technically possible” as our behavioral standard. Our chimp-like impulse to just click already derails picky-wicky concerns we might otherwise have, such as “Hmm, wonder whether sending that might get me, oh, you know, fired, ostracized, and sleeping in a refrigerator box on the corner.”

Consider that anything you email can be rapidly shared — and shared and shared and shared.

For example, novelist and professor Robert Olen Butler emailed five of his grad students the sad (and rather creepy) details of the demise of his marriage, asking them to “clarify the issues” for other students who wanted to know.

The email quickly made the rounds in the literary world and ended up in The New York Times and on Gawker, where they “clarified” that his wife had left him to become one of four women in “Ted Turner’s collection.”

But even a less tawdry, less tycoon-filled breakup email may go more viral than one might like.

Anthropologist Jerome Barkow, who studies gossip, explains that we evolved to be keenly interested in information that could have some bearing on our ability to survive, mate, and navigate socially. As Barkow puts it (and as is borne out by others’ research), gossip about how soundly somebody’s sleeping is unlikely to be as spreadworthy as whom they’re sleeping with.

However, our propensity to spread gossip may be both the problem with emailing your news and the solution to getting it out there. Consider going old-school: Ask a few, um, chatty friends to put the word out to your circle, answer any questions people have, and let your wishes be known (like if you aren’t ready to talk about

adviceamy@aol.com advicegoddess.com

it). All in all, you’ll get the job done, but in a much more controlled, contained way — one that reflects this bit of prudence from political writer Olivia Nuzzi: “Dance like no one is watching; email like it may one day be read aloud in a deposition.”

Thinking From The Right Side Of The Crotch

Q

: I’ve been seeing this woman for two months. I really like her. She’s made some mistakes -- two bad marriages, some promiscuity, running from debts — but she’s determined to change. My friends think she’s bad news. But our relationship — though mostly sexual so far — has been terrific.

Shouldn’t my intuition count more than my friends’ opinions?

— Fretting

A

: When you’re deciding how to invest your life savings, you probably don’t say, “I’ll just take a moment to ask my penis.”

Well, your intuition is about as reliable a judge of your girlfriend’s character. Intuitions (aka “gut feelings”) are conclusions we leap to — automatically, without the intervention of rational thought. Our mind flashes on this and that from our past experience, and up pops a feeling. The problem is, we’re prone to overconfidence that our intuitions are correct — mistaking strong feelings for informed feelings.

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein find that certain people’s intuitions are somewhat more likely to be trustworthy — those who repeatedly encounter the same situation, like a surgeon who only does appendectomies. Her hunches about a patient’s appendix are more informed because they come out of repeated experience and because she presumably gets corrective feedback when she guesses wrong (though, ideally, not from a monitor making that awful flatlining sound).

But Kahneman tells the McKinsey Quarterly, “My general view … would be that you should not take your intuitions at face value.” In fact, you need to go out of your way to look for evidence that your intuitions are wrong. In this case, it will take time and challenges to her character -- and your actually wanting to see whether she acts ethically or does what’s easiest. In other words, your hunches can tell you things — things that need a lot of post-hunch verification through applying higher reasoning (which, again, doesn’t simply mean calling upon any organ that’s higher than your knees).

Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 29

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lOGY

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Jesse, a painting by renowned 20th-century artist Marc Chagall. I wanted to get a copy to hang on my wall. But as I scoured the Internet, I couldn’t find a single business that sells prints of it. Thankfully, I did locate an artist in Vietnam who said he could paint an exact replica.

I ordered it, and was pleased with my new objet d’art. It was virtually identical to Chagall’s original. I suggest you meditate on taking a metaphorically similar approach, Capricorn. Now is a time when substitutes may work as well as what they replace.

(March 21-April 19): In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is a huge holy tree that links all of the nine worlds to each other.

Perched on its uppermost branch is an eagle with a hawk sitting on its head. Far below, living near the roots, is a dragon. The hawk and eagle stay in touch with the dragon via Ratatoskr, a talkative squirrel that runs back and forth between the heights and the depths. Alas, Ratatoskr traffics solely in insults. That’s the only kind of message the birds and the dragon ever have for each other.

In accordance with the astrological omens, Aries, I suggest you act like a far more benevolent version of Ratatoskr in the coming weeks. Be a feisty communicator who roams far and wide to spread uplifting gossip and energizing news.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): ): You have a

divine mandate to love bigger and stronger and truer than ever before. It’s high time to freely give the gifts you sometimes hold back from those you care for. It’s high time to take full ownership of neglected treasures so you can share them with your worthy allies. It’s high time to madly cultivate the generosity of spirit that will enable you to more easily receive the blessings that can and should be yours. Be a brave, softhearted warrior of love!

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I love and respect

Tinker Bell, Kermit the Frog, Shrek, Wonder Woman, SpongeBob SquarePants, Snow White, Road Runner, and Calvin and Hobbes. They have provided me with much knowledge and inspiration. Given the current astrological omens, I suspect that you, too, can benefit from cultivating your relationships with characters like them. It’s also a favorable time for you to commune with the spirits of Harriet Tubman, Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, or any other historical figures who inspire you. I suggest you have dreamlike conversations with your most interesting ancestors, as well. Are you still in touch with your imaginary friends from childhood? If not, renew acquaintances.

CANCER June 21-July 22):

“I never wish to be easily defined,” wrote Cancerian author Franz Kafka. “I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.” Do you ever have that experience? I do. I’m a Crab like you, and I think it’s common among members of our tribe. For me, it feels liberating. It’s a way to escape people’s expectations of me and enjoy the independence of living in my fantasies. But I plan to do it a lot less in 2017, and I advise you to do the same. We should work hard at coming all the way down to earth. We will thrive by floating less and being better grounded; by being less fuzzy and more solid; by not being so inscrutable, but rather more knowable.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Here’s my declaration:

“I hereby forgive, completely and permanently, all motorists who have ever irked me with their rude and bad driving. I also forgive, totally and forever, all tech support people who have insulted me, stonewalled me, or given me wrong information as I sought help from them on the phone. I furthermore forgive, utterly and finally, all family members and dear friends who have hurt my feelings.” Now would be a fantastic time for you to do what I just did, Leo: Drop grudges, let go of unimportant outrage, and issue a blanket amnesty. Start with the easier stuff -- the complaints against strangers and acquaintances -- and work your way up to the allies you cherish.

30 • January 9, 2017 • Northern Express Weekly

BY ROB BREZSNY

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I recently discovered Tree of

ARIES

Community Features:

JAN 9 - JAN 15

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): There are some

authors who both annoy me and intrigue me.

Even though I feel allergic to the uncomfortable ideas they espouse, I’m also fascinated by their unique provocations. As I read their words, I’m half-irritated at their grating declarations, and yet greedy for more. I disagree with much of what they say, but feel grudgingly grateful for the novel perspectives they prod me to discover.

(Nobel Prize-winner Elias Canetti is one such author.) In accordance with the current astrological rhythms, Virgo, I invite you to seek out similar influences -- for your own good!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Now would be an

excellent time to add new beauty to your home.

Are there works of art or buoyant plants or curious symbols that would lift your mood? Would you consider hiring a feng shui consultant to rearrange the furniture and accessories so as to enhance the energetic flow? Can you entice visits from compelling souls whose wisdom and wit would light up the place? Tweak your imagination so it reveals tricks about how to boost your levels of domestic bliss.

ScORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In 2017, you will

have unprecedented opportunities to re-imagine, revise, and reinvent the story of your life. You’ll be able to forge new understandings about your co-stars and reinterpret the meanings of crucial plot twists that happened once upon a time. Now check out these insights from author Mark Doty: “The past is not static, or ever truly complete; as we age we see from new positions, shifting angles. A therapist friend of mine likes to use the metaphor of the kind of spiral stair that winds up inside a lighthouse. As one moves up that stair, the core at the center doesn’t change, but one continually sees it from another vantage point; if the past is a core of who we are, then our movement in time always brings us into a new relation to that core.”

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The Tao Te Ching is a poetically philosophical text written by a Chinese sage more than two millennia ago. Numerous authors have translated it into modern languages. I’ve borrowed from their work to craft a horoscope that is precisely suitable for you in the coming weeks. Here’s your high-class fortune cookie oracle: Smooth your edges, untangle your knots, sweeten your openings, balance your extremes, relax your mysteries, soften your glare, forgive your doubts, love your breathing, harmonize your longings, and marvel at the sunny dust.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) “It is often

safer to be in chains than to be free,” wrote Franz Kafka. That fact is worthy of your consideration in the coming weeks, Aquarius. You can avoid all risks by remaining trapped inside the comfort that is protecting you. Or you can take a gamble on escaping, and hope that the new opportunities you attract will compensate you for the sacrifice it entails. I’m not here to tell you what to do. I simply want you to know what the stakes are.

PIScES (Feb. 19-March 20): “All pleasures are

in the last analysis imaginary, and whoever has the best imagination enjoys the most pleasure.”

So said 19th-century German novelist Theodor Fontane, and now I’m passing his observation on to you. Why? Because by my astrological estimates, you Pisceans will have exceptional imaginations in 2017 -- more fertile, fervent, and freedom-loving than ever before. Therefore, your capacity to drum up pleasure will also be at an all-time high. There is a catch, however. Your imagination, like everyone else’s, is sometimes prone to churning out superstitious fears.

To take maximum advantage of its bliss-inducing potential, you will have to be firm about steering it in positive directions.

NORTHERN EXPRESS

CLASSIFIEDS EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCED MEDICAL BILLER Hand surgery practice seeking experienced biller/coder/patient accounts manager. In addition to a positive and professional demeanor, the ideal candidate should possess strong organizational and customer service skills and a team-oriented attitude. Multi-tasking, attention to detail, and knowledge of the medical billing industry required-eClinicalWorks a plus. Competitive wages and excellent benefits offered. Send cover letter and resume to: Administrator, Hand Surgery of N Michigan, 701 W. Front St., Ste. 100, Traverse City, MI 49684 GRAPHIC DESIGNER VP Demand Creation Svcs(frmly Village Press) is hiring a F/T Graphic Designer. Responsible for designing multiple hobby and association publications. Works directly with Clients, Sales,and Editorial. Must have attention to detail, strong time mgmt skills, excellent organizational and communication skills, and ability to manage multiple deadlines. Experience with Adobe Creative Ste, Magazine layout and design, Commercial design of marketing materials, and Wordpress website design.Email cover letter and resume to: HRM@villagepress.com ESTIMATOR VP Demand Creation Services (frmly Village Press)is hiring a F/T Estimator.

Duties will include: Creating sales proposals, job planning and implementation, labor and resource planning/allocation, costing, maintaining database standards, monthly reports and pricing levels. Will work closely with the Sales SVC team. Must be an analytical thinker, ability to work independently, excellent organi-

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E-mail cover letter and resume to: HRM@villagepress.com CONTROLLER - GLEN ARBOR We’re three thriving companies under one umbrella, always evolving to better suit the rental, real estate, and property maintenance/construction industries in north. MI. Seeking: highly driven, experienced accounting professional to act as Controller. Responsibilities: budget management, financial analysis, payroll, forecasting, accounts payable/receivable, financial reporting, key areas of human resources.

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OTHER ALTERATIONS, SEWING, mending & repairs.

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REAL ESTATE LELAND OFFICE SPACE FOR LEASE A unique mixed use building on Main Street recently renovated to accommodate 3 professionals in private offices. Potential for 5 additional offices. Quiet setting and conveniently located within walking distance to downtown. $375/mo-Office w/view of the Leland River, $325/mo-remaining 2 offices. Call Jennifer at 231-941-0707 to schedule appointment.

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Northern Express Weekly • january 9, 2017 • 31

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