Sometimes, one of the best ways to show your dedication is just to show up and be ready for the task at hand. Northeast Michigan’s legislators, state Sen. Jim Stamas, R-Midland, and state Rep. Sue Allor, R-Wolverine, have done just that. Out of more than 1,000 roll-call votes in each ...
Do you, like me, believe we have reached a critical stage dealing with the coronavirus in Michigan? Everywhere I turn right now, I see tensions running high, people’s nerves frayed, and disappointment and discouragement much more prevalent in discussions and attitudes. While, for the ...
I’ve covered I don’t know how many protests over the years. Luckily, all of them have been peaceful. The wildest scene I’ve witnessed was probably a neo-Nazi rally at the state Capitol several years ago (actual Nazis, in the tan uniforms and sieg heil salutes and all). Besides this ...
If you think this year’s snowfall is less than normal, you would be right. While the area has received traces of snow most days this week, accumulation has been rather inconsequential compared to normal winter weather this time of year. As of Jan. 14, the National Weather Service in ...
At my age, I need to start my day with a few repetitions, though they’re not the sort you might imagine. I admire those hardy folks who slide out of bed, moving smoothly into the push-up position before doing a few — repetitions. But that’s not the way I wake up, and those aren’t ...
An elegant pair of cardinals was perched at my feeders this morning, looking for an early breakfast, when I realized that the suet holder hung empty and the cache of sunflower seeds was depleted. I debated about going out into the cold that early, but I couldn’t bear to see them go away ...
The coronavirus has struck another popular Northeast Michigan event — The Alpena News’ Business Expo and Newspapers in Education Book Sale. “The expo has been delayed, not abandoned,” said Alpena News Publisher Bill Speer. The first Saturday in February — this year, the 6th — ...
For months, now, closing in on a year, we have heard about the dangers of the coronavirus and heard that some of us — the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions or compromised immune systems — are especially at risk of serious complications if they contract the virus. ...
On Tuesday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer unveiled her Michigan COVID Recovery Plan to help tackle the pandemic and its related impact on Michigan workers, businesses, and our economy. That was the latest in a string of some long-awaited good news and hope on the COVID-19 front as our state and our ...
Alpena firefighters recently went into the icy Thunder Bay River to save two dogs, one of whom had gone through the ice and into the frigid waters. That heroic act alone would be worth writing about, to point out to readers the good work of our firefighters. But there’s another ...
We’ve been here before. Americans fighting other Americans. The horrendous video of an angry mob storming the U.S. Capitol and fighting the authorities is not much different from the young kids who protested the Vietnam war against two sitting presidents and a handful of the kids were shot ...
The coronavirus pandemic has driven the Thunder Bay International Film Festival online, and we urge our readers to follow the festival there. The festival begins Wednesday and runs through the end of the month. Single-screening tickets cost $10 per feature film or $12 per themed program or ...
A recent two-day series of stories by News staff writer Julie Riddle showed us public officials have few tools at their disposal to help people whose mental illness brings them into contact with the criminal justice system. At any given time, some 40% of Alpena County Jail inmates have a ...
Normally, I keep my political thoughts pretty much to myself. But, for those who really know me (meaning I have shared political discussions with them), they know I have always been a Mitt Romney guy. Intrigued by his ties to Michigan, his success in business and organization, and the ...
Fake news is the problem of our generation. America seems to be living not just in two realities, but hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of individual realities built by no longer caring about the source of information, only whether the information is something we like. We’ve ...
Not leaving anything to chance, maintenance crews and law enforcement officers across the U.S. began boarding up capitol buildings and erecting barricades around perimeters of the buildings this week. The action came as authorities took seriously the FBI’s announcement that they’d picked ...
I was born in 1943, during that interval of time between ice chests and the ability to plug a full-sized freezer into an electrical outlet. In these “in-between” years, refrigerators came with freezers large enough to hold two ice cube trays or a couple Kool-Aid popsicles — but not ...
Winter’s officially here and, along with it, all the opportunities for outdoor recreation that make northern Michigan a great place to spend this time of year. It’s also as good a time as ever to be mindful of the ways we can recreate responsibly, particularly when it comes to our own ...
A solid economic indicator that developers have come to depend on and trust is the number of furniture and possession moves in and out of a state each year. According to the latest numbers from U-Haul officials released this month, Michigan finished 40th in terms of growth this past year. ...
On a per-capita basis, Alpena County is in the top five of Michigan’s counties for the number of doses of coronavirus vaccines administered, a recent analysis of state data by News staff writer Crystal Nelson showed. Nelson’s analysis showed other Northeast Michigan counties ...