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The responsibility in the brevity

It was a meeting-heavy week. They were mostly one-on-one, which I like best, but those tend to take the most effort. The morning of day three, bracing for more meetings and sitting outside a cafe with the creeping heat starting, I watched a mother and son walk past me into the shop. Cute, I thought. Then, a continuation: Even though those two likely loved each other and were sharing an easy morning, both of them would die. One of them would carry the grief of the other. My brain wanders into strange neighborhoods when left unsupervised. While other people are noticing the weather or ...

Support what we have

My heart has been a little heavy since Thursday night, but at the same time, it’s also incredibly full. I’ve been thinking about this nonstop since my sister, my niece, my mom and I visited the Otsego County Fair in Gaylord for the Ashley Cooke concert. I love county fairs. I really, really do. The Alpena County Fair is the one week of the entire year that I look forward to the most. My favorite part has always been seeing the animals and watching the youth show their projects. I know firsthand how much work, time, dedication and love goes into those projects because I’ve been ...

Who has my signature?

As a matter of transparency it’s important for the community to know that all the petitions from the school board recall effort are now in the hands of unknown numbers of individuals. The day after the recall petitions were filed with our County Clerk, community member Dennis Schultz submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Schultz wanted all petitions, numbering close to 2000, to be copied to a thumbdrive and turned over to him. Schultz paid for the FOIA and by that action, had in his possession the names and addresses of over 4300 individuals who participated in the ...

Not winning? Just change the rules

What binds the new Democratic Party to the new Democratic Socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome--lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster--helped give birth to the socialists. But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the "system." Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or ...