A new food relief fund in Northwest Michigan links farmers and food pantries, helping both persist through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Local farmers are struggling to sell their produce right now, especially if they used to sell to schools, restaurants or farmers’ markets.

At the same time, demand at food pantries has grown.

Inmates inside the North Lake Correctional Facility — an immigrant prison in Baldwin — allege conditions are so unsafe that some have been put in prolonged solitary confinement. 

They further allege prison guards are segregating the facility by race, and the amount of food that they’ve been getting recently hasn’t been enough, specifically citing a lack of protein.  

Reconstructing bassoon teaching pieces and arranging Ozzy Osbourne songs for his group Rock E. Bassoon are all in a day's work for Doug Spaniol.

Two more positive COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Grand Traverse County, and the health department is reporting a possible exposure site at the Holiday Station Store on South Airport Road in Traverse City.
 

A man in his 30s caught the virus through community transmission, health officials say. A woman in her 20s had contact with someone who tested positive case. 

The Grand Traverse County Health Department is also telling those who

The 2019-20 Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast season continues with Puccini’s thriller Tosca, starring Anna Netrebko in the title role, in a performance that was originally recorded live at the Met on April 30, 2018.

The superstar soprano took on the iconic role of the fiery diva Floria Tosca for the very first time that month at the Met. Tenor Yusif Eyvazov starred opposite her as Tosca’s lover, the idealistic painter Mario Cavaradossi, and baritone Michael Volle was Scarpia, Rome’s chief of police, who lusts after Tosca.

On one particularly bad day, Otsego County EMS responded to six COVID-19 emergency calls. Later, paramedics started getting sick. 

Right now, about 20 percent of Otsego County’s 36 EMS staff are out because of the virus. That includes those in quarantine, those sick, and an employee on voluntary leave for health concerns.