News

The big news in night sky this week was going to be Saturn’s annual opposition, but then Comet NEOWISE survived its closest approach to the Sun and trumpeted into naked-eye visibility, so now I want to talk about this unpredictable messenger from space instead.

This week a shopper in Meijer in Acme threatened an employee with a knife, upset he was told to wear a mask.

In Lansing, a man was stabbed and in May, a security guard at a Flint dollar store was shot to death.

In the mid-19th century, a persuasive Mormon leader named James Jesse Strang led hundreds of followers to Beaver Island in the middle of Lake Michigan. Then he declared himself the King of Earth and Heaven.

That’s the story author Miles Harvey tells in his new book, The King of Confidence - A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch.

This week, in that sacred place where the dark of night surrenders to the dawn, a mighty council of stars is taking place, as if to say: “O, humanity, if you seek remedy to your current trials, lift up your thoughts to the stars, for the powers that wait on your noble deeds have gathered and await your participation.”

The times of lounging on a crowded beach or walking through a busy downtown without a mask are coming to an end.

The Health Department of Northwest Michigan announced possible COVID-19 exposure at Torch Lake on July 4, when thousands of visitors partied on the lake’s sandbar.

After starting last week, the Traverse City Pit Spitters season has been put on hold. The same goes for the newly created Great Lakes Resorters and Northern Michigan Dune Bears.

Several players recently tested positive for COVID-19 which prompted the pause.

So maybe you heard there was an eclipse last weekend. Did you see it? Or did you go out to look at the brilliant lunar light and wonder what everybody was talking about? Sometimes it’s like that.

A few weeks ago, IPR reported on the problems facing rural schools in northern Michigan before next fall. Now, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has provided a roadmap for them to reopen.

But there is still a lot of uncertainty on what next school year will look like.

Water levels in the Great Lakes continue to remain high. 

Every month this year, Lakes Michigan and Huron have surpassed record-high water levels set in the 1980’s. In June, those lakes were nearly three feet above average. 

An Ingham County Circuit Court Judge ruled today to continue a temporary restraining order against Enbridge, while also allowing the company to resume operations on the western leg of its Line 5 pipeline. 

The decision comes after a long hearing in court yesterday, during which the state and Enbridge each made their case for why the state should, or shouldn't, be able to regulate the pipeline.

The coronavirus is starting to creep back into northern Michigan.