WobblyReport

Riding a motorcycle in Northern Michigan during the month of November is neither for the ill-prepared nor the faint of heart. A body must be prepared both for an initial shock and, depending on circumstances, an endurance challenge. A blast of 60-mile-an-hour cold wind, its chilly tendrils reaching into any part of a rider’s outfit that isn’t airtight, testing the layers underneath, tends to cause one’s face, neck and shoulders to tense up. Full-face helmets are the best remedy but I haven’t yet replaced one I left in the Pacific Northwest in 2008. On a solo mission in early October this year, the cold crept up and took me by surprise. Attending a meeting in the southeast of our coverage area led to a return ride to home base after dark on one of the first nights the temperature sank below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). Consistent, unseasonably warm temperatures in the days and nights just prior had lulled me into overconfidence and I was without gloves. Between pockets...

Readers and longtime subscribers have been critical of a few of our recent editorial decisions at the papers I edit and related social media posts have generated heated discussion. So, I thought it would be a good time to give everyone a look under the hood and describe how we decide what to put in the newspaper. Our first priority is to report as much as we can by traveling around the area, taking photographs and talking with people. We are primarily a team of two persons in this regard, covering three rural northeast lower Michigan counties, with a couple of regular, freelance contributors assisting. We rely on invitations, community buzz and personal interest in deciding what to attend. Our next priority is to solicit and curate community contributions and press releases. When coaches and parents of student athletes send us photographs and gameplay details, we take pains to include them. We also work in collaboration with coaches and parents to develop stories from a combination o...

The Immigration Act of 1918, also known as the Alien Anarchists Exclusion Act of 1918, was signed into U.S. law by President Woodrow Wilson on October 16, 1918. It expanded upon the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 to further target anarchists, anti-war protesters and members of radical labor unions. The 1903 law had come in response to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The assassin, Leon Frank Czolgosz, was a 28-year-old born in Detroit to a Polish-American family. Colgocz moved with his family to Alpena in 1880 and to Posen in 1883. He began his working life in a Pennsylvania glass factory at the age of 16. At 17 he found work at Cleveland Rolling Mill Company in Ohio. He worked there through an economic crash and labor strikes in 1893 and more violent strikes in 1898, before going to live as a recluse on a farm his father had bought in Warrensville, Ohio. President McKinley himself was born and raised in Ohio to English and Scots-Irish parents, whose famili...

I tagged along with circa 240 5th graders this week on a farm and forest educational event hosted through a joint effort by a county conservation district, local U.S. Forest Service staff, farmers and other volunteers. Here I am 10 minutes before I found the farm.

The recent preemption and television broadcast restoration of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC should remind us to be clear-headed about our right to free speech in the United States of America in 2025, and in which sorts of media free speech is even possible. As Hamline University political science professor and author David Schultz observed, both Kimmel’s brief suspension and the imminent cancelation of The Late Show on CBS with Stephen Colbert reveal first and foremost “the overwhelming grip of corporate, for-profit media on our public life.” Much of the reporting on Kimmel’s suspension completely omits mention of a $6.2 billion merger that ABC affiliate broadcaster Nexstar plans with Tegna — a merger which requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice. Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which revealed some of its own merger and acquisitions plans earlier this summer, announced Kimmel’s suspension on the stations they manage only hours ...