Allegan County News & Union Enterprise Courier-Leader & Paw Paw Flashes Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

Life as Performance Art

       I have been waking up well before dawn this spring, and it is all my wife’s fault.  No, she is not pulling the blankets over to her side on cool mornings, or sprawling across the bed, shoving me closer to the edge.  Rather, it is a book that she gave me for Christmas, entitled Bird Songs in Love Read More…

Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

July 4 show, revised, to go on

By Scott SullivanEditorIs an Independence Day free from threats possible? Saugatuck’s July 4 parade will go on, Mayor Garnet Lewis told city council Thursday, with her leading in lieu of the Saugatuck-Douglas Rotary Club stepping down claiming it could not furnish increased security per new public safety edicts.Rotary foundation chair Jim Sullivan presented the city Read More…

Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

Pride Week lights up spectrum

By Scott SullivanEditorDouglas Poet Laureate Jack Ridl looked through chain links at Pride Week festivities — crowds, rainbows, music — like an outcast from life’s feast.John Porzondek, the Saugatuck guy who with-his partner-turned their home’s city-banned awning into a butterfly sporting “WTF” (“Wait, Think, Forgive” he said) signs was inside, having not cut his hair Read More…

Allegan County News & Union Enterprise Courier-Leader & Paw Paw Flashes Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

Life as Performance Art

    James Barrie, best remembered as the author of Peter Pan, also wrote a short play he called, “The Old Woman Shows Her Medals.”  It is a sad tale of an elderly widow who would periodically go to the local train station, and if she saw a soldier home on leave from the Western Front in France Read More…

Allegan County News & Union Enterprise Clare County Review & Marion Press Courier-Leader & Paw Paw Flashes LaFayette Sun Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

Bring back Civics classes, initiate term limits

I fear for our democracy. My fear is rooted in the fact that most citizens don’t really care about what is happening at their federal, state and local governments. Only fifty percent of us bother to vote, and once the vote is complete, we forget that part of our civic duty is to play watchdog Read More…

Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

Armstrong new Ox-Bow development head

Former Columbus (Ohio) Area Arts Council executive director Kathryn Armstrong has been named new development director at Saugatuck’s Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency. She will oversee fundraising and manage patron, sponsor and foundation relationships for the 111-year-old School of the Art Institute of Chicago-affiliated local institution starting June 6. Armstrong, who in 2009 Read More…

Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

Does LHD plan single out owners’ land?

BY SCOTT SULLIVAN EDITOR The Saugatuck Township Planning Commission, wary of history repeating, May 23 declined activists’ urging to establish a Local Historic District at and around the Kalamazoo River mouth by a 2-2 vote. Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance members and other neighbors of Northshore of Saugatuck LLC’s proposed 304-acre development north of where the Read More…

Saugatuck/Douglas Commercial Record

Blue Star

By Scott SullivanEditorIn AirI knew when I saw kids plant a redwood at River Bluff Park in just centuries salamanders would skydive from it. How? From a story in The Smithsonian.Like flying squirrels, Aneides vagrans or wandering salamanders stretch their tails and feet to glide limb to limb among redwood canopies. Alligator lizards in the Read More…