You must visit the Traverse Area Historical Society website and check this out. I did some searches for various places (Suttons Bay for example) and found some really cool photos. The navigation is a bit clunky, but the content certainly makes up for it. The site features over 7,000 photos!

This picture featured in the Enterprise article really made my day! A family fishing and women wearing dresses, if only today's society lived the same way!

Read Thousands of historical photos posted in the Leelanau Enterprise
Visit Traverse Area Historical Society online

Here's a couple of recent pictures from 2008!

Claire as a flower girl 5-24-08

Luke and Mark Camping 7-3-08

Teresa swimming for the first time! 7-24-08

I borrowed this book from one of my friends and had a hard-time putting it down. The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition is written by E. Christian Kopff, a classicist at the University of Colorado. Kopff provides great thought-provoking chapters and strong arguments for bringing back the "classics" to help our children's education.

Here's an excerpt from Booklist...

"Contemporary Chronicles" contains profiles in classical courage drawn from academe and the movies; especially noteworthy are the sketch of classicist and Scottish nationalist Douglas Young and the considerations of The Godfather, the films of Clint Eastwood, and The Lion King as enactments of classical Greek ethical concepts. Kopff concludes with practical proposals for restoring Latin and Greek to elementary and secondary curricula and with guidance for adults who want to learn them. His clean and lively style throughout constitutes a very cogent arguing point for teaching the classical languages again: would that we all wrote this well.

I also enjoyed the story in the introduction explaining the title of the book.

The Devil Knows Latin at Amazon.com

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a professional production company offering high quality "Broadway" style musicals to Northern Michigan. Our mission is to provide a performance venue and employment for the immensely talented college men and women who return here each summer.

That sums up the show in a nutshell. The performances by Trevor Kolle (Phantom) and Hanna Brammer (Christine) blew me away. I was very impressed. The rest of the cast provided many outstanding moments and provided a wonderful evening of entertainment. We would have gone back the next day if we could have and watched it again.

Miracle Productions is currently getting ready to perform "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" in August and you can get information about showtimes and tickets at www.miracleproductionstc.com.

You can also learn more about the "Other Phantom" in the articles below...

Read 'Phantom' has same story, different approach in the Record Eagle
Read Phantom (musical) at Wikipedia

Read LEGO is used for lighthouse gift donation in the Leelanau Enterprise

I know we try to make a couple of trips every summer to enjoy their delicious ice cream. If you haven't been, you're missing out! Go and vote through Saturday, May 24th for Moomers to be the best in America!

God Bless each and every one of you,
The Stecks

PS. I have setup a new email account that Mary and I both access at thestecks@gmail.com.

PSS. I thought the baptism gown worn by Mary's family for 3 generations was impressive, but check this out in the Record Eagle - Gown worn by family since 1889!

A new study by The Nielsen Company shows that PG-rated movies with less profanity made more money at box offices across the United States. The study cross-referenced box office figures for 400 films in wide release from the fall of 2005 to the fall of last year.

My wife won't watch many movies that are PG-13 or R so it's disappointing when browsing the local video store just how few PG or G movies there seem to be. It does seem that Hollywood just keeps spitting out trash and not taking the box office numbers into account. I remember driving by the Horizon Theaters one night last summer and every movie there was PG-13 or R. I know the mall theaters generally cater to the kids movies, and the Horizon more teen and adult, but still, it really seemed pathetic.

Read Appeal, success of PG movies apparently falling on deaf ears in Hollywood at OneNewsNow.com