Opinion

Fall colors just around corner

Fall is the season Yoopers should make time to enjoy. For many people in the Upper Peninsula, the arrival of winter brings a certain sadness. Summer seems to disappear almost overnight and before long we are facing icy roads, freezing temperatures and months of snow. Winter is part of life in the U.P., but that doesn’t mean we have to look forward to it. Fortunately, before winter arrives, we are given one of the best gifts of living in the Upper Peninsula: fall colors. It’s still early yet but one can observe Mother Nature’s paint brush at work here and there, splashing ...

Almanac for Sept. 18, 2026

Today is Friday, Sept. 18, the 261st day of 2026. There are 104 days left in the year. On Sept. 18, 2020, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering champion of women's rights who became the court's second female justice, died at her home in Washington at age 87 of complications from pancreatic cancer. Also on this date: In 1793, President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol. In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which created a force of federal commissioners charged with returning escaped slaves to their owners. The act was repealed ...

Almanac for Sept. 17, 2026

Today is Thursday, Sept. 17, the 260th day of 2026. There are 105 days left in the year. On Sept. 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was completed and signed by a majority of delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Also on this date: In 1862, more than 3,600 men were killed in the Civil War Battle of Antietam (an-TEE'-tum) in Maryland. In 1908, Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge of the U.S. Army Signal Corps became the first person to die in the crash of a powered aircraft, the Wright Flyer, at Fort Myer, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The ...

Remembering September 11

We had no idea what was about to happen. The setting is Starker Gym, Fort Hood Texas. Our son, a 3-year Iraqi war vet, was coming home after his first tour and we were going to Texas to greet him. The soldiers were supposed to be at Ft. Hood by 4 p.m. Steve called us from Maine, explaining the plane was having mechanical problems and they wouldn’t be there until 1 a.m. We didn’t care… he was coming home! We were one of the first to walk into the gym at midnight. Our first surprise was when we noticed all the signs posted all around the gym. They were everywhere! As the gym began ...

The lynching epidemic that wasn't

Even paranoiacs have enemies, they say, but sometimes they are just paranoid. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a founding member of the Squad, organized 59 fellow Democrats to co-sign a letter demanding a federal investigation of a spate of supposed lynchings that never happened. The document ...

Editorial cartoon for Sept. 17, 2026