http://www.record-eagle.com en-us Copyright CNHI All Rights Reserved. 5 Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:00:58 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_292070019.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_292070019.html Earthquakes are rare in Michigan, but Traverse City residents definitely felt the earth move beneath their feet and watched electric ceiling lights sway overhead on Feb. 28, 1925. "EARTHQUAKE HERE FIRST EVER FELT: Dishes Rattle, Chairs Rock, Smokers 'Swear Off' and People in High Places Come Down," Record-Eagle headlines shouted after tremors rattled the city at 8:27 p.m. that Saturday night. Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:10:58 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_264071051.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_264071051.html I pick up Jerry Dennis' book to read "The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas." From the first page on, past and present merge. Pieces of childhood vacations and long beach walks float to the top of my consciousness. A part of the adult self dives deep and connects to the heart of something much on my mind these days: It is my gnawing concern about the future of these beautiful and important sweetwater seas. Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:27:00 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_236071628.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_236071628.html The images stick with me, a week after Peshawbestown's annual powwow. A little girl, at most two years old, toddles along behind her mom in the Sacred Circle. They are dressed in similar buckskin colored dresses. The mother's thick black hair is pulled into two braids. The little girl's hair isn't long enough yet for braids, and her hair wisps in an impish circle around her face. Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:06:57 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_208080652.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_208080652.html Harold Titus has been one of my favorite Traverse City historical characters since I read "Timber," his 1922 novel, last year. He intrigues me for many reasons. Part of his mystery is that he is virtually unknown today. He is "new" local history. Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:45:58 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_180064542.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_180064542.html It began on a Saturday morning in the second spring after The Grub Invasions. I was spading a section of dead lawn. The yard was a wasteland. That morning the flowers in a kitchen vase had died of thirst. Now I had unearthed a headless plastic toy soldier. Were these omens? Why did I think I would do better with a flower garden than grass? Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:39:00 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_152065558.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_152065558.html Features section editor Jodee Taylor asked me last week what people would learn if they came to the Record-Eagle's exhibit celebrating its 150-year history in Traverse City. It opens today at the Grand Traverse Heritage Center and will run through July. I stood speechless as 15 decades of life in Traverse City reported by the Record-Eagle and its forerunners scrolled through my head. Mon, 04 May 2009 07:43:00 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_124065750.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_124065750.html It's amazing how one small personal common detail can link past and present. Ralph Guido Wallace is my connection to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and World War I. He lived in my neighborhood. I know nothing more about this local soldier other than what I read in a 1918 Record-Eagle. He died Sept. 28, 1918, of Spanish influenza, seven days after he became ill in a New Jersey hospital. Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:17:00 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_096065558.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_096065558.html This column is, in part, a request. The Record-Eagle is preparing for its Grand Traverse Heritage Center exhibit in June and July, part of a year-long celebration of our 150th birthday. This column also is a commentary on newspapers today and predictions of their doom. It's true that the newspaper industry faces serious challenges today, but I don't believe the forecasts. Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:00:58 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_068100325.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_068100325.html Women's History Month is upon us. Here are two stories from the Record-Eagle History Project bound to raise eyebrows, elicit chuckles and increase 21st century awareness about how growing freedoms for women played out in more than voting booths. Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:03:00 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_040095651.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_040095651.html The 1924 Ku Klux Klan violence in Traverse City has been the biggest surprise, so far, in researching and writing stories for the Record-Eagle's 150th Anniversary History Project. Local history writer Richard Fiddler tipped me off to this story in late 2007. His account of that Aug. 9 "night of terror" is the first chapter in his book. Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:00:58 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_294094537.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_294094537.html A daydream dances into mind to the tune of "Hey, Hey, the Gang's All Here" as I read newspapers, watch TV and surf the Internet to get a fix on this year's presidential election. Joe Six Pack nurses his third beer and his cousin, Joe Camel, takes another drag on his cigarette. His pet pot-bellied pig rests at his feet. It is wearing lipstick. Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:00:58 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_266094106.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_266094106.html Jay Smith is back downtown. City workers returned his commemorative plaque last month to his walkway along Front Street between Kilwin's Chocolate Shoppe and Pangea's Pizza Pub. It rests now on a limestone slab at the foot of a gentle old tree in the rehabbed "pocket park." This is a good thing, and I'm grateful. Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:58:00 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_238095532.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_238095532.html Two recent headlines made me cringe. "Afghanistan, the good war" and "Russia plays chess, America plays Monopoly." They beg questions from this weary American about the Georgian-Russian conflict and the U.S. role in it. Are the world's nations mere pawns, places to buy, sell and sell out? Do their people have any say in what is happening? Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:00:56 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_210095327.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_210095327.html Jay P. Smith, may you never go missing again. This column is about several things: A downtown walkway named for Jay 43 years ago; a plaque; and the links between visible local history, a sense of place and community in cities and villages that still have a unique character and natural beauty to them, and wise, community-oriented decision-making. Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:00:57 +0000 http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_175095547.html http://www.record-eagle.com/loraineanderson/local_story_175095547.html It is a Sunday morning after a night of thunderstorms. I am picking up fieldstones on a cousin's 80 acres in Michigan's Thumb and putting them in my car. Some have to be pried from soggy earth, others rolled to the car and hoisted onto the sheet-covered back seat. I stand for a moment, rocks in each hand, catching my breath and looking across newly planted fields.