Here’s our weekly salute to the people, places and organizations that make Northern Michigan
a special place to be.
Petoskey graduate to perform with Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Petoskey graduate, Sarah Lewis, now 25, was recently selected over nearly 100 other candidates for a full-time oboe position with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. She’ll perform twice a week for the next 43 weeks.
“I am feeling very lucky to have a paying job in a large city,” said Lewis.
Lewis received her M.A. from the Juilliard School in New York City and has since auditioned for about 15 orchestras throughout the country. Five times she made the top four, and in Toronto, she landed the job.
While there, Lewis will also be involved in symphony recording and touring opportunities.
Lewis feels she got an excellent education in the Petoskey schools under band directors Carl Brien and Barry Bennett and privately with Dan Stolper. She was able to be in ensembles, and play in festivals and concerts. At that time she was not interested in classical music and did not take part in the Bay View Music Festival.
Congratulations to Lewis, and good luck in Toronto.
Youth choir to head out on international tour
The Little Traverse Youth Choir recently received invitations to tour several locations in Ottawa and Canada’s French speaking provinces as it begins planning its first international concert tour.
The youth choir, under the direction of Heather Marvin, is in its third year and has served as the host choir for the Children of the World in Harmony Festival in Northern Michigan for the past two years. As a result, the choir has received several invitations to tour to Canada, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Bangkok, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia.
The youth choir is a program of Voices Without Borders which produces the international youth choir festival in the Little Traverse Bay area.
“A Canadian tour seemed to the (Voices Without Border) board to be the next logical and appropriate step in the development of LTYC’s international touring experiences,” said Jack Kukuk, executive director of Voices Without Borders.
Current plans include concerts in Toronto, Ottawa and Quebec, and the city of Elmira in New York. The choir will also make several other cultural and fun stops along the way.
What a wonderful way to show the world the talents of our youth here in Northern Michigan.
Easier drop-offs
Petoskey’s Gold Mine Resale Shop North recently renovated its drop-off area for donations, with three Northern Michigan organizations providing funding toward the project.
Petoskey Rotary Club Charities Inc., Charlevoix County Community Foundation and the Oleson Foundation contributed funds for the new “donation station” at the resale shop. The project included excavating part of the rear area to accommodate water runoff, building a sidewalk on the rear perimeter, adding a driveway path to a new donation receiving door and directional signs.
The receiving door is now covered by a large canopy providing donors with added convenience and protection from the elements.
The canopy also protects the receiving area from water runoff, unnecessary moisture and dirt tracking.
We hope the new renovations help bring in more drop-offs to the center, which in turn will help more people in the area.
Prettiest painted?
The Bay View Association is one of hundreds of towns and neighborhoods that will compete this summer in a national contest to find the “Prettiest Painted Places in America.”
Bay View, a summer community immediately east of Petoskey, includes hundreds of cottages painted in a variety of colors.
The competition , which is sponsored by the Paint Quality Institute, a leading source of information on paints and coatings, was last conducted in 2000 when towns such as Cape May, N.J., Lake Charles, La, and Telluride, Colo., won top honors.
The purpose is the Prettiest Painted Places is to identify and recognize those towns and neighborhoods that best demonstrate how exterior paint can enhance the appearance of an entire community.
This month, a panel of judges will choose 60 places as finalists, 10 each from six geographic regions of the United States.
After further research, a panel of judges from major media outlets will select one small place and one large town or city from each region as the 12 Prettiest Painted Places in America. The winners will be extensively promoted in a national publicity campaign conducted by the Paint Quality Institute.
Good luck to Bay View!
Students see campus additions
Students at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey returned to the classroom this week to find four new sculptures and a plenty of brand new classroom space.
The four sculptures are in display in the Harris Gardens, bringing the total number of sculptures in the garden to 25.
In addition, the Jack and Dorothy Harris Health Education and Science Building opened just in time for students. The 23,000 square foot building houses science labs and classroom. It also includes office space for some faculty and staff.
This fall, renovation of the former science labs is also scheduled to take place, to create 17,150 square feet of instructional space for nursing labs and general purpose classrooms.
We feel the additions are a great resource not only to students, but to the community.
Charlevoix County “Connected”
In August, Charlevoix County received the first “Connected” community certification to be awarded by Connected Nation in the United States.
The recognition follows a months-long inventory-taking and planning process by the Charlevoix County Broadband Team, which involved participation by county and local government, schools, libraries and business/economic development entities and cooperation from the Connect Michigan program.
Connected Nation is a national nonprofit organization focused on expanding access to, and use of, broadband Internet.
Connected Nation cooperates with the Michigan Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulatory agency, to operate Connect Michigan, which is Michigan’s designated entity for broadband planning and mapping.
The technology action plan that recently emerged notes that Charlevoix County is seeing high success in terms of technology access, adoption and use. Local levels of these allowed the community to exceed the score needed for certification.
Now, county leaders will work on some areas of the county, particularly in less densely populated areas, where more can be done to engage individuals, businesses and governments in the use of online resources. The plan identifies a variety of action steps to boost broadband accessibility and use.
We feel this is a good step for the county, and look forward to seeing improvements in the county’s connectivity.
‘Our View’ represents the opinion of the News-Review editorial board: Ryan Bentley, Rachel Brougham, Doug Caldwell, Brandon Hubbard, Jeremy McBain, Neil Stilwell, and Babette Stenuis Stolz.
