Before I forget, I want to start out with a little housekeeping.
Late Edition is ending up in a lot of spam folders! I think because the email has reached a few hundred readers, Google has started flagging my newsletters as spam and rerouting them from inboxes into spam folders, where they go unseen.
To avoid this, simply add the email address you got this email from to your contacts list.
Unfortunately, if this is already being sent to a spam folder, people won’t see my warning. If you know someone else who reads Late Edition, would you please check in with them and see if they’ve been getting the emails weekly still? If not, it’s probably in their spam folder.
Thanks!
In other news, I got my first vaccine shot, submitted a thorough application to the Tiny News Collective that I’m optimistic about, and I’m still working on the multimedia presentation I teased last week. Still, plenty of content to share with you!
Art’s Corner
I’m very happy to be able to bring you Art’s Corner, by Miriam Pickens, who was also one of our March guest writers. She has written Art’s Corner for the Daily Mining Gazette for years. With both of their permission, Late Edition will be delivering it to you now, too.
If you’re not familiar with Art’s Corner, now’s your chance! Miriam is well-connected in the local art community and writes about it thoughtfully. This week she talked to the residents of the Sustainability Demonstration House on Michigan Tech’s campus about how they’ve celebrated Earth Day and expressed themselves through the pandemic.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I’m planning some special coverage of the SDH’s Earth Day plans this year, too!
Community Pandemic Scrapbook
We need some catharsis. This pandemic and the voting cycle of the last year have been rough on us, no matter who you are or what “side” you’re on.
We all weathered this thing together, even though we have a variety of viewpoints and were usually apart. I just want to find a way to express that.
My mom used to do some pretty extensive scrapbooking. It gave our family something to hold on to, and her a chance to reflect on our activities as she assembled them. I want to undertake a similar (but digital) project.
Send me stuff for a community scrapbook! I’m going to try and roughly organize it chronologically, so please date whatever you send.
You can send photos or anything else to me@joshuavissers.com.
You can also reply to this email, or you can send things to me through Late Edition’s Facebook page.
Some ideas:
Screenshots from Zoom get-togethers
Unique holiday celebrations
Hospital visits
Photos or videos of special time with pets (make sure to share their names!)
Links to impactful news articles
Photos of make-shift workspaces or pandemic safeguards
Vaccination photos
Vacation photos
Protest photos and videos
Photos from school activities
There wasn’t a part of our lives untouched by the pandemic, so just about anything you can send me in a digital format is fair game. And not just good things. Share some of the tough things with us, too. That’s where some of the catharsis comes in.
Depending on what I receive, I’ll find a way to present them back to the community in a shareable way. There are a few options that I’ll explore once I see what kind of things I get, and how much of it.
My contribution will be a handful of the articles I’ve written and this selfie:
Village terminates manager. Again.
After rehiring him, the Ontonagon Village Council had a hearing over Village Manager Joe Erickson’s employment. And then they fired him. Just barely, though.
Hey, that’s neat
The secret YouTube doesn’t want you to know? You can easily download any video off of their site.
There are a lot of reasons to want to do this now and then, but up here the most prevalent is probably not having a good enough internet connection to stream it without frequent pauses.
All you have to do is go to the video (on YouTube, this doesn’t work for other sites) and add ‘dld’ to the URL just before the .com.
So the URL in the video window might normally look like this:
You just need to make it look like this:
And that will take you to a user-friendly website with a couple of options (including audio-only) before letting you download this. Or any other video.
Happy viewing!
Media Matters
This week’s Media Matters feature is as local as it gets. Staff reporter Garret Neese at the Daily Mining Gazette wrote a nice article about Jan Tucker’s career in radio and retirement. Being new to the area, I’m not very familiar with Jan’s work but as much as I’ve heard about her in the last few weeks leading up to her retirement, she is clearly an important person to the community.
Garret seems to have done a good job, you’ll have to tell me.
Aggregated News - Endorsed, not sponsored
These are articles (and the occasional podcast) I’ve found that I thought should be shared. None of the work is my own, but it comes from colleagues and organizations that I find generally trustworthy, or am personally a member of.
Click on the headline to be taken to the story.
Virus surges, governor urges
Coronavirus cases are pushing higher day by day in Michigan again, but this time Gov. Whitmer is not imposing any new restrictions, instead opting to urge local authorities into more action. Story by David Eggert from the Associated Press.
Tribal citizens condemn Enbridge for ‘manipulative’ video
From Michigan Advance’s Laina Stebbins and Kaye LaFond for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, “A video recently released by Canadian oil company Enbridge has elicited both criticism and condemnation from Indigenous leaders in Michigan.”
Hancock City Council approves MNRTF grant application
Michele Bourdieu at Keweenaw Now wrote this article about last week’s Hancock City Council meeting, and she referenced Late Edition’s Sunshine Calendar! I’m very happy that the calendar is already being utilized in this manner, and I’m taking action to keep it up as easing pandemic restrictions lead to the elimination of Zoom meetings. This coming week’s Houghton County Commissioner meeting is going to be a real test.
Colbeck accused of ‘disinformation campaign’
Former Michigan lawmaker Patrick Colbeck, who recently spoke at a Houghton County Board of Commissioners meeting, has been contacted by Dominion Voting Systems. They’ve demanded he retract some of his claims. They’ve already sued others for billions of dollars for making similar claims.
Avoiding (or spotting) common data visualization errors
This was almost Media Matters for the week. IJNet walks you through a few ways visual displays of statistics can be misleading. With examples!
Sheriff McLean and Hancock’s mayor defend Karl Dresch
I really don’t have much more to say about this. Oh! Except that Jeremy Sorvisto was also arrested this week. You can see the complaint and statement of facts here. Whatever else you think about what happened that day, the evidence definitely points to these two being inside the Capitol, which they were not supposed to be.
Calls from domestic violence victims increase
From the AP; “The Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, which represents 73 shelters across the state, has seen an outpouring of need from victims of domestic and sexual violence, Executive Director Sarah Prout Rennie said.”
That’s it for this week! One more reminder to add Late Edition to your contacts, and don’t forget to send in your pandemic scrapbook photos. Thanks for reading!