Smoky Sunrises, Eager Runners, Anorexic Girls, and the Kombucha Kraze
The latest from Marquette, MI by Brian Cabell
BEAUTIFUL, BUT KINDA eerie sunrises and sunsets in the last several weeks. They’re the result of smoke traveling southward from Canadian wildfires just east of Lake Winnipeg and north of Lake of the Woods.…So, an air quality problem here in the UP? “Right now it’s not an issue,” says NWS meteorologist Jordan Wendt, ”because the smoke is not getting down to the surface.”
No drought here in the UP, at least not yet, but we have had below normal precipitation this year. And actually a small sliver of Chippewa County is considered to be in drought conditions, and the far western UP is listed as abnormally low in precipitation…What happens the rest of the year? Anybody’s guess.
The gorgeous weather and the desire to put the pandemic behind us are bringing runners to the streets and shores of Marquette on Saturday. The Queen City Half Marathon and the Breakwater 5K. “It’s become a lot bigger than we expected,” says Kevin Thomsen, the owner of the Queen City Running Store…How big? 400 in the half marathon (The maximum. No more allowed), and more than 200 in the 5K so far. Entries still accepted through Friday.
The races start 8 am Saturday on Spring Street in front of the Ore Dock Brewing Company.
No surprise, hotel occupancy is up in Marquette County this summer. It was at 66% countywide in June. That compares to 63% in 2019, and only 43% last June when many travelers still had pandemic anxiety….”The struggle now is to find enough people to wait tables and clean rooms,” says Travel Marquette executive director Susan Estler. Restaurant tables and hotel rooms are being left empty because there’s not enough help.
Tourism the rest of the summer looks promising, but the possible return of the pandemic looms heavily over all of us.
Another sad and surprising result of the pandemic, as reported in Bridge---a huge increase in eating disorders, according to one Michigan study. Mostly girls, average age 15….The apparent reasons: 1) They’ve been lonely, stuck at home 2) They haven’t been able to see their friends 3) They didn’t go to school 4) They missed all their regular activities and sports.
Looks like students will be wearing masks in school again this fall. Ugh…And the younger kids don’t even have an approved vaccine yet. And even if they did, some of their parents would balk at having their children vaccinated….Crazy. We’re marching straight down the road to another pandemic in the name of liberty and free choice.
Meantime, enjoy what we can. Superior Culture, the charming little kombucha tap room on Third Street, is featuring live music Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays for the rest of the summer. A tent and stage have gone up out back, crowds are there, the kombucha is flowing.
Their production of kombucha, along with mead, cider, and seltzer, has quintupled in the last few years. Superior Culture is now being sold in more than 50 stores throughout the UP….“We’re excited most of the time,” says an occasionally weary owner, Alex Rowland, “but it’s all coming together, better than we expected.”
That abandoned Shopko property on West Washington? Still empty, no deal in sight, according to Marquette director of community development Dennis Stachewicz. Fleet Farms expressed interest in the property several months back but nothing came of it.
Ahh! Football season is just about upon us! Let us hope we’ll hear less and less about the tedious Aaron Rodgers melodrama. And let us pray that the beleaguered Lions will be better than the experts expect….Yeah, good luck with that.