Squaw Bay: When Washington Rewrites Local History

In 2022, during the peak of America’s DEI-driven renaming campaign, Washington quietly rewrote more than 650 historic geographic names with the stroke of a pen. No vote in Alpena County. No referendum in Michigan. No debate in Congress. Just appointed federal officials deciding what generations of local residents should call their own landmarks. Whether you believe the name should stay or go isn’t the only question. The bigger one is this: Who gets to decide? If local history can be edited from a desk in Washington today, what piece of your community’s heritage gets rewritten tomorrow? It’s time to restore local control, preserve historical context, and remind the federal government that not every issue belongs in Washington.

Springtime for Platner ends

As the British would say, the Democrat Party is about to give Graham Platner the Spanish archer, aka, the El-Bow. The Nazi-tattooed misogynist mess who raises oysters for his mommy’s restaurant has begun to slip in the polls made public—an indication that Democrats are horrified by the results of their more accurate internal polling.

On Monday, he suspended his campaign, which paves the way for replacing him before the weekend deadline.

Living the Dream of the Neverlanding

Most people spend their lives dreaming about freedom while signing another payment, another contract, another obligation. Then along comes Captain Steve and the Neverlanding—a homemade houseboat built from lumber, blue barrels, grit, and a stubborn refusal to accept that life must be lived according to someone else’s blueprint. Drifting across the Great Lakes with his dog and a floating front porch, Steve accidentally became a symbol of something modern society desperately misses: adventure, self-reliance, and the courage to untie the dock lines. The Neverlanding isn’t just a boat—it’s a reminder that sometimes the richest life isn’t found in what you own, but in what you’re willing to leave behind.

Michigan Needs a Mushroom License — And Deep Down, You Know It

Every spring in Michigan, the forests erupt into a full-scale fungal gold rush. Pickup trucks jam two-tracks. Facebook groups trade morel coordinates like cartel smugglers swapping contraband routes. Grown adults crawl through the woods in camouflage carrying mesh bags full of mushrooms worth more per pound than some cuts of steak. And through all of it, the State of Michigan collects exactly zero dollars from one of the largest seasonal harvest activities on public land.

Michigan: A Peaceful Place Built by Geological Violence

Stand on the bank of the Au Sable River at sunrise and it’s all mist, pine trees, and trout quietly minding their business. Feels like the kind of place that’s always been this way—stable, predictable, friendly. It hasn’t. Michigan is what happens when the earth tries to tear itself apart, fails, gets buried, frozen, crushed, flooded, and then—only after all that—decides to look nice about it.

Alpena’s Dirty Secret: When “Alternative Fuel” Starts Looking Like Alternative Reality

Systech Environmental—pitched a brilliant idea: instead of burning traditional fuels, why not torch hazardous waste in the kiln? Tires, solvents, industrial byproducts—if it could burn, it could earn. Companies paid to get rid of their waste, Lafarge saved on fuel, and everyone shook hands like they’d just invented fire. The pitch was wrapped in the kind of language only a regulatory lawyer could love: “resource recovery,” “alternative fuels,” “energy efficiency.” What it meant in plain English was this: Alpena became a destination for waste that nobody else wanted, cooked at 2,500 degrees and released into the same air the locals were breathing.