Belated Happy Thanksgiving, Housing the Homeless, Line 5 and the UP, and Head Start Program Closes

– INFORMED BREVITY –

Belated Happy Thanksgiving and Let It Snow, Let It Snow

The first major snowstorm of the 2025/26 winter season hit the Upper Peninsula hard and steady. All the snow had a huge impact on the biggest travel holiday weekend of the year. Scores and scores of families could not get to their celebrations with families in the Upper Peninsula and many could not get out to other destinations around the nation to see and celebrate with their families.

Gogebic County had a record snowfall of 33 inches. My daughter, E, said to me that “with that much snow we might not see Gogebic until July.”

Housing the Homeless and the Unhoused/Unsheltered in the Upper Peninsula

So many urban and rural communities are this holiday season trying to figure out how to deal with increasing homeless/unhoused/unsheltered issues. Where shall each community house them? Who will pay for this housing and related services once they are housed? And that is just the beginning of the issues and problems related to this issue.

We would like to hear from you about what your community is doing to handle this issue and how is it working? Tell us about what problems your community has confronted and what successes you have had in the process. We will share your comments.

Kudos to Marquette Mayor Paul Schloegel, the City Commission and staff for how they have publicly discussed the options, problems and solutions for how the Marquette community will handle all this. They have engaged the public and have come up with some beginning ideas and solutions.

Line 5 and the UP

In the final weeks before the federal regulators was going to make final permitting decisions for the Line 5 pipeline tunnel project it threw a new proposal on the table. It proposed that the tunnel project should be scrapped and instead they proposed putting the pipeline in a smaller underground borehole. Environmentalists panned the idea. More to come.

Gogebic-Ontonagon Closes Head Start Program

The federal government did not renew a $1.5 million grant to the Gogebic-Ontonagon Community Action Agency and the agency said without that grant they would have to close the free Headstart preschool program. The program has operated since 1965 in these two counties.

National Service, Veterans and Military Service

“In the U.S. 6% of adults are veterans, while active-duty service members comprise less than 1% of all adults. An estimated 64,000 young Americans and an additional 200,000 seniors volunteer for AmeriCorps, the primary umbrella organization for civilian service programs.”

Congressman Jason Crow, an Army veteran, said recently “When city kids get together with farm kids and white, Black, Asian, Latino, straight and gay people roll up their sleeves and build something together… that creates a foxhole mentality that breaks down barriers and connects us.” (Scott Galloway No Malice No Mercy, 11.15.2025)

There is a growing call for a mandatory national service for all young Americans that would include not only military service but other options like AmeriCorps.

Quotes That Make Us Go Hmmm

“To be an American is not to be someone, but to believe in something. That is why we are at heart a creedal nation, and that is why the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is so important.” Gordon Wood.

“And it is both right and proper, as we celebrate the last Thanksgiving of our first 250 years, to be thankful that we live in an exceptional nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” William Kristol.

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