Ice and Ice, Warming Centers in Your UP Community, and Four Dead People to Dine With

– INFORMED BREVITY –

Ice and Ice

We have all read a lot about the Federal Immigration ICE police force activities in our neighbor Minneapolis. To the folks all across the Upper Peninsula we have also been reading about the slippery kind of ice on our roads, walkways and driveways. It has been quite a January with more snow and ice than we have had in some past years.

ICE has arrested 2,349 people in Michigan from January through October 2025. That number tripled the number of people arrested in Michigan in the same timeframe in 2024. This data comes from the data from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. (Bridge).

Those arrested by ICE have been detained in northern Michigan in Baldwin’s North Lake Correctional Facility. Approximately 3,338 ICE arrested people are in that facility. (ICE. Bridge).

Warming Centers in Your Upper Peninsula Community

We have heard from many of our readers about what their communities are doing to help the unsheltered and homeless in their community. All across America, including in parts of the Upper Peninsula, the number of people who are homeless and unsheltered is at an all time high.

Some communities are training people to ask people who they suspect might be homeless/unsheltered. “Are you living outside? Do you know where to go for help and to find shelter?”

Let us know what is going on in your Upper Peninsula community and we will share it with our readers.

Four Dead People to Have Dinner With

This is not an original idea.  Other blogs have written about this idea. This is how it works. Think of four dead people you would invite if it were possible to have them come back to earth to have dinner with you. No relatives. No living people but you at the dinner. Send us your thoughts. We will share your thoughts. Who are your four invitees?

My four invitees would be: theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Sr., US President Dwight Eisenhower and Mother Theresa.

Let’s also do a little different take on this experiment. Same rules of no living people invited to your dinner people and no deceased relatives. All four of your invitees to this dinner must have been from the Upper Peninsula–born and raised there.

I’m still thinking about my list.

Who’s on your list? Let us know. On those cold, winter nights this coming week try this game out with your friends and family.

Quotes That Make Us Go Hmmm

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” Alexis de Tocqueville.

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” President Abraham Lincoln.

Books Recommended By Our Readers

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. John U. Bacon.

Talk To Us

Keep your raves, laurels, rants and darts coming. Send them to us at david@ruralinsights.org. We love to read them.

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Rural Insights connects policy, information, news and culture to raise topics and stories/information you might have not seen or overlooked. We bring you original writing from Rural Insights and other researchers, change makers, and storytellers, as well as our latest research and analysis.

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