Northern Lower Michigan Trip

The first week of April, Karren and Deb and I began the first of our two multi-day road trips, this time for meetings 8, 9, and 10.

We began the week at Grace A. Dow Memorial Library in Midland, where we were hosted by Director Melissa Barnard and her staff. We had a good discussion as usual.



During lunch I got away to see the upper levels of the library once again, as I hadn't been there for about a year.

The window in the stairwell is fabulous, and is an indication of how lovely the rest of the Alden Dow-designed building is.







We arrived in Alpena on Monday evening and awoke to a chilly day Tuesday, but were nice and comfortable spending the morning and afternoon in the confines of the Alpena County Library's community room named in honor of Director Judi Stillion.




After the town meeting, Judi and Marlo Broad gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the digitization project they are doing with funding that the Library of Michigan awarded them in 2005. Pat Labadie's collection of documents and photos of ships, shipping history, and so much more, are housed at ACL, and are a great complement to the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. (I did get a photo of the main floor of the library on our way out, too.)




We drove that afternoon through the rain to arrive early in the evening in Cadillac. Wednesday morning, in spite of blizzard warnings, host Cathy Tacoma and her staff welcomed us and a full town meeting crowd for our 10th meeting. I was impressed that there were so many willing to fight the weather to attend, and we had great discussions and many new ideas.





The Cadillac-Wexford County Public Library is much appreciated and used by the surrounding community, and, as you can see, it's a lovely space. Interestingly, it's also unique in that it's a Michigan public library with co-directors -- although I was only able to meet Cathy on my visit, as the other co-director (Kathy Petoskey) was out of town that week. We drove home in the blowing snow, but arrived safely back in mid-Michigan late in the day.