My deck is connected with nature and community. It offers a cool, nice place for me to reflect on everything and watch life go by. It’s amazing how these spaces become such a part of us. more

My favorite thing is our community garden and what we are starting to do with it. As things start to bloom and produce food, we are doing a summer of taking for the community. We have lettuce, strawberries, blueberries, herbs, tomatoes and sunflowers.  more

Meridian Township has two ballot measures before the voters this Aug. 6, including one that could boost service for its convenient Redi-Ride public transit service and a large bond measure to raise money for new streets and improved infrastructure. more

Lansing City Council hopeful Dan Ross said he knew his criminal background as a teenager would come out if he ran for public office. He said that was a reason he launched his long-shot write-in bid for an at-large position. more

Eight challengers — including a late arriving write-in candidate — will face off against four incumbents for seats on Lansing’s City Council in the Aug. 6 primary election. And each of them has voiced some big ideas. more

John Roos, the owner of Ann Arbor-based RoosRoast Coffee shop, thinks hard about what he can do to make his business stand out. Roos takes the quality of his coffee seriously. However, as an environmentally conscious person, he understands the impact coffee-making has on the planet and tries to find ways around that. more

In “How Democracies Die,” political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that there are three strategies would-be authoritarians – from Juan Peron in Argentina, to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, to Silvia Berlusconi in Italy, to Vladimir Putin in Russia – have employed in their efforts to consolidate power: capturing the referees, sidelining key players and changing the rules. more

A federal magistrate judge granted the ACLU of Michigan the authority to intervene on behalf of the Williamston High School Gay-Straight Alliance in their lawsuit with a fundamentalist Christian group, in a key legal victory for LGBTQ youth. more

Chased out of the Republican Party by President Donald Trump’s antics, the strict constitutionalist from Cascade Township is professing his reelection plans to the national media. If successful, he’d be the first Michigander in at least modern history to win a congressional seat as an independent. more

The Lansing Board of Water & Light broke ground June 3 on a new, $500 million dollar gas-fired plant, but unsuccessful opponents of the plant are hoping the BWL will at least consider scaling it down. more

U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, announced today she raised $730,000 in the second fundraising quarter, giving her $1 million in cash on hand as she prepares for a reelection campaign. more

A set of landmark civil rights cases, including one involving a Michigan transgender woman, are on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket, and Lansing Mayor Andy Schor has signed the city of Lansing on to support her and two gay men who were fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. more

Lansing has a feel both rough-around-the-edges and familiar, the kind of city where I might push back the shrubbery and find mulberries. more

Refinancing a portion of the state’s roughly $30 billion public teacher pension obligation will be part of the Republicans’ road funding plan presented to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, according to Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake. more

This summer, truckloads of titanic timbers from Canada are rumbling across Michigan State University to be unloaded and assembled into a structure that will be unique on campus, and in the state, when it’s finished in the fall of 2020. more

Last week, I wrote that there were two recent events that made me think America’s unraveling had reached a point of no return. The more I thought about it, though, I realized there was a third: the blasé reaction to a credible allegation of sexual assault made against the president of the United States by a well-known New York media personality. more

As it turns out, it was a bad week to be reading a book called “How Democracies Die.” more

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers made the case Tuesday to both Michigan U.S. senators and nine Michigan U.S. House members on why a 10-year, $830 million plan to jazz up the Brandon Road Lock and Dam is the best way to prevent Asian Carp, and possibly other invasive species, from entering Lake Michigan. more

Three years of records detailing complaints filed against officers at the Lansing Police Department will remain hidden from public view after city officials blocked their release in a recent Freedom of Information Act request. more

It's a neighborhood within a neighborhood, with a shared garden space, a cabana and a landscaped brick walkway to connect several, smaller cottage-homes — all of them smaller than 1,000 square feet. more