There’s no doubt Montcalm County needs a transportation system. We’re all aware of the economic difficulties our community has faced over the past decade.

Three years ago, Montcalm Township voters elected the “Team for Change” to repair fractured relationships on the township board and end years of discord. The “Team for Change” has proved to be anything but.

High school football is part of what makes America great. The fields sit quiet and the bleachers sit empty most of the year. But for nine Friday evenings (or hopefully longer if your favorite team makes the playoffs) the stadiums come alive with a chorus of community spirit virtually unmatched.

Autism cases and awareness of the neurological disorder are on the rise locally. Little is known about its cause or effective treatments, but families and individuals no longer are suffering in silence.

Could the occupiers of Wall Street come to Lafayette Street in Greenville? Could the riots in the streets of Athens come to the streets of Montcalm and Ionia counties?

S-P-I-R-I-T, spirit! She’s got spirit! Sixteen-year-old Danielle Riley, a junior varsity cheerleader at Montabella High School, has taken the meaning of spirit to a new level. This spirit carried her through more than a dozen major surgeries, three scopes and 12 dilations of her esophagus, eight cardiac catheterizations, six barium swallows, six bouts with pneumonia, [...]

On Nov. 11 the Michigan State Spartans and North Carolina Tar Heels opened the men’s college basketball season in San Diego. This game, though, was different. It was special and held far more meaning than the typical regular season or even postseason game for that matter.

The start of the firearm deer season has been good for area hunters so far, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The first day of the season saw an average number of deer being brought to the check station in Belding, said DNR wildlife biologist John Niewoonder.

There’s an old saying that “what’s past is prologue,” so I trust it is true in this case as well. You see, for the second year in a row I can’t participate on the opening day of firearms deer season. Perhaps that will change in the future, but for now I’ll settle for a day or two at our deer camp sometime during the season.

It was going to be a difficult task for the Greenville Yellow Jackets varsity football team to duplicate the success of 2010 this past season. The Yellow Jackets followed a 9-2 season with a 4-5 record in 2011. The record can mostly be attributed the youth and inexperience of the team. They returned just a handful of starters from the year prior.