Above: Judge Clinton Canady looks at the trees in the backyard of Conni Crittenden, foreground. Immediately behind Canady is the mature disputed maple, which has multiple trunks. BWL wants to remove the entire trunk shown on the left (to the right of Canady) in this photo. What would remain is the trunk shown directly behind Canady in this photo.

Image: An artist’s rendering of a station for CATA’s proposed BRT route

Above: The moon and Venus, as seen from East Lansing a few months ago

This Friday and Saturday, July 15 and 16, mark the start of a five-week interval when all five bright planets or our solar system can be observed during evening twilight in East Lansing.

When last week’s storm hit East Lansing, Foods for Living grocery store lost power for more than 30 hours. But what they found in their time of darkness was a sense of community.

At 10 a.m. on Saturday July 9, Foods for Living put a post on their Facebook page asking for people or organizations who need food to come and get their dairy and deli foods before they spoiled. The post was shared more than 168 times. By 2:20 p.m. they had updated the post to say that all the food had been given away.

This week’s meeting of East Lansing’s City Council was a summer classic: short in length, with a driving rain pounding on the roof, and with the minimum number of Councilmembers needed for a quorum in attendance (three). Mayor Mark Meadows and Councilmember Susan Woods are away on vacation, so Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Beier led the meeting. She stumbled a bit with the procedures for voting on items, but was provided friendly help by Councilmembers Shanna Draheim and Erik Altmann.

Whose idea was it to close two key railroad crossings at the same time?

Above: ELPD Officer Adam Park and K9 Max, left, out in the community, and ELPD Chief Jeff Murphy, right, courtesy City of East Lansing

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought significant attention to the killing of African-Americans by police officers. Last week, social media circulated suggestions about what citizens should be asking their local police forces about anti-bias training, techniques used to de-escalate tense encounters, the use of non-lethal force in policing, and the like.