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Haunted Holland: Hope College

 Spooky season is upon us, so I thought I'd look at haunted or supernatural occurrences in and around Holland, Michigan.  Early on in my blog journey, I spoke with Mr. Nick McNamara, who was a custodian/building & grounds technician at Hope College, who shared the following stories with me:   *Dimnent Chapel: Fall 2017 I was cleaning the chapel very early in the morning (around 3:00 am when this happened) in preparation for Christmas Vespers. I heard one of our locked entrance doors shut, but heard nobody else in the building. I was expecting a student to come help but he wasn’t coming until 5, so this freaked me out. Around 5:30 I had a light flash in front of me, like a camera flash, but the student was down in the handicap entrance and no lights around me had burnt out or blown. Right after that I heard a thump in the balcony above me, but when the student went up there and came back he never mentioned seeing anything that might have fallen.   *Voorhees Hall, ...
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Nashville 2

 In early August, my wife and I took a long weekend to Nashville.  I wrote the little poem here about it , because I realized that I was in a creative rut.  I've been mulling over the whole thing for over 2 months now, and sorta realized that Holland, in essence, has no culture. We stayed in a hotel near Midtown Nashville, not far from Vanderbilt and not far from the main drag of Broadway.  The hotel we were in was built in the 70s, but renovated and doubled in size in the 2010s.  We walked to the Exit/In for a show and walked past an entire block of businesses that was burned out, graffitied over, and in general disrepair.  But, they almost all had old gig posters and stickers all over the windows.  The reason I was drawn to the Exit/In was because of the book Outlaw (ISBN 0062038192) and the stories of the venue that Kris Kristofferson, in particular, told . We walked from our hotel past Vanderbilt University and saw The Parthenon...got to readi...
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100 Things To Do In Holland Before You Die: #37 - Expand Your Mind And Your Digital Experience At Herrick District Library

Part of the whole ethos of the book "100 Things To Do In Holland Michigan" is about highlighting the culture and community that we have in Holland, Michigan. As such, the book is divided up into sections: Food And Drink; Music And Entertainment; Sports And Recreation; Culture And History; and Shopping And Fashion. It's followed up with suggested inteneraries and activities by season. As I was entering a transitional phase in my lil' ol' blog here, a serendipitous discovery at Barns & Noble one idle Saturday led me to the actual book itself. I took advice from the book, and went to a local store to actually purchase it . As it pertains to Action Item #37   Expand Your Mind And Your Digital Experience At Herrick District Library , that's literally how I started this very blog .  I was unemployed and trying desperately hard to maintain some semblance of a normal schedule with my time.  Basically, I'd wake up at my normal schedule (up at 6:30, shower...
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Nashville

As I walked the city streets of Nashville I realized I was surrounded by ghosts   Beneath the neon clad celebrity bars were the ghosts of trendy artists  And the memories of thousands of celebrations   Beneath the boarded up storefronts were the ghosts of businesses past  And the memories of dreams forsaken   Beneath the echoes of historic venues were the ghosts of the legends   And the memories of iconic performances   Beneath the facade of dive bars were the ghosts of desperation  And the memories of times gone by   Beneath the walls of 19th century tenements were the ghosts of folks who lived there And the memories of their own vivid lives   Beneath the shadows of sentinels guarding the skyline Were the ghosts of centuries of liveliness  And the memories of the past   Nashville is a city of ghosts
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100 Things To Do In Holland Before You Die: #41 - Walk Through A Dune At Tunnel Park

 Honestly, this entry could be a series.  I have at least a full page of notes in my old blog notebook about Tunnel Park.  As I started this blog back in 2019, this particular book kept on coming up in my early research.  The area north of Holland proper was incredibly touristy in the early 20th century, and featured many lakeside resorts and attractions - not the least of which was Tunnel Park (subject of this entry).  Located on 22 acres north of Holland, the park's namesake tunnel actually goes through the dune.  There are stairs and everything, but - why a tunnel? And, what's this got to do with The Farm That Was A Zoo? See, the land that Tunnel Park sits on was donated by Chicago industrialist, George Getz, who owned the aforementioned  Farm That Was A Zoo , to Ottawa County in the 1920s, in an effort to get beachgoers away from his property - he set Tunnel Park up as strictly beach access.  The tunnel?  There's an urban legend that it ...
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Pope Leo's Connection To West Michigan

 Robert Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, has some interesting connections to West Michigan, and specifically, some content that this very blog has covered!  According to Wood TV 8, Pope Leo attended the St. Augustine Seminary in Laketown Township , between Holland and Saugatuck.  Where have we heard that name before?  Oh yeah, it's Felt Mansion !  After inventor Dorr E. Felt passed away, the property was sold to the Archdiocese Of Chicago, where it was converted to a boarding school in 1962, before closing down in 1977 and being sold to the State Of Michigan to become a minimum-security prison complex.
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Tulip City Dispatch's 2024 Year In Review!

 The good: My top post (by page views) in 2024 was the review comparing Chocolate Payday to Baby Ruth .  Odd because I honestly forgot about writing that one.  And, I spent a LOT of time promoting other posts on various Discord servers and on BluSky . Speaking of BluSky, I've gotten consistently more hits from links on that site than I ever did from Instagram or from Twitter.  Give me a follow if you haven't already!  https://bsky.app/profile/tulipcitydispatch.bsky.social Got to meet a few Instagram followers in real life, which was kinda cool I've been hitting up bookstores a little more, and have acquired a few local history books that I hope to dive into Doeb's Pizza has really  come into their own this year.  I always knew they had a lot of good potential, and they're absolutely hitting it on all cylinders I've recently discovered the deli/sandwich shop inside Ryke's Bakery and it's amazing.  There's high competition with Electric Hero f...
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