Maria

This year, as most of us struggle with cutting costs and keeping our financial lives on track, the county’s librarians have come up with a fun Livingston Reads! program that’s full of comfort and joy.

Truly.

If anyone knows how tough times are these days, it’s Livingston County’s librarians. Business at the county’s libraries has never been better as people look to ride out the deep recession by taking advantage of the services offered throughout the community.

As I watched the snow falling outside, my thoughts turned to big snowstorms of the past. I remembered the winter I was pregnant with my son, when it snowed a few inches every day for three weeks straight. We all moved slowly through the kind of hard, dreary winter days that send those with means on cruises to warmer climes, leaving those of us without dreaming of spring.  

Maybe you can go home again.

At least that’s how it felt today at Brunner’s, which opened in the Promenade Mall on Grand River Avenue just east of downtown Howell.

Or, is it more accurate to say, “reopened”?

It was Brunner’s several years ago before sisters Jeannie Karagiorgos and Sia Kupfer, as well as Karagiorgos’ husband, Angelo, sold the business to the owners of the Holiday Grill in 2006. As first reported on Livingstontalk.com, the Holiday Grill closed in December.

There is one reason why Livingston County has long battled a reputation as a haven for racists, a place where minorities, especially blacks, should fear to tread: Bob Miles.

Miles, who died in 1992, was a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. He lived about 10 miles north of county-seat Howell on a 70-acre compound in Cohoctah Township called “The Mountain.” It was to that compound that white separatists, neo-Nazis and members of the Aryan Brotherhood swarmed from across the country for camaraderie, shared dreams of a whites-only world, and the burning of crosses.