MARQUETTE — Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

Erik Johnson, a member of the MooseWood Nature Center Board of Directors, said the center held a can drive, “Cans for Critters,” in 2020, which proved to be successful.

Maybe too successful.

“As things go, we’re still sorting cans and it has indeed taken all winter,” Johnson said in an email. “I appreciate that Marquette has outpoured cans and bottles to us. However, a good thing for all of us has turned bad. We’ve made repeated posts that we can’t take any more returnables. We’ve also fielded calls and directed folks elsewhere.”

Can drives have been popular within the last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited returns at grocery stores.

MooseWood’s goal, he said, is to resume the can drive this year, but that could bring up issues.

Unfortunately, people have been randomly leaving cans and bottles at the nature center, he said.

“This is to the point where we now have to consider it littering and report it to Marquette police in order to get folks to find another cause that needs them,” Johnson said.

He mentioned one incident, which took place on Saturday, but said there have been at least 10 “semi-tolerable dumpings, but this one is too much.”

Johnson wants people to understand that MooseWood cannot accept cans and bottles now.

“We appreciate the donations from the bottom of our hearts, but if this is truly people wanting to help from the bottom of their heart, it may in fact ruin it for us,” Johnson said.

He stressed MooseWood has and will report the incidents as littering if returnables are left outside, noting one incident involved five boxes worth of unbagged cans.

Johnson serves on the Presque Isle Park Advisory Committee, which tries to keep Presque Isle — where MooseWood is located — clean.

“I can’t have MooseWood be the center of litter and complaints,” he said.

Winter Wonderland on

The Greater Ishpeming-Negaunee Area Chamber of Commerce is moving forward with planning the West End Winter Wonderland set to take place at Al Quaal Recreation Area in Ishpeming from 1 to 4 p.m. March 13. The GINCC will follow a COVID-19 mitigation plan to reduce gathering size and keep all activities outside.

The event will differ from past WEWWs with the primary focus on drawing families for an afternoon of structured winter activities.

Activities will include sledding at the gully hill behind Birchview Elementary School, snowshoeing on the Baby Lake Trail and snow sculpting in the field on the north side of the park.

The GINCC encourages families to build a cardboard sled at home and bring it to slide on. The snowshoe scramble will have a mystery message encoded along the trail to decypher, and the snow sculpting will be open to all creative ideas such as snow statues or snow forts.

People are encouraged to bring their own equipment for all activities. Wilderness Sports will have a limited number of snowshoes to use and West End Ski & Trail LLC will be on site with snow bike demonstrations.

Participants will all be entered into a prize drawing and free giveaways will be provided. Pre-registration is required; the cost is $5 per person or $15 for a family. To register, visit https://ginccweww.eventbrite.com, or check out the GINCC Facebook event page.

The event is sponsored by Northern Michigan University, TruNorth Federal Credit Union, Bell Auxiliary, Upper Peninsula Power Company, Cleveland-Cliffs and Eagle Mine.

NMU has positive cases

After reaching a point of having no active positive COVID-19 cases recently, NMU has reported nine active cases, which include four on-campus students, four-off-campus students and one employee.

According to the NMU’s COVID-19 reporting dashboard, found at nmu.edu/safe-on-campus/dashboard, there have been 51 positives — 31 off-campus students, 14 on-campus students and six employees — from Jan. 4 through Monday. The 51 cases amount to a 0.77% positivity rate out of the total NMU population of 6,613.

Committee member reacts

to new vaccine

Veronica McNally of Michigan, who serves on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee that voted last week to approve the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for human use in the United States, has issued a statement on the action.

McNally is the only member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from Michigan. McNally is the founder of the Franny Strong Foundation and the state of Michigan’s I Vaccinate campaign to give parents facts about vaccines.

The approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by the ACIP is more good news for Michigan, the nation and the world as “the tireless work and dedication of medical science deliver a third vaccine that will help tamp down and reduce COVID-19,” McNally said.

“Based on the science and the process that has been used to deliver life-saving vaccines for decades, each of the three approved COVID-19 vaccines (are) safe and effective, and I urge everyone in Michigan who is medically able to get whichever of the three vaccines is made available to you when you become eligible,” she said.

Even with the arrival of a third vaccine following the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, McNally urged everyone to continue wearing masks, limiting social interactions and practicing social distancing until enough people are vaccinated to achieve community immunity.

Classroom program expanded

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state Treasurer Rachael Eubanks on Monday announced the expansion of the MI Classroom Heroes COVID-19 Grants to include a new grant program for Great Start Readiness Program, Head Start, adult education and special education classroom teachers for young adults ages 18-26.

“The MI Classroom Heroes COVID-19 Grants are just a small token of our gratitude to educators for going above and beyond during the pandemic,” Whitmer said in a statement. “When COVID-19 hit, teachers worked around the clock to quickly transform from in-person teaching to remote instruction to ensure that their students could continue learning. It is simply the right thing to do to expand these grants to include all specific program teachers across the state.”

The GRSP, Head Start, Adult Education and Young Adult Special Education Teacher COVID-19 Grant Program enables these specific program teachers to receive up to $500 for extra hours worked and costs incurred during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.

A state budget appropriation signed by Whitmer at the end of 2020 provides $2.5 million to make specific program teachers eligible to receive a MI Classroom Heroes COVID-19 Grant. These teachers were not eligible under previous programs.

Full-time and part-time GRSP, Head Start, adult education and young adult special education teachers in a school district or nonprofit nonpublic school classrooms during the 2019-20 school year prior to moving to remote learning are eligible.

To receive up to $500, specific program teachers must have performed at least 75% of their standard instruction workload in brick-and-mortar classrooms before moving to remote instruction on April 2, 2020.

The state Treasury Department is working with the Michigan Department of Education, school entities and other education partners to implement the grants. Eligible specific program teachers should consult the school entity where they worked during the 2019-2020 school year to ensure they receive a grant.

Grant funding checks for the GRSP, Head Start, Adult Education and Young Adult Special Education Teacher COVID-19 Grant Program are anticipated to be sent directly from the state Treasury Department to teachers in June.

Under the Teacher and Support Staff COVID-19 Grant Programs — the first two grant programs under the MI Classroom Heroes COVID-19 Grants umbrella — more than 138,000 K-12 teachers and support staff payments were sent MI Classroom Heroes Grants checks.

More than $51 million is being distributed to eligible K-12 public school teachers as well as support staff and nonpublic school teachers.

For more information about MI Classroom Heroes COVID-19 Grants, go to www.Michigan.gov/MIClassroomHeroes.

Alliance supports industries reopening

The Northern Michigan Chamber Alliance called on the Whitmer administration, including the affiliated state departments and decision-makers, to provide a pathway for a full reopening for all industries, including metrics.

The alliance represents 16 chambers and economic development organizations and over 7,000 member businesses from all across northern Michigan, including the Marquette-based Lake Superior Community Partnership.

The alliance said business owners deserve clarity and transparency in how reopening decisions are being made. The coalition shared that all industries should be allowed to reopen with proper safety protocols in place. Restaurants and bars have been particularly hard hit, it said, and Michigan is an outlier among neighboring states, with Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio no longer having statewide restaurant capacity restrictions in place outside of social distancing.

The alliance mentioned a statistic from the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association that indicated the hospitality industry is Michigan’s second largest private employer, responsible for 12.5% of the state’s workforce and nearly 10% of its economy. It has also suffered disproportionately since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as 3,000 restaurants have permanently closed, 200,000 jobs have been lost and more than half of all hotels remain at real risk of foreclosure in 2021.