French Road Connections

How to Test

2010-09-26T21:55:00.000-04:00

Here's a snippet of an article about standardized testing, by Susan Engels, in today's NY Times:

Instead, we should come up with assessments that truly measure the qualities of well-educated children: the ability to understand what they read; an interest in using books to gain knowledge; the capacity to know when a problem calls for mathematics and quantification; the agility to move from concrete examples to abstract principles and back again; the ability to think about a situation in several different ways; and a dynamic working knowledge of the society in which they live.

I'm preparing to launch 4-H Chess Club for another year. I hope to reformulate the club as a group of high school kids helping me teach the elementary kids, while I reinforce the fun and challenge of all sorts of brain work with the high school kids. While I'm not a fan of standardized tests, I do take pride in seeing kids' intellects grow. The markers that Engels mentions in the above quote resonate with me as they reflect the themes of many of the informal conversations that erupt during chess club. I have one kid who likes to draw, not so much to read, but who has checked out and studied every drawing book in the school library. Snack time is always an exercise in practical mathematics -- chess players want everything to be fair even if it means dividing 36 cookies among eight people down to the last crumb. Chess pieces are metaphors for actual fighters; in elementary school kids move back and forth between the abstract idea of chess pieces fighting and the "real" fighting techniques of Star Wars characters. We learn en passant by acting it out on the checkered floor of the cafeteria. We practice the components of a classic handshake and the more nuanced art of losing and winning gracefully.

Engels' idea of a good test of a kid's intellect is to ask the child to read and discuss a book. I like to observe not only intellect, but perseverance and grace under pressure playing chess.

Liz Graduates!

2010-09-07T21:05:00.000-04:00

It was a stormy day in Evanston, but that seemed somehow fitting. The graduates were no less fazed by the weather than they were by the crazy world into which they were graduating. Smart, earnest young people ready to work hard at whatever needs doing -- I had the distinct sensation of passing the torch.

Spring Break in Washington

2010-09-07T20:33:00.000-04:00

Last spring Anna and I were able to go to Washington DC with my brother Chris and his family. Anna and I ended up spending a lot of time downtown, on the mall, hoofing it from one museum to the next. While there is plenty to see in DC, I spent most of the time teaching her the skills one needs to enjoy a city on foot or using public transportation.

Here we are relaxing on the wall around the flower bed in front of the museum of American History. We had brought some small snacks and were listening to the music that was piped into the flower garden. It was all American music, one familiar song after another -- Gershwin, Joplin, and Paul Robeson singing "Old Man River".

If I haven't been blogging much lately, it's because I was living life instead of chronicling it. This was a good day.

UM Class 0f 2010

2010-05-03T09:09:00.004-04:00

Here's a picture. Here's Obama's nice speech. It was a wonderful day, thunderstorms, crowds and all.

Graduations

2010-04-29T11:24:00.003-04:00

We are leaving tomorrow for Ann Arbor where Shelagh will graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Elementary Education. In June, Liz will graduate from Northwestern University and in the fall she will be heading to UM to study law.

Shelagh's impending graduation is quite the big deal because the commencement speaker is President Obama. There are restrictive security measures (no purses or camera cases or umbrellas) and strict rules about showing up late. It is in the huge outdoor stadium and the weather is expected to be around 70 degrees with a chance of thunderstorms.

Once I stop contemplating the crazy logistics, I wonder what the president has to say to these kids. These are the kids who did it all right, now emerging into the new jobless economy. I'm glad my kids didn't have to go deeply into debt to get their degrees, but a lot of their friends are not so lucky.

Shelagh's degree is in elementary education. Everyone wants to talk about how important teachers are, but nobody can figure our how to pay to employ them. I'm interested in what the president has to say about that.

Maybe I'll hear nothing. If the thunderstorms materialize, the whole event may be washed out. But I'll still have a newly minted graduate to hug.

Brother Tim on Lockport, New York

2010-02-24T09:49:00.007-05:00

This was pretty much my viewpoint on the night that my dad took us downtown to watch the demolition of downtown Lockport.
Brother Tim published a piece in this morning's USA Today, Olympians Can Always Go Home. And the Rest of Us?. He writes about our hometown, Lockport, New York, and the push/pull of the hometown.

Joyce Carol Oates also hails from our hometown. Tim writes

Joyce Carol Oates, another literary lion, recently returned to her home of Lockport, N.Y., for Smithsonian magazine. There she revisited the public library, the old Palace movie house and the Erie Canal locks that give the town its name.She was reminded how much these places still resonate throughout her life and work.

I, too, hail from Lockport. A few years ago, I had the good fortune to meet Oates, and we discussed where in the town of 21,000 we had grown up. She was from the west side, Transit Road, which has been transformed by shopping malls and multilane highways. When I told her I grew up on the east side, a two-lane road that hugged the Erie Canal, Oates' eyes grew excited. "That's the real Lockport," she said

I'm not so sure. When I visit Lockport I find that the place I remember has long ago sprawled over itself in a headlong rush towards "Anytown USA". I have three landscapes in my head, the place I grew up, the place that it has become, and the place that appears when I dream of Lockport, a Lockport that could have been, but maybe never really was, a town with a downtown and farms and neighborhoods and and quiet places and mysterious places and timeless places.

Downtown Lockport's signature brick front downtown was razed for "urban renewal" when I was about 13. At my 20th high school reunion, one of those lots was still empty, with a "Will Build to Suit" sign. Much of my late teen years were spent exploring the back roads and back streets, my friends and I seeking to chronicle our hometown before it disappeared forever.

These days I serve another town, one that managed to make it to the 21st century with a strong sense of place. Still, the struggle to maintain that sense is constant. There are many people devoted to keeping the area the "same as it ever was" and just as many who expect to see a healthy return on their real estate investments. The trick is in selling the idea that a strong sense of place trumps "Anytown, USA", and selling it one detail at a time.

What was for Dinner

2010-02-15T20:48:00.003-05:00

Richard fixed the balky basement light switch just in time for "eat out of the basement season". We usually eat out of the basement this time of year because paychecks are small and heat bills are big. We have potatoes, canned vegetables, salsa and pickles, frozen fruit, frozen chicken and fish.

Tonight I had some leftover Cuban black beans that the neighbor had brought us. To go with it I made the "Skillet Corn Bread" recipe from The Joy of Cooking, enlivening it with fried onions, rehydrated dried garden peppers, cheddar cheese, and a freshly fried bits of the bacon ends I bought on sale at Gabe's Maple City market last fall.

The meal looked like it could use more vegis and protein, so I got a jar of home canned salsa from the basement, heated half of it on the stove, and poached eggs in it while the cornbread finished up. The chickens are seeing the days getting longer and laying eggs accordingly, so it's a challenge to come up with new ways to eat eggs. It was a nice meal, quite colorful for mid winter.

High Heat

2010-02-11T09:51:00.005-05:00

Brother Tim, stuck at home in DC's snow storm, put together this video trailer for his new book, High Heat.

January Harvest

2010-01-24T20:27:00.000-05:00

They didn't size up the way I was hoping when I planted them last July, but getting anything out of the garden in deep January is a coup. these carroys are sweet and crisp and we've been munching them at the dinner table and in lunches. Every year I put less and less emphasis on the traditional garden season and more and more emphasis on the very early and very late season. Next year I will try using shade cloth to cool the mid-July soil so as to get better carrot germination.

Great Lakes Blog

2010-01-22T10:22:00.002-05:00

I have been reading up on the legal and political battles over the Asian carp over at Great Lakes Blog. When I'm done with that issue, I'll see what they have to say about Phragmites, that invasive swamp monster grass that is colonizing the Lake Michigan shoreline and has been sighted in the Lake Leelanau Narrows. Leland Township has been asked to adopt an ordinance that would allow the county Soil and Conservation office to treat Phragmites stands with herbicides in the fall without the specific permission of the property owner.

I've been talking about Phragmites with everyone I meet both, trying to gauge support for a spraying program and trying to find alternatives to a spraying program. Everyone who has seen Phragmites doesn't want to see it in our township, but there are still lots of questions to be asked and answered before a spraying program is accepted.

Stop Asian Carp

2010-01-21T13:41:00.002-05:00

I'm not convinced that finding Asian Carp DNA in Lake Michigan means that the actual fish are there (seagulls could be dropping fish parts) or that it is time to give up the effort to keep them out of Lake Michigan by closing the locks that can give them access. So I signed the petition here, and I'm urging others to do so.

Easy Winter, So Far

2010-01-09T13:09:00.005-05:00

I haven't posted one of these NOAA Lake Michigan temperature maps this year. I haven't needed to. In a normal December, we are huddled under a couple of week's worth of dark clouds dumping foot after foot of lake effect snow. I monitor Lake Michigan surface temperatures, waiting for the day that the big lake gets cold enough to stop adding its moisture to the cold west winds and the lake effect machine shuts down.

The lake is still warm, over 40 degrees, but the winds didn't blow that way this year. After a few days of melt around Christmas, the wind started blowing from the north, from the east, from the northeast, making for cold and wind but no reason to run the snowblower. The rest of the country is seeing low temps and snow, but we are taking a break and even expecting a thaw next week.

17th Annual Madrigal Christmas

2009-12-02T13:02:00.004-05:00

The Leelanau Children's Choir will present its 17th Annual Madrigal Concert at 7:30 on Friday December 4th and Saturday December 5th at the Northport Performing Arts Center. This is a picture of Anna and Liz. This photo is maybe 4 years old; the little girl wearing this costume this year is truly little, Liz is long graduated, while Anna has become a young lady. Tech week is always a grind, but the performances truly start the Christmas season.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-30T11:59:00.004-05:00

University of Michigan senior Shelagh Fehrenbach works with a group of third graders on Spanish words during a class at Ann Arbor's King Elementary School. Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

It was a treat to have daughter Shelagh and her husband Jordan home for a short Thanksgiving holiday. My favorite moment was when Shelagh was reacquainting herself with the piano and Beethoven's "Sonata Pathetique" in all its head=banging glory while Jordan and I swept up the kitchen and Anna hovered over Shelagh's shoulder, turning pages and watching music and hands.

We ate a smoked turkey from Carlson's and lots of side dishes. Shelagh and I sort of tag teamed teaching Anna how to make the pies. We burned the first baked pie shell so we had two lemon meringue pies and no apple, but apple is an everyday pie and lemon meringue only shows up when Shelagh comes home, so everyone was happy. I cut up a home grown big Long Island Marrow Squash, roasting part of it in chunks and cooking down the rest for pie filling. Yams with coconut milk and garam masala has been my favorite leftover dish.

Shelagh and Jordan went back to Ann Arbor on Saturday. Shelagh is student teaching in a third grade classroom at Martin Luther King Elementary, hoping to be lucky enough to get a teaching job after graduation, but making plans to work odd jobs until Jordan finishes his degree.

You can read more about the Ann Arbor Language Project here.

350 at the Dunes

2009-09-30T00:48:00.013-04:00

Ken Scott's stop action film of the 350 on the dunes.

We had to go to Traverse City anyway, so I told Anna that we would spend the extra fossil fuels to swing by the dunes and join a group of people who were going to make a giant 350 on the dunes to draw attention to climate change. She said "Great!" and asked if her friend Madison could come along.

When we got there, people were sort of milling around and saying hi to each other. It was interesting to try and figure out who was there for climate change and who was there to just visit the dunes. Jim Lively stood on a picnic table, hollered a welcome, explained the event, and then asked us to divide into three groups, one for each digit. I was drawn to the small groups of people picnicking and watching; I made a quick pass down the picnic tables inviting the onlookers to "help us make the number 350 on the dunes as part of an international effort to focus government attention on the challenge of climate change." I knew I probably wouldn't get many takers, but I wanted everyone there to know why we were doing what we were doing.

I'm the person in the teal shirt and dark jeans running to catch up to the last of the "0" group. Anna and Madison were wearing matching neon green T shirts and pink shorts, at the top of the 5. In the stop-action movie it seems like we were rushing, but at the time we had plenty of time for crosstalk, even as we kept our eyes on our director. The lady next to me fretted about people who who coming in late to join. They weren't wearing the bright blues and greens mentioned in the email invitation to the event. "That's OK," we reassured her, "we need all the help we can get." It reminded me of the bickering about "I'm greener than you!" that often pops up in environmentalist circles and discourages neophytes from taking small steps because they can't see themselves going whole hog.

In the movie we are only laying down for a second. In real life we had time to look at the clouds blowing by. A guy to my left started thinking aloud:

"350. That's the percentage of the carbon of what, again?"

I spoke to the sky, "We need to achieve a target of 350 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere in order to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change. Scientists agree that 350 is our target."

"And where are we now?"

Across the "0" someone yelled, "We are over 380. Getting close to 390."

An older voice said, "We need to get our governments to get serious about this. We can all do things on our own, but governments need to become involved. A younger voice suggested "Go to 350.org."

We stood up again, on cue, and then jumped up and down and did some waves. I was reminded that I was never meant to be a cheerleader. The elderly lady next to me confessed that she couldn't jump. I said, "I think I'm jumping but I'm afraid that my pants are staying where they were."

We all trooped down again on cue, and then went off to our own pursuits. I fed the girls a picnic lunch and they set off to play on the dunes, the better to justify the extra gas that we had spent on such a frivolous stunt. Usually we come to the dunes when family visits. I was impressed at the discipline of the group that came on the tour bus and dutifully trooped up and down the dunes in a line. I saw many examples of our typical family gathering, when a few people go up and then disappear for what seems like hours while others wait at the bottom wondering if the first group is lost.

I sat for over an hour waiting for Anna and Madison. I talked to the family sharing our picnic table and turned a forgotten video camera over the a park ranger. I fielded questions from people who had seen the 350 and wondered what it was (a family reunion?) I explained that this action was both a precursor to international events being planned for October 24th and a follow up to Bill McKibben's talk in Traverse City last fall, when he saw mentioned on his own dune tour how cool it would be to se folks depict a 350 on that landscape.

Finally we packed up and drove home, getting ice cream bars in Maple City and dropping Madison off at her house. All traces of 350 were gone from the dunes, but Anna and Madison had put two new tracks on by rolling all of the way down.

It was nice this morning to see that the EPA is going to start regulating greenhouse gas emissions on the nations biggest producers, mainly power plants. Even dunes can move.

P.S. There are more pictures of the event here.

4-H Livestock Auction

2009-08-07T12:01:00.005-04:00

Two 4-H kids and their lambs, waiting for their turn to show.

The Northwest Michigan Fair opens on Sunday, with the culmination of the 4-H Livestock projects, the 4-H Livestock Auction, taking place on Thursday, August 13th. The 4-H Livestock Auction is an opportunity to purchase high quality, local, home grown animals for meat, for breeding stock, or to add to your laying flock. It is also the place to buy less mainstream meat like goat, rabbit or duck. For those who want to truly know what they are eating, the fair is an opportunity to interview the person who raised the animal, peruse feed records, compare animals, and to see who was deemed the best by expert livestock judges.

Darrel Robinson of the 4-H Livestock Council was kind enough to give me some advice about the action for first timers. 4-H kids will be showing their animals all week (see schedule here) through Wednesday, and will rated for both the quality of their animals and for showmanship (their knowledge of and handling of their animal). Wednesday evening , the eve of the auction, is a good time to walk the barns and talk with the kids about their animals. Registration for the auction is at 8 am on Thursday morning; the auction starts at 9 am. The auction proceeds one specie at a time, beginning with swine. The lineup looks something like this:

Swine
Turkeys
Ducks
Lambs
Goats
Steers
Meat Chickens
Production Chickens (layers)
Dairy Feeders
Rabbits
Jr. Beef

There is a free appreciation luncheon for all registered buyers at noon on auction day. Registered buyers also get free fair admission on auction day. Buyers are also publicly thanked in fair and newspaper advertising. If you are interested in bidding on an animal but can't be there for the auction, you may complete a "proxy card" which authorizes 4-H Livestock Council to bid on your behalf. Call 228-6562 to get a buyer's pass or a proxy card.

After the auction, you may choose from five different local processors, who will slaughter, butcher, vacuum pack, and freeze your meat to your specifications. The processors will have their services and prices posted at the auction. Smoking and other specialty processing is available. 4-H will transport your animal to the processor at the close of the fair. (If you wish to take your animals home instead of to a processor, this is allowed.)

Families who have purchased or shared in the purchase of a cow or pig tell me that having a whole animal in the freezer challenges them to find recipes for more than the usual cuts of meat. I've found these recipes in older cookbooks and ethnic cookbooks. Authentic ethnic cooking often requires goat, rabbit or duck, smaller animals perfect for adventuresome cooks with less freezer space.

Buying at the 4-H Livestock Auction is more than just an alternative way to buy food. Last week at the Traverse City Film Fest, I saw Food, Inc. and was inspired to hand out Livestock Auction brochures at the discussion afterward. During the film, the audience murmured and groaned during scenes of animal distress. I was more moved by descriptions of farmers' distress. The cheap meat that we see in the grocery store is made possible by a system that forces farmers to accept higher and higher levels of debt and diminishing levels of actual income. I'm not worried about the future of the factory far. -- the system is unsustainable and will crumble under its own weight -- but I'm worried that as we build more sustainable systems we will face a dearth of young people who know how to actually work with animals. Supporting 4-H through the Livestock Auction is a way to support the next generation of food producers.

Fourth of July Parade

2009-07-11T11:29:00.001-04:00

The 4th of July is a big holiday in Leland. Our streets are full of residents and summer people, although the split may be 50/50 between residents watching in the parade and residents actually in the parade. My family has been dedicated parade watchers, passing up opportunities to ride bikes, be a piece of the baguette, support candidates and causes, etc., although brother Chris has been known to play his french horn in the one-rehearsal-only marching band.

For me, the big drama was the Eve of the Fourth fireworks. As long as I can remember the fireworks have been held on the Lake Michigan beach, sponsored by the Leland Community Improvement Association. A few days before this year's display, Leland's fire chief, Mike Fandel, met with the pyrotechnic crew at the site and determined that the rising water and late dredging had left us with too little beach to safely host a fireworks display. Chief Fandel offered us an alternate location, at Hancock Park, and presented us with a plan for crowd control and how they would station the fire crew to simultaneously monitor the fireworks dsplay and be ready in case of a need elsewhere in the township.

It was fun to be called to a special town board meeting to "save the fireworks" by approving the new location. It was not so much fun to hear feedback from people who feared that the soccer fields would be ruined, the park would be trashed, or that the parking would become unmanageable.

In the end, the fireworks went off without a hitch. I heard good feedback about the fire department's safety enforcement and event management. The new location, on a hill, meant that the display was visible from many more parts of the township, including most of the north lake , East Leland, and even my house, over the tops of the trees. Many village residents skipped going out to the field and simply watched from their yards, streets, or rooftops. People remarked that it was much more of a family event, instead of the beach front bacchanalia that we had seen in recent years.

NOTE: I've mentioned fireworks enough that the web crawlers are sure to think that it is appropriate for this blog to host home fireworks advertising. In order to put on a fireworks display in Leland Township, you must get special permission from the town board, which involves obtaining a large insurance policy and an event plan approved by the fire chief, you are likely to be ticketed, fined, or worse.

After the fireworks drama, it was nice to have a laid back day in Leland, watching the parade and cooking hot dogs. I tried to get one shot of each entry in the parade, but I ran out of memory just before The Leland Fire Department made their customary second appearance, with some members running around the back streets to not only head up the parade, but to also bring up the rear. Chief Fandel ended up on top of the antique engine, using a not so spry water shooter to sprinkle the kids in the crowd.

Suddenly Summer

2009-06-26T02:43:00.002-04:00

In summer, we are often too busy living life to properly document it, so here are some quick updates:

Leland Harbor is still not open for business. The earliest we expect to have slips and fuel is July 3rd, with showers and full service maybe July 17th. If you came into the harbor, you would see docks but no fuel or pump out available, and every second plankon the docks is loose, so that the workers and inspectors can get at the underside.
Strawberries are out, the garden is in, rhubarb was a hot seller again this year.
I set another hen on eight eggs and ended up with two new chicks. She was a real good mom, but the rooster is apparently not giving his job its due.
It rained in Chicago, so we never made it to the blues fest. But I spent a day letting Anna learn how to navigate the subway and bus and how to handle an umbrella on a busy sidewalk. It was fun.

Choir Concert Tonight

2009-06-19T14:54:00.002-04:00

The Leelanau Childrens Choir concert is tonight, 7:30 at Northport School. I'm going early to drop Anna off and then taking Richard out for barbecue at the new place just south of Dog Ears Books. Hope it doesn't rain.

(Image borrowed shamelessly from Books in Northport. Some days are pretty busy......)

Lots of News, No Pictures

2009-06-12T17:30:00.004-04:00

The wine fest is tomorrow, and the parking lot is ready in the nick of time! Wednesday night I was at work on break when I read in both the Northern Express and the Leelanau Enterprise that the community of Leland was so resourceful and cooperative that we had figured out how to hold the wine fest at the harbor despite the delays in actually finishing the harbor project. Rains on Monday and Tuesday had meant further delays and the wine fest site on Wednesday had looked like piles of dirt with curbs. As I went back to work I worried that the printed congratulations may have been premature.

But then I saw the project foreman watching some guys play a slot. I tapped him on the shoulder.

"Do we have asphalt?"

"Tomorrow. Eight in the morning."

Asphalt went down as promised, and set up for the wine fest should be going on as I type. I have no picture, as I am in Evanston today, picking Liz up after her junior year at Northwestern. We'll miss the wine fest, but we intend to take in the Chicago Blues Fest tomorrow. (See The Leland Report for a crazy photo)

Liz wanted baby chicks when she got home, and I finally got a hen to commit to brooding a clutch in time for the first two little ones to hatch out yesterday morning. I hope she'll be a good mom and keep them safe until we get home. I wanted to download some pictures, but this morning my computer had an ominous "System file 22 corrupted" message on the screen. Good excuse to leave town and come back with Liz and her computer. It was a beautiful day to travel. Life is good.

Leland Harbor: Four Days Til Wine Fest

2009-06-07T22:34:00.006-04:00

And it's raining at Leland Harbor. The parking lot must be graded and paved in order to host the Leland Wine Fest on June 11, and they were still pouring curbs and gutters late last week.

This drama is as good as any reality TV series. At our last Town Board meeting we decided to extend the completion deadline to:

Parking Lot Paved -- June 11
Operational Gas Dock -- June 26
Building Substantial Completion -- July 10

We could have refused to grant any extensions and collected penalties and fees from the contractor, but having the harbor open, even provisionally, is worth more to us.

The docks have been in use already, almost from the moment they hit the water. Even over Memorial Day, when they were just floating in the harbor, unattached to land, there was a sailboat that spent the holiday on their own little island out there. As Anna and I left on Sunday, we saw some power boaters pull into a slip, tie up, and walk over the "Dock Closed" sign on their way to shore.

Our mission Sunday was to photograph the north side of the building, which is now almost completely covered with the grey shakes that were chosen to mirror the look of the vintage buildings of Fishtown. I have to look past the construction equipment and imagine the front porch, but I can see the building eventually feeling like an extension of Fishtown.

Even before I was elected I heard a lot of opinions about the size and style of the harbor building. I talked to people who came late to the process complaining that the building would be too big and tall. I talked to the Harbor Commission members who had put the design together based on the input from public hearings and the constraints of the site and the funding process. I went from being skeptical of the design to being a big fan. But I was also struck by the way the the people who came in late to criticize the design were talking to only each other. I had always thought of a public hearing as a mechanism for the public to make their views known to the powers that be. Now I see the public hearing as a useful forum for the various stakeholders to hear each other and figure out how to compromise. The harbor building had to accommodate the boaters' needs, the classic Fishtown architecture advocates, the pedestrian traffic, the playground crowd, and myriad state and federal agencies. Nobody was getting everything that they wanted, but the Harbor Commission did try to come up with a design that was responsive to all concerns.

Right now it takes a lot of imagination to erase the construction equipment, the tool trailers, , the piles of dirt. You have to visualize the grey shakes darkening in a few seasons. The seagulls are already depositing their own patina on the red roof. One day the flag pole will be up again, the noisy machines will be gone, and we will be standing in the harbor with seagulls flying through a stiff west wind, watching a small boat entering safe harbor, and all will be well.

Stefani on "The Early Show"

2009-06-05T12:28:00.013-04:00

Watch the video here

I wrote about Stefani Pentiuk in a Leelanau Childrens Choir inspired post a few years ago. That post ended "Life is too much to believe," and not much has changed. Stefani and her parents were on The Early Show this morning with her heart doctor, the man who reassured her before the heart transplant that she would not only survive, but he would "take you to your prom." Dr. Ackerman then showed up, ten years later at the Leelanau County Prom to surprise Stefani and fulfill his promise.

I was thinking of that scene while reading recent commentaries about proms and the expensive gowns, limos, hairdos, hotel rooms, etc that some communities indulge their kids in. Our prom is a three-school affair that takes place in the showroom at the casino where I work. The event is organized by a student committee advised by Sutton Bay business teacher Stan Pasch. You don't need a date, or a new dress for prom; you can shop second hand or rework an old dress. (I used to like to go visit prom on my breaks. Of course my own kids hated seeing me, but the neighbor kids were always glad to hug me.) Flying in your heart doctor is the most extravagance I've ever seen associated with the Leelanau County Prom, but it made perfect sense.

I've told Stefani's story a lot lately. There's not much to do when you turn eighteen in this town, so lots of kids come out to play at the three dollar blackjack tables once they're old enough. During the transplant and recovery years Stefsni seemed to have lost a few years of growth and a lot of people ask "is she old enough to be in here?" I like telling her story, as it perfectly illustrates my oft-repeated line "Casino luck is the most overrated kind of luck."

Stefani graduates next week and sings in the choir concert the week after. We are all charged with taking whatever luck we have and using it to serve others. She will start at Hope college in the fall, studying to become a nurse.

I was apprehensive about The Early Show gig, but they did a wonderfully understated job of telling the story. I'm looking forward to hearing Stefani's account of her trip to New York.

Leelanau Children's Choir Upcoming Concert

2009-06-02T09:41:00.006-04:00

This year's Leelanau Childrens Choir concert is entitled "The Last Five Years", referring to the musical of the same name and also describing the choice of music, all of which comes from recently debuted Broadway shows. They are singing selections from "Spelling Bee", "Spring Awakening", "Billy Elliot", "The Light in the Piazza", "Mary Poppins", "The Last Five Years", "Wicked" and probably some others that I haven't heard yet.

So much new music means that the kids have a lot to learn. Anna has been sitting at the piano evey spare moment working out the melodic details of each piece. The song in the video, however, has taken over her imagination; it is the song she sings to herself when she doesn't even know she's singing. Anna's voice is suddenly sweet, strong, and mature, as if the person upstairs singing is a young woman, not a twelve year old girl.

The video is a YouTube production of an anonymous voice singing a capella, illustrated with stills from various productions of "Light in the Piazza". It seems you can find anything on YouTube these days. The concert is on Friday June 19th at the Northport Community Arts Center. The concert begins at 7:30 pm.

My Brothers Launch a New Book

2009-05-22T09:30:00.004-04:00

The face of Buffalo's Memorial Auditorium, AKA "the Aud", now in demolition.
So these days I have a Google news alert set up to keep track of my siblings. Good thing, too, because I'm too busy getting the garden in to do much writing of my own. Today's alert tells me that Brothers Chris and Tim's long time project, a coffee table book about the heyday of the Buffalo Braves basketball got a nice review in the Buffalo News. The review also mentions the demolition of the old Memorial Auditorium, the big venue for sports, concerts, etc. of my youth.

I can see it from the third floor of The Buffalo News, a crumbling carcass of steel and brick. You think of the ghosts and memories contained in the old Memorial Auditorium, and in the hearts and minds of the athletes and fans who spent so many hours there.
Tim Wendel remembers. Wendel grew up in Lockport. He came of age in the 1970s, when pro sports in Buffalo were at their zenith and two daily newspapers were there to record the moment. Wendel would run out of his house on cold winter mornings to pick up the old Courier-Express, and to see what Phil Ranallo had to say in his column.
Wendel went to Syracuse to learn journalism. He got work as a sports rewrite guy at the Courier, editing Ranallo's stuff. He was on his honeymoon in September 1982 when he got a phone call from a friend who was watching his apartment. Your apartment's fine, the friend said, but your paper closed.
He ended up in Washington, D.C., where his wife got a job with the Post. Wendel wrote a book about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. He covered baseball and wrote a baseball novel about Fidel Castro.
He remained a Buffalo guy at heart. He and his brother, Chris, sat around at family gatherings, rehashing games from their youth. One day, they were carrying on about the Braves when a relative said, "Why don't you guys shut up and write about it?"

Buffalo, Home of the Braves is published by Sun Bear Press, brother Chris's new publishing company. Chris is a small business consultant for the the NorthWest Michigan Council of Governments; starting a publishing company is his response to Brother Tim's frustration with the state of the publishing industry, and the opportunity offered by new print-on-demand technology.

Leland Harbor Still Under Construction

2009-05-20T09:22:00.003-04:00

Unloading the new floating docks.

The latest word on Leland Harbor from the Harbor Commission:

Leland Harbor is still closed for renovation. Don't look for any mooring in the harbor until June 18th, and don't look for fuel before June 26th. The boat launch will open around the same time.

The Leland Harbor project was on a tight schedule, having been delayed last fall due to State of Michigan red tape, and one of the waterside contractors was held up by the relatively late spring. I had hoped that they could catch up in the long days of late spring, but dredging is going slowly near the shore.

Once the dredging is done, they can stabilize the retaining wall and start on the building's front porch. The roof shingle are on and the shakes, stained a weathered gray, are ready to go up.

I have heard a lot of criticism of the building's size, the roof color, and so on. As the daughter of a civil engineer and an interior designer, I have seen a lot of structures make the transformation from blueprint to finished building, and have heard this same sort of criticism before. I went to the Thompson Street beach after hearing complaints about how huge and intrusive the building looked from the beach. Of course with no siding and shingles it looked bright and huge. But when I imagined what it would look like finished and with the flag flying in a stiff breeze, well my heart skipped a beat. The scene was so impossibly perfect that I'm anxiously waiting for the finish date so that I can see it for real. I suspect that by the end of the summer we will be tripping over artists and their easels painting that very scene.

Of course if you are out on the big lake, scanning the shore for a safe harbor, that red roof will be a most welcome sight.

Anna has been taken with the building process as well. She scrambled over the rocks to get this photo of the new floating docks, as they are assembled out in the harbor waiting for the rest of the components. Only two days on the water and already the seagulls are making themselves at home! An otter was playing around and flipped its tail at us.

Mimi at Shelagh's Birthday Party

2009-05-10T22:20:00.001-04:00

This is another from the rolls of old film. This is Shelagh's birthday party, her first grade year. Shelagh would have been turning 7 this year, so it was 1993, and my Grandma Mimi, in the photo above was 90. Next to Mimi is Ashley Patterson, and the girl in the red bow is Becky Houdek. Mimi always loved children and loved a party, so she had a place at the table for every birthday party.

This is in the kitchen at our house. We used to have cake-and-ice cream birthday parties with musical chairs and Duck Duck Goose. You were allowed to invite only as many kids as the age you were turning, plus your sister, so turning seven made a pretty good party. Shelagh's birthday is just before Christmas, so other pictures on this roll show the girls making Christmas cookies. In another picture Shelagh is proudly modeling the hand me down white shoes that Ashley gave her. Shelagh was thrilled to get white shoes and I was honored that Ashley's mom trusted us enough to give a second hand birthday present.

Today is Mother's Day. All I wanted was to spend time with my family. Anna and I slept late, then went for a walk in the woods. For supper Richard, Anna, and I made half baked pizza crusts and cut all the fixings, then took it all over to my parent's condo and made them dinner. We also had baby lettuce salad and fresh cut tulips.

Leland Harbor Progress

2009-04-26T18:55:00.001-04:00

A video from last Thursday, April 23rd.

Swine Flu News

2009-04-26T14:15:00.003-04:00

Readers might have wondered why Effect Measure has held the number one spot in my "Blogs I'm Reading now" list. I started reading Effect Measure, an epidemiologists' blog, when I was interested in avian flu and backyard chickens. Mainstream news outlets were desperately trying to take an evolving science story and fit it into the "beginning, middle and end" story formula, preferably with a gripping headline that would get us tuning in again tomorrow and the next day. Effect Measure's editors were engaging in a more collaborative investigation that was much more interesting and to which I, as a backyard chicken keeper, could occasionally contribute some practical observations.

Now, with the swine flu news getting similar treatment, I recommend Effect Measure to readers who want up to date news and science without the premature conclusions. I'm also stocking up on Lysol spray, decongestants, garlic, and chicken soup.

Sammy the Dog

2009-04-15T10:29:00.002-04:00

My girls are remembering our dog Sam, who was the next picture in that old roll of film. Her full name was Samantha. She was born under the porch at what was then Ken and Alice Scott's house in Peshawbestown, part of a litter born to a stray black lab who took refuge there. Sam was a good dog, very smart, and very protective of the kids.

It was a tragedy when she died under the wheels of Mr. Hagstrom's school bus, trying to prevent it from taking Liz off to kindergarten. I was guilty of negligence, as she would have been obediently by my side had I remembered to call her in before the bus was due. But that day I had gotten our piano tuned for the first time and I dawdled to try it out as Liz nagged me to call the dog in.

Time heals. By the time Liz graduated from high school, the family tragedy had become a well worn black comedy. Liz feigned bitterness over memories of classmate Ellen laughing when Liz shared the news at kindergarten circle time. Ellen obliged by recreating the laugh. Abby's graduation announcement -- featuring a picture of Abby on her first day of school boarding Mr. Hagstrom's bus -- was hung on the wall as crime scene evidence.

Rose has been, in contrast, a not so smart dog. Perhaps that's why she lived so long. She never figured out how to open gates, climb the fence, or even how to walk over the fence when the snow drifted over it. (She did fall over the snow drifted fence a few times and couldn't figure out how to get herself back in.) Instead of having a dog who seemed to always know what I was thinking, I've had to learn to communicate with a loving, but slow witted dog. And now to be patient with a tired, smelly old dog.

So there's a picture of Sammy, my wonderful but short lived dog.

Ridgeline Zoning Hearing

2009-04-13T09:43:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow night, Tuesday April 14th, at 7 pm in the township office, Leland Township's Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on a proposed zoning ordinance to regulate the development of ridge lines.

The purpose of the proposed ordinance is "to naturally reduce the pronounced appearance of structures on a dominant ridgeline without interfering with the scenic views from within those structures." There are restrictions on how much tree cutting can go on around ridgeline construction, and a provision for siting structures below the ridgeline instead of at the top "so as not to be the primary ridgeline element seen from a public road during the first week of July."

I see problems with the ordinance as proposed, since it would pretty much eliminate our township's best sites for wind generation. I also suspect that the oversized house on the hill is the dream home of the last century; the dream home of the future is likely to be of a more reasonable size and built into the hill to conserve energy.

As township trustee, I will go to the hearing to listen, rather than to advocate one side or the other. But I hope that the hearing will be well attended, and that we will hear a variety of perspectives on this issue.

Shelagh and Liz

2009-04-10T13:12:00.000-04:00

My splurge with the tax returns involved scooping up all of the old film laying around the house and taking it in to be developed. This is one of a roll from around 1992, when Shelagh was in first grade and Liz was in kindergarten.

Leland Harbor Renovation- Installing the Fuel Tanks

2009-04-08T21:04:00.004-04:00

Folks returning to Leland this spring will see some big changes. The old Courthouse has been torn down, and there are plans for new housing in it's place. The Leland Library is undergoing a complete interior renovation and should be looking nice and new by mid-May. but the real nail biter has been the long-planned Harbor Renovation. It has been a challenging project, requiring cooperation between Leland Township, Michigan DNR, Michigan DEQ, Michigan Office of Budget Management, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Leelanau County Road Commission, Leelanau County Construction Code Office, and, no doubt, some other agencies that I've forgotten.

Today it was a pleasure to see a big part of the project successfully put into place. The fuel tank in the pictures and video will hold both diesel fuel and gasoline, providing boaters with the only fuel stop between Frankfort and Northport. Behind it, rather lost in the mayhem, you see our pretty little playground. I was happy to see the fuel tank nestled deep into the ground. When the area is back filled and sodded, it will be a nice venue for "king of the Mountain."

It was a warm spring day, with beautiful blue water framing Whaleback. The construction guys are hoping for more weather like this to make up for the time they lost fighting blizzard conditions early in the project.

P.S. As I left the site, I saw an eagle soaring above, too high for a photo, its white head gleaming in the sun.

Thunderclouds and Moon at Dusk

2009-04-07T21:20:00.000-04:00

After a softball game last summer, from M-22 near Whaleback.

Climate-Energy – Leelanau’s Future Sustainability

2009-04-02T23:11:00.002-04:00

Wednesday April 15 5:30 to 9:00 PM Old Art Building in Leland

“Climate-Energy – Leelanau’s Future Sustainability”

Come to Leland’s Old Art Building at 5:30 for a delicious chili and

biscuits supper, followed at 7 with presentations by guest

speakers Steve Smiley and Dave Barrons.

Donations at the door

Anna Plays Ball

2009-04-02T14:00:00.002-04:00

Anna on the volleyball court.

Anna, my third daughter, is younger than the other two by nearly a decade. She strives to distinguish herself from her sisters, who set the bar high with their academic achievements. Anna has spent seventh grade being a jock, playing basketball, then volleyball, and she is now co-manager of the varsity softball team.

I know little about basketball and less about volleyball. I haven't tried to learn. There seem to be enough parents around who know all of the lingo and all the strategies and who want to tell anyone within earshot what the coach is doing wrong. Seventh grade is when kids are starting to break away from their families and establish their own identities. I'm glad the coaches are there providing venues for kids to try out their newly minted autonomy.

Anna had one basketball coach who yelled, and one who wrote on a clipboard. Her volleyball coaches were mantra-types, repeating the same simple instructions, "Happy stance! Call it! Shuffle shuffle!" In volleyball, the kids were not even supposed to look at the score. They were praised by their coaches for using the proper six-step serving techinique, even if they never got the ball over the net. Once the ball was in play, they were supposed to try for six touches every time the ball came to their side, regardless of scoring possibilities.

Liz said, "Yeah, the seventh and eighth grade teams always lose, but by the time they get to ninth grade they're really good." We shall see. I'm happy to see discipline and practice stressed over "talent", whatever that is. And I'm happy to go to the games and make the popcorn when it's my turn and otherwise enjoy the show.

More About GM

2009-03-31T10:29:00.001-04:00

Looking down on a lighted walkway in Detroit's Renaissance Center, and, below that, a display of GM cars.
I never did figure out how to actually get to that walkway.
My family continued to weigh in on the troubles of the Big Three auto makers. In the comments on my last GM post, Brock Yates Jr., second cousin on my dad's side, referred to his dad's recent critique of the Big Three, Grosse Pointe Blank.

The Big Three’s bosses work is unlike that of any other boss of a major manufacturing operation. In a sense, they must function more like television or movie executives. They must link with their audiences’ daily lives– and dreams– or lose business. They must be one with their sales people– and the “real” people.

And yet, the geography of the business and its “show biz” component makes the men who run Detroit's car companies a culture unto themselves. They live in fancy houses well away from inner city squalor; their private clubs are among the finest in the world. Their social set links them with each other, and connects the major companies like Europe’s nobility linked eighteenth century nation states. They are seldom fired, downgraded or even moved laterally. They are stars in their own little universe. but this universe is distant, and finite.

You could even say these execs live cloistered lives. The Motor City’s Princes and Kings have more privilege and perks than other major executives, yet remain behind closed doors. They make millions from but rarely deal with the Union men who actually build the cars upon which their livelihoods depend. PR flacks protect them from the snooping media. And they seldom deal with the public– beyond an occasional visit to a motor show or a speech written by their media men delivered to some fawning special interest group.

In the world of powerful men, here or in Europe, few live within such a bizarre combination of privilege and insulation.

Like many bosses in industries under assault from "barbarians," Detroit’s isolated auto execs work tirelessly to maintain the status quo. Safe in their gilded cages, they continue to ignore their customers' changing needs. And they continue to build the same products over and over: the same damn automobiles that their fathers and grandfathers built.

There is a lot of meat, even in these few paragraphs. The auto execs' implicit assumption is that America will buy what Detroit decides to produce. When we can't or won't buy they cry foul, even though many of us bought American vehicles long past the point where it made sense.

My parents were loyal GM buyers for decades. They lived in a GM town, Mom had grown up in a GM family, worked at GM on summer break when she was in college. Grandma and Grandpa were retired on a GM pension. When Mom's last GM car spontaneously combusted with a few thousand miles on the odometer, she called the dealer to report the unusual event. At least my mom thought that having to escape from a flaming automobile in the course of an otherwise normal drive to town was an unusual event. Nobody at GM seemed surprised, or apologetic, or even curious. Her hometown Chevy dealer said "You're in luck! I've got another one like it right here!" assuming that she would collect her insurance money and settle into an identical vehicle. that was the end of a lifetime relationship.

My brother Chris, the small business guru, describes a hierarchy of customer loyalty:

.....I’m always looking out for good and bad customer experiences. Like many of you, I keep a mental list of businesses that I’ve placed on “probation” (I’m not going there for awhile), “double secret probation” (Why did I come back here again?) and “boycott status” (I’m not ever coming back here again!).

For most products and services companies move down the ladder of shame one step at a time, and even a monumental experience like my Mom's could be turned into a positive experience if the customer is treated with respect and empathy. Taking customer loyalty for granted is deadly.

If GM was losing my parents' generation, they never had my generation. When I was in high school, during the first oil crunch, the gear heads were already dividing up into two groups: there was the "go fast" group, but there was also the guys looking to stretch their paychecks by eeking more mileage out of their vehicles. Cousin Brock Jr accurately describes how GM failed to honor that subset of car lovers:

During the first fuel crisis in 1973 consumers witnessed the contempt Detroit had for the marketplace as they tried to discredit small cars with such swill as the Pinto, Vega and Pacer. This allowed the Japanese and Germans footholds in the country where before they were less than niche brands. Over time, as the executives became more insulated from the marketplace, they become increasingly incapable of understanding what consumers wanted and started losing market share.

I always thought I would someday buy a GM car, once they got their act together and built a car for the future, one with breakthrough gas mileage. GM has tantalized people like me with various concept cars, basically holding off the environmentalists' criticisms by showing us technology that was perennially "on the horizon." Suddenly it's the future already. Everyone from our governor to the electric company to the county extension agent is bullish on wind energy, expecting GM to honor its 2010 launch date for the plug-in hybrid Volt. While Michigan's cheerleaders are looking for GM to help turn the state around, automotive insiders are skeptical, as Jack Lessenberry notes in a recent column:

Now, people are pinning their hopes on the Chevy Volt, the new electric car scheduled to go into production next year. Last week, I talked to the man who may be most responsible for making electric and hybrid cars happen, the legendary Stanford Ovshinsky.
He was the principal inventor of the nickel-metal-hydride battery that powers your cell phone. He worked for years on an earlier GM attempt to build an electric car, the EV-1, until GM got cold feet.
If you want to know more about that, go rent the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car," in which Stan and his late wife Iris play starring roles. Stan, by the way, recently launched a new company, got remarried, and is working as hard as ever. And why not? He is only 86. I asked him about the Volt. "Well, it is a start," he said. "They will probably sell a few thousand, but... they are fourteen years behind the Japanese." Back in the 1990s, he went to Japan and saw that the hybrids were coming. He tried to tell GM, "and they laughed at us. They said they would never work, or sell."
Ovshinsky hopes the Volt is a success. But, as he noted, the company still hasn't decided on the battery to run it. The car will also cost more than $40,000, out of many people's reach.

It's so tempting to throw up our hands and let the car companies sink or swim on their own. Here in Michigan, things are more complicated. It's not just that Michigan's economy is intertwined so thoroughly with the auto industry. Michigan is a place where people know how to do things, to grow things, to make things.

This era's broad declarations about the new "idea economy" sound just as stupid and unsustainable as the broad announcement of the new "service economy" did back in the 1980's. America's auto industry is the backbone of our nation's manufacturing industry, the same "we can do it" people that churned out the tanks, planes, and armaments that won WW II. Lately we have been experimenting with outsourcing almost all of our nation's manufacturing, and a lot of the food production, to whoever could promise to do it cheapest. Even in peacetime this outsourcing gave us lead in the toys, fake medicine, and melamine in the pet food. Could you imagine if we were actually at war?

Maybe my dad gets at the root of the problem when he talks about the adversarial relationship between management and union workers. Union workers, with no big war to win, went to work winning better contracts and better benefits. Somewhere along the line, the auto workers went from leading the way in improving the lot of the working people to becoming an elite class onto themselves, with benefits (cosmetic surgery? free legal advice?) that leave the rest of us shaking our heads. Management seems to have missed the news that American workers as a whole have seen stagnant wages and increased costs over the past twenty years. We just can't afford to buy a new car every three years, no matter how much they spend on advertising.

Maybe my kids' generation is key. They are so overexposed to advertising hype that they seem practically immune. Many twenty-somethings like cars, for road trips, but aspire to be car-free in their day to day lives. Paying for car insurance, car payments, and running the risk of getting pulled over on the way home from a night out seems like a rat race, without even thinking about the hassles of actually commuting to work. No wonder they are looking at walkable communities and filling the Amtrak trains. What would you have to build to sell to the next generation? I have an idea that the answer is something as far from today's cars as the Model T was from a horse and buggy.

It all looks to me like that picture of the lighted walkway at the Renaissance Center. The people on that walkway were going somewhere, talking to each other, busy at their tasks, never noticing the rest of us. Now they need a bridge loan? Maybe they should walk alongside the rest of us, and we'll talk about it.

Produce Under Snow

2009-03-30T22:07:00.003-04:00

The garden at 8 pm -- not yet dark but certainly dusk.

We had yet another snowstorm early Sunday, with a fresh new 6 inches of wet snow. The sun is high these days, as high as it is at the end of August, but it never seems to burn down to the bare ground of the garden. under that snow there are parsnips and carrots overwintered, arugula, parsley and French sorrel ready to poke through, and a big crop of rhubarb gathering up all the snow melt moisture. I have already been cutting chives, thyme, and oregano from the bed up by the house, but that got covered again on Sunday.

The warmest bed, down by Richard's shop, had lettuce and arugula already sprouting from seeds that fell off the bolted plants last fall. I'm trying to figure a way to start parsnips inside (in toilet paper tubes?) since they grow so slowly that they tend to get lost in the weeds. Spring harvested parsnips are a sweet and tasty treat, even if they didn't come in early spring when we are craving garden produce.

We are still eating canned tomatoes, dried tomatoes and peppers, apples held in the basement, dried apricots, pickles from the gallon jar in the fridge, frozen blueberries, cherries, and pesto, and garlic from the basement. I'm ready to plant peas as soon as I can find some bare ground. The chickens are really thinking spring -- they're laying at full tilt and I'm hoping it warms up enough to put a broody hen on some eggs.

Sugarloaf Petition

2009-03-26T16:40:00.003-04:00

I still have my Sugarloaf sweatshirt.

I just signed the Sugarloaf Petition. It asks the county to purchase and redevelop the closed and deteriorating Sugarloaf Ski Resort as a Brownfield Redevelopment project.

I'm not a skier, but I sure appreciated the winter business that the ski resort brought into the county. The resort has been closed and neglected since 2000. At various times the owner was in jail for tax evasion, the new owner was rumored to have bought the place to house a rehab center, and several parties have tried to buy the place but were thwarted by the odd business practices of the nominal owner.

Friends have seen squatters living in the building. Kids have taken to exploring the abandoned buildings and some were caught lighting fires. The roof was reported to be leaking about five years ago already; I'm sure that mold alone is enough to qualify it as a brownfield. I'm glad to see Chauncey Shiflett, my county commissioner, taking the lead in this.

Riverberg

2009-03-17T22:31:00.002-04:00

They got out the chainsaws and the beer last Sunday and cut a "partyberg" out of the ice of Lake Leelanau. The big berg got hung up somehow and wouldn't float down the river, so the chainsaws came out again and pretty soon there were two partybergs. Liz took this picture near the end of the ride. She saw one guy jump completely into the river to "save the beer". Soon after this the dog in the picture bailed out and swam for shore.

Ice Castles

2009-03-12T22:24:00.001-04:00

The beach at Reynolds Street in Leland.

I spent most of the day driving down to Kalamazoo to pick Liz up from the train station. I was irritated to find that snow had fallen again, glazing the pavement from Bingham to Cadillac, allowing me to drive about 45 mph at most. Her train was early and I was a few minutes late, but we met and enjoyed conversation the whole ride home.

Living in the snow, I tend to think about how to best get from here to there. Coming from Chicago, Liz wanted to see what the beach looked like. We gathered up Anna and headed off to Leland to find ice stretched almost to the islands. Anna wanted to climb the ice foothills, but we know that those lumps are often hollow and if you fall through you will be in a ice cave filled with icy water and the roof far above you.

This winter has dragged on and on, but these late winter scenes are more and more extravagant. The landscape is transformed daily, if not hourly. It's nice to have Liz here for a few days to drag me out to see it all.

2009-03-10T22:32:00.000-04:00

Snow Totals

2009-03-10T22:09:00.004-04:00

Our four foot chain link fence with our 4+ accumulation of snow.

The weather varies wildly, up to 46 today and down to the teens tomorrow with 50 mph winds. The good news is that there's not much snow predicted in the next storm. The bad news is that the last storm was predicted to be "2 to 6 inches".

The reality, here in Leelanau, was as much as 23 inches (just north of Leland) in our yard well over a foot. It fell at a rate of 3.5 inches per hour, or as my neighbor Kathleen put it, "It fell like cement." Kathleen is just back from two years in Thailand in the Peace Corps. She found the snowfall to be thrilling. The rest of us are sick of winter, but I saw more than a little pride in how fast roads, driveways and sidewalks were cleared. Shoveling snow when it's 40 degrees and sunny is far superior to shoveling when it's 10 degrees and bleak.

Thunder Snow

2009-03-09T12:10:00.002-04:00

On the eastern edge of one of the Great Lakes, a thunder snow is often the first or last snow of the season. Last night was just a lot of wet snow, coming fast and furious for about four hours. Somehow, the snow was greasy on the bottom and blowing on top.

We kept table games open an hour later than usual, to accommodate the people who had stopped in because they couldn't make it home. I wasn't in a hurry to leave, as I wanted to wait until the plows could get out and make a dent on the main roads. As I dug my car out of the parking lot there was a front end loader clearing big bites of snow. At one point I saw it sliding backwards and sidewards down the driveway, dropping its blade to try to slow down. I inched down that driveway, sliding, but slowly, coming to a stop on the frozen chunks that were M-22.

I crept over the top of M-204 hill, not wanting to have too much momentum on the long downhill slope. My rider had to walk the last four blocks home though the village of Lake Leelanau, as there was no place to turn off the main highway. By that time it was a pleasant night, not too windy and surprisingly warm, so I wasn't too worried about him.

My heart sank as I got to French Road. There seemed to be no lane plowed at all, but at the last minute I saw a narrow lane in the snow bank and went for it. I had hoped to break through that last bank at my driveway, but my luck ran out. I ended up on top of the bank, wheels barely touching the ground, and I had to dig for the better part of an hour to get that last 12 inches of my car out of that narrow plowed lane. I was about done when the sheriff deputy came by and helped me back out and then push it the rest of the way off the road.

Richard got up at dawn and ran the snow blower, rescuing my car before the plow came by and buried it further. You can see where I strayed off the path last night, into thigh deep snow.

Drunk Herding

2009-03-07T11:25:00.003-05:00

I'm still thinking and writing about GM, but I'm also in the middle of my 3 day work week, three 12 hour shifts in a row. the casino has been busy on the weekends, with a moderate amount of drunk monitoring. The video reminds me of a Saturday night.

General Motors -- the Family Weighs In

2009-02-28T11:54:00.001-05:00

Grandpa Gordon Harry pioneered the camshaft driven fuel pump when he was a young engineer with General Motors.

My post on GM corporate culture brought in feed back from my parents, my uncle, and my brother. Everyone heard (or lived) the stories in slightly different ways. From my dad, in Lockport, New York, once home of GM's Harrison Radiator division:

Based on my limited observations of the Harrison operations here in Lockport I think that there were three (actually four, including the union) sub cultures interacting within the company - which I suspect was pretty typical of all US auto companies.

There was top management which operated in it's ivory tower isolated from the 'dirty work' of the manufacturing operation.

Manufacturing was led by tough, bull headed guys (no women in that culture!) who worked on the assumption that the union workers were dumb, weren't to be trusted and had to be 'kept in line.' Pure old 'Theory X' management style - I think, you do!

This assumption created and reinforced the Union labor philosophy that management couldn't be trusted and you only did what you were told to do and had to do. You avoided all work you could get away with.

The manufacturing and union culture somehow, over time, created a high level of mistrust and tension was always high - especially when contract negotiation time was approaching. In effect the two parties create a win-lose interaction that turned into a lose-lose situation. The focus was always on trying to get something from the other party. Cooperation and collaboration were the last thing on their minds - they were more like enemies fighting in the same theater of battle day after day.

And then there was the design group - like Gord and Alfred. They were a very different culture - technically focused and, to a large extent, they remained aloof from the rest of the operation as much as they could. Of course, they interacted with the other three groups because what they designed had to be manufactured but when friction occurred, I imagine that they stepped back and 'let them sort it out.'

Concerning Gord, did you know that he had 28 patents? I don't know what the others were - probably more mundane, technical items that were integrated into 'stuff' that made cars better. I do recall him talking about work he did on early catalytic converters before he retired. Perhaps you Uncle Bryan knows more about all this.

I was always impressed with the fact that Alfred spent his whole career on spark plugs - plain old spark plugs! But then I thought about how spark plugs had to change as combustion engines change from low to high compression, from relatively cool running engines to ones that ran at very high temperatures. And he also worked on jet engines - unheard of during his first couple of decades of work. And, I recall, he worked on the ignition systems that detonated the early atomic bombs. Quite a wide range of applications!

From my brother, the small business consultant here in Michigan:

I recall Grandpa Gord discussing an early version of cruise control, although I'm not sure if that was one of the patents. The GM he described was bureaucratic and immense, yet there was room within the design sector for expansive "what if" kind of thinking, both with innovative part development and car aesthetics.

That was now 45 plus years ago. Who knows what happened with that GM design culture. Grandpa Gord thought the accountants were running the show in the 80's, basing new model "introductions" more on their ability to maintain older die-hard American customers (i.e. Buick) than adapting to changing customer demands (i.e. fuel efficiency).

Brook Yates' book from the early 1980's "The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry" refers to the "The Grosse Pointe Myopians." discussing in detail the way American automotive upper management grew "arrogant, lost touch with its markets, and failed to respond to changing public needs and tastes, technology, and energy and environmental concerns".

Our economy today is obviously more knowledge based. Unfortunately (I think)the days of someone with a high school education, working at an auto plant, earning $50,000-60,000 are over. It's amazing to me how that this sense of entitlement still exists within the auto unions. Not what one would think of as "entrepreneurial".

From my uncle Bryan, Gord's son, long time resident of Hawaii, recently retired from the US Department of Interior:

As a kid I always regarded Dad as hugely creative, and given pretty much free license by GM to go wherever he thought. Cruise control type things were something dreamed up out of the air. The fuel pump kinds were, however, innovative solutions to vexing problems.

I don't think the tension between the 'accountants,' the 'engineers,' and the 'stylists' that Dad crabbed about was any 'root in the trail' for GM.

In my view, the Darwinian seed was planted in the labor relations' conflicts
during and shortly after World War II. Recall, wages were frozen during and
shortly after the war. But labor strife and the competition for labor was
intense. GM leadership coped by giving its employees huge other benefits--work rules and health care, and pensions--that skirted the wage freezes and were championed as the model for all industry. And they are still grandfathered in! Because of GM's success at that time, Dad was really more concerned that the company was so dominant that Gov't was likely to break it apart using antitrust laws. And too--recall that Dad really had an analog--not a digital--mind and outlook. Maybe GM did too.

So fast forward to now. I think GM cars are very good. Excellent in fact. But GM can't pay out the labor benefits--work rules and health care, and pensions--when their sales are not only way down, but at best they now are only 20% of the total today's market share rather than 70% like the yesterdays. Around here each Chevy carries about $1500 / car 'employee other benefits costs' in its price tag. A Honda carries maybe $50 to $100.

In my sense--I hope the accountants prevail. They are saying that unless GM sheds these other benefits--work rules and health care, and pensions--to be comparable with the Toyotas and Hondas, the old company seems doomed.

So, I'm hanging on to my Chevy-- unless Michigan labor relents, it'll soon be a 'collectors item' (and still running great).

Here in the rust belt, the cost of employee benefits, and retiree benefits, in old news, weighing down budgets in the public and private sectors. Still, I think that building something that people want to buy would do a lot for the US auto industry...

GM Culture

2009-02-20T09:57:00.005-05:00

I have been over at The Truth About Cars, reading the first three installments of Dr. Rob Kleinbaum's analysis of General Motor's corporate culture. I have touched on this subject in my a piece about Grandpa Gord, and of course it was impossible to watch even a little bit of the Big Three's performance before Congress without asking "Who the heck do these people think they are?"

Part two of Dr. Kleinbaum's series gives us a clue:

In progressive societies, merit is central to advancement but in static ones it is family and connections. On this point, GM probably gets mixed to negative reviews. The sense is that one must be part of the club to advance, which usually means the right degree from the right school, the right path, and knowing the top guys, who are your mentors. Twenty years ago, GM would have been completely in the static dimension on this attribute, but there has been substantial progress in reaching out to groups that had been excluded in the past and advancing them on their merits.

Unfortunately, this has been much truer for GM’s operations outside of North America and Western Europe than for these two core regions. In North America, the tradition is to pick high IQ people with the right background at an early age and then to rotate them through a series of “developmental” assignments. The consequence is that the people who rise to the very top are very smart with broad experience, but they are almost never people who have truly accomplished anything; who have built something from scratch or grown a business from small to large or turned around a losing operation into a profitable one.

and

Progressive cultures are secular, with limited influence of religious culture and a high degree of tolerance of heterodoxy and dissent. GM scores fairly low on this attribute. There is little tolerance of strong dissent from the prevailing opinion, although there is substantial subversion and passive-aggressive resistance. In discussions about setting direction, much more attention is given to wondering what the senior leadership will think than to figuring out the right path and trying to make it happen. The very senior people are often spoken of in tones of reverence and are seldom debated in any meaningful way.

That first congressional hearing was funny, in a sad sort of way. It was clear that Wagoner, especially, could not quite get his head around the idea that there were people who would actually question his pronouncements and challenge him to support his conclusions with anything more than the sound of his own voice.

This stuff is not just a spectator sport here in Michigan. Last night I spoke with our township supervisor. His business is in auto parts manufacturing; he had just come back from a meeting in Grand Rapids where he had announced a 15% pay cut to all of his salaried employees. Here in northern Michigan we see parts manufacturers laying off or shutting their doors almost weekly. Our tourism business is highly dependent on the automakers as well.

In Detroit a few weeks ago, I stayed at the Renaissance Center, home of GM headquarters. Amusing myself between meetings, I took a tour of the ground floor, which was set up as a museum/showroom for all of GM's cars. Seeing them all at once was weird. They were all so large and clunky, too big for my garage. They all looked the same to my untrained eye. Bored, I started looking at the window stickers, trying to find a vehicle or two that got MPG similar to my 1996 Corolla. When I finally found a car I would consider driving, I glanced inside the driver's window. The steering wheel was cranked to the right, exposing the bottom of the center plate. The center plate had been indifferently installed so that the wiring for the horn and the airbag and everything else was just sitting out there for all the world to see. It was a sight that stays with me, the moment when the Emperor had no clothes.

I had another vision last week, a vision of what it would take to save the GM, and to save Michigan's manufacturing sector. What if they stopped thinking of themselves as a car company and started thinking of themselves as the consumer energy solution company? There's a lot of talk about plug in hybrids. what if GM made a plug in hybrid car that was designed to be charged with GM brand wind generators and GM brand photovoltaics? What if there were GM charging stations at work and a GM motorbike, charging from the same GM home system, for short trips? What if your GM charging system or plug in hybrid could also function as emergency power in case of a blackout? What if.......

Then I woke up. I saw the restructuring plan that they just showed to Congress. As Dr. Kleinbaum put it:

GM’s current response seems to reflect its fundamental beliefs about the way the world works and it’s almost identical to what it has been doing for the last 30 years: cut “structural costs,” wait for future products to bring salvation, and count on cash from the other regions (and, now, the government) to help prop things up in the meantime. But they effect no truly fundamental changes in the business, its structure or the people running it (as they are clearly the best and brightest, know how to manage things in a serious way, and have a sound plan).

The proposed changes are touted as “profound” and “fundamental” but are really the minimum change from status quo the company believes it can get away with. There is a profound reluctance to make hard decisions that would cause short term pain but would lead to fixing the problem in the long run; instead there is a continual compromise of action that leads to “too little, too late” but defers immediate catastrophe. This is reflected in every aspect of the enterprise, from decisions on manufacturing, which never bring capacity into line with market realities, to people, where almost no one is ever fired for poor performance. This has not worked before and it is difficult to believe it will work now.

Part four will be published tomorrow.

Guerilla Knitting

2009-02-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

Kathy at Thistledown Yarn keeps asking me if I've been to downtown Suttons Bay lately. I finally went over there today to pick up some books that I ordered from Peter Makin at Brillian Books. That's when I found what Peter referred to as "The Guerilla Knitting" on all of the power poles. Peter says that they all appeared the night of the Superbowl.

Right now I'm reading Loiuse Erdrich's The Game of Silence, the second of the Omakayas stories.

Anna and Rose

2009-02-05T20:58:00.002-05:00

This was in 2005, back when Anna and Rose were still hanging out together. Anna would wake up everyday and figure out what to do with Rose. Rose was good at hide and seek, or at sitting with a treat on her nose until Anna told her to eat it. She would wear dresses, or wait at the bottom of a tree while Anna climbed. Anna tried to get her to ride on the sled or in the wagon. Rose politely refused.

When Anna was born, Rose was just over a year old, still puppy silly, and I told her that she needed to grow up and become responsible so she could help me raise this kid. Rose always barked at anyone passing by, so I felt safe letting the two of them play out in the fenced yard. Anna learned to be responsible about closing the gate to keep Rose in. Later she learned to go out and find Rose when she ran away.

Now Rose is old and can barely make it up the porch steps, much less play. She is blind and deaf; to get her to go anywhere we have to put our hands on her and point her in the right direction. She can't hear the back door open or even a knock on the door. Her digestive system is problematic; she is flatulent and sometimes poops involuntarily. I know that she won't be with us much longer but I hope she sees another spring.

The Ice Report

2009-02-04T23:00:00.005-05:00

Seems like reporting on ice all is I do anymore. I've had a big uptick in blog traffic from folks looking to know how much of the Great Lakes are iced over, so I've posted a new graphic and will let you all click here to stay updated. Lake Michigan is cold. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, there may be ice as far as you can see. Suttons Bay is frozen over at the foot of M-204, but I haven't seen any fishermen out there yet.

Last night the temperature was below zero at dawn and it didn't move out of the single digits despite the clear sunny morning. The good result of a nearly frozen Lake Michigan is the end of lake effect snow that comes from dreary lake effect clouds. The days are brighter, sunnier, and longer.

I'm doing another sort of ice reporting as well. The people in the condo next to my parents' place left their heat down too low when they left town and the pies froze, burst, and then leaked unattended for quite some time. It had been cold enough that the leak wasn't discovered until a contractor turned the heat up in the place below and melted the ice upstairs. What a mess! As it turns out my parents' place is pretty much OK but the neighbor's place must be completely gutted and rebuilt. Paying a cottage care service to keep an eye on things is a small expense in comparison.

Our Hoop Housing Neighbors on NPR

2009-02-04T21:36:00.002-05:00

Mature greens in Jon and Jenny's hoop house, mid April of 2005. I think this was the first year they ran the hoop house.

I never look at this picture without wishing for an excuse to post it to the blog again. Tonight I got my wish. As I hopped into the car and headed off to the planning commission meeting, I heard a familiar voice on NPR. Jon Watts and Jenny Tutlis of Meadowlark Farm, just up the road, were featured in a piece on season-extending farming in the frozen North. For years Jon and Jenny have been our faithful neighbors, the ones who trade chicken chores so we can leave town now and then, the parents of Anna's friend Ella, and Liz's much loved employers last and next summer.

You can hear the whole interview or read the transcript by clicking here.

The Dirt on Kids

2009-02-03T11:09:00.007-05:00

Two new articles about parenting came out yesterday, verifying my suspicions about workaholic parents and dirt. The first, from England, details a study that looks at childhood well-being. The headline, Selfish adults 'damage childhood' pretty much says it all:

The aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children, a major independent report on childhood says. It calls for a sea-change in social attitudes and policies to counter the damage done to children by society. Family break-up, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education and income inequality are mentioned as big contributing factors.

The report itself is not likely to be popular, as it points out the detrimental effects that divorce, two working parents, and too much competition in education have on kids. The report's recommendations are interesting:

a civil birth ceremony conducted by a registrar in which parents publicly accept the responsibilities of parenthood

free parenting classes available around the time of birth

free psychological and family support if relationships struggle

rules making it easier for parents to stay at home to rear their children

And

abolishing sats tests and league tables in English schools

a ban on all advertising aimed at the under 12s and no TV commercials for alcohol or unhealthy food before the 9pm watershed

stopping building on any open space where children play

a high-quality youth centre for every 5,000 young people

I'm not sure about that last one. I think the high quality play environment ought to be in one's backyard with a parent watching out, but not too close.

This brings us to the second article, sent to me yesterday by Liz. I'm sure she was thinking of the low cost play space she and Shelagh enjoyed when they were young. We had a sandy bank in the yard, and if they begged Dad, he would bring over a shovel and loosen the sand to make a pile to play in and a hole to excavate. The "dirt pile" was a major draw in our yard; kids would get a glimpse of the dirt pile from the back seat and they were all over it, down on their knees and getting dirty before anyone could say no. Often there was a dog or a chicken helping to dig, that's how the they came up with the summer "Chicken Circus" in which chickens would ride on bike handle bars and "fly" though hula-hoops.

I'm sure some readers are clucking to themselves at the unsanitaryness of all this. The article Liz sent, Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You is provocative, but it might gross you out:

Ask mothers why babies are constantly picking things up from the floor or ground and putting them in their mouths, and chances are they’ll say that it’s instinctive — that that’s how babies explore the world. But why the mouth, when sight, hearing, touch and even scent are far better at identifying things?

When my young sons were exploring the streets of Brooklyn, I couldn’t help but wonder how good crushed rock or dried dog droppings could taste when delicious mashed potatoes were routinely rejected.

Since all instinctive behaviors have an evolutionary advantage or they would not have been retained for millions of years, chances are that this one too has helped us survive as a species. And, indeed, accumulating evidence strongly suggests that eating dirt is good for you.......

.....“What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”

One leading researcher, Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, the director of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said in an interview that the immune system at birth “is like an unprogrammed computer. It needs instruction.”

He said that public health measures like cleaning up contaminated water and food have saved the lives of countless children, but they “also eliminated exposure to many organisms that are probably good for us.”

“Children raised in an ultraclean environment,” he added, “are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuits.”

I must admit that it's kind of fun to hear the "ultraclean environment" moms getting scolded for once. They should give up some cleaning and volunteer a little more.

The idea that being infected with intestinal worms conveys an immunity to disease is really new:

Immunologists now recognize a four-point response system of helper T cells: Th 1, Th 2, Th 17 and regulatory T cells. Th 1 inhibits Th 2 and Th 17; Th 2 inhibits Th 1 and Th 17; and regulatory T cells inhibit all three, Dr. Elliott said.

“A lot of inflammatory diseases — multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and asthma — are due to the activity of Th 17,” he explained. “If you infect mice with worms, Th 17 drops dramatically, and the activity of regulatory T cells is augmented.”

In answer to the question, “Are we too clean?” Dr. Elliott said: “Dirtiness comes with a price. But cleanliness comes with a price, too. We’re not proposing a return to the germ-filled environment of the 1850s. But if we properly understand how organisms in the environment protect us, maybe we can give a vaccine or mimic their effects with some innocuous stimulus.”

In the end, we weren't going to keep all of those germs out of the baby's mouth, anyway. It's nice to know that letting them out of the car seat and into the dirt was what they really needed all along.

Why Appreciate

2009-01-30T23:55:00.012-05:00

I came home from the Michigan Townships Association conference last Thursday. While there is much to share about the conference, what I've thought about was the ride home. Jane Keen, our township clerk, volunteered to drive. I rode shotgun while our town supervisor, Harry Larkin, rode in the back seat. As 3/5 of the Town Board, we had an obligation to steer the conversation away from specific matters of township business, so as not to violate the open meetings act. On the four hour drive, the conversations pretty much centered around our families, the economy, and cars. We were riding in a 2003 Jaguar that Jane's husband had found while working in his retirement business, which I understood to be custom detailing for car dealerships. With business so slow this winter, Jim had recently laid himself off so that his two employees could keep working. They were looking forward to a father-son snowmobile trip this week and expecting another grandchild. Our supervisor's business centers on automotive parts manufacturing, Jane knows the dealership end of auto business, and I am the environmentalist casino dealer trying to figure out how we are going to live sustainably, with or without the internal combustion engine, so there was a lot of car stuff to talk about, even if we hadn't been en route to The Motor City.

On the way home we talked about the conference. We compared notes, measuring our township's procedures against what we had heard the experts describe as wise or lawful or proper. Since I'm new on the job, I had a lot of questions, and usually I found out that our practices were pretty much on the mark. We also shared some of the horror stories that had come out in the question and answer periods. I'm sure glad I'm not in the township where the board won't approve any of the supervisor's appointments to the planning commission and the guy whose term has expired won't give up the seat. After sitting through an insurance presentation (for the free lunch) I'm glad that we don't have retirees with benefits to fund, either.

Jane and Harry observed that the level of competency at these conferences has gone up over the years, even as the average age of township officials has gone down. They attributed this to the modernization of statutes governing townships and how people who couldn't learn and change, the "that's the way we've always done it" crowd just couldn't keep up. At the conference the discussions kept coming back to the importance of ethics in government. Almost like an arranged counterpoint, we heard a car radio broadcast of Rod Blagojevich's impeachment speech, which oddly echoed Randy Orton's caricature of a canned apology on last week's Monday Night Raw wrestling show.

I was still feeling good the next morning when I posted a comment on No Impact Man's blog about counting one's blessings. It was a shock when I called Chauncey, our county commissioner, and heard from him that Jane's husband had passed away at home while we were driving home. She had come home and found him already gone, an apparent heart attack. I keep thinking about what a presence Jim had been during that car ride. What strikes me in retrospect is how much she talked about him, and how much she seemed to appreciate him. I told Jane as much when I dropped off pies on Saturday for the family that was gathering. "What a difference a few hours can make!" was her summation of the situation.

Services for Jim Keen are to be held next Saturday, February 7th at 3 pm, ay the Leland Community United Methodist Church, as announced on The Leland Report. I titled this post "Why Appreciate" as a companion to the How to Appreciate I posted a few weeks ago, but it might as well be "When to Appreciate."

The answer is: "Always. Who knows when you'll get the chance again."

On The Fly

2009-01-28T15:12:00.002-05:00

Just a quick post from the Michigan Township Association's Annual meeting at the Rennaissance Center in Detroit. I'm on the 22nd floor, with a slim view of belle Isle. Eating Dinner last night I kept thinking of Grandma Mimi's stories of wild timesw in Detroit and WInsor in the 1920's. Especially about that time she dressed up like a sailor to see the burlesque show....

Peanut Butter Recall Hits Home

2009-01-26T21:44:00.002-05:00

Most of these food recalls don't affect me much. We buy very little supermarket produce in the winter and almost none once the garden gets going. I did buy a case of these peanut butter crackers last winter as a backup snack for Chess Club. They are not too sugary, kids like them, and they should keep for a good long time, even riding around in the trunk of the car all winter.

Well, maybe I was wrong about that last part. These crackers are the latest recall, since they seem to harbor salmonella that came from a peanut packing plant that sold "peanut paste" to various snack food manufacturers. This product is sold in vending machines all over the place and is the sort of snack that people look for when they want healthy foods for kids. People too busy for a real meal and preschoolers seem like the sort of people who will probably get sick instead of fighting the infection off.

For me, the lesson is "Don't be too busy to cook." But I know how to cook. Both of my college kids report that their peers know next to nothing about cooking. One of Liz's friends was in her kitchen when he saw an unfamiliar object:

"What's that?"

"It's an onion!"

"Really? Can I cut it and see if I cry?"

Shelagh says that most of her friends don't cook. They subsist on take out and Lean Cuisine. That's got to be expensive. I hope they don't have a peanut noodle dinner.

As long as I'm rambling about food, I will tell what has happened to my baking blog. It started out as a place to expand on my bread baking advice, but as the kids grew up and left home it became a handy place to post the recipes that they most missed from home and wanted to cook. I embedded a recipe template so that it was quick and easy to insert ingredient lists and directions. I posted recipes steadily for a while, but now when they call home for a recipe, it's usually there. Anna and I shot some footage of learning to knead last winter, but I have to find time to learn how to edit before that gets published.

How to Appreciate.

2009-01-22T22:35:00.003-05:00

I saw the beginning of this State Department briefing when I was break at work today. I post it because I want to share the first two or three minutes, not for the foreign policy points, but for the way our president sincerely and publicly appreciates the people of the state department, the work they do and the sacrifices they make. How we speak to each other makes such a difference, and most people don't practice appreciation enough to do it so sincerely and eloquently. I'm sure the morale at the State department increased by a factor of 10 today.

(Isn't YouTube great? I can watch something live on TV this afternoon and share it this evening!)

Obama Inauguration.

2009-01-21T10:15:00.002-05:00

The parking places were few. It was cold. The line was long. We had to sign in with our name, address, and occupation to be admitted.

No, it wasn't The Inauguration. It was the Inauguration Party at the Leland Lodge last night. Because the $10 cover charge was considered a political donation, all of our information was required, and there was a bottleneck as people struggled to remember their employer's zip code. Eventually they improvised some clipboards and passed them through the crowd, and we could come in from the cold.

The whole night was happily crowded. The two bartenders were mobbed; the finger food was wiped out; I kept seeing folks I wanted to hug, but I couldn't get through the crowd.

Being a Democrat in Leelanau has always meant being out of step with everyone else. When I decided to run for township trustee, many people told me that I should just suck up and pretend to be a Republican because no Democrat could be elected in this county. I found that, as our president said yesterday, "the ground has shifted" and we are now a two party county.

There was some confusion as to the appropriate greeting for the occasion. I started out saying "Happy Inauguration Day!" but some shortened it to "Happy Day!" a few people were saying "Happy Birthday!" and one friend just said "Happy I can breathe again." The happiness was not so giddy, though. There was a heavy sense of work to be done, and a sort of comfort that we were to be measured by our capacity to work rather than the size of our bank accounts. Many of the people I spoke to were focused squarely on our local community, hatching practical plans to save energy, feed people, put people to work.

Many of us have been trying to solve these problems for years. The difference now is feeling that instead of perpetually tacking upwind we might have the wind at our backs for a while and be supported by the highest level of government. As I told a friend last night: "I know how to work hard and you know how to work hard. And I think most of the people here know how to work hard. Just think what we can get done when someone puts us all on the same task!"

Here we go......

Inauguration Prayer.

2009-01-19T21:42:00.003-05:00

Yesterday's concert on the mall was televised by HBO, although I understand they skipped this invocation by an openly gay Episcopal bishop. I liked the opening:

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will bless us with tears – tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women in many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless this nation with anger – anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort at the easy, simplistic answers we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be fixed anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility, open to understanding that our own needs as a nation must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

Bless us with compassion and generosity, remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable.

I'm also reading that HBO is trying to censor all footage of the celebration, even persinal cellphone footage, from YouTube, citing copyright laws. Watch Pete Seeger, below, while you can.

Great Lakes Ice Cover

2009-01-19T21:38:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure if this is a year that Lake Michigan will freeze over, but we certainly have a candidate. This is the ice cover map from last Friday, showing Geen Bay, Georgian Bay, and most of Lake Erie ice covered. Pretty good for only halfway through January.

Winter Weather Report

2009-01-15T10:13:00.003-05:00

This is yesterday's depiction of Lake Michigan temperatures, and it explains a lot. Those big blobs of green are surface water in the 40's. They explain why we, so near the lake have not had the sub-zero temperatures that people in the middle of the state have experienced. They also explain why it just keeps snowing, lake effect snow, two or more inches every day. The flakes are very fine lately, but they add up anyway.

Liz, down in Evanston, has that dark blue, 32 degrees water off her beach, which is rapidly turning to ice. She sent me their weather report, 7 below zero this morning with a windchill of minus 27. They have about a foot and a half of snow, more than her roommate has ever seen.

I'm cheering the cold weather, imaging the squash bugs dying in their underground hiding places for the first time in a few years. I'm also looking forward to the lake cooling enough to shut off the lake effect and give us some weeks without constant snow.

Leland Library Renovation

2009-01-14T12:46:00.002-05:00

Each Leland Township trustee acts as the township representative a commission or board in addition to sitting on the town board. My assignment is the Leland Library Board. Today was my first library board meeting and it was an important one as we were reviewing bids for the upcoming renovation project.

Construction is scheduled to begin in mid February and to be finished mid May. Much of the collection will go into storage, but a skeleton collection will be available in a temporary setup in the Munnecke Room. Right now there is a silent auction going on to sell many of the current furnishings, including bookshelves, tables, and chairs. Bid sheets are attached to items throughout the library and the bidding will end Saturday at 4 pm.

Gum Surgery

2009-01-13T16:20:00.002-05:00

I had gum surgery this morning, taking a piece of tissue from the roof of my mouth and using it to shore up the gum line on my lower front where it's always been sparse. It's the sort of thing I'd be tempted to put off, but like most people these days I'm not real secure about my job-dependent health insurance. I decided to get it done while I had dental coverage.

Thinking about it was worse than the reality. It took about 40 minutes, start to finish, and the only pain was from the Novocaine injections. Sometime during the procedural, the doctor was making that one sided small talk and he started telling about his friend in the Coast Guard, stationed "on the Wisconsin-Canada border". I started going "UNHHHH!" because Wisconsin just doesn't have a border with Canada, and then he corrected himself and said "Minnesota". I was hoping his dental geography was better than his Midwest geography, but it was too late to turn back by then.

It's funny to feel sewing going on inside one's mouth. The Novacaine wore off with a curious popping sensation as I drove through Suttons Bay. I'm spending the rest of the day reading and trying to stay warm as the temperature drops into the single digits.

2009-01-12T22:14:00.001-05:00

I worry about our president-elect, with so much crashing down on his shoulders. I liked watching this on the spot video of Barack's lunch at the chili dog stand.

20 Billion Dollars

2009-01-07T11:15:00.007-05:00

I'm old enough that when Carl Sagan said "billions and billions" it sounded like an unimaginable amount. Okay, I'm old enough that they didn't teach "billions" when I was in school. I have to look it up every time. One billion is one thousand multiplied by one million or 1,000,000,000.

Yet I've been contemplating twenty billion dollars, or $20,000,000,000. That's how much money the people of Michigan spend on outside energy sources -- oil and gasoline, coal, natural gas -- each year. The number came from Dr. Stephen Harsh, of Michigan State University, who was a speaker at the wind energy workshop that I attended last November. Of course, oil prices have fallen since then, so we may be spending less right now. Maybe only $10 billion, if you can say "only" and "$10 billion" in the same breath. No wonder we're broke!

I still can't get my mind around that number, but I have another number to contemplate: 60%. That's how much of Michigan's electricity is generated using coal. Despite all the propaganda to the contrary, all coal burned in power plants today releases its full load of CO2 up the stack. In the future we will be replacing coal plants with wind farms -- a new wind farm is already cheaper to build than a new coal plant -- but for now, electricity use is inextricably linked to coal.

Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting another MSU faculty, Dr. Kirk Heinze, on my blackjack table. After talking to Dr. Heinze, I checked out his blog, which features podcasts of his weekly radio show, The Greening of the Great Lakes. The latest show, which aired January 2nd, featured an interview with Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. She is enthusiastic about Michigan's energy future, but adamant that it is time to save energy, RIGHT NOW, particularly by doing the old fashioned thing and turning out the lights when nobody is using them.

Well. I had been thinking that very thing on Christmas Eve, as I went out around midnight to check for Santa and saw, not a star in the east, but the glow of the parking lot lights at the new county office building lighting up most of the ENE. There was a time when this sort of thing would have made me long for lost dark skies. Now all I can think is "$20 billion dollars!" when I see all that wasted energy.

The governor sounded a little crazed when she talked about turning out lights. She sounded like your old grandpa, following everyone around from room to room turning out the lights. I've been acting like that at home. I haven't bought an incandescent bulb in years, and I'm looking to upgrade the CFLs to LEDs as soon as I can. I still walk around turning things off.

I've gone back to trying to turn my community's lights off, as well. As township trustee, I've been reviewing the records of the township/county agreement that allowed for the construction of the Connie Binsfield building. I came upon the original land use permit hearing minutes, which seem to require those parking lot lights to go off at night. They've been bugging me for ten years -- they waste money and make my neighborhood look trashy. Maybe I will finally get them turned off. I've also been asking questions at the new county building, and the maintainence department there is looking into replacing the high powered flagpole and sign lights with sky-friendly solar units. They have also agreed to leave the parking lot lights off on weekends and holidays.

Twenty billion dollars. One lightbulb at a time.

The Happy New Year Egg

2009-01-01T23:19:00.000-05:00

We've been following the chicken named Mr McFluffers since she was an egg in a clutch under the broody hen. On August 11th, Anna's birthday, she was one of two hatchlings, then the only survivor, with a dedicated mother hen to hang out with. Somewhere along the line we figured out that Mr McFluffers was a girl, even though she has spur buds, a feature of the Mediteranean breeds of hens.

When a chicken was needed for the school play, Mr McFluffers' mom had gone back to join the flock, but McFluffers had not found a place in the pecking order and was usually alone outside or in the entryway to the barn, looking like the Ugly Duckling. So Mr McFluffers was our pick for the school play, where the village idiot character was trying to teach her to talk.

This morning, New Years Day, I went out to the barn to give the chickens food and water and found Mr McFluffers on her usual perch in the entry way and a small egg in the straw in the corner. I took it as a good sign for the new year that our hen from an egg is now laying eggs of her own.

A Hummingbird Story

2008-12-29T10:43:00.002-05:00

In early fall, two years ago, I found this lifeless hummingbird ensnared in our garden gate. We always have lots of half grown hummingbirds around that time of year, swooping down on the feeders and playing tag in the air. This one must have misjudged the nature of chicken wire and run out of energy while trapped. It was beautiful and delicate, even when dead.

I took some photos and then worked it out of the chicken wire and showed it to Anna. She packed it into a little cotton-lined box that had once housed jewelry and showed it to everyone who visited. The next day she took it to school to show her fifth grade class.

On the third day she decided to have a funeral. She dug a hole under the pine tree, and opened the box to say a few words about the deceased. The cat seemed to be participating, so she held the bird out for the cat to say his last words. That is when the cat jumped up, snatched the hummingbird, and swallowed it whole before she could do anything about it.

Last summer Anna had another funeral for the one-eyed baby chick that lived only a few days. The cat dug up the deceased and ate it. I'm hoping she gets this funeral thing a little more finessed before it's time for mine.

Another Lousy picture of my Exciting Life

2008-12-28T23:23:00.001-05:00

We were driving to Leland to see my folks, checking out the ice, which was punky today after our record high temps yesterday. We saw something out on the ice, bigger than a bird, and moving fast. It was an otter, alternately running across the ice and then sliding on its belly through the puddles. It seemed to be heading towards the open water of the river, but in no particular hurry.

We have seen otters in the river, in fact one year a mother raised her pups under the dock in front of my parents' condo. We'd never seen one out on the ice before. I think the ice was strong enough for an otter, but maybe not for coyotes and other predators. It was an otter's day to play.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T22:28:00.002-05:00

Everyone is home. Much snow. Much mayhem. All is well. Enjoy.

Choir Christmas

2008-12-04T11:21:00.002-05:00

We are looking forward to this weekend's Leelanau Children's Choir Madrigal Christmas concerts, at 7:30 pm on Friday and Saturday at the Northport Community Arts Center. Anna is my only performer this year, and my work schedule has been such that I will attend Friday's performance without overhearing any of the rehearsals. Only occasionally do I get to hear a choir concert "fresh" with no idea what will happen, and I enjoy the new perspective.

I have a pet peeve about parents who videotape each and every one of their kids' performances, especially when the lit screen of their camera interferes with my ability to concentrate on the performance in a darkened hall. For me, the here-and-now quality of a live performance is part of the appeal, sort of like a sunset or a rainbow.

This is an old photo, of my three girls and Hunter Bell, standing in front of "Fluffy", the boar whose head is one of the Madrigal props. It was taken
after a performance. You can kind of see Fluffy's snout behind Shelagh.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-29T19:56:00.001-05:00

It was a lovely weekend. All three daughters, and our son in law, were home for the weekend, and my sister visited with her family. We ate our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday, all fourteen of us, so as to leave Thursday open so that Shelagh and Liz could spend time with husband's and boyfriend's family. This left me time to do a lot of cooking and prep work ahead of time. After I put the turkey in the oven, there was not much left to do, so I left the rest to the kids, who whipped up appetizer plates while Richard opened wine.

I had sweet potatoes, part of my experiment in adjusting to climate change by learning to grow warm weather crops. The peanuts were a flop, I had little bit of okra, but the sweet potatoes did quite well. I had seen a recipe in the Penzey's catalog for curried sweet potatoes, but I had no garam masala. I sent all the kids down to NJ's to get last minute stuff, and Liz asked Dave Chugh, one of her Leland classmates, who went in back and dipped out of his mom's spice containers. It was only fitting because I had split my okra crop with his mom last summer.

The whole weekend kept folding back on itself like that. The younger kids tumbled around from parlor to stairwell, to the other parlor, to the kitchen, to the first parlor, and then all around again. The girls played piano and challenged each other at Scramble. On Saturday they all rolled out Christmas cookies and decorated them while my sister and I went to pick holly.

Now it's Sunday. The college kids have left and I must get ready to go to work.

Sworn In

2008-11-20T13:38:00.002-05:00

Today I took my oath of office down at the town hall, swearing to uphold the Constitution of the United States, th Constitution of the State of Michigan, and the laws of Leland Township and the county of Leelanau to the best of my ability.

Wildfires as Weapons

2008-11-18T10:05:00.004-05:00

We had a wildfire up on Popp Road last week. It burned about 50 acres and threatened our friends' home and farm. In the end, with all county fire crews responding, it was contained and our friends lost only their woods and a row of peach trees. I didn't think that the fire danger was that extreme, but the source of the fire, a brush pile, seems to have smoldered for a week or more until the wind shifted to the east and whipped it up again.

I can't imagine how it feels to live in dry country when the wildfires come up and move fast. This was the terror that the Japanese wanted to turn on the US during WW II, using a simple, ancient, but remarkably effective technology -- paper balloons capable of drifting across the Pacific on the jet stream and then igniting wildfires when they hit the dry land. The fire balloons were kept secret by the US government, both to prevent fear in the US and to deny the Japanese any evidence that their plan was working. But it did work surprisingly well -- over 300 fire balloons landed in the US, one nearly reaching Detroit.

My brother Tim found this WW II training film in the National Archive and posted it with comments about the research for his new novel. Red Rain, based on the stories of the fire balloons. He first heard of the fire balloons while working on a fire crew when he was in college, and he incorporates some of his fire fighting experiences into the story.

Getting the film from the National Archives was, in Tim's words, "Another adventure."

Building Community

2008-11-17T12:16:00.006-05:00

This is a poster that hangs in Mr. Evans' music room at Leland School. I liked it so much that I had to find it on the web. The text reads as follows:

Turn off your TV.
Leave your house.
Know your neighbors, Look up when you are walking;
Greet people; Sit on your stoop; Plant flowers;
Use your library; Play together;
Buy from local merchants; Share what you have;
Help a lost dog; Take children to the park;
Garden together; Support neighborhood schools;
Fix it even if you didn't break it;
Have pot lucks; Honor elders;
Pick up litter; Read stories aloud;
Dance in the street; Talk to the mail carrier;
Listen to the birds; Put up a swing;
Help carry something heavy; Barter for your goods;
Start a tradition; Ask a question;
Hire young people for odd jobs; Organize a block party;
Bake extra and share; Ask for help when you need it;
Open your shades; Sing together;
Share your skills; Take back the night;
Turn up the music; Turn down the music;
Listen before you react to anger; Mediate a conflict;
Seek to understand; Learn from new and uncomfortable angles;
Know that no one is silent athough many are not heard.
Work to change this.

Mr McFluffers Goes to School

2008-11-13T22:29:00.002-05:00

The second hand store cage was too small, so our raised-from-egg chicken, Mr. McFluffers, will be appearing in this weekend's production of Fools in this lovely brass cage complete with a stick perch scavenged from the playground at Leland School. You can see from the photo that the cage was originally topless, but we wove a new top for it from fishing line.

Life in the theater is not all glamor and makeup. Here Mr Mc Fluffers sips some water amid the hubbub of final carpentry work on the upturned cow prop downstage and Mr Cox tuning the piano upstage.

Fools will be presented this weekend only:

Saturday, November 15 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm

Sunday, November 16 at 7:00 pm

Leland Public School • Performing Art Center

Tickets $8 adults, $5 students – available at the door or in advance by calling 256-9857.

As mother of the chicken, I had a special seat at the dress rehearsal. I was impressed by the expressive and tightly knit cast, hilarious dialogue, and one very talented hen. Don't miss it!

Fools

2008-11-11T16:42:00.002-05:00

From the school newsletter:

One weekend only! • November 15 & 16

Leland High School Drama presents Fools, by Neil Simon. Directed by Jeremy John Evans.

Saturday, November 15 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm

Sunday, November 16 at 7:00 pm

Leland Public School • Performing Art Center

Tickets $8 adults, $5 students – available at the door or in advance by calling 256-9857.

This story, by Neil Simon, takes place when Leon Tolchinsky, an ambitious young school teacher, arrives in the village of Kulyenchikov, and discovers that the town is suffering under a 200-year curse of stupidity. The curse was cast on them by none other than Vladimir Yousekevitch, after his son’s fiancé was forbidden to see the younger Yousekevitch by her father, who found out the boy was illiterate. She subsequently was made to marry another man. If Leon can’t educate the fiancés descendent within 24 hours of his arrival in Kulyenchikov, he, too, will fall victim to the curse. The curse can only be broken if he can educate Sophia…or if she marries a Yousekevitch!

Hilarity ensues as this fast-paced comedy with quick and witty banter takes place on our Leland Performing Arts Center stage. As always, our Leland productions are brought to you in part by the generous donations of the Verdier Circle of Friends.

The Och family's contribution to this production is......a chicken. Jeremy called me a few weeks ago to ask if they could borrow a chicken, in a cage, for the character who is trying to teach a chicken to talk. The chicken is easy to come by, if a bit challenging to wrangle, but a cage suitable for a Russian village is something else. I think I found a candidate at Jaffe's consignment shop in Lake Leelanau, a cute ornamental cage. Now if the chicken will only fit inside.....

Tandem Ciders

2008-11-08T22:57:00.007-05:00

Cider maker Dan Young serves a packed house on Saturday afternoon.
Even with gas down to 2.15 per gallon, I know that getting in the car to run just one errand is a waste of my carbon footprint. Still, I needed to go over to the casino to pick up my paycheck, so on the way back I decided to check out the Tandem Ciders sign that has be recently erected on M-22 at Setterbo Road.

I had a idea of what was up there thanks to an article in this week's Leelanau Enterprise, but hard cider has always been something that happened by accident, something that figured in Grandpa Gord's stories of growing up in the UP, or in the case of a friend's old-school grandmother, something that teetotalers drank because it wasn't really alcohol. So it was funny, at least to me, to find that I had inadvertently joined a throng of wine-tasters working their way from one winery to the next. The small tasting room was packed, proprietor Dan Young was swamped, and I ended up talking to a lady who was not quite sure where she had ended up.

"So what is this hard cider?" she asked me, looking at her the contents of her sample glass, a clear, dry, golden cider made from old-fashioned Northern Spy apples. Northern Spys, an heirloom variety from the 19th century, were Grandpa Gord's favorite apple, the same apples that I sought out for him every fall in the last years of his life.

"It's wine made from apples."

"You can make wine from apples?"

"Sure. You know the sweet cider that we drink in the fall? That's unfiltered apple juice. If you ferment it, you get hard cider."

Just as the sweet ciders can vary greatly in taste depending on the apples used, the three hard ciders I tasted each had their own character. The Northern Spy was dry and sophisticated, nice, but a little formal for just knocking around on this beautiful fall day. The Farmhouse blend used the varieties that were the mainstays of the apple industry 30 years ago -- Macintosh, Romes, (did he mention Empires?) a little Delicious -- for a sweeter taste that seemed a little thin, at least when it followed the Northern Spy.

I liked the Bees Dream, a blend made with a different yeast. This one was just nice, a full, friendly hard cider. All three ciders that I tasted were 2007 apples. The folks on the other side of me were drinking this year's Macintosh, which was being served on tap, but the barrel ran out before I could try it. Being new, it was still a tad cloudy and the folks enjoying it, friends of the proprietor, praised it as the best cider there.

I bought a bottle of Bee's Dream, for $10. They were also selling gallons of fresh cider, one of the few places where you can still buy fresh cider so late in the season.

Tandem Ciders is located on Setterbo Road, across from the Toy House. It is the white barn with the bicycle-built-for-two above the door. When you go there, check out the dark-sky-friendly light fixtures above the doors.

Tandem Ciders is open Wed-Sat from 11 a.m - 7 p.m. and Sun from Noon to 5 p.m.

Liz's Night in Grant Park

2008-11-06T10:10:00.005-05:00

Our daughter Liz, a junior at Northwestern University, landed tickets to Obama's acceptance speech on election night. Here is her account:

Getting off the train in Chicago was like stepping into another world, one that could easily be called "Obama-land". On every street corner and scattered in between were vendors selling Obama paraphernalia—shirts, buttons, hats. The air was charged with anticipation, even blocks away from Grant Park; it was impossible not to be excited. Although our group had planned to stop to eat on the way to the park, once on the sidewalks of Chicago, it was clear where our feet were going to lead us, and it was not the nearest Taco Bell.

We reached the entrance to the park and went through the first checkpoint. It wasn't even 5:00 yet; gates were said to open at 8:30. Another Northwestern student painted our faces with the Obama emblem while we waited. Soon more people were gathered behind us than in front of us, and around this time the Democratic Party, or maybe the City of Chicago decided to open the gates early, and we began our long journey through more checkpoints and finally, the metal detectors. Polls closed in some states at 6:00, and we began to hear snippets of exit polls and early results from the "outside world" via cell phone. The wait at this point is unbearable. Finally, mercifully, we empty our pockets, walk through the metal detectors…and we're in!

The park itself wasn't even half full when we got inside. CNN was being aired on a giant screen, keeping the rally-goers current on election results. We begin our search for food and find pizza ($5/slice, apparently "slightly more upscale" than the pizza served to non-ticketholders). While we were eating the pizza, a CBS news reporter catches sight of our painted faces and ends up interviewing my friend Dan and I for TV; this wouldn't be the last time our face paint got us noticed. Soon after we finished eating, CNN projected Michigan for Obama. I cheered loudly.

We found a spot to stand with a passable view of the stage and a pretty good view of the screen. My recollection of the next couple of hours is hazy. More and more states were being called for both candidates, with Obama taking states with large numbers of electoral college votes and McCain grabbing up smaller states. At some point Ohio was called for Obama. Then, finally, Virginia. It is 10 seconds before 10:00 CT and we count down to the polls closing in California and other western states, knowing that with California's electoral votes, Obama has the nomination.

8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT! There is an explosion of sound as every single person in Grant Park reads those words on the screen. We had been expecting the countdown to end with "Polls closed", or even "California goes to Obama", but most of us weren't expecting the race to be called at that moment. People are hugging, and crying, and screaming, and jumping up and down. It is surreal and dreamlike and…perfect. As much as we had all thought, wanted, and above all, hoped this would happen, there was no sense of this being the predicted outcome. After two years of hoping for change, we had suspended that hope just in case it didn't happen. Hope, but don't get your hopes up. And now…suddenly…we had every reason in the world to feel hopeful.

There was a lot of cheering and picture-taking and general happiness as we waited for McCain's speech. We had been making fun of the McCain rally when it appeared on the screen throughout the night; here we were, hundreds of thousands of people gathered outside in Chicago, dressed and painted and EXCITED! And McCain was in a hotel in Phoenix with who we could only assume to be the most elite of the Republican Party. There was no joking, however, when McCain gave his speech. The speech itself was so different from what we've heard from McCain lately; he praised Obama as his "supporters" booed. In Grant Park, we clapped for McCain, sometimes to be polite, but mostly because he was saying things worth clapping for. We were looking again at the McCain who won the Republican nomination, the man who could once be thought of as a "maverick". The only time our Grant Park audience didn't perform better than the McCain's Phoenix one was at the mention of Sarah Palin, when the entire park let out a (presumably involuntary) snort of laughter.

And then, finally, it was our turn. Time for Obama to address us with one of his famed speeches. The announcer man said "Ladies and Gentlemen…" and we all held our breath, only to have the man leading a prayer announced to us. And then the man leading the Pledge of Allegiance. And then the woman singing the National Anthem. And then, not one, not two, but three songs. And then, finally, FINALLY… the entire Obama family is on stage. The future First Family of the United States of America is on stage. And we are within (strained) eyesight.

Obama's speech was everything we had been waiting for. He was eloquent, deliberate, and modest. His victory was not his own—it belonged to each one of us who struck a ballot for him, to everyone who worked on the campaign, for every single person who donated even the smallest amount to the cause. I was surprised to discover later that the speech only lasted about 15 minutes; few people can convey such a powerful message in so little time. I have no words to describe how breathtaking the speech was, and I urge everyone to watch it online. The video cannot recreate the surge of positive energy that was in Grant Park, but the words that our future President speaks can provide hope for America.

Nothing can ever compare to what I witnessed last night in Grant Park. 24 hours later, I'm still giddy, still wearing a ridiculous grin, and still filled with a hope I've never felt before. Uploading my rally pictures onto the computer, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many pictures I had taken of American flags. Before last night, I associated "patriotism" with the Republican Party, a word too often used to justify unpopular agendas. November 4, 2008 changed that. Now, after 20 years of indifference, I finally understand how it feels to be truly proud to be an American.

Here in Leelanau, I'd be careful to use the term "neocon" instead of "Republican" in that last paragraph. Still, there's a first hand account of the beginning of the future.

And The Results......

2008-11-05T09:44:00.004-05:00

It was at 10 pm last night, as I went on break, that one of my card players told me to call the county clerk's office and check on my election results. In the break room there was already a coworker looking up local election results. I had 719 votes, second place in a three way race for two seats, so I had won.

I left work soon after, as soon as a table closed down, and went home to get Anna. The presidential race was looking good for Obama. Grant Park was filling up with people; Liz was there among them. A group of my supporters were having an election party. Anna and I listened to McCain's concession speech on the way over.

I had been thinking about the 2000 election, the first presidential election that Shelagh and Liz were old enough to understand. Liz and I slept on the floor of the living room watching TV as the race was called, first for Bush, then for Gore, and then a tossup that would take weeks to eventually be decided with a sketchy Supreme Court decision.

I have spent the last eight years trying to keep my kids from becoming cynical, trying to to keep alive the faith that what we do, each of us, matters. It has not been all that easy to keep the faith myself when our very nation, up to and including our economy, our constitution and our very atmosphere, has been cynically offered for sale to the highest bidder. Still, with the help of friends, relatives, teachers, neighbors, the kids are alright. Somehow, while we were "Waiting for the World to Change" and I was despairing that we just couldn't wait much longer, they were forming and testing the new networks that elected this new president.

We aren't out of the woods, yet, not by a long shot. Before the 2000 Bush victory party was cut short, we saw them dancing to the strains of "Louie, Louie", the song that played in Animal House right before they trashed the joint. It has been a long, ugly frat party and there are some big ugly chickens that have yet to come home to roost. Obama acknowledged the work ahead last night:

I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

There's lots of work to be done. But I can breathe again. I sat last night watching Obama speak with Anna on my lap, even though she's way to big for laps. She, and Liz out there in the crowd somewhere, and Shelagh, watching election returns with her husband in a loud crowd at a bar in Ann Arbor , they were all proof that we've survived, that I've raised these kids through the dark times with their spirits intact.

Here is a Chicago news video with a short interview with Liz at Grant Park last night.

Election Day Dispatches

2008-11-04T15:15:00.003-05:00

Brother Tim writes from his polling place in Vienna, Virginia:

I did my shift this morning at the polls and several things struck me. First, every 90 minutes to 2 hours, several of the Obama reps came outside with lists of the people who had voted so far. They matched up those names with the lists they had of prospective voters for Obama. By keying names via cell phones into a central computer bank, they were able to quickly determine who had voted and who hadn't. Those who hadn't made it to the polls yet where to be called or even visited in-person. That's what my son was doing later in the day in Vienna -- going door to door for the third straight day.
I was outside, handing out Democratic sample ballots. Of course, not everybody took one. But some people who turned me down going into the poll asked for one coming out. Why? They wanted to hang on to it for historical reasons.

However this shakes out, it will be a memorable night. Either we elect the first person of color to the highest elected position in the land or a genuine war hero mounts the most impressive comeback since Truman beat Dewey a generation ago. Whoever wins is going to need our thoughts, prayers and best intentions. That's what I wrote about in my USA Today column that will appear tomorrow.

Enjoy the wild ride. This has indeed been one for the history books.

Voting in Leland was much less dramatic. There was no line and no last minute campaigning. I was approached twice because I was wearing a button, but it was only Anna's basketball picture so they let it go. There were poll watchers who were marking off names on a voter list when you came through. Ir took 15 minutes to fill out all those bubbles, even though I skipped the unopposed. On the way out we wondered aloud why people in other places had to wait hours to vote, and that voting means so much that people will wait for hours. I was standing outside talking with the neighbors about giving them some creeping thyme when we realized that someone was waiting for their parking place, so we moved on.

Local election results will be posted on the county website as soon as they come in. Liz will send us an account of her night at Grant Park, also.

Election Day

2008-11-04T09:14:00.006-05:00

Finally it's Election Day. At least it's Election Day for everyone who didn't vote by absentee ballot. It's another beautiful late fall day, sunny and warm. The chickens are roaming the yard, playing out their little chicken rivalries. Gas prices are unusually low, $2.26 at the BP station in Lake Leelanau. It's the sort of day that tempts us to think that the golden days might just go on forever, even though all logic tells us otherwise.

Richard has been fishing and has voted already this morning. One 14 inch walleye, not a keeper, and a short wait to vote. I keep thinking about my own campaign, thinking of more people that I could have talked to. I did more door-to-door canvassing, more advertising, and more standing in front of the post office than my opponents.

But I am running as a Democrat in an area where running as a Democrat has always been the kiss of death. It turned out that many of my supporters were the orphaned moderate Republicans. Many of the people I met going door-to-door told me that they were so fed up that they were voting straight Democrat this year. The guy I carpool with won't vote for me, nor will his wife, because "We always vote straight Republican." I ended up leaving party reference off of my pamphlets and ads because all it seemed to do was muddy the waters.

Leland Township will face challenges in the coming years, much as we wish the golden days to go on. Energy prices will make our area less attractive as a Traverse City bedroom community. We can expect Big Wind to come back again with tempting lease terms for our farmers; we will also be confronted with the idea of windmills out on Lake Michigan. Our lake shore septic puzzle isn't going to solve itself. Public school funding will continue to be a problem, exacerbated by those volatile energy prices. A combination of the economic slowdown and Michigan's pop-up tax are already affecting our real estate market in unexpected ways. The harbor renovation will fly or falter depending on state funding.

So many of theses issues will be resolved -- or not resolved--by the various levels of government working in combination. Playing chess with Anna yesterday reminded me of trying to figure out these local issues. The best land for wind towers is in the northern tip of Leelanau county, but there are no transmission lines, but the new Comprehensive Energy Plan provides for expediting the siting transmission lines. There are lots of possible scenarios and how they play out depends on who is elected at the various levels. It's hard to imagine a county board that won't require some type of septic inspections, even if it's only for antique lake shore systems. It's equally hard to imagine a state legislature that actually faces up to school funding and the pop up tax problem.

Liz has tickets to go hear Obama speak at Grant Park tonight. I think it will be a victory speech but I'm wary enough that I warned her to take a friend and stick with him. And to wear shoes she can walk in. I can't stop contemplating all possible scenarios.

So I'm off to vote, to do my small part in shaping our future. Wish me luck.

Don't Forget Leland School!

2008-11-03T10:22:00.003-05:00

When you are voting tomorrow in Leland School district, don't forget to go all the way to the end of the ballot, past the medical marijuana question and the stem cell question, and vote YES on Leland Public School's operational millage renewal.

This is a renewal, not a new tax. It renews the millage on non-homestead properties and it is a requirement -- if we can't pass this millage, Leland School will not receive money to operate next school year.

We pass this renewal millage, and hold the school board election, in May. Putting this millage on the ballot in November will save the expense of a separate election; it does not accelerate the actual collection of the tax.

There are no candidates for school board on the ballot, but there are two write-in candidates. Andrew MacFarlane is ready to serve another term, although he missed the August filing deadline. Janine Fierberg, who was recently appointed to finish Peggy Miller's term, is also willing to continue her service. We are lucky to have two good people ready to put their time and energy into our school.

Susan Och for Leland Township Trustee

2008-10-29T14:55:00.000-04:00

Thanks for making your way to my blog! Looking for information on my campaign for Leland Township Trustee? Here you go:

Why I'm running.

Economic Development in Leland Township

The Lake Shore Sewer and Septic Question

More on Township government

My Grand Vision Experience

Four Reasons to Save Energy

A Windy Week

The League of Women Voters Candidate Information Page

What I Didn't Know About Wind Power

2008-10-28T11:02:00.015-04:00

Monday night's wind energy class, presented by Michigan State Cooperative Extension, was packed with both information and audience. Although I have written about Michigan's Comprehensive Energy Package in brief, This was the first time I'd heard some of the nuts and bolts applications of the new laws. I had the distinct and exciting feeling of moving toward a hopeful energy future and it was wonderful to be sharing that future with a roomful of over 100 people. (There were also 30 people on the waiting list for the workshop, which will be repeated in January. Watch the Leelanau Extension website for details.)

I can't begin to cover the whole workshop, but here are some of the points that have got me thinking:

It's not just for hippies anymore. In Leelanau we've had neighbors using wind generators for decades now. They were usually "back to the land" types, ready to accept limits to their electricity use and able to tolerate outages that required an investment of their own time or money to resolve. Often people lived "off the grid"on sites so remote that the cost of erecting a tower, installing a windmill, batteries, and an inverter to change from AC to DC was still cheaper than stringing wires to the nearest utility pole. The new generation wind energy systems are designed to work "on the grid", feeding electricity into the same power lines that bring the rest of us power. The new systems require no extra inverters or batteries; the grid itself functions as the battery. The many windmills or solar panels plugged into the grid function as a lot of little power plants in this new system of "distributed generation". Many smaller generation sites result in more power being produced and used locally, lessening the strain and waste of moving large amounts of electricity from one region to another.

Michigan's laws have changed to favor home generated energy. Just three weeks ago our legislature signed a Comprehensive Energy Package, committing to meeting 10% of Michigan's energy from renewable sources needs by 2015. This is not just a matter of feeling "green". Right now Michigan imports almost all of our energy at a cost of some $20 billion per year. Producing more electricity by harvesting our own wind will allow more dollars to go to work building our state's economy.

The Comprehensive Energy Package changes the rules for "net-metering" or selling a wind or solar generating household's excess energy back to the utility. Under the old rules you bought power when you needed it at retail rates but you sold you excess power at wholesale rates, or roughly half of retail. Under the new rules, you can sell your excess electricity for the higher retail rate. Each net metering household gets two meters, one measuring what you use and one measuring what you produce. At the end of a billing period, if you have produced more than you used, you get a credit for the excess. Right now both Cherryland Electric and Consumers Energy, the two power companies who sent reps to speak at the workshop, have billing periods of about a month, but that could change in the future if they invest in more sophisticated metering systems that can charge different rates hourly or daily according to the real cost of electricity. As the rules stand now, you can carry credit forward from month to month, but not year to year, and you can't register a net-metering setup that is rated to produce more than your home currently uses. You would never have a negative electric bill, or even a zero electric bill, as there are base fees that must be paid by everyone. But your bill could be pretty darn cheap.

We can look forward to the cost of electricity going up slowly but surely. For years, residential electricity rates have been kept artificially low because they have been subsidized by business and industry paying higher rates. Michigan needs to encourage energy efficiency and avoid penalizing industry, so the residential subsidy is being gradually phased out.

While not part of the legislative initiative, I also think about the next generation of cars, the plug-in hybrids, and how they will increase our total need for electricity. A plug-in hybrid could also function as a storage device for excess electricity. You would recharge your car at night when your household energy use (or the utility's rates) was low.

With the cost of wind generators falling, the cost of electricity rising, and everything else so unstable, I suspect the next generation of wind aficionados will be people disgusted with the stock market and looking for a more predictable return on a $10K or $20K investment.

Size matters. A few days ago I posted a photo of Mariah Power's Windspire, a compact, vertical axis wind generator designed to provide about one quarter of a typical household's electricity while conforming to most neighborhoods' height and noise ordinances. (Mariah Power is of special interest to northern Michigan because their next generation Windspire will be manufactured in Manistee. Read more and watch a video about their design here.) The windspire' vertical axis design is also bird-friendly, addressing a concern for the many Leelanau residents who live near important bird migration paths.

But the laws of physics still apply. If you use a higher tower, you will be able to take advantage of faster winds. As wind speed increases linearly, the potential power increases exponentially. We may well find that taller towers supporting smaller generators will seem less intrusive. Another physics fact: the colder the temperature, the more energy in the wind, because cold air is denser.

Scale matters. My interest in this class was to learn more about zoning for wind energy. There were a few guys in the audience who make their living installing home-scale wind systems. They were adamant that zoning needs to consider home-scale wind and utility-scale wind as two different applications. One installer decried "cookie cutter zoning" that required him to "put a flashing light on top of a 40 foot tower." The last presenter of the evening was an attorney who advises on utility-scale wind leases. Because of the length of these leases and the expense involved in decommissioning an obsolete wind tower, local planners would be wise to require that any such projects include a performance bond or escrow arrangement to insure that today's wind farm is not the next generation's brownfield. Tomorrow I am attending the Council of Government's class on Zoning for Renewable Energy so I'll write more about zoning later.

Wind generation is an attractive option for utilities. Utility scale wind is less expensive to build from scratch than coal plants or nuclear plants. Wind energy is perhaps difficult to predict on a day-today basis, but in the long run the cost is less volatile than the cost of crude oil or natural gas. Even if we leave climate change out of the equation, wind seems destined to play a major role in our future because it is becoming affordable.

A Windy Week

2008-10-27T10:12:00.008-04:00

Home wind generation is coming of age. This is a windspire from Mariah Power, who bill their design as a quiet, unobtrusive, and inexpensive option for home wind energy production. Mariah Power recently announced plans to build their next generation windspires in Manistee.
One of the themes of my campaign for Leland Township has been 21st Century Vision. I tell anyone who listens long enough that we have to make sure that our zoning ordinances allow for home-based wind and solar energy generation. Leland Township is drafting new zoning laws to follow up our new Master Plan; I want to do everything possible to see that our new zoning ordinances don't cost our residents money by denying their right to make their own power.

Knowing what we need to do and knowing how to do it are two different things. I jumped at the chance to sign up for a Home and Farm Wind Power workshop at the MSU Experiment Station this afternoon. This is a timely topic; I was one of 90 people to sign up. With another 30 on the waiting list, there are already plans to repeat the workshop later this winter.

I will be at an all day class later this week called How Do We Plan For Our Renewable Energy Future?, covering more of the planning and zoning aspects of wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower.

I'm also running ad ad in the Leelanau Enterprise this week, listing some of my supporters and issuing this challenge:

Adjusting to higher energy prices and an unpredictable world economy challenges us to reweave the threads of our local economy, planning for home-based businesses and alternative energy while preserving our natural beauty. Our community has the natural resources and talent to thrive in the 21st century –let’s do it together!

When I think about "reweaving" I think about the threads of money and energy leaving our region: money spent on fuel and energy, on pumping holding tanks, on food from far-flung places when our farmers raise such nice food right here. I always told my kids "You can't spend the same money twice." and that goes on a township level, too. We need to spend our paychecks enriching our local economy.

Michael Pollan in the NY Times

2008-10-13T23:34:00.004-04:00

I can't write anything better than what I read in the New York Times Magazine this week. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, published an open letter to the next president, Farmer in Chief, outlining a plan to wean American agriculture from fossil fuels, fighting climate change, obesity, and a host of other problems in one fell swoop. Here is one of his last suggestions:

Since enhancing the prestige of farming as an occupation is critical to developing the sun-based regional agriculture we need, the White House should appoint, in addition to a White House chef, a White House farmer. This new post would be charged with implementing what could turn out to be your most symbolically resonant step in building a new American food culture. And that is this: tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden.
When Eleanor Roosevelt did something similar in 1943, she helped start a Victory Garden movement that ended up making a substantial contribution to feeding the nation in wartime. (Less well known is the fact that Roosevelt planted this garden over the objections of the U.S.D.A., which feared home gardening would hurt the American food industry.) By the end of the war, more than 20 million home gardens were supplying 40 percent of the produce consumed in America. The president should throw his support behind a new Victory Garden movement, this one seeking “victory” over three critical challenges we face today: high food prices, poor diets and a sedentary population. Eating from this, the shortest food chain of all, offers anyone with a patch of land a way to reduce their fossil-fuel consumption and help fight climate change. (We should offer grants to cities to build allotment gardens for people without access to land.) Just as important, Victory Gardens offer a way to enlist Americans, in body as well as mind, in the work of feeding themselves and changing the food system — something more ennobling, surely, than merely asking them to shop a little differently.

I know it's nine pages long, but read it anyway. Pollan takes the whole big subject of food and wraps it up in a neat package of science and flavor then marinates it in culture and common sense.

From Whence This Panic?

2008-10-10T09:50:00.002-04:00

We are back in Minnesota this weekend for my nephew's wedding. In the motel breakfast room I am surrounded by Canadians talking about the tanking stock market. They are not surprised that the US economy is faltering; they think that Americans have been living beyond our means for years. But they are surprised that the rest of the world is so linked to the US economy.

The headlines are using the word "panic". I've been surprised at how many of my coworkers -- people who are usually analytical thinkers-- have been contemplating panic moves, asking me things like, "Should I borrow all the money out of my 401K?" I'm going back to my last winter's ruminations on the tendency to base or self-image on our consumption, to identify ourselves primarily as consumers. If spending money is the basis of your perceived self worth, then losing money is more than just a financial problem. It's enough to make a person, or a nation, panic.

October

2008-10-02T12:28:00.000-04:00

There was nothing in the weather report --cool, windy, rainy-- that would have alerted us to look for patches of awesome skies and rainbows. I walked out the back porch to get some more canning tomatoes and saw a full double rainbow about slapping me to "Wake up and see the show!"

Linking Livestock and Kids

2008-09-25T16:35:00.003-04:00

I'm spoke last weekend at the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy conference in Kalamazoo, on the topic of engaging kids in livestock through 4-H.

Of course, 4-H has been putting kids and livestock together for the last 100 years. 4-H, and its parent organization Cooperative Extension, were formed at the turn of the last century to fill a technology gap. The nation's land grant universities were churning out research that had the potential to substantially improve farming practices, but the nation's farmers. set in their ways, were slow to take advantage of the new research. 4-H was formed to train the youngsters in more scientific farming methods in hopes that they would grow into better farmers. Soon the opportunity to meet others, demonstrate their skills, compete for fame at fairs, and sell their livestock for cold hard cash made 4-H the community organization of choice for farm kids across the nation.

In the past few generations the farm population has dwindled, but 4-H is still involving kids in livestock projects. It takes a little more imagination and flexibility to do livestock projects with kids who are city dwellers or suburbanites, but the principles remain the same.

The best projects take an established curriculum and tweak it to suit the situation. Many resources are available at the national 4-H websites:

National 4-H Council

National Directory of 4-H Materials

4-H Online Community:

Every county or regional fair has its own rules, expectations and record books. Here are some samples:

A Goat Project Book for the Cloverbud (age 5-9) member. The focus is on learning about the animal. I like the questions where the child is asked about their goat's diet and digestive system:

My goat is a ruminant. Unlike me, she chews her cud.
_____ I have watched my goat chew her cud.
_____ I have seen a cud.

Unlike me, she has four parts to her stomach. One of these sections is the rumen where food is fermented by tiny bugs or micro-organisms.
_____ I have smelled my goat’s breath to see how these bugs produce stinky gases when they are digesting her food.

Roughage is food that is high in fiber.
_____I have scraped grass with a serrated plastic knife to find the fiber in the grass.
A roughage I feed my goat is:
My goat started to eat this when he/she was _____ weeks old.

Record keeping is just one part of the 4-H livestock education. Most kids who show their animals at the fair compete in the showmanship ring. To excel at showmanship, you must be thoroughly knowledgeable and practiced with your animal and your animal must be thoroughly comfortable with you. 4-Hers must work with their animals, exercise them, handle them, brush them, wash them, hang out with them. You can't just toss them some food and water and go on your way. This Rabbit Showmanship Guide gives a good example of what is involved.

The livestock auction is a big part of our local fair. The profit from a successful pig or steer project is an important source of income for the older kids, but there are sales in the goat, rabbit, and chicken barns as well. This year the goat clubs cooked up some goat dishes and offered samples at the livestock auction to raise interest in their meat goats. One of the buyers at our auction is the Fresh Food Partnership representing local food pantries; people who want to support both 4-H and the food programs donate to this program, and some money for the program is raised by 4-H clubs.

At the ALBC conference, there was a lot of frustration with the 4-H fair system. Many of the rare and endangered breeds of livestock were developed before the era of cheap corn feed; they grow well on pasture and forage, but their mature size may be smaller and it takes longer for them to reach maturity.

Fair rules often specify the dates when the 4-Her takes possession of the animal and a minimum weight to show an animal at fair. The heirloom breeds don't grow fast enough to qualify. A 4-H leader from New Jersey wanted to get his kids involved in the ALBC mission by letting them try some Tamworth pigs, but he wasn't sure if they could make the weight minimum. A 4-H leader from Indiana was just plain frustrated with the fair schedule -- their county fairs were held in July to accommodate the State Fair schedule.

I ended up defending 4-H. 4-H was teaching kids how to better raise livestock 100 years ago. 4-H kept up with the tradition of livestock and kids through the years when the family farms were disappearing and the art of working with animals seemed quaint and anachronistic. If the 4-H fair system seems set in its ways, that's because there's a lot of momentum. It's not uncommon for 4-H volunteers to have 10 or 20 or even 30 years invested, or for a family to volunteer over two or three generations. If it is hard to change the direction of the program, that's because 4-H has a heck of a lot of momentum.

At the same time, 4-H has been under siege as state and federal budgets become strapped and funding is cut or eliminated. Talking to people from across the US, I felt lucky that in Michigan and in Leelanau, that when we fought the budget battles we were largely successful. Still, it is hard to be forward thinking when we spend so much time in "Save 4-H" mode.

I challenged the audience to volunteer on some level, whether the fair process was immediately accessible to their breed or not. Dependable adults who know how to work with animals are needed for all sorts of jobs. Meet with the fair board to explain the conformation of your breed and how it's supposed to be shown. In Leelanau, there is a network of Scottish Highland Cattle owners; they were able to negotiate around a dehorning requirement and show their animals with their horn tips covered.

A club could also be primarily engaged in working with rare breeds, but raise a few standard breed animals to take to the fair. I appreciate my older breeds so much more after raising a few Cornish Cross "meat blobs".

Beyond the fair, sometimes instead of the fair, there are many ways to get kids and livestock together. Once kids become knowledgeable about their animals and secure in their skills they are eager to talk others about their animals, and are great ambassadors for their breeds. Here are some ways that 4-H kids in my county are teaching about their animals and helping to re-integrate livestock into the community.

We usually have 3 or 4 clubs that join forces to stage a petting zoo at the horticultural station during the National Cherry Festival, and again at the Horses by the Bay horse show.
We have a rabbit group that volunteers at the Tractor Supply Store every spring, bringing rabbits to sell but also giving demonstrations on all aspects of rabbit care and answering individual questions.
Family Llama Fair: Our local llama clubs cooperate to put on a fair for the llama loving public and other llama owners. It is a chance for 4-H kids to practice their skills, tell the public about their animals and learn from the invited speakers. This idea could easily be replicated by a breed association or even cross-species group of rare-breed aficionados. In our county, we do both a spring 4-H Expo and a July 4-H Livestock Achievement Day in addition to Fair. (The leader from Indiana who was so frustrated with her July fair schedule started thinking out loud about a "Heritage Livestock Fair", in late fall. )
Horseless Horse: learning about horses without actually owning a horse, or before owning a horse. This curriculum is a basic horse curriculum and would serve as a nice intro for draft horses as well.
Day camp for kids who want serious training, or as an introductory experience. One of our most successful horse groups never goes to fair. They can't see the logic of taking their animals off of pasture to spend a full week in a hot noisy stall at fair. They do a week long day camp to provide young kids with a first horse experience. The club members organize the event, limiting it to one camper per kids with two club members assisting each camper. I could see a similar camp-style training for kids who were already doing livestock projects but wanted more experience in draft horses or sheep shearing or butchering.
Michigan State Proud Equestrians Volunteers assist disabled riders. We had 4-H kids and leaders volunteering in this program for years.
Many kids are rearing livestock in backyards in residential areas, as in this headline: Suburban Kids Sell Their Livestock at Fair Auction. About 15 years ago we got a call from the 4-H office alerting us to a meeting of our local planning commission; they were contemplating an ordinance that would outlaw backyard livestock in our neighborhood. The 4-H families turned out in force and the idea was dropped.
Raise a pig for Rotary. Our local Rotary club approached 4-H a few years a go with an offer centered around their annual pig roast. The Rotary members offered to interview 4-H members, select one or two, and then have those kids raise an extra animal specifically for the fall pig roast. Local restaurants, especially the upscale restaurants that are selling a story along with the food, could be another place for kids to market their projects. Heritage turkeys? Christmas geese?
While not strictly a 4-H project, our local spring tradition of hatching eggs in the preschool and kindergarten classrooms could be a nice service project for a poultry group. The process of hatching eggs in an incubator, counting down the days, candling the eggs, letting the chicks work their way our of their shells, and then learning to gently feed, water, and handle the young chicks reinforces many parts of the kindergarten curriculum. A 4-H group could provide eggs, equipment, and mentoring to a classroom hatching project.
Our 4-H groups often choose, as a service project, to visit nursing homes with their animals. Small animals like dogs and rabbits are an obvious choice; larger animals like lambs or llamas are more unexpected but also appreciated. I'll confess that I've always thought about nursing home visits as sort of a knee-jerk response to the question of "What sort of service project shall we do?" One of the people at the ALBC talk pointed me to the Delta Society's research on the measurable benefits of including animals in the day to day lives of the elderly.
Arizona State University Hunkapi Program. I saved this example for last, as it has become, for me, somewhat of a muse on the meaning of the efforts to pair livestock and kids:

Hunkapi was founded as a research program in 1996. When compared to other sports, the research showed that horseback riding was the most positive intervention for children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism. The positive results prompted the launching of the community outreach program in 1999. Hunkapi believes that interacting with horses can serve as a non-drug intervention alternative.

and, from ASU's research magazine:

Animals have long been touted for their therapeutic benefits. Horses are especially effective. Crews says that horses are generally able to interpret a person’s emotions and will mirror those emotions. For example, if a participant is upset and tense, then the horse will be tense and upset. But when the child is comfortable and confident, the horse will relax and follow the child’s lead.

Like all good relationships, the bond between a horse and child must be based on mutual respect. Horses can be loyal, obedient, and good listeners. But their respect must first be earned.

Horses are immense animals. They can be intimidating. They also can be frustrating because they force the child to communicate congruently with words and body language. Hunkapi specifically uses these qualities, challenges, and opportunities to encourage change and growth in each child....

.....For Crews, these positive results come with the hope that interventions such as equine therapy may some day reduce or perhaps even replace medication for these children.

“Medication often simply allows these kids to sit in the classroom at school, to just be there. It doesn’t help them excel. They might be ‘C’ students, when really they could be ‘A’ students,” she says. “The physical interventions are meant to help them actually exceed to their ability and, maybe in some cases, to reduce or eliminate medication.”

Humans evolved alongside animals for countless generations; yet in the last two or three generations we have contrived to live lives in isolation from our animals. Somehow, we are losing much more than eggs, milk, and meat when we leave animals out of our lives, and out of our children's lives. The ALBC's work centers around forgotten breeds of livestock, but I found myself wondering if "made to work with livestock" might be a description of a forgotten breed of kid, one that we might soon wish we had nourished.

Dan Scripps with News on Michigan Energy

2008-09-22T21:09:00.002-04:00

I would read Dan Scripps' blog even if he wasn't running for the State House in my district. He writes about the things that I'm interested in, about the issues and problems that keep me up nights.

Two weeks ago he wrote about the differences between himself and his opponent on climate change. What a treat to be able to cast a vote for someone who is willing to confront climate change without a lot of mealy-mouthed caveats or head-in-the-sand denial.

Last week Dan broke the news on Michigan's comprehensive energy package.

The legislation passed by the state legislature yesterday is an important first step in building a long-range energy plan to make Michigan more competitive and in creating jobs now in this exciting growth area. What’s more, the fact that the legislation was supported by groups ranging from the Michigan Environmental Council to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Michigan Manufacturers Association shows that renewable energy solutions can help slow global warming and protect our natural environment while creating jobs and sparking investment in Michigan. This truly is a win-win, and a step towards a more diversified economy and a more prosperous Michigan. The cost for this: $3 a month. Not bad for a plan that can add 30,000 jobs to Michigan, and as part of an overall clean technology strategy than can reduce our highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate by nearly two points.

Pretty good stuff if we can slow climate change while putting people back to work.

The Future of Livestock

2008-09-18T10:50:00.000-04:00

I've been revisiting livestock issues in preparation for an invitation to speak at next week's American Livestock Breed Conservancy conference in Kalamazoo.

I first became aware of the livestock breed conservancy back in 2005 when I was writing about avian flu, and watching TV footage of culled flocks in Hong Kong headed for the incinerator.

Keeping chickens is a sort of window to the wider world. The everyday chores of caring for poultry is something that humans have been doing in similar fashion for most of recorded time. It is also something that is done, with little variation, almost everywhere that people live.

It was hard to stop thinking about those first bird flu reports from Asia. I saw fleeting images of beautiful birds on the evening news as they told of killing all poultry in whole provinces. At first I wondered how many interesting breeds of chickens were going extinct.

Later, I became worried that we were destroying the generations of intellectual property, and the secret to the avian flu problem, in this wholesale culling effort:

Each breed is the result of generations of breeding. I suspect the smarter, thriftier birds are the result of breeding that spans human generations, not poultry generations. There are countless more varieties of chickens, a different variety living in each little corner of the world, bred for centuries to best suit the microclimate and needs of the people who live there.

This is the old-fashioned method of genetic engineering: selective breeding and cross breeding to secure the traits that are favored. In good times, you might breed for a fancy tail. In bad times you might breed for survival in famine or resistance to the latest disease.

Now, confident that the only answer is in gene splicing, we are depopulating the country sides of their locally-bred chickens, in a losing battle to contain the virus. The disease is devastating to flocks; the birds look fine one day and the next morning 80 to 90% are dead. One wonders if the clue to flu resistance in poultry lies in that small sliver of surviving birds, the ones that are being culled with the rest. Or maybe it lies with the flock next door that appeared untouched by the disease but was culled anyway.

The first images of avian flu showed us armloads of chickens, held upside down by their feet, on the way to incineration. As someone who has catalog shopped chicken breeds, I wanted to shout: "Wait! What kind of chicken is that? Show me again, right side up! What a cool bird!"

Just those few short years ago, it seemed that, except for a few of us hobby farmers and the tiny boutique foods market, the trend would continue towards out-of-sight, out-of mind, larger and larger factory farming operations. All cows looked alike because they all were alike; in 1997 it was estimated that 60% of our dairy cows came from the same four breeding lines. Every commercial specie of livestock had been bred to be the most efficient at turning cheap corn into edible protein. Traits like ability to forage, curiosity, even the common sense to get out of the rain took a backseat to feed conversion or disappeared altogether.

That was then. These days, avian flu takes a back seat to bigger problems. Cheap corn is no longer cheap -- beyond the lunacy of trying to run automobiles on corn-based ethanol, there is a new awareness that corn yields depend on large doses of nitrogen fertilizer and that nitrogen fertilizer is made from ever more pricey natural gas. Feedlots are implicated in the rise of new, deadly E.coli strains. Climate change, and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester CO2 is front and center, and we are looking at the role of pastures and grasslands in global carbon sequestration. In the US, our current food production is dependent on the rapidly depleting aquifers of the western states; we use our expensive fossil fuels to move food long distances to the food producing areas of the 1900's which are now covered with homes on one or two acre lots where the fertile soils and abundant rains now grow shrubs and lawns.

I'm intrigued by a comment that I read in a discussion of home food production. A person familiar with the history of her suburb noted that the original lot size was meant to provide a family with the land they would need to raise most of their own food in gardens, orchards, and with some small livestock. Last summer we saw many families return to gardening in response to higher food and fuel prices. If trends continue, we may see many more backyard poultry flocks, rabbits, or even milking goats.

If you see suburban poultry, goats, or even pigs these days, chances are it's a 4-H project. 4-H has fostered the relationship between kids and livestock for all of its 100 year history, even as the bulk of us have moved away from the traditional farms. Rabbit and poultry projects are ever popular for small yards, and there are new projects like Horseless Horse, Small Pets and Goldfish for kids with no yards at all.

The traditional large animal projects prosper around here. Northwest Michigan Fair's livestock auction signed up 125 new buyers this year, not surprising considering the renewed interest in eating local, and knowing what you are eating. Where else can a person choose meat for the table by perusing growth, feed, exercise and medical records of each animal and interviewing the person who raised it?

Kids learn responsibility, business skills, grace under pressure, time management, teamwork, and a host of other skills from working with livestock. 4-H folks have been extolling these character building themes for years as the rest of the world asks why we want to keep doing something as old-fashioned as raising livestock in our backyards.

Lately I've been rethinking the purpose of making sure that kids get experience raining livestock. When I think of the challenges facing us, I want to everyone -- our leaders, our families, our communities, our kids -- to have as all available tools. When policymakers are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring our food supply, they need to know a lot about cows, not just that they produce methane. Community planners need to recognize that backyard food production is part of the health of a community and not just reflexively zone out livestock because they want to head off potential factory farms. If times get really tough, we could send our 4-H livestock kids, leaders and alumni out to the suburbs to teach people how to feed themselves from that good farmland under those lawns.

Thisledown Yarn Shoppe Warms the World

2008-09-13T11:08:00.008-04:00

The community organizers at Thistledown Yarn Shoppe are at it again.:

Warming Northern Michigan One Hand Crafted Project at a Time

The Goodwill Inn estimates that any any point in time there are 591 homeless individuals in the surrounding five county area (Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, and Leelanau.) Local shelters serve approximately 700 to 800 folks per year; many are turned away due to lack of room. Some are double up with friends or family some live on the streets and in parks.

We estimate the number of people who knit or crochet are three times the amount of the homeless in the five county area.

We are calling on Northern Michigan yarn lovers to pick up your needles and create just one hat, one scarf, one pair of mittens or socks (adult or children size) for donation to the Goodwill Inn where they will be distributed to the homeless in Northern Michigan.

We will start collecting donations October 15, 2008.

For more information contact us at 231-271-YARN (9276) or Demarie Jones at 231-271-4812.

I need to pick up knitting again, Mittens are easy, as the pattern is always close at hand.

Dan Scripps Talks Broadband

2008-09-12T10:32:00.007-04:00

Dan Scripps, our Democrat for State Rep, wrote his weekly Thursday economic issues column on the importance of broadband internet to the rural economies. He described the rural Electrification Project of the 1930's and spoke of how a similar effort to provide broadband service today could provide a boost to our area:

By making loans available to local electrification cooperative, which were often driven by farmers, the Rural Electrification Act helped farmers modernize their operations, provided the encouragement necessary for private electric companies to connect rural households (which ultimately lowered electric rates), and made it possible for businesses to remain and grow in rural America.

So what?

Well, as important as extending electricity to rural areas was to reviving the economy of the 1930s, access to broadband is at least as important to growing Michigan’s economy today. Indeed, as former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta and media expert Robert McChesney note d, broadband represents “a technology that, in terms of powering economies, could be the 21st century equivalent of electricity.” Moreover, while many assume that access to broadband is universal, 60% of American households do not have access to broadband either because it is unavailable or unaffordable, and our global position is getting worse: “since 2001, according to the International Telecommunications Union, the United States has fallen from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband penetration.”

I'm told by local real estate people that "Can I get broadband here?" is one of the first questions that prospective buyers ask about properties in Leelanau county. Recently Higher Grounds coffee company, after struggling to get broadband access in Leland Township's only zoned industrial district, relocated to Traverse City. Broadband is the key to attracting and keeping the right-sized businesses in our township, and to keeping our farms and businesses competitive.

Saying No to Coal

2008-09-11T11:19:00.003-04:00

One of the questions at Bill McKibben's talk was about the meaning of the phrase on many politician's lips: "clean coal".

McKibben was very clear that, from a climate change point of view, there is no such thing as clean coal. We know how to use stack scrubbers to take out the sulphur and lead from coal plant emissions, but any technology to remove the carbon and put it back underground is only imagined, not in in use.

After the talk, the Sierra Club organizer was overwhelmed by the people lining up to sign a petition to Governor Granholm asking her to:

fight against climate change by issuing an executive order that prevents the permitting of more coal plants until stronger protections are put in place against dangerous global warming carbon dioxide pollution.

You can sign the petition too, online, just click here.

Notes from Bill McKibben's Traverse City Talk

2008-09-09T10:30:00.009-04:00

About halfway through McKibben's talk it dawned on me that I had posted, last fall, parts of his essay entitled Climate Crisis in National Geographic magazine. I quoted from it with abandon because I so admired his calm way of talking about a situation that tends to overwhelm people into ignoring or denying it. I also admired his ability to break this big problem down into manageable pieces.

The word "connections" is in the title of this blog because I'm usually quite good at connection ideas from many different sources. But I've been overworked this summer. I knew I wanted to go see Bill McKibben, and so did Liz. I wrote a rather lame announcement of his appearance, forgetting that I could have quoted myself from a year ago.

Back then I described how the people around me were living in two different worlds:

Most folks seem to recognize that the world is getting warmer, and that something needs to be done. I have seen the average size cars in the parking lot shrink. I am seeing people considering relocating to be closer to work, or looking for jobs closer to home. Nobody brags about their new snowmobiles anymore. I also have small, concerned conversations with people who are worried about the future but unable to figure out the best way to prepare for change or to shoulder their responsibility.

Watching the Republican convention last week was truly watching another world. While most of the people I talk with are looking for strategies for using less energy, the people chanting "Drill, Baby, Drill!" on the floor of the Republican convention seemed to think that finding more oil to burn would automagically fix everything.

McKibben's talk was calmer, more thoughtful, and much more grounded in everyday reality. McKibben has a quiet, everyman persona, much like talking to one of my more reticent neighbors. He has a habit of rubbing the back of his head as he formulates his thoughts, much like a farmer swatting flies away with his tractor hat. He used a lot of self-deprecating humor; it was interesting to me that after a while the women were still responding to these jokes but the men were silent.

He spoke of two different worlds. He described the mood in the world of climate scientists as "terrified" and related the new evidence that suggests that climate change is progressing faster than most had believed possible. He described the response in the world of policy making that was basically no response at all, and told the story of a walk across Vermont that eventually included about 1000 people meeting in the capital and asking their elected leader to pledge support for a goal of an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

"80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050" is included in Obama's platform. (McCain's goal is 66% by 2050). Nobody was talking about any goals fro 2050 before McKibben and his friends started walking. This was one of his main points -- that regardless of how cynical the American people have become about the political process, the process can still be made to work.

McKibben's new goal is to publicize the number 350. He wants the world to embrace a target of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, the number that we need to attain in order to stop the course of dangerous climate change. Before the industrial revolution, before we started burning large quantities of fossil fuels, the Earth's atmosphere was about 280 parts per million of CO2. This year, in 2008, the number is 387 and gaining every year.

How do we do this? McKibben spoke of how we keep looking for a "silver bullet" that will fix things without too much individual effort. We tried that approach with ethanol, and the results have not been good. He introduced a new metaphor: "silver buckshot" to describe the many smaller changes that are going to add up to the change we need:

Make no mistake--getting back to 350 means transforming our world. It means building solar arrays instead of coal plants, it means planting trees instead of clear-cutting rainforests, it means increasing efficiency and decreasing our waste. Getting to 350 means developing a thousand different solutions--all of which will become much easier if we have a global treaty grounded in the latest science and built around the principles of equity and justice. To get this kind of treaty, we need a movement of people who care enough about our shared global future to get involved and make their voices heard. ( from 350.org)

The video at the top of this post is part of the international effort to publicize the 350 goal worldwide. The is more of an explanation of this effort at www.350.org. McKibben was enthusiastic about the potential of using the internet to organize a worldwide citizens' movement, saying "If there is a reason for the internet, if God decided that humans needed to create the internet at this point in history, it is surely so that we can use it to solve the climate crisis, the most dangerous problem we have ever faced."

I think that we are not facing this problem because we are scared. We have amped up our our economy on cheap energy for so long that we fear that no more cheap energy means, as one audience member put it, "a return to the horse and buggy days." McKibben cited surveys in which Americans have been asked, every year since 1956, how happy they are. Every year since 1956 we report that we are less happy, even though our consumption of material goods has increase threefold since then. McKibben spoke of how our bigger homes, spread out across the landscape and the miles of roads to connect them all have left us all more isolated and lonelier.

Bill McKibben's new book is Deep Economy, The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. His premise is that rebuilding our communities is neccesary for both energy efficiency and to reach the sense of well-being that we have been seeking, but not finding, through our last half century consumption binge. While I'm skeptical of uniform measures of happiness, I find such satisfaction in the nuances of community that I'm interested to read the new book.

Bill's Traverse City talk can be heard online here.

Bill McKibben in TC on Sunday

2008-09-05T12:29:00.003-04:00

Nationally acclaimed author Bill McKibben will speak at Lars Hockstead Auditorium this Sunday from 6-9 pm. McKibben is an author, educator, and environmentalist with a respected voice among those who are envisioning the post peak-oil world. His latest book, Deep Economy, advocates reviving local economies as a tool in fighting climate change.

Liz and I will be attending this event together. One thing I have heard over and over again from college kids this summer is the idea that, for them oil is the past. They want to face climate change instead of avoiding it. They don't expect oil to last through the next decade, let alone through their lifetimes. They are looking for walkable lives, or at settling in places where there is public transportation (and, of course, a night life.). Nobody is interested in investing their careers in old technology. The guy who was at mechanic's school said "Nobody wants to waste time learning gasoline engines. There's no future in it. We're all learning diesel."

The McKibben should be interesting, both for the speaker and the crowd.

The Lake Shore Septic or Sewer Question

2008-09-03T13:00:00.006-04:00

My Grandma Mimi, as a child, with a bow in her hair, on a mule at Castle Rock in Colorado.
I had hoped to base my campaign for Leland Township Trustee on opportunities for economic development in our township, with a serious effort at expanding broadband internet in our township. Instead I have been talking about septic systems and sewers because that's what people want to talk about.

Last month's Leland Town Board meeting featured a spirited discussion of the role of septic systems, sewer systems and government. This is not a new topic. We had questions about sewers and septic systems at the Leland Township candidates night. There was more talk about septic system inspection at the county candidates night. I was surprised to hear some of the candidates for county board saying that inspection of septic systems was a township issue. The county health department regulates the building of septic systems. The county Board of Commissioners has been trying for over a decade, unsuccessfully, to draft regulations that would require some sort of septic system inspection. The regulations as they stand right now do not require any septic inspections, not even when property changes hands.

Of course, a person would be nuts to buy any property without having the septic system inspected. But many lake front properties change hands within families, passing from one generation to another. According to Michigan State University, the life expectancy of a septic system is 20 to 30 years; septic haulers estimate more like 40 years. Eventually the gravel in the drain field becomes clogged with small particles and the drain field will no longer accept water.

Replacing a drain field is a big expense and it may be impossible for a lake front property owner. Every time you add a bedroom or a bathroom the required drain field area goes up, and overall standards are stricter these days. The septic system that was installed fifty years ago to serve a two bedroom seasonal home is much smaller than what is required to serve the same home after multiple additions and upgrades. If, over the years, that two bedroom cabin has gained another bathroom, turned a few porches into bedrooms, and installed a furnace, you may well be trying to serve a four bedroom year-round residence with an antiquated system designed for a two bedroom summer home. According the the Leelanau County Health Department's codes, a three bedroom home on a site with sand loam, a typical lake front soil type, requires 1050 square feet of drain field. It must be no less than 10 feet from any building, and the lowest part of the drain field must be at least four feet above the maximum high water table. The whole system must be 50 feet from the lake, 50 feet from any well or spring, and 10 feet from the property line.

If a homeowner can't fit a modern septic system onto their lot, they may be able to use a mound system. The county health department defers to the Michigan DEQ on these regulations; DEQ requires that the mound, essentially a thick, above ground drain field fed by a pump instead of gravity, be located over 100 feet from the lake.

Property owners who find that they cannot build a new drain field usually opt for a holding tank. The health department will allow other alternatives, but they are considered experimental and the property owner is responsible for the cost of regularly monitoring the performance of these systems and for replacing them if they don't work.

If a holding tanks seems like a less dicey option, it is certainly not cheap. We have friends who are renting a lakeside holding tank house while their new home is being built. They have two elementary age boys, not a demographic known for excess bathing, they are actively conserving water, even to the point of only flushing every third or fourth use, but they are still paying $270 every three weeks to have their tank pumped.

Without a requirement to inspect septic systems, it is easy to just procrastinate. A homeowner can procrastinate, saying "Well, the system only floods the yard when our house guests stay too long." My son-in-law, Jordan Fehrenbach, worked for his father's septic pumping company, Bay Pumping, when he was in high school. Although it is recommended that we pump our septic tanks every few years, he said that many of the calls he answered were from people who had procrastinated until their systems didn't work right anymore. "People just don't know much about their septic systems. The subject doesn't come up in polite conversation, so there's not much opportunity to learn about it."

A township can be pressured to procrastinate, worrying that sending out a questionnaire about a possible new sewer district could be construed as "drumming up business" for the township. The people who think that government is already too big jump on sewer projects as an example of "big government getting bigger." They decry "a shotgun approach" and encourage us to wait until we know each septic system goes bad before deciding that there's a problem.

I heard Leelanau County Commissioner Melinda Lautner say these lines at the Leelanau County candidates night. Unfortunately, she is also one of the county commissioners standing in the way of any sort of septic inspection. If you don't have inspections, you may procrastinate until your well, or a neighbor's well, is contaminated. You may procrastinate until your family, or your neighbor's family, falls ill from hepatitis or blue baby syndrome or dysentery.

Or we could use a conservative, common sense approach. In Leelanau County, we have required permits for all septic systems installed since 1972. Since it is now 2008, we could expect that any property that does not have a permit on file probably has a septic system that is living on borrowed time. It is easy to drive around North Lake Leelanau and see plenty of homes that are on lots too shallow to site a septic system 50 feet away from the lake, or too low to site a system four feet above the maximum high water table. These people need a sewer or holding tanks, whether they want to think past the flush or not. Both sewer systems and holding tanks are expensive options, but they are both better options than sticking your head in the ground while your effluent seeps into the lake.

David Marshall, Democrat for Leelanau County Commissioner District 6, described the common sense approach this way: "You fix the bridge before it collapses." Most of my conversations with township residents express the same expectation that county and township government should be proactive and prudent in protecting our lakes and groundwater with appropriate inspections of septic systems and construction of sewers where necessary.

The talk at last month's meeting was of creating a new sewer district to serve Leland Township's lakefront properties, with its own assessment so that the lakefront property owners were paying for their service, not the township at large. There was a chicken-and-egg discussion about whether we could assess interest without knowing the cost, and whether we could estimate cost without knowing interest. I'm afraid the discussion ranged far towards the philosophical while ignoring the idea of aging septic systems as a simple math problem.

Congratulations if you've followed me this far! You've earned the right to know why I would preface this piece with a photo of my grandmother on a mule. Writing this piece reminded me of the stories that my Grandma Mimi used to tell of growing up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Every summer all who could afford to would flee the city, taking the train west or north, to escape the waves of cholera and typhoid fever that plagued American cities in the early 1900's, largely due to poor sanitation. Mimi was riding that mule in Colorado, where her family spent summers. Lake Leelanau has hosted city refugees for over 100 years, with travelers at the turn of the last century taking the train to Perrins Landing the south end of the lake and the ferry up the lake from there. Here in Leland Township, where our century-old resort economy is benefiting us in so many ways, it is imperative that we protect our reputation for clean, safe water.

Note: 9/4/08 The ads that appear on this blog are chosen by web robots, or "web bots", programs that attempt to read each article, decipher its content, and then assign relevant ads to each piece. I earn a negligible amount of money from these ads, but I keep them because I find it interesting to see what an artificial intelligence thinks of my writing.

Today I see that I am advertising several "miracle cures" for septic system failure. That these ads appeared so quickly, and that there are so many of them, is further evidence that many people worry privately about their septic systems, even if they don't talk about them around the water cooler. Every reputable source of information about septic systems, from MSU to my son-in-law, tells me that those products that claim to fix an aging septic system are bunk, and may actually make your problems worse. Feel free to read the ads for your own amusement, but please don't think that I, or anyone else, is endorsing these products.

Red Rain

2008-08-31T16:01:00.004-04:00

Brother Tim's historical novel Red Rain debuts next week.

Tim Wendel’s RED RAIN tells the story of the best-kept secret weapon of World War II – the Japanese fire balloons.

Assembled from paper by schoolchildren and women in the waning years of the war, these curious weapons were launched from fields near Tokyo and Kyoto. They often reached the U.S. mainland in just three days and two nights. Armed with incendiary bombs, the balloons’ original goal was to ignite forest fires throughout the western states, which they did at an alarming rate. Wendel’s research at the National Archives and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., reveals that the balloons touched down in the U.S. more than 300 times from 1944 to 1945.

The balloons proved to be a better weapon than the Imperial Army ever knew. One sailed as far east as Michigan. At one point, the Japanese high command planned to replace the incendiary bombs with nerve and gas warfare. But, thankfully, it never came to that largely because of the U.S. military’s ability to keep a secret.

You can join me in reading chapter one on Tim's website.

The Lost Ladybug Project

2008-08-27T11:19:00.004-04:00

I was researching a different topic when I stumbled across the Lost Ladybug Project. Here in Michigan we have been so overrun by the ladybug's stinky brown cousins, the asian beetle, that most of us haven't noticed that the classic ladybug is no longer around.

Besides being incredibly cool and charismatic ladybugs are also essential predators in both farms and forests that keep us from being overrun with pests (like aphids and mealybugs). In many areas the native ladybugs are being replaced by exotic ones. This has happened very quickly and we don’t know how this shift happened, what impact it will have (e.g. will the exotic species be able to control pests as well as our familiar native ones always have) and how we can prevent more native species from becoming so rare.

Cornell University is asking for help from the citizen scientist community to find out what's going on. The Lost Ladybug Project asks us to watch for ladybugs and, when we find them, photograph them and upload the photos and other information to their database. Anyone can do this; you can read here about the elementary school kids who made the first sighting in 14 years of a nine-spotted ladybug in the eastern US. There are clear instructions and a map of others' sitings on the website.

I think I've seen some nine-spot and two spot ladybugs in the last few years, but I wasn't thinking of them as a nearly extinct species or I would have paid more attention. The lovely ladybug is a reminder to me to slow down and pay attention to the little lovely details of my days.

Blueberry Picking and a Bear

2008-08-20T12:30:00.005-04:00

A Trunk Full of Blueberries

I have been working 45-plus hours each week since that break I took for Chris's wedding, so when Richard proposed that we go blueberry picking I was happy to just ride along and look at the scenery. Our final destination was the Baatz Blueberry Farm in Honor, but we took a side trip to the National Park Headquarters to renew our annual park pass, and then to the blueberry patch in the park on Esch Road, where the berries are free, but you have to crawl through the underbrush and overgrowth to get at them.

At the Baatz Farm, there are nice mowed rows and you can pick berries by the handful instead of one by one. I like to pick berries with my husband because we have such good conversations when we work together. Anna has hated blueberry picking in years past and this year I relented at the last minute and let her stay home on the condition that she organize her wardrobe for the start of school. Still, I felt like a bad mom for not requiring her to come along and pick what will be our winter food. A good parent is supposed to make you come along on boring hot car rides to nowhere, right?

We picked 11 quarts of berries in about 2 1/2 hours. It did seem slower without Anna to help. We talked a lot about politics, windmills, Europe, bugs and birds. The berries were $2.00 a heaping quart. We drove back into Honor for cold drinks and then headed home, back past the blueberry signs.

I had been thinking all day that I would see a bear. When we left the house, I felt sad that Anna wasn't with us, thinking "Now she won't see the bear," but knowing that I couldn't promise a bear, that seeing a bear was most unlikely. On Esch Road, there was a smell that immediately brought to mind the old question "Does a bear shit in the woods?" I was paying attention and looking before I crashed through the next set of trees expecting a bear or a mink or something, until Richard noted that the pig farm across M-22 was really stinky today. Later, at Baatz Farm, I heard young kids wandering down the rows from Mom to Dad, and I felt like saying "Stay close to the Big People! There's bears!" but I didn't say anything because I didn't have any real reason to think there were bears around. It might have been the fact that Anna slept outside in the hammock most nights last week, despite my worries. It may have been that old children's book, Blueberries for Sal. It might have been the book I'm reading now, David Western's In the Dust of Kilimanjaro, and its discussion of living closely with large mammals.

At any rate, we were heading north on Ely road, passing the blueberry signs again, when we came around a curve in the road and there was a bear. It was a younger one, bigger than a cub, but not heavy like a mature bear. It seemed to be interested in something that was on the road, but when it saw our car it turned and walked off into the brush. Richard was saying "What is THAT?" and I was saying. "It's the bear. I knew we were going to see a bear." He prompted me to grab the camera and get a picture, but it was gone by the time I unzipped the case. As it walked off the road, we saw the unmistakable bear silhouette.

At home, I baked two blueberry pies as Richard cooked bratwurst and corn and Shelagh made a salad. We all sat around and ate a great dinner and drank a bottle of wine. The hummingbirds chased all around the house for our entertainment, and we all enjoyed the evening off.

Thursday is Dan Scripps Day

2008-08-14T13:50:00.002-04:00

Dan Scripps, our Democratic candidate for State Rep, is posting every Thursday from now until November on Michigan's economy and his solutions. You can read the first installment here.

When it comes to the economy, the fundamentals include fiscal discipline to encourage investor confidence; establishing a fair, competitive and predictable business environment; and making targeted investments in human capital - especially in education - to create the globally competitive workforce necessary to compete in today’s knowledge economy. These aren’t the sexy, headline-grabbing announcements that politicians love; rather, they represent the nuts-and-bolts, behind-the-scenes hard work necessary to spur long-term economic growth and create jobs now.

Two Chicks

2008-08-11T11:33:00.001-04:00

Momma is clucking gently as she shows them how to find food and water. If she gets spooked, she squacks and they scurry under her wing for protection.