Muskegon Chronicle: 67 Year Old Muskegon Man using a walker Robbed in the Street by 4 GOP Presidential Candidates

A friend of mine found this appropriate headline/photo combination on his smart phone and took a picture of it.




If you can't read the headline it says "Midday Muskegon: Four men rob elderly Muskegon man using a walker..."

The caption next to it is a photo of Gingrich, Santorum, Romney, and Paul.

For the record, the man who was robbed was not physically harmed. The robbers took his cash. Hopefully the perpetrators will be brought to justice, and more importantly here's hoping he can feel safe at some point soon.

To confirm the photo wasn't photoshopped, I found it myself as well...here's my own screenshot:

(photodiary) Frozen Dunes, the Compelling Contours of the Small

Rick Santorum came to Muskegon a couple days ago. Maybe it was yesterday. Don't know. Seems so long ago. Went there with my 4 year old boy on promise of fruit snacks in exchange for Not Freaking Out at Having to Hear Extra White Christian Man Hate On Americans For Thirty Minutes. My son...he did pretty good. He earned those fruit snacks. EARNED them.

But we all know the guy's a douche. Really. What more could be said? He made the Not So Roundabout point he was against the domestic auto industry. He's basically another Romney.

Anyway, here's some pics of closeup winter dune formations along Lake Michigan.



See those dark outlines? That's magnetite on the sugar sands. Some type of iron based sediment. Naturally occurring. The occasional black striations occur naturally along the sandy beaches of the lakeshore giving contour and texture to the sandy, watery landscape.



But that can be seen any time of year. This time of year the sands are frozen wherever moisture touches them, creating bizarre and interesting sand formations.



and





and




You see...it's not just the water. It's not just the dunes. It's not just the distant birdseye view.

It's the world in microcosm and on the individual scale. It's the contours of the small. The closeups where the differences and beauty of shades and contours are revealed.





I have trouble with the world from a distant view. The small beauties and dramas are too easily overlooked, and understood only in aggregate. Too often the world is understood by taking the whole and divining the parts, rather than taking the time to see the parts as they are and divining the whole. The ugly. The stupid. The noble. The terrifying and the beautiful. The brilliant and the small.

Endless Stream of Frustration and Reinvention

A lot of history has been blown up over the past half century as post industrial towns have struggled to "reinvent" themselves. There's a miserable lack of historical buildings, still standing, in many post industrial towns...Ford's original factories are gone or dissolving, nearly forgotten. Cuz it's progress to un-be what we've been. A reinvention to undo what we've done and start fresh. The dynamite,detonated at the base of our architecturally sinful past wipes the slate clean again...building after building after building. All to re-invent.

One specific building in Muskegon comes to mind, and to this very day it evokes feelings of anger and resentment at its destruction when its name or image comes up. The Occidental Hotel. the Occidental Hotel in Muskegon was a landmark. It was demolished in just one of a string of many attempts to revitalize the down town over the past 50 years.

Many folks still around, including my father, tried desperately to save it. Tried desperately to keep our ties to the past. But the efforts were no use. Muskegon had to reinvent itself to stay afloat. That old phrase we hear so often when confronted with a failure of industry of manufacturing of our own economy. We need to reinvent ourselves. Once again. Again and again and again.

We had to blow the old building up.

We had to get with the times. And the times, at the time, was some ill fated mall that would itself be demolished 25 years later in a new effort in a long running meme known post-industrial reinvention. The mall would eventually itself be bulldozed to the ground. Where the Occidental Hotel once stood. Where the Mall then stood. Then a sand pit. And then a cullinary arts college surrounded by sand pit.

They did the same to the court house and countless other buildings.

One building, however, did manage to miss the wrecking ball all these years.

The "Century Club"



It's been a lot of things over the years, since its construction in 1889: a social club...a social club...also a social club...then it was a furniture store and then it became what it is today: a small mall for local artisans and, if I may say so, a place to get some amazing baklava.

The West Michigan Jobs Group, our group, lead by our fearless Vice Prez held our second Cash Mob to bring people into the area and find out what's going on in the current incarnation of the Century Club. A cash mob is basically an organized group of folks who descend on a store or area of town to support local, independent biz.

Around 60 folks came to this one:



It's hard to really appreciate the need for cash mobs to introduce people to under-represented regions of the city if one doesn't realize that most of the downtown had been bulldozed in one in an endless stream of frustration with our past going on a century and more.

Muskegon Documentary "Up From the Bottoms: Search for the AmericanDream" to Premier on PBS Nationwide

The Internationally acclaimed, and award winning film "Up From the Bottoms: Search for the American Dream", produced and directed by Jim and Rod Schaub of my home town, Muskegon Michigan will premiere on PBS nationwide in February.

"Up From the Bottoms" chronicles the movement of African Americans from the South to West Michigan around the turn of the century.





February 5th, PBS - 8:00 PM....watch it.

Sharing Jupiter

Prior to a game of Settlers of Catan with our boy I went out to the trunk of the car to get some wood for the fireplace.

While I cut and split about 70% of our wood, I supplement the rest of it buying wood from other sources, mostly from a fellow on Henry Street who sells wood for 6 pieces for a dollar. But they're huge pieces. Gigantic.

During the summer he sells smaller pieces of pine. Horrible wood for heating the home using a fireplace insert. He sells pine in the summer, the season when campers and tourists are in town enjoying the lakes and beaches, and camp in Hoffmaster and roast marshmallows over the fire pit and create a wonderful scent and hazy atmosphere when driving by the campground on the way home, while campers light the darkness, cook hot dogs, and make smores with their families.

But as the campers go, and the weather turns cold the wood man changes his offerings from pine to hardwood. Massive chunks. Pine isn't good for heating the home with unless you have an outdoor wood furnace. Mostly pine is for the campers. It's gooey. Resinous. Clogs the chimney and makes chimney fires more likely. Hardwoods are best. And the wood guy offers hardwoods in the winter. He sells huge pieces. Each piece I split up into three or four normal pieces. Oak, maple...sometimes walnut or sassafras. But mostly hardwood. As though the wood man knows that winter folks are heating their homes, as though he holds off with the hardwood until the tourist season is over and sells the large chunks of hardwood to the locals.

I stocked up, shoved as much as I could into the car and drove it home.

As I went out into the darkness this evening to take wood from the car and bring it to the house for heating, I heard a voice. My elderly neighbor. A widow.

"Hi!" said the voice from the darkness.

Surprised, "Oh! Geeze...you scared me! Hi!"

"Oh I'm sorry, dear. I'm just looking up at the sky. I'm wondering if that's a planet up there between the trees. It's so bright!"

I looked "I................maybe?" I went over into my neighbor's yard to see what she was seeing "Wow...that might be a.....plane? No...it's not moving........maybe.....Venus?"

"I don't KNOW, but it was so beautiful. I saw it from the window...I have half a mind to go down to the Lake and see it better."

We talked of Aurora Borealis and constellations.

"When my husband was alive I was outside and I saw such beautiful greens and yellows maybe....maybe five years ago?" she told me "I told my husband and at first he told me it was too late to go out but he came out and we were both so amazed. He and I, we went down to the Big Lake that very moment, even though it was so late and we watched the colors in the sky...."

I didn't speak.

We just looked at the brilliant heavenly body off on the Western horizon together in the January darkness.

A Beautiful Spring Day!

Ah spring!



The warm breezes, the melting snow the....wait a second....

OH! It's the middle of JANUARY, you say? In MICHIGAN?

That can't be right. It's 45 degrees outside. There's no snow. The birds are chirping, the squirrels are squirreling. The lakes are......this.....odd...liquidy consistency.



Where's the city of ice fishermen and their sacks of Miller Lite?

A couple weeks ago my older boy asked me if we could go ice fishing this year and I was like "YES! That sounds like FUN! Let's DO that."

And THEN we got THIS big snow and I felt sure that winter had FINALLY gotten off to a slow and late start, but a start anyway:



And that lasted all of two days before melting away. And here we are again. Obnoxiously sunny skies. GREEN GRASS. Warm breezes. Birds CHIRPING. PEOPLE JOGGING in SHORTS, for the love of god.

Ain't nachral. I know that Weather isn't Climate. But still.

This isn't the warmest January on record. That was in 2000. But I don't like it. Nosir. Not one bit.

The guy who sells huge chunks of firewood for an AWESOME price, who stops cutting when the winter sets in...he's STILL putting firewood out. It's FREAKING me OUT.

Went To a Fight and a Fight Broke Out

My father had a small stack of free promo tickets to a Grand Rapids cage fight and he passed them out liberally in the parking lot, and so it came to happen that I had a seven year old companion and his mother sitting next to me and my wife, also from Muskegon. The boy's father was a cage fighter and it seemed the boy knew everybody in the place: the ring girls, the referees, the fighters. Men dressed in T-shirts with the word MEDIC in red block print gave the boy a high five as they passed by the table. In fact, the boy's father was paired with the boy's uncle in the first match. We could not have asked for a better companion.

Stocky, rosy cheeked little boy with a spiked up mohawk and a front tooth missing. Much like my own son. Surely the tooth fairy had been kind to him.

I joked with him "Wow! Look at that tooth! Looks like you got into fight yourself!" HA HA HA!

He laughed too and nodded, "YEAH! It was on the SCHOOL BUS! My friend and I got into a fight and he KNOCKED my tooth RIGHT OUT!"

"OH! So you DID get into a fight?"

"YEAH! It HURT! I'm not gonna get into a fight with HIM again! HEY! I THINK I see my DAD!!!! SEE! He's over THERE! He's got the....the....YEAH! It HURT like HECK! My TOOTH! It was DANGLING by a tiny piece of SKIN and the DENTIST just PULLED it off and that HHHHUUUURRRRT!!!!"

"Geeze...well...so, are you thinking maybe it wasn't a good idea to fight?"

"I don't know...but not with him! He's huge! HEY LOOK! It's my DAD!"

A huge man strode out into the ring, a gigantic pink mohawk spiked up high, with a bright pink Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon tattooed onto the top of his half shaven head.

"YEAH DAD! GET UNCLE M!!!!!!!!"

I cheered too, clapping for the boy's father. He won. The fight ended extremely fast compared to all others with the father lifting up his brother and squeezing...and the brother "tapping out" to indicate concession. It seemed, more than anything, a display for the boy...the one audience member who mattered in the audience of hundreds. A 5 second fight that involved merely lifting and a Tap Out and cheering from one...just one...very tiny section of the audience. But the section that mattered.

The boy and I cheered together and exchanged a high five.

Muskegon Cash Mob Gets Mention in Wall Street Journal

This here is the Wall Street Journal right here...AND a friend of mine who made it happen:

Similar cash mobs have materialized in more than 20 cities from Norman, Okla., to Muskegon, Mich., most arranged by individuals who establish followings on Facebook and Twitter. The cash-mob organizers don't get any benefit in return.

I don't know where to start. I'm so freakin' proud of my friend. Known her since we were kids growing up in the same church.

We founded a group called the West Michigan Jobs Group, which championed an offshore wind farm. This friend of mine, she's the Vice President of the West Michigan Jobs Group and she, among many others, worked tirelessly and without a cent of payment to raise support and awareness for renewable energy and a new industry in West Michigan. We successfully helped lure a 100 MW wind farm to the Waste Water Treatment Facility. This friend of mine...She and I, we've known each other since we were small kids in bible school at the same Slovak church.

Now I don't want to go claiming that her actions are mine, or ours. Her actions are hers. And they've made a difference in a small corner of America. And got National Attetnion. But she's one of Us. She's dedicated to making her town a better place to live.

She organized a Cash Mob that brought people to a little known part of our community, and has helped independent businesses raise awareness of what they do, and bring traffic to an economically hard-hit part of our community.

What's a Cash Mob?

It's a large, organized descent on an independent business to raise awareness of it, bring people to an under-served and under-represented part of the city.

The boys and I attended the cash mob in a particularly hard-hit part of Muskegon. And while there we discovered in the same area an Asian market where we can buy some well priced miso soup mix that my older seven year old son loves, and some tiny red hot peppers that I love, some delicious wasabi peas, and mung-bean cakes, and noodles. And of course, a restaurant called Mia and Grace which serves mostly locally made foods, down to the ketchup which is made in the store from locally grown ingredients. All along this little strip on 3rd street in a place I rarely visit......

...the Cash Mob brought me there. And I learned about a completely new region of the city.

Awesome.

Bravo, friend and VP of the West Michigan Jobs Group.

We are TOTALLY going to drag this hard-hit region out of hardship and obscurity. We're so freakin' sick of things being hard.

Parbolic Michigan Dunes In the Winter

It's not just the Great Lakes themselves. It's not just the water, and the massive holes in the ground that cradle it. It's the world around the edges that the waters make possible. The susgar sands of Lake Michigan, the agate beaches of Lake Superior, the Niagara Falls between Erie and Ontario.

It's the edges. Where the oak and hemlocks decide, almost unanimously that they should stop and let the dune grass have a place of its own with the trees fomring a line along the dune ridge looking down, but rarely passing.





Someplace between the waterline and the tree-covered hills in the interdune habitats built up over the millenia, is an ecosystem of its own. It inhabits a thin band just 100 feet wide in many places, but streches up the shoreline of Lake Michigan for hundreds of miles. Parabolic dunes, or "blowouts"expand the sandy ecosystem into the woods, here and there...where natural or man-mad erosion caused the underlying sand of a large dune to be exposed and the wind continuously removes the ground cover, back and back and back.



The dune grass plays an important role in stabilizing the dunes. Keeping them put. Allowing the establishment of nutrients and soil and keeping the water down...Preparing them once again for the trees to move in as far as they'll dare.

And This is Why 2012 is Going to Be a Better Year

Do you see this? THIS? THIS is why 2012 is going to be a better year. Because folks aren't just going to sit around and let things get worse.

Business Owner Starts School Supply Collection for Hurting District

Kids at Muskegon's Edgewood Elementary school dob't have paper, pencils, crayons...BASIC school supplies. The community is pulling together to right this wrong...to make sure, from a personal level, that our kids in our community have the basics for education, with people volunteering to be art teachers, music teachers, gym teachers when the school itself can't provide these educational basics. YES...this is something the State should be taking care of. But they're not, are they? So we...WE step in today.

I drove through this part of town recently on my way to my aunt's house and counted over a dozen boarded up homes, just from the main streat. Homes with ragged blue tarps are up in place where a roof should be, where cardboard and duct tape are up where windows should be...even as the winter overtakes the region.

This is a school where 100% or NEAR 100% of the kids are on free-reduced school lunches. Parents can't send their kids to school with these supplies. The teachers have supplied all they can. The school district itself is financially on the rocks.

It's not a region that's falling. It's a region that has fallen. It does no good to shakes ones head and pretend that voting the Right People into office is going to make a damn bit of difference in the prosperity of the kids living in there RIGHT NOW, TODAY, this week, next month, next year. That's a fight for the long term.

In the short term, communities need to move in and make the change, help each other out. Get out there and make a difference, dammit.

Throughout these challenging times, many of the teachers have reached into their own pockets to provide needed school supplies at places like Edgewood Elementary, according to Principal Sonya Hernandez. Parents also struggle to send the kids to school prepared as Hernandez points out that her school is approximately 100 percent free reduced lunch.

Hernandez turned to her friend Mitch Dennison who is with the Facebook group “Muskegon Social Media Tag Team.” Hernandez expressed the needs from everything from pencils and papers to crayons and binders. Grand Haven business owner and CEO of Media 1, Chris Willis, saw the post and sprung into action.

“I said is this for real? Pencils and paper?” Willis exclaimed.

Willis put out a school supply collection box at Media 1, 605 Elliott St, Grand Haven, just before Christmas. Other businesses followed.

This can't be a short term, one time thing. We need to pull together. Maybe a good thing will come out of these hard times. Maybe communities will start seeing their interconnectedness in 2012. Maybe they'll learn to look to one another as partners and neighbors. Maybe in 2012 we'll start to realize that the good and future of our communities and children is our own personal responsibility today. Today. Today. Right now. GO! Go do something good, you!

Extraordinary Natural-Urban Art Photos of Muskegon

The thing about Muskegon is that it's a strange combination of woodland and factory, boondocks and urbanization. It's hard to capture the mix of natural and gritty-man-made edges of the region in pictures and words...it tends to either come across as one or the other without really communicating both essential aspects that permeate and define the city and the people.

I've come across a most excellent Muskegon Photographer and blogger, Joe Gee Photography who manages to capture this essence with extraordinary skill.

Churning, Wind Swept Lake Michigan on Christmas - Video

Took some video of wooded West Michigan dunes, wind-swept beach, and a churning Lake Michigan over Christmas and spliced them together.

Don't Tell Me Where You Work. Tell Me What You Do.

Do you ever lose interest in the big things?

Sometimes weeks go by where big things hold no interest for me. Not just no interest. They hold no meaning. Big things like national news. Like electoral politics. Like national policy on this or that.

I read the news, or listen to the radio and at times it all seems like it's happening on Mars. Disembodied. Floating in the ether. Way up there.

Meanwhile I'm feeling the rocks on my feet. The frozen wind in my face. I ponder that we have no bread, no milk. I think about making bread in the evening rather than buying a loaf for $1.50. I gauge the presence of toilet paper. I wonder if I have enough butter, if the car that acting up that we have that replaced the dead car is suffering a serious problem, why my son has been grumpy. I think about commitments I have made and if and when I'll fulfill them and mentally note the date and try to recall things I said I'd do this week.

Somehow meaning and significance shifts from day to day, week to week. As though meaning is a spirit channeling through random events and objects. It takes a vacation from the large, fleeing from the sounds on the radio and macro-visions of the nation, to personal interactions, to the flavor of something I ate as a child, to small personal accomplishments or failures.


Today a man behind me in line handed me a pen as I searched around for something with which to write a check.

I turned and thanked him and took the pen and turned again to the man and gave him a good look as I thanked him.

I knew him. The man in a hoodie and a stocking cap. A fellow I knew in high school...whom I barely knew in high school. With whom I had barely had more than a two or three sentence conversation. All I knew is that he and his girlfriend had a child before the end of high school and he married her and went to work to help support the child. As I get older, the more admirable that becomes.

"It's you!" I said. And called him by name.

We talked for some time as if catching up on time lost.

The impulse we both had was to talk about our work. Somewhat excusively he said he made a living chopping vegetables, and had for more than a decade. As though somehow it was the defining thing about him.....a person, chopping vegetables 40 or more hours per week to receive the cash he needs to live.

It felt unfortunate to me that the questions "what are you doing" or "what have you been up to..." are so often answered by describing the tasks and people we sell our time to.

I made the usual statement about work being work. And told him I'm trying to write.

He brightened and talked about his band. His band that tours from Detroit, through Ohio and Indiana and around the lower part of Michigan. He told me about experimental jazz he and a friend did in his basement. And recording equipment he used to help friends who also wanted to record.

For a man with such a rich, active creative life...one wonders why the first impulse of self definition is the one where he chops vegetables.

There are so many rich, creative minds all around us. Refilling our bottomless cups of coffee. Asking us "will that be debit or credit"? And too often that's all we see. As though the people around us go home into a box and shut down when the day is over. When they're done doing the job that's too easily dismissed as "menial"......

.....and maybe they're not working themselves to death, two or three jobs. Maybe they're finding more meaning and value, and depth and motivation and self worth in an act of creation. The people too easily dismissed as insignificant because of the tiny, TINY sliver of the life we happen to intersect with.

We've moved ourselves into a position where our financial success is the metric we ourselves use to define success.

I love stumbling across the artists in my community. I love it. I love talking to the cashier and learning that she loves to paint. I love meeting an old friend who, on his own time, challenges his own skill as a musician. I love the dancers...and I'm fascinated by the woman I know who hula-hoops and breaths fire in her spare time. These aren't RICH people. They're not even getting by easily. But they are fulfilled.

"This is for her..."

The following is NOT fiction. It happened while I was paying my electric bill.


-----------
There's a certain kind of feeling in the lungs, in the guts, when the air crystalizes at freezing. Not quite snow. Not yet. But the fact of snow without precipitation. The body knows. It just knows. And the darkness comes at 5:00 PM.

I drove down to the Consumer's Energy building on Hoyt between Laketon Ave. and Hackley St., named after the lumber baron who refused to abandon the once-lumber town after the trees were gone. The Consumer's Energy is in a blighted region of the city with boarded up homes on the way, and official papers with city ordinance numbers duct taped to the doors. Across the street a crumbling home with one such sign and somebody's earthly possessions behind cracked glass, stacked to the ceiling in the mud room.

I had to make an urgent payment to the electric company, hence the in-person visit. Right to the source. Long story. We were about 5 months behind on electric payments and I'd been calling the company telling them that if they could pretty please just delay the shut-off for another week, I'd pay them...at least the amount to push the shut-off date further into the future. Twice I assured them, and twice they delayed payment.

At the zeroth hour I pulled up at the building and was preceded by a woman who had driven a rusted, crumbling beater that shuddered to a stop. I walked into the door behind her, cash in hand..............and waited in line. My children bounced on the chairs near the door.


Two women sat behind bullet-proof acrylic windows taking money and talking to customers. But only one, it seemed, was moving the line.

The other was occupied with a long term conversation with a young woman with a baby who appeared to be in her pajamas and a sweater. Good natured. Laughing.

"Well...so...." said the woman "...You know how it is. I mean....they just sit there in a pile, right? I don't know where they go. I probably lost it...."

Nodding, unspeaking, the woman behind the two inch thick bullet proof plexiglass...

The young patron kept speaking "....I mean....I GUESS the payment plan is good. But that's...that's.....I guesss that's what again? How much is it?"

"Fifty dollars...." The women behind the plexi prompted

"Yeah....fifty. Dollars. I mean. And if we miss that today than what again? Fifty you said?"

"Yes, fifty. It was the payment plan we arranged."

"Oh! That was the...okay...boy, how could it be so much?" a long pause "I guess....so what again happens if we don't have the...the what?"

"Fifty dollars. Well...we....that's when the account needs to be discontinued."

"Okay. So....I see....yes....well...I mean, we....I mean...I....I hadn't seen the bill itself. So........." a pause and nothing....

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Oh I'm just trying to picture where we put that agreement. I'm just trying to...you know, see it. I can't see it. I....there's.....you know how it is...you get the mail and it just ends up in a pile..."


The woman with the baby on her hip looked studiously at the floor during the whole conversation, ignoring the long line. Talking. Talking in a low voice. Quietly. But in a silent, silent room of people waiting in line.

She just talked.

As though every second she talked was another second the power stayed on. As though somehow in the circular conversation the situation would somehow maybe resolve itself.

I stood in line. I felt momentarily irritated that one woman was taking up 50% of the capacity of this line. But that quickly faded and I felt a bit of shame and resolved to pretend as though the other teller behind the plexiglass wasn't even available to me. That just the one was, and I'd just have to wait.

Slowly. Slowly. The line crawled. My children became more animated and impatient. The woman at the other window with the child on her hip kept talking...and in her manner just from seeing and not from hearing one might thing she was talking to a long lost friend. Small laughs and a smile on her face as she talked and gestured.

Then...finally the women in front of me went up. The woman who drove the rusted beater that shuttered to a stop before she went inside. I heard the women at the front of the line...

"Can I just have a bill sent to my house again?"

"Yes, Ma'am" said the teller "....is that all?"

The woman in front of me handed the teller a check..."This is for her..." and she pointed at the young mother in the other line with the baby on her hip....

Then she left. She made a bee line to her beater and drove off. The two tellers behind the counter looked at one another in confusion. Then said to the other woman "Well...I guess Merry Christmas." The woman with the baby on her hip just looked at the floor and said "I....I don't think she pointed at me. I don't know who that is."

"Well, she paid your electric bill..." said the unoccupied teller blandly.... "Next! She looked up at me."

All the people in line, who had been staring blankly and silently burst out with a chuckle..."Merry Christmas, Mama...." said an older woman near the back of the line.

A Renaissance of Great Lakes Research

We bundled the kids up and filled a thermos with hot chocolate and went to Hoffmaster State Park where we hiked through the dunes and woodlands for two hours, down to the lake to sit on a log and have some hot chocolate. It was cold. And the wind was hash. But it was worth it. And in the end did the children fall asleep in the car ride back like we had hoped?

No. Not at all.

One of the 200 foot tall parabolic dunes we passed on our approach to the beech had decided at some point that it was tired of sitting around. It somehow shed its trees and soil and decided it was time to move a bit. I've passed this dune dozens of times and it seems to have gone from soil to pure sand all at once...and this time around we found a line of orange flags on spikes situated at the very bottom of the dune. A gas line? A water line?

We went over to examine one and it basically said this:

Leave this flag alone, Bud. We're researching dune movements.

A professor from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan was researching the movement of dunes. Awesome. And as we wandered down to the water front we found yet another research field with a large array of instruments from the same professor, researching dune formation and deposits of sand washed up and blown in from the Big Lake.

For those who want to know more about dunes and dune formations there's some fascinating information here on the Calvin.edu website.


It's a beautiful thing. I don't recall seeing much in the way of evidence of Great Lakes research growing up in the area. Now we've got the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory down by Pere Marquette just off of Lake Michigan. We've got the Annis Water Resources Institute along Muskegon Lake. We've got Calvin College in Grand Rapids apparently researching dune formations. And of course we've got the Grand Valley State University Wind Research Buoy.

There's a renaissance of Great Lakes research going on and it's long overdue.

Muskegon Coal Plant to Close, No Coal Burning Replacement to be Built. Demand Met by Renewables.

The 63 year old coal fire power plant in Muskegon is scheduled to close in 2015. There will be NO replacement coal plant construction.

Let me say that again: the Muskegon coal plant is shutting down, and it will not be replaced. Check THIS out...

Along with the current energy market forces, Consumers' decisions also were made based on future expectations of energy savings from efficiency measures and additional generation from alternative sources of power. Consumers Energy now is constructing the 100-megawatt Lake Winds Energy Park, a commercial wind farm in southern Mason County.

Opponents of renewable energy need to stick that in their crack bowl and smoke it. Between this and a Bay County wind farm that was put on hold because power demand had been met with renewable energy...the suggestion that wind power doesn't shut down coal plants is pretty much blown out of the water.

And it's not just ONE coal plant being shut down.

The closure of coal unites at the Cobb plant, J.R. Whiting plant near Luna Pier and the Karn/Weadock Plant near Bay City are due to the same factors that canceled the company's plans for a clean coal plant.

The closure of the seven smaller, older coal units and the environmental improvements to its remaining generating units will reduced Consumers power plant emissions by 90 percent, company officials said.

Do I have to say it again? It's a new world. I'm saddened by knowing that over 100 jobs will be lost when the coal plant closes...though there is an advanced battery manufacturing plant opening up that will employ hundreds, and a proposed wind turbine component manufacturing park. We hope that will go to help replace those jobs and give work to those families.

I drove down the road this drizzly December afternoon with my kids and passed by Every Woman's Place...an organization that helps women in need. Next to the familiar building I've seen my whole life, something news. Rows and rows and rows of solar panels pointed toward the sky generating clean energy. It was part of a project funded by the US Department of Energy from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

It's a beautiful thing.

This is what art is for, isn't it?

Through some sequence of interactions I can't quite figure out, I found myself on a newly formed Muskegon Area Arts Council. Tonight it had its third meeting at the Tipsy Toad Tavern in the downtown that had largely been reduced to a sand pit 8 years ago or so when entire city blocks were torn down...

...long story. I'll sum up:

Blah blah blah...1970's high unemployment, failing factories...blah blah blah....city revitalization project...blah blah blah..."hey, let's reinvent ourselves into a retail center." blah blah blah...

Anyway, they ended up bulldozing 4 to 6 blocks of the downtown in 2004, which was about 30% of the entire downtown. On the bright side, they're rebuilding. There's a nice culinary arts school where a parking lot used to be.

Where was I? Ah yes, the Tipsy Toad Tavern.

I got there early so walked the mostly empty streets of downtown Muskegon to kill some time. Walked passed closed buildings between alternately bright spots lit by the street lights and dark spots, filled with shadows and alleys.

Folks walking in my direction invariably crossed the street before getting anywhere near me. Or maybe I was just imagining that. Either way, it was quiet and empty in the partially bulldozed downtown until I reached the local theater building where the Muskegon Civic Theater performs most of its plays. Up on the third floor in front a huge, brightly lit window were twirling heads...people dancing...people rehearsing. Somebody was singing, somebody else playing a piano, all just loud enough that the sound carried outside the window and radiated into the streets.

I stopped and watched the only sign of life around me.

I watched until I got the idea that I could just walk right in. So I did.

Nobody stopped me. I poked my head into the dark, empty theater itself, and wandered through halls toward the bigger theater, the Frauenthal center, but didn't dare go into the stage area. Not because it was dark, but because it was clearly full of life. Behind closed fire doors, on the other side of the silent hall I'd been walking I could hear something being constructed. A set, most likely. The sound of a radio, and people talking away...power tools...hammers...

I kept walking. Went up a flight of stairs where the sounds of the dancers and musicians grew louder. There on the second floor, a gallery. An art gallery. Again, I was alone but for the sound of people in another room above me.

I'd just walked into this world and didn't encounter another soul face to face. Just sounds. Creaking floorboards from dancers above me. All around me photographs, some of beaches from around the world, some of stars and galaxies taken by an eccentric man who long ago built an observatory into the roof of his small cape cod.

This is what the arts are, isn't it? Looking into another world. Reaching beyond the self. A creative act that brightens a lonely evening.

I walked the long plush carpet in the foyer, and walked down some dark steps to a trickling fountain in a darkened restaurant down below the main level...all the while in the background the distant sound of piano and singing, the hammer and banter of sets under construction.

Enough time had been killed, so I wandered out the door back into the chilled night and walked back up the street to the Tipsy Toad Tavern to meet people who chose to gather to breathe more joy and life into the city we love. To cultivate creation.

Tonight I Learned the Smart Grid Will Destroy the Universe

Whoa.

Dude. Room Full of CRAZY.

Tonight I went to the Public Service Commission (PSC) public input meeting.


I was looking forward to hearing some information on renewable energy -- wind, as it turns out, is as cheap or way cheaper than coal...awesome.

I was looking to find answers to what would become of the now defunct Low Income and Energy Efficiency -- this is the fund once managed by the Public Service Commission that helped low income families heat their homes or make their homes more fuel efficient. It also helped fund renewable energy education and research projects. But a new law and a court ruling declared that the PSC has no authority to do any of those things. So....here we are right before winter and no authority helping people with heating assistance. Classy. And we're dead in the water with funding renewable energy initiatives OR having long term funding for the new offshore wind power research buoy going into Lake Michigan. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But...the topic du jour was the new smart grid...

Or more specifically, new smart meters which are to replace the old meters on peoples' homes. Here I expected the audience to ask questions like "how does it work?" and "will it save me money?" and "can I control it online?" stuff like that.

But instead what I heard was statement after statement after statement about how the new smart grid was a government conspiracy to find and detain people who dare to use incandescent lightbulbs, and that smart meters are going to fry your brains out and give you cancer.

One man in the back asked if these new smart meters can be turned off remotely, shutting off power to the house. The man started talking Big Brother when the PSC guy answered in the affirmative. Oh my GOD! Government Overreach! Government Overreach! The POWER company has the ability to disconnect my POWER! ARRRRGH!

One after another, after another, after another....."I don't want the government telling me how to save energy...I know how to save energy."

"I heard the government can tell if I'm using incandescent lightbulbs and will disconnect my power instantly if they discover I'm using those old bulbs!"

"I read that these things will destroy the electricity not just your own house, but in your neighbors houses too...even if you don't have one if your neighbor does it will corrupt your electricity!"

"They've been a disaster in Europe! Just look at Spain!"

"This is just a way for the Greens to get into our lives and make us get used to a lower standard of living."

On and on and on and on and on and on and on...a whole crowd of people who had assembled to voice concerns about some of the wackiest crap I've heard for a long time. Everything short of smart meters sucking your home into a vortex that starts a chain reaction collapsing the entire universe into a singularity.

We're all going to die.

...this one is new to me. Heck, I took a peek in the wikipedia entry on smart meters and as of 11/3/2011, nobody has written any entries about the horrifying evils of smart meters.

I'm still kind of stunned.

The Awful, Horrible, No Good EPA Cleaning Up a Century of Industrial Sludge from Muskegon Lake

There's a barge out in the middle of Muskegon Lake filled with sand. I was down that way on Friday when I took my boy to the candy store after school, telling him he could get $2 worth of candy. After a half hour of dithering he eventually settled on a gummi pizza, a jelly fruit slice (lemon) and Superman ice cream of the Hudsonville, MI brand. I can't exactly describe the flavor of Superman ice cream. It's more of a color than a flavor.

Anyway...just behind the candy store is a marina with the dock for the Lake Express cross lake ferry, and just beyond that is Muskegon Lake. And in Muskegon Lake...a barge, filled with sand.

Sand.

It took me a bit to figure it out....after a century and a half of industrial dumping in our beautiful lake, the Federal government is investing 12 million dollars to clean it up, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency. Keep in mind, if our conservative brethren have their way, West Michigan Congressman Bill Huizenga included, we'd be leaving this lake polluted and we'd be helpless to stop more industry from dumping more nasty stuff into it.

This is going to be awesome for the health of people living here, for the wildlife and for the safe edibility of the fish we pull out of there. And it's going to be a great thing for Muskegon's tourism.

Federal and state environmental agencies have approved a $12 million Great Lakes Legacy Act cleanup of contaminated sediment at Muskegon Lake’s Division Street Outfall area starting in May.

The initial focus of the Muskegon Lake project involves the dredging and safe disposal of 41,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the bottom of the lake between Heritage Landing and Hartshorn Marina.

Much of this sediment contains elevated levels of mercury and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons.

The project also includes placement of a 6- to 12-inch sand cover over 120,000 cubic yards of sediment with lower levels of contamination. Workers will also restore shoreline habitat, providing improved ecological conditions for fish and other aquatic life.

AWESOME! National Rocketry Competition Coming to Muskegon 2012

GAH! OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD...

THIS IS just TOO FREAKIN' AWESOME

National rocketry event coming to Muskegon County in 2012

MUSKEGON COUNTY — The national championships competition for the hobby of model rocketry is coming to Muskegon County next summer.

One of three national rocketry events held annually, the National Association of Rocketry's NARAM 54 is set to be conducted July 28-Aug. 3, 2012, at Muskegon County's wastewater site that covers 11,000 acres in Egelston and Moorland townships. The weeklong event is expected to attract 300 to 400 people, with 150 to 200 staying the entire week.

Article

HOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAPHOLYCRAP...

I think I just peed my pants.

Summer 2012...is going to RULE.