Slapping Tortillas

Making a difference

2010-09-03T16:57:00.002-05:00

Mindful Metropolis

Dr. Jane Goodall talks about staying focused on her mission, breaking down global barriers and her institute's Roots & Shoots program

Twenty-four years ago Dr. Jane Goodall had an epiphany. The animal rights and environmental activist best known for her study of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania was attending a conference here in Chicago when she realized that the habitats of her beloved friends were being destroyed, not just in Tanzania but across Africa — in order to serve the commercial bushmeat trade and to satisfy the growing human population. The chimpanzee population was plummeting. “I couldn’t go back to that old, beautiful wonderful life,” says Dr. Goodall. “Instead, I took to the road, and used my voice, to raise awareness about the threats facing chimpanzees, their habitat, and, ultimately, our world.”

Since then, the Jane Goodall Institute has become a global nonprofit that empowers people everywhere to make a difference for the environment and all living things. Goodall’s “Roots & Shoots” program encourages tens of thousands of youth in almost 100 countries to identify problems in their communities and take action. The Great Lakes Regional Office of Roots & Shoots is here in Chicago, and will hold several Peace Day events downtown Sept. 16-18. Goodall visited the Windy City in May, and granted us this interview via email.

Dr. Goodall, thank you for granting this interview to Mindful Metropolis, and thank you for visiting Chicago in May. These days find you traveling for most of the year. Amidst a sea of airports and hotel rooms, how do you remain focused on your mission?

One of the advantages of all the travel I do is the amazing people I meet. They help keep me inspired, particularly the young people who are so passionate about making a difference in the world.

You appeared on May 5 at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park, sponsored by Milwaukee-based Rishi Tea, which unveiled its Masala Chai — an organic and Fair Trade-certified™ tea concentrate, some of whose proceeds benefit your Institute. How can ethical corporations team up with the Jane Goodall Institute to protect animals and the environment?

Despite trying times, consumers are more eager than ever to do their part for the planet by shopping “green.” Charitable organizations like the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) are trying to further this consumer trend by increasingly recognizing manufacturers that have shown a commitment to doing business in an environmentally and socially responsible way.

In 2007, JGI created the “Good for All” brand to recognize companies and environmentally conscious products that are making the effort to use sustainable processes and socially responsible practices. I am pleased that so many eco-friendly companies have come to the table with innovative ideas and products that are consistent with JGI’s vision and values. A portion of the proceeds from “Good for All” products help support JGI’s efforts including chimpanzee protection and community-centered conservation in Africa, as well as Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots, JGI’s global environmental and humanitarian youth program for young people from preschool through college.

Together, we can truly encourage consumers to make positive changes in their everyday lives that will help the environment and build a more sustainable future.

Are such collaborative partnerships with for-profit companies a new front in the campaign to protect the environment?

While there are still a number of challenges to overcome, many companies are beginning to change. There’s no question that many companies are trying to help people in the countries where they’re operating. They are trying to improve standards of living and help children get educated. There are people who really, really care. And I think more heads of corporations are beginning to feel that way, whether they’ve seen the writing on the wall or looked into the eyes of their grandchildren. Whatever it is, I think more and more are beginning to understand that we’re not in this world just to grow and take. We’re in this world to help and to save something for our future generations.

Public companies can only act in a socially and environmentally responsible way, that is, make decisions, with their shareholders’ approval. Pressure from the public can also encourage a company to change their practices. So again, it comes back to us. The company will be driven by the people who buy the products. So our purchasing decisions affect our environment on a daily basis.

We hear talk these days of yesterday’s global barriers being broken down — especially among today’s youth — thanks to the Internet, travel and trade. How can such cross-cultural movement help us protect the environment?

Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots is breaking-down the barriers we build between people of different countries, religions and cultures. We now have programs for preschool right through university. It’s even appearing in prisons and among senior citizens. It’s also being embraced by staff at various companies. It’s what gives me hope, and what gives me energy to carry on. The shinning eyes: “Dr. Jane, we want to show you what we’ve done to make the world a better place. We want to tell you what we’re doing to make the world a better place and what we plan to do.”

I hope that one of the achievements in the next quarter century is that more and more people around the world will understand that there are actions that each one of us can take to make a difference. This will happen through the Internet, word of mouth and through the development of Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots and other programs coming together to create this critical mass of youth with different values. But if we don’t get there, then during the next quarter of a century we will see the world deteriorating, so it is up to every one of us to become involved locally and to take steps to change the way that we live on this planet.

How has individual involvement in the environmental movement changed since you were a child? These days, what attracts young activists? Is it exposure to the natural world?

The Internet has broken down a number of barriers for the environmental movement since I was a child. People from all over the world can learn about different environmental issues. They can share their thoughts, organize, and collaborate with each other to overcome the threats facing the planet and its well being. For example, members of Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots use the website (www.rootsandshoots.org) and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to exchange ideas and share success stories in addition to traditional newsletters and word of mouth.

At the Nature Museum, you also told us, “If I’d imagined what I’d be doing today, when I was out in the forest, I think I would have gone deeper and deeper into the forest and never emerged, but it was thrust upon me. So I went in as a scientist and I came out an activist.” Was there a particular moment when you realized what your calling was? Would you change anything about the path you’ve taken?

It actually all began in 1986. You know, in the beginning of the year, I was in a dream world. I was out there with these amazing chimpanzees. I was in the forests I dreamed about as a child. I was doing some writing and a little bit of teaching once a year. And then I attended a conference in Chicago organized by my good friend Dr. Paul Heltne that brought together people who were studying chimpanzees across Africa and a few who were working with captive chimps, non-invasively. We were together for four days and we had one session on conservation.

It was so shocking to see right across the chimpanzees’ range in Africa, forests were being destroyed, human populations were rapidly growing, the commercial bushmeat trade, the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, was beginning and chimpanzees were increasingly being caught in snares. The chimpanzee population was plummeting. When I left the conference, I couldn’t go back to that old, beautiful wonderful life. Instead, I took to the road, and used my voice, to raise awareness about the threats facing chimpanzees, their habitat, and, ultimately, our world.

You’ve been a hero and an idol to countless people throughout the world. But who are your heroes or idols? Is there anyone, in particular, with whom you’d love to have lunch?

My mother and my grandmother were certainly inspirational. Muhammad Yunus, who founded Grameen Bank with its amazing microcredit program that has done so much to change the lives for the poorest of the poor, is also one of my all-time heroes.

What advice do you have for budding young environmental activists today? And what are the most important current causes in which they should get involved? Climate change? Animal rights?

I would say never to give up and to get involved. We need to step up to the challenge now. There are so many opportunities for people to step up in a positive, lasting and meaningful way — to think globally and live locally. I would encourage young people to get involved in Roots & Shoots, identify the issues that concern them, whether in their own backyard or across the globe, and take action to make a difference for people, animals and the environment we all share.

The Great Lakes Regional Office of your Roots & Shoots program is located in Chicago. Tell us about Roots & Shoots and how it relates to the work for which you are most known — researching and protecting chimpanzees.

When I was in Gombe I was just concerned with learning about the behavior of one group of chimps. Then I realized that chimps across Africa were becoming extinct and so I traveled around Africa and talked about conservation. It was not long after that I realized how many of the problems in Africa are due and left over from colonialism and the continued exploitation of Africa's resources. While travelling in Europe, Asia and North America, I realized how many young people had lost hope, which led me to establish a global program for young people, Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots, which is now in more than 120 countries. Roots & Shoots involves young people from preschool right through university.

Roots & Shoots’ main message is that that every one of us makes an impact on the world every day. It's helping individuals to understand that though they may feel their small actions don't make a difference, it's not just them. Cumulatively, our small decisions, choices and actions, make a very big difference.

Roots & Shoots is youth driven. The members get together with their peers, teachers, and/or family members to talk about the problems around them. They then choose three projects that they feel would make things better: one for people, one for animals and one for the environment.

Roots & Shoots is working. We are changing lives on a daily basis. Young people are empowered to want to make a difference in their world. I think this is why it's growing so rapidly.

How often do you make it back to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, where you first arrived in 1960 to study the chimpanzee communities 50 years ago this year? What significance does that setting hold for you?

I return twice a year, not for very long though, just long enough to replenish my spirit as it is refuge for me. Most of my old chimp friends are gone. The very original ones have all gone. Now, a research team is following and learning about the great-grandchildren of the chimps that I originally studied.

What’s next for the Jane Goodall Institute? Are any new ventures in the works?

JGI is a global organization. We are planning to build an endowment that will enable us to secure the future for the Gombe research and the Institute’s core programs. It will provide security for our sanctuaries for orphaned chimpanzees whose mothers have been killed for the illegal commercial bushmeat trade, and to help improve the welfare of captive primates. And, it will give Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots program a legacy foundation.

Are you reading anything good right now? Any favorite foods?

At the moment, I am proofreading Dale Peterson's new book The Moral Lives of Animals, which will be published in the United States by Bloomsbury in the late spring of 2011. Dale is the author of my biography, Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man.

Regarding favorite foods, I love good dark chocolate, organic cheese and well-cooked vegetables (beans, spinach, mashed potatoes, mushrooms, broccoli etc.)"

Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail promotes access and safety

2010-08-12T16:53:00.001-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Over the years, Bob Sutherland has taken his mother on countless walks along the quiet, rustic trail near the base of Alligator Hill, between Glen Arbor and Glen Haven. The president of Cherry Republic underwent a change of heart before he realized that this path should be turned into a multi-use trail and shared with bikers, hikers, rollerbladers and wheelchairs — for the greater good, he says. Cherry Republic has been a major funder of the push to build the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail — a 27-mile multi-use trail planned within the National Lakeshore, from the Leelanau-Benzie county line to north of Port Oneida.

Anderson’s Market owner Brad Anderson spends much of the school year in Traverse City, where he and his three kids enjoy the Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation (TART) bike trail between Suttons Bay and Acme, and in particular, “the connection that family biking brings to our lives.” But in the summer, when Anderson brings the family’s bikes to Glen Arbor, “they lay dormant as I rediscover the hazards of navigating the state highways in and around the (Sleeping Bear Dunes National) Lakeshore.”

Tom Reay, owner of Trattoria Funistrada in Burdickville, says he’s been advocating for a bike trail within the Lakeshore for over a decade — especially during the days when the Park’s attitude toward the concept was lukewarm at best. Reay laments how many tourists come to our region with bike racks on their vehicles but find nowhere — other than the edges of state highways, or rugged two-tracks — to use their two-wheelers, despite the fact that the Lakeshore’s 1976 mission statement mentions trails for biking (and in those days, mountain bikes weren’t yet mass produced).

Too many visitors still experience the Lakeshore from within an automobile and spend minimal time interacting with its wonders while hiking, swimming or biking. Reay says that the majority of tourists never stray more than 100 feet from their cars. Matt Wiesen, owner of Crystal River Outfitters (which also rents and services bikes), believes that the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail “will allow us to promote safe, family-oriented recreational opportunities within the National Park’s boundaries and showcase its beauty from within and not just from a passing car.”

For 25 years Miller Hill resident Sandy Miller (Hall of Fame retired Glen Lake basketball coach Don Miller is her husband) has biked from her house to Sugar Loaf, or into Glen Arbor and Glen Haven on M-22 and M-109. During that quarter century she’s seen this area bloom into a tourism mecca, and she’s seen automobile traffic increase and cars grow bigger and wider while pulling monstrous boats behind them. Driver distractions have increased accordingly (children in the backseat, maps, cell phones). In short, the number of people who want to enjoy the outdoors near Glen Arbor has surged, but the available roadways have not. Miller has experienced and witnessed numerous “near misses” between bikers and distracted drivers.

The Park’s Deputy Superintendent Tom Ulrich shakes his head at the irony of seeing children on bikes at the D.H. Day campground on M-109 doing circles in the gravel, because their parents don’t feel that the stretch of Harbor Highway between Glen Haven and Glen Arbor is safe enough for amateur bikers. Cars whizz by (often blinded, if they’re heading east during sunrise or west during sunset). As Sandy Miller says, “just like with coloring books, little kids aren’t always able to stay within the small lines on the roadside.” As a result, entire families often drive from the campground to the Dune Climb, or the mile to Anderson’s Market, to buy a single grocery item, when they could have easily biked that short distance.

Sutherland, Anderson, Reay, Wiesen and Miller are all proponents of the planned Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail and active on its fundraising committee, which is a joint effort between local citizens and Traverse City-based TART Trails. The Park supports the trail on its land but will not finance its development or construction. In order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and thus receive matching funds, the majority of the trail will be paved and 10 feet wide, with two-foot buffers on either side.

The prospect of an asphalt trail running through the Park (and the Alligator Hill/M-109 stretch in particular) has generated passionate opposition from some locals: see “To pave or not to pave the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail?” in our July 15 edition, and numerous comments, both pro- and con- on our website, GlenArbor.com. “If the Park must put in a trail then let it be crushed limestone and only 5 feet wide,” opines Glen Arborite Paul May, whose perspective is shared by many.

But as we reported then, this project has been in development for nearly four years, support for the trail has reached a critical mass, and with the Park’s support and local business owners writing checks, it won’t be long before the Glen Arbor region can add yet another feather to its hat — as a safe and accessible bicycle destination for the entire family, amateur and experienced riders alike.

“I strongly believe that the Lakeshore is a family destination, particularly a young family destination,” says Brad Anderson. “Creating new opportunities for families to enjoy the Park will create special memories and timeless connections to the land. Families will use these 27 miles of trail to discover places they never would have without it.”

Sandy Miller says that she was initially skeptical about the idea of an asphalt trail in the woods (where a natural footpath had existed before), but that now she supports a trail and surface that will permit the broadest range of use. For Miller, two tenants trump all others: access and safety.

“We have become a destination for those interested in all manners of outdoor activities. I believe that we have an obligation and responsibility to provide safe access for those activities.”

Dining on the deck at the Glen Lake Manor

2010-08-09T16:50:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Ah, what better way to celebrate an August early evening than with summer fresh ingredients — both on my plate and in my glass — and a view of the shifting light over Little Glen. At the Manor on Glen Lake, you can begin your dining affair with a fresh bruschetta appetizer (tomato basil, garlic, onion and balsamic vinegar on bread) and a minty mojito, and have your view too. It’s honestly difficult to decide which of the three are more deserving of your full attention.

That’s the biggest dilemma facing patrons of Scott Lee Grant’s cuisine. So yes, things could be much worse.

Grant, a graduate of the Culinary Arts Institute of Seattle and native of Clare, Mich., joined the Manor in early July after seeing an advertisement for an executive chef position posted by owner Nancy Wright. Grant and his fiance Tammy were tired of the rat-race in Port Huron, Mich. (they occasionally heard gun shots): he visited the Manor in late June, Wright hired him on the spot, and he stuck around to work Sunday brunch the next day. The couple’s move out of the city and up north has been a breath of fresh air — other than when their moving truck broke down in Flint for an entire day.

“The area sold me on this job,” says Grant, who just turned 50 years old. “Tammy and I love it up here. My four brothers and I grew up in Clare, and we’d come up here as kids to visit the Dunes and Lake Michigan.”

Grant took one look at the Manor’s deck, and its dazzling views of Little Glen Lake across M-22, and came up with the idea for “Chef on the Deck.” Every Saturday evening you can dine on the deck and interact with the friendly former army nurse, who dresses in a telltale towering chef’s hat and sports an American flag on the right breast of his coat. While getting his executive certification at culinary school eight years ago, Grant got to work with the 1986 American Olympic Prep team. The experience was unforgettable, and the patriotism stuck with him.

The Saturday menu features Jack Daniels Tenderloin with Mushroom Demi sauce, a twice-baked potato, vegetables, and for dessert, “Cherry Jubilee” or Banana foster, all for $30. The Manor also serves a “light fare,” grilled sandwiches and burgers or appetizers for $9-15. And an early-bird special between 4-6 p.m. features Parmesan-crusted whitefish, broasted chicken or glazed salmon.

My wife Sarah and I dined at the Manor in mid-July, and we were ravenously hungry, following several hours of standup paddle boarding at Empire beach. We kicked things off with bruschetta and crab cakes, served with a mild Thai coconut curry sauce. As with Nancy Wright’s past restaurants (remember Le Bear?) warm bread rolls and salads with dried cherries topped with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing followed the appetizers. Lemon sorbet arrived as a taste bud cleanser before our main entrees, which were Parmesan-crusted whitefish and a broasted chicken dinner, each served with asparagus and a twice-baked potato.

Chef Grant has logged his share of miles in recent years. He’s worked at restaurants in Onekema, Bay City, Grand Rapids, an upscale retirement home in Lansing, and briefly ran his own joint in Port Huron, before meeting Nancy. Grant hopes that the 104-year-old Manor is his last stop for a while. Once the summer fades and the tourists go home, he looks forward to spending his free time hunting and fishing, and planning his wedding with Tammy.

He’s also excited about the changes that could be in store for the historic building. Wright hopes to build a tavern in the east room and perhaps convert the rooms upstairs into shops. Grant’s expansion plans for the Manor include hosting picnics, weddings and private parties on the deck. And if boaters on the Glen Lakes prefer to call in their order and eat his culinary creations out on the water, the Manor will deliver your meal to the dock on Little Glen.

After all, a good meal deserves an equal view.

The Manor on Glen Lake is open 7 days a week, serving lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., dinner from 5-9 p.m., and Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Early Bird specials are 4-6 p.m. daily. For more information call (231) 334-0150.

Dunegrass focuses local, with a little Big Easy

2010-07-29T16:47:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Now that Dunegrass organizer Ryan Lake has the 2009 rebirth of the festival under his belt, he can focus on bringing harmony to the popular annual northern Michigan music event, which celebrates its 18th year this August. To Lake, that means trimming the number of bands, so that festival-revelers can hear them perform more than once, and above all, emphasizing Michigan artists.

Ninety percent of the 32 bands scheduled to play at Dunegrass 2010 — August 6-8 at the Empire Eagles’ property on M-72 east of Empire — hail from the mitten state, says Lake. The local performers include Steppin’ In It, Luke Winslow-King, Susan Fawcett and Michael Beauchamp, who belong to the Earthworks Music collective and are as familiar to local folk aficionados as beaches and cherry pie.

But Dunegrass also supports a smooth musical connection between New Orleans and northern Michigan. Lake once lived in the Big Easy (he spent the winter in nearby Lake Ann, and has camped on the Dunegrass land all summer, in preparation for the festival); Winslow-King calls the Bayou home after honing his skills at the Interlochen Art’s Academy, and this year’s festival will once again import a famous act from America’s first musical mecca — following Porter Battisse Stoltz’s show last year that nearly brought down the roof.

Big Sam’s Funky Nation will headline Friday night at midnight. HBO viewers will recognize trombonist and bandleader “Big Sam” Williams from “The Wire” producer David Simon’s new hit miniseries, “Treme”, about life in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Williams has toured with everyone from James Brown to Dave Matthews.

Lake is also stoked to have Greensky Bluegrass on tap for Saturday at 9 p.m. Greensky may team up with Earthworks members Jen Sygit and Sam Corbin. And he’s curious to see what form local favorite Steppin’ In It takes when it plays with a big band, drums and bass. (Glen Arborites will remember Steppin’ In It from their acoustic acts at pastoral sites such as Thoreson Farm and at the Dune Climb.)

Even the musicians we think we already know could surprise us, explains Lake. “Everyone goes through phases where you do one thing and then morph into something totally different. If an artist isn’t creating, then they’re not an artist.”

Dunegrass 2010 will feature two alternating stages on the infield, in order to avoid delays between acts.

As always, the festival features many kid-friendly events, including arts and crafts and educational workshops on Saturday from noon until 6 p.m. Twister Joe will be there twisting balloons, and the food lineup will include Thai, barbecue and gyros, with a full coffee bar for those needing a pick-me-up. For the spiritually inclined, Rachael Davis will lead a Sunday morning gospel hour at 11 a.m.

Dunegrass is preparing for as many as 2,500 revelers this year. Tickets cost $74 for a weekend pass ($90 if you buy at the gate), $40 for a day pass, and $25 per vehicle if you’re camping. You can purchase tickets on the festival’s website until August 4 at DunegrassMusicFestival.org or buy them at Oryana or Old Town Coffee In Traverse City.

And if you see video cameras at the festival, smile and wave. Vic McCarty, a well-known local TV broadcaster, is reportedly making a documentary-style movie about Dunegrass. Also, we’ll post daily updates on our website GlenArbor.com from the festival. Once again, Dunegrass lives!

Candidate John Arens

2010-07-26T16:44:00.001-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Avid readers of this newspaper who also frequent the Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company and have talked with John Arens, part owner of the Glen Arbor business, know that our politics don’t align. In fact, on some days our perspectives on current issues seem as far apart as the distance from here to Wisconsin. But rather than using that as an excuse to avoid meaningful discussion, for years (ever since I worked behind the counter as a barista) John and I have engaged each other in provocative banter, usually prodding, but always listening, and respectful of the other’s views. I’ve played revolutionary Bob Dylan tunes in his establishment, and he recently leant me Radical Son, the autobiography of David Horowitz, a one-time liberal turned conservative. I’ve promised Arens that I’ll read the book before the next ice age (or before global climate change melts the polar ice caps).

So when I learned that Arens was running in the Republican primary for state representative, I jumped at the opportunity to interview him, ask a few tough questions and publish his answers in the Glen Arbor Sun (they were long: read the full interview on our webpage, GlenArbor.com) For whether or not I agree with his politics (in particular, his doubts about public education and green energy potential make me shudder), he is an articulate and witty thinker whose words deserve a place in the local rag. Arens faces an uphill battle to defeat Onekema resident Ray Franz in the Aug. 3 primary before he would even have a chance at taking on Democrat Dan Scripps, who beat Franz handily, with 60 percent of the vote, in 2008 and currently serves Michigan’s 101st District. Arens hasn’t spent the money on publicity that Franz has (road signs around Leelanau County tout Franz as a “conservative Republican”). But that doesn’t mean that this underdog should be ruled out.

Glen Arbor Sun: You are a successful part owner of the Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company in Glen Arbor? Doesn’t that keep you busy? Why run for office?

John Arens: Why not? Its Glen Lake Fair Day today, and I can’t find a parking space here at the Coffee Shop. The closest one may well be in Lansing.

Seriously, Jacob, I think Government at all levels has run completely off the rails, and has breeched the well-constructed firewalls of the constitution. And I see a fresh breeze of New Federalism on the horizon, which will mean we better be ready to take advantage here in Michigan of our long-dormant sovereignty as it pops up.

As for being busy, The Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company has an amazing bunch of people that care a great deal about it, and I am only one of them. And, I fully expect to still be involved at the coffee place, even if the clouds part, the heavens are rent asunder, and I am elected. When this state was in its infancy, it was lead by folks that put down their plows for a season once the fields were harvested, went to Lansing, debated a bit, passed a law or two, and then went home. I think there is great wisdom in this approach, and Michigan would be much better served by such citizen-legislators.

Sun: If successful, name three objectives that you’ll seek to accomplish in Lansing.

Arens: One: reduce the size, scope and reach of state Government.

Unlike many erstwhile Republicans, I am not advocating “tax cuts” per se. I am talking about “government cuts”. And, I won’t cast these cuts simply in economic terms. There are moral components involved in respecting the dignity of grown-up, adult, Michiganders. Actually reducing the amount that the State harasses, torments and belittles its citizens would be an active admission that you as an individual, free-born, grown-up adult are perfectly capable of minding your own affairs, and those of your family and community, and that the instrumentalities of State Government should respect you for it.

This can be done a number of ways, through a number of methods: Legislatively, by executive order, or before the Bar. Or, a combination of all three. For example, in order to reduce the size and influence of the Government where it is a matter of “settled” issue or law before the courts, those in the Legislature should work hard to remove the standing of public advocacy groups that are not directly impacted and then re-file lawsuits as needed. We should as a matter of statute restore such legal pathways as “local nuisance law”, in order to attempt to short-circuit some of the authoritarian federal rulings, as well.

Two: Work with like-minded colleagues to create a totally new, creative, nimble framework for primary and secondary education.

You are either blind, or a fool, to not see that our current system of public education is a disaster, and that it needs to be ripped out, root, branch and leaf. The inequities in the foundational funding alone requires this, on top of the fiscal massacre we see at how much we spend for such middling results. And finally, we need to seriously address the horrible injustice of forcing parents to pay for a child’s education that oftentimes may actively countermand the educational priorities of those parents.

When the nation was founded, the framers rightly put the societal “informing institutions” beyond the reach and influence of government: freedom of assembly, religion, and of the press. At the time, there were no government schools, and the means of education were strictly functions of assembly and the church, so there was no need to explicitly spell out that freedom of education was inherently included in this calculation. Of course, the wheels fell off this approach when localities began taxing themselves to build schoolhouses, and the State metastasized itself inside the classroom.

This was acceptable for as long as the education kids received mirrored the wants and needs of the parents, and as long as the locality had paramount control over the operation of the Little Red School House. Obviously, this long ago ceased being true, and now the whole system needs to scrapped to achieve the basic goal: Teach kids in accordance with their parents’ means and wishes.

Three: Require home delivery of the Glen Arbor Sun state-wide. At $7 a copy.

‘Skidding. Seriously, though, if I can make substantive progress on these two things (reducing the size of State Government, and thoroughly reforming the means of primary and secondary education), then that is enough for any legislator’s plate.

Sun: Your opponent in the Republican primaries, Ray Franz, got into hot water during the 2008 election when he attacked Democratic opponent Dan Scripps (who won the election and currently holds the 101st state house seat) with a mailer that used homophobic language. What did Franz (who calls himself a “conservative Republican” on roadside billboards) do wrong in that campaign? And how is your campaign different?

Arens: I never saw the mailer to which you refer, although I did read excerpts of it, and quite a bit of the commentary about it, so I can’t definitively address its tone, if it was “homophobic”, or not. As I recall the incident, I think Candidate Franz was referring to a generous Democrat donor as a “homosexual activist”. I will say this: I am not in favor of revealing the sexual proclivities of any political donors, (aside from those who have been convicted of breaking the law) especially when the thought of the sexuality of most politicians is kind of creepy anyway.

Further, I would assume that those who donate to Democrats are, in fact, Democrats — or that they have a world-view that mirrors the choices of their endorsed candidates. If I remember correctly, the activist to whom Mr. Franz referred was Jon Stryker, who is well known in Michigan as a very wealthy, far-left supporter of Democrat issues and causes. Similarly, Betsy DeVos is a well-known wealthy, conservative donor, but I don’t recall anyone referring to her as a “heterosexual activist”. Neither seems particularly germane. Mr. Stryker’s personal choices are his own, and like everyone else, he alone is responsible for them. However, I find Styker’s political activity far more problematic than what he might (or might not) do with his clothes off. I found the whole kerfuffle to be quite odd, frankly. And I know it was a gigantic blunder on Candidate Franz’s part because Mr. Stryker’s personal affairs were so foreign to race at hand, as it remains today.

Mr. Franz’s mistake, I believe, is that at times he tends to engage his words before he engages his critical thought. For example, I have learned through the good offices of the Ludington Daily News that Mr. Franz is telling those that are interested, that I am no longer campaigning for the primary. This is odd, because I’ve seen Mr. Franz at a couple of recent candidate events, and he knows I am still an active candidate.

I am a thorough-going conservative, and I know that campaigning as such requires temperate, passionate, articulate argumentation, and ongoing appeals to reason. Throwing around intemperate, polarizing nonsense at critical times can be very hurtful to the constitutional, conservative cause (just as it clearly can be to the statist, liberal cause). There are certainly times to be loud and passionate and forceful. But this Franz mailer thing was oddly timed, and seemed genuinely weird.

This is unfortunate, because I’ve found Mr. Franz to be a perfectly nice man, and probably quite earnest in his beliefs. But, the constitutional movement needs thoughtful and rhetorically sound candidates, and I am not sanguine Mr. Franz completely fits the bill. I wish him the best.

Sun: Appealing to divisive social issues seems to be in the national Republican party’s playbook these days. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? On which issues do you stand with the national Republican party, and where do you differ?

Arens: Well, perhaps you have a copy of that playbook. The Republicans have not sent me a copy.

I don’t know that I agree with the premise, Jacob. Some of my fellow citizens on the more liberal end of the spectrum should come to terms with the fact that these issues you reference which relate to family, traditional morality, societal culture and so forth, have deep and enduring meaning to many Americans, even more to them than, say, simple economic policy, light rail, or parking ordinances. Further, “divisiveness” can be in the eye of the beholder, as well. Some might term it “competitiveness”.

Having said this, though, the issues that relate directly to individual sovereignty and cultural mores are extremely deep, extremely personal, and thus should be treated with the utmost seriousness by both sides. Just as a societal liberal might view a buffoonish appearance of an right-wing evangelical pastor calling on God to strike down sinful living as (correctly) repulsive, it is equally offensive to see radical homosexuals dressed as nuns parading down Fifth Avenue. Caricature-like behavior begets caricature-like public policy and discourse.

Sun: In our conversations, you’ve said that you favor small government, one that’s non-intrusive, and perhaps sometimes invisible. What ought to be government’s primary functions, and what ought it to leave alone?

Arens: The primary functions of government are spelled out quite well in the Constitution, and the nub of that document is to protect the liberties and private property of free-born sovereign adults. These protection functions includes armies, patent laws, civilian police and courts, and the laws describing the intercourse of one state vis-a-vis another, and so forth. Beyond that, as James Madison wryly observed, I don’t see any indication in the constitution that provides for the absolute sheer comfortability of anyone — especially at the expense of someone else.

Sun: That said, some of the biggest problems facing the state, and the country, today, seem to lack solutions within the private sector or from the private citizenry. Malfeasance by giants such as BP and Massey Energy, and Washington’s recent moves (mostly under past administrations) to water down regulations of the behemoth oil and mining industries, led directly to recent environmental and human disasters in the Gulf of Mexico and West Virginia. The financial sector brought the 2008 recession upon us all with little or no government oversight to stop that from happening. And health care costs have risen to the point where they were completely unsustainable and forcing hard-working people into poverty. Isn’t good government part of the solution? Shouldn’t we favor good government over — or at least on equal footing with — corporations run amuck?

Arens: Thank goodness we got to the question mark here, Jacob!

The institutions of our federal and state governments have delivered our society to the point where we, as a people, now bear the burden of $65 Thousand Million Millions (-that’s “Trillions”) in unfunded public liabilities. In my view, this criminal failure means that that our Federal Government in particular has categorically surrendered all moral authority to regulate anything, from my toilet water to multi-national corporations, including BP. I think you would agree that any institution, public or private, that so thoroughly abuses its constituent citizens (be they employees, stockholders, or voters) financially, like the Government has, to the point that it compels, it forces, it enslaves them (and their off-spring for generations) to personally pay off and atone for its reckless behavior, should be punished to the utmost — rather than given further authority over the liberties of individuals.

And this goes to the basic understanding of “free” markets. Take your statement about the “unsustainability” of health-care costs: When the United States Government entered the health-care market in a significant manner in 1966, the average cost of delivering a baby was $265. It is now, 45 years later, over $10,000. In 1966, the average cost of a new television was also $265. Today, it is $415. The “raw materials” for both activities have not changed dramatically in the last half-century, to my knowledge (and I do have two sons, so I am at least familiar with that process, although I’ve never manufactured a television). In the intervening years, the price of the TV doubled, but the cost of having a baby has increased nearly 50 fold. What changed?

A simple market fact: When government steps in, as it did in 1966, it neither creates nor manufactures anything of added value, it only “shifts” existing resources, and creates market dislocation. Each “shift” costs more resources (in fact, this could be the economic version of the second law of thermodynamics relating to friction). Each dislocation requires “making up” the resources dislocated. At some point, the multipliers add up. A baby is still free of charge to create, just as it was in 1966, but the market dislocations created by government regulations and mandates have ballooned the cost of delivering it. Clearly, then, the fix to this isn’t more government. It is less dislocation of market forces by government.

The same is true for the financial crisis: It was a beast created by market dislocation by government. I personally hold extreme environmental regulation responsible for creating the spark that ignited the financial free-fall: By virtue of our inability to site and permit petroleum refineries in America for the last 25 years, owing to the byzantine and onerous rules for citing them created by the EPA, we had a market scarcity of refined petroleum in the fall of 2007. This caused a run on refined petroleum in the western world, which drove up the cost of unrefined product, which caused scarcity of both by the spring of 2008, and a run-up in the speculative futures price. This meant Joe Schmoe of Kokomo wound up paying $4 a gallon for gas, and all those other things that were once affordable for him (say, a 100% loan-to-value mortgage) were suddenly un-affordable. The sudden, cascading effect was stunning throughout the general economy at that point. If we had continued to have $1.29 per-gallon gasoline, as we did in 2007, there would have been no “financial crisis”. Pure and simple.

Jacob, I would be careful about throwing around the term “malfeasance”. That implies criminal premeditation on the part of BP. “Misfeasance”, perhaps. I am fairly sure they didn’t knowingly blow up one of their own wells, and kill 11 of their employees. But, I would also point out that the mere existence of BP is a creation of the federal leviathan: It’s incarnation here in America as a monstrous international entity cobbled out of the rump ends of the federally mandated break-up of Standard Oil (which was broken up into Amoco, Esso, Conoco, Exxon, etcetera). Since the end of the Rockefeller era, the oil industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries in our nation, and, after the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon, I am not sure what this regulation has bought, and at what price.

The logical fallacy here is that the free market, when untrammeled, will run roughshod over individuals. Let’s accept that for argument’s sake. But, what of untrammeled government? Wouldn’t it trend toward a similar outcome? They are both human constructs, so the logical answer is, yes. While the market is not perfect, which I would never argue, it is clearly more perfect in that it must answer to the needs and whims of tens of millions of individuals, making tens of millions of individual decisions, versus government, which only coerces and forces people to its will.

As for the canard of “Good Government”: Government Governs — it doesn’t nurture. It can only coerce and impel, ultimately at the point of a law-enforcement gun. The sooner a voter comes to terms with this concrete fact, the sooner we will have “Just and Effective Government”.

Sun: Here at home, Michigan has been bleeding jobs for the better part of a decade, the auto industry has all but imploded, and there doesn’t seem to be any hope in sight. Many have posited that investing in the clean energy sector (wind, solar, hydro, and perhaps nuclear) is a way to bring manufacturing and skilled jobs back to Michigan. Where do you stand on this? What kinds of state government investments and initiatives would help create jobs here at home?

Arens: I stand on “cheap” energy. I don’t care if it comes from elderberry fumes, and some enterprising chap finds a way to market them. I also stand on extremely “abundant” energy. I also stand on “safe” energy, which all existing base-load power is, especially when placed on the overall economic balance.

But, “Green Energy” jobs, as such, are a myth. Spain, which has been “investing” (that is, coercing markets) in “Green” jobs for over a decade, has recently come to the conclusion that it is a giant sucking maw at the public treasury. For every $230,000 spent, only $38,000 was returned to the general economy in the form of a job, or what have you; and, as I say, this was after ten years. “Clean Energy” is an emotional euphemism, and has a whiff of propaganda, dependent on its verbal reverse for effectiveness: “Dirty Energy”. Nobody, of course, wants that.

But, our current market-driven system of energy delivery is already manifestly clean, especially when compared to the America of 70 or 100 years ago. Go to Mackinac Island on a hot, steamy July day for evidence of how “clean” our transportation is today, compared to how it was in the horse and buggy era. I especially enjoy trundling my wheeled luggage over the road apples. And, my mom and dad remember their childhoods in Lansing, when they had to get out and play in the new-fallen snow quickly, before it got covered with an ugly sheet of coal soot from all the neighborhood coal-burning furnaces. Nowadays, you flip a switch, the heat comes on, and the snow stays white.

There is a reason that Michigan grew from a backwater prairie outpost to world-class industrial power in roughly 80 years, between 1840 and 1920: Michigan was at the vanguard of utterly free-market mercantile capitalism. You see, Michigan had once experimented with giant Public Works in its very early years of statehood, and left a number of New York bondholders holding a very empty bag for a failed publicly-owned railroad system. After that Rube-Goldberg experiment of the late 1830s, Michigan was both unwilling and unable to float bonds for such things, which in their day, were the equivalent of Governor Granholm’s “Green Jobs” initiatives. Instead, Michigan chose the way of public frugality, and general liberty. As a result, the Fords, the Durants, the Kelloggs, the Dows, were free to experiment, put their sweat and capital at risk for little overhead burden, and they created an entire new civilization.

That could easily happen again if we made the political determination to remove regulatory obstacles, open lands and resources currently put off-limits by government’s arbitrary fiat, and remove the standing in court that crony capitalists and left-wing agitators alike enjoy.

Michigan is an amazing, amazing place. It’s people are some of the most sophisticated, hard-working, creative folks on the planet. Michigan should be the golden place, and the golden age, in which to live. All we need is the political will to make it happen.

Sun: Of course, tourism, and not auto manufacturing, is the name of the game here in Leelanau County. What should politicians in Lansing be doing to help folks up north?

Arens: Get the heck out of the way. For example, most of the beachfront hotels in Michigan would love to be, ‘er, “beachfront”. Instead, many of them are “reed-front” or “fen-front”, and the owners of the properties would jump at the chance to recharge their beachfronts with the beautiful sugar-sand that sits a couple of hundred feet out in the water, sitting at the bottom of the bay, or lake. Let them rebuild their beaches with it, as they could prior to about 1978. Let the sunbathers, and toddlers and swimmers enjoy real sand beaches. That’s what attracts tourists, not wilderness areas that only Park Rangers can enjoy.

Besides, the level of Lake Michigan will come back up anyway in the next 10 years, and all of the so-called “emerging wetlands” of the firth will again be submerged. Bank on it.

Also, the State and Local governments should re-align their taxing, permitting and citing requirements to more easily allow developers to take over distressed or unfinished projects, such as the condo projects in Manistee, or the Black Hole of Petoskey, and to partner alongside those that have real money to spend on such projects.

I will also point out that Michigan has lost a vast swath of 850,000 middle-management, or highly skilled labor jobs since 2007. Those people used to fill the hotels, buy the t-shirts, and play the putt-putt, but they’ve moved on. We can fix this, though. Remember: when Henry Ford went to build his Highland Park plant in 1904, which, along with his River Rouge project in the 1920s, went on to employ nearly 185,000 people, he had very few regulatory hoops he had to jump through, both at a local, and a state level. And Hamtramck and Dearborn exist because of it. We can create that kind of climate again in Michigan, if we are serious about jobs, and a liberty-based way of life; or, we can be mealy-mouthed about it, and watch while we wring our hankies over “wetland” protection, or whether or not we are disturbing the local dandelions.

Sun: Bringing things back to Glen Arbor, what’s the best coffee at the Roasters? And have you seen any interesting characters come through the cafe today?

Arens: Oh, man: a softball! I just had a cup of Guatemala that was so bright and spring-like that my tongue thought we were having a party. It depends, really, on what’s just been roasted.

But, as you know, we just lost one of the Most Interesting Characters that ever walked through the cafe (and who walked through it the first day we were open, by the way): Don Vavra. I still expect to see the old fellow come through the door, and ask for “brewed coffee”. Don was a great, great man — and he knew how to live life, that’s for sure. Life was a canvass to him, and he was the artist.

Sun: You live near Sugar Loaf resort. Got any good Liko Smith stories for us? And what’s the secret to getting the long shuttered ski resort open again?

Arens: Liko who?

Oh, yeah, him: “Mr. Smith Goes to Cedar”. I understand he was a boxer of some type. I knew the minute Mr. Smith said he was going to open the hotel “by July 4th” that he was, shall we say, “punch-drunk”. The last publicly revealed suitors (the Lutz’s, I think) of the resort back in 2006, it should be remembered, walked away once they discovered they couldn’t obtain a clear title to the place after two years of searching — and this Smith fellow is going to walk in, turn on the lights, and start leaving mints on the sun-bleached pillows? It sure seemed like a con-game to me.

All I can tell you is that it is a heartbreaking scene up at Sugar Loaf. The memories are trapped in the amber of about 1975 everywhere you look. For crying out loud, Sandy Miller was my ski instructor there, back when we were both many eons younger. Other than Boyne, it was the place to go in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. The hill itself is probably the second best in the Lower Peninsula. And the view is magnificent.

But, if you go there now, the box elder trees are reclaiming the slopes, the seats on the J-Bar have rotted off, and lay right beneath where they’ve fallen. The warming hut at the top of the hill is sliding down the hill. Windows and doors are broken out, or boarded over. The eaves are crumbling on the buildings, the swimming pools have cracked, and I wouldn’t get on one of the sclerotic lifts now unless all the moving parts and electrical service were replaced.

Other than Kate Wickstrom, or her secured interests, deciding that they can take a massive loss to unload the place to someone with aquifer-deep pockets, I don’t know what can be done at this point. And it sure looks like Remo will run to the darkest corner of Fiji to avoid taking a real loss.

Polselli paid what, $11 million for the place? And, as far as I can tell, Kate has what amounts to a glorified land contract for roughly the same amount. Five or six years ago, I think Kate could have opened the hotel and restaurant to at least get some revenue flowing, but now, after half a decade of abandonment, I don’t know.

The real problem is that it’s such a tangled mess of competing legal interests. Who actually holds the paper on the place? Is there fraud involved, known or unknown, to the signatories? Who is suing whom over what? If the resort stays wide open and unbarricaded long enough, some kid is going to wander onto the grounds in a drunken stupor, fall into one of the holes or through a window and get hurt, and then what? It certainly is an attractive menace, to say the least, to use a legal term. Of course, if the taxes don’t get paid over time, this will be a moot discussion anyway, the County and the taxpayers will own it. At which point, maybe the county could abate away the taxes, or create some sort of TIFA district there to entice a purchaser. But, it would be silly to even propose such a thing until they actually took possession of it, which could be a disaster, too.

It’s better in Burdickville

2010-07-17T16:40:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

“I would characterize Burdickville as the great big little community,” says Mary O’Neill, owner of the Laker Shakes Burdickville Market and, one day last week, the owner of a very sore right wrist, from scooping rock solid ice cream.

“Though we are, for the most part, rural and a very small community, we have a school, a church, a park, four thriving businesses, many thriving home-based businesses, a few farm stands and, of course, access to beautiful Glen Lake.”

O’Neill goes on to mention that Burdickville — the semi-autonomous community on the east end of Big Glen Lake — is home to a Pulitzer Prize winner (Taro Yamasaki), an award-winning restaurant (La Becasse) and a former Lieutenant Governor (Connie Binsfeld). “I would say that the nature of Burdickvillians is one of community and neighborliness. We take care of each other.”

Since acquiring Laker Shakes nearly two years ago from longtime icon Rich Hargreaves, O’Neill has offered the community humor at the direst of times (Remember her “Tent caterpillars, You Pick” sign out front during those icky May days?) and now music too. She and the Binsfeld brothers Greg and Mike got together last summer to jam (She and Steamboat, Col. resident Greg play guitar; Mike plays bass, and his wife Mindy accompanies on the harmonica), and now Laker Shakes boasts “Music Mondays” outside in the side garden, from 7-10 p.m., weather permitting.

“We welcome anyone to play instruments along with us,” invites O’Neill. Greg routinely sets up bongos, drums and a PA system. And people just stop by. They bring their music, and some offer a solo performance.

“People come to the stop to get ice cream, and they often hang around and listen. … An employee of mine has a rap band and threatens to show up.”

“We want real live professional musicians to show up,” jokes Greg Binsfeld. “Just make sure the audience has no rotten fruit to throw at us!”

Laker Shakes offers more than just good jokes these days — though no longer the insanely inexpensive milk shakes for which the destination was famous, particularly among Glen Lake students up the hill. The store’s interior is updated with soft hues. Quality beer and wine, lunch items, local food products and upscale snacks line the shelves, and cold ice cream fills the coolers — sometimes to the chagrin of O’Neill’s right wrist. The paintings on the wall were done by her brother John.

“I’m doing Gabe’s hotdogs from Maple City, Food for Thought jam from Honor, and we’ll soon get Michigan beer and Michigan-made potato chips,” promises O’Neill. “We’re in an evolutionary stage.”

Naturally, the presence of two world-class European restaurants in the neighborhood (La Becasse and Funistrada) were clear incentives to bring in local produce and high-quality foods to satisfy the local culinarians. O’Neill says that one day she’d like to have an outdoor farm stand here. To many beachgoers, families and bike riders, however, Laker Shakes is still the ice cream pit stop.

O’Neill moved to this neck of the woods from Denver when her parents passed on (and a job at Lockheed-Martin fell through). In 1980 her mother opened that restaurant across the street where Guillaume Hazael-Massieux now makes his famous hangar steak. La Becasse won best restaurant in Michigan in 1987 before she sold it to Peachy Rentenbach before the decade’s close. With the profits, O’Neill’s mom bought a cottage on Big Glen.

And now, in addition to scooping ice cream, jamming in the garden and striking fear into the tent caterpillars, O’Neill is the community scribe. She pens the weekly Burdickville column for the Leelanau Enterprise, the county’s paper of record.

“I approached them a year and a half ago and said, ‘There’s an Omena news, and a Glen Lake news, so why not do Burdickville too?’ To me the tone is that of a Garrison Keillor-like Lake Wobegon, with my own little twist. I like to be a little self-deprecating.”

O’Neill once made her living as a writer, at Detroit Monthly Magazine. She also worked at a dealership, doing advertising, television, radio and print ads.

“I write the column to bring attention to little Burdickville, which is often in the shadows of the Thriving Metropolis of Glen Arbor. We like to say ‘It’s Better in Burdickville’ and I like to highlight the quirky things that happen in life that have universal appeal but that are also specific to our little corner of the world.”

To pave or not to pave the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail?

2010-07-15T16:37:00.001-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Some citizens prefer compact earth or crushed limestone to asphalt

With at least one fundraising meeting under the belt, and checks already committed by local private-sector philanthropists, the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail appears to be on a momentous course for success. According to Tom Ulrich, Deputy Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park Service), construction could begin as early as next year.

This multi-use, biker-oriented trail within the Lakeshore will run roughly parallel to state highways M-22 and M-109 near the Dune Climb, and will one day stretch from Manning Road, south of Empire on the Leelanau-Benzie county line, to the Lakeshore’s northeastern border beyond Port Oneida. It will increase the region’s visibility as a biker destination and almost certainly bring more visitors into the Park.

Traverse Area Recreation and Transport (TART), which heads the fundraising effort, envisions that, one day, two-wheelers will be able to pedal from Traverse City to Northport and around the perimeter of Leelanau County, clear to Frankfort and the existing Betsie Valley Trail. Around nearly every turn, this grand idea has been greeted with open arms.

But the trail’s specifics — 10 feet wide with two-foot buffers on either side — and a push by TART and the Lakeshore to pave its surfaces (as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act) has some local residents worried that the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail will be not a trail, but a mini highway through the National Park.

Of particular concern is Segment Five of the proposed trail, which would divert west of M-109 near the Dune Climb and follow an historic narrow gauge railroad toward Glen Haven before running south of 109 (Harbor Highway) toward Glen Arbor, at the base of Alligator Hill. Segment Five may be the first portion of the trail constructed.

The Glen Arbor Sun met with a trio of citizens last week who, though supporters of the trail, oppose the exclusive use of asphalt and believe that a 14-foot-wide, paved trail is incompatible with the aesthetics of the National Lakeshore. Cookie and Becky Thatcher and Nancy Mueller worry that our precious Park is ceding land to TART, and bowing to the regulations of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT, who would eventually install the asphalt), which they call “a highway service,” not a trail designer.

“The Park is giving TART free access to go in and build trails,” says Mueller. “This is a piece of land that went through national legislation to protect it. And yet TART is treating this like an extension of the Traverse City trail system. People come here to get away from pavement and sidewalks and typical suburban parks. Certain areas of our Park are not to be paved over.”

Mueller adds that Segment Five near Alligator Hill is zoned “recreation”. According to the Park’s General Management Plan, any such natural overall alterations must be designed to blend in with the rustic, natural landscape.

“I don’t believe that asphalt is rustic or unobtrusive. And yet this is the Park’s plan — a 14-foot, paved bicycle path.”

The width of the trail will require the removal of trees that would be unnecessary if it were more narrow, and rustic. Mueller fears that a wider trail means a straighter trail, and a faster trail. “When you take a two-lane and make it a four-lane road, people go a lot faster.”

Debates like these, between recreation and preservation, represent an age-old discussion within the National Park, says Tom Ulrich. We see these two camps square off every time the Lakeshore faces major decisions, be they a General Management Plan, parking lots at Glen Haven or North Bar Lake, or the scenic outlook at Pierce Stocking Drive.

“We always ask ourselves, ‘have we designed a trail that provides immense benefit without having a significant (environmental) impact?’” explains Ulrich. “The goal of this trail is to provide maximum utility for many users — hikers, rollerbladers, wheelchairs and both wide- and thin-tired bikes. The best way to do that is with a hard-surface trail.”

The Park’s Environmental Assessment revealed that pavement would have a minimal environmental impact on ecosystems such as those in Segment Five, which may also include a boardwalk over certain wetlands.

Cookie Thatcher believes that compact earth or crushed limestone would suffice for a trail surface that could still accommodate most bikes and non-motorized vehicles, and would prove more appealing to hikers who don’t favor pavement. She wants the Park to consider trying compact earth or crushed limestone first, for two or three years. If that doesn’t work, then pave it.

But Ulrich disagrees. Crushed limestone is not good for rainwater runoff, he says, whereas a paved surface would have a longer lifespan and serves a greater number of people. Ulrich has studied crushed limestone bike trails elsewhere in the United States, particularly one in Kansas, which, according to online commentary, hasn’t been kind on road bikes.

“Most narrow-tired bikers say they can’t ride there. They get too many flats. In fact, some former crushed limestone trails are redoing them. Earth trails are primarily used for mountain bikes.”

To Nancy Mueller, the Park and TART’s push for paved trails proves that the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail is a bike trail first and a multi-use trail second.

Becky Thatcher wonders to what degree the trail’s private financing has forced the Park’s hand. TART heads the fundraising, several prominent local businessmen have already pledged their support, and the federal government has offered up to $5 million in matching funds. In short, none of the money required to build this trail will come from the Park’s coffers.

“Are they trying to cooperate so much with MDOT and TART that they’re forgetting their own citizens who use the Park?” Becky asks.

Cookie Thatcher and Mueller, both of whom are certified trail masters, favor a packed earth trail that can be maintained by volunteers. Cookie alludes to popular natural trails in both Missouri and Lake Tahoe, Nev., which are used by bikers, hikers, and animals from horses to donkeys. She favors investing in a $100,000 machine that carves and compacts dirt into a two-foot wide path.

Some of the natural trails in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Cookie says, have been around since the loggers, and the Native Americans before them, tamped down by feet and hooves. “Not one piece of equipment has ever been back there.”

In addition, Cookie worries that this trail through hilly country couldn’t possibly conform to the maximum 10-percent grade required for wheelchairs by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“There isn’t anybody in a wheelchair who could get up the hill between Empire and Glen Arbor. They’d have to add switchbacks, which would be 14-feet wide and paved. That might mean paving the whole hill!”

Becky Thatcher says she welcomes the Leelanau County-wide trail with open arms, but only if it’s done in the right manner. She proposes building a packed earth surface for Segment Five between Glen Arbor and Dune Climb — the first phase that will be launched.

“It would serve as an example to people of how to install a trail that’s sensitive to the environment, and it could be done by volunteers. We don’t just have to pave it because it’s convenient and gives us a bike path. Instead we can teach kids how to adapt to the land and conserve it.”

Stay tuned for more perspectives on the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail in future editions of the Glen Arbor Sun, including interviews with local business owners who are already writing checks, and inside looks at the pros and cons of similar trails elsewhere in the United States.

Wildflowers hopes to bloom

2010-07-13T16:35:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Sitting on Donna Burgan’s desk at Wildflowers are detailed blueprints for how Glen Arbor’s lush garden destination hopes to expand. The plans include a restaurant to the north of the store, a couple picturesque ponds, a wine-tasting room and condominiums and new shops to the back. Wildflowers, located on M-22 just south of Glen Arbor’s main intersection, currently uses only a quarter of its land (a storage shed and abundant parking areas occupy the rest).

Imagine that: 75 percent of your commercial property going unused in crowded, lucrative Glen Arbor.

For two and a half years Burgan and her marketing guru Sue Woodward have brainstormed how to expand Wildflowers in a tasteful manner that wouldn’t detract from the popular floral destination, would provide Glen Arbor with services the town doesn’t currently enjoy, and would occupy more of the 320 feet that Burgan owns between M-22 and the back of her rectangular plot.

During that time, of course, the country has fallen into a painful economic recession that has affected both citizens’ pocketbooks and banks’ ability to lend money. Burgan and Woodward have amended their original plan and now hope to lure investors or sell parcels of the property, but above all, involve local residents in visualizing how Wildflowers ought to bloom.

“We’re sitting on valuable property and not using much of it,” says Woodward. “Small businesses like this have to grow, to satisfy customer demands and product demands.”

The women have worked with a local architect to devise a plan that would happen in three phases — though all details are speculative, depending on investor interest. Woodward imagines building a driveway along the property’s southern edge and four condominiums above ground-floor retail spaces to the east that overlook the gardens

“Who wouldn’t want to live five months a year above their business, within walking distance of downtown Glen Arbor?” asks Burgan, who says she’d like to retire in three or four years — after 30 years at Wildflowers.

The mockup also includes a winery tasting room in the northeast corner with tables and chairs out front (in an effort to lure “wine tourists” to Glen Arbor from eastern Leelanau County) and an ethnic-food restaurant where the business’ storage shed currently sits.

“We want to reach out to the community and invite people to bring ideas to us,” says Woodward. “What do they envision for the land? Could we form some sort of environmental partnership here in Glen Arbor that drives visitors and investors alike?”

Woodward would like to introduce a grey water system that irrigates plants with recycled wastewater. Burgan wants to maintain the destination’s ambience, but take conservation to the next level.

Wildflowers doesn’t intend to alter the popular gardens and store, nor will it sacrifice “YouJazz in the Garden,” which attracts both amateur and professional musicians to perform amidst the flora on Tuesday nights. Currently in its fourth year, YouJazz sometimes draws as many as 45 guests, from ages 10 to 70, and has witnessed as many as 11 musicians playing at one time.

Wildflowers is currently listed with Serbin Real Estate. Sue Woodward, Donna Burgan and realtor Ron Raymond welcome ideas, input and investors. Those interested in joining the discussion may post comments on our website, GlenArbor.com, or email Woodward at MichKaleid@aol.com.

Sugar Loaf deal dead?

2010-06-11T16:32:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Kate Wickstrom goes public … Liko hides in Vegas … trail leads to Polselli

Kate Wickstrom has broken her silence. And she has spoken with a vengeance.

Wickstrom has effectively banned Eneliko Sean Smith from Sugar Loaf until he makes a legitimate, written offer to purchase the long-shuttered ski resort. Meanwhile, the mysterious West Coast boxer-turned-businessman is back in Las Vegas and may not return to northern Michigan unless a deal miraculously materalizes.

Sugar Loaf’s current hard-luck owner went public last month, following what she called an onslaught of mudslinging — both verbal and online — from Smith. Following a prolonged silence, Wickstrom began commenting in early May on Sugar Loaf-related forums on both Leelanau.com and on our website, GlenArbor.com, in order to defend herself, in particular from accusations that she says Smith made about her and her father on his blog, LikoSmith.com.

Wickstrom is an area native and graduate of Glen Lake High School who runs a substance abuse program in Manistee and lives on Old Mission Peninsula north of Traverse City. Her father Wally has been Sugar Loaf’s primary caretaker and maintenance man since the resort closed in 2000, and her mother, Betty, lives at the Maple Valley nursing home near Maple City. Both are nearly 80.

“The comments Sean was making on his blog set me off,” Wickstrom said. “I’m not going to let anyone paint me that way, and any attack on my dad really ticks me off. My Dad doesn’t need a bar named after him. He is an 80-year-old man who has worked manual labor all his life, and spends eight hours a day at the home with my mom.”

Kate and Wally agreed to an interview with the Glen Arbor Sun this past Wednesday evening at Myles Kimmerly Park near Maple City. As a girl’s peewee softball league played nearby, they described a very different narrative than the one that has appeared in Liko Smith’s blog posts this spring. And email correspondence this week between Smith and Wickstrom’s attorney, Traverse City-based Joe Quandt — to which she alluded during the interview — shed light on long-suspected Sugar Loaf-related ties between Smith and former owner, and convicted felon, Remo Polselli.

Wickstrom claims that after offering her a legitimate deal for Sugar Loaf on May 6 — and giving the impression that his finances were in order — Smith rescinded the offer and placed other chips on the table, which included pressuring Wickstrom to sign over the deed to the title, no questions asked, before he could prove that Florida-based TransCapital Bank would finance the acquisition, and that Wickstrom wouldn’t be left high and dry with mortgage payments.

Wickstrom alleges that as soon as she brought her lawyer, Joe Quandt, into the picture, Smith’s attitude changed dramatically.

“Sean sat there and called me stupid for involving my attorney,” Wickstrom attests. “We were asked to sign the deed by him. But I couldn’t just sign the deed without knowing that he was set up with the bank. My obvious concern was that if he had the deed and I still held the mortgage, he could salvage the property and I’d have nothing but the land and a building that had been emptied out.”

Smith reported on his blog that on May 5 he brought in a salvage crew to clean up the hotel and turn on the electricity and water, and offered Wickstrom half the salvage proceeds in cash. Smith also offered to name Sugar Loaf’s new future bar after her father Wally.

“My attorney contacted (TransCapital) bank’s attorney (Leonard Zedick), and they weren’t aware that Sean was doing that,” Wickstrom says. “My attorney was leery of me signing a deed, signing anything. My signature shouldn’t be on something without him having closed with the bank … or without Hanna and Remo releasing me from the mortgage.”

Surprising news emerged in February that Hanna Karcho Polselli was Sugar Loaf’s secret mortgage guarantor — unbeknownst to Wickstrom, she and Wally claim. In fact, Wally says they don’t even know what the Polsellis look like.

“Sean told me that Hanna is part Iranian, and here I thought she was a little blonde,” Kate joked.

Hanna Karcho and her husband Remo Polselli owned the resort from 1997 until 2000, before Wickstrom acquired it in 2005. Remo was sentenced to prison in 2003 for tax evasion, though unrelated to Sugar Loaf. Present business ties already link Liko Smith directly to the Polsellis, whom he admits he has known for years. Smith’s company, Hotel Management Advisors, shares the same Bloomfield Hills, Mich., phone number as Resort America, which is tied to the Polsellis.

Wickstrom told the Glen Arbor Sun that Smith has mentioned — in conversation and through emails with attorney Joe Quandt — that he already has a deal in place with Hanna Karcho. “(Smith) says that if I don’t do this, Hanna will foreclose on me, and it’s a matter of time before (he gets) it,” said Wickstrom, who added that Smith stated in an email, “I brokered the deal myself with Remo.”

Wickstrom also alluded to threats made by Liko Smith.

“In (a different) email that (Smith) sent to me, he said (that if I didn’t sign the deed) he’d make sure that Hanna would come after me, and after my property in Manistee, and come after my Dad. He mentioned that again in the email to Joe (Wednesday morning). To me that’s a threat to my Dad. You don’t do something like that to an 80-year-old man.”

“Sean is pretty unhappy now because things aren’t going his way.”

And yet the good-cop, bad-cop routine continues. Liko Smith was back out west this week, to celebrate his young wife Sarah’s birthday on June 8, he writes on his blog — though that was also the date for him to appear in court in Tahoe for restitution related to $200,000 in evaded taxes from a previous failed business venture with The Block hotels.

Early this week, Wickstrom says that she received the following text message from Smith (who may or may not return to Michigan this weekend):

“Please call me. I’ve worked out a deal with the bank for you that will close by Friday. I’m in Vegas. Please call me. This deal is from mortgage companies. They will release you along with Remo and Hanna, and you pick up a cashier’s check for $20,000 from their office in Troy by Friday. They will not pay your attorney’s fees. You sign the claim to the mortgage company and I buy it from them directly. This took two days to finalize. It is a confidential arrangement.”

The message left Wickstrom with more questions than answers.

“How can you go from having a deal here to a deal there?” she verbally expressed. “How many mortgage companies does (Smith) have? How can you have a mortgage company give you approval in two days? Who would put a deal together in two days?”

“It doesn’t make sense. If he has that much pull in the financial arena, he should just be able to sign a check.”

Wickstrom’s 80-year-old father Wally, who has maintained the grounds at Sugar Loaf, admits that he and his daughter were initially charmed by Liko Smith, and charmed by the notion of getting Sugar Loaf off their hands.

“He is very good at meeting someone and picking a soft spot,” said Wally. “He did that with (Kate), who has strong feelings for her parents. He said he wanted to name the bar after me. I didn’t care about that — there are plenty of Wally’s out there — but if he used my full name, I’d come after him.”

Kate and Wally both maintain that they hold no grudge against Smith, and that if he returns to the area with a legitimate deal, they’ll consider a sale.

“All he has to do is step up to the plate right now with a deal,” said Wally. “His original deal is legal. It’s a clean-cut deal. Sean just needs to hold up to his end of the bargain.”

Kate Wickstrom says she has spent close to $2 million on Sugar Loaf since buying it in 2005, including $750,000 prior to the purchase, and monthly interest payments.

“I’m not holding out for $2 million, not even for $1 million. I just want a little something in return to pay a few people: my attorney, my Dad, my accountant …”

When asked what went wrong with her plans for Sugar Loaf, Wickstrom responded that she was unable to open the resort after acquiring it in 2005, she says, because Ed Fleis and Brian Sculthorp, who own the septic drainage system, the golf course and property near the resort and ski hill, all but handcuffed her.

“I think they saw an opportunity with me. They terminated my agreement six weeks after I purchased the property. They wanted to purchase 450 of my 478 acres and leave the hotel and 25 acres on the other side of mountain. But the bank wouldn’t split the land. Instead, they wanted me to pay $8,000 for a toilet that I couldn’t flush. … I’ve spent $100,000 just in legal fees. They’ve lost twice in court, and they’re trying another appeal.”

If not to Liko Smith, will Kate Wickstrom ever sell Sugar Loaf?

“We want to sell the property to someone who is going to take care of Leelanau County and his residents.”

“It’s gonna take honesty,” Wally chimed in. “Honesty and hard work, and everybody working together, instead of coming into the project and asking ‘What’s in it for me?’”

Time running out on Sugar Loaf

2010-05-27T16:28:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Liko Smith sets June 1 deadline for deal with Kate Wickstrom: Red Ginger fundraiser a flop

The window for the mysterious West Coast businessman Liko Smith to acquire and re-open the Sugar Loaf Resort and ski hill appears to be closing — and fast. Smith wrote on his blog’s “Weekly Update” (www.likosmith.com/friends.html) three days ago, and confirmed during a phone conversation yesterday that June 1 — next Tuesday — may be the date when he decides to pack up and leave Leelanau County for good.

“I’m losing my window here,” Smith said, while driving downstate. “I’m gonna take a look at my projects in Las Vegas the first week of June. Because if (Kate Wickstrom) doesn’t sign by June 1, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve got a lot of stuff coming in on Wednesday. … There are so many deals and opportunities in Vegas. I can spend the next year playing softball with my kid and still make a decent living.”

Smith’s bid to acquire the hotel and ski hill from Wickstrom — and the Sugar Loaf golf course, sewage treatment plant and accompanying real estate from businessmen Ed Fleis and Brian Sculthorp — has encountered a series of snafus this month. The 39-year-old former Samoan boxer now says that he has scaled back his plans and only intends to buy from Wickstrom.

As Smith puts it, Fleis and Sculthorp have stonewalled him with strategies similar to their negotiations, and ultimate rejections of deals, with previous bidders for Sugar Loaf. ‘We’ve done this two times before with two other buyers, we’ll keep doing it until we get paid,’ Smith quoted them as saying. In his lengthy blog post (it felt like reading “War and Peace”) Smith also narrates how Fleis, Sculthorp and Wickstrom have played financial and legal hardball against each other for the past decade, which has doomed Sugar Loaf’s chances of reopening.

A deal with Wickstrom was supposed to be inked on May 5, but that date has come and gone. Since then, Smith says, Wickstrom has made numerous additional demands of him, resulting in what he calls “a Mexican standoff.” On May 5, Smith says he brought in a salvage crew to clean up the hotel and turn on the electricity and water, but Wickstrom refused to sign the deed because “she believed she was not going to make any money on the sale.” The crew was turned away.

Smith says that he offered Wickstrom half the salvage proceeds in cash ($50,000 according to his estimates), a 10-percent share in Sugar Loaf (which he valued at $10 million), lifetime employment as an onsite maintenance man for her father Wally, and that he would rename the “Top of the Loaf” bar “Wally’s”. Through her attorney, Wickstrom has asked Smith for $200,000, and $3,200 to reimburse her father Wally to cover gas and expenses for seven visits he made to the resort.

In short, Wickstrom and Smith have engaged in a standoff for most of this month.

Smith says that recent phone calls with former Sugar Loaf owners John Sills and Remo Polselli (a longtime business associate of Smith’s, and convicted felon for tax evasion) encouraged him not to give up on the deal. “You have to see it as a ski resort first and a hotel second, and you have to market heavily to bring in the business, but re-use the exiting lifts, and you’ll see it come back,” Smith quoted Sills … though he admitted during our phone conversation that the equipment is probably worthless and may not even be licensed in October.

But for the first time this week, Smith’s words, both in person and online, have adopted an air of defeatism — that the deal might not get done, and that he might not be a Leelanau County resident for long. “Unless Sugar Loaf is opened this year; it will most likely not open for another 10 years and maybe never again,” he wrote on his blog.

Liko Smith and his young wife Sarah (they say they first learned of Sugar Loaf while on a honeymoon in northern Michigan in March) recently moved into a townhouse next to the vacant resort, which describe as a ghost town:

“Every night, I see a closed-down hotel and ski resort 100 yards from my front door. I am forced to experience it every night. … It is sad at best, and absolutely heartbreaking at worst. … The town of Cedar is a ghost town in the evenings. I walk the town of Cedar every day and in the evenings I sit at the Tavern and skull a few beers. Until you’ve done this, you can’t see the gravity of the situation.”

The couple describes their living situation at the townhouse as reminiscent of that of a developing country: “Kate Wickstrom has made no repairs to the water well that also feeds the town homes for over six years,” Smith writes. “So there is sand seepage into the water system and it is in dire need of repair and upgrade. When we turn the water on here, it is white with sand and we have to boil it out of the water in order to make soup or use the water for pasta.”

Red Ginger flop

But when it comes to ugly standoffs after reneging on financial agreements, Wickstrom, Fleis and Sculthorp are not alone. Liko Smith held a fundraiser on April 30 at Red Ginger, a restaurant next to the State Theatre in downtown Traverse City, which he hoped 100 potential investors would attend and fork over $100 per person to hear “his vision” for Sugar Loaf.

By all accounts, the Quad Fund mixer in the restaurant’s Lotus Room was a flop. Smith estimates that 40 people attended: Red Ginger puts the tally at closer to 20.

A Red Ginger representative, who insisted on remaining anonymous, said that Smith initially sought to rent out the entire restaurant (on a busy Friday night) and take control of it — this after using Red Ginger’s logo on his blog and invitations, which made it look as if the restaurant was backing Liko Smith (a charge it categorically denies).

Instead, Red Ginger suggested its banquet facilities upstairs, for a renting price of $1,500. The restaurant required a deposit before the event, but according to the representative, Smith said that, at the time, he had no cash, no checkbook, no credit card, and that he had just lost his debit card.

“I told him I’d never done this before where I haven’t taken someone’s money, but I asked him to sign the contract and guarantee me that you’re good for that minimum amount,” said the representative.

Attendance at the fundraiser was a disappointment, Smith refused afterwards to pay the $1,500, a near shouting match ensued (alleges Red Ginger), and Smith was ultimately banned from the restaurant. Red Ginger ultimately reclaimed over half of that amount — in part because it collected the credit card charges from people paying $100 at the door.

The Red Ginger representative said he was baffled by Smith’s initial refusal to pay a deposit. “Liko, you told me you own hotels,” the representative said. “So this idea of signing a contract with a minimum amount due is nothing new to you, right?”

During a phone interview yesterday, Smith said that Red Ginger didn’t provide the food service that it had promised. “There were a bunch of California rolls, and not many people drinking,” he said. “It was the cheapest [crap] they could put out. … It was nowhere near $500 in food value. … They said they’d provide three different types of appetizers, drinks, and that would guarantee 100 people.”

“They told me ‘You’re talking a $10 million deal (for Sugar Loaf), but you can’t even pay us $1,500?’ But I’m getting tired of people expecting me to throw money around, just because I’m from Vegas and California. … I’m here to say that I’m not an outsider now. I live in Cedar; I drink at same tavern, I golf the same courses.”

The question is: how much longer will Liko Smith stick around in Cedar? And more importantly, will Sugar Loaf ever re-open?

New kids on the block

2010-05-26T16:24:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Glen Arbor now boasts pottery, Pilates, a ringmaster and Chinese dominoes

Here’s a vacation dilemma: Lets say you and the family have spent four days baking on the beach, soaking in Sleeping Bear Bay, dining at all the fine restaurants around Glen Arbor, and shopping for everything from t-shirts to cherry salsa. Your sunburned hide won’t let you return to the water’s edge. So what do you do next?

You visit Campfire Pottery. On the eastern edge of downtown Glen Arbor, across M-22 from Riverfront Pizza and Crystal River Outfitters, Katy Wiesen has furnished a colorful and eclectic, family-friendly paint-your-own pottery studio in the space formerly occupied by Maybings. This is Campfire Pottery’s third summer, but first in this ideal location.

Family reunions, ladies nights out, birthday parties — even teenagers who are too cool to visit galleries with their parents — will enjoy painting and decorating glasses, bowls, wine chillers, piggybanks or toy boats on the nearly dozen tables inside the shop or while sitting outside. And yes, you’re allowed to get messy. Paper napkin rolls at every table await your creativity.

Katy says that some customers paint for half an hour, others return day after day, before their work bakes in the kiln for 10 hours. Once cooled, Campfire Pottery will ship your new mug or bowl home for a minimal fee and guarantee a five-day turnaround.

The idea for Campfire Pottery sprung from her husband Matt’s trips as a child to visit his grandmother in Naples, Fla., where he and his siblings looked forward to visiting a paint-your-own pottery studio there. Now they’ve brought this dynamic form of family entertainment back home to Michigan, and they hope to make Campfire Pottery a destination to which people return over and over again, and one that will stay open on weekends during the winter holidays.

Matt owns Crystal River Outfitters across the street (they’ll supply, and transport, many of the kayaks used during this year’s M-22 Challenge), and the young couple hopes their ventures will increase walking traffic on this side of town.

Working the core

Considered fringe or at least relatively unknown until last decade, Pilates is now found in towns across America (and not just California, or New York City, where German immigrant Joseph Pilates landed in 1925). Pilates was born a sickly child but worked to become a gymnast and boxer. He opened his first Pilates studio in the Big Apple in 1926 and helped elite dancers recover from injuries. Not until his protégés fanned out across the country following his death did Pilates begin to be understood by the mainstream. The activity works the body’s core muscles, and unlike yoga, which stresses repetition, this workout calls for only six-eight reps through hundreds of different exercises, either on mats or on an elaborate wunda chair.

Lorie Osinski’s studio in Glen Arbor’s Village Sampler Plaza offers six classes per week: beginner classes on Mondays and Fridays at 8:30 a.m., intermediate classes on Tuesdays at 8 and 9:15, and resistance and core classes on Thursdays at 8 and 9:15 (private lessons are also available). Lorie recently sold her studio in Findlay, Ohio, and now teaches exclusively in Glen Arbor. Regulars at the Glen Arbor Athletic Club will remember her from past summers. Lorie holds a personal trainer certification from the American Council on Exercise. She recommends taking her hour-long classes twice a week to work on the body’s rings of powerhouse muscles, which she likens to a tree’s rings.

Don’t “Wear” it out

Sue Jameson isn’t really “new” in Glen Arbor. She just took a six-year hiatus, after selling her store, Bay Wear, in the Village Sampler Plaza, to David Marshall who renamed it Dune Wear. Marshall, now a Leelanau County Commissioner and President of the Glen Lake Chamber of Commerce, sold the store back to Jameson and her husband Wayne late last year. (David’s wife Christy officiated Sue and Wayne’s wedding last August.)

As a girl Sue worked for her dad’s store Harbor Wear in Petoskey and Charlevoix. He gave her the opportunity to expand the chain, which is known especially for its line of sweatshirts that sport the name of the given town. The company has had as many as 32 locations at one time, spanning northern Michigan, and today boasts 22 outlets, each owned individually by members of Sue’s family.

Compared to 2004, Sue says that Glen Arbor seems even more alive than it did then. She adds, the stores are nicer, and the public bathrooms at the Glen Arbor Garden are a great addition. Equally as important, the Glen Lake Chamber of Commerce’s desk remains at Bay Wear. “We’re pretty friendly about giving out directions anyways,” says Sue, “so we might as well distribute walking maps” that the Chamber desk offers visitors.

Lord of the ring

Bob Vertel’s departure from Becky Thatcher Designs after 23 years of making fine jewelry created a new opportunity for the 57-year-old craftsman. A connoisseur of the martial arts and of Zen Buddhism, Vertel moved into the shop formerly occupied by Hepburn Holt, on M-109 on Glen Arbor’s western edge, and named it Dokan — a combination of “Do” and “kan” which thus means to “the way of the ring”.

Bob is excited about his budding partnership with Paul Mihelcich of Eagle Harbor in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to make fine jewelry out of green stones that Paul harvests from abandoned mineshafts in the Kewana Peninsula. Bob had read in the Detroit Free Press about Paul’s unique venture and left him a message late this winter. Two months later, while shopping at Menards in Traverse City and unsure of what lay ahead for his jewelry career, Bob got a return phone call. The two men discovered they were the same age, boasted the same values and ambitions, and talked for an hour and a half. In Glen Arbor, Bob is currently working on prototypes with fiery green Chlorastrolite stones that Paul sends him.

Next door to Dokan, Grace Dickinson has teamed up with Shawn Ricker, a New Yorker who summers in the Glen Arbor area, to open a photography studio that displays and sells Grace’s father Frederick’s historic local prints. Shawn says that she and Grace put their heads together, spent the winter sorting and sifting through stacks of prints, and have now framed iconic pictures of dune buggies atop Sleeping Bear Point in 1939, a coast guard boat launching into the bay and Leland’s Fishtown in black and white.

The Padma Lakshmi-Glen Arbor connection

Big things are happening for Great Lakes Tea & Spice. Heather and Chris Sack’s brainchild, which started four years ago in a 12-by-12-foot shack behind Roger Vanderwerff’s veterinary clinic, has moved into the 700-square-foot space formerly frequented by ailing animals (Roger’s operation moved to nearby Maple City). Great Lakes Tea & Spice now sells its teas, herbs and rubs in two satellite locations: wellness-oriented Henry Ford Hospital in West Bloomfield, and the Cleveland Clinic.

But that’s not the best part. Last July at the Fancy Food Show in New York the Sacks met Padma Lakshmi of the TV show “Top Chef” fame. The stunning Indian-American actress, celebrity and cookbook author has twice advertised their products on the Home Shopping Network — albeit under an Easy Exotic Line but with “Great Lakes Tea & Spice” and “Glen Arbor, Michigan” written on the label. Heather and Chris visited Padma in her Manhattan apartment, and found her welcoming and down-to-earth.

In their new and improved location, the Sacks plan to offer tea sampling and demos on how to use their rubs. They’ll also sell chocolates and tea truffles from Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in Empire. Great Lakes Tea & Spice will feature a garden in front of the store along M-109, and will provide outdoor seating behind the store where visitors can play mahjong Chinese dominoes. The tearoom will host a grand opening on July 3 from 3-9 p.m.

Speaking of celebrity chefs …

Just because Don Sielaff no longer owns the Foothills Café and Motel in Burdickville doesn’t mean that you can’t continue eating his delicious Norwegian Eggs Benedict. Sielaff is now cooking breakfasts at the Western Avenue Grill (every day until 2 p.m.), and the popular restaurant in downtown Glen Arbor all but brought Sielaff’s popular a.m. menu along with him. Foothills fans (that’s you, coach Don Miller!) still salivate over The Big Glen breakfast, the Huevos Rancheros, and the Farmers, Western, South Bar and Greek Omelettes. Or, if you didn’t get enough asparagus at the Empire festival two weeks ago, try Sielaff’s Veggie Omelette, packed with asparagus, tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms and cheese.

To complement Sielaff’s menu, the Western Avenue Grill also $6 breakfast cocktails, including fruit mimosas, margaritas and martinis. Manager Bill Skolnik says that Sielaff has already made the restaurant a small fortune in increased breakfast sales. Now doesn’t that sound delicious?

The Poisoning of Puerto Rico

2010-05-03T09:26:00.002-05:00

The U.S. Navy left Vieques, but for many, the cancer remains.

In These Times magazine

Vieques, Puerto Rico — on March 31, retired Sgt. Hermogenes Marrero was told during a visit to the Veterans Affairs (VA) outpatient clinic in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, that he didn’t have cancer — or at least, his official VA computer file no longer showed any record of cancer.

But Marrero was not relieved. He had been diagnosed twice before with colon cancer and suffers today from a dozen other illnesses, including Lou Gehrig’s disease, failing vision, a lung condition that keeps him on oxygen around the clock, not to mention tumors throughout his body. The terminally ill and wheelchair-bound, 57-year-old veteran immediately suspected that the U.S. government had manipulated his medical record.

Marrero is the star witness in a lawsuit filed in 2007 against the U.S. government by Mississippi attorney John Arthur Eaves on behalf of more than 7,000 residents of the picturesque, yet heavily polluted, Puerto Rican island of Vieques. From 1941 until 2003 the U.S. Navy operated a base here, conducting bombing runs and testing chemical weapons for use in foreign wars, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia to Iraq.

The three-quarters of Vieques’ population listed as plaintiffs in the suit blame the billions of tons of bombs dropped by the Navy on Vieques’ eastern half, and the toxic chemicals released into the water, air and soil during that period, for their physical and psychological illnesses. Viequenses today suffer 30-percent higher cancer rates than other Puerto Ricans, 381-percent higher rates of hypertension, 95-percent higher rates of cirrhosis of the liver and 41-percent higher rates of diabetes. Twenty-five percent more children die during infancy in Vieques than in the rest of Puerto Rico.

Early in World War II, when fortunes looked grim for the Allies, the U.S. Navy occupied three-quarters of Vieques, which sits eight miles from the Puerto Rican mainland, moved one-third of its population to the nearby Virgin Islands, and planned to relocate the entire British fleet there in the event of a German invasion of England. Instead, Vieques became the U.S. testing ground for nearly every weapon used during the Cold War.

Though Marrero spent only 18 months on Vieques during his tour in the early 1970s, the Special Forces Marine suffers today from many of the same medical conditions as the local population. The Puerto Rican native, raised in Queens, N.Y., arrived on the island in 1970 with the task of guarding the vast array of chemical weapons the Navy stored and tested there. Marrero was exposed to toxics, including napalm and Agent Orange — which at the time he thought was weed killer. He developed massive headaches, bled from his nose, and suffered nausea and severe cramps. “I witnessed some of the most awesome weapons used for mass destruction in the world,” Marrero says. “I didn’t know how dangerous those chemicals were, because it was on a need-to-know basis.”

Today Marrero waits in the city of Mayaguez in western Puerto Rico for his chance to testify in court against the U.S. military for poisoning the people of Vieques and U.S. soldiers based there.

“These are American citizens, yet we violated their human rights,” says the humbled former Marine. “This would never have been allowed to happen in Washington or Seattle or Baltimore.”

The king can do no wrong

Before John Arthur Eaves’ lawsuit can be heard, however, it must first be approved by the First Circuit Court in Boston after the suit was rejected on April 13 by federal judge Daniel R. Dominguez, who sits on the U.S. District Court in San Juan. Eaves will officially appeal the case to the First Circuit Court early this summer. But the U.S. Navy has invoked sovereign immunity, a strategy that comes from the monarchic period when kings were immune from being sued. Unless a federal judge in Boston rejects sovereign immunity, no scientific evidence will ever reach the courtroom.

“The U.S. government wants the case to be dismissed — the ‘king can do no wrong’,’ ” says Eaves. “We claim their actions should not be protected under sovereign immunity, because when the government steps outside its discretion, its actions are no longer protected. We know that in at least one year the Navy violated the Environmental Protection Agency’s [EPA] standards 102 times.”

Washington rejects allegations that the Navy’s activities on Vieques poisoned residents — even though the government has admitted the presence of napalm, agent orange, depleted uranium, white phosphorous, arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium on the former bombing range. In February 2005, the EPA identified Vieques as a Superfund site, which placed the cleanup of hazardous sites in federal hands.

In its defense, the U.S. government cites a controversial 2003 study by the Centers for Disease Control’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). But Arturo Massol, a biologist at the University of Puerto Rico who has studied toxic contamination on Vieques, calls the ATSDR study unscientific, if not outright criminal.

“A battalion of researchers came here and used poorly designed scientific experiments to conduct a political assessment that intentionally covered up reality,” Massol says. “The Navy is gone, but these agencies should be charged as accessories to murder because preventative policies could have been established after 2003.”

The bombing range on eastern Vieques was indisputably subjected to more than 60 years of non-indigenous chemicals, Massol says. There are no other sources of industrial pollution on the island. Those toxic metals accumulated in the biomass of plants and were eaten by grazing cows and fish. Once pollution reached the vegetation and the base of the food chain, it was transferred into humans. Massol and other independent scientists found that Vieques animals had 50 times more lead and 10 times more cadmium than animals on mainland Puerto Rico.

Under President Barack Obama, however, the U.S. government has shown signs of changing its tune. A U.S. congressional investigation last May into Hurricane Katrina trailers contaminated with formaldehyde accused the ATSDR of colluding with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to “deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns.” When the Vieques case resurfaced, a team of ATSDR scientists began re-examining environmental health data on the island.

On Feb. 12, 2008, during his heated primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, then Sen. Obama wrote a letter to Puerto Rican Governor Acevedo Vila, stating that, were he to be elected president, “My Administration will actively work with the Department of Defense as well to achieve an environmentally acceptable clean-up … We will closely monitor the health of the people of Vieques and promote appropriate remedies to health conditions caused by military activities conducted by the U.S. Navy on Vieques.” Yet today, the Obama White House remains silent on the issue.

Living in the line of fire

Nanette Rosa, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, remembers what daily life was like in the Vieques village of Esperanza when the Navy airplanes took off from the island’s west coast and flew overhead to drop bombs in the east.

“When the wind came from the east, it brought smoke and piles of dust from where they were bombing,” Rosa says. “From January until June, they’d bomb every day, from 5 a.m. until 6 p.m. It felt like you were living in the middle of a war.”

Her neighbors in Esperanza developed breathing problems and skin rashes. Then in 1993, Nanette traveled to the port town of Fajardo to have her fourth child, Coral. The girl weighed only four pounds and doctors diagnosed her with “blue baby syndrome” (a result of high nitrate contamination in the groundwater, which decreased her oxygen-carrying capacity). Doctors in San Juan performed a colostomy on Coral, and when she was six-months-old, they found eight tumors in her intestines and stomach. The day before Coral’s first birthday, Nanette was told to celebrate because this would be the baby’s last.

Instead, in January 1995, Nanette sold her new house for a $600 plane ticket and flew to Brooklyn to seek help. Doctors at Kings County Hospital removed half of Coral’s intestines and stomach, which saved her life. Broke and without financial support, Nanette spent three months sleeping on a bench in the hospital.

Miraculously, Coral is alive today and about to turn 17. Her cancer is in remission, but doctors recently found three lumps in one of her breasts. Coral’s younger sister Ainnanenuchka, 14, has been diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma (cancer in her blood and bones), and part of her leg was removed and implanted in her chin.

“I’m 100 percent confident that the lawsuit will succeed, because the Lord told me so,” says Nanette, now 38 and a Pentecostal optimist. “I read in the Bible that every damage caused to the Earth has to be repaid.”

And if the lawsuit doesn’t succeed?

“I leave it in God’s hands. If I have to go to jail, it’s worth it to save my daughters’ lives.”

Obama brings full house to the Big House

2010-05-01T09:30:00.000-05:00

Absolute Michigan

ANN ARBOR — President Barack Obama took a break from the constant political storms in Washington, D.C., to address the University of Michigan (U-M) 2010 spring commencement ceremony today. And thunderstorms rolling across the Midwest rewarded him with a break in the weather, as nearly 85,000 graduating seniors, U-M students, families and well-wishers enjoyed overcast skies and a humorous, but reflective speech on American politics that could well have been delivered in a political science lecture hall.

The crowd that packed into Michigan Stadium — the gridiron popularly known in Ann Arbor as the “Big House” — more than doubled that of typical commencement ceremonies, in no small part because of Obama’s popularity and intrigue among this student body, and young Americans in general. Early morning showers dropped spring rains on southeast Michigan, but the precipitation stopped in earnest by 9 a.m., two hours before the ceremony was to begin.

Adhering to a punctual schedule, Obama entered the stage shortly before 11 along with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (a close ally of the President who may someday seek a cabinet position or a Supreme Court nomination once term limits end her governorship) and U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, and took a seat between the two. School of Music, Theatre & Dance senior Mary Martin then opened the ceremony with a performance of “The Star Spangled Banner,” followed by a Reflection from Samir Mohammed Islam, a senior from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA, which is U-M’s largest school).

Following remarks by esteemed faculty members, the spotlight turned to LSA Senior Alex Marston, a D.C. native and third-generation Michigan student whose grandparents met in Angell Hall during the 1940s. His speech on the topic of “change” seemed fitting with Obama just feet away from him, and the cameras focused on Mr. Change whenever the word was used.

“We desire change, but we fear it too,” Marston said. “After (Obama) took office, he found resistance to change,” at which the President whispered something to Gov. Granholm and laughed. Marston alluded to changes in U-M’s football program, a new coach and the team's fall from grace over the past three years. The senior also lamented that, for today’s graduates, change will mean no more visits to the popular Ann Arbor bar Good Time Charlies, or Zingerman’s Deli, and its world famous pastrami sandwiches. “But still, we must embrace change and follow the lead of Michigan graduates to change the world.”

Coleman then honored the nation’s 44th President with an Honorary Doctor of Law degree before thanking Obama for making the trip on Air Force One: “Congratulations to a group of graduating students so exceptional that we had to show you off to the President of the United States. … President Obama, welcome to the Big House,” she said to thundering applause.”

Just after 11:30, Gov. Granholm took the podium (adorned with the President of the United States seal) and applauded Obama: “On behalf of our 10 million citizens, thank you for supporting our auto industry — Ford, General Motors, Chrysler. They all have bright futures now, whereas one year ago much darker clouds than these loomed overhead.” Granholm mentioned a recent visit by Vice President Joe Biden to promote Michigan’s electric battery sector. “We could not change Michigan from the rust belt to the green belt without your support, Mr. President,” she continued.

About 10 minutes later Obama rose and drew nearly 30 seconds of applause before opening his speech. He smiled, answered, “I love you back” and then pronounced, “It’s great to be here in the Big House. Go Blue,” admitting that he wanted to start things off with a cheap applause line.

Political science

Obama began his speech on a humorous note: “I am happy to join you all today, and even happier to spend a little time away from Washington. Don't get me wrong — it's a beautiful city. And it sure is nice living above the store; can't beat the commute,” he joked. “It's just that sometimes, all you hear in Washington is the clamor of politics — a noise that can drown out the voices of the people who sent you there.”

He reads 10 letters a night from ordinary citizens, including one from a kindergarten class in Virginia, which asked the leader of the free world a series of innocent questions. “One asked, ‘How do you do your job?’ Another asked, ‘Do you work a lot?’ Somebody wanted to know if I wear a black jacket or if I have a beard — clearly getting me mixed up with that other tall guy from Illinois. And then there was my favorite: ‘Do you live next to a volcano?’”

But after tickling the crowd’s funny bone, Obama adopted the conciliatory, unifying stance of the change-maker he’s aspired to be in the White House. He admitted that the debate over the size of government is a legitimate one that has existed since this country’s beginnings; he called on cable news pundits and others to keep the political debate civil, and he admitted that these issues of political tone are nothing new.

“Before we get too down on the current state of our politics, we need to remember our history. The great debates of the past all stirred great passion. They all made some angry. What is amazing is that despite all the conflict; despite all its flaws and frustrations, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any other form of government on Earth.

Obama’s call for a good government, of the people, seemed suitable for a political science class, if not a campaign rally: “Government is the police officers who are here protecting us and the service men and women who are defending us abroad. Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe.”

And then the President made perhaps the only allusion to the stormy issues of the day that are certainly on his mind as he flies back to Washington.

“Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them. Government is this extraordinary public university — a place that is doing life-saving research, catalyzing economic growth, and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small.

Shortly after noon today, Obama wrapped up his speech, calling on U-M’s graduates to be tomorrow’s leaders, and protectors of democracy. And after the seniors filling the football field in a sea of black gowns were officially declared graduates, they honored tradition and tossed their black caps into the air. Formal above the waist, many graduates wore tennis shoes — even Bermuda shorts — below.

U-M a collegiate leader

President Barack Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to deliver a graduation commencement speech in Ann Arbor, following Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and George H. W. Bush in 1991. Johnson used this setting to outline the pillars of his Great Society legislation, which marked the 1960s. Bill Clinton also spoke to U-M’s graduates after he left the White House. Video images of Johnson and Bush both appeared on the jumbotron during today’s ceremony.

Though they weren’t commencement speeches, John F. Kennedy stopped for a midnight rally at the University of Michigan 50 years ago while on the 1960 campaign trail and introduced the Peace Corps. (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” he said in that recognizable Bostonian accent.) And U-M alum and Grand Rapids native Gerald Ford (the only Michigan native to sit in the Oval Office) launched his unsuccessful re-election campaign here in 1976.

While U-M has taken its lumps on the gridiron in recent years, and all but ceded state basketball bragging rights to Tom Izzo and Michigan State, the university continues to be a national collegiate leader. University president Mary Sue Coleman, who took over the reigns in 2002 following Lee Bollinger’s tenure, launched “The Michigan Difference” campaign, which raised $3.2 billion — the most ever by a public university.

The university’s value to the state of Michigan is equally immense. The U-M Health System, which serves 1.7 million patients each year, boasts a medical school, three hospitals and more than 120 health centers and clinics. U-M spends over $1 billion annually on research, which has resulted in 2,521 discoveries, 1,184 patent applications and 83 startups. U-M is part of the University Research Corridor, a collaboration with Michigan State and Wayne State universities to accelerate statewide economic development.

Michigan Stadium, which opened in 1927 and was the first college stadium to use electronic scoreboards, holds a capacity of 106,201.

No to Coal

2010-05-01T06:41:00.001-05:00

The Chicago City Council unveils legislation to clean up South Side power plants

Mindful Metropolis

There are killers loose on Chicago’s South Side. Two coal-fired power plants—located in the heavily Latino neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village, and owned by the energy company midwest Generation—spew soot and other pollutants into the air that cause approximately 41 premature deaths, 550 emergency room visits and 2,800 asthma attacks every year, according to a 2001 Harvard study. The Chicago Clean Power Coalition estimates that the Fisk plant in Pilsen and the Crawford plant in Little village have released 45,000 tons of pollution in the past three years alone.

Frustrated by the slow pace of action on the federal and state levels, Alderman Joe Moore of the 49th Ward teamed up with four co-sponsors in mid-April to introduce a Chicago Clean Power ordinance in the City Council. Moore led a spirited press conference on the second floor of City Hall on April 13, where he shared the microphone with Sandi Jackson (7th Ward), Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), Eugene Schulter (47th Ward), Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) senior attorney Faith Bugel and Brian Urbazewski from the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago. Nearly 200 environmental activists gathered with signs in support of the legislation.

“This ordinance will require Chicago’s two coal-fired power plants to clean up their act, to reduce the amount of particulate matter and carbon dioxide they spew into the air,” said Alderman Moore. “When this legislation passes, Chicago will do what no other large city in America has had the guts to do — clean up a dirty power plant within its jurisdiction, and thus protect the health and welfare of its residents.”

The lawmakers going to bat on behalf of Pilsen and Little Village residents represent a broad geographical area of the city, because pollution doesn’t stop at ward borders.

“The soot and the particulars go across this entire city, they go across the Midwest, they go across the entire world,” said Alderman Waguespack. “And that’s what we’re trying to stop here. We need to hold these people accountable now.”

One alderwoman viewed the effort to clean up the south side polluters not just as her legal responsibility, but as her parental duty.

“This is very personal to me because my two children have asthma,” shared Alderwoman Jackson. “So every time I drive, and I put them in the car with me, they’re struggling to grasp for breath. If we’re not fighting every day to ensure that the breath our children breathe is clean, then shame on us, shame on us.”

Predictably, Midwest Generation answered the proposed legislation with a press statement saying that current regulation standards were adequate and that more regulation would only cost jobs: “Given the existing state and federal regulations protecting health and the environment, an additional layer of regulation in Chicago is unnecessary and overreaching. … It’s only real impact will be to risk the shutdown of these plants, and as a result, reliability of the electric grid and the loss of hundreds of good union jobs.”

But the company has all but ignored a federal Clean Air Act provision requiring coal plants to upgrade their pollution controls, and a lawsuit filed last year by the Environmental Protection Agency could take years to resolve. Midwest Generation has agreed to install pollution control “scrubbers”, but not until 2015 in Pilsen and 2018 in Little Village.

“We are here to act more quickly, to fill in those gaps," said Faith Bugel of ELPC.

At the City Hall press conference, Alderman Moore lashed out at Midwest Generation for using scare tactics.

“Before they’ve even read one word of this legislation, the power company executives are already threatening us. They say, rather than clean them up, they’ll shut them down. They say workers will lose those good union jobs. … I’m sick and tired of corporate executives scaring people about job loss just to try and save the bottom line. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some power company executive … divide the workers and their families from those of us who care about their health.”

Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist, editor and publisher who hails from the cobblestone streets of Copenhagen and the forests of northwest-lower Michigan, where he publishes the Glen Arbor Sun (GlenArborSun.com).

Think Beyond Recycling

2010-05-01T04:49:00.002-05:00

"Junk artist" Gabriel Dishaw's exhibit, (Not So) New Shoes, runs through May at 360SEE Gallery in Bucktown

Mindful Metropolis

Ever refused to purchase a pair of beautiful new Nike sneakers because you knew that the Honduran workers who made them didn’t earn anything close to the $100 price tag on the shoes? Well, now you can buy those shoes, and do so without violating your conscience.

Self-proclaimed “junk artist” Gabriel Dishaw sculpts trendy sneakers out of reclaimed computer parts, electronics, metal, wire and plastic. The Indianapolis-based artist’s show “(Not So) New Shoes” runs through the month of May at 360SEE gallery (www.360SEEgallery.com) in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. Each pair of Nike reproductions is built to scale and matched with a vintage piece of luggage that Dishaw retrofits into a custom-label shoebox.

Granted, most of the shoes are to be viewed, not worn. But Dishaw has also designed three wearable custom designs of Nike’s “Air Force One” brand, which come in green, orange and copper colors, and include an external cutout from a computer’s motherboard in the shape of the Nike swoosh. Dishaw captures the shoe’s details, down to the logo, laces, Velcro and loops on the back. Best of all, you can wear these on the basketball court.

“My passion for working with metal and mechanical objects has been crucial in the evolution of my art,” Dishaw writes in a press release. “It provides an avenue for me to express myself in a way that both satisfies my love for creating art while re-using items that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

“I create sculptural objects that not only promote visual and tactile interest but provokes others to really appreciate how much we dispose of each day and the impact that our behavior has on our environment. I want to inspire others to think beyond the conventional route when it comes to recycling.”

All proceeds from Dishaw’s Air Force One shoes will be donated to the Earth Day Network, which recognizes 360SEE gallery and director Jordan Witkov as part of its “Artist for the Earth” Earth Day 40th anniversary initiative. This month you can also bring old laptops, personal computers, typewriters and other electronic components to the gallery, located at 1924 N. Damen Ave., for Dishaw to use in future sculptures.

The sustainability-minded media gallery will celebrate two years at its Bucktown location in July. Witkov, a North Shore native who returned to Chicago after receiving his Bachelor’s in Fine Arts in painting and printmaking at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, believes that 360SEE gallery is one of a kind. He works with artists all over the world, exhibiting everything from furniture, to paintings, to design.

“All artists we work with use responsibly-sourced materials,” explains Witkov, who turns 30 in June. “Some artists use (sustainable) materials because they find 150-year-old wood very beautiful, as opposed to having an environmental motivation. Others make a conscious choice to use sustainable materials.”

Witkov emphasizes that the 1,200-square-foot, two-story gallery is not just the next passenger on the green bandwagon.

“Sustainability is important to me, and it’s a great talking point for (the artists). But if the work is not formal and well done, visually and conceptually compelling, no one will buy it. We’re a serious gallery — not just the new eco gallery on the block.”

360SEE is inviting and unpretentious, with a name that suggests a closed-loop, full circle perspective. When I visited in early April, Witkov’s dog Homer greeted me at the door. The bulldog sported brightly colored balloons on his feet (to prevent the dog from sucking its toes) and proved to be a pleasant companion while escorting us on our gallery tour, which last month featured “Arrested Moments,” early 20th-century mug shots that were hand-painted onto brown paper bags by Seattle artist Chris Crites. Remarkably, most of the criminals were better dressed than the Bucktown hipsters around all us.

Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist, editor and publisher who hails from the cobblestone streets of Copenhagen and the forests of northwest-lower Michigan, where he publishes the Glen Arbor Sun (glenarborsun.com).

The Manitou

2010-04-12T09:30:00.006-05:00

Shore Magazine

Sailing the freshwater seas

Not long after the tall ship Manitou pushes away from the dock on West Grand Traverse Bay and points her bow toward open water, the vibrant sun forces its way through the clouds above, and Mother Nature offers us a strong northerly wind.

Heaving hand over hand, obeying command after command, the three-member crew hoists the Manitou’s sails high, and ties them so taut that barely a ripple appears in her 3,000 square feet of heavy canvas. They catch wind and she cruises forward at 12 knots. At the helm, Dave McGinnis smiles—the reaction of a captain the moment his ship finds its groove.

It’s a Friday morning in mid-September, just days before the fall equinox sheds leaves on a Midwestern summer that began late and will end soon. We are embarking on a four-day “Windjammer Cruise” from the northwest-lower Michigan tourism destination of Traverse City and to wherever the wind will take us. The guests on this weekend’s wine-tasting cruise include six middle-aged and retired couples, our aspiring sommelier and me. We sip strong coffee served in a hot pot on the port side of the ship and watch as Captain Dave and the crew practice the ancient craft of the mariner, which has been passed down through the ages.

“Stand by to tack,” Captain Dave announces as the Manitou nears the coast of the Leelanau Peninsula to the west. “Stand by to tack,” the crew dutifully responds and jumps to their battle stations. Because we’re sailing north, into a northerly wind, we have to sail at angles, west, then east, and “tack” back and forth when we near shore. This is the tortoise’s approach to the journey. We’re not moving fast. But slowly and steadily, we’ll get there.

McGinnis calls the Manitou a simple boat, without the complications of electrical or mechanical systems. “We’re trying to give people a taste of what it was like to sail on one of these boats one hundred years ago,” he says. “So simplicity is key. We don’t need generators and refrigerators and Cuisinarts on board. Her beauty is in her simplicity.”

The Manitou is a traditional gaff rig two-masted schooner, the likes of which once sailed up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States in the 1800s. She is 114 feet long, weighs 82 tons and was retrofitted with a steel hull in 1983 to preserve her lifespan. The Manitou boasts western red cedar masts, a deck made out of Douglas fir and a steering wheel of cherry wood. Put simply, she is beautiful. This vessel sailed Lake Champlain in New England until 1990 under the name Homer W. Dixon, after the uncle of the original owner. McGinnis, who had been first mate on the Dixon, brought her in 1991 through the shipping canals, 40 locks and the Great Lakes to Traverse City on behalf of the Traverse Tall Ship company, which he now owns.

Since those days, Traverse City and its surrounding counties—Leelanau, Benzie and Grand Traverse—have blossomed from a post-lumber industry backwater, known mostly for hunting and fishing, into a vibrant tourism Port of Call. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (part of the National Park Service) on the state’s west coast, pristine beaches, rolling dunes, lush forests, inland lakes, quaint villages and boutiques, gourmet food, European chocolates, numerous wineries, bike races and cultural events draw hundreds of thousands of seasonal visitors every year.

Michael Moore put an exclamation point on this with his annual Traverse City Film Festival. And Pure Michigan’s advertising campaign targeting out-of-staters (especially in the Chicago region) with enticing videos of Michigan’s pristine nature has helped guide the state through a painful economic recession and establish tourism—more than the automobile industry—as the state’s future growth engine.

Amanda Danielson, who would lead the wine tasting on this weekend’s cruise, owns the Italian restaurant Trattoria Stella, together with her husband Paul, on the former grounds of Traverse City’s old state mental hospital. The Danielsons are among many who have taken advantage of the region’s interest in gourmet and local foods.

Originally from the Detroit area, the couple opened Stella’s six years ago with the intention of promoting local farmers and sustaining the local economy. They knew that Michigan’s geographical location on the 45th parallel—the bountiful region halfway between the Equator and the North Pole—and its abundant farmland make it the second most agriculturally diverse state in the nation, following California. They also knew they wanted to emulate southern European cuisine, where the food on your plate is never far from the farm. And they knew that with a couple dozen wineries located on nearby Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas, they could pair tasty, locally harvested grapes with fresh food. (Danielson is studying to take the sommelier exam.)

Since opening in 2004, Stella’s has worked with nearly sixty local farms and producers, and the summer of 2009 was their best one yet, which Danielson owes as much to tourists as to the support of the local community. “There’s a population of people here who appreciate good food from the backyard,” she explains.

This is Danielson’s third wine-themed windjammer cruise aboard the Manitou. This fall the schooner has hosted three other similar weekend trips: an astronomy tour, a folk music trip, and a chocolate and storytelling cruise (courtesy of my mom’s business, Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate, and my dad’s storytelling troupe, the Beach Bards). Captain Dave McGinnis has considered a yoga and meditation-themed cruise as well.

Danielson’s first year on board she stuck to a 45th parallel theme, with wines from Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Bordeaux (France), Piedmont (Italy) and this region. In 2008 she highlighted indigenous grape varieties that grow well here, such as Riesling, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc, and compared them to grapes from Europe.

The theme this weekend would be peninsular wines—appropriate, as we sailed north between the Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas. Danielson had also included wines from other famous peninsulas around the world: the boot of southern Italy, the Iberian Peninsula including both Spain and Portugal, and Greece, which has developed more high-end table wines in recent years.

The weekend’s wines were paired with delicious dinners prepared on a wood stove by the Manitou’s chef, Wendy Foss. On Friday night, after we docked in Omena Bay, between the towns of Suttons Bay and Northport on the Leelanau Peninsula, Danielson began the celebration by opening a bottle of local winemaker L. Mawby’s “Sex” sparkling wine, proceeded to a white with hints of salt from Cinque Terre, Italy, wowed us with a sweet Rosé from Toscana and, finally, seduced us below deck with a delicious red table wine, where we enjoyed fresh, southern Italian cuisine of pasta cooked with clams, fresh vegetables and portabella mushrooms. The dinner was simple, yet fresh and tasty. Homemade tiramisu awaited us when we resurfaced above deck and watched the sun set over land just beginning to show the slightest hints of fall colors.

That night a crisp fall air made the Milky Way galaxy above seem all the more clear.

The wind died on Saturday, and Captain Dave needed the motor to get us around the tip of Leelanau County and over to North Manitou, in Sleeping Bear Bay, he taught us Polish drinking songs.

Without enough wind to fill the sales, Captain Dave found time to reminisce about his love for sailing as he manned the wheel. While studying photography at age 19 at an art school in New York City, the New Jersey native spent six days as a passenger on a tall ship cruise off the coast of Maine. He was instantly smitten and emptied his meager college savings to return. In 1985 McGinnis got a deckhand job on the same vessel, sailed the coast of Maine for several years and occasionally spent winters in the islands near Florida. Five years later he met the ship now called the Manitou and brought her to the freshwater seas.

“I feel very fortunate to be her caretaker,” McGinnis says. “It’s about stewardship. This boat, if she’s cared for, will certainly outlast all of us. There are boats still sailing the coast of Maine that were built in the 1870s.”

By 1995, Captain Dave and his wife Mary—who met on a boat called the Angelique—felt burned out by the shipping life and decided to take a break and return to Maine. McGinnis went to work as an assistant manager at a 30-room bed and breakfast on Penobscot Bay. But by July of that year, he recalls, watching all the schooners he had known for years sailing up and down the bay while he was chained to a desk in the lobby showed him that the shipping life was still his calling.

Perhaps he heard the words of English poet John Masefield in his mind: “I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, and the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, and a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.”

A year and a half later Dave and Mary returned to Traverse City and the Manitou, and he’s been behind the wheel ever since.

Somehow, despite the lack of winds today, by mealtime, Danielson and Foss managed to transport us from Italy across the Mediterranean Sea to the Iberian Peninsula. And on the second day we ate delicious roasted chickens with potatoes and green beans, washed down with a Portuguese Vinho Tinto, which followed a Rosé from Old Mission Peninsula and a sampling of whites from both Spain and Portugal.

That evening, the Manitou’s life raft made several trips ferrying people to North Manitou Island, an uninhabited part of the National Park, for evening strolls along the beach. According to Ojibwe legend, North Manitou and her sister island to the south were formed when two bear cubs, trailing behind their mother swimming across Lake Michigan to escape a forest fire in Wisconsin, grew tired and drowned. The great god Mishe Mokwa took pity on the cubs and turned them into the Manitou Islands. Meanwhile, sand covered the mother bear as she lay in mourning on the shore of the mainland, and her body became the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes.

After combing the beach for Petoskey Stones, and knowing that by mid-September Lake Michigan is warmer than the evening air, I opted to swim back to the Manitou, which rested peacefully 100 yards offshore. From a distance she appeared to be set in a painting from a bygone era, her white hull and majestic masts sharing the canvas with a vanilla sky and a shade of pink from the setting sun. Was I swimming toward a mirage? No, thankfully, she was real.

Sunday, another day without much wind, we returned to the mainland, and by evening found ourselves dining and drinking in Greece.

The Tall Ship Manitou sails four Windjammer weekend cruises in the fall. During summer she takes passengers on two-hour tours in West Grand Traverse Bay and also functions as a bed and breakfast. For information visit tallshipsailing.com or call 231.941.2000.

40 Years of Earth Day

2010-04-01T11:21:00.003-05:00

Mindful Metropolis, April edition

Despite setbacks, and failure in Copenhagen, the modern environmental movement has reached a critical mass — especially here in Chicago.

Last Oct. 17, cabin ministers of the Maldives, an archipelago of 1,200 low-lying islands and atolls located in the Indian Ocean, took the unusual step of donning scuba gear and holding a meeting 20 feet underwater. They were led by the nation's dynamic young president, Mohamed Nasheed — a former political prisoner who was elected to office a month before Barack Obama.

The act was brilliant political theater. Communicating through hand signals, the ministers signed a document calling on world nation’s to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions within the next decade, to save the Maldives from disappearing under rising sea levels as a consequence of global climate change (80 percent of the country sits less than 4 feet above sea level).

Nasheed used that image — and the threat of a sovereign nation disappearing forever — as a rallying cry on behalf of those on the front lines of global climate change, particular African and low-lying island nations, during the United Nations’ COP15 Global Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December.

World leaders were supposed to come together in the Danish capital and agree on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in order to stop global climate change—the greatest challenge facing our generation, if not all generations of mankind. But for anyone who hoped for a groundbreaking deal, Copenhagen was a humiliating disaster. Political squabbling between Washington, D.C., and Beijing (the world’s two biggest polluters), enormous rifts between rich nations and poor nations, disagreements over the concept of “climate debt,” Denmark’s inability to effectively mediate between sides, and ultimately the banning of civil society from the Bella Center where the meetings took place, doomed the much anticipated summit and sent environmentalists home for the holidays pessimistic about our future and with little faith in government.

Since then we’ve suffered a winter of discontent — full of gray skies, unemployment, tragic earthquakes, Tea Party spectacles, and nasty East Coast storms (which are absolutely compatible with climate change and, thus, more extreme weather). What to make, then, of another spring, and the 40th anniversary of Earth Day later this month?

We’ve come a long way, baby

Commonly observed on April 22, though its events often spill into the weekend, Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin. Nelson announced his idea for a nationwide teach-in day on the environment in speeches the previous September to a fledgling conservation group in Seattle and to a meeting of United Auto Workers. He sought to spark a grassroots outcry about environmental issues — parallel to the growing movement against the Vietnam War — that would force the Nixon administration to act.

That spring, approximately 20 million Americans rang in a new decade by gathering to protest the deterioration of the environment, oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness and the extinction of wildlife. The U.S. Congress passed important legislation in the wake of the first Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act and the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

By 1990, Earth Day had mobilized 200 million people in 141 countries and elevated environmental issues onto the world’s stage. Considered fringe in 1970, recycling was now a household term, if not yet a household chore. The 20th Earth Day also paved the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Then, 10 years ago, the emergence of the Internet linked activists around the world and brought together 5,000 environmental groups to celebrate the millennial Earth Day. A talking drum chain traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, and hundreds of thousands gathered on the National Mall in our nation’s capital.

But by 2000, the environmental community was talking in earnest about a new and dangerous phenomenon—global climate change, the human industry-induced emissions of carbon gasses into the earth’s atmosphere, which cause a gradual warming of the planet, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, rising sea levels, shifting ocean currents, stronger storms, desertification of once arable lands and disappearing fresh water supplies.

Today, scientists, and most world leaders, have coalesced around the recognition that global climate change is real, and dangerous. Yet here in the United States our government has yet to legally guarantee that we will reduce emissions by 2020 or put a price on carbon — an act that would help the green energy economy grow.

A truly grassroots movement

You wouldn’t know it from watching CSPAN, or from the dismal headlines that emerged from Copenhagen in December, but the environmental movement is actually booming in American states, cities and communities, including right here in Chicago. And the Windy City’s green activists don’t expect change to come from the top (even if the commander in chief once lived amongst us), but from the bottom.

“Reducing our overall carbon footprint will require a very grassroots approach,” said Carlos Chavez, CEO of the Logan Square-based sustainability, energy and environmental consultant Green Dot Environmental. “We can’t wait for countries and organizations to come around.”

Green Dot Environmental is teaming with Conscious Planet Media to hold an Earth Day 5K Run/Walk (earthday5kchicago.com) on Saturday, April 24, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. at the northwest corner of Humboldt Park on Chicago’s northwest side, move north to Logan Square and then return through Palmer Square to the Humboldt Park boathouse. A Green Living Expo in the park will ensue, featuring music, entertainment, food, vendors and environmental education, with appearances by City Councilmen Robert Maldonado and Rey Colon, respectively, of the 26th and 35th wards.

“We created this event to bring under one roof all the elements of a healthy lifestyle—running, farmers markets, eating health and shopping locally,” summarized Chavez.

While Peter Nicholson, executive director of Foresight Design (foresightdesign.org) and founder of the Chicago Sustainable Business Alliance, appreciates the fact that hundreds of millions will officially celebrate the planet this month, he looks forward to the day when we don’t need an Earth Day: “I’m in this year-round, I don’t just drop in and drop out. It’s almost a sign of distress that we actually need to have an Earth Day.”

Nicholson hopes that, instead of merely inventing greener consumer products, we’ll undergo a culture shift in our relationship to the planet. “One of the things we talked about 10 years ago was the backlash effect. When you create something that’s more efficient, your impulse is to use it more. You might say, ‘I have a hybrid car, I can drive it twice as far’. Instead of just touting green products, we need to deal with the behavior behind them.”

For Dr. Clare Butterfield, executive director of Faith in Place (faithinplace.org), our compromised relationship to the planet represents a “human inability to see ourselves in a larger system, a part of history, the heirs of our ancestors, and the benefactors of our grandchildren. Because we aren’t willing to set limits, we take up as much space as we can.

As an “environmental concierge service,” Faith in Place helps religious organizations make connections between what their theology teaches them and their relationship to the planet. “If your faith requires that you love your brothers and sisters, that means you must reduce your carbon footprint,” said Butterfield. For example, Faith in Place helped a mosque in Bridgeview include a solar water system in its Friday prayers—the first solar-powered mosque in the country.

Veronica Kyle is Faith in Place’s liaison to African-American communities in areas ravaged by high unemployment and foreclosed homes that are in survival mode. For them, global climate change is a distant concept. “Our language is around green opportunities in the community,” said Kyle. “People aren’t making the connection between Styrofoam and the environment. But we talk about keeping materials from going into the landfill, so that another builder can take advantage of them.”

Faith in Place recently collaborated with the City of Chicago and the Delta Institute on a major weatherization project that involved local youth on the city’s west side installing weatherization kits (doorstoppers, draft stoppers, irrigated faucets) in over 400 households. Rev. Marshall Hatch from New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church addressed the youth and called them “the first generation of new environmentalists in our community. Let this begin a journey toward conservation and understanding.”

Greener schools

No Foam Chicago (nofoamchicago.org), is pushing schools to change their wasteful habits, and seeking legislation to prod them along. Students and teachers at Chicago Public Schools still eat their lunches on harmful Styrofoam that ends up in landfills. In fact, 300,000 Styrofoam trays are wasted every day, an amount that, if stacked one on top of another, would surpass the height of the Sears Tower. No Foam Chicago is encouraging the City Council to approve a ban on Styrofoam in schools, which was proposed on Feb. 10.

No Foam Chicago’s Stacy Pfingsten pointed out that 41 Styrofoam bans have already been enacted in California, and 100 nationwide. New York City has not yet followed through on its proposed ordinance, giving Mayor Daley an opportunity to beat the Big Apple. (Daley takes pride in calling Chicago the greenest city in the nation.) No Foam Chicago will reach out to area high schools and colleges the week of Earth Day to spread information about the harmful effects of Styrofoam.

Speaking of public schools, Joey Feinstein of Climate Cycle (climatecycle.org) sees our public learning spaces as the ideal spots to install solar panels, which his organization does through funds raised during the annual Solar Schools Ride, to be held this year on May 15 at the green space adjacent to Soldier Field. Last year’s inaugural event raised nearly $70,000 through pledges. The first solar panels were installed nine months ago at the Perspectives/IIT Math & Science Academy charter school on Chicago’s South Side. More solar installations will follow at Curie Metro High School (where Climate Cycle will hold a “solarbration” on the day before Earth Day), Polaris Charter Academy and Lindblom Math and Science Academy.

“Schools give us high-visibility centerpieces,” said Feinstein. “There’s lots of traffic at schools—students, teachers and parents. And it’s about empowering youth and employing educational tools. … Additionally, schools spend more money on energy costs than they do on textbooks and computers.”

In the midst of a painful economic recession, reusing and recycling are back in style. Money is especially tight for schools, and the Glen Ellyn-based SCARCE (School Community Assistance Recycling Composting Education) program’s book rescue initiative (bookrescue.org) collects millions of books that libraries and families no longer need, just in case a needy school comes calling. Last year, SCARCE installed 18 pianos in Chicago-area schools that didn’t have them, and gave an Aurora school 130 biology books that would have cost $87 a piece, says Kay McKeen. SCARCE has even helped a local church group send books to schools in Uganda and Ghana.

Good for the environment, good for business

Even as we act locally, we shouldn’t be afraid to think globally, believes Erik Lukas, co-founder of the Rainforest Chicago Project (www.rainforestchicago.org), an effort to preserve 6,400 acres of South American rainforest — equal in size to the City of Chicago. Lukas will take the microphone after the 5K run in Humboldt Park this Earth Day weekend, and launch Rainforest Chicago together with the World Land Trust, which has dedicated over 20 years to saving rainforests and endangered species.

“I tried to think of ways to make (rainforest protection) more relevant, more tangible to people here.” He came up with the concept of preserving an amount of land equivalent to the Windy City. “Simple ideas have potential to travel fastest through the world.”

Lukas, co-founder and “chief evangelist” of Bean & Body (beanandbody.com), “the earth’s healthiest coffee,” believes that social entrepreneurs, and the business world in general, must be the instruments for environmental change. “I see more and more businesses realizing and working toward greener business practices,” he said. “From an energy perspective, the solution has to come from the marriage of socially and environmentally-responsible business practices and the environmental activism movement.”

Howard Learner, President of the Environmental Law and Policy Center (elpc.org) concurs that what’s good for the environment should also be good for business. Confronting climate change means embracing clean energy solutions that also create jobs and generate economic growth, such as wind and solar power (viewed as fringe 10 years ago, though some are now calling the Midwest “the Saudi Arabia of wind power”), and transportation solutions such as the development of a Midwest high-speed rail network. “These are smart, job-creating and economy-growing solutions to our global warming problems,” says Learner.

Whether Earth Day is celebrated every day or just once a year, it’s a time to reflect, act, and work toward a better future—for Chicago and for the Maldives. As Learner says, “Earth Day is a time to spend with friends and neighbors and talk about the solutions to our problems. Because solving our global climate problem is the political, moral and economic challenge of our generation.”

Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist, editor and publisher who hails from the cobblestone streets of Copenhagen and the forests of northwest-lower Michigan, where he publishes the Glen Arbor Sun (glenarborsun.com).

Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food

2010-03-01T09:39:00.002-06:00

Mindful Metropolis

FamilyFarmed.org’s annual expo promises to be the Midwest’s premier local food event

The local food movement has reached a critical mass, and sustainability guru Jim Slama knows it. His organization FamilyFarmed.org’s annual expo has ripened like a tomato on the vine and is now considered the Midwest’s premier local food event, if not the best local food trade show in the country.

The 2010 Family Farmed Expo will be held March 11-13 at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) Forum. Family Farmed expects as many as 5,000 to attend the three-day festival, particularly on Saturday, March 13, for the consumer food festival, which features an all-star lineup of speakers and celebrity chefs, including Frontera Grill’s Rick Bayless. The menu Saturday will offer education seminars about topics such as consuming the entire animal, raising chickens in the back yard and growing your own garden—not to mention cooking demos, an interactive Kids Corner and more than 140 vendors ranging from family farmers to artisan food producers to local food advocates—all of whom can help you eat locally and healthy year-round.

The expo begins with the “Financing Farm to Fork” conference that connects local food producers with potential investors. Farms and businesses that have been selected will showcase their company models, amidst an entire day of discussions and an opening seminar by Woody Tasch, author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money.

According to FamilyFarmed.org, “A primary objective of the conference is to educate regional farmers and food processors about various financing strategies and then link them with individuals who represent a variety of financing options that may help them grow their businesses. Business education and training will be essential to the success of the conference and breakout sessions will help inform food producers and financiers about the opportunities and needs in this sector.”

Friday offers the Midwest’s leading local food trade show, a “Meet the Buyers” reception, an innovative “Food Policy” summit and the yummy “Localicious” party that evening.

“I’m excited about this whole event,” says Slama. “The local food movement is exploding. We’re doing what we can to build capacity for the movement through pretty sophisticated and unique measures.”

Slama adds that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is taking steps to encourage local food systems, partly to promote food safety but also farm-to-school initiatives. Chicago Public Schools, for example, has spent $1.8 million on fresh, local food: potatoes from Illinois, apples, peaches and plumbs from Michigan, and also products from central Wisconsin.

For Slama, the “gotcha” moment that the local food movement had become mainstream arrived in September when he and five other sustainable food leaders were given a tour of the White House kitchen and garden by President Obama’s chef Sam Kass, executive chef at the Jane Addams Hull House here in Chicago before his move to Pennsylvania Avenue last year. That same day, Obama and other world leaders were attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh and, according to Kass, each world leader received a bottle of honey from the White House garden.

Bob Borchardt, who together with his wife Jenny owns Harvest Moon Farms in southwest Wisconsin, believes that the arrival of large buyers on the local food scene proves that the local food movement has reached a critical mass. “When you have national organizations shifting and proactively setting up purchasing plans, then you know that it’s happening,” explains Borchardt.

Located about four hours from Chicago in Viroqua, a part of Wisconsin dubbed “the driftless region,” Harvest Moon is entering its fourth year in business and will exhibit for the second time at the Family Farmed Expo. Harvest Moon primarily services the wholesale market, particularly restaurants and institutions, and also runs a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

“We feel like this event is one of a kind,” says Borchardt. “It’s the combination of the ability to market to people directly, to be part of the best industry initiative that’s out there, and to have it all happen under one roof.

“The biggest benefit for us is the face-to-face interaction—to have actual CSA members or customers come see us and talk about current and future products, in a setting where the whole meaning is around local food.”

At its table, Harvest Moon will feature storage crops, samples of its products including cheeses, flowers, chicken eggs and grass-fed beef, and marketing information about the CSA, which Jenny runs along with day-to-day farm operations.

The Borchardts don’t just sell produce. They call their operation a food business, which they integrate with chefs, wholesalers and market makers. Before they bought the land four years ago, Bob owned a company that serviced restaurants. Today, the marketing leg of their business is Cuisine Populaire, a video production company that narrates the stories of those who work with food, wine and spirits. Bob’s brother Bradley, who also plays a hand in Cuisine Populaire, is a consulting chef and will handle all recipe development. Bradley has spent the last 15 years studying culinary cultures in Europe, South America and Asia.

“This is a way for us to contribute to changing local food systems in a positive way,” says Bob.

And as evidenced by the thousands of people flocking to the Family Farmed Expo, “local food” is certainly in style.

For more information, visit familyfarmed.org.

Jacob Wheeler is an adjunct teacher at Columbia College and publishes the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper (GlenArborSun.com) in northwest-lower Michigan.

COP15: Climate Action Network closing press conference

2009-12-18T13:47:00.000-06:00

COP15: African negotiator Lumumba speaks out

2009-12-17T13:56:00.000-06:00

COP15: Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed

2009-12-15T13:59:00.000-06:00

COP15: Mother Jones journalist Kate Sheppard

2009-12-14T14:01:00.000-06:00

COP15: largest climate change demonstration in history

2009-12-12T14:02:00.000-06:00

COP15: Jason Mogus of TckTckTck

2009-12-12T11:10:00.000-06:00

COP15: interview with 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben

2009-12-11T14:13:00.000-06:00

COP15: interview with negotiator Bernaditas Muller

2009-12-09T14:18:00.000-06:00

COP15: interview with Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo

2009-12-09T14:15:00.000-06:00

COP15: interview with Naomi Klein

2009-12-09T12:20:00.000-06:00

Finding Common Ground

2009-12-01T09:50:00.002-06:00

Mindful Metropolis, December edition

Jim Kenney, founder and executive director of the interreligious center Common Ground, talks about why he believes we’re witnessing a breakthrough in cross-cultural understanding

Do shortsighted people get you down? Do you sense religious zealots, warmongers, racists and global climate naysayers all around you? Take a deep breath, and consider the notion that they no longer represent the dominant voices in our societies. They represent old and archaic values, not new values that are growing in popularity, such as ecological sustainability, peace, economic and social justice, human rights and the empowerment of women. Visionary Jim Kenney, the founder and executive director of the interreligious and intercultural education center Common Ground, based in nearby Deerfield, Ill., and author of the forthcoming book Thriving in the Crosscurrent: Hope and Clarity in a Time of Cultural Evolutionary Sea Change (Quest Books, May 2010), believes that we’re experiencing a unique period of global cultural understanding. Those adhering to the old values may cause destructive whirlpools, but they’ll never succeed in changing the course of the stream.

Kenney was instrumental in the founding of Mindful Metropolis’ predecessor, Conscious Choice magazine. He’ll speak at our Dec. 3 screening of the film “Oh My God,” and we talked to him last month to discuss Common Ground, his book, and why he believes we’re witnessing a breakthrough in cross-cultural understanding.

How has Common Ground changed since you and Ron Miller founded the organization in 1975?

The biggest change in Common Ground has been that we’ve moved from focusing on “everything you always wanted to know about religions of the world, and interreligious dialogue,” to what we now say, which is that Common Ground is an adult education center that focuses on the world’s great religions, philosophical, spiritual and cultural traditions, and their implications for every aspect of human enterprise, endeavor and inquiry. We offer programs that range from art to history to literature, politics, philosophy and current events. We have a very broad spectrum, but the core idea has always been the world’s great religions, all of which have great value to contribute to understanding. The way I’ve been putting it lately is that Common Ground helps its participants be better global citizens.

I studied (at Northwestern University) the world’s religions because of a compelling interest in the world’s cultural realities. I thought there’s no better place to start than religious history. Studying current affairs was a very natural evolution … and the audience ate it up as we broadened our horizons.

How have you evolved since then, spiritually or otherwise?

The biggest change for me has been getting connected to the global interreligious movement, in particular the Parliament of the World’s Religions, one of the largest of the global interfaith groups. I became one of the group’s founding trustees and board members and later the program director for the Parliament which was held in Chicago in 1993. We brought 8,000 people here from all religions of the world to talk about the role of religion in making the world a better place — not to craft one world religion, which is what we were always accused of, but to talk about the role of religion in addressing the most critical issues of our time, and then I took on the role of Global Director of the Parliament, through 2002.

I got hooked, and since then I’ve had a deep involvement in global, interreligious affairs. I got to know people in Chicago and all over the world, from many religions. Great spiritual teachers, thoughtful people that have had a huge influence on me personally, spiritually and intellectually. That became for me a clear indication of the reality of cultural evolution: that human culture does evolve, and that we’re currently in a period of dramatically accelerated culture shift.

What are those big cultural changes that are happening right now?

This is the biggest single area of my research, and the topic of my book that’s coming out in May. Cultural evolution means that our values are gradually moving toward a closer fit with our deepening understanding of reality. We learn more about the world every day, and slowly, our values change to fit that. We gradually come to realize that women are not inferior to men, and then, much more slowly than that realization comes the value shift away from the patriarchal. We began to realize that the old assumption that the world is un-fragile and that nothing we did could possibly injure our ecological balance is simply wrong. Slowly, our values catch up.

There are rare periods in history when there’s a sudden dramatic acceleration in that evolution of values. In my book, I talk about four of them, which range from pre-history, through history, to the modern day. I suggest that we’re smack dab in the middle of one of those periods of acceleration. The positive signs I see are the areas of peace and non-violent conflict resolution, social and economic justice and human rights, and ecological sustainability.

The lectures and discussions that Common Ground facilitates deal with current events, such as President Obama’s economic plan. Can we always find lessons in current events?

If you’ve got a broad overarching vision, then there’s always a lesson to be learned. For me, that vision is human cultural evolution. We make a lot of mistakes as we go, but gradually we become wiser. We sharpen our focus, and there are always signs on the horizon. Even if we explore some major cultural failing, there’s always a lesson there.

How do you identify politically? Spiritually?

My politics are very progressive. I’m clearly to the left-of-center, as I think most people are who identify the critical issues of our time as peace and justice and sustainability. The same is true in my religious attitudes. I am a pluralist, which means that I believe it’s possible for more than one religion to be valid. Religions speak in symbolic language. I believe that since religions speak symbolically, the symbolic claims of the great religions don’t contradict each other, they complement each other.

Common Ground is revamping its website, including the addition of an open forum and a social-networking site. How is the Internet changing the way we interact across cultural, religious and spiritual lines?

I think it’s critical that we have access to other cultures. We’re all part of a generation that knows more about the world, other cultures and other religions than any other generation in human history. The Internet is a big part of that; it’s an extraordinary resource.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the issues of the global commons — basically an extension of the old idea of the village commons. The forest and the land in the center of the village, the land surrounding the village, are held in common by all members of the village. They can pasture there, have animals there, they can garden and hunt. Gradually, the village commons was enclosed. The great landowners realized they could make the forests their own and wall off the village commons. The critical problems today when we talk about global commons are Antarctica, the deep sea and the high seas, outer space, the airwaves and natural resources that need to be protected.
One of the most important aspects of the global commons is information and information sharing. An exciting development underway with the Internet is what some call the creative commons, an effort to project access to information that should belong to all and to keep it from being gobbled up by corporations that know how to make information proprietary.

What are some examples of breakthroughs in cross-cultural understanding?

In almost every area, there are major global networks at work. In the area of nonviolent conflict resolution, for example, new approaches have been developed that link efforts in Latin America with efforts in Asia and efforts in Africa with the inner cities of the United States. Another wonderful example is the number of groups that are actively working to address the problems of climate change, or groups that are working on small-scale development programs in poorer countries or on the empowerment of women. You not only have groups that are working in their local areas, but groups that are working in global networks, sharing resources, information and technologies with others all over the world.

Why did you write your forthcoming book Thriving in the Crosscurrent? What did you learn in the process?

I wrote the book because I believe that cultural evolution is happening now. We’re in the fourth great period of dramatically accelerated cultural evolution. Older values that have long been dominant, such as patriarchy, the invulnerability of the earth, the idea that social and economic fairness are unrealistic goals, the idea that war will always be with us — all of those ideas, with which most of us were raised, are declining in influence, an outgoing wave of cultural values. At the same time, a new wave of values is rising: ecological sustainability, peace and justice, nonviolence, economic and social justice, human rights and empowerment of women.

Theoretically, there comes a point when that outgoing wave of values is roughly equal in influence to the incoming wave. I think that’s precisely where we are. The crossing of one wave on the way out, and a new wave on the way in, is bound to produce a backlash. I use the term eddy, to stick to the watery, sea-change metaphor. A whirlpool, a counterspin, when some portion of a body of water tries to resist the prevailing flow. They can be destructive, but none ever succeeds in reversing the flow of the stream.

What’s sitting on your desk right now? What projects awaits?

I’m very involved in this idea of the global commons, trying to understand it better, and to interact with the movers and shakers who are making a difference. And I’m working with the Interreligious Engagement Project (IEP21), a group I founded in 2003 after I left the Parliament of the World’s Religions. We interact with groups that are trying to make a difference, and that we can help by virtue of the connections we have to the global interreligious and intercultural community. This summer I hosted a conference at Loyola University on globalization for the common good. The next one will be in California. We bring together people from different disciplines and from the interreligious community, who believe that globalization is here to stay, but it needs to be dramatically influenced if it’s to reach out to those who are being ignored.

We also publish the Interreligious Insight Journal, a quarterly journal of dialogue and engagement. It focuses on what you might call the best news from the religions of the world — what they do when they get it right. The journal is one of a kind, and we’re very proud of it.

To kill a deer

2009-11-02T23:44:00.001-06:00

Mindful Metropolis, November edition

It was the second bullet that pierced the deer’s brain. The first one, fired through the barrel of my father’s rifle a couple minutes earlier, only maimed him as the buck bent down to eat a fallen apple in the orchard on my parents’ property — on the opening morning of Michigan’s deer-hunting season five years ago.

I was at the computer absorbing the day’s news when I heard the shot. George W. Bush had won his reelection two weeks earlier, and I still felt numb with disbelief. Secretary of State Colin Powell (“the voice of moderation”) was resigning today and Condoleeza Rice would replace him. The news was expected to make the White House more hawkish.

In Iraq, the U.S. military’s invasion of Fallujah — seemingly postponed until after the presidential election — was entering its eighth day of bloody, street-to-street fighting, pitting American soldiers against Shiite rebels loyal to the fiery cleric Abu Musab al-Zarquawi, with plenty of innocent civilians trapped in between. The reports coming out of Fallujah were confusing, and morbid.

Then, the second gunshot. Remembering my pledge to my Dad to help this time, I threw on a raggedy pair of jeans and walked outside into the cool northern Michigan fall air. There, on a bed of freshly fallen leaves and under a knotty old apple tree, where I had once lain in a hammock and memorized statistics on the backs of baseball cards, a beautiful animal lay dead. Blood trickled from his mouth and wound near the heart, where the first bullet struck. The deer had been sacrificed to feed us.

“Are you ready for this?” my Dad calmly asked as we stood over his body. I nodded, though I wasn’t convinced, myself.

He later told me that he had been reading an essay in The New Yorker by John McPhee about barges on the Illinois River when he saw the deer walk into the orchard. The buck had appeared suddenly and was in such a direct line of fire that my Dad had taken a couple deep breaths to calm himself before pulling the trigger. Nevertheless, the first shot hadn’t killed the deer — the nightmare for every hunter with a conscience. The animal stumbled for 20 yards before falling down. He must have felt at least 90 seconds of bewilderment and pain before leaving this world.

My Dad knelt over the deer’s body and said in a hushed tone, “Thank you for your life.”

I imagined Native American hunters performing the same ritual over centuries — taking a moment, just a moment, between kill and butcher, to reflect on the animal’s life and thank it for its contribution to the food chain.

Then he pulled out a knife and cut the deer’s throat so it could bleed. Next he made an incision along the belly, from crotch to ribcage. When we opened up the deer, the air around us became warm, and it took on a sickly, sweet smell of blood and organs. There’s no smell quite like it — and it’s nothing like the experience of consuming meat, which I’ve done my whole life and continue to do today.

We reached our bare hands and arms into the deer, navigated past the heart and lungs with a sharp knife, and cut its esophagus so that we could pull out its guts and intestines. We were careful not to rupture anything, as we separated the part of the animal we would use with what we wouldn’t. My Dad cut out the deer’s liver and placed it in a plastic bag — part delicacy, and perhaps also part trophy. The innards were left in a far corner of the apple orchard for coyotes and vultures to eat that night. Everything would be used somehow.

Then we each grabbed two hoofs and dragged the body across the yard, marking the path with a slight trail of red. She was not heavy, but my thoughts weighed me down. When we got to the tree where the cars are parked, my Dad fetched a rope from the tool shed, and we tied the hoofs to the antlers and strung the deer from a tree limb, to let its blood drain onto the ground and to cure the meat.

The liver was put in salted water to soak and to draw out the blood. I showered and changed my clothes, then sat down in front of the computer again.

Hundreds were reported dead in Fallujah, and the occupying army was blocking an aid convoy from the Iraqi Red Crescent from entering the besieged city. Amidst the fog of war, rumors surfaced of an ambulance — which may or may not have been carrying insurgents — with sniper bullet holes shot through the windshield from above, aimed at chest level. An NBC cameraman videotaped a U.S. Marine shooting an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner in a Fallujah mosque, yelling, “He’s (expletive) faking he’s dead!”

A couple hours after the kill, my Dad invited several friends and fellow hunters over for lunch, and the fresh liver was fried up with onions. Though I’d eaten this delicacy before, today I had trouble chewing the body of the animal. The aroma of the liver in my nose took me straight back to the smell of the body when we opened it up. It wasn’t that I was nauseated; I just couldn’t chew.

I thought of the deer lying there in the apple orchard, how she had been alive and graceful just minutes before, how quickly this animal had gone from pasture to plate, and how I had witnessed and taken part in most of the process. I thought of all the meat eaters in this country who have never killed or butchered what they eat, and I wondered how many would continue to do so if the gun and the knife, the blessing and the intestines were required to be a carnivore. And I couldn’t help but think of the bloodbath in Fallujah.

Was shooting a human being anything like shooting an animal? Was it difficult to chew food in the mess hall afterwards? Was there a connection between how we get our food and how we fight conflicts in the world? All I knew for certain was that the tender liver seemed rougher than any meat I’d ever chewed before.

Sustainable Thanksgiving

2009-11-01T23:37:00.000-06:00

Mindful Metropolis, November edition

Say “thanks” this turkey day with local and organic foods that honor nearby farmers and the land they tend.

I am not politically aligned with my in-laws, with whom I spend Thanksgiving. When we vote, we support different values and visions. But when it comes to food — what we eat, where it comes from, and how it’s prepared — we might as well have grown up on the same farm. And our common relationship to food may be more important than which lever we pull at the ballot box every four years.

I called my mother-in-law a few weeks ago and suggested that we team up this November to produce a Thanksgiving feast full of local and, if possible, organic foods. She fully supported the idea. A schoolteacher in rural northern Michigan, she’s been on a buy-America kick for a while now, partly out of patriotism and partly to enhance the quality of what she brings home.

When we gather for the traditional harvest meal in a few weeks, the turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet corn and squash, green beans and cornbread, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie will taste great. They’ll be full of healthy nutrients. And our purchase of them will support the local economy.

Whether you’re a city mouse or a country mouse, whether you like your T-day meal traditional or whether you introduce creative flair, whether you eat turkey or prefer tofu, and whether you do it yourself or like to go out, you too can celebrate a sustainable Thanksgiving. In Chicago, here’s how:

Organic turkeys

All talk of Thanksgiving begins with the bird. It’s the centerpiece and the main act, the sun around which the other courses revolve. You’ll give the turkey hours in the oven to cook it just right, and you’ll stuff it with bread, and possibly vegetables, herbs or fruit, to spread the good tastes all around. So make sure the main course lives up to its hype.

Caveny Farm, located in central Illinois near Springfield, is a card-carrying member of the Slow Food movement and raises heritage turkeys, ducks and geese in pastures that grow grasses, clovers and amaranth. Caveny’s Bourbon Red Turkeys are a hit among Chicago foodies, and John and Connie will deliver to Lincoln Park, Evanston and the House of Glunz on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and to Heritage Prairie Farm in Geneva, Ill. the next day. (The Lincoln Park pickup will happen at the Green City Market at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, between 8 a.m. and noon.) Caveny’s birds cost between $50 and $110, depending on how many mouths you have to feed. Visit www.cavenyfarm.com or call (217) 762-7767 to order.

Fresh Picks, just north of town in Niles, offers free-range, broad-breasted bronze and white turkeys from Triple “S” Farms in Stewardson, Ill., and TJ’s Poultry in Piper City. Pick up the bird yourself, or Fresh Picks will deliver to most Chicago zip codes between the Wednesday and Saturday before Thanksgiving. Reserve one at www.freshpicks.com or call (847) 410-0595.

Organic, Pasteur-raised turkeys from the Wettstein farm in Carlock, Ill. will be available for pickup the Saturday before Thanksgiving at the Buzz Cafe on Lombard Street in Oak Park. Call the Wettsteins at (309) 376-7291 for information.
Good Earth Farms in Milladore, Wis. offers pasture-raised Broad Breasted Whites with plenty of meat on them. You’ll be eating organic birds that lived out their days happily scratching, eating clover and grass and chasing grasshoppers. Good Earth will ship them for $15 each within a seven-state upper-Midwest region or for free if they weigh over 40 pounds.

If you don’t mind buying from a chain store, Whole Foods offers organic turkeys (though shipped in from Sonoma, Calif.) and non-organic birds from Michigan. And Trader Joe’s will offer some organic birds, though a company spokesperson declined to state where in the Midwest they originate.

Vegans get creative

My friend Chris Brunn, who doesn’t consume animal products, reports that vegan-friendly holiday meals aren’t as tricky as they might sound. He recommends perusing holiday editions of mainstream cooking magazines, like Bon Appétit, which offer recipes that are either vegan, or can easily be modified to be vegan.

In a post two years ago on the local blog GapersBlock.com, Chris mentioned unique and delicious recipes that included wild rice with roasted grapes and walnuts and a three-mushroom dressing. He followed the instructions but recommended substituting margarine, or good olive oil, for butter. Adding rosemary, white wine and sautéed onions to the mushrooms didn’t hurt.

Moving onto potatoes and vegetables, Bon Appétit’s mouthwatering suggestions included a bourbon-walnut sweet potato mash, red potatoes with ancho chiles, a wasabi mash, a hash of sweet potatoes, a recipe for roasted fingerlings, caramelized shallots, smashed rutabagas with ginger-roasted pears, green beans and almonds, parsnips with carrots, rosemary and roasted fennel.

Not everyone enjoys all meat substitutes, Chris admits, but some can be really good, and you can have fun making your own. The Chicago Diner, located at 3411 North Halsted, offers a host of great recipes on its website (www.veggiediner.com) including one for tofu roulade, which Chris has used for several years. Basically, roll heavily seasoned tofu around a savory crouton stuffing. Chris and his brother added another layer one year. They wrapped the whole thing in phyllo dough and brushed it with olive oil. The concoction turned out super flaky on the outside and piping hot and tasty on the inside.

The Chicago Diner will also take reservations and offer carryout for its 27th annual vegan Thanksgiving. Visit the website to drool over the menu or to book a spot at the table. And check out GapersBlock.com for more of Chris Brunn’s vegan culinary odyssey.

Bountiful sides

The Green City Market in Lincoln Park is Chicago’s only year-round farmer’s market, so stop there for produce and ingredients for all your delicious sides. Because the turkey would look awfully bare without the tasty stuffing, potatoes, sweet corn, squash, green beans, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. The aforementioned Fresh Picks, and other turkey-growing farms, are also good options to fulfill your produce needs. Or check out FamilyFarmed.org for a list of family-run farms that will help you set your table this Thanksgiving.

Remember, you might not see eye to eye with your family members about some things, and avoiding discussions about politics or religion at the dinner table is good advice. But if you can all agree that the food in front of you is tasty, healthy and ethical, then you already have more in common than you realize. Besides, the first taste of that delicious squash is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than a protracted debate about health care.

Jacob Wheeler is an adjunct teacher at Columbia College and publishes the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper (GlenArborSun.com) in northwest-lower Michigan

One On One: A Year On The Land

2009-10-09T09:18:00.002-05:00

Mindful Metropolis, October edition

Farmer, author and founder of the Land Connection foundation, Terra Brockman, talks about the seasons, local food systems and buying food based on values.

In Terra Brockman’s new book, The Seasons on Henry’s Farm (Surrey Books), the 50-year-old food and farm advocate tells the story of her family and their life on her brother Henry’s farm. In central Illinois, on some of the richest farming land in the world, five generations of Brockmans have resisted the shift to agribusiness and maintained sustainable practices that produce healthy and delicious foods without spoiling the land.

Brockman’s evocative memoir leads readers through 52 weekly “seasons” using the power of vignettes, photographs and family yarns. Author and activist Sandra Steingraber calls Henry’s Farm “a compelling argument for rebuilding our nation’s food security that is threaded within a lyrical, funny, suspenseful narrative of life on her brother’s Illinois farm.” Brockman, who has lived and worked in Japan and New York City and traveled to farFlung destinations including Nepal, Eritrea, Morocco and the Baltics, founded The Land Connection, a nonprofit working to save farmland, train new organic farmers, and connect consumers with fresh foods. She also contributes regularly to Mindful Metropolis. We interviewed her just as an Indian summer was turning into the harvest season.

Why did you write Henry’s Farm? And what was the most gratifying thing about doing so?

I never set out to write this book. It just evolved from the weekly Food & Farm Notes I’d been sending out to people each week over the past 10 years—letting them know what’s happening on Henry’s farm and what’s coming up to market. The feedback I got from market-goers and others convinced me that a book based on those notes would meet a certain need—a hunGer for connection to the people who farm the earth that sustains us.

The most gratifying thing has been hearing readers say they have a deeper appreciation for the physical labor and intellectual effort involved in bringing good food from the soil to the supper table.

We typically think of a season as lasting for three months, but you described 52 weekly seasons per year. Are we missing something?

We definitely miss a lot when we view the world through the coarse lens of four seasons. There is a world of difference between a “spring” day in early March and another “spring” day in late May. Different birds are singing, different plants are coming up, different fruits are blossoming, different seeds are being planted.

I was inspired to use the 52-season approach after I heard that an ancient Chinese calendar had every five days as a season, and so had 72 named seasons. I figured if they had 72 seasons, then I could easily describe 52—and that made sense given that I write the Food & Farm Notes weekly.

Do you have a favorite season?

Autumn has always been my favorite season— all 12 mini-seasons of it. I love it more and more as I get older, and as it edges inexorably toward winter. Autumn is full of serene melancholy and bittersweet feelings that are best described by the Japanese phrase “wabi-sabi.” I wrote about this at some length in the book, but it is basically the realization that nothing is perfect, nothing lasts and nothing is ever finished.

Tell us about the Land Connection, and the impetus for founding that organization.

In a classic “leap before you look” moment, I founded The Land Connection in 2001 as an educational nonprofit to preserve farmland, train new farmers, and link local producers and consumers. Although there are more and more organizations in the local foods movement, not many deal with the prime movers: farmland and farmers. The Land Connection has had many successes, but still has a long way to go to ensure that we will have farmland and farmers in the future, and not be dependent on foreign sources for food the way we are for oil.

What are the biggest barriers standing between farmers and consumers? How can we tear those down?

We need to work at various levels to recover a direct relationship with farmers and good food. There is a lot standing in the way—from federal policies to large multinational corporations with a vested interest in chemical intensive agriculture, to other large food and fast food companies who make a lot of money by manufacturing highly processed foods from tax-payer subsidized grains.

We need people working on Capitol Hill to counteract the money and misinformation put forth by highly paid lobbyists. A lot can be accomplished with the power of the pocketbook, but we cannot completely reform the food system by just voting with our forks. There are policy issues and structural issues, like corn subsidies, that keep our current system on life support when in a true free-market economy it would have died a natural death decades ago.

It’s true that individuals have a lot of power, but we also need public policy solutions, and many organizations are working to make that happen.

But one of the best things about the local food movement is that people are empowered by it. You decide every day what you will put in your body and what you refuse to put in your body. That’s politics at its most basic. I hope that The Seasons on Henry’s Farm, along with many other books out there, will be part of what Alice Waters calls “the delicious revolution.” Perhaps a reader will stop buying the “perfect” but tasteless peaches in the store, back away from the global food network, and begin going to a farmers market, or seek out farmers and grocers who sell local meat and produce.

How have your travels around the globe impacted the Land Connection’s mission?

My brother Henry and I spent many years living in different cultures, and I think that experience led us both to our current lives. Henry decided to spend each day working with the earth and with his extended family to produce good food for the community—in some ways this is a “third world” lifestyle, but it was the only thing that made sense to him.

My world travels made me see that we needed to make some big changes in the way we use our incredible farmland. We need “land reform” in this country as much as any other nation, and we need “food reform” too. I realized the latter when I had the best frittata in my life in war-torn Eritrea. Here was a country almost reduced to rubble, yet I could eat better food from a tiny roadside café than I could in most restaurants in the United States. Why?

Because the ingredients were fresh and local.

The Land Connection seeks to get farmers back on the land, growing real food for local families—“real food” meaning nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, and eggs—not corn and soybeans to sell below their production cost to companies who pick them apart and then reassemble them into nutrient poor “junk” foods.

What’s the next big project for you? Do you have another book in mind?

The next big project is knocking out some walls in my house.

As for writing, I’ll keep trying to bring people to their senses—literally, to enjoy the sight, smells, feel and taste of great food—and figuratively to realize what is happening to the health of our bodies and our planet because of industrial foods.

I hope that The Seasons on Henry’s Farm gets people thinking and talking about how they can have an impact—on the environment and on their own health via the food choices they make every day. I know it could be considered naïve, but when consumers make buying decisions based on their values, it does bring about change. We’ve seen it happen. If people get to know a few local farmers and their practices, they can get delicious food grown in a way that enhances rather than harms the environment— and do good by eating well.

Jacob Wheeler is a journalist, editor, translator and teacher who also publishes the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper (GlenArborSun.com) in northwest- lower Michigan.

Economic recession? Not necessarily

2009-09-17T10:07:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Thanks to Pure Michigan, Bed & Breakfast and others report healthy summers

Chat with guests at the Glen Arbor Bed & Breakfast on a given weekend, and you’ll take a virtual cross-country tour, and perhaps even a global one. Nearly half of those staying at the popular B&B in the heart of Glen Arbor are from out of state, and the guest book also boasts messages of “Thanks for a great vacation!” from Brits, Germans, Chinese, Venezuelans, Belgians, French, Scots, Israelis, Ghanaians, to name a few.

On account of the global economic recession, and stormy waters for Michigan in particular, owners Patricia and Larry Widmayer had forecasted a 20-percent drop in the number of guests this year. But that didn’t happen. Their numbers, and profits, have been as steady as a trusty skipper at sea. In fact, their tally has increased.

The National Park, the beaches, the inland lakes, the rolling hills and the wineries have a lot to do with that, of course, but the Widmayers also cite the state-funded Pure Michigan advertising campaign as keeping the local tourism industry afloat.

“Many people have commented to us that they’ve seen the Pure Michigan campaign. It makes you want to come here,” said Patricia, who spends most of the year in Evanston, Ill. and sees the ad campaign on Illinois television. “The ads have a great look and feel, whether you want to go out on the golf course or to the beach,” Larry chimed in.

Actor and comedian, and a summer resident of nearby Northport, Tim Allen provides the voiceover, with poetic and compelling messages like this one: “Fall colors begin with a slow dance of turning leaves, and crescendo in a trillion trees aflame. Experience the entire state of Michigan in its annual blaze of glory. Find out what Pure Michigan fall colors feel like. Your trip begins at Michigan.org.”

Pure Michigan was launched in 2006, and Governor Jennifer Granholm approved $45 million in additional funding in 2008 — an unprecedented tourism budget for the state, which allowed the campaign to be broadcast on a national level beginning this March.

Patricia and Larry Widmayer certainly hope those funds continue to be allocated and that Pure Michigan continues to bring tourists up north.

Stories over breakfast

The Glen Arbor Bed & Breakfast was built in the 1870s, served as a single-family home and a “kum-an-dyne” restaurant during the 1930s and 40s. The old Victorian house has since added a new porch, and the Widmayers brought a crew of workers from Evanston to renovate the house and give it a French countryside aura after buying it from Mike and Becky Sutherland in March of 2001. The B&B currently boasts six rooms and suites, two cottages out back, a cozy living room and large fireplace (from where guests can look out and see the heart of Glen Arbor at the corner of M-22 and M-109).

When I joined the Widmayers for a communal breakfast on a Sunday morning in early September, there were guests around the table from Oakland, Calif., Denver, Col., Milwaukee, Wis., and all over southern Michigan. Innkeepers Brian and Jody treated us to a scrumptious, and not atypical, meal of Granny Smith apples with whip cream, hashbrown casserole, homestyle biscuits, Patricia’s own honey-vanilla granola (she brings a bag of it to her daughter-in-law whenever they visit North Carolina: view the recipe on the B&B’s website) and topped off with coffee from the Leelanau Coffee Roasters.

The Widmayers had plenty of favorite yarns about guests and how they fond their ways to Glen Arbor. There was the 10-year-old grandson of a schoolteacher from Patricia’s youth who, when asked of his favorite vacation destination, chose Glen Arbor over Disneyworld and California because he loved going fishing up north with his grandfather. Last fall the B&B hosted a United States Postal Service team, which was in town to unveil the Sleeping Bear Dunes stamp. The federal employees all had interesting tales about how they found their ways to Washington and which politicians they had befriended, among them Sens., and Vietnam war heroes, John Kerry and Max Cleland. There was also a woman last year who dressed up in a clown outfit and surprised her sister on her birthday.

And one morning innkeeper Brian was chatting with a couple guests from his native Wauwatosa, a neighborhood in Milwaukee across the lake, when he discovered that they lived in the exact house where he had grown up!

State of the economy around town

Here’s what local retail businesses and restaurants had to say about how they fared this summer, despite the global economic recession, despite the closing of the Narrows Bridge, and despite, or on account of, the lousy weather. (We didn’t quote any real estate or building companies: obviously, their business has suffered more.):

• Holly Reay, Trattoria Funistrada: “We were up. Adding tables in the bar did increase our capacity and therefore our sales, but it appears that we were up anyway. We noticed a different trend in spending, and our fine wine sales were down just a little, but otherwise a successful summer.”

• Bonnie Nescot, Art’s Tavern: “Arts’ summer was up. We attribute it to the cooler weather, keeping people off the beach and water. (Husband) Tim Barr’s logic is that while 10 percent of U.S. citizens might be unemployed, 90 percent still are, and a lot of them chose to come to our area.”

• Marion DeVinney, Synchronicity Gallery: “Synchronicity has been up this summer. Our sales are about 17 percent above last year’s figures. Last year, sales started dropping in August when people were very uneasy about what was happening to the economy. They are more settled this year, so we hope that sales will continue to be strong through the end of October.”

• Tom Ingold, Devette & Ford Insurance: “We have seen steady growth in the insurance business, through referrals and existing customers that want to combine everything with a local agency. We have seen a trend of customers wanting to work with a smaller agency and know who they are talking to, not the larger agencies where the person who services the policy is not the same as the one who sold it.”

• Margaret Hodge, Anchor Hardware: “I am very pleased. My business is steadily growing, year round.”

• Randy Chamberlain, blu restaurant: “I was extremely cautious with the state of the economy, the Detroit auto mess, and for business in the ‘luxury’ market. I was convinced that we’d have to work harder for less. But we have exceeded my forecast every single week: it’s a mystery as to why. July and August were both over 50 percent above last year, and I see our fall reservations following suit.”

• Mike Sutherland, The River at Crystal Bend: “We were up by 50 percent. I attribute this to adding the eco tours and the kayak livery business, but also the Pure Michigan campaign. With National Park attendance up 10 percent, that’s over 100,000 more people in and around Glen Arbor. If we get even 1 percent of those, it makes a huge difference on our bottom line. Also, I think the bad weather helped us, as people were looking for things to do instead of beaching it.”

• Sue Nichols, Riverfront Pizza & Deli: “Thankfully we were busier this summer than last year. We are lucky to be in an area fueled by tourism, where people on vacation like to eat out. I know when I go on vacation that cooking is not something I look forward to. We also have a pretty loyal local base.”

• Matt Wiesen, Crystal River Outfitters: “With the current weather it appears Mother Nature may be confused on her seasons. The weather was exceptionally challenging this year due to the rain and overcast skies, but business was still quite good. Midwesterners are resilient people and a little cool weather rarely keeps them inside for very long. Crystal River Outfitters has been on the river for 15 years now and we have developed a loyal following, for whom canoeing and kayaking the Crystal River is a summer tradition. When it was sunny we were very busy, hitting our numbers from previous years and in some cases even beating them.”

• Cammie Buehler, Epicure Catering (nearby Omena): “We are up significantly from last year (the worst in our seven-year history) but still down from our high mark of two years ago.”

• Cherrie Stege, Forest Gallery and Lake Street Studios: “We enjoyed a wonderful season. Last year was our best ever, and this year has almost matched that. Like everyone else, Beth (Bricker) and I were crossing our fingers and hoping for at least a good ‘no bridge’ and ‘low economy’ season when we opened our doors in the spring. As it turned out, those two influences weren’t the driving factors. The cool weather kept people off the beaches and in our galleries, much to our delight.”

• David Marshall, Glen Lake Chamber of Commerce President: “My impressions (from a recent Chamber meeting) are that, for most of us, business was either down some or about the same. I’ve heard everything from ‘things have been off 20 percent’ to ‘we are even with previous years.’ Now, if you think about it, ‘being even with previous years’ is darn good in this kind of economy. It’s almost like being up. Other than the businesses south of Glen Arbor on M-22, or north of Empire beyond the M-109 cutoff, I don’t think people were nearly as impacted by the bridge closing as they were by the economy, in general. I’ve heard many merchants say that they had as many people as in previous years, but people were scaling back their buying.”

Bob Byerly’s beautiful mind

2009-09-17T10:04:00.001-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

“This would be a great place for a party,” Bob Byerly once wrote to University of Michigan fraternity brother Harold Jackson about Newfoundland while on a trans-Atlantic journey. “It’s strictly off-campus … and there’s plenty of ice!”

Later on that trip he followed up with a postcard from Paris. “You see the most wonderful things walking around this town leashed onto poodles,” wrote the eccentric and brilliant millionaire who passed away in July after living for decades on the east side of Big Glen Lake.

Byerly was a writer and craftsman, a musician and artist, known around town as much for the spontaneous and wild parties he hosted as he was for his secrecy. When his nephew Bruce showed up to collect Bob’s possessions, arrange a memorial service for August 8 and put the lucrative property on the real estate market, he discovered the true mystery and mystique that surrounded his uncle.

“I knew him pretty well, but he was even more eccentric than I thought,” says Bruce, a contractor who works in Idaho and California. “He had his two lives — his social life and private life, and never the two shall meet.”

“His unfinished projects were his soul — his disheveled, beautiful mind.”

The Byerly properties represent the largest chunk of real estate on the Glen Lakes ever to appear on the market at one time, says Ranae Ihme of LVR Realty, which is teaming up with Serbin Real Estate to sell the land. Two acres on nearby Fisher Lake and an acre on Glen Eden Drive have sold. Still available are the Christian House, the Byerly House and Bob’s Project House, whose listings total nearly $11 million.

The Christian House is a southern plantation-style cottage with pillars on the porch, overlooking 533 feet of Big Glen Lake waterfront, and one of the oldest standing houses on the lakes. The Christian House, built by Lee Christian, Bob’s father’s best friend, was where the famous, lavish parties were held.

“Every time he wanted to play his cornet he’d hire a band and throw a party,” says Bruce. “They were in the Christian House because he kept that house pristine. Nothing ever came out of that house (and into the Byerly House), or vice versa.”

Bruce recalls decades-old stories his parents told of immaculately dressed guests, tables adorned in linen doilies, African-American servants (whose uniforms he found hanging in the closet when he cleaned out the house), and photos of the guests sitting on the deck drinking Mint Juleps.

“The parties he used to throw were epic. He was so tunnel-visioned that he’d do anything for a huge party. He’d go out and hire the band, get it catered or cook, himself. A couple times he told people just to show up, the whole bar was all set up, and he wouldn’t even show. He’d get lost in Traverse City trying to pick up the band, and wouldn’t make it until midnight.”

“I remember one story about the leg of lamb he forgot to put in the oven. A couple gals were getting hungry because it was supposed to be a dinner party. At 10 p.m. someone walked into the kitchen and saw the leg of lamb, ready to go, but hadn’t even been put in the oven. Needless to say, it became a great midnight snack.”

Not all of Bob’s parties took place at the Christian House, though. Bruce remembers his uncle would call friends and spontaneously invite them up to Miller Hill, where he’d have swings built in the trees and a string quartet playing. To “Strings and Swings” the guests would enjoy bread, cheese and wine. “People would sit and listen to violin and cello and have these wonderful, therapeutic respites for hours on end,” says Bruce.

Or if you came to visit on a special occasion, Bob might throw you a party.

Bruce remembers a vintage 1929 American-La France fire truck that Bob used to drive. When Bruce’s brother arrived to spend a week of his honeymoon at the Christian House, Bob came whistling down the road in the fire engine with the sirens running and an entire band strapped to the side of it. “These wide-eyed musicians were playing trumpets and trombones, and hanging on for dear life,” laughs Bruce. Bob picked up the newlyweds and took them to the Burdickville Inn (now Funistrada) for a raucous party.

His passions

But as public as Bob Byerly could be during his lavish, save-no-expenses parties, his private side was even more fascinating. Next to the Christian House is the Byerly House, a four-bedroom Tudor-style chalet with 250 feet of lake frontage that was built during the Great Depression. Here, and in Bob’s Project House at nearby Tamarack Cove, the walls are covered from floor to ceiling with writing — projects that Bob envisioned at the spur of a moment, and most of which he never finished.

Very few people saw the inside of the Byerly House during Bob’s lifetime — not Barbara Siepker, who owns the Cottage Bookshop and wanted to feature it in her book, Historic Cottages of Glen Lake (Leelanau Press, 2008), and not guests who were invited to parties at the Christian House.

“He wrote on the walls, he wrote everywhere,” says Bruce. “He wrote tons of prose and poetry, and he was in the process of writing his autobiography. When I cleaned up the place there were annals and annals of his work.”

Born in Owosso, Michigan in 1925, Bob attended both Michigan State and the University of Michigan before receiving a Master’s degree in literature from Cambridge University in England and a Minor in advertising. For a time he worked for the New York City-based Omnicom Group’s BBDO, one of the top creative agencies for 30-second TV commercials. Bob and his older brother, Bud, inherited the family business of 42 discount grocery stores throughout the state.

Their father, James Arthur Byerly, had been a self-made man who left home when he was 13 and started as a bagboy in a store. He came up with the idea for a shopping cart. Rather than have the clerk get your groceries, why not give people baskets or carts to get their own groceries? You could give customers a discount. In fact, you could open discount stories. The idea was a hit, and made James Arthur Byerly a rich man. With his earnings he bought the land on Big Glen Lake, where he befriended neighbor Lee Christian.

After their father died, Bob, and Bruce’s father Bud, sold the business in 1959. The older brother headed for California while Bob settled here, though he traveled extensively and often wintered on Harbor Island in the Bahamas.

Bob’s love for music fueled his wanderlust. He played the cornet, and nephew Bruce played the harmonica. Once, they met in New York, stayed for a week at the Chelsea Hotel, and visited every jazz joint in Greenwhich Village. “He was just unstoppable,” remembers Bruce. “So much energy, always on the go, a maniac.”

On another trip to the Big Apple, Bob lost his luggage and was without his cornet, which bothered him to great lengths. He and Bruce were walking through Central Park when they came across a couple African-Americans musicians, one playing with a Pignose amplifier and the other keeping time on a trash can lid. Bruce pulled out his harmonica, and Bob found the core of a paper towel roll and turned it into an instrument. “You wouldn’t believe the sound he got out of that,” says Bruce. “We played for hours with these guys, with a little hat to collect change. Afterwards we divided the money four ways.”

He also loved the Detroit Tigers baseball team. Bob would drive downstate at the spur of a moment, pick up friends and order them along to a Tigers’ game — rarely arriving on time. During the 1984 World Series, when the Tigers beat the San Diego Padres, Bob told his workers around the house to drop their things and come watch the games. “You never know when you’ll see the Tigers in the World Series again!” he told them. (Not until 2006 would they reappear in the Fall Classic.)

When Bruce arrived this summer to clean out his belongings, he found baseballs covered in autographs from the entire Tigers’ team and a freezer full of baseball articles from old newspapers and film rolls, covered in plates of baking soda to keep them fresh. Bruce wondered whether his uncle planned to go back and read those stories for his muse.

As for his writing, Bob didn’t use desks or filing cabinets. He strung clotheslines around the Byerly House with notes and missives attached to the line with clothespins. If something had only one clothespin on it, he hadn’t yet gotten to it — it was just an idea. Two, it was growing in his mind. Three, it was due yesterday.

He sometimes taught Shakespeare classics at a local tavern in Traverse City, he wrote constantly, he owned as many as 10 typewriters, and he became obsessed with assignments. At one point, remembers Bruce, Bob became enamored with a secretive cult of people down in rural Georgia. He had trouble reaching them and even hired a helicopter to take him there before they ran him off the grounds. “It was almost illegal how he was pursuing them,” laughs Bruce. “He was more obsessed than they were.”

He wrote fantastic letters, often penned in the style of poet e.e. cummings (who wrote in lowercase). “They’d go from a stanza to down angles, backwards, using different colors, with cartoon characters and embellishments in the margins,” says Bruce. “When you got a letter from Bob, you had to sit down, open a beer and go through it.”

Bob was a poetic naturalist in the Walt Whitman style. He wouldn’t cut a tree unless it fell on his house. He was an environmentalist and a tireless advocate for preserving the Crystal River. Bob once sat in his bathtub and tape-recorded a two-hour-long tirade about the merganser duck on Big Glen Lake. He splashed around the tub while reciting all the information he’d read, then sent the tape to his nephew Tom.

His craftsmanship was just as spontaneous, eccentric and complex. Bob’s Project House is 45-years worth of unfinished, creative projects, and the home’s future owner better bring their tools, and their patience. His cedar shingles are not really shingles at all, but carved cedar routes that were hand-knot to each other. He interspersed cedar shakes to make a wavy, Hobbit-like pattern. Each piece was carved to match the next one and took probably a week to make.

Bruce says that two old Polish men worked for Bob for two decades, and he must have been the most difficult contractor they ever met. “You’d have to find a certain kind of nail or window trim. It would have to be just so,” explains Bruce. “You’d spend all day looking for it, and suddenly it’s lunch time. By the time lunch is over he’d have you off on another tangent. The next thing you know it was time to cover everything for the winter.”

Brilliant, but impractical

Bob Byerly tried married life for a time, but his eccentricity and spontaneity ultimately got in the way. In 1971 at Longboat Key resort near Sarasota, Fla., he met Ruth Conklin, then a teacher in Chicago Public Schools, who was there with her two children, Russell and Casey. He asked her to dance, and six months later they where married in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Shortly thereafter Ruth and the kids moved into the Byerly House. Now a staple in the Glen Arbor art community, this was the first time she’d ever seen northern Michigan. Bob showered the kids with adoration. He spent days designing intricate gifts and costumes for them, like the wooden turtle shell he carved for Casey. She won a competition, Ruth remembers, but she couldn’t stand up in the costume.

“He was very excited, both about me and the children,” remembers Ruth, who speaks fondly of their nearly three-year marriage. “He had so many lofty, exciting ideas, but they were very impractical. He had absolutely no sense of time. If I said it was time for dinner, he’d ask ‘what do you mean?’”

Ruth remembers that for years Bob was curious about visiting a church in nearby Northport where Marshall Collins, an African-American minister, held court. On Sundays he’d ask Ruth to prepare the children for church, and by the time they were ready, he’d moved on to some other project. “We never got there before everyone else had left,” Ruth laughs.

Similarly, the family would often take trips to Chicago. But Bob would never arrive at the airport on time. More than once, Ruth remembers she and the children sitting in the plane, looking out the windows for Bob. As the plane taxied away, she’d see him running down the tarmac chasing the plane (in the days before airport security). He’d usually come on the next flight.

“He was brilliant, but so incredibly off the wall,” she says. “You couldn’t imagine what it was like to live with him. Fascinating, but very difficult. Today he’d be diagnosed as bipolar.”

“Everything he did was the most creative thing I’d ever seen in my life. I called him a cathedral, and his ideas were the spires. He liked that.”

Nearly three years after the wedding, the kids arrived in Michigan from their father’s house, but Bob said he couldn’t handle them. They had to go. And so Ruth left, and the marriage ended.

Ruth has few regrets today. If she hadn’t met Bob, she never would have known Glen Arbor. She had been a schoolteacher when she married Bob, and she never imagined she’d do anything else. But he turned her on to pottery, down in the basement of the Byerly House. Nearly 40 years later, she’s still selling beautiful pots at Ruth Conklin Gallery on M-109.

The beginning of the end for Bob came in the winter of 2002-03 when a pipe burst in the Byerly House and a flood destroyed some of his work. He was in the Bahamas at the time, and the following spring he turned the yard into a tent city where he set up fans to dry out everything that had been damaged. Shortly thereafter, says Bruce, he fell and hurt his face. Bob spent his final days in the Maple Valley Nursing Home near Maple City.

Despite the challenges that Bob Byerly’s brilliant mind posed him, Bruce says he never dwelled on things. “He’d forget about the misfortunes and failures. The things he didn’t do were easily forgotten.”

Have stories about Bob Byerly that you’d like to share? Write to us at editorial@glenarborsun.com or mail correspondence to Glen Arbor Sun / P.O. Box 615 / Glen Arbor, MI 49636.

American-made Streetcars: Portland Company Rebuilds Lost Industry

2009-09-08T21:24:00.001-05:00

Apollo News Service

United Streetcar, a union company in Portland, Ore., and wholly owned subsidiary of Oregon Iron Works, has built the first American-made streetcar in over half a century, with the help of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. United Streetcar has a deal in place to build six streetcars for the city and is on the verge of signing a $26 million contract to build seven more for Tucson, Ariz.

The initial streetcar was unveiled on July 1 in a ceremony attended by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who called Portland the transportation, streetcar and livable community capital of the United States. Union workers from Oregon Iron Works flanked LaHood as he lauded the successful partnership between the city and the transit operator, calling it “exactly the kind of synergy we need in the United States of America today.”

“I believe this is the dawn of a new era for public transportation in the United States,” said LaHood. “A new opportunity to claim ‘Made in America.’ It’s a chance to generate good-paying union jobs right here in the region.”

LaHood also announced the allocation of $360,000 in federal money to boost the East Side Loop extension of the Portland streetcar project, which supplements the initial $75 million in federal project funds.

United Streetcar, LLC was formed in 2005 after Chandra Brown, the company’s president and a vice president at parent company Oregon Iron Works, made the startling discovery while talking to friends that modern streetcars were not manufactured in the United States – or at least not by American companies – and hadn’t been for 58 years. Given the variety of complex products that Oregon Iron Works has manufactured since 1944, Brown was sure that the company could handle streetcars as well.

For 65 years Oregon Iron Works has manufactured metals and complex machines, including hydropower equipment, plate fabrications, bridges, aerospace ground equipment, nuclear containment work, specialized boats, and wave energy.

United Streetcar’s ultimate goal is to provide modern streetcars to cities nationwide. Portland and Tucson are just the start.

“Knowing the huge success of the Portland streetcar line, we were positive that streetcars were on the brink of exploding into a large and extremely viable market,” said Brown, a 15-year veteran of Oregon Iron Works. “We thought that a separate website and company specific to streetcars would be the best way of reaching out around the country in this new marketplace.”

Brown added that more than 65 U.S. cities are currently looking into implementing streetcars. Portland, though, is leading the way in public transportation.

The streetcar that United Steetcar recently unveiled — and hopes to put into operation this fall — is truly an American-made product. To meet “Buy America” requirements, at least 60 percent of the components had to be domestically produced by American companies. Brown claims that United Streetcar’s product is approximately 70-percent U.S.-made, with components coming from vendors in more than 20 states. The steel streetcar shell was fabricated in Portland; a company in Pennsylvania finished the trucks; a company just down the freeway from Portland provided the fiberglass; and the seats came from Michigan.

“We truly consider the streetcar project the creation of an industry,” said Brown. “It has opened doors for vendors across the nation. Specialized companies who have never had the opportunity to work in the streetcar arena now find themselves with new work in their shops.”

The propulsion system, one of the few foreign-made parts, comes from Skoda in the Czech Republic, with which Oregon Iron Works has an exclusive license agreement. While United Streetcar wanted to manufacture its own vehicles, it didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, explained Brown. So the Portland company evaluated European companies that had experience and credibility in the streetcar fabrication industry, and settled on Skoda.

Portland currently has 10 streetcars in operation, not including United Streetcar’s new prototype. The six new cars will service the Portland East Side Loop extension. Brown said that the city’s next expansion will likely be a seven-mile extension to Lake Oswego, which will necessitate 10 additional cars. Portland’s streetcar plan envisions many extensions of service throughout the city. In a decade, Brown believes, there could be as many as 30-40 cars.

The last streetcar made by an American company and assembled on U.S. soil was completed in 1952 by the St. Louis Car Company, which specialized in PCC (Presidents’ Conference Committee) streetcars — vehicles that were popular in the 1930s but faded after the Second World War when the U.S. stopped expanding its transit networks, says Rick Gustafson, director of Portland Streetcar, Inc. Unlike the PCC cars, United Streetcar’s new models are low-floor vehicles that make it easy for wheelchairs, senior citizens and baby strollers to enter and exit, thus complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act. United Streetcar also provides air conditioning and a heating system, energy efficient lighting, and regenerative braking.

Brown added that Portland residents have wholeheartedly embraced this unique public-private venture. The streetcars boost the city’s reputation as a public transportation pioneer, and they provide good-paying union jobs. Oregon Iron Works employs a total of 400 workers. The shop workers are represented by Ironworkers Local 516, and the electric workers who perform the streetcar’s electrical outfitting are under IBEW Local 48. Those working on streetcars perform dual roles: they may build streetcars one day and then move to another of the parent company’s activities the next day.

“Instead of outsourcing jobs, we are ‘insourcing’ jobs, bringing them back to the States,” Brown said. “This is key to keeping Portland’s manufacturing industry thriving, as well as promoting American-made products.”

Olympic Dreams, Olympic Nightmares

2009-08-31T09:18:00.001-05:00

Will Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games adorn the Windy City in beautiful rings or lock it in handcuffs?

Mindful Metropolis, September edition

Imagine two glorious weeks of summer when the entire world comes to nearby Chicago — which is our local city, judging by the number of Illinois license plates in Leelanau County during the summer. Imagine August whitecaps on Lake Michigan and sunbathers on North Avenue Beach, and hearing those attractions described in countless languages. Imagine kings and heads of state, Brazilian soccer gods and Greco-Roman wrestlers shopping together on Michigan Avenue. Imagine the world’s greatest amateur athletes pursuing the pinnacle of their dreams, in our city. Imagine President Barack Obama, his hair turned a wise grey, returning home to Hyde Park with only months left in his second term, to ring in the 2016 Olympics.

Like that night in Grant Park last November, and like the World’s Fair in 1893, this metropolis on the lake would once again command the world’s attention. The Olympic torch, that symbol of progress and sport, would pass so close that we’d feel its heat. We’d smile when the Parisians admired our lakefront, the Scandinavians took photos of our solar panels and rooftop gardens and the New Yorkers admitted that perhaps they had underestimated “flyover country”.

But then imagine opening your eyes to a hazy, Dickens-like scene. It’s the dead of winter and the snow is falling, wet and heavy. Weary and disgruntled Chicago citizens are plowing their own streets, filling their own potholes and policing their own neighborhoods. The city is broke, and no longer provides these services. Families are packing up and moving further west, unable to afford to live in the once-working-class neighborhoods where Olympic venues were built. The few who still go downtown carry bags of quarters with them, to pay the parking meters, the toll collectors on Halsted, the lifeguards and the attendants at Millennium Park. The city lost so much money back in the summer of 2016 that City Hall was forced to sell off assets and privatize everything. The 21st century equivalent of Tiny Tim can no longer visit the beach, bike what’s left of the Lake Shore Trail or play in the park.

Imagine that all the money Mayor Daley promised would flow into the city’s coffers from corporate sponsors, advertising, ticket sales and tourism never came close to what Chicago spent to build the venues and Olympic Village, cater to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) needs and provide security for the world’s stage. To balance budgets in the aftermath, the city shut down bus lines, schools and hospitals.

You get the picture. Two pictures actually — two opposite visions of what winning the right to host the 2016 Olympics would mean for Chicago.

A giant door will either open wide or slam shut for Chicago when the IOC gathers in Copenhagen on October 2 to choose between the Windy City, Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro. That decision will forever change one of those cities.

Blue-Green games

The webpage, Chicago2016.org, lays out the city’s vision for the Olympics in visceral, convincing fashion. Glamorous pictures of Millennium Park with skyscrapers in the Loop lit up with the numbers 2016, and other iconic shots of downtown flash across the screen.

A voice reminds us, “We may not all be fleet of foot, but each of us can be part of the Olympics, for the games touch us all …” And then Obama, himself, the would-be master of ceremonies, comes on the screen to announce that the White House fully supports Chicago’s bid for the Olympics.

A series of Olympic athletes with Chicago roots take the baton and lead us on a tour, from Buckingham Fountain, where the relay race would begin, north to the tennis center in Lincoln Park, back south to the hockey arena in Grant Park and Monroe Harbor for rowing events, to Soldier Field for the football (soccer) finals, to McCormick Place and the United Center, and finally to Washington and Jackson Park on the South Side. We even see computer animations of the posh apartments along the waterfront where the athletes would stay.

“This is our vision for Chicago, along the shores of a great Lake, a city that will welcome the world in 2016,” proclaims Brian Clay, a decathlon champion in the 2008 Beijing Games.

You’d have to be heartless not to get at least a little excited about the prospect.
(My local friends and I have joked that, if Chicago wins the games, we’ll draw straws and whoever draws the shortest one would host everyone else in sleeping bags on their floor for those two weeks. We’d share the money we’d make from renting out our apartments to rich Belgians and Japanese visitors.)

But first, Chicago must prevail over the other contending cities.

The Windy City boasts many assets in its favor: five large historic parks and a beautiful lakefront; a giant local media market; venues that are already available, such as Soldier Field, the United Center and the UIC Pavilion (79 percent of sports would be staged in existing or temporary venues); an Olympic Village that would house 90 percent of athletes within 15 minutes of their competition venues; McCormick Place, North America’s largest multi-use facility, and the fact that this continent hasn’t hosted a summer games since Atlanta in 1996. According to that line of thinking, Tokyo is out because Beijing hosted last year, Madrid is out because London gets it in 2012, and slum-ridden Rio de Janeiro could be a gamble. (No South American city has ever hosted the Olympics, which could also make it a sentimental favorite.)

Dubbed (by itself) the greenest city in America, Chicago is already touting its 2016 bid as the “Blue-Green Games”. The Windy City has teamed up with representatives from 30 environmental, architectural, engineering and governmental entities, and organizations as important as the Sierra Club, to create a sustainable vision that includes a carbon management program and a focus on water issues.

The Chicago 2016 committee pledges that all electricity used to power the games will come from renewable energy sources, and all generators supplied for the games will run on biofuels. The Blue-Green games would be the first in history to incorporate athlete and spectator travel in its carbon offset model, and a “green fleet” of low carbon vehicles will be used for all games operations. The committee also claims it will reuse or recycle 85 percent of the materials used for the Games and expand the city’s green spaces after the Olympics.

Let’s not forget Obama, the feather in the Chicago 2016 Committee’s hat and perhaps the most popular man in the universe when the IOC delegation made its official visit to Chicago in April. Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett still sits on the Chicago 2016 committee and corresponds often with committee president Lori Healey despite her current perch in the White House. A recent New York Times Sunday Magazine story depicted Jarrett as Obama’s closest advisor, which means there is all but a direct link between the Oval Office and Chicago’s bid for the games. Ben Joravsky, columnist for the alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader, wrote that Jarrett will convince Obama to fly to Copenhagen in early October to court the IOC — much like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair did in the eleventh hour to snatch the 2012 Games away from Paris.

“Greatest disaster since Chicago fire”

Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics has already cost No Games Chicago organizer Tom Tresser a pretty penny, and he doesn’t even work for Mayor Daley. Tresser and others have paid out of their pockets (including plane tickets to Europe) to convince the International Olympic Committee that awarding the Games to Chicago would be a very bad idea.

No Games Chicago rented a room at the downtown Fairmont Hotel in early April just to gain access to the exclusive IOC, which was being wined and dined by the 2016 committee and entertained by Chicago celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan. In June, members of the grassroots group paid their own way to Lausanne, Switzerland, to deliver 150 copies of a copy shop-produced book (“No Games Chicago: Book of evidence for the International Olympic Committee — Why Chicago should NOT be awarded the 2016 Olympic games.”) to the IOC and to international journalists.

Tresser, who teaches student engagement in public policy at DePaul University, considers himself a “good government geek” and says he’s obsessed with sound public policy and transparency. But he hasn’t seen that from the City of Chicago. When I met with Tresser in his Lincoln Park home just after the trip to Switzerland, he rolled off a list of deceptions and projects that far exceeded their original costs which the city has forced on its inhabitants over the years: the skyway bridge connecting Indiana and Illinois, the Burge police torture case, the international airport terminal, Millennium Park, Block 37, Soldier Field, the Monroe Street parking garage, not to mention the recent parking meter debacle.

Tresser simply doesn’t trust the city to handle the Olympics, nor does he believe that Mayor Daley will spare taxpayers from funding the games or protect public assets such as parkland before and after the games.

“The Park District passes along our precious public parks without comment to the 2016 Olympic committee to do as they will —destroy them, build whatever they want,” says Tresser. “The City Council passes a $500 million guarantee at a time when they’re laying off 1,000 people from the public schools and 1,500 city workers. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) faces $45 million in cuts, and the Park District cuts back the hours you can swim in the damn lake! The City of Chicago is $300 million in the hole today, falling to pieces all around us, and yet they have $500 million to guarantee for the Olympics.

“Every day there’s a new case of egregious abuse of the public trust. All the while the mayor is saying that taxpayers won’t pay a dime. Unbelievable, it’s incredible. … We’ve determined that the Olympics would be the greatest disaster to befall our city since the Great Fire of 1871.”

The reasons that No Games Chicago opposes a Chicago Olympics are 1) lack of finances 2) lack of competence 3) lack of infrastructure and 4) lack of public support.

“We’re broke,” exclaims Tresser. “The 2016 committee estimates their total expenses at around $5 billion. We think they’ve underestimated by at least 50 percent if not 100 percent, based on how these things really play out and based on Chicago’s horrible record in managing massive construction projects.”

He adds that revenues from an Olympics games won’t total the amount promised by the city.

Grassroots groups worldwide that are wary of their city hosting an Olympics often point to a 2006 study by Victor Matheson from the College of Holy Cross, titled “Mega Events: The effects of the world’s biggest sporting events on local, regional, and national economies”. No Games Chicago provides this article on its website.

Matheson writes: “While most sports boosters claim that mega-events provide host cities with large economic returns, these same boosters present these figures as justification for receiving substantial public subsidies for hosting the games. The vast majority of independent academic studies of mega-events show the benefits to be a fraction of those claimed by events organizers.”

“We’re corrupt,” says Tresser. “The mayor has put his henchman in charge of major departments who are not skilled at those areas. Over and over again we see the massive corruption and self-dealing where a few families use the city as their private ATM.”
Chicago politics are known nationwide for reeking of corruption, and names like Blagojevich and Burris are only the latest punch lines. Tresser floats the notion that if the IOC awards the Games to Chicago, it may be dealing with people who are headed to jail in the future.

Moving down the list of judgments, Tresser adds, “The city is falling to pieces. You’ve got citizens down in Austin paving their own roads, mixing up their own tar to fill potholes. The CTA just announced another $30 million in cuts and can’t meet the needs of citizens today. How can you meet the needs of hundreds of thousands coming to the games?”

As for local public support, Tresser says that three out of every four Chicago residents oppose the games if they have to pay for them at the expense of schools, roads and city services. “If you just ask people, ‘Hey, do you like the Olympics?’ they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, little girls doing gymnastics, and brilliant swimmers and the joy of sport.’ ‘OK, how much do you want to pay for that party? A billion, two billion, five billion?’ Seventy-five percent do not want public money spent on the games. People think we have better uses for our funds.”

“Make no small plans”

This year is the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, which called for expanding streets, public parks and civic buildings. Foremost among the plan's goals was to reclaim the lakefront for the public. “The Lakefront by right belongs to the people,” wrote Burnham. “Not a foot of its shores should be appropriated to the exclusion of the people.”

The plan recommended expanding the parks along the Lake Michigan shoreline with landfill. Of the city's 29 miles of lakefront, all but four miles are today public parkland.

Many of those opposed to Chicago’s Olympic bid claim that the city is attempting a land grab that would take away much of the precious public lakefront that Burnham gave us. A proposed Olympic Waterfront in Monroe Harbor, a Lake Michigan Sports Complex at McCormick Place, an Olympic Village where the Michael Reese hospital currently sits, and the construction of new venues in Lincoln Park to the north and Washington and Jackson Parks to the south (in Hyde Park) would require closing those areas to the public — not just for two weeks in 2016, but for years beforehand. And because of the heightened security required by the games, the construction zones themselves have to be secure, turning those areas into no-go zones for years.

Fears also run rampant within the minority, working-class communities on the city’s south and west sides, whose parkland and civic buildings would be sacrificed for the 2016 games — namely Washington, Jackson and Douglas Parks.

Washington Park would undergo serious changes. That park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, whose resume also includes Central Park in Manhattan. Thousands of people currently use Washington Park every year, and they may be denied use of it. The Chicago 2016 committee has proposed a $400 million temporary stadium for the opening ceremonies and track events, as well as a $100 million aquatic center with four pools, all on an open meadow designed by Olmsted. Listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, Washington Park occupies 1,000 acres — one-seventh of the city’s parkland — and features baseball diamonds, football and soccer fields, all of which would be closed to the public for years before the games.

According to Arnold Randall, director of neighborhood legacy for Chicago 2016, the stadium would shrink to a 2,500-3,500-seat amphitheater after the games, and all of the pools would be dismantled except one, which would replace the existing pool at Dyett High School in Washington Park. In other words, the Olympics would not destroy the park.

Erma Tranter of Friends of the Parks points out that other U.S. cities that have hosted the Olympics have added parkland. Not so with Chicago, which is last among the nation’s 20 largest cities in park acreage per person, she points out.

In nearby Jackson Park, Chicago 2016 wants an Olympic field hockey venue, which would replace a world-class track and football field next to Hyde Park Academy. One of only three regulation tracks at Chicago schools, according to a Community Media Workshop report, the track and field opened just eight years ago and was funded by a community-led drive which raised over half a million dollars. “It’s eight years into a minimum 35-year lifespan,” says Ross Petersen, president of the Jackson Park Advisory Council.

At a July 18 community meeting in Washington Park held by the Chicago 2016 committee, the Hyde Park Herald quoted one woman as saying, “Oprah and all those people who gave money do not speak for us. I hope I’m not bursting your bubble, but you’re not getting your Olympics.”

Not everyone at the Washington Park meeting was opposed to Chicago getting the games, however. “We are excited, and we encourage the Olympics coming to Washington Park in 2016,” the Herald quoted Hanna Andersen. “Bring on the Games!”

In Lincoln Park on the north side, an Olympic tennis facility would replace the Jarvis Bird Sanctuary, eight acres of protected forest that’s on an international bird migration route.

Meanwhile, in Douglas Park on Chicago’s west side, a recently rebuilt gymnasium and pool at the Collins High School campus, which cost $30 million, would give way to a $37 million velodrome for bicycle racing. Chicago 2016 promises to convert the elite outdoor venue into a year-round “multisport facility” after the games.

“Communities that need good educational facilities will lose them,” says Tom Tresser of No Games Chicago. “Land speculators will come in when these projects happen and buy up land. Property taxes will rise, and that will push out the people who lived in those neighborhoods.”

Chicago 2016 has introduced a “Memorandum of Understanding” with communities that — nominally at least — addresses construction, community enhancement and affordable housing, as well as guaranteeing that minorities and women will get their fair share of jobs generated by the Olympics and building venues for the games.

Members of Communities for an Equitable Olympics 2016 — a coalition of community and labor organizations from around Chicago — pushed for the city to commit to a more specific “community benefits agreement” before the IOC’s visit in April. But City Hall ultimately declined to offer a legally binding agreement that would reserve a certain amount of jobs, housing, and minority contracts for neighborhood residents.

Workers in Washington, Jackson and Douglas Parks want more than just jobs selling hot dogs and tickets during the games. They want a promise of construction jobs in the years leading up to the Olympics. And if Chicago is to make money on these games, they want a piece of the pie.

Douglas Park residents attending a Chicago 2016 community meeting on August 3 expressed fear that their park, their high school and their community assets will be taken away from them, that real estate prices will rise and they’ll no longer be able to live in Douglas Park, and they’ll have very little to show for their hardships.
The crowd that turned out to question the Chicago 2016 presentation included a multi-ethnic mix of local workers, activists with connections to No Games Chicago, students defending the architectural legacy of Chicago’s old buildings, and even a teacher. Mrs. King brought her eleventh grade class from nearby North Lawndale High School to ask pointed questions of Lori Healey and other Chicago 2016 representatives. At one point the question and answer session gave way to a tense standoff between Alderwoman Sharon Dixon of the 24th Ward (who supports the Olympic bid) and a boy from Mrs. King’s class. Dixon clearly felt uneasy that one of her constituents dared rock the boat and question the city’s grand plan.

“Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood,” Daniel Burnham famously quipped. But when it comes to Chicago’s ambitious Olympic bid, are those really the best plans for the city’s residents? Can a broke and notoriously corrupt city afford the 2016 Games? And is the International Olympic Committee listening?

Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist, editor and teacher who also publishes the season Glen Arbor Sun newspaper (GlenArborSun.com) in northwest-lower Michigan.

Chattanooga Choo-Choo hugs Off The Grid

2009-08-28T10:06:00.000-05:00

Apollo News Service

Chattanooga, TN - Twenty years ago, under popular mayor Gene Roberts, Chattanooga launched an effort to rejuvenate its deteriorating downtown. In 1992, the city opened what at the time was the world’s largest freshwater aquarium. That same year, the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) opened an electric transit vehicle (ETV) shuttle service with the aim of bringing people – and businesses – back downtown.

Chattanooga, which used electric streetcars from 1889 until shortly after World War II, modeled its ETVs after a battery-powered system in Santa Barbara, Calif. Though it initially encountered a few speed bumps, by 1996 the ETV transit system’s rubber-tired buses were running solely on American-made, 100-percent recycled, rechargeable, zero-emission electric batteries. The transit system has fueled Chattanooga’s downtown revitalization and created good jobs in the process.

Now CARTA is seeking funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to buy hybrid buses for its non-electric, suburban routes.

Ron Sweeney, CARTA’s general manager, estimates that as many as a million passengers enjoy ETV service every year. Drivers pay to park their cars in one of three garages in or near downtown, and the shuttle itself is free.

“People want the shuttle because it’s a very convenient, safe way to get around downtown,” said Sweeney. “Where the shuttle runs, the businesses prosper, because it brings activity and people. There are requests from three or four different parts of town to expand the shuttle service into their area. As time goes, on we’ll need more buses so we can expand.”

The ETV shuttle program has also created good jobs. CARTA employs approximately 120 people full time, including 13 drivers and eight technicians who work on the downtown ETVs. Employees start off earning 75 percent of a top (diesel bus) operator’s rate of $18 per hour. After two years on the job, the pay increases to 80 percent of that salary. CARTA workers also have access to an employer-sponsored pension plan to which the company contributes.

In addition to its ETV shuttles, CARTA has 60 regular diesel buses that transport passengers between Chattanooga’s suburbs and its downtown. CARTA recently acquired two hybrid buses to begin replacing the diesel-guzzlers, and it has applied for Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to buy eight additional hybrids.

“We know it’s good for the environment around us, and for the nation to get us off foreign oil,” explained Sweeney.

Meanwhile, CARTA’s 15 downtown ETVs use no fossil fuels except for propane heaters, which only operate during the winter months. The shuttle buses are each 22 feet long and 92 inches wide. They seat approximately 25 people and run a 3.8-mile loop, from 6:30 a.m. until 11 p.m. Once a day, the ETVs are switched out for replacement vehicles with fully charged batteries, usually between noon and 2 p.m. The electric-powered batteries are stored in 3,000-pound cubes inserted and removed from the sides of the buses with forklifts. The batteries take approximately six hours to charge.

Most of the ETVs were built in the 1990s by a Chattanooga company called Advanced Vehicle Systems, which has since gone out of business. Ninety-five percent of the lead-acid batteries are made by Deka Batteries in Pennsylvania, and according to CARTA’s technician foreman Clifford Lowrance, regular maintenance on the batteries includes neutralizing the harmless sulfuric acid with tap water. The process uses no hazardous chemicals and doesn’t even require purified water. The batteries themselves are 100-percent recycled.

“These batteries last 1,200-1,300 cycles, or five-six years; there’s no waste,” said Lowrance, who started working at CARTA just after it was created and has logged 35 years on the job. “We monitor these batteries from cradle to grave. You’ll never find a battery in a river or in a field. And there’s very little carbon footprint because (the Tennessee Valley Authority’s) hydroelectric dams supply most of the energy."

Litecontrol Illuminates Energy Efficiency

2009-08-10T10:11:00.001-05:00

Apollo News Service

Litecontrol, an employee-owned and unionized Massachusetts manufacturer of energy-efficient architectural lighting for commercial buildings and institutions, is a prime example of how the lighting industry is illuminating the nation’s path toward reducing our carbon footprint. Besides producing American-made, energy efficient lighting, Litecontrol is a woman-run company that provides good jobs to local workers.

Founded in 1936 in Boston, Litecontrol later moved its headquarters to Hanson in the cranberry bogs on Massachusetts’ south shore. The company opened a second, larger facility in 1995 in nearby Plympton, Mass. Its Hanson headquarters employs 59 workers on the factory floor and 62 in the office; 67 more work at the manufacturing and training center in Plympton.

Before introducing the nation’s first school fixtures in the 1950s, Litecontrol manufactured switch boxes for Navy destroyers and submarines during World War II. Today, Litecontrol is a $45 million company best known for its architectural product innovation and its perimeter fluorescent lighting.

President and CEO Veda Ferlazzo Clark, 56, started at Litecontrol in 1987 as vice president of marketing and product development. After engineering an employee takeover of the company in a three-stage purchase, she took charge of the company in 1999.

“We’ve been working toward lighting that is visually comfortable so that workers can do their jobs, but in way that minimizes power usage,” said Clark.

Litecontrol designs its products to emit one watt or less per square foot, putting the company at the forefront of industry standards recommended in 2004 by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). Ten years ago, indoor lighting typically emitted two watts per square foot, or twice as much energy as it does now. And whereas the industry once deemed 75 footcandles per classroom or workspace necessary, today 45-50 footcandles are now considered adequate.

“An overhead light that you turn on when the sun sets probably gives you 25-30 footcandles,” explained Clark. “Sitting in bed with a table lamp beside you gives five footcandles. Overall, the eye is pretty adaptable. It’s generally accepted now that your eyes need less light, but it needs to be better quality light than what we used to provide.”

More than 60 percent of Litecontrol’s employees are represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), earning, on average, $14 per hour. Litecontrol has been 100-percent employee-owned through an Employee Stock Option Plan since 1999, and the company contributes 50 cents for every dollar that employees pay into their 401(k) retirement accounts.

The economic recession only recently began impacting the lighting sector, which typically trails the overall construction industry by nine months to a year, since lights are the last things to be installed in a new building. After hiring approximately 20 to 30 employees per year between 2004 and 2008, Litecontrol was recently forced to cut its workforce by 10 percent — both union and non-union workers. Nevertheless, Clark says that the company typically unveils four to six new products every year and hopes to grow through acquisitions once the recession subsides.

Litecontrol has not directly applied for stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but the company is pursuing several applications for product development with money that is being allocated through the Department of Energy.

U.S Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D-Ohio) proposed “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009” could help businesses like Litecontrol. Brown’s bill would support small and medium-sized manufacturers by providing capital for investments in energy efficiency and for retooling and expanding into the clean energy supply chain. If the bill is enacted, Litecontrol would be eligible for loans to improve energy efficiency in its facilities by installing solar panels.

The government’s commitment to green energy could help too. Before taking office, President Obama said in a speech last December while unveiling his plan for creating 2.5 million new jobs, “We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.”

Out of a common interest in making the company as profitable as possible, all Litecontrol employees recently underwent “lean training” to make themselves more efficient, both on the factory floor and in the office. “Every single person in the company analyzed what they do every day and how that can be done faster,” said national accounts project manager Greg Banks, who chaired Litecontrol’s Ownership Improvement Committee, a group of both union and non-union employees who suggested the training. “We looked at something as small as organizing file cabinets, to changing the way we make a fixture, from start to finish.”

All of Litecontrol’s products are manufactured in the United States (though not all components are American-made) and are silver-certified by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), a consultancy that helps clients implement “cradle-to-cradle design,” which offers a new approach to sustainability and prosperity. Litecontrol is the first company to produce linear architectural fluorescent lights that are cradle-to-cradle certified.

“The MBDC analysis is a global look at how you make products, from start to finish,” said Banks.

“And not just our process, but also that of the vendors we buy from,” added Clark. “For example, we worked with paint vendors we buy from to develop a new process to make better, safer paint.”

Rather than producing cradle-to-grave products, MBDC believes that companies should focus on where a used product will ultimately end up. Litecontrol has achieved a silver-level certification. In Clark’s words, “anything that you use in a product eventually goes back into ecosystem. We’ll have to be prepared to eat again what is thrown away.”

Signs, tickets relieve congestion at Empire beach

2009-08-04T10:37:00.001-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

In response to parking congestion during the height of summer at Empire’s popular public beach, the Village Council erected signs, laid boulders on either end of the lot and is paying the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Department as much as $10,000 this summer to maintain order and keep the fire lane open for emergency vehicles.

“Our main concern is to keep the fire lane open,” says Village Council board member and chairman of the Parks Committee Lannie Sterling. “The beach is the only way to access (residential) Lake Michigan Drive.”

Sterling added that Fourth of July weekend wasn’t as busy as it has been in past years on account of chillier weather, but he still saw cars parked where they shouldn’t be. One had received a ticket. On the other hand, Sterling also saw cars parked in legal spots around the village — a short walk to the beach. He hopes that more beachgoers will drop their families and friends at the beach and then park in town.

Deputy Tim Tull is the Sheriff’s Department’s officer on duty at Empire beach. He also patrolled last summer, but didn’t issue village ordinance tickets, which typically cost $40, until this year. Tull, a former policeman from the Kalamazoo area who recently relocated to Traverse City, missed police work and contacted the Sheriff’s Department in Lake Leelanau.

The Department currently works with the Village to schedule Tull’s patrol hours. During peak times he works 40 hours per week, though depending on the total number of hours he logs this summer, the Department may not bill the Village the full $10,000.

Tull told the Glen Arbor Sun in mid-July that there have been no problems with parking at the Empire beach. “There have been a few parking tickets, but people come to have a good time and be safe,” Tull says. “The Village has done a good job of painting stripes and ‘No Parking’ on the pavement in the Fire Lanes.”

Between that and his presence on patrol, this has been virtually a problem-free summer so far at the Empire beach.

Ecotourism, a buzz word with many paths

2009-08-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

The word “ecotourism” is gaining popularity in the Glen Arbor region. Ecological tourism is defined in Martha Honey’s book Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who Owns Paradise? (Washington DC: Island Press, 2008) as “travel to fragile, pristine and usually protected areas that strives to be low-impact and (often) small scale. It helps educate the traveler; provides funds for conservation; directly benefits the economic development and political empowerment of local communities; and fosters respect for different cultures and for human rights.”

Canoe, kayak, hikes and bike trips into the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park Service) certainly qualify as such. The nature is fragile, pristine and protected. The trips are low-impact and small-scale. While visitors don’t directly fund local conservation, their visit up north does aid the area’s economic vitality and empower the community. As for respecting different cultures and human rights … well, the indigenous peoples have long since left the Lakeshore, but ecotourism strives to respect their legacy.

Two Glen Arbor businesses now offer trips into the Lakeshore that could be considered ecotourism. Matt Wiesen’s Crystal River Outfitters rents kayaks and canoes from its base next to Riverfront Pizza on M-22. The Outfitters’ favorite trip is a two-three hour paddle along seven miles of the Crystal River, within the Park. Its website promises, “You’ll be amazed by the clear water and sandy bottom of the Crystal River … You’ll see Northern Michigan’s true residents: White Tail Deer, Blue Heron, Bald Eagles, otters, turtles, frogs and endless amounts of fish.”

This summer, Mike and Becky Sutherland’s eco-friendly mini golf course, The River at Crystal Bend, has expanded to offer canoe and kayak outings, fishing trips on Tucker Lake, bike trips and hiking tours. According to its website, the River strives “to create a place of happiness for folks that want to escape the whirlwind that has become the American lifestyle.”

“Our intentions are to educate people about how to treat the environment,” says Mike Sutherland. “It’s about teaching awareness, especially in children.” Mike sees Glen Arbor as an island surrounded by the National Park, and The River has a responsibility to share its richness with the community and visitors to the area.

The River employs several local guides who know these woods, lakes and rivers like the backs of their hands. On nature hikes, landscaper Cre Woodard teaches clients about native plants and wildlife. Outdoorsman Mark Ringlever guides the Tucker Lake fishing trips, teaches fly-fishing and explains how practices such as catch-and-release help preserve natural resources. Mark’s mantra is “get in the water and let the current do the rest.” Experienced naturalist Georg Schluender teaches the casting of animal tracks in plaster to children. One of The River’s many ambitions, says Mike Sutherland, is to “specialize in that moment with kids, teaching them how to treat the environment with respect.”

If done poorly, recreation can spend and deplete natural resources. But The River is careful to balance this consumption with teaching conservation and promoting efforts to preserves our resources.

Combining the commercial element and the environmental element doesn’t have to conflict, says Sutherland — precisely because of the symbiotic relationship between the local economy and the environment. The economy depends on the environment to draw visitors to northern Michigan. And the environment depends on the economy to promote preservation and conservation. Both support and sustain the other. Ecotourism is rooted in the concept that environment and economy are like a spider web, a beautifully intricate network of relationships.

Park-sponsored ecotourism

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, itself, sponsors ecotourism ventures within the Park. Ranger-led hikes are offered frequently, and “Saturdays at the Lakeshor” — each with a weekly theme — feature guided trips that leave from the Visitors Center in Empire on Saturdays at 1 p.m. Past themes have included “The Great Meltdown” and “Wonderful Waterfowl”.

For the second summer in a row, the Park’s Transportation Interpreter Ryan Locke is offering guided bike trips. The trips are free, as long as your vehicle as a Park entrance pass ($10 per week or $20 per year). And bring your own bike!

Locke is 25 and originally from Spring Lake. His position is sponsored by the National Park Foundation, whose mission is to promote alternative transportation within National Parks. “They gave me bikes and said ‘go to work with them,’” says Locke, who plans routes in the Park and also leads the tours. The program expanded from two to four routes this summer.

Those routes are: “Discovering Cultural Landscapes,” which tours the Port Oneida Rural Historic District north of Glen Arbor, on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. and Fridays at 11 a.m.; “Backroads, Farms and Forests,” south of Empire through an agricultural landscape, ghost town and former logging area, Thursdays at 11 a.m. and Fridays at 5 p.m.; “Recreation and Tourism,” north of Empire on paved roads near the Dune Climb, along Glen Lake, and through Glen Haven, Wednesdays at 11 a.m. and Thursdays at 5 p.m., and “Bicycle Safety and Beach Ride at Platte River Campground,” which starts in the Platte River campground and rides down Peterson Road to the beach and back, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. (all ages welcome). Locke’s current schedule runs through Aug. 28, and different programs will be added for the month of September.

“I think of ecotourism as an alternative vacation where someone is actively looking for meaning in their vacation, something larger,” says Locke, who is also a graduate student in urban design planning at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. “It’s also about people engaging in green traveling and thinking more carefully about the impacts they have.”

Writer Ian Vertel contributed to this report.

Back to school to learn green jobs

2009-08-01T10:28:00.002-05:00

Mindful Metropolis

The green economy is taking off, there’s no question about it. Buoyed by rising energy costs, an economic recession, and the recognition that the way we lived, and the way we consumed energy, during the throw-caution-to-the-wind days of yesteryear were simply not sustainable. In response, visionaries, entrepreneurs, conservationists and gardeners are racing to come up with new ways to build and power our homes and grow our food. But they also need workers with green-collar skills — executives and blue-collar “grunts,” alike, who know how to grow and harvest organic produce, weatherize homes or install windmills. “Green-collar” job-training programs are blossoming all over the Chicago area. The following is a sampling of them:

Chicago Botanic Gardens

The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Windy City Harvest provides instruction in sustainable horticulture and urban agriculture to residents of North Lawndale and Chicago’s west side. Students receive six months of hands-on instruction in greenhouse and outdoor growing practices, in the process acquiring hands-on experience with sustainable vegetable production and learning essential business skills, including planning, pricing, sales and marketing. Or they can opt for a five-month certificate in cool-weather growing techniques for hoophouses and greenhouses. Windy City Harvest participants study at the City Colleges of Chicago’s Arturo Velasquez West Side Technical Institute at 28th and Western Avenue in Chicago and at the Garfield Park Conservatory. The two locations provide state-of-the-art greenhouses, fully equipped classrooms and high quality outside plant production spaces. The course prepares students for permanent employment in the new green collar jobs sector. Visit www.chicago-botanic.org/windycityharvest or call (847) 835-6970

Chicago Center for Green Technology

The Chicago Department of the Environment’s “Greencorps Chicago” accepts 40 Chicago residents into its paid, nine-month Green Industry Job training program every spring. Greencorps Chicago is a pioneer in the green industry and works out of the Center for Green Technology. The program is open to ex-offenders and provides field and classroom experience in these areas: landscaping & horticulture, environmental health & safety, electronics recycling and weatherization. According to Greencorps’ website, “skills learned in the field (include) basic carpentry, horticulture principles, plant identification, electronic recycling and computer building, environmental health and safety and home weatherization.” Visit www.greenforall.org/resources/greencorps-chicago or call (312) 744-8691.

Chicagoland Green Collar Jobs Initiative

The Chicagoland Green Collar Jobs Initiative, which now boasts 100 partners, is a collaborative that, according to its website, “facilitates the development of a skilled workforce that is ready to meet the demands of the emerging green economy and capture new employment opportunities for Chicagoland workers.” The Initiative’s goal is to achieve a green collar workforce that “integrates green business growth, innovative workforce development and emerging environmental practices … into a vibrant regional economy.” Housed in the LEED council office, the initiative’s Workforce Development Task Force teams up with Victoria Cooper of Wilbur Wright College’s Environmental Technology Program to offer a weatherization curriculum, which will benefit the construction industry, contractors and labor unions once it is complete. Visit www.greencollarchicago.org or call (773) 929-5552.

Centre for Sustainability and Excellence

The Centre for Sustainability and Excellence, an international advisory on sustainable development with offices in Chicago, Athens, Brussels and Cyprus, will hold a two-day practitioner workshop (approved by the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment) on Sept. 1-2 at the Hotel Monaco in downtown Chicago. The workshop is geared toward executives, public relations, marketing managers and human resource managers and sustainability and environmental professionals. This is the first workshop CSE is offering in the United States. Managing director Nick Andrews says that the United States lags four-five years behind Europe in the field of sustainable business ethics, and this workshop presents an opportunity to catch up. Visit www.cse-northamerica.org or call (773) 714 5065.

Eco Achievers

Eco Achievers offers an online-based curriculum for motivated professionals or engaged homeowners who want to learn more about sustainability or make their homes more sustainable, advance their careers or become more effective advocates for renewable energy. The program’s courses are now available through over 250 community colleges and universities around the country. Jason LaFleur, president of Eco Achievers, says that Eco Achievers was begun in 2007 to fulfill “the need for quality online education in the renewable energy, green building and sustainability professions.” On its website the program offers a free, one-hour class on “Green Careers,” which was born from a presentation LaFleur gave at a renewable energy fair in June to over 100 people. Visit www.ecoachievers.com or call (312) 952-5451.

Growing Home

Growing Home helps those with barriers to employment — especially those who have been incarcerated or homeless or have battled substance abuse — through a seven-month gardening and farming job-training program from April to October. Interns spend four days per week working on Growing Home’s various farm sites — including the Englewood farm on the south side, Chicago’s first inner-city farm that produces local and organic produce, which opens this month. The curriculum focuses on planting, cultivating and harvesting organically, food and nutrition education, and basic life skills, including personal money management. Participants also learn marketing and sales skills, which they practice while working at Growing Home’s booths at various farmers markets. Visit www.growinghomeinc.org or call (773) 549-1336.

IIT School of Business, Sustainable Business

The Illinois Institute of Technology’s Stuart School of Business, which ranks in the top 100 worldwide, offers an interdisciplinary M.S. in Environmental Management and Sustainability that includes a mix of law, environmental and business courses. IIT’s Center for Sustainable Enterprise seeks to advance sustainability in the classroom and implement practical and equitable business strategies while fostering current and future economic viability. Director George Nassos says the curriculum is a blend of traditional environmental management courses and new environmental management. “Many people in the industry know about pollution compliance,” he explains. “But many don’t know too much about sustainability.” One of Nassos’ recent alums has already started a company that builds wind turbines. Visit www.stuart.iit.edu/cse or call (312) 906-6543.

North Lawndale Employment Network

The North Lawndale Employment Network helps economically isolated individuals, especially former offenders, secure jobs, helps employers recruit and retain workers, and advocates on behalf of low-income job seekers. The network’s most unique program is called “Sweet Beginnings,” an Urban Honey Transitional Jobs social enterprise that teaches ex-offenders how to care for bees and make products from honey. Sweet Beginnings has approximately 40 hives in North Lawndale and sells honey at local farmers markets. Its line of Beeline products will soon include honey facial scrub, lip balm and hand lotion, and Sweet Beginnings hopes to sell its product at local restaurants. Visit www.nlen.org or call (773) 638-4800.

The ReBuilding Exchange

In an effort to divert building materials from the waste stream and make them accessible for reuse, thus saving resources and creating jobs, the Delta Institute’s ReBuilding Exchange promotes sustainable deconstruction practices, makes used building materials available at low costs and provides educational resources such as workshops on “how to rewire a light fixture” and “tiling.” The ReBuilding Exchange retail warehouse is located at 3335 W. 47th Street. LEED Deputy Executive Director Elise Zelechowski says that building material reuse center favors deconstruction over a traditional wreck and ball demolition process. “That allows more building materials to be diverted for reuse. That process takes longer, it’s less mechanized, and so it creates more jobs.” Visit www.delta-institute.org/rebuildingexchange or call (773) 844-5945.

Wilbur Wright College

Wilbur Wright, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, began offering its six-course, 21-credit hour Occupational Certificate in Building Energy Technologies (BET) in 2006 to satisfy a demand in the green industry for workers who could translate green designs into reality. Prior to the course offering, according to Director of Sustainable Initiatives David Inman, Wilbur Wright had sought feedback from a focus group of architects, contractors, builders and rehabilitators, organized energy and energy consultants from the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. What Wilbur Wright learned was that, while the technology and the willpower was in place, the growing green sector still lacked workers with the knowhow to make buildings energy-efficient or to erect windmills or solar panels. Visit: http://wright.ccc.edu/department/etp/build.asp or call (773) 481-8610.

Dunegrass lives! Popular music festival rises from the ashes for 17th year

2009-07-28T10:49:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

The Sleeping Bear Dunegrass Music Festival is back, albeit in a new location on the Empire Eagles’ M-72 property six miles east of Empire. Come join the revelry from Friday, July 31-Sunday, Aug. 2, and enjoy excellent blues, roots, rock, reggae, bluegrass, progressive, funk and contemporary acoustic music playing on two stages from around Leelanau County and the state.

Dunegrass kicks off with a set by Susan Fawcett on the Vandergrass Stage, Friday at 6 p.m. and continues past midnight. Friday and Saturday feature open mic sessions from 11 a.m. until noon and then roll all day long and into the night. Check out the website www.dunegrass3.org for a full lineup. Organizer and Winwin Productions owner Ryan Lake says he’s most excited about Porter Batiste Stoltz, which will play Saturday at midnight. But locals are also psyched to see so many familiar faces, including The New Third Coast, The Corvairs, Cabin Fever and Ms. Princess Sarah Jane Everlasting.

Tickets at the gate cost $85 for all three days (or $70 on the website if you get them in time). The Empire Eagles’ location offers more than 20 acres of property for parking, primitive camping, food and craft vendors, safety services, a kids’ tent, an events tent and three days of beautiful music.

dunegrass6At first glance, this year’s festival will appear a shadow of what Dunegrass became under the guidance of Grassroots Productions, a nationally known company that went bankrupt after mismanaging and overbooking bands for last year’s festival. Lake estimates that the 2009 festival will spend less than 20 percent of what Grassroots did last year. Lake’s expectations of 2,000 attendees are much more modest, and realistic, than the miscalculations that saddled Grassroots with an insurmountable debt of $175,000 (see interview with Lake here).

But downsizing the festival — making it local again — is exactly the point.

“We are very excited about this year’s lineup,” says fellow organizer Ted Grossmeyer. “We have concentrated on producing a ‘Made in Michigan’ festival this year, and with only a few exceptions we are featuring bands and performers from Michigan. We are reaching back to the festival’s foundations, and following the vision of the founding Vanderberg family, that together have made the festival such a success over the years.”

Recent setbacks

Until just two months ago, Dunegrass was seemingly dead in the ashes following a series of setbacks in recent years. Days after the festival in 2007, founder Mike Vanderberg collapsed and died in the field — owned by the Deering family and adjacent to the St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Empire — where the festival was held. (During the 1990s, Dunegrass was in the field now occupied by the New Neighborhood across M-72 from the National Park Visitors Center.)

Steven Volas of Grassroots Productions had already taken over the job of booking bands and managing the festival’s finances from the Vanderberg family, and last year he brought a lineup of Woodstock proportions to Empire. Household names including Donna the Buffalo, Buckethead, Peter Rowan, Bela Fleck and the ageless folk artists Richie Havens and Arlo Guthrie were to grace our tiny town.

dunegrass14-copyBut if that lineup appeared too good to be true, it was. Sun editor and Dunegrass emcee Norm Wheeler recounted after last year’s festival, “A lotta people didn’t get paid, that’s the buzz … By Saturday noon of Festival weekend it was clear backstage that something was amiss. The Grassroots brain trust huddled in the big motor home and emerged frequently with long faces or in tears. Someone in the know told me that there wasn’t enough money coming in to ‘cover the nut’ (pay the bills), and maybe some big names on the schedule would cancel. Sunday morning started with the news that Richie Havens would not be coming (‘His flight had been canceled’).”

In an interview with GlenArborSun.com before last year’s festival, Arlo Guthrie said, perhaps prophetically, “It’s nice to see [that Dunegrass is] still going. It’s natural for it to grow into a bigger thing, but you don’t want it getting too big. Every organization has to decide at some point what it wants to do. Most feel the pressure from an audience asking, ‘How are you gonna top this? Who you gonna get that you didn’t have last year?’ Soon you get caught in a spiral … as if what happened before wasn’t good enough.”

By the time the dust settled on Dunegrass ’08, many bands, venders and organizers had not been paid — neither had a law firm that Grassroots contracted to fight a “not in my backyard” suit filed by a couple renters who lived next to the Dunegrass site. Grassroots Productions was $175,000 in the hole, the festival’s name was seemingly tarnished within the music industry, and Volas left town with his tail between his legs.

Mike Vanderberg’s daughter Amelia considered reviving the Dunegrass festival without Grassroots Productions, but by late fall it was clear that the Deering family would not agree to host Dunegrass again. And Volas missed a deadline in February to appear before the Empire Village Council to discuss future Dunegrass plans.

Fast forward to May. A group of local residents including Grossmeyer, Laura Sielaff of the Empire Eagles, and Mike’s surviving wife Carol Vanderberg, were meeting regularly to discuss reviving the local festival. Sielaff and the Empire Eagles could provide the land, but they needed someone with connections to the local music industry. Entire Ryan Lake, who joined them and agreed to start Winwin Productions for the purpose of pulling the Dunegrass Festival out of the ashes.

Though he wouldn’t mention specific names, Lake admits that some Michigan musicians he contacted were wary of playing at Dunegrass after last year’s debacle. “They felt burned,” he says. Nonetheless, through Lake’s connections (he’s a musician, himself, and will play Sunday at 2 p.m.), he was able to build trust among local musicians — especially those from the Earthworks Collective, which includes Steppin’ In It, Daisy May & Seth Bernard and Luke Winslow King — that this year’s festival was returning to its roots and focusing on local talent.

Through Lake’s damage control efforts, Davis (whose band Steppin’ In It played at this summer’s Manitou Music Festival Dune Climb concert) re-upped to play on the first night of this year’s Dunegrass Festival.

Did Lake ever think there were simply too many obstacles to overcome to bring back this vibrant music festival in just two months?

“Nope,” he answered. “The wind just seemed to be blowing our way.”

Check out the official Dunegrass website, www.Dunegrass3.org, for more information, and visit our archives at www.GlenArborSun.com for past Dunegrass coverage.

Wind turbines in Leelanau County?

2009-07-15T10:51:00.002-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Local opinions, for and against, passionate and protective, are blowin’ in the wind

Ever since the Michigan Wind Energy Resource Zone Board (WERZ) released a report on June 2 that named Leelanau County as the second best location statewide for industrial-scale windmill farms, local citizens have vociferously debated this prospective news in coffee shops, stores, restaurants, and in the editorial pages of The Leelanau Enterprise, the county’s paper of record.

On one side are those who believe we need to take advantage of this prized and abundant natural resource, especially given our current energy crisis. On the other side are those who think this area is far too beautiful, and the environment too sensitive, to erect 262-foot wind turbines.

The public will have until Tuesday, Aug. 4 to comment on the WERZ report (available at www.Michigan.gov under the Public Service Commission page: the direct link is also available here), and public hearings are scheduled downstate for Aug. 24 in Bad Axe and Aug. 31 in Scottville. WERZ will also hold a training program at the Township Hall in Empire on July 23 at 6 p.m. for local planning commissioners, elected officials, administrators, planners, developers and anyone else interested. Space is limited and the program costs $70.

Our country and our society need new ways of creating energy that don’t rely exclusively on coal, nuclear power or oil and petroleum from politically troubled parts of the world — that opinion is now largely unanimous. And out-of-work, archaic Michigan needs new jobs, income sources and ways to rebuild its industrial backbone. The most known sources of alternative energy — that don’t contribute to global climate change — are wind and solar. But those of us who head south, or dream of doing so, during the cold months know that the sun doesn’t shine year-round in northern Michigan, at least not enough for solar power to satisfy our energy wants and needs.

Wind power, on the other hand, is everywhere, and it doesn’t break for the season. The WERZ board’s report —prepared by the Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants along with the Michigan State University Land Policy Institute, and funded by the Michigan Public Service Commission with support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation — reports that Michigan ranks 14th of the 50 states in its wind power capacity potential and that the state could “experience significant commercial wind energy development” in the years to come.

Ever since Michigan passed Public Act 295 late last year — known as the “Clean, Renewable and Efficient Energy Act” — WERZ has studied which regions of the state boast the highest wind energy harvest potential. It identified four regions: the west coast of Allegan County in southwestern Michigan, Antrim and Charlevoix counties northeast of Traverse City, an area including parts or all of five counties along Lake Huron in the thumb of Michigan … and Region 3, which includes western Benzie County and part of Manistee County to the south and almost all of Leelanau County — our home.

The industrial thumb region already boasts two commercial wind ventures — Harvest Wind Farm LLC and Michigan Wind I — which went live last year and currently provide 122 megawatts of energy, or 94 percent of the state’s installed wind energy capacity. WERZ estimates that the thumb region could host between 1,578 and 2,824 one-and-a-half-megawatt wind turbines, generating as much as 12 million megawatt hours of energy per year.

Leelanau County’s rolling hills and orchards along Lake Michigan also boast promising wind potential. The WERZ board estimated that between 435 and 778 turbines could be erected in Region 3, which includes Leelanau County, and they would supply between 2 million and 3.5 million megawatt hours per year to the region and beyond — making us energy independent while putting money in our coffers when the excess energy is sold back to the grid.

But unlike the thumb, our neck of the woods is a beautiful tourist destination, known around the state and the world for its dunes, forests and beaches, its wildlife, wineries and National Park. Anyone who has walked or biked her scenic roads, or sat with an easel and brush in one of her meadows, will have an opinion on whether 80-meter-high (over 262 feet) wind turbines ought to appear in her midst — in the name of sustainable energy.

And therein lies opposition to industrial-scale wind farms, even if that argument borders on a “not in my backyard” sentiment.

“Too large, too industrial”

JT Hoagland, chairperson of the Leelanau Economic Development Corporation, personally opposes “big wind” because, he says, we live in a largely seasonal/tourist area, whereas the “beets and beans (produced in the thumb of Michigan) are not a tourist draw … and it’s closer to markets like Detroit.”

“Personally, if I don’t want to see condos on the hills, it’s hard to support wind,” Hoagland wrote to the Glen Arbor Sun. “I try to be consistent.”

Tim Johnson, chairperson of the planning commission in Centerville Township, in the heart of the county, remembers when a company called Noble Environmental Wind Power released a study in 2005 that advocated wind turbines running through Centerville Township and up the spine of the county. A majority of citizens who turned out at public meetings opposed the idea, he says.

“People thought it was too large, too industrial,” says Johnson. “Their biggest concern was size and appearance, and the noise associated with them. People were worried they’d devalue the property values. And they were concerned about migratory birds dying.”

Noble’s initiative, Johnson recalls, was perceived as a big corporation coming in, installing giant windmills, turning local land into an industrial site, and then leaving town with the profits.

Centerville’s planning commission has since drafted legislation to regulate wind energy — legislation that would likely stop industrial-sized turbines but allow smaller windmills that could power individual homes.

“Folks who turned out were in favor of renewable energy,” Johnson says. “But I personally have reservations about 400-foot windmills.”

Johnson, himself, has a 70-foot windmill and solar panels on his property, which combine to generate 90 percent of the energy he uses. (The Glen Arbor Sun has printed numerous stories lately about Leelanau County residents — such as Allan Fici and Sun co-editor Mike Buhler — who’ve taken it upon themselves to install windmills or solar panels to generate their own energy.)

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — the local branch of the National Park Service — weighed in when Centerville drafted its legislation against large wind turbines, primarily expressing concern for the safety of migratory birds and endangered species such as the Piping Plover.

“Fifty percent of the Great Lakes species fly through here annually,” says the Park’s Deputy Superintendent Tom Ulrich. “We wouldn’t want the Plovers flying into wind turbine blades.”

Wind worth considering

But Jim Lively, program director of the Leelanau Smart Growth Coalition for the Michigan Land Use Institute, doesn’t think that the public has given wind turbines a fair shake since the June 2 WERZ report and since a front-page story ran in the Enterprise on July 1, which largely dismissed support for “big wind” and generated a flurry of letters to the editor.

“I think this is worth talking about,” says Lively, a Burdickville resident. “We’re not necessarily on board saying that we want the biggest wind farms in Leelanau County, but this is something we should talk about from a bigger perspective. I’ve honestly heard input stating that (industrial-sized windmills) are good policy, but that it’s too pretty for them in Leelanau County.”

To argue in favor of wind power over other, destructive forms of harvesting energy, Lively cites a website called ILoveMountains.org, where the viewer can see live Google Earth images of mountaintops being stripped in West Virginia for coal.

“We think it’s pretty here, and we can watch the devastation happening in those mountains, while we sit in air-conditioned homes watching our flat-screen TVs. We should at least think about wind power, because we’ve got it here.”

“Of course the drawbacks (to wind turbines) are legitimate questions to address, just as global climate change is legitimate to address,” Lively continues. “And we have a moral obligation to think about how we can help the cause of renewable energy.”

The Michigan Land Use Institute views the ability of an individual township to stop wind turbines, such as the case with Centerville Township, as potentially problematic. “The institute’s position is that there ought to be room for statewide regulation as well,” says Lively. “Local zoning can’t be the only thing.”

Lively also views wind power as compatible with agriculture — Leelanau County’s original occupation, and still the livelihood of many farmers in places like Centerville Township. Every township has an agricultural area, he says, but in actuality they are also residential.

“If people live in agricultural areas, they should realize there will be tractors and other noises, including wind. We think that agricultural districts should allow wind energy as a use by right.”

Community-sized wind energy

The Empire Renewable Energy Committee embraces community-sized wind turbines, though not on the scale of what WERZ has proposed. Executive Director Liana May considers turbines similar to the 150-foot Vestas tower on M-72, west of Traverse City, as a “happy medium between huge wind turbines and windmills at every house.”

“We’re interested in developing community wind energy tailored to the needs of our individual community,” she says. “In Empire, we’d like to see our energy come from a more sustainable source.”

As locations, May says the Committee is exploring several farmer-owned fields east of Empire high enough to catch the wind but set back far enough from town that they wouldn’t be directly visible from National Park overlooks, the beach, or Empire itself. She says that several farmers are very interested in hosting windmills, because this could mean an added source of revenue for them, and they could continue to maintain their fields.

Two active wind turbines, May believes, would be adequate to power Empire.

But the Committee’s initiative in development faces a roadblock in an Empire Township height limit of 40 feet. The Committee is attempting to build community support for the project and may apply to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the “stimulus” American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for funds before hurdling that legal barrier.

“It’s important to convey that you don’t have to develop giant wind farms,” says May. “They don’t have to be owned by people who don’t live here, and you don’t have to ship (the energy) downstate. We can use our own resources and improve our standards of living without hurting the land.”

When discussing the prospect of industrial-sized wind turbines, local politics and attitudes always come into play. It’s important to note that the WERZ study and feasibility of wind farms in Leelanau County is based on natural wind energy potential and not on local political conditions, including zoning, public policies, land use, community support or opposition, costs associated with transporting energy to the electrical grid or to consumers and economic factors. The study states that WERZ doesn’t necessarily endorse or advocate for wind development in these regions — it is simply “identifying the regions with the highest wind energy potential.”

But whether or not wind turbine proponents and renewable energy advocates are able to garner popular support, we can’t deny the massive energy potential all around us — it’s blowin’ in the wind.

“It’s nice to know that Leelanau County has something to offer besides sand dunes and cherry orchards,” concludes the Michigan Land Use Institute’s Jim Lively. “We’ve got some of the best wind power in the Midwest, and we can’t ignore that resource.”

Target Women: let them eat yogurt

2009-07-13T10:55:00.002-05:00

The Glen Arbor Sun interview with Sarah Haskins

Chicago native, and Glen Arbor summer native, Sarah Haskins is all the rage with web-savvy young women these days. Her hilarious, and smart, satirical show “Target: Women” airs at 7 and 10 p.m. on Thursdays (Eastern Standard Time) as part of infoMania on Current TV and www.Current.com — an independent media company started by former Vice President Al Gore. Haskins has been featured in Mother Jones; Salon.com predicts she’ll soon land on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show”; and a Huffington Post reader likened her to the next Samantha Bee. Personally, I’ve scored brownie points with female friends when I tell them I actually know Sarah Haskins — we used to work together at the Pine Cone ice cream shop in Glen Arbor in the mid-90s. That was before she got big.

Haskins spoke to the Glen Arbor Sun about “Target: Women,” being funny, being famous, and what she’ll do first when she visits Glen Arbor later this summer.

How did you end up in Los Angeles, and how did you get hooked up with Current TV?

Current TV is actually the reason I came to Los Angeles. I was living in Chicago and touring with the Second City. I’d been touring for about two and half years and was wondering what I’d do next when — and this is when it gets a little crazy — my next door neighbor from childhood told me about a job opening up at Current (where she used to work). So, I applied and had a weeklong freelancing tryout and was accepted.

Speaking of L.A., is it a real place? How does one go about living there?

It is a real place. It’s actually very nice if you can find the right spot. My neighborhood has a lot of trees. This is important to me. The L.A. that we see in “The Hills” or movies about Hollywood — that’s a very particular part of this city, but certainly doesn’t encompass the day-to-day existence here. Or at least mine. I still think “clubbing” is something you do when you’re hunting.

How was your show “Target: Women” born? And what is its mission (other than to make us laugh)?

Born, as many things are, by accident — I’d been working at Current about six months as a writer and wanted to do an on-air piece. In the course of watching TV to find something to satirize, I watched dozens of annoying ads about women and yogurt. “Hey,” I thought, “This is a thing.” And then we made that thing.

Its mission is to make you laugh first, and, hopefully those laughs provoke some thought about how advertising speaks to us and makes us feel about ourselves — men and women alike.

The episode parodying women’s relationship with yogurt seems to be the most popular. What brand of yogurt do you eat, Sarah?

None! I hate calcium. (To my Mom: that’s a joke.)

What’s the greatest compliment you’ve received for “Target: Women”? How about the strangest comment?

The greatest — a 15 year old in Massachusetts wrote me a letter — a real letter — and said that I was her and her best friend’s favorite comic and they were inspired by the clips. I was touched.

The strangest … well, you don’t have to go far on the Internet to find strange things. Several people have declared that they would like to marry me. I would like to dissuade them: no, do not marry me. I can’t cook and I snore. Unless you will take care of the taxes. Then, I’ll think about it.

Also, in real life I am engaged, so, that makes it somewhat difficult.

Does your mom watch “Target: Women”? How about other women in your family who precede the Internet generation?

Mom does. I think she likes it. She’s gets the Internet.

What makes you funny? Did you read a book about being funny when you were a kid?

I think being funny comes from a profound desire not to be embarrassed, something that happens to me fairly regularly. I am a clutz. (Ask Ann (Derrick) and Brendan (Burrows) at the Good Harbor Grill, where I worked for about seven summers.) So, you can laugh or drive yourself insane. I do remember, very clearly, reading a box set of Erma Bombeck that my Grammy had in Michigan — sitting on her couch, looking at the lake and laughing hysterically. I thought that the power to do that was so great and that laughing is a great feeling. So, it became part of the way I express myself.

You grew up in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and vacationed at the family cottage on Big Glen Lake. What do you miss most about the Midwest? What don’t you miss about the Midwest?

I miss Fall. And I miss the sense of community that is so important in so many Midwestern places — be it Chicago or Leelanau County. And the Cubs. I miss the Cubs.

I do not miss April, which pretends to be a spring month, but is a horrible tease and a liar.

Will you visit Glen Arbor this summer? What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get up north?

Absolutely. I will swim. And then I will go to the Good Harbor Grill and eat and catch up with Ann and Brendan. And then I will go to Art’s and have a (Bells) Oberon. Oh — I miss Oberon too. No Oberon out west.

Any chance you’ll include a reference to Glen Arbor in an upcoming episode of “Target Women?” We’re kind of funny up here, right?

I’ll try. How’s that Narrows bridge going? There’s humor in that, right?

Is it true that you and I worked together as 15 year olds at the Pine Cone ice cream shop next to the Good Harbor Grill, and that I accidentally dumped soft serve syrup all over the floors once?

This is true. Jacob, I will say, you were not meant for a life of ice cream. I am very happy you are a journalist. Because I love you. But you were bad, bad, bad at serving ice cream.

Pete Edwards’ Nordic Walking Poles help wounded war heroes walk again

2009-07-01T12:15:00.001-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

Wounded Iraq war veteran and Traverse City resident Michelle Rudzitis drove to Mount Adams in Washington state earlier this year for three days of solo hiking, camping and collecting her thoughts— two and a half years after a roadside bomb in Baghdad severed her left leg and nearly killed her. Rudzitis took a pair of Nordic Walking Poles given to her by Glen Arbor resident, and local running and ski coach, Pete Edwards.

The custom-made, one-piece polls strapped to her hands and didn’t put pressure on her wrists. Spikes at the base of the polls dug into the ground, allowing Rudzitis, 34, to walk on uneven terrain. She prefers them over canes and other support devices she has tried since coming home. “With the poles I can swing my arms and do normal motions,” said Rudzitis. “They’re especially helpful for walking up hills.”

Ever since Nordic Walking instructor Edwards received a letter three years ago from Wade Walrond, a Senior Station Manager with the American Red Cross at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., thanking Edwards’ website, www.SkiWalking.com, for donated walking poles, the Lake Street resident has been targeting America’s wounded warriors with his popular product.

“When the first two military orders come through, I just felt bad charging them,” said Edwards. “It didn’t seem right to take money (from wounded veterans) or to get a military contract.”

Edwards predicts that a couple dozen wounded veterans are currently using his poles. He hopes to increase that amount into the hundreds within the next year. Edwards will visit Fort Carson in Colorado this month, and he expects to demonstrate his product to doctors and nurses at Walter Reed in August.

This spring, his wife Lissa and his son Keefer visited Walter Reed, and Keefer gave wounded veterans, including Jeanette Nieves of Brooklyn, N.Y., a demonstration on how to use the walking polls. As of press time, Nieves and several of her comrades in arms were awaiting their custom-made poles, and she should have received them just before Fourth of July weekend.

“They help you walk like normal without too much weight on one side or the other,” said Nieves, 45, who was wounded in Iraq in 2006. “They work better than a cane because a cane doesn’t allow you much leverage.”

Not just for skiers

For Edwards, the appeal of his poles to wounded veterans was one of hundreds of confirmations that one-piece Nordic Walking poles are safer, lighter and much more durable than twist-locking adjustable-length, telescoping or collapsible poles. He discovered five years ago that Nordic Walking Poles were not just for expert skiers deprived of snow, but doubled as an aid for those with balance and stability issues.

Edwards started volunteering to host free Nordic Walking Clinics at Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Diabetes support group meetings. Three years ago he donated dozens of pairs of durable, one-piece Nordic Walking poles to Walter Reed. He has also shipped free Nordic Walking poles directly to injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Family members, doctors and physical therapists have been amazed by the improvement in their posture, balance, stability and gate.

For over 25 years Edwards has coached local runners and skiers. His skiers have used the poles to ski walk and bound hills during the warmer months. After a knee injury ended Edwards’ own marathon-running career, his Nordic Walking Poles saved the day — allowing him to continually walking and running without pain.

Using Nordic Walking Poles custom-made to one’s height automatically helps a person’s walking posture and radically reduces stress to the shins, knees, hips and back. Nordic Walking is low impact and yet provides a highly effective workout — burning more calories and working more muscle groups than regular walking. For the reason, Nordic Walking has been the fastest growing fitness activity in Europe for several years. Over seven million Europeans walk with poles — both in the city and in rural areas.

People who use canes or walkers often find that Nordic Walking Poles are much more comfortable and stable. Feedback from amputees and others with head trauma or balance issues indicates that poles dramatically improve balance and stability.

Walking again, with God’s help

Since Michelle Rudzitis began using the Nordic Walking Poles, she and Pete and Lissa Edwards have become good friends, and she visits them often in Glen Arbor.

Rudzitis’ war story is particularly painful. On Jan. 22, 2007, she was on patrol in a Humvee in the Iraqi capital when a roadside bomb exploded, sending copper slugs and shrapnel into the vehicle. She and her gunner were severely wounded, and the driver and interpreter were killed instantly.

When Rudzitis arrived at a military hospital, she had no pulse and was technically dead. She lost her left leg above the knee, and the right leg was badly damaged by shrapnel. Rods and pins were inserted to hold its bones together.

The fact that she’s alive today is a miracle.

Ironically, before the mission a colonel had ordered her unit to remove the five inches of protective glass from the doors of their vehicle because the glass could allegedly shatter and hurt them. But Rudzitis attests that another patrol with glass in the doors of their Humvee were also hit by a roadside bomb, and the glass stopped a copper slug, probably saving lives.

“I’d rather have a leg full of glass now than not have any left leg at all,” she said.

Rudzitis, who was promoted to staff sergeant after the attack and before her retirement, spent seven and a half months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, an experience she called “horrible … out-patient care leaves a lot to be desired.”

“It’s no wonder why many of our veterans are homeless,” she added. “Many don’t get care they need.”

The journey through hell didn’t end when she returned home to northern Michigan. Until recently, her interactions with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have put her through one trial after another. Rudzitis still gets mail telling her that she’s not completely covered for all of her medical expenses, including frequent doctors visits and prescriptions for ongoing physical and mental pain. She often pays $30 or $40 out of her pocket for co-payments.

Once or twice a week she feels deathly ill, sick to her stomach, and can’t get out of bed. She has issues with stuttering and memory loss, as well as vision and hearing loss. Not to mention Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But on her road to recovery, at least Rudzitis has a sturdy companion when she goes hiking or stares up at a beautiful mountain. She attests that Pete’s Nordic Walking Poles have helped her immensely.

Rudzitis believes that she was brought back to life by the grace of God.

And now she can walk again too.

Seattle Machinists Apprenticeships Trains Next Generation of Windmill Workers

2009-07-01T10:14:00.001-05:00

Apollo News Service

Journeyman machinists are retiring at a rapid pace throughout greater Seattle. To offset the dwindling workforce, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 160 is teaming up with area companies to offer a multi-year apprentice program that brings fresh hands into the industry.

The Seattle Machinists Apprentice program, which has existed since 1941 but seen a recent surge in popularity, currently boasts 34 participants. The program graduates four to eight apprentices every year.

“Journeymen are retiring and this is viewed as a dying trade,” said Kristin Nottingham, an organizer with IAM District Lodge 160. “Most people don’t think of taking classes to become machinists. But this is a great way to break into the industry.”

Most companies involved in the program are union shops, and employers cover all costs for schooling or supplemental instruction, usually at nearby Renton Technical College, which offers training for careers in assembly, gear, maintenance and marine machining, soft tooling, and tool-and-die making.

Applicants must have graduated high school or hold the equivalent of a GED, be at least 18 years old, and be physically able to perform the trade. Potential apprentices apply directly to employers that are pre-approved by the union’s apprenticeship committee. The union itself neither teaches nor trains apprentices, nor does it act as a referral. But the committee does evaluate each applicant’s prior experience and work history in order to place the trainee in the appropriate program. The apprenticeship committee also ensures that employers comply with the Washington State Apprenticeship and Training Council’s rules, including the rule that companies employ at least one journeyman-level worker for every apprentice.

The machinist apprenticeships typically require nearly 8,000 hours of training over a four-year period. Apprentices are paid 68 percent of the journeyman rate to start and receive four-percent raises every 900-1,000 hours worked until their pay reaches a journeyman’s salary.

The program recently added a 7,424-hour gear machinist apprenticeship, specifically for a local gear manufacturing and repair company called Gearworks. Considered a model employer for the apprenticeship program, Gearworks currently employs nine apprentices who are learning to make and maintain gears for wind turbines.

Wind now represents 25-30 percent of Gearworks’ business. The company was founded in 1946 and is now one of the largest gear manufacturers in North America, but it didn’t branch into the booming wind energy sector until 12 years ago, when it began redesigning wind turbine gearboxes for California-based EnXco.

“In five years, we expect to be doing 30 to 40 percent of our business in wind, or more,” said shop superintendent Mike Robison.

The Gearworks apprenticeship program requires between 160 and 1,000 hours honing the following skills: engine lathe, milling machine, drill press, tool & cutter grinding, keyset and spline broaching, small gear hobbing, small fellows gear shapers, thread milling, large gear hobbing, large fellows gear shapers, maag gear shapers, bevel gear generators, CNC gear hobbing, gear grinding, and gear measurement and inspection. Though the program includes supplemental instruction at Renton Technical College, the vast majority consists of on-the-job training.

Once hired full-time, Gearworks machinists make a journeyman’s rate of approximately $26 per hour with handsome retirement benefits.

Thirty-year-old apprentice Michael Bowman made $15 an hour as a cook before joining Gearworks three years ago. He enjoyed working with his hands, and machinery work was in his bloodline — his great grandfather was a mechanical engineer with the German navy. Bowman also knew that he’d reached the apex of his career as a line chef and that the booming wind sector offered far more room for professional growth.

“It’s nice to know that we’re part of the future, pushing toward more green energy,” said Bowman.

Gearworks currently employs 100 workers, nine of whom are apprentices. The program may soon expand to keep pace with graduating apprentices and retiring workers. The average age of a Gearworks employee is 40 years.

“The most important skills are learning how to work with the equipment,” said vice president of marketing, Jerry Magnuson. “Anyone can crunch numbers and formulas on paper, but doing it with the machinery requires a very skilled employee. A wind turbine gear is a special gear, maybe one of most accurate gears made in the world.

“If [entry-level employees] express interest and have a good work ethic and aptitude, we encourage them to take basic classes at a local community college. If we have an opening for an apprenticeship, we hire them.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Aaron Grieler has completely nearly three years of his four-year apprenticeship. Grieler came to the job with prior experience. He took machining classes for two years in high school and subsequently worked in a tool and die shop. He worked in construction before landing at Gearworks.

“This job fits my mechanical aptitude,” said Grieler. “I grew up working on cars, and I’ve always been fascinated with mechanical devices. Wind turbines are unique in their own way. Every gearbox manufacturer has their own special technique.”

Last year, Gearworks posted sales of $25 million — its fifth straight year of record revenues. The economic recession has thrown a wrench into the company’s plans, however, and management has reduced the workweek to 32 hours for 60 percent of its employees. But Magnuson believes that 2009 will prove to be a temporary setback, given wind energy’s bright future.

The local Apollo Alliance in Washington State is working hard to continue driving investment and quality job creation in the clean energy economy. After spearheading the Climate Action and Green Jobs bill and other policies to create good green jobs over the past several years, Washington Apollo Alliance is currently discussing with key stakeholders how to promote in-state manufacturing of the rolling stock needed for the growing mass transit system. When successful, this effort would create greater demand for trained machinists, steelworkers, metal fabricators, and many other skilled workers.

Gearworks also builds gears for the mining and aerospace industries, works with marine propulsion and gas compressors, and even contracts with the Department of Defense. But wind, which could generate 40 percent of the company’s revenues by 2014, is Gearworks’ fastest-growing sector.

Gearworks made its foray into wind energy when it began retrofitting 300-kilowatt machines for EnXco. “The number of wind turbines being installed is growing every year, so business for us has naturally increased,” said Magnuson. “We expect that to continue.”

The company’s longest-running project is with FPL Energy, a leading U.S. wind energy developer. Since 2000, Gearworks has rebuilt approximately 300 gearboxes for FPL’s wind farm of 250-kilowatt turbines in California. Rebuilding the gearbox costs approximately $40,000 per wind turbine.

Magnuson explains that each gearbox for a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine weighs 35,000 to 40,000 pounds and requires a 2,000 horsepower load test to make sure it performs properly. Building the infrastructure and equipment for testing gearboxes will cost an estimated $3 million, Magnuson believes. The company plans to seek approximately $5 million in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to build a large gearbox test facility at its Seattle plant, which would employee 30 to 40 more workers.

Family outdoor fun, on a dime (almost)

2009-06-30T15:10:00.003-05:00

Mindful Metropolis, July issue

Ten ways that you and your family can enjoy the outdoors in or near Chicago this summer, without breaking your bank in the process

The economy is bad — actually, it’s awful — and your stock portfolio, your personal piggy bank, and your cash allowance for events on the town are probably all screaming “uncle” by now. But don’t worry. You don’t have to cough up astronomical, Wrigley Field-ticket-price sums just to enjoy the great outdoors this summer.

Chicago is the third-largest city in America and boasts a vast skyline of steel and concrete on its lakeshore, with industry and grit further inland. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the outdoors all around you — and learn about local ecosystems. Parks, gardens, concert festivals, outdoor museums and street festivals beckon this summer. Or, just load up the picnic basket with fresh, tasty goodies, hop on your bike, and head toward the lake.

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

Located a hop, skip and a jump from Lake Shore Drive at Fullerton Avenue, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park is the perfect venue within the city limits to study nature. At $9 for adults, $7 for seniors over 60, $6 for children ages 3-12 and free for those under 3, the museum’s costs are doable.

This summer the museum is showcasing two exhibits that examine interactions between humans and nature here in the Midwest. Finding Walden: Photographs from the Chicago Park System, which will run until August 2, showcases Bill Guy’s images that capture the beauty and diversity of Chicago’s neighborhood parks. Finding Walden is the Nature Museum’s contribution to the Burnham Plan Centennial Celebration, a citywide program that pays homage to architect Daniel Burnham’s plans that shaped Chicago for the past century.

And Paradise Lost: Climate Change in the North Woods, which runs through August 15, is the culmination of a project by artists, scientists and educators who met recently in Wisconsin to consider ways that art could increase public understanding about climate change. Paradise Lost is an environmental art exhibition, featuring paintings, quilts, puzzles and music, exploring the roots of climate change and encouraging mass action to preserve the environment. Each piece of artwork reflects the effects of climate change in Wisconsin’s north woods.

Lincoln Park and Garfield Park Conservatories

These two conservatories, featuring tropical palms and ancient ferns in a lush, humid setting, are even more necessary for your mental and physical health during the dead of winter, when Chicago temperatures painfully plunge below zero. But no matter the month, a mock-visit to the rainforest can do you good. Step inside and take a deep breath of this wonderfully moist air. Both conservatories boast tropical flower displays selected for their colorful foliage until late September, including a lush backdrop of assorted tropical plants featuring begonias and hibiscus.

The Lincoln Park Conservatory is located near the Nature Museum, also at Fullerton Avenue, open from 9 am-5 pm every day of the year, and offers free admission. Garfield Park Conservatory is at 300 N. Central Park Ave., just off I-290 or the Green Line train on your way to Oak Park, open from 9-5 and 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. As Mary Eysenbach, Chicago Park District Director of Conservatories, says, “both conservatories offer visitors a chance to escape the concrete, urban environment and reconnect with nature.”

Biking in Chicago

Chicago may not be an Amsterdam or Copenhagen when it comes to biker-friendly metropolises. Vast swaths of the city offer no bike lanes, and ghost bikes — memorials to the fallen — are sober reminders of what can happen when bikes and cars meet. At the same time, we’re a far cry above New York or Los Angeles in terms of bike-ability. The lakeshore trail, and many streets on the near north and west sides have lanes for two-wheeled warriors. So put on your helmet, clip on your lights, wear clothing visible to cars and locate Milwaukee Avenue, or Cortland or Armitage, on your map, and enjoy the ride.

Seriously, what better way to enjoy the outdoors in Chicago this summer than pedaling through this grand city on the lake — and for free! Remember all the anger over the city privatizing parking meters, meter costs rising, and those metal beasts eating up your time? Well, if your car model is a Schwinn or Redline, then that issue doesn’t concern you. Just roll on by. Get to know that Active Transportation Alliance (formerly the Chicago Bike Federation), www.activetrans.org, the best urban biking resource in town.

Museum of Science and Industry

Head down to Hyde Park and check out what might be Chicago’s greenest home, part of the Museum of Science and Industry’s “Smart Home: Green & Wired” exhibit. No, it’s not exactly nature, but it is ecological living within the city. Take a tour of this three-story modular and sustainable house in the museum’s backyard. You’ll learn about the latest innovations in reusable resources, smart energy consumption, healthy-living environments and easy ways to go green.

The home, designed by Michelle Kaufmann Designs and powered by ComEd, includes a “green” baby nursery, a space-maximizing hallway office, new cutting-edge technologies, wind power and earth-friendly landscaping ideas. Other new and unique home technologies are on display at the museum through the end of 2009, courtesy of WIRED magazine. Also explore the home’s updated landscape, which offers techniques for urban gardening, including vertical gardens and EarthBox planting. Tickets to the “Smart Home: Green & Wired” exhibit cost $22 for adults residing in Chicago and $14 for children ages 3-11.

Street festivals

It often seems like Chicago has a thousand different neighborhoods and a million different ethnic groups within its city limits. Almost every group and almost every ‘hood throws their own party at some point during the summer, and if you were to make an appearance at every single one, you’d traverse the globe, from the alleys of Istanbul to the barrios of Puerto Rico, while merely going a few stops on an El train. The best street festivals are free, they represent a distinct neighborhood or a distinct ethnic group (as opposed to the gluttonous, drunken Taste of Chicago) and they feature small business owners.

This month, check out the African-Caribbean International Festival of Life in Washington Park (Hyde Park), July 3-5, the Thai Festival Chicago, July 8-10, the Chinatown Summer Fair, July 19, and Celebrate Clark Street Festival, July 26, just to name a few. Space them out, mind you. The cuisine will differ greatly from one festival to the next. Or a swish a little water around in your mouth — as if you were wine tasting — between the Thai peanut sauce and the Swedish Lingonberry sauce. Otherwise they’ll clash.

Veggie picnic

Let’s say you’re really broke, and all you can afford — or all you care to eat — are veggies in a meal prepared at home. Going out to eat, in that case, means packing a picnic, jumping on the bike, and heading to the beach. Given that it’s July, you’re in luck. This month yields a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables that will look good, and taste good, in a salad, a sandwich, or in your breast pocket.

And if you wear your thrifty hat to the Green City Market or any other farmers market, these foods won’t set you back a paycheck: beets, peppers, celery, cucumber, eggplant, green beans, lettuce, onions, summer squash, tomatoes, apples, blueberries, peaches and raspberries are all abundant this month. How about making a cold pasta salad with snap beans, garbanzo beans and cherry tomatoes and packing it into your panniers with a side of beet salad and local berries for dessert?

Chicago Botanic Garden

Take the Metra train north to Glencoe, Ill., and the Chicago Botanic Garden trolley will pick you up and deliver you straight to the gardens for $2 per person (parking otherwise costs $20 per vehicle). Once there, you can stroll through 385 lush acres of display gardens, lakes and three natural habitats, which are situated on nine islands and border native Midwestern woodlands.

Admission is free, and the gardens offer a bounty of family activities during the summer, including “Dancin’ Sprouts” children’s early evening concerts on the first and third Wednesdays of the month, and “Hot Summer Nights” on Thursdays from 6-8 pm for adults who enjoy music and dancing from around the world. These live entertainment events take place on the Esplanade, where picnicking is allowed.

Volunteers give away plants every Wednesday and Saturday, so kids can plant their own gardens at home. In the fruit and vegetable garden, volunteers also teach the little ones about bees, tools, herbs and composting. And at the English Walled Garden, volunteers share seasonal highlights with visitors and help them identify the variety of plants growing in the garden. For a calendar of free activities at the Chicago Botanic Garden, visit www.chicagobotanic.org/events.

If you’re thinking of making a habit of visiting the Botanic Garden, buy a $100 membership, which includes year-round parking for two cars, a 10-percent discount at the Garden Shop, a discount coupon for the Garden Café and free admission to the Model Railroad Garden and Tram Tours on Wednesdays.

Ravinia

Not far from the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Ravinia outdoor concert series near Highland Park hosts many big names every summer, from Femi Kuti, to the Beach Boys, to Lyle Lovett, to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). But enjoying those sweet sounds doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. You’re encouraged to bring your own picnic, with food, drinks, tables and chairs and find a spot on the lawn. You’ll need to sit in the pavilion (and pay big bucks) to actually see the performers, but loudspeakers are set up throughout the picnic area, so open a bottle of wine, cuddle up with your sweetheart, close your eyes and instead just listen. Lawn seats cost $25 for adults and $5 only for kids.

Ravinia offers a bounty of special deals: pavilion seats to CSO concerts cost $25 on July 12, 15, 19 and 30; free lawn passes are available to college students for most Martin Theatre and CSO concerts; kids five and under get free lawn access to all CSO concerts. Ravinia also offers a special kids’ program book at its kiosks, which includes coloring pages, information on music and word finds. You can take the train from downtown Chicago to the festival grounds for only $5 roundtrip, leaving from the Ogilvie Transportation Center three times between 5:45 and 6:45 pm.

Morton Arboretum

The Lisle, Ill.-based Morton Arboretum, about 25 miles west of Chicago, boasts 11 imaginative new “Animal Houses,” which are designed to help visitors understand how trees provide habitat to animals, and to reinforce the importance of appreciating and protecting trees. Explore every nook and cranny of these enormous animal houses — all of which are built to human scale.

In the wetland near Bur Reed Marsh you’ll find the Pollywog Pond, Beaver Lodge, Skunk Den and Great Blue Heron Rookery. At the Schulenberg Prairie, youngsters can crawl into the Spider Web, Ant Colony and Coyote Den. And the 24-foot-high Raccoon Den, Fallen Log and Squirrel Drey all await you in the woodland near Big Rock Visitor Station. The Guest House near the Visitors Center offers an introduction to the exhibition along with some hidden neighbors that share our backyards.

Visitors to the Arboretum receive a map of the Animal Houses, and an Adventure Guide with word games and animals hidden in pictures, and a ballot to vote for their favorite Animal House. On certain weekends you can get up close to live bats, coyotes and other animals as visitors explore the ways in which animals rely on trees as their habitat. The 1,700-acre outdoor Arboretum even offers animal-related merchandise and animal-themed meals.

The Animal Houses are open from 7 am to 7 pm and are free with Arboretum admission, which costs $11 for adults, $10 for seniors, $8 for children ages 2-17 and free for anyone under two years old. Wednesday is a discount day. Visit www.mortonarb.org for more information.

Starved Rock

Driving 94 miles west on Interstate 80 may be a haul, but you’ll be glad you made the trip to Starved Rock National Park, which is located along the south side of the Illinois River. Starved Rock is best known for its rock formations, primarily St. Peter sandstone, laid down in a huge shallow inland sea more than 425 million years ago and later brought to the surface. The park boasts 18 canyons formed by glacial meltwater and stream erosion, which slice through tree-covered, sandstone bluffs for four miles.

Starved Rock features sparkling waterfalls, vertical walls of moss-covered stone, hiking and nature trails, spectacular overlooks and recreational opportunities for picnicking, fishing, boating, camping and horseback riding. Nearby Starved Rock Lodge offers a $95 “Land of Lincoln Getaway” package, including overnight accommodations for two and a $15 breakfast voucher.

City Hall’s sustainability pioneer

2009-06-30T15:01:00.003-05:00

Mindful Metropolis, July issue

GreenEconomyChicago.com, the new website sponsored by Alderman Manny Flores and Mike Bueltmann of Clear Content (a local Internet service provider) offers much more than green shadows of the city skyline rolling across the banner of the page. GreenEconomyChicago is an online forum for Chicagoans "to discuss and develop ideas about building a green economy … and creating sustainable jobs."

Here’s how it works: you log on and submit a fresh idea (it could be requiring an energy efficiency rating for home sales, or offering solar education to Illinois middle schools), other users comment on the idea, which lends the idea perspective and helps it gather momentum, and Manny Flores turns the popular projects into progressive legislation.

Flores, who represents Chicago’s first ward on the city’s near northwest side, has built a reputation for himself as a visionary and an advocate for government transparency and developing Chicago’s green economy. Elected in 2003, 37-year-old Flores is currently the youngest alderman on the city council. He recently spoke to Mindful Metropolis about the new website, GreenEconomyChicago.com, whether Chicago really is the ‘greenest city in America,’ how to make his ward more sustainable, how he’d like to see his gentrified Wicker Park neighborhood change over the next five years, how biking can be improved in Chicago, and why he hopes we’ll land the 2016 Olympics.

Tell me about GreenEconomyChicago.com

The website uses technology to bring a variety of stakeholders together to enable them to better collaborate in the area of sustainability … (it offers a) platform to incubate ideas and create a pathway for transforming those ideas into actual law, policy or a new way of doing things — as an individual person, or as an organization, or as an entire industry.

One of the inspirations for the website was the notion of open source, where you’re sharing ideas through this horizontal, collaborative model. The power is not just in the idea itself but what you do with the idea and how you bring others together around one idea that you can build upon. The Internet evolved from a number of cool technological ideas that people shared with a universe of other talented computer folks, and they just kept building on it. It’s that same principle that we’re adopting here now with the way we focus on sustainability — in particular economic development using sustainability.

The whole point is to get people together and recognize that we should share our ideas: you’re not going to transform society by just hording an idea. The value is how you build on an idea to help create other ideas, and then how those ideas are manifested and implemented in a way that you do see results.

What inspired GreenEconomyChicago?

What set this off was my interest in sustainability and Mike Bueltmann’s interest in looking at how we could use technology to get people more involved through community volunteerism and through other levels of participation. We were both inspired by what President Barack Obama did with the use of technology and new social media platforms to get folks to do what many of them had never done before. (His campaign team) bridged the new communities that were inspired and emerging through the Internet with off-line communities who really are on the ground, transforming their inspiration.

Why couldn’t we do the same for the ideas that everybody has? You don’t have to be a lobbyist. You don’t have to be a politician. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t need to have influence. We live in a society where anyone can make a difference. And yet people who have power and influence are able to hijack or distort the system. (We asked ourselves) how can we balance that playing field?

GreenEconomyChicago is one tool to help those who have very compelling ideas and to let them know that their ideas have merit. If you really care about that idea, there is a way to transform it. There’s a pathway to reach out to other like-minded people. Say we’ve been talking about this idea, now have a meet-up. Have a little party to talk about how we can further strategize. (The website can) connect you to existing resources, literature, or other groups in communities who are interested in the same idea. (It can) connect you to policymakers who truly understand the value of sustainability and who espouse those values of the triple bottom line that defines sustainability — as environmental protection and stewardship, as social justice, and as economic opportunity.

How will the site evolve?

How user-friendly the site appears is crucial. The website is currently in beta format, meaning that we anticipate changes, and that’s part of the process. We’re asking people who are interested to provide recommendations.

While I sponsor the website, I do not claim sole ownership. I believe this is a website that belongs to all. Everyone can post on it. I would encourage people to not only post their idea, but (use it as a resource for networking) in the way that Mindful Metropolis (has built a community).

GreenEconomyChicago is a product of rough consensus — the notion of starting a project though you may not have planned every specific detail but you start the project with the expectation that you’ll build upon it. It calls for collaboration. It calls for people to think critically about how we can make things better. One of our priorities now is to visit with academics, sustainability organizations like the Center for Neighborhood Technology and other entrepreneurs. We want to present the website, show how the website works, and then appeal to their individual members to take ownership of GreenEconomyChicago as a tool to implement what they’ve been talking about.

How did you arrive at the title GreenEconomyChicago, and how large is the community’s scope?

It is citywide. But I believe it’s a model that can be replicated for other jurisdictions. We struggled with the name: is it too parochial, too narrow? I felt that it was important to brand our city as a place where there is a commitment by its community, the people who make up the city of Chicago. They are engaged in a process to make this a hub for clean technology and economic development using clean technology.

I believe that the city of Chicago should be the world’s leading financial, commercial and industrial clean technology hub. We can do that: it’s a lofty goal, but one that I’d like to see achieved.

That being said, all of us are interconnected. (We all) want to live in healthy communities, (we all) want the best for our children, (we all) want the opportunity for good housing, good healthcare and a good job. Universal aspirations.

We must understand and appreciate the level of connectedness and how we’re closer together than we know. The title GreenEconomyChicago is really intended to inspire other communities too. (Despite) all the resources that we have in our city, all the remarkable organizations and leaders who do believe in expanding clean technology opportunities and addressing the triple-bottom-line principles, we still have a long way to go.

Mayor Daley claims that Chicago is the greenest city in America. Is he right?

What does that mean? It’s important to recognize the good things that many individuals have done, but we have to raise the bar and ask what else we can do. We need to tie it to results that impact people’s lives — whether it’s growing the number of students who are not only staying in school but graduating with degrees in math and science, or whether it’s being part of the next Apollo project associated with creating the most sustainable country in the world.

How do you deal with, for example, the coal burning plants on the South side that are hurting people, killing people. (We need to) come together and not have this conflict between environmental justice and the commercial or business community saying, ‘we’re doing everything within the law and we have the right to pursue this economic opportunity.’ There has to be a smarter and healthier way to pursue that economic model. Why haven’t we figured out a way not to use coal to power our economy?

Also, how do we make communities more sustainable (in terms of) access to healthier food? How do we empower local farmers so that they take advantage of the opportunities that exist by developing new relationships with restaurants, hotels and others in the hospitality industry that make Chicago a tourist destination?

How do we redefine the way that we develop public housing? Why not create a standard where public housing is the most sustainable housing? The housing that is the most innovative, to not only provide a better roof over a family, but also to provide models or an incubator for new innovations, technologies, building methods and processes. There’s a way that we can bring different stakeholders together, which historically had not been done before, because of a misplaced belief that these groups were at odds or philosophically opposed. It really does call for a new paradigm.

I’m inspired by the opportunity that we have here — to help create a healthy environment where people through collaboration are helping themselves and helping their neighbors. Let’s encourage all the positive things that you see in entrepreneurism, where the prosperity can help a greater group of people. Let’s enlarge the economic pie, not shrink it.

What can be done to make the 1st Ward more sustainable?

The skies are the limit. The most important part is creating a culture in the community where people are coming up with ideas of how we can become more sustainable. Plans are important. But in addition to planning, you need a path. The reality is that we live in a world where you just can’t freeze time.

Why not make it easy for folks to adopt or implement some low-hanging fruit? That can make things more sustainable. We know some of these issues. When you brush your teeth, why not turn the faucet off? If you’re gonna visit your friend who lives five blocks away, why not walk instead of taking the car? If you have the opportunity to shop locally or shop halfway across the town, shop locally.

Why not get involved with chambers of commerce and other organizations in developing plans? We have in the 1st Ward, for instance, developed a number of smaller neighborhood planning guides, almost like master plans. We talk about what the sustainable principles are that we want to incorporate into our planning.

The other thing is, when you have projects that come up, incorporate green technologies, smarter ways of building. The Green Exchange is probably the biggest example. The Green Exchange came about not because a group of us were environmentalists to begin with, but through a process that got us there, one that really was about sustainability. People were concerned with their environment. They didn’t want to see more demolition, destruction of a beautiful building. They wanted to see adaptive reuse, so we ended up building the landmark.

There was talk of jobs. What are we gonna do with jobs? We had the Cooper Lamp Company closing its doors because it couldn’t compete with China anymore. Did we just throw in the towel? Everyone was telling me as a policymaker that the only use would be residential development. I thought to myself, ‘well, you have that.’ You may add a quick boost to the economy; you may add more construction jobs to area. But what happens when the project is complete? Then this 270,000-square-foot facility that has been a manufacturing center for that area is gone forever. So we said ‘no.’ We need jobs. We need to figure this out somehow.

Barry Bursack, who really is an environmentalist, inspired the group to go in the direction of the Green Exchange. He made us realize that there was a huge opportunity here. The idea of having one facility for green businesses, not just about creating jobs but about helping this emerging sector of the economy grow in a way that hadn’t been done before in this city.

Lathrop Homes, is gonna be redeveloped. Now we have a decision to make. We can go along with business as usual and adopt the same principles that CHA (the Chicago Housing Authority) has been using, but my question is how we can look at this as an opportunity to do things even better — to become leaders in energy and environmental design? Why not make Lathrop Homes a 35-acre, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold or platinum community — the nation’s first ever LEED certified public housing project? That would be transformative.

The Addison Industrial Corridor, in general, has been languishing. Many businesses have left the area. When I became alderman, there were several requests made to consider changing the zoning and making that area into a luxurious residential community. Could we have created some new jobs? Yes. But then what happens to that area that was always an industrial corridor? It’s gone. There has to be a better answer.

I can’t tell you how many people said to me, ‘Manufacturing, it’s gone, Manny. Gone. We appreciate you wanting to fight the good fight, Manny.’ But we didn’t get to this point by simply saying, ‘Let’s go the path of least resistance.’ This is what conventional thinking tells us, because that’s how we got to some of these problems that we’re now confronting. We’re gonna have to be innovative. We’re gonna have to be visionary.

How can Chicago become more biker friendly?

I think we have to provide more resources for it. We have to do a better job of the way that we lay out streets so that they really do provide for greater multiuse on the public roads. (People shouldn’t have to) take their lives in their own hands by riding their bikes on the street. I think we also have to better engage some of the NGOs and nonprofits, such as the Active Transportation Alliance.

We’ve had some success already. Everyone talks about parking spaces. Why not require a percentage of bike spaces? Or places within a complex for people to actually store their bicycles, like parking garages. Use that as an alternative to the number of mandatory parking spaces that you have to dedicate per each unit under the zoning code. You have transit-oriented development, but encourage more bicycle use.

You’re not gonna take the car away. But I see a Smart Car in the future, a car that doesn’t emit greenhouse gasses. You’re still gonna need a place to park that smart car. So the demand for garages will remain. But why not encourage large bike racks, within these garages? And team up with the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) to have a dispenser in the front area of these garages for CTA cards that are linked to your smart car parking or your bicycle. I could see some of these garages near train stops and other mass transit hubs.

Wicker Park has changed a lot in last 10-15 years. What are your hopes for Wicker Park in the next five years?

Have you ever read Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class? Wicker Park, I think, could be the quintessential community that Florida talks about. But there are a lot of challenges. Some of the artists have moved away. We’ve lost some of the diversity, in terms of ethnicity and race. Income levels have risen, which is a good think, but that has also created pressure in terms of housing affordability. We’ve renovated the parks, schools have improved, the neighborhood is safer, and new businesses are moving in — by and large, independently owned businesses.

What I’m striving to do as the elected representative is to plan things in a way that provides access to all. We have to be mindful of looking for opportunities where you can develop low-income, affordable housing and looking at good economic development. That’s why I’m a big proponent of green technology to help create new jobs.

My aspirations for the community are for Wicker Park to be a place where people respect one another, where people feel like their opinions matter, where they are engaged, where there’s a pathway toward participation and involvement. Their help and direct participation will result in something good. A community known as a place to incubate innovation, in the way that people look at things and address challenges. A place where families are proud to call home and to raise their own families, and a place where I myself would like to be a longtime resident.

Recology Pursues Zero-Waste in Bay Area

2009-06-27T14:54:00.002-05:00

Apollo News Service

San Francisco-based Recology is the national leader in helping American cities draw ever closer to becoming zero-waste communities. With the company’s guidance, San Francisco has achieved a recycling rate of 72 percent, the highest in the nation.

Recology, which until this spring was known as Norcal, has also been a boon to workers. When San Francisco donated the land now occupied by Recycle Central, Recology’s state-of-the art recycling center at Candlestick Point, the city required that any company bidding for the site recognize a union that signed up a majority of the workers. The winning company also needed to hire residents from three of the city’s most economically distressed neighborhoods, including those near Candlestick Point.

“When we built the recycling plant in a big shed on a city pier - in a separate location from our other facilities - we agreed that we would try to fill all of the positions with workers from two zip codes impacted by that location,” said Recology’s CEO, Mike Sangiacomo. Recology currently employs 2,100 workers, 80 percent of whom are unionized.

Recology also uses energy efficient vehicles to transport the materials it recycles and composts. Two years ago, Recology converted its entire fleet of 400 trucks to run on locally-produced B20 biodiesel fuel - which means 20 percent of the fuel comes from vegetable or corn oil. Sangiacomo said the next step for Recology is to work with next generation battery and truck manufacturers to enable its vehicles to run on electric motors.

The company’s trucks pick up recyclable and compostable material from approximately 2,100 restaurants and 75,000 homeowners in San Francisco, according to Waste News. Much of what they receive is already sorted, thanks to Recology’s grassroots efforts to promote recycling.

Color Coding Works

San Francisco residents get color-coded plastic bins affectionately known as the Fantastic Three. Recology provides a blue cart for paper, glass, plastics and metal; a green one for food and yard waste; and a black cart for landfill-bound waste. Recology was the first company in the nation to provide green bins citywide.

Food waste is transferred to long-haul vehicles that travel to one of the company’s two California composting facilities. Paper, plastic and hard materials are taken to Recycle Central.

The $38 million facility opened in 2003 and features conveyor belts capable of sorting and baling single-stream and co-mingled materials. Recology recycles 350 tons of yard and food waste and 750 tons of paper, plastic, and other household and industrial materials every day.

Worker-Friendly, Community-Friendly

Teamsters Local 350 organized the workers and negotiated one of the best labor contracts in the industry with Recology. The starting wage is $20 an hour, and maintenance worker John Andrews and others at his pay grade earn $29.50 an hour, with $42.81 per hour for overtime. Andrews, who lives in the nearby Hunters Point-Bayview neighborhood, began on the sorting line in 1999, handling garbage.

Employees start with one week of vacation per year and can build up to eight weeks of vacation after 30 years on the job. Recology provides quality health insurance for workers and their families- what Sangiacomo calls a “Cadillac plan.”

“This company has taken care of its people,” said Sangiacomo. “We’ve raised a tremendous amount of families and seen their kids grow into good people. A number have come back and now work for us.”

In terms of worker safety, the Recology facility is considered superior to most other recycling operations. Local business agent Larry Daugherty was quoted in Teamster Magazine as saying that Recycle Central is “definitely a state of the art facility- especially in comparison to many nonunion facilities I’ve seen. It is fully automated. The materials are presorted by machinery and it all goes up on belts, which makes it much safer because the workers can see everything that goes up instead of just reaching blindly into a pile.” And unlike many other recycling sites, Teamster workers at Recology get high-quality protective gear.

Another sign of Recology’s devotion to the local community is its artist-in-residence program, which the company has sponsored since 1990. During a four-month residency, local artists receive a stipend and access to a well-equipped studio. They create works out of trash and recycled material and display them at Recology’s headquarters. Sangiacomo estimates that more than 70 professional artists and several hundred student artists from the San Francisco Art Institute have benefitted from this innovative program.

Rise of Recycling

Mike Sangiacomo’s story parallels the rise of recycling in San Francisco. When he was young, Sangiacomo accompanied his Italian-born father on a garbage collection route through San Francisco’s famed Chinatown. The work was dirty, salaries were paltry, and people often didn’t pay their garbage bills.

Jobs collecting San Francisco’s garbage and recyclables have traditionally been filled by immigrants. Sangiacomo remembers the days when scavenger companies comprised mostly of immigrants would scour the city’s streets for anything they could sell or reuse.

“Not only did they collect paper and cardboard, newspaper and office paper, they collected bottles and actually washed them and resold them,” Sangiacomo recalls. “(Companies like Sunset Scavenger) had a rag-washing plant, before the days of synthetic fibers. They had a crew of Russian immigrant women who would cut off buttons, size pieces, wash them, bleach them, and then sell everything from wiping rags to Turkish towels.”

When people realized that garbage landfills were harmful to the environment, the recycling movement began to regain momentum - not just as a way of reducing costs, but to protect the environment. Twenty years ago, Norcal established a curbside recycling program in San Francisco. More and more communities recognized the benefits of recovering materials and putting them back into reuse.

In 1990, California initiated an ambitious law calling for 25-percent waste diversion by 1995 and 50 percent by 2000. But as the millennium approached, Norcal found itself stuck at around 35 percent, in an industrial urban environment that didn’t produce much clean waste.

“Between yard waste, paper, bottles and cans, most communities can get to 50 percent,” said Sangiacomo, who became CEO in 1991. “We couldn’t. So we started looking at what could help us get there.

“What could we do with food? The only thing we could think of was to compost it.”

Norcal learned how to establish an industrial-scale food-waste composting system almost from scratch. At the request of then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, Norcal visited restaurants, produce markets, and grocery stores and established a successful composting program in the East Bay that recovered nearly 100 percent of food waste.

Future Growth

Today, Recology is the largest employee-owned company in the solid waste industry, and a key player behind the city’s push toward zero-waste.

Recology provides waste management services to more than 570,000 residential and 55,000 commercial customers in California, mostly in the Bay Area. The company collects and processes garbage in more than 50 California communities and is currently the 13th largest waste management firm in the United States.

The company is still expanding, with the acquisition of two Oregon composting companies in Portland and Salem and a contract to provide collection services for much of San Mateo County in 2011. According to Sangiacomo, Recology’s annual revenues, which now total half a billion dollars, have increased by 7-8 percent annually over the last five years.

“Most of the work we do is with franchises or municipalities,” says Sangiacomo. “That growth can come in decent-sized chunks. We don’t go out and get a new customer at a time. We go out and get a new city at a time.”

Jacob Wheeler, a writer based in Chicago, is a regular contributor to the Apollo News Service.

Not your grandmother's theater

2009-06-17T15:55:00.004-05:00

CenterStageChicago.net

Head to the theater on a Friday or Saturday night — only, this isn’t the type of performance your grandmother would fancy. Theatro, the new club/lounge in the West Loop was inspired somewhat by the mansion scene in the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman flick, “Eyes Wide Shut” (you know, the scene with all the … ahem … masks).

Of course, no actual swingers sex is allowed. Gothic meets sheik at Theatro, in the former home of Reserve. But don’t waste your time studying the decadent chandeliers or the gold-plated masks on the wall behind the DJ. And never mind the nearly dozen bouncers built like Mack trucks. The real entertainment is the actresses.

Sexy waitresses in short black dresses behind the long bar serve a host of fancy cocktails. Or take your bottle and your posse to the large black leather banquettes. Make sure you can see the glass-enclosed stage at the center of the club. Every 45 minutes or so the blinds will be pulled up, revealing the evening’s entertainment. A juggler? A fire-eater? A trans-gender diva? Every weekend’s a surprise. Think you could hold that pose as long as she can?

Theatro
858 W. Lake
Tel: (312) 455-8345
www.theatrochicago.com

Terzo Piano

Location is everything for Terzo Piano, on the third floor of the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, next to the sleek new bridge that crosses over Monroe Street from Millennium Park. The fancy Italian lunch restaurant offers views of Michigan Avenue, the park and the Bluhm Sculpture Garden from its outdoor piazza (with binoculars, you could even watch a performance on the amphitheater stage from here).

The food is all fresh, local and organic, and designed by Chef Tony Mantuano, who food-loving Chicagoans know from his four-star Italian restaurant, Spiaggia. The menu will change seasonally. If you dine here before summer vacation, try the spring salad of local peas, the Chesapeake Bay soft shell crab sandwich with avocado slaw or the sesame crusted Lake Superior whitefish with eggplant and organic cucumber salad. Stick around and enjoy a cheese plate from the cheese cave (cava di stagionatura), which holds a variety of American artisanal cheeses. Terzo Piano serves quality wines and beers, as well as a list of fresh spirits infused with such refreshments as lemon, sage, seasonal fruits, basil or tomato passato. The restaurant is open for dinner on Thursdays only.

Terzo Piano
156 E. Monroe
Tel: 312.443.8650
www.terzopianochicago.com

Tailgate

Gary Applebaum has brought his love of football and pre-game tailgating (and his food knowledge from years in the wine industry) to the Tailgate Restaurant, located inside the U.S. Beer Company building in Lincoln Park. (The U.S. Beer Company opened in 1939 and was the watering hole of choice for generations of factory workers since before the Second World War. The locale also sponsored nearly every softball team in the city.) The U.S. Beer Company’s successor, Tailgate, offers something extra. It’s still a great place to drink, watch the game, take in a concert or hold a private party in one of the private party rooms in the back. In fact, a DePaul student group routinely meets here and breaks into harmonious karaoke.

But since he opened in early March, Gary has already surprised patrons with the quality of his grub — especially the rotisserie chicken and barbecued ribs, served with soup or salad and a choice of potato or baked beans. Not to mention that almost everything on the menu costs less than $10. Tailgate offers choices for health-conscious runners and beefy linebackers, alike. The menu ranges from salads with fresh greens, to ballpark sausage fare, to carbohydrate-filled pasta dishes, to burgers packing half a pound of beef. Gary will cater private parties and deliver all over the near northwest side.

Tailgate
1811 N. Clybourn
Tel: (773) 857-6644
www.thetailgatecatering.com

Latin American Restaurant & Lounge

If you dig the fried Puerto Rican delicacies sold from the trailer at the ball fields in Humboldt Park, then visit the Latin American Restaurant & Lounge on the edge of Division Street’s Paseo Boricua for hearty, inexpensive south-of-the-border and Caribbean fair. And the portions are enormous. For a $4.95 breakfast special, a $5.95 lunch special and dinner specials under $10, you could hang around here all day, practicing your español. Latin American Restaurant just opened a second location as well, at 6001 W. Diversey.

Puerto Rican specialties line the pages of the menu, with offerings like banana dumplings, meat turnovers, jibaritos, plantains, cassava and stuffed potatoes. Keep scanning the extensive menu and you'll find something to write home about, like lobster rice ($12.95), summer sausage soup ($5.99) and blood sausage with boiled green banana ($5.95).

The restaurant itself is a dive, but features a few gems, like a pull-down movie projector screen hanging behind the bar, model ships and a push car grill that warms up fried foods for Humboldt Park. And don't miss the naughty, naughty video slot machines, on the way to the restrooms.

Latin American Restaurant & Lounge
2743 W. Division
Tel: (773) 235-7290

The Rockhouse

Cheap beer drinkers from DePaul, rockers and those who enjoy good alcohol all share this new Lincoln Park joint, which replaces Deja Vu. There’s no cover here, any time. Get familiar with the shot machines dispensing Jager, Patron and Bacardi behind the bar, enjoy the art tattooed on the wait staff’s bodies if you can see them through the fog machine, and rock out to the bands jamming on stage until the wee hours on Friday and Saturday nights (the juke box will have to suffice, Tuesday-Thursday). Dan Aykroyd wants you to try his Crystal Skull vodka, stocked behind the bar in (what else?) skulls. The Rockhouse will eventually offer cocktails named, and perhaps styled, after dead rockers like Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain.

But the true highlight of your night (or morning) may come upstairs, where you’ll be able to hear your own voice, and where three elegantly decorated rooms with comfy couches and portraits of the rock bands of yesteryear — Elvis, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who — might make you feel like you’ve entered a time warp and are partying with your parent’s crowd (assuming your folks were hip). Check out the love suite in the corner, separated from the room by drapes and offering a bird’s eye view of Lincoln Avenue, but the wait staff asks you and your sweety not to get too cozy there. The Rockhouse may open up the basement — a former speakeasy — some day. Well drinks cost $5 or $6, and you’ll find specials on cheap beer throughout the week. Of course, who’d want $1 Busch on Wednesdays when you can have a $4 Maker’s Mark.

The Rockhouse
2624 N. Lincoln
Tel: (773) 871-0205
www.rockhousechicago.com

Baza Sports Club

Restaurants in Eastern European cities are typically located in the basement, so Nicolai Perepitchka’s new Baza Sports Club in Ukrainian Village is naturally underground (a patio outside also seats approximately 16). “Baza,” which means “home” in the mother tongue, boasts old-fashioned wood paneling and softly lit lanterns, suggestive of an eatery in Kiev. But the 19 televisions on the walls, airing everything from baseball to boxing, the posters of a young Michael Jordan and other Chicago sports icons, and the marble-topped bar all remind you that this is the Windy City. Nicolai, who’s lived in the States for 18 years, is a true sports fanatic.

Once Baza gets its liquor license, this will become the perfect tavern in Ukrainian Village to watch the game and drink a cold one (currently BYOB, the restaurant serves $4 fresh orange, grapefruit and pomegranate juice for mixed drinks). For now, the cuisine alone is worth the trip. Baza offers a global menu that includes Eastern European-specialties like borscht ($5), but also Asian items (pork potstickers, $8) and comida Mexicana (mushroom-goat cheese empanadas, $7). If you’re ravenously hungry, then splurge on the high-end entrees such as the 12-ounce New York strip steak ($18) or the pan-seared salmon with asparagus ($14).

The executive chef at Wolfgang Puck designed Baza’s menu, and it shows. You’d expect the beef borscht to be hearty, and that it is, but the popular dish also offers a cornucopia of different tastes — owing to the crème fraiche and dill. All in all, this fusion restaurant is worth a visit.

Baza Sports Club
2500 W. Chicago Ave.
Tel: (773) 252-4775/2292
www.bazasportsclub.com

Witt’s

After owning the popular Lakeview tavern, Witt’s, for three years, Christy and Donald Agee felt the place needed a facelift. The specials and beer prices are still listed on the horizontal chalkboard along the back wall, and you can still fraternize with old friends here while watching the game. But Witt’s updated its menu in May, as Christy puts it, to play up their chef Jeffrey’s talents, and to appeal to a broader audience. Chef Jeff visits the Green City Market once a week and prepares delicious meals with fresh, local produce. The menu now features homemade pastas ($12), a house salad and different seafood options including shrimp and halibut ($14), but the bar favorites like the burger ($9) and the popular pulled pork sandwich ($10) remain. Christy says the Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwich served on a croissant ($10) goes particularly well with whatever’s on tap.

Witt’s has always appealed to the neighborhood sports crowd, but those who want to go out on a date and have a nice meal can now enjoy it too. The classy menu presentation doesn’t hurt either. Witt’s outdoor patio seats 75, and you’re tucked away from the streets, so ladies, wear whatever you like after Cubs games … street pedestrians won’t gawk at you. And if you live in the neighborhood, stop by for trivia night on Wednesdays at 8 p.m., and get to know the summer specials: $9 burger and draft on Mondays; $6 Belgian brew and 2 for $25 menu including wine on Tuesdays; $1 off cocktails on Wednesdays; $4 Bell’s and $5 pulled pork sandwiches on Thursdays; $5 Captain Morgan cocktails on Fridays; $4 vodka cranberries on Saturdays; $5 bloody Marys on Sundays, and more.

Witt’s
2913 N Lincoln Ave
Tel: (773) 528-7032
www.wittschicago.com

Lan's Old Town

Jimmy, the owner of Lan’s, the new Szechwan, Mandarin restaurant in Old Town, knows a thing or two about Chinese restaurants. The original Lan’s — which is named after his wife and his mother, and means “orchid” in the old country — opened in 1980 at Armitage and Sedgewick. Another Lan’s was born in River North in 1988, and Jimmy opened Lan’s Old Town in May after tiring of the commute between Chicago and Cabo San Lucas, where he ran yet another Chinese joint and worked three weeks there for every week in the Windy City. In Cabo, of course, he could fish for a fresh catch every single day, whereas here he settles for fresh fish from the market on Thursdays and Fridays.

Lan’s Old Town, which is BYOB, sports a classy interior with white linens, a wooden bar countertop and an orchid painting behind the bar. Much of his business, though, is takeout orders. Jimmy’s neighborhood customers know him by his first name, and return again and again, for the perfect blend of spice and flavor in his MSG-free dishes. The fish pot stickers ($5.95) are favorites (you’ll never go back to pork after trying fish pot stickers, he insists), as are the Moo Shu pork, the Lan’s Manchurian beef and the Szechwan beef (all $9.95). Lan’s Old Town offers catering, and a bounty of affordable food.

Lan's Old Town
1507 N. Sedgwick
Tel: (312) 255-9888

Los Dos Laredos

One of the first Mexican restaurants to open its doors 42 years ago in the Little Village neighborhood on the city’s southwest side, Los Dos Laredos offers a colorful and open atmosphere with seating for 99 and a dance floor and cocktail bar perfect for private parties, banquets and weddings. Serving liquor and open all night during the weekends, Jesus Lopez’s restaurant will resume live music in the fall.

Named after two towns named Laredo on both sides of the Rio Grande, where the river splits Mexico and Texas, Los Dos Laredos has adjusted its menu within the past year to adhere to customer demand. Tapas de carnita, tamales and salads are all new, as diners want healthier, and smaller, options. But the mixed grill platters made for two or four are still the signature order. Bring your spouse and kids, or three pals, and enjoy the pollo rostizado family pack ($12.99) or the popular taquiza ($21.99) or a bounty of meaty choices including skirt steak, beef ribs, pork chops, bacon and Mexican sausage.

Daytime meals are cheap. Breakfast specials go for $3.99 and include huevos rancheros, huevos a la Mexicana and huevos con chorizo. Lunch specials served between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. generally don’t exceed $5. Try the giant quesadilla, handmade in a corn tortilla and stuffed with mushrooms and cheese or chicken.

Los Dos Laredos
3120 W. 26th
Tel: (773) 376-3218

Mangia Fresca

Stuff yourself full of pasta, designed the way you like it, at Mangia Fresca, a new Italian café/lunch counter that opened in early 2009 in Bridgeport. Mangia Fresca is a block west of Halsted and just steps from the Orange Line and the expressway. It’s a great place to order takeout on your way to the Sox game, and owner Paul Impallaria has also installed a couple flat-screen televisions, and a dozen tables, where you can watch the first inning if you’re running late.

You can be the boss and create your own pasta meal for just $4.99. Choices include angel hair, linguine, spaghetti, mostaccioli, rigatoni, bowtie and fettucine, with marinara, vodka, arrabiata, aglio & olio, alfredo, meat sauce or pesto. Add sausage, chicken, meatballs, shrimp, salmon or fresh veggies for a few bucks more. Mangia Fresca serves a variety of paninis, sandwiches and burgers ranging in price from $3-$9. Paul says that his original breaded steak is the most popular, and brick oven pizza will be here soon. Mangia Fresca also offers complete catering for family parties, office events and business meetings.

Mangia Fresca
2556 S. Archer
Tel: (312) 225-7100

Inaugural M-22 Challenge to feature running, biking, paddling

2009-06-17T13:44:00.001-05:00

Glen Arbor Sun

The famous Sleeping Bear Dune Climb has hosted many events since the great mother bear lay down here and slumbered. Thousands of children have tumbled down this dune, their hair filling with beach sand. Chamber orchestras have played at its base, their music rising up the hill and moving toward the great lake beyond. Now the Dune Climb will host the first leg of a triathlon, and watch as the second and third legs unfold nearby.

Participants in the inaugural M-22 Challenge will run, pedal and paddle on Saturday, June 20 at 9 a.m. Approximately 200 athletes will endure a two-mile run over the dunes, followed by a 17-mile bike ride — up M-109, through Glen Arbor, around the east side of Big Glen Lake, over Inspiration Point and back down M-22 toward Empire — and finally a mile of paddling the shallow end of Little Glen Lake. The leaders are expected to finish the race in two hours.

For Glen Arbor, the M-22 Challenge effectively replaces the Tour de Leelanau bike race, which was shelved after four years. Glen Arbor residents will once again witness a cycling sprint through downtown.

For that they should thank Matt and Keegan Myers, a couple aficionados of kiteboarding (surfing with a kite) who were raised on nearby Old Mission Peninsula and three years ago opened the M-22 retail store — which sells t-shirts, stickers, coffee mugs, beer and wine out of a storefront on Traverse City’s Front Street. “M-22 is not just a road,” their website states. “It is a way of life.” The Myers brothers are also renovating the old Fisher house in Glen Arbor, and hope to move their M-22 retail store here next summer.

“The unparalleled scenery of northern Michigan combined with this unique event offers the community an opportunity to compete in a challenging and breathtakingly beautiful race,” says 30-year-old Matt Myers. “I’m most looking forward to bring everyone together and see the community get involved in this active outdoor activity.”

“For me, the M-22 Challenge is taking place at the best location in the world, at the best time of the year,” concurs Keegan, 28. “There is no other event that utilizes the extreme uniqueness that this very location offers.”

The M-22 Challenge isn’t your grandfather’s triathlon, and that’s what will make it fun, says Matt, who designed the course — though his duties as organizer will probably prevent him from participating on June 20. “These three sports (running, biking and kayaking) are all integral to the area.”

The Myers brothers will limit the roster of athletes to 200 — a number they feel comfortable managing for the inaugural race. Most of the entries will be locals, though Matt and Keegan attest that a handful from around the Midwest have signed up and promised that they’ll win the M-22 Challenge.

The M-22 Challenge was designed to be just that — a challenge — but not a herculean feat. The running leg was limited to a couple miles because of the tough, 100-yard vertical trip up the dune, which Matt promises is doable without walking. At 17 miles, the bike leg is a good sprint for a trained biker, but still achievable for someone who doesn’t pedal every day (though the climb up Inspiration Point will make you downshift). The one-mile kayaking portion through shallow Little Glen Lake doesn’t pose a physical challenge as much as a navigational one.

The closing of the M-22 Narrows Bridge south of Glen Arbor had nothing to do with the Myers’ decision to start and end the M-22 Challenge near the Dune Climb on M-109, by the way. The location was chosen long before the Michigan Department of Transportation began rebuilding the bridge.

“Logistically, (M-109) makes the most sense,” explains Matt. “You have the park and the open space (on Little Glen Lake) where we’ll have the paddle event; the dune climb is right across street, and for the biking event we can have all right-hand turns for safety. Plus, the spectators can watch every event start and finish at that one spot.”

M-109 will close temporarily as the runners cross the road toward the Dune Climb, but all roads will remain open for the biking leg of the race. Matt Myers says that local police will monitor busy intersections along the route.

Runners … on your mark … get set … go!