Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

                           I recently read some articles about the fear of public speaking - holy smokes, I had no idea it ranked up there with trips to the dentist and that an overwhelming majority of people of all ages and stripes would pretty much rather do ANYTHING rather than address a group of people from behind a podium. As a member of the City Council, I am constantly encouraging people to come to the meetings and speak their minds on what ever issue or issues they might be passionate about. When I do this, I am completely serious. I will not speak for the others, but for me feedback from the public - especially residents and tax payers of Lowell - is something I depend on. If you know me, you KNOW I have a lot of opinions on a lot of things. :-)  However, my job on the Council is to reflect the will of the people in Lowell and when you come and address us it helps me to know exactly how you feel,...

Fun Fact - you know you have been hanging out with someone for a long time when you start to think alike. Yesterday my wife Julie and I had very similar thoughts about masks and guns even though we were in two different locations. I was home and she was at the store and the thoughts seem to have occurred at a similar time. Anyway, here is my version. There is a lot of division in my favorite Michigan town about two tools - Guns and Masks . They might seem to be vastly different in materials and proper usage, but my point here is to draw your attention the the similarities. How can a face covering of paper or cloth be similar to a tool designed to ignite gun powder and fling projectiles in space at high speed? I believe there are two common threads in these tools and the people who advocate for their use: Control and Fear . Masks Fear : Those of us who advocate for the wearing of masks in places where face to face interaction is going to occur take a lot of guff from people wh...

My favorite town in Michigan has been party to some very effective use of smoke and mirrors over the last few days. I would like to examine some of it. Before I do that, let me make it clear - this is my opinion and everything put forth here is coming from me and I do not pretend to be speaking for anyone else on the Lowell City Council. First off, no City Council member has the ability to hire or fire anyone who works for the City of Lowell with the exception of the City Manager and City Attorney. We did not fire the police chief. No one fired him, he resigned. Biggest Smoke: The Chief was fired because of the 2nd amendment. Not the case at all.  First of all, the Chief resigned, he was not fired. Yes, he was given the option to resign or face termination, but HE CHOSE TO RESIGN. This is not word play - anyone who knows Steve Bukula knows that he has a very quick mind and is very familiar with the laws on the books. I have seen him address matters of City Codes and O...

When I toured the Lowell Wastewater Treatment plant, Brian and Cody both let me know that "flushable wipes" are NOT something you want to flush down the toilet. They do not break up and they can cause clogs in sewers drains. Fast forward a couple of years and for some reason I decided to conduct an experiment. I purposely chose the Cottonelle wipes because of the wording on their package. "Tested With Plumbers" and the picture of a happy dolphin gave a quick visual impression that maybe things had changed since the guys delivered their warning. In case you cannot read the lower right, here is what it says, "Cottenelle Flushable wipes start to break down immediately after flushing and are septic and sewer safe. For best results flush only one or two at a time." So I took an equal size piece of Angel Soft 2 ply toilet paper and put it into a container of tap water. To simulate a flush, right after I put them in the containers I swirl...

If you find the image above even remotely funny, then we need to have a heart to heart talk (notice how that rhymes with fart to fart? - see how the Universe is calling us to change?) It is estimated that the dog population in the US is at 89.7 million currently. I ask you - of that number how many of Man's Best Friend are catching the blame for the noxious wind passed by the humans with whom they live? My years of research and personal experience clearly indicates that a safe estimate is 67.8% (with a 1.8% margin of error) so MILLIONS of innocent dogs are being blamed and humiliated because we as a species are afraid to own up to our fumes. For me, this issue reared it's ugly hinney with the passing of St Otter (seen above) a few years ago. It is with a heart heavy with regret and shame that I now confess to the hundreds (maybe even into the thousands) of times Julie and I might be enjoying a movie and my cry of "Oh, Otter!!" was nothing more than my vaingl...

All though it seems a different lifetime, it was just a few weeks ago that my wife and I sponsored a series of concerts at LowellArts in our favorite town. There was supposed to be a total of 13 concerts featuring local and regional bands and/or musicians. The schedule included some whose work I was very familiar with as well as some musicians completely new to me. Fun thing for me is that I was able to serve as the host for the concerts which entailed introducing the talent. (Some might say we sponsored the concerts just so I could get in front of folks with a microphone, but.......) One of new ones was Patty Pierzchala who appeared as a solo act opening for Chain of Lakes. Kyle Rasche, from Chain of Lakes, knows what its like to have your last name mangled, so he gave me the phonetic version of Patty's last name - Pershayla - which she uses when she is playing with her 3 piece band The Mayhaps. (Wrote all this to splain the aka business noted above.) Patty took the stage ...

Herndon is seen here with two odd looking chickens. After receiving a tip from business person and silly shirt video maker, Cliff Yankovich, Kent County authorities surrounded the house of  Lowell resident Karla Herndon in a pre-dawn raid with the sole mission to shut down her "Majick Chikken Food Laboratory and Chicken Ranch". The 14 member team was armed with a 27 page Cease and Desist Warrant citing among other things; "chicken abuse", "animal cruelty", "sketchy science", "practicing hoo-doo without a license". Herndon, a long time Lowell resident, is generally considered to be a kind and considerate person by neighbors who were shocked when the conditions of the Experimental Chickens were revealed. She was described as "compassionate" and "willing to share a smile or a kind word" by neighbors we interviewed for this almost true story. In what might have been an unintentional slip of the tongue, one neigh...