Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

 Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 7.12.23 The Streets of Lowell – USDA Loans, Revenue Sharing, and Marijuana Taxes It is safe to assume that everyone reading this will agree that the streets in Lowell, and most other communities in Michigan, are a mess. Our recent unscientific, purely speculative, hunch based opinion would award Washington street as the most pot-holed stretch of pavement in the City. (My bet is that some other ones might be coming to your mind.) For the sake of this article, how about we pretend that Washington is the worst. Then why the heck is Monroe getting a total make-over before Washington? The USDA provided funding for the Monroe Project. Here are some other questions we can examine today: Why is Lowell borrowing millions of dollars to fix our roads? Does the USDA fund road repairs? What happened to all the money from marijuana sales in Lowell? What is the difference between a storm sewer and a sanitary sewer? And the one that seems to never go away...

  Main Steet Housing Is Changing Lives Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 7.5.23 What do you think of when the words “Flat River Outreach Ministries” (aka “FROM”) come to mind? Most of us will probably think of Food Fight filling up the Food Pantry to help our neighbors or maybe their Thrift Shop. Others may be well aware of more ways that FROM helps people in the area – from the loaning of medical equipment to helping people with their taxes. All of these are really great programs, especially when you consider that the genius of FROM is that it involves the resources of several area churches which allows it to tackle these critical issues on a much larger scale than if it were the efforts of a single congregation. For the past seven years, FROM has been tackling one of the most needed issues facing Lowell and most other communities: affordable housing. In 2016, FROM launched Main Street Housing (MSH) when they purchased five city lots in Lowell. The most visible effort ...

  Luke Marin – The King of Window Fishing Published in the Lowell Ledger 6.21.23 Spend any time at all with Luke Marin and his love of fishing will make itself known. It is no wonder that he and his wife Rachel decided to open Fish & Finn Outfitters and Consignment in 2022. Their shop is the best example of the truth that can be found in the real estate mantra of “location, location, location” this reporter has ever seen. The building at 98 East Main Street in Lowell is actually built over the Flat River. You read that correctly. Fish & Finn is one of a small group of stores on the south side of Main Street situated between two dams. The store is built on stilts over a small island. Location, location, location - Fish & Finn is the brown building on stilts over the Flat River in Lowell, Michigan. Luke and Rachel jumped at the chance to be so close to a great fishing river, but the brainstorm to actually fish out of one of the windows at the rear of the store did not ...

  Health Insurance – Celebration Day Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 6.7.23 I am writing this on the first day of June. Not only is it a nice, warm day with lots of sunshine, it also happens to be the first day that my health care coverage switches over to Medicare. For a partner in a mom and pop business this is a day to celebrate. Ask anyone who is self-employed or owns a micro sized business like ours and they will tell you how awfully expensive health care coverage has become. Let me spell it out for you. Julie, my wife and partner in our small business, was eligible for Medicare last April. Prior to that, the cost of coverage for the two of us with Priority Health was $1,428.64 a month. The sticky wicket in that equation was that we had a deductible of $9,500.00. Each. Yes, we were paying $17,143.68 a year for health coverage but if we both had something serious happen in one year, we would have to come up with an additional $19,000.00. Once she switched to Medicar...

Why would I give the Hillis Brothers Painting Company a Five Star rating/review? Glad you asked.  Before we chase that answer down, how about a look at how our house used to look. Nice, but a wee bit boring not to mention the need for massive amounts of scraping, caulk and paint. We have lived here for five years now and the paint job was over 20 years old, so change was in order.  I am not one of those who toss out reviews, much less five star ratings, with abandon. There really is no one thing I can point to in order to justify my happiness with Hillis Brothers. Step one came into the picture when we sought bids for our house last year. We got three. The prices were similar, but Hillis offered a two year warranty on their work, the other companies offered one.  The next element was Alana, she came and met with Julie about color choices. She asked Julie for our favorite colors with the instruction that she not think about the house before she answered. Julie loves greens...

 Published in the Lowell Ledger 5.17.23 Dixon’s Violin captivated a full house of music lovers at Sound Check last Friday night. Who or what is Dixon’s violin? Great question – it is a musical experience provided by Ann Arbor musician Dixon and his violin. What or where is Sound Check? It is the great music venue tucked inside the Lowell United Methodist Church at 621 East Main Street. If you appreciate local and regional music in a quiet, intimate performance space with great sound then this is the place for you. (www.facebook.com/SoundCheckLowell) Back to Dixon – he just goes by the one name. When considering Dixon it is a hard call to talk about his music or his personal journey first because the two are so integral to the Dixon experience. (Excuse me while I flip a coin.) Music wins the toss. Dixon's Violin making beautiful music in Lowell. Dixon approaches his musical performances in a manner unlike anyone I have ever experienced or worked with. Most artists have a set list...

Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 4/19/23 WARNING: Trying to keep up with Kate Brim can lead to amazement, jet lag, fatigue, wonderment, and the overuse of the word “Wow.”. For those of you new to her story, Kate has taken her love of para-cycling from the streets of Lowell to the mountains of Colorado, the desert around Phoenix, AZ and across the ocean to Maniago, Italy where she just blew by the competition in three days of road racing and time trials there. Did we mention her appearance in the Corewell Health Super Bowl ad “Can We”? Did you know she has been named an Ambassador for Team Novo Nordisk? If that were not enough, she took time to go to Las Vegas for some national competition with the Grand Rapids Thunder rugby team. How about we slow down a bit and dive a little deeper into the last few months of our favorite Olympian. To say Kate was over the moon excited when she was accepted as a member of Team USA would be selling her reaction short. The timing of finally get...