Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

Originally Published in The Lowell Ledger August 30, 2023  Friends Don’t Charge Friends Fees, Do They? WARNING: the following column represents my best imitation of a combination of two crotchety old guys: Andy Rooney and Lewis Black. (Young people, ask an older person about the Andy Rooney segments on “60 Minutes” back in the day when we only had three TV networks from which to choose.) Andy and Lewis represent two very different styles, methodology, and personal affects, but they do have one thing in common in that they like to examine things that really honk them off.  Since we are Best Friends, can we skip the fees please? Today, I want us to examine a subject near and dear to everyone’s heart: Bank Fees. Did your blood pressure take a bit of a jump just reading those two words in that order? Cool, then we can proceed. Note: from here on all banks will be lumped together as “they” or “them.” This is my column and I get to choose the brush size I use, okay? Also, “they” are...

  Red Barn Mercantile Opens Tasting Room for Love Wines Originally Published in the Lowell Ledger August 16, 2023 Hopefully by now anyone reading this article appreciates how important it is to shop at locally owned businesses because studies consistently demonstrate how dollars spent at a local mom and pop results in way more of that money staying right in the community. Want to know a way to double down on that principle? It happens when you support a local family owned business that is selling a product produced by another family owned business. The Red Barn Mercantile at 217 West Main is a mom and pop business owned by Laurie and Marty Chambers. After lots of phone calls, form filling, and hoop jumping, they are very pleased to open their tasting room for Love Wines – hand crafted wines produced by another family operation located in Luddington, MI. The wine tasting room is one more step for Red Barn Mercantile in their effort to provide a nice selection of Michigan Made foo...

 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...