Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

The Pink Arrow football game was the brain child of our former football coach Noel Dean. Back in 2008 he was casting about for a way to help residents of the Lowell area who were battling cancer. Pink Arrow was born and since then the event has grown to be way more than a football game and the best part is that it has been copied all over Michigan and the rest of the country thanks to some national news exposure early on.  For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Pink Arrow Pride , Coach Dean came up with a plan to have his players (the Red Arrows) play a game in pink jerseys and turn that game into a fund raiser to lend a hand to area residents and their families who were fighting some form of cancer. FYI - the tremendous success of Pink Arrow is the reason that Lowell is home to a Gilda's Club. There is no other town of our size that has one. The  story goes that he floated the idea by one of his friends, Perry Beachum, and asked, "Do you think the team will put on pink j...

This story originally ran in the Lowell Ledger and Buyers Guide . As part of our annual Pink Arrow effort, the local paper(s) publish stories of Lowell folks who have been affected by cancer. (They also have stories of other people who are dealing with grief at Gilda's Club.) Anyway - they were nice enough to let me tell my story - here it is: The Pink Arrow Project was the brain child of one Noel Dean, the varsity football coach at Lowell High School. He noticed how many families in the community were being hit with cancer and he decided his team, the Red Arrows, could turn their uniforms and name to pink for one game in the season and use the money raised to help local people in the fight. If you want to appreciate what "Pink Arrow" has done, spend a few minutes doing an internet search on the subject. Be prepared, get a box of tissues. The results in Lowell are fantastic and the concept has been copied and modified all around the country. Our week...

First off, let me tell you I was diagnosed and treated for throat cancer in 2013, so I am not talking out of school. You can read about my cancer dance in a book which is for sale here: Otter Was A Beagle-ish Dog.  Having danced that dance gives me the latitude to discuss the potential of devoting a month to being more UNaware of cancer. Actually, this concept will work for pretty much any DISease you want to use to fill in the blank. But my target today is cancer. All due respect - I really think we are aware of cancer - breast cancer, testicular cancer, skin cancer, cancer cancer and every other cancer. We got it. The disease is out there and whacking people willy nilly. I work, and will soon live in, Lowell, Michigan,  a small town that has elevated cancer awareness to a new level. Our high school football coach created The Pink Arrow Project, which has done a HUGE amount for folks and families fighting cancer in our little slice of The Mitten. That is why we are ...

The Pink Arrow Project was the brain child of Noel Dean, the football coach at Lowell High School. It began nine years ago and has helped many people in the Lowell community battle cancer (including me!). Compassion is the driving force behind Pink Arrow. Elect Cliff and send some Pink Arrow Thinking to Lansing.

I recently had an opportunity to address the Lowell City Council and their consideration of allowing a medical marijuana dispensary to operate in our town. Here are my remarks: My name is Cliff Yankovich. Business owner since 2002 - Chimera Design - soon to be resident, moving to the corner of Monroe & King while we refurbish our 2nd floor. I am here to support allowing a dispensary in Lowell. I am speaking as someone who has benefited from Medical Marijuana. 2013: Diagnosed and treated for stage 4 throat cancer. 7 weeks of daily radiation with IV cisplatin chemo administered at the beginning, middle and end of the radiation. Lost 40 pounds, landed in the ER twice with complications, spent 3 days in the hospital, and had a feeding tube installed when I could no longer eat or drink. I could not eat because I had no appetite and because of the pain. In addition, the treatment killed my sense of taste. My post treatment anxiety was through the roof - hard time sleepi...

For the last three years our HS football team has been a catalyst for fighting cancer on a local level. For one day the Lowell Red Arrows become Pink Arrows. The seed planted by Coach Dean has grown into a community wide fund raising extravaganza. http://www.pinkarrowpride.org/index.html All manner of fund raising takes place from gas stations to coffe shops. Thousands of Pink Arrow t-shirts are sold and the community rallies. The cool part is that some 60-65% of the money raised stays right here to help local families with members who are battling cancer. This video done by staff members at the high school is a good indication of the support for this effort: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c9ODFloTL0 This kind of thing is why we encouraged our son and daughter in law to move out here and why we helped our daughter to start a coffee shop in Lowell. It is a great community.

QUICK INTRO: My name is Cliff Yankovich and it is my intention to run as the Green Party candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives 86th District.  For the last several weeks I have been focusing my reading on books that INSPIRE me. They speak to my spirit. Synonyms for "inspire" are stimulate, motivate, encourage, influence, rouse, move, stir, energize, incite. The word has a literal meaning - "to breathe in air; inhale." Anyway, this morning as I was waiting patiently to see if I was going to be impaneled to sit on a jury I was reading one such book and something hit me. Many of us believe that conditions in our great state have hit an all time low. Before the events of the last 2-3 years, and especially the Flint water situation, I have never been embarrassed to be a Michigander. When you pile up all the evidence of the last couple of years, it becomes harder to take pride in the Mitten: The oil pipeline(s). Our state was LISTED AT THE BOTTOM in...

Just read a profile/interview on Tim Gill , a software multi-millionaire who has devoted the majority of his fortune to the fight for LGBT rights for over 20 years though the Gill Foundation . Gay marriage was a goal, but now that this has become law, he continues to work toward making equality a reality in all 50 states. As the article points out, what good does allowing a lesbian couple to marry do if either or both of them could lose their jobs simply by putting a picture of their partner on display where they work? (There are still laws in place designed to push back on gay marriage in many states.) The push for single payer health care - even if it was to be AN OPTION or an option that could be a part of a total health insurance package - needs a Tim Gill or maybe a better plan would be to have several Tim Gills. The beauty of what Gill did for the LGBT community was not simply that he threw a lot of money in the effort for equality. He put his logical, computer coding mind to w...

  Throat Cancer Update 2015 - so, as the date of my last treatment grows even more distant my overall response when folks ask me "How are you doing" is kinda like Snoopy here. All happy dance and what not. After all - I keep going in for check ups with all the various doctors involved in my treatment and they keep giving me Grrrrrrrr-eat news: On top of getting good reports from the Medicos on a consistent basis, I have my own gauges of success to go by. First, I ain't dead. I am cool with that. Secondly, I am getting stronger all the time. I can handle the cold temps of The Mitten waaay better this year than last. I can sing full out most of the time - my weight hangs out at 200 lbs with hardly any variance. Thanks to medical marijuana (I drink tea and use edibles) most of my nights are actually spent sleeping. The pot tea helps with my appetite as well.  Since my taste buds are still toast, I can use the boost in that department.   I am thankful the v...

One of the most divisive subjects to hit Lowell since the Biodigester has been the "Community Garden" set up by a Lowell resident in 2018. Before I go any further, we need to acknowledge how completely ironic it is for anything labeled "community" to create so much division. I say this because the very first definition Merriam-Webster gives for "community" is "a unified body of individuals". By the very definition, anything built around community should be bringing us together with a common cause. One of the reasons I am such a fan of Lowell is the strong community demonstrated in Pink Arrow, Flat River Outreach Ministries and the Food Fight, Lowell Rotary, Lowell Arts, etc etc. While I was NOT a member of the City Council during the Community Garden mess, I was following it very closely for a number of reasons. First, I like anything with the first name of "Community". Secondly, I thought it was really cool for a family to grow...

One of the current trends that just bugs the crap out of me has to do with the pretense that what happens in location A really does not have any effect on those of us in location B-Z. Or that somehow we can build a wall or withdraw from our neighbors in order to "protect ourselves" from THEM. As the Great Philosopher once said, "Them is Us." On a global scale, the fact that the Olympics are being held in a Zika hotzone, to say nothing of the conditions of the waters down there, scares the crap out of me. People from all over the globe are traveling to Rio and then they go back home. "Who cares about the mosquitoes in South America?" That kinda thinking had traction when folks walked and rode horses - today not so much. Here is a cute little graphic with some airline routes to make my point. Speaking of Zika - on a national level we are ignoring Puerto Rico in a big way. We seem to have some kind of a weird relationship with PR -...

I had a great opportunity to share some of what makes me tick when the Lowell Ledger asked me some questions the week after my appointment:  Why did you want to be on the Lowell city council?   Seemed like the next logical step for me. I love me some Lowell and I believe that giving back to the community that supports our store is the right thing to do. I have been involved with the Chamber, the Marketing Committee, and have served on the DDA since 2014, but now that we live in Lowell I can be on the Council.   What are some of your favorite things about Lowell?   How long of an answer do you want! The foundation of most of the things I love about Lowell are summed up in the word compassion. Great community that supports each other, in spite of our differences: Pink Arrow, FROM, Rotary, Gilda's Club, and a host of others. Our schools rock - we have great sports teams AND The Rock Fusion Orchestra. We have two rivers - TWO RIVERS! We embrace f...