Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

  We have certainly seen our share of flurry lately surrounding the attempt at building a data center next to I-96 in Lowell Township. Meeting halls were flooded with folks, many questions went unanswered or dodged. As an aside, kudos to our community for keeping things rather civil in this day of copious hollering and threats. Well done. I am here to answer the elephant in the room question – Why the huge uptick in demand for data centers all over Michigan and other parts of the country? In case you skipped the title – I am here to tell you that I am the reason for the demand for MORE data centers. Yup – my fault. For those who do not know me, I have tried to live a life with action and concern toward the environment. My mother taught me to avoid waste and to recycle anything that could be recycled. I have ridden a fully electric motorcycle for eight years. My home and business pay Lowell Light and Power a wee bit extra so that our electricity comes from renewable resources. I w...

Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 10.4.23  Loretta Visser is a MYTHical Hiker and a True Adventurer With Lowell having the National Headquarters of the North Country Trail ensconced on Main Street, one almost feels guilty writing about the Appalachian Trail (AT). Our focus today is not to compare and contrast these two trails, but to celebrate the fact that Loretta Visser has recently completed hiking the entire length of the AT. Loretta Visser celebrates on a mountain top in Maine. We should start off with some fun facts about the AT. The most current listing of the mileage from the genesis of the trail at Springer Mountain in Georgia to the end of the trail at Mount Katahdin in Maine is 2,1987.4 miles according to Appalachian Trail Conservancy website. The AT winds its way through fourteen states and has a low point of just 124 feet above sea level to an impressive elevation of 6,643 feet at its highest point. Thankfully encounters with bears are very uncommon, but you ne...

Encouraging News From The Environmental Front As you may recall, yours truly learned about recycling at the knee of his Ronald Reagan loving, Republican mom from a very young age. For mom, recycling was not about politics, rather it was about common sense. If the glass jar could be made into another glass jar, then why would you toss it in a land-fill? She grew up in a frugal household, my grandmother Wright grew and put away every kind of fruit and vegetable you can imagine - cherries, corn, beans, apples, peaches, grapes, and more. All done on a double lot on Manning street in Detroit. When my mom taught me to recycle, we did not have a service that would pick it up at the curb. We had to save the items and drive them to the recycling center which she did faithfully for many years. I mention all this to let you know recycling is in my DNA. The last few months have given me a lot to cheer about in this regard. My slippers were getting pretty nasty and a new pair was in order. As I am ...

Explore A National Marine Sanctuary in Michigan Originally Published in the Lowell Ledger 1.18.23 If you are anything like me and hear the words “National Marine Sanctuary”, the images and places that appear in your mind in some fashion or another probably include the Florida Keys, the Hawaiian Islands, and various places you might explore on the east or west coasts. Such thinking covers almost all of the fifteen locations that have been designated as marine sanctuaries by NOAA - which includes a reference to oceans in the long form of it’s name: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Would you be as surprised as I was to learn that our favorite state has one of the sanctuaries? If you travel between 234 and 250 miles from Lowell, depending on the route you choose, you can visit the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena. When a friend of mine plopped a half dozen publications on my desk that were all about this phenomenal place, it took a minute for me to pr...

  A More Earth Friendly Shave Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 8/13/22 Every little bit helps. Just remember that as you read my story about the pursuit of a way to shave my face every day with minimal impact on the environment. Up until about nine or ten years ago, I would alternate my daily shaving method between disposable razors and an electric shaver. Of those two methods, the electric shaver is by far the more green option of the two, but I would always switch back to disposable razors because it gave me a much closer shave in my opinion. It wasn’t that my facial hair is thick and prolific, but no matter how many times I ran the electric shaver over my face, by the afternoon my face felt stubbly. I would grow tired of that after a couple weeks or so and switch back to lathering up and using whatever set up was popular in disposable razors. When I first started shaving on a daily basis, during the end of the Ford or beginning of the Carter administration, plastic ...

Renewable Energy & Protecting the Environment Should Not Be Partisan Politics   Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 7/7/2022   Why on Earth has protecting our environment and conserving natural resources by “going green” in any way we can is turned into a partisan, Democrat vs Republican thing? It should not be this way. Please stick with me and read this whole column before you toss the paper in the trash bin, or better yet the recycle bin. I am hoping I can challenge the thinking of both Blue and Red readers.  The Eagle is the symbol of our country – it is not a mascot for the Red or Blue team. One of the best things I have seen in my lifetime is the return of eagles, not only in Michigan, but all over the country they symbolize. When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my mom had me read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” a book about how we were trashing our environment. At that time, DDT and other pesticides were decimating eagles and other birds of prey...

Water Is Life – We Cannot Take It For Granted   Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 6/25/2022   Michigan truly is a water wonderland. As residents of a state surrounded by twenty percent of all the available freshwater on the entire planet, we might take water for granted. Yes, our little mitten shaped portion of the globe gives us access to one fifth of the fresh water available to the world. Let that sink in, will you?   Julie and I recently took a work vacation trip to Las Vegas to attend a jewelry show. We stayed some extra days so that I could check a visit to the Hoover Dam off my bucket list (more on that later). For most of the daylight hours during our six days out west the temperatures were triple digits – the highest was 111 degrees. Sure, it is a “dry heat” compared to Michigan with the humidity levels at 10 to 15 per cent. However, 111 still feels like walking around in an oven and the decided lack of humidity, read WATER, is the subject ...

  Go ahead - you can touch these frozen sand dunes. Standing slack jawed in the 109 degree heat at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area it was hard to imagine anything being frozen at any time in this natural oven. That is probably why I got such a kick out of the description of the beautiful red and tan sandstone formations surrounding me – “frozen sand dunes”. During our recent work-cation to a jewelry show in Las Vegas, Julie was busy working the search engine on her phone to find places to visit that would expose us to the incredible natural wonders that are just a short trip from the non-stop neon spectacle of the Vegas Strip. Our plane had not touched down before she had our first day trip all mapped out for us. Red Rock Canyon is just 24 miles from the Strip and is well worth the drive. One of the best things about Red Rock is that if you have absolutely no desire to exit your vehicle and take advantage of one or more of the 26 different hikes and trails, you can...

Michigan truly is a water wonderland. As residents of a state surrounded by twenty percent of all the available freshwater on the entire planet, we might take water for granted. Yes, our little mitten shaped portion of the globe gives us access to one fifth of the fresh water available to the world. Let that sink in, will you? Julie and I recently took a work vacation trip to Las Vegas to attend a jewelry show. We stayed some extra days so that I could check a visit to the Hoover Dam off my bucket list (more on that later). For most of the daylight hours during our six days out west the temperatures were triple digits – the highest was 111 degrees. Sure, it is a “dry heat” compared to Michigan with the humidity levels at 10 to 15 per cent. However, 111 still feels like walking around in an oven and the decided lack of humidity, read WATER, is the subject I want to address here. In case you are unaware, many parts of the Western US have been experiencing draught conditions over the last...