In the Moment--for a Moment.

People not a part of the world of writers may not realize how “out of time” we live. We always have to be ahead of time. Since publications take time to put together and go to press, the editors and writers have to be thinking about their topics well in advance of actual publishing dates. Often this lead time is six months, sometimes more.

In May, when peonies are popping, and iris’ raise their noble heads, writers are working on The Scariest Jack O’ Lanterns and Mince Meat Tarts and Corn Mazes.

In July when most people are under beach umbrellas, sipping mai tais, we writers are thinking cool, frosty, thoughts--of icicles, wool sweaters, hot chocolate. While people barbecue around us and watch fireworks--red, white, blue, we’re putting ourselves into Santa’s Sleigh and Making Snowmen and Decorating the Home for the Holidays. We’re conjuring up Ten Tips for Handling a Hangover, or for Avoiding the Flu or Hosting the Company Party.

In November, when people are baking pumpkin pies and roasting turkeys and getting out the woolens for real, writers are thinking Red Roses Tell That Special Someone You Love Them. We’re thinking lingerie and chocolates and heart-shaped jacuzzis: Show Him/Her You Really Care.

In December, when the rest of the world is opening gifts around the tree and snuggling under the mistletoe, writers must Think Spring! Planting Pansies for an Early Splash of Color! Ten New Ways to Color Eggs for Easter! The Family that Spring Cleans Together Gleans Together!

But every now and then a day comes along that just can’t be ignored--that quintessential “seasonal” day that even we writers can’t ignore, that makes us take notice, makes us stop for a moment and live in real time. The blazing hot day of summer that draws us away from our keyboards and down to the beach, the blustery day of winter that demands cozying by the fire--the first days of autumn, cool and crisp, turning toasty as the sun gains control. Those days where clear blue skies with cottonball clouds call us to our senses, or those rare evenings when the rising Harvest Moon humbles us. And just for a moment, even we writers must succumb to living in the moment.

Southwest Michigan: a Splendid Place to Live!

I love southwest Michigan. This has been one of those slow-growing, creeping affections, not a love-at-first-sight passion.

I transplanted to the area in 1985, from the beaches, and mountains and deserts of California. By comparison, Michigan seemed dull--flat, mono-colored. Not ugly, just bland.

But slowly, surely, the place grew on me.

Lake Michigan was a draw of course, the sunsets assuaged my homesickness.

In the fall, the smell of ripening grapes lured me into the gentle hills surrounding the towns where I lived and worked. I began to notice the subtle differences in geography,learned to identify the native flora and fauna.

I watched the trees change color and drop their leaves.
Then came winter’s snow blanket, and later the wildflowers of spring. With each cycle I grew fonder of the area.

I love Michigan’s beaches for their fresh water (you need inhale salt water only one time to understand that!) and soft sands. I like its changeability. Ocean tides are regular, Lake Michigan’s movement is much more complex, unpredictable.

The high dunes and blue, blue skies have captured me.

But I think my favorite thing about southwest Michigan is the availability of fresh, ripe, high-quality produce to choose from during the growing season.

I’ve learned to pick raspberries in July, and blueberries. I’ve found farmers who grow asparagus and rhubarb and apricots, peaches and apples.

I know people who produce honey and maple syrup.

I love that I can actually know the people behind the food I eat, the wine I drink and the plants I grow.

I love the act of driving out to the farms to procure each one’s specialty.

I roam the farmers’ markets buying fresh baked goods, canned fruits and vegetables for winter, and homegrown bouquets. People offer herbs: basil for pesto, dill for pickles. There’re organic catnip toys for the puss and lavender soaps and potpourri.

Nurseries display their shrubs and flowers.

As summer gives way to fall, pumpkins and decorative corn will fill the stalls.

Apples will come on, good for eating and canning sauces and butters, and of course for pies!

Southwest Michigan isn’t just rich in good food, clean air and nice scenery, it is also rich with human ingenuity, imagination and industry.

If I could offer advice to anyone finding themselves in southwest Michigan, it would be: get out and enjoy it!

This essay previously appeared in the South County Gazette, Three Oaks, MI.

DuPont’s Teflon, and Nonstick Politicians.

Recently, the mega-company DuPont agreed to pay fines levied by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for “allegedly” hiding research regarding the toxicity of Teflon--that ubiquitous nonstick, stain-resistant substance coating your cookware, your carpeting, your upholstery, your car’s upholstery, as well as candy wrappers, microwave popcorn bags and even small appliances--Foreman grills, waffle makers and clothes irons.

Apparently, Teflon’s main ingredient, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has been found in umbilical cord fluid, the water supply and even the polar bears of the North Pole. The EPA has upgraded it to being a “likely” carcinogen. It takes years to leave the human body and never breaks down--ever.

Now I believe in letting the market control things--get squeamish about government regulation--like to believe people should be responsible for themselves, and that they know best what's best for them. But where does my buyer-beware responsibility end and corporate responsibility start? This is a hot issue--just look at the Great Tobacco and McDonald's Spilt Coffee lawsuits.

It's one thing to unknowingly sell something dangerous--and another to sell something knowing it is dangerous. Innocent wrongdoing demands ceasing and desisting when knowledge exposes the wrongdoing, knowingly selling something dangerous should come with penalties severe and swift enough to cause ceasing and desisting.

A January 18, 2005 Chicago Tribune article asserts DuPont scientists were warning company execs as early as 1961 of problems--and the company hid the facts. They hid the birth defects of plant workers, and argued that while PFOA caused cancer, birth defects and liver damage in rats, there was no evidence it was harmful to people. In short, they lied.

They lie still. DuPont continues to market Teflon--aggressively. It is now a “new” ingredient in toilet bowl cleaner, and has been added to car wax to supposedly repel dirt.

In my opinion, there are (at least) two wrongs here: the deception of DuPont, and the complicity of our own government. DuPont put a product on the market, lied about its safety, breaking the law, and our government, rightly, fined them. An old episode of Andy Griffith shows Andy and Barney checking out a travelling salesman whose tonic consists mostly of liquor. When the truth is confirmed, Andy puts a stop to the man's enterprise. But the fines our govenment imposed on DuPont were a pittance of their profit, certainly not enough to force them to remove Teflon from the market. If the government agencies involved were doing their jobs, Teflon would be recalled and DuPont would be made to clean up its mess, the same way Mayberry's salesman was made to relinquish his permit and refund everyone's money.

If the government is not willing to enforce its own laws, and persists in levelling such impotent fines, they are, in fact, rewarding bad behavior. If they are not part of the solution, they become part of the problem. If my government is part of the problem, then I shouldn't be paying their saleries and rewarding their bad behavior. Now there’s a free market control I'd like to see!

Is Our Democracy Dying?

I’m disappointed with the current state of politics in the United States of America. Not because the candidates I've voted for have won or lost. Not because policies have, or have not, gone the way I think they should. I’m disappointed because, it seems to me, running the country has become a power game, and elections more a sport than a time to come together and decide the business of our government.

The very language used--horse race, winning team, point spread--turns them to game. The candidates come out “boasting” of their feats, and deriding the opponents’, posturing reminiscent of the mudslinging that precedes wrestling matches.

Commanding our government is not a wrestling match. In his letters, Thomas Jefferson states, "The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government." Since we, as the people, are the government, our job becomes to promote and ensure the liberty and opportunity of everyone--not ourselves, not the few, not even the majority, but all.

According to Jefferson, again, this is done, not through wrangling, but through honest pursuit of truth. He further contends that it is the expression of differing opinions that uncovers truth. "Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry truth,” he wrote to P. H. Wendover, in 1815. Uncovering truth means honest debate and honest discussion.

I do not hear that taking place. I hear a lot of positioning, I hear a lot of rhetoric, I hear a lot of buzzwords and sound bites. True discussion would have each person truly hearing and understanding others’ positions. True discussion would clarify the rhetoric and define the buzzwords. True debate would tell not just what, but how something could be accomplished. I believe true debate would bring us, not to a 51-49 split, but to general agreement.

Dr. Phil often asks people on his show: “Are you fighting to be right, or are you trying to resolve the issues?” I think, as a nation, we should ask ourselves the same question.

Our job is not to decide a winner, or even to choose the person who presents the best ideas. Our job is to figure out how best to safeguard the liberty and happiness of our citizenry. When we have done that, we send the person to the capital whom we deem best able to carry out our wishes.

In 1787, a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinburgh, Alexander Tyler made the statement: "A democracy is always temporary in nature . . . . A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Tyler saw that each of the great civilizations of history followed a pattern “from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; [and] from dependence back into bondage."

Our founding fathers thought Tyler was wrong. They had great faith in the human desire for justice, and in the human ability to reason. "If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted," wrote Jefferson to James Madison, in 1826.

It would be a shame to lay their work to waste, and to return to the bondage against which they revolted.

--an earlier version of this essay was published in the South County Gazette, Three Oaks, Michigan.

Wetland Habitats Best Preserved.

Since the 1600s, human endeavor has drained or filled fully one half of the wetlands those early settlers encountered across the expanse that is now the United States (including Alaska). This is according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website.

What this means is that in roughly 400 years, man has engineered himself out of acres of habitat that filters drinking water, controls flooding, balances nutrients and sodium values--and, new evidence suggests, perhaps even climate itself. He has undone in a short period of time what nature has taken tens of thousands of years to put in place, and he has spent billions of dollars creating waste water treatment centers to do what the wetland did with greater efficiency.

And this is just the wetlands, the swamps and meadows that line the coasts of our oceans, the shores of our lakes and the banks and flood plains of our rivers.

Rivers themselves have been dammed and redirected. All of this has been done in the name of progress, for purposes ranging from power production, to recreation, to sheer convenience. And now decades down the line, the folly of these endeavors is becoming evident. Our groundwater is polluted, shorelines and river banks are eroding, flooding has increased.

Many of the neighborhoods that flooded in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit used to be wetlands--wetlands that would have absorbed much of Katrina’s wrath, or at least water, wetlands that would have buffered the impact of the waves against higher ground, a sort of shock absorber, as it were. In short, flooding would not have been as wide spread. And the manmade levees put into place in their stead did not do the job. I am sorry for the people who lost their home, that is tragic--but the homes should not have been built there in the first place.

Because of all the dams and diversions along the Colorado River north of the Grand Canyon, the once-raging whitewater that carved the gorge is now murky and still. Plant and animal species are dying off at tremendous speed as the river drowns in its own silt. A river that once ended with a great delta before emptying into the sea is now but a stream.

As man hurries to undo what he has done, he finds he can’t--he can make it better but he cannot replace what has been lost.

The lesson here, as with the lessons of all history, is that we must think before we act, not after. We have, it seems to me, put our desires before our needs. We have put golf courses before drinking water. We have been blinded by easy living, existing on a “credit card” whose interest has been accruing, and whose bill is about to come due. We can’t afford environmental bankruptcy. That is the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil that grows our food.

Before we undo nature, maybe we should try to see why nature has put what she did where she did. There is a scene in the movie Out of Africa where the character played by Meryl Streep brings European technology to the “outback,” and has her servants dam the river running through her property. Her servant is taken aback. “This river lives in Mombassa,” he tells her. And when it rains, the river floods, the dam breaks. After several attempts to rebuild it, and several rains that destroy it, she finally concedes: the river lives in Mombassa.

My point is: wetlands are where they are for a reason, and will not be easily changed. I can give a local example. Just south of Higman Park, in Benton Harbor, the Paw Paw River was diverted so a road could be built (at least this is what I’ve been told). One can tell by the vegetation, and remaining ponds, that the land is low. And every time it rains, Jean Klock Road floods. It is best suited to being the wetland it was, and I suspect, given time, it will reclaim its territory.

As a child, in church school, I was taught a little ditty about the “wise man,” who built his house upon the rock, and the “foolish man,” who built his house upon the sand. I realize the song was about building on a spiritual foundation, but the analogy wouldn’t work it there weren’t physical truth in it.

In the song, the “rains came down and the floods came up,” and while the house upon the rock “stood firm,” the house on the sand went “splat.”

Wetlands not only provide valuable habitat, and ecological functions, they aren’t good places to build. It is the wise man who understands nature’s law, and obeys it.

--a version of this essay was published April 1. 2006 by The South County Gazette.

Take a Deep Breath

Several years ago, I heard a sermon. The speaker made many good points, but the one that has stuck with me is the distinction he made between those things which are important, and those things which are urgent. The important things, he said, are always being derailed by the urgent.
Mulling this over, I of course realized he was right. In our “hierarchy of needs,” health comes first, social support--friends, pets and family--usually comes next. These are things that cannot be replaced. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Wal-Mart doesn’t carry them.
But more often than not, we are “too busy” to really give these things the attention they deserve.
I can think of lots of examples: we don’t have time to exercise, or to sit down to home cooked meals, or to take walks on the beach, or read to our kids, or sit down for a cup of joe with Aunt Greta and Uncle Ben (Good gawd! That would take all day by the time they got out the good china, bickering with each other all the while, and then he’d start telling his stories and before you knew it, you’d have to stay for supper, and watch the evening news--and the car wouldn’t get washed, or the football game watched, or the leaves raked.). These are things that become more important when you can’t do them anymore--when the kids are grown, when the aunts and uncles are dead (and you can’t remember exactly how that story went even though you heard it a million times), when you can’t stand up straight, or drive anymore.
Much of the urgent we pay obeisance to is done to keep up with the Joneses, to look “normal.” We let daycare and television raise our kids so we can work to have the two-car garage, the picket fence and caller-ID. We struggle to feed our families, but we have cable TV.
We drag ourselves to work when we’re “fighting a flu,” or are “under the weather.” “But this project has to get finished,” we argue. Never mind that we, by expending our energies on work, are robbing our own body of the energy it needs to rid itself of whatever “bug” ails us. Never mind that we are probably prolonging our illness. Never mind that we are exposing our (important!) friends and family to our germs. And never mind that we probably are not functioning well enough to do our “project” the justice it requires.
But if we call in sick, we say, we will let down our boss, we will disappoint our clients, we will overburden our coworkers. These sentiments are admirable, but they are putting people over health--and if the people become sick as a result, well we have, in my opinion, negated the good we set out to do.
Just out of college, I was contract teaching at a local college and just wasn’t making ends meet. People were telling me I needed to get a “real” job (and what is teaching?!), and I was increasingly frustrated. Over the Christmas break (out of contract, with NO money coming in), I was contemplating throwing in the towel, and looking for work I knew would be less intrinsically satisfying, but more financially rewarding, when my landlady died. She had had gallbladder surgery five weeks earlier, and they had opened her up to find her riddled with cancer. The whole thing kind of knocked the wind out of my sails. The conclusion I came to was: If that had been me, I’d have been glad I stayed in the classroom.
I refer to this scenario often when I am harried and confused and frustrated. I take a deep breath and say: If I were to die next week, next year, tomorrow, what would be most important today. I won't be a slave to the urgent.

The Homeland

As a graduate student, I spent a month taking classes in England. It was a wonderful place, just like in the pictures one sees--a green carpet framed by low stone walls and decorated with quaint cottages, flower gardens and castles. From the rhododendrons lining the driveways, to Buckingham Palace, England mirrors its press.

During the course of the month, there were trips to London, to Stratford, to Oxford and to Canterbury. One excursion was to Tintagel in the southwestern tip, over Dartmoor, and through the legendary land of King Arthur. We saw Stonehenge, the British Museum, Shakespeare at the Barbican. We visited Jane Austin’s grave and saw the spot in Canterbury Cathedral where Thomas á Beckett was slain. We took a boat along the Thames to Kew Gardens, and visited the ancient Roman baths in Bath that still gurgle and steam after all these centuries.

My favorite trip was one where a friend and I rented a car and "motored" north for a free weekend. It was on this trip, while "oohing" and "aahing" my way through the North York Moors, and along the coast of the North Sea, that it struck me. The thought crossed through me, "This is so beautiful--but, I’ve seen landscapes just as beautiful in America."

It was on that winding roadway I realized: aside from the exhilaration of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, traveling the coast of England was a lot like traveling the coast of New England. And though they sported purple heather and wild horses, the moors were formed by glaciers just like the moraines of Michigan and Ohio and much of the northern United States.

Of course, there is more to traveling than scenery and geography. There is no substitute for experiencing another culture, observing how they solve the problems all humans encounter, coming to an understanding of their viewpoints on issues, and partaking of the unique contributions they make to taste and style.

I grew fond of malt vinegar on my "chips," and I haven’t tasted a scone that held a candle to those of England. I enjoyed walking to the "news agent" everyday, and eating Ploughman lunches at local pubs, but I did resolve, right there on the coast highway, to appreciate my own country just a little bit more when I returned.
I guess its a human tendency to get bored by what is too accessible, or familiar, human tendency to look for the thrill. It’s a shame really. We miss a lot, I fear, and waste the precious time life bestows on us, in our frantic pursuits.

A few summers back, I took a trip with my mother to Mackinac Island, coming back through Traverse City and the Leelanau Peninsula. We climbed Lookout Point and toured the Grand Hotel. We rented a horse-drawn buggy to drive around the Island. We drove the 5-mile bridge that spans the Straits of Mackinac, uniting the Upper and Lower Peninsulas. We bought souvenirs and postcards and nutty fudge.
We ate the nectar-like cherries of Kewadin, and toured the wineries of Leelanau County. We watched the sun set over Traverse Bay from a top-floor, glass-walled restaurant.

I’ve never had such good perch as I ate on the Island, and Sleeping Bear Dunes could surely challenge the White Cliffs of Dover. I read about the glaciers that helped form the land and the legend of the mother bear and her cubs who swam Lake Michigan to escape a fire. The “mother” still waits upon the shore looking across the water for her cubs who tired and drowned just short of safety. Small islands commemorate the spots where they were lost.

I stand looking over the lake and could as easily be looking out from the ruined walls of King Arthur’s mythical Tintagel castle. In England or in my own backyard, the lesson is the same. It is the lesson learned from watching the endurance of nature and of human story--it is patience and awe.

I am reminded of Claude Monet, who in his later years retired to Giverny, his home and gardens, on the premise that it would take a lifetime to see everything they contained. He found peace and contentment among the flowers and ponds, and painted some of his most famous paintings there.

I want to return to England someday--to go to places I didn’t before, and to revisit some I did. But until that day comes, I’m going to breathe deeply the Michigan air. I’m going to climb the dunes and delight in the sound of the waves lapping against the sand. I’m going to drink in the purples and the oranges of the sunsets and eat the fruits of local farms. I am going to watch the birds and creatures around me and appreciate the beauty and the people of the land I call home.