Category / Home Goods

by nflanagan

Leelanau Needs to Get Out Ahead of Change

We all love Leelanau’s rural beauty—this is absolutely a ‘common ground’ issue for everyone, Republican or Democrat, who lives here. It’s nice to think that Leelanau could forever be pristine—sparkling lakes, rolling orchards, charming villages. We live in a very desirable place.

But change is coming—as it comes to every community. The trick is anticipating and preparing for that change. When one segment of the County Commission (including my opponent in the District Seven race) decides not to set goals for the upcoming year, they are abdicating the Commission’s responsibility to its constituents.

The Commission’s job is anticipating—or recognizing—challenges and addressing them.

Is this process always smooth and effective? Of course not. But it’s why you’re elected: to identify and serve the needs of your district, and your county.

Because those immediate needs—and the ones we can foresee on the horizon—are very real: Climate change and its impact on agriculture. An array of proposed recreation sites on our lakes, as legacy property owners sell to developers. Eurasian watermilfoil in our largest lake (and the county’s economic engine). A severe shortage of affordable housing (owned and rented), while 40% of the available housing is unoccupied, year-round. A potential uptick in tourism as cruise ships dock in West Bay—and perhaps rail-based tourism as well. The list is long.

And–not all change can be predicted. The pandemic, for example, which served as a divisive and politicized point of contention for countless local government officials, precisely at the time when we were called upon to act in community.

In 2020, a Leelanau County Road Commissioner made national headlines by spewing racist language and thoughts in a public meeting. It was another opportunity to act in community, addressing latent racism in a county where most of the land was deeded, in 1855, to the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa, and strongly repudiating the Road Commissioner’s thoughts.  Some commissioners wanted to sweep the national embarrassment under the rug, however.

When we first moved to Leelanau County in 2010, my husband and I were both running businesses from home—he had a law practice, and I had a small business providing professional development webinars for teachers. And what we considered adequate internet capacity—we had cable internet prior to moving here—was unavailable. I was curious about why—Leelanau County is rural and rolling, and I understand that poses challenges to providers, but the county is also relatively well-off. Why weren’t providers eager to tap into this market?

Tracking the County Commission’s actions on securing broadband is how I got interested in Leelanau County politics. I heard commissioners describe broadband as a luxury, and the extension of internet services as spoiling our rural character. The Grand Traverse Band has been a willing partner in broadband development for years, but the Commission did not seem interested in working with them.

It took a pandemic and an infusion of federal money to get the Commission off square one, but they have now achieved a momentous first step of mapping internet availability across the entire county, uncovering the fact that 22% of the county had zero access to broadband. Think about how that impacted student learning during the pandemic—and how many clean, small businesses that could support a local tax base were turned away by lack of what is now considered a necessary utility.

There is no better local example of getting out ahead of change than what happened when Dollar General purchased property and applied to build a store in downtown Maple City, declaring that Maple City was a food desert, and the opportunity to buy cheap imported junk and off-brand canned goods would benefit its citizens.

Those citizens got wind of the plan and showed up in huge numbers at township meetings to protest. Dollar General withdrew the request—and there are presently two partially completed duplex homes (something we DO need) on the site. 

The irony is that Maple City is decidedly rural—there are fruit stands and community-supported agricultural (CSA) businesses everywhere in the area. Could the town use a small, pick-up grocery? Perhaps. But Maple City and hundreds of other modest small towns are now vulnerable to big corporations, with their eyes on the bottom line, rural character be damned.

The changes coming—inexorably—to northwestern Michigan are even larger than the ones we’ve been dealing with, like getting a septic ordinance in place, or resisting unnecessary gravel pits.  Climate migration is a real thing, and a beautiful, lightly developed area with ample water and a four-seasons climate is like a magnet for wealthy national and international investors.

Again—the County Commission is elected to identify and serve the needs of Leelanau.

Change is coming. Best to get out ahead of it.

This week’s take from the CSA box.
by nflanagan

Birthdays and Gifts

I clearly remember all my decade birthdays, except number 20, which is a blur. Not old enough to drink and not really happy with my life. That’s all I got.

It’s easier with subsequent decades. There was a husband and a house at 30, kids at 40, and some professional recognition by 50.  And 60 seems like yesterday. Yesterday, alas, was 10 years ago.

Do I have a favorite decade birthday? Yes. When I turned 40, my wonderful husband made all the arrangements to take me on a surprise trip. This is how he did it: He called me from work in the summer before my 40th birthday and told me he was entering a contest for an all-expenses paid trip to anywhere in the United States. Where would I want to go? Boulder, Colorado, I told him. Ah—good one, he said.

Then he surreptitiously made all the arrangements—flights, members of the family to babysit and keep their mouths shut in the meantime, an adorable little log-cabin resort in the foothills to the west of town with an outdoor hot tub. He told me to pack my hiking boots and my bathing suit—that we were going on a mystery trip.

It was memorable and wonderful in every possible way. Boulder remains one of my favorite places on earth, and I still wear the earrings he bought me from an art show vendor on Pearl Street.

I have passed through decade markers without a whole lot of angst or reflection. Sixty seemed like coming into a certain kind of wisdom and serenity—newly retired, a new home, new friends, new adventures. A time to accomplish all the things I’d been too busy to enjoy while working and raising a family. A time to travel while still healthy and mobile, to garden, to read, to cook. To write about education.

Most importantly, it was a return to the absolute joy of making music—of capitalizing on all the work I did as a teenager to build and polish my musical skills.  I joined three community musical groups, got a part-time gig as a church music director, and started taking piano lessons, something I have wanted to do since I was in fifth grade. I got my flute out and practiced. I helped establish a thriving flute ensemble. I played for weddings and funerals and other occasions.

I will be seventy tomorrow.

And for the first time, I feel old-ish. Not old-old, but there is a creeping realization that I have some limitations. I still plan to be around for additional decades—my grandmother lived to 103, and was hale and hearty until her last day on earth. I’m healthy and have possession of my marbles.  And I have lots of plans for the future—after all, I have skills and knowledge, things I learned in school, that have made my life, into this eighth decade, rich and rewarding.

I think about my students’ parents, eager to sell that saxophone or trumpet when their child could not decide between band and football. I would ask: What can you give your child today that they can use, literally, for the rest of their lives?

I will be seventy tomorrow. I’ve been playing the same flute—the one my parents re-mortgaged their house to buy—since 1967.

Thanks, mom and dad. I made it to 70!

by nflanagan

A Story about My Dad and My Refrigerator

There are lots of stories I could tell about my dad. Some are heroic and wonderful, others not so much.

My dad died young, at 58, of brain cancer, and one of the greatest blessings in my life was that, by the time I was 28, we had reconciled all our old grudges and battles.

Here’s one story: A few years before my dad got sick, my very young marriage had failed, and I was moving downstate to start my first teaching job. Of course, I had zero money and no car. But I did have the promise of a job in September, so Dad took a day off work, drove me three hours up to where I’d been living, then three hours back downstate to help me move my few possessions (think card table, mattress, stereo) into a teeny tiny upstairs flat in Howell.

One of those possessions–probably the most expensive thing I owned at the time– was a refrigerator.The apartment had a rickety outside staircase. After everything else had been moved up those stairs, all that was left was the fridge. We didn’t have a dolly or strong young backs available.

So my dad, using the trailer strapping, strapped the fridge to his back and carried it up those stairs, and plugged it in. It still worked. We drove home (another two-hour trip, to the west), where he sold me his car (a brown Buick LeSabre) over the kitchen table, with excellent, low-interest terms. He happily got himself a new Buick the next day.

I paid that Buick off, $50/month. And later sold the fridge, to pay my phone bill, watching the newlywed who bought it strap it to his back.

Down is better than up, when it comes to moving refrigerators. And dads are what you need, when you’re down.

by nflanagan

Christmas Past

If you watched Stephen Colbert’s show-length interview with Joe and Jill Biden last week, you heard Joe, acting like the nation’s corny but well-meaning grandpa, describing his annual habit of spreading fake snow, made with Ivory Snow flakes, on the branches of the family Christmas tree.

Joe really got into it, adding a lot of detail about placement of single strands of tinsel, and how this was a midnight tradition handed down from his father. The future first lady was bravely smiling, in political wife fashion, but she had that look women get when they want their husbands to stop rambling on.

But personally—I was charmed. It was geezer talk, all right, but it’s refreshing to hear the next Leader of the Free World get all nostalgic about past Christmases and his father. Joe Biden is an unabashedly sentimental empath—and an empath is what we need when there are monsters lurking.

When Joe Biden started getting specific about tinsel, I flashed to my mom. My mother was a post-war bride who saved tinsel, year to year, tied with ribbon. When the newspapers (remember them?) published stories about the high lead content in old-style tinsel, she phased it out, but prior to that she was a single-strand person, carefully doling out the silvery magic, making it last, teetering on her step stool.

As a 30-year music teacher, I wrestled annually with what others—parents, students, administrators—thought was my job during the holidays. I recognize that Christmas cheer is often false and corrosive in public settings, not to mention a thoughtless privileging of one quasi-religious tradition over all others.

Still—all major religious and cultural groups have some kind of ‘turning of the light’ festival, often featuring a hopeful story, feasting, music and merriment. A friend who identifies as a Pagan humanist celebrates the Winter Solstice and puts up a Yule Tree—which from the road looks just like every Christmas tree on her block. When she put a picture of it up on Facebook, however, I was surprised at how many commenters poked at her terminology—reactions ranging from cynical snottiness to genuine antagonism.

Donald Trump knew what he was doing when he bragged that under his reign tenure in office, it would once again be OK to say Merry Christmas. He understood, at some level, the mystical, murky power of nostalgia, and the distress of having your cherished memories and beliefs challenged. He also pumped up the idea of a threatened majority–Santa Claus Matters!

The truth is that people whose memories do not include candlelit midnight masses and glorious, present-saturated dawns with all the trimmings are American citizens, too—and when it comes to family holiday celebrations, religious belief matters less than resources and circumstances. Christmas and other winter holidays are fueled by memory as much as reality.

On Twitter yesterday, a guy named @MohammadHussain wrote this: Growing up, my Muslim family never celebrated Christmas. This year I am not going home, because pandemic, so my roommates are teaching me how to have my first proper Christmas. I am approaching this with anthropological precision.

Hussain’s Tweet thread is hilarious, including the observation that Christmas ornaments fall into two groups: the “fillers” and the “keepers”. The fillers are the generic ones. The keepers are meant to be more special and unique. This second stream is stored in your family’s reliquary to be one day passed on to the children.

In our family reliquary, there are the usual travel souvenirs and construction-paper photo frames. Because I taught band and choir, half the keepers are music-related. There’s also a chipped Hot Wheels rendition of the General Lee (the orange Dodge Charger that the Dukes of Hazzard kept airborne), attached to a string, and hung on a Christmas tree, back in the 1990s by my son, who’s always been a car guy.

Christmas is perfect only in memory. And sometimes—like the Christmas between the diagnosis of my dad’s brain cancer at Thanksgiving, and his death in early January—the memory is dark and riven with sorrow. But it’s still there, reminding me that healing is possible, if you give it enough time and eggnog.

Social media has been filled with trees and lights and So Many Packages. Plus an out-of-control festival of baking. On Tuesday, I will be baking my mom’s caramel butter cookies to take to the local nursing home.

Lest you think my mother was a creative master baker—no. She was an indifferent 1950s cook. Lots of jello, dishes based on cream of something soup, and pedestrian box-mix cakes. But at some point in the 1960s, she was given a cookie press, and I was there watching her (probably because of the novelty) attempt to make caramel butter cookies from the little booklet that came in the box with the press.

Pressing out cookie shapes is harder than it looks. The dough must be the right consistency. She tried adding water. Then extra flour. Then she put the dough and the press in the fridge. The dough went from a food-colored toothpaste-ish ooze to the texture of chilled, unset cement. The cookies were brightly colored disaster-blobs. But I can’t remember ever laughing so hard, tears running down our cheeks. And when my mother died, in 2000, the one thing I wanted was her cookie press.

The right-wing press was really hard on Joe Biden’s interview with Colbert, but it went down well at our house, where we are leaning heavily, in 2020, on hope. It reminded me of Maya Angelou’s poem:

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.