Jobs OR Housing? – That Makes No Sense

 

About a month ago, a letter to the editor of the Leelanau Enterprise observed that the “Share the Bay” signs were a clever ploy on the part of the developer’s publicity campaign for the RV park/campground. I checked with Rachel Dean, the person I was pretty sure had come up with the slogan herself, in hopes she would write to the Enterprise to correct the wrong assumption, but she was simply amused that her idea had been taken -- mistaken, that is – as part of a commercial publicity campaign. 

 

The facts are these: Rachel came up with the slogan, ordered the signs, paid for them herself, and everyone who took a sign reimbursed her for it. It was a totally local, grassroots movement. 

 

Did the letter-writer make a “reasonable assumption”? That’s what he said in his defense when I stopped him on the sidewalk to give him the scoop, because I don’t like “misinformation” circulating in our community. Community, in fact, is the key issue as he sees it, and he finds the slogan, on the other side of the “Share the Bay” signs, “Build our community,” to be a wrongful use of the term. He says community means people who put down roots and commit to a place, not “transients” (his word). 

 

In the course of our brief conversation, I learned that the letter-writer thinks affordable housing would be a better use of the property in question. He says we need affordable housing for (his examples) “firefighters and teachers.” Well, county firefighters are all volunteer: they have other jobs, or they don’t live here. As for teachers, we won’t need teachers much longer if the school keeps shrinking, as it will continue to do without other kinds of jobs.

 

What I see, from having lived and run a business here for 28 years and having spent many a long, cold winter here (working a variety of part-time jobs over the years to pay my winter bookstore bills) is that Leelanau County’s economy has always been seasonal. Agriculture and tourism: that’s the basic economy. Because of farming and summer people and tourists, we have schools and libraries and retail and other businesses. And summer people and tourists provide jobs by keeping businesses in business. Even year-round jobs exist because the seasonal economy carries so many businesses through the calendar year.

 

How long would Northport have a grocery store without “transients”? (That’s a peculiar term to apply to tourists, anyway, isn’t it? And where do “summer people” fit into the equation?) Omena’s post office would have disappeared long ago, had it not been for the old Solley’s bookstore, and believe me, bookstores in these little seasonal villages – Northport, Leland, Suttons Bay, Glen Arbor -- only survive because summer business is good to us!

 

(A former landlord of mine told me years ago, “The key to a seasonal business is to keep it seasonal.” Lately I have begun taking what I call “seasonal retirement,” and at my age I make no apologies for that. My two younger sisters and most of my friends are fully retired. I’m not. And, as I’ve already said, I have spent many winters right here and know whereof I speak.)

 

One of the keys to a viable local community, it seems to me, is understanding its basic economy. Yes, we do need year-round local housing for workers, seasonal and otherwise, but we also need the jobs that seasonal visitors bring. Affordable housing without jobs isn’t going to have many takers. A Habitat house in Cherry Home for a woman whose job was in Traverse City couldn’t hold her long. Financially, it doesn’t work.

 

Another key is listening to what local people say they need, rather than coming in from the outside to tell them what’s good for them. Many of the supporters for the RV park/campground remember the old Timber Shores campground because they worked there, and some of their children worked there. They remember how much positive impact the campground had on the community they’ve lived in for two or three generations. 

 

I live out in the township, not in the village, and I’ll be far away when winter comes, but my bookstore is now launched into its 29^th year, and I can’t imagine moving it out of Northport. This is my home. I would not want to cast a deciding vote on the RV park/campground issue, and I am as concerned as anyone else that it be properly run, if it happens, to prevent any negative consequences for Grand Traverse Bay. Trying to force a choice between jobs and housing, though? That’s a non-starter. 

 

And if the choice were. Between a campground and condos, I’d vote for the campground any day of the week.

Mom and Pop Show: Mom Shops for Things for the Dog

Pop: Okay, how much did you spend?

Mom: Never mind!

 

Pop: Right around forty-five dollars?

 

Mom: Right around there.

 

Pop: No, no “around there”! How much?

 

Mom: Fifty-four dollars.

 

Pop: Okay. I regard it as an investment.

 

Mom (astonished): You do?

 

Pop: Sure. Now he won’t have to chew all our things. 

 

(Mom thinks silently: Yeah, as long as we put our things out of his reach….)

Mom and Pop and the "Dog with Issues"

Pop to Mom [shaking his head]: You fall more in love with that dog every day.

Mom [with a helpless shrug]: Yes, I do.

Pop to dog: Peasy, where's your bear? Go get your bear! Bring me your bear! 

Mom and Pop and Their Undying Hearts' Desires

Pop: Okay, you got the dog you wanted, so now I get to have the Hayabusa I want. 

Mom (who isn't the world's fastest thinker) [PAUSE, then] No, you bought that Ford van you wanted, I got the dog, and now we're even, so if you get the Hayabusa, I get a horse, and your van can tow the horse trailer!

Pop: The Hayabusa will fit in the van. It won't need a trailer. 

Mom (silent but unconvinced)

Note: This debate has no end in sight.

Targets of Our Rage

I’ve been thinking recently about grief and about heartbreak and about how a heart does not break all at once, like a glass dropped on a hard tile floor, but over and over and over again. The breakage of a material object is a one-time event. (Okay, maybe you glue it back together and drop it again, but the events are still each singular.) An aching, breaking heart may stop hurting for a while, but new pangs can come unexpectedly, sharply, deeply, at any time. That was one thought. Another is how much anger can be generated by grievous heartbreak, anger which so often has nowhere to go. I might feel anger toward a late friend or relative who “didn’t take care of himself” and/or with whom a relationship had suffered and not been repaired, but if I allow myself to feel angry with the dead I feel guilt on top of grief and anger. So either I add guilt to grief or repress anger. At present I grieve and fear for the future of my country, and there is anger there, too. Third thought: What I’m thinking now is that the anger of fear and grief can be repressed but not done away with by repression, and that means anger – even rage -- can erupt (like the pangs of grief that come on unexpectedly) at any moment. And it WILL find a target. The target will not be appropriate to the feeling at all, but the feeling – justifying itself – cannot be stopped. And so these days we Americans are like blindfolded archers, shooting arrows of rage in all directions. And if that doesn’t grieve you, I don’t know what will.

If I wanted the expressway, I’d have taken the expressway!

Recently, when I went to log into my New York Times account (the basic, cheap one I signed up for last winter when far from home and ways to buy physical copies of the newspaper), I was urged to “Continue with Google,” “Continue with Facebook,” or “Continue with Apple.” No, thank you. I prefer to log directly into the account I pay for monthly. Why should I have to go first through one of those virtual expressways to get to my account? Ridiculous, annoying – and, to my way of thinking, suspicious.

 

I also subscribe to a daily book business newsletter called “Shelf Awareness,” and I can either read it as e-mail or click to read it in my browser. Then, for each article, there are further options: I can share through Facebook or Twitter or e-mail. Nice. But this morning when I chose the e-mail (to a friend) option, I was urged to go through Gmail. Again, no thank you. I prefer my own e-mail account through my own Michigan ISP. Why is that not good enough?

 

Not to mix metaphors here, but I feel as if I’m being railroaded – or, I should say, that attempts are being made to railroad me – onto giant virtual expressways that I have no desire to travel. I like my back roads. And while I value very much both the New York Times and “Shelf Awareness,” I’m disappointed that they seem to have bought into these railroading attempts. There must be something in it for them, but I fail to see what’s in it for me. 

 

Protests Then and Now

On this 50^th anniversary of tragic shootings on the campuses of Kent State University and Jackson State University, I can’t help thinking how different it might have been, and I’m not thinking, as I always have before, that those tragic events could have ended without fatalities. No, what I’m thinking now, in May 2020, is that the death count could have been much higher, had protestors in 1970 been armed with assault weapons, as were recent protestors this spring at the Michigan Capitol Building in Lansing. 

Think about it. Unarmed students at Kent State faced National Guardsmen armed for war. Those at Jackson State were met by 75 units of the Jackson Police Department and the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Shots fired in Mississippi lasted 30 seconds, killing two; in Ohio, four lay dead after only 13 seconds of shooting. 

Jackson State students had gathered to protest racism, a serious social issue for all Americans and a highly personal one to students at that historically black institution. The Kent State rally, originally organized to protest the war in Vietnam, became also a protest against the military occupation of their campus. It is true that some property damage had occurred in connection with both of these protests. But property damage – not violence against persons. 

Scenes from the recent Lansing protest showed angry white men, many carrying assault weapons, many not wearing the face masks most of us are wearing these days to protect ourselves and others from the contagion of coronavirus, and some carrying not protest signs at all but campaign signs. The angriest men got right up in the faces of masked police officers who were constrained from any kind of retaliation. Some of the legislators on the floor donned bullet-proof vests. 

No one was killed in Lansing, and that is a good thing. Maybe some think the protestors’ assault weapons protected them. I tend to give the credit to the forbearance of the law enforcement officers. 

If you think I’m wrong and if you believe that the assault weapons carried in Lansing are what prevented the eruption of fatal violence, how do you imagine events at Kent State and Jackson State would have played out if the protesting students had been armed? We’ll never know, will we? But I for one cannot imagine the Guardsmen and police sent to control the situations in May 1970 showing the restraint taken for granted by so-called “American Patriots” in Lansing on April 20, 2020, had they faced students with lethal weapons.