WobblyReport

Riding a motorcycle in Northern Michigan during the month of November is neither for the ill-prepared nor the faint of heart. A body must be prepared both for an initial shock and, depending on circumstances, an endurance challenge. A blast of 60-mile-an-hour cold wind, its chilly tendrils reaching into any part of a rider’s outfit that isn’t airtight, testing the layers underneath, tends to cause one’s face, neck and shoulders to tense up. Full-face helmets are the best remedy but I haven’t yet replaced one I left in the Pacific Northwest in 2008. On a solo mission in early October this year, the cold crept up and took me by surprise. Attending a meeting in the southeast of our coverage area led to a return ride to home base after dark on one of the first nights the temperature sank below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). Consistent, unseasonably warm temperatures in the days and nights just prior had lulled me into overconfidence and I was without gloves. Between pockets...

Readers and longtime subscribers have been critical of a few of our recent editorial decisions at the papers I edit and related social media posts have generated heated discussion. So, I thought it would be a good time to give everyone a look under the hood and describe how we decide what to put in the newspaper. Our first priority is to report as much as we can by traveling around the area, taking photographs and talking with people. We are primarily a team of two persons in this regard, covering three rural northeast lower Michigan counties, with a couple of regular, freelance contributors assisting. We rely on invitations, community buzz and personal interest in deciding what to attend. Our next priority is to solicit and curate community contributions and press releases. When coaches and parents of student athletes send us photographs and gameplay details, we take pains to include them. We also work in collaboration with coaches and parents to develop stories from a combination o...

The Immigration Act of 1918, also known as the Alien Anarchists Exclusion Act of 1918, was signed into U.S. law by President Woodrow Wilson on October 16, 1918. It expanded upon the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 to further target anarchists, anti-war protesters and members of radical labor unions. The 1903 law had come in response to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The assassin, Leon Frank Czolgosz, was a 28-year-old born in Detroit to a Polish-American family. Colgocz moved with his family to Alpena in 1880 and to Posen in 1883. He began his working life in a Pennsylvania glass factory at the age of 16. At 17 he found work at Cleveland Rolling Mill Company in Ohio. He worked there through an economic crash and labor strikes in 1893 and more violent strikes in 1898, before going to live as a recluse on a farm his father had bought in Warrensville, Ohio. President McKinley himself was born and raised in Ohio to English and Scots-Irish parents, whose famili...

I tagged along with circa 240 5th graders this week on a farm and forest educational event hosted through a joint effort by a county conservation district, local U.S. Forest Service staff, farmers and other volunteers. Here I am 10 minutes before I found the farm.

The recent preemption and television broadcast restoration of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC should remind us to be clear-headed about our right to free speech in the United States of America in 2025, and in which sorts of media free speech is even possible. As Hamline University political science professor and author David Schultz observed, both Kimmel’s brief suspension and the imminent cancelation of The Late Show on CBS with Stephen Colbert reveal first and foremost “the overwhelming grip of corporate, for-profit media on our public life.” Much of the reporting on Kimmel’s suspension completely omits mention of a $6.2 billion merger that ABC affiliate broadcaster Nexstar plans with Tegna — a merger which requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice. Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which revealed some of its own merger and acquisitions plans earlier this summer, announced Kimmel’s suspension on the stations they manage only hours ...

The prognosis was a natural clearing of the obstruction or, failing that, surgical intervention. The diagnosis, following an expensive computed tomography scan, was a small bowel obstruction caused by eating too many raw vegetables. I had overdosed on salad. The scan revealed a pinch-point in the small intestine caused by scar tissue resulting from a hernia operation almost two decades ago. Too much fibrous material can stop up at this point, causing any solid or liquid material taken orally to become a ticking time-bomb—what cannot go down, must come up. In effect, this meant periods of intense abdominal pain and regurgitation. It started a couple years ago. Ascertaining the cause was a relief, although the bill for 24 hours’ observation and the CT scan will take us a year to pay, at over $400 per month. We couldn’t afford insurance when my employer offered and were not eligible to enroll when my spouse found full-time employment last spring. We’ll be able to enroll in November and...

The events in New York City on September 11, 2001, separate what came before and all that has happened since in American society. The front page of the Heralds and Independent*  all described local residents as “stunned” by the tragedy, when several commercial airplanes were hijacked and crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, causing thousands of casualties. Many first responders valiantly sacrificed their own lives in attempts to rescue those still in the towers while they were still standing, before they both collapsed. Amid the confusion and before the dust had settled, politicians initiated the most significant restructuring of the federal government in modern history, while dubbing 9/11 Patriot Day. The changes were sudden, although the preparations had been long and deliberate. The social climate that helped usher in the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was one of unity and patriotism, but a unity and patriot...

This morning I utilized a generic, OS X native Epson driver to produce two copies of the document shown below with the FX-890 dot matrix printer shown above. 

Michigan’s Public Act 451 purports to require school to begin after Labor Day. Most Michigan schools do not. The law was a gift to the tourism industry lobby, passed by the state legislature in 2005. Educators were against it from the start, preferring local control. Exceptions within the law have allowed most schools that control. Current, local, prevailing wisdom on when to start the school year was not forthcoming last Friday afternoon, a few days before school started in Standish, Au Gres, West Branch and Mio and a few days after students’ first day in Fairview. Phones at administrative offices went to voicemail, sometimes without so much as a ring. The same went for the Michigan Association of School Boards. A representative of the Michigan Department of Education was careful to explain the department only issues waivers to districts that request them and that they do not analyze any resulting data. Off the record, he suggested collective bargaining contracts are influential i...

After Sunday’s 5k jog around the south side of Omer City, around noontime, my body was desperate to shed accumulated heat. The Rifle River Public Access provided opportunity to fully submerge. People preparing for or packing up after a float downriver were bustling around both sides of my vehicle as I returned. Using a towel, I changed into a pair of bottoms with pockets, dropped my key into one of them and locked the car doors, readying to head back down to the river for an extended cool-down. As the door swung shut and the alarm system chimed its activated status, I patted my front pocket and felt instant regret. There on the driver’s seat of the vehicle lay the key. Its friends, wallet and phone, sat in the passenger seat. As I voiced my dismay, the lot around me quickly cleared out and within minutes of the tragic blunder, I was quite alone, with nothing to do but start walking with extended thumb in the direction of the spare key, in West Branch. An Omer resident picked me up not ...

Running shorts On runs, sentences... July was a month of making up for lost training time. My log after 22 days showed more than 92 miles jogged. Here are brief reflections on some of those miles. Rifle River Recreation Area The temperature was close to 90 F (32 C) on July 5 for this jaunty two-miler through the hilly, difficult section of Rifle River Recreation Area’s trails, beginning from the parking area near Grousehaven Lake. The route is fully shaded and runs along several ridges, with the feel of a coastal trail. Two others hiked the route in the opposite direction to my own. The route is easily navigable. More loops, longer ones extending south that I explored last year, are accessible from the same parking area and trailhead. But those were for another day. The lake access was teeming with people relaxing, barbecuing and cooling off. Entry is free with a Recreation Passport, which is available as an opt-in on license plate renewal. Loud Creek Non-Motorized Trail Sys...

The petition to bring ranked choice voting to Michigan elections began circulating last week. Director Pat Zabawa reportedly logged his own signature as the campaign's first last Thursday. “One down, 446,197 to go,” said Zabawa. “Obviously, we have our work cut out for us: when we qualify for the ballot, it will have taken the biggest signature collection campaign in Michigan history. That might intimidate some campaigns, but it’s what this team is built for. We have thousands of volunteers who are very eager to win this with shoe leather and hard work. We’re now in the stage of the campaign where progress is measured in how much ink we put on paper and how many conversations we have with our friends and neighbors.” Conversations with our friends and neighbors indeed. Circulating petitions, and engaging with circulators when we encounter them in public, provide simple and direct opportunities to establish and reestablish community connections. Whether or not we agree or disagree...

Declaration of Independence TL;DR? Find a full transcription of the original Declaration of Independence here . Read on for a modernized and distilled version. Sometimes people reject an established political authority that they had for a time in the majority agreed to follow. Here’s why we did. Obviously human beings are created equal, inheriting unalienable rights, among them Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. People institute governments to secure those rights and produce the best chances for Safety and Happiness. Government power starts and ends with the consent of the people. If government fails in these regards, it is the Right of the People to change or abolish it and institute new forms of government. Prudence dictates that we not change or abolish long-established governments for slight or short-lived causes. Plus, people are naturally averse to change. But when a long train of abuses clearly aims to impose tyrannous rule, people have both the right and the dut...

Multiple petition drives gearing up in the Mitten Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers (est. 1850) has been busy throughout late spring reviewing numerous petition proposals that state residents are likely to see when we are out and about in public this summer. Here are a few of the petition drives being reviewed and my views on their substance. RANK MI VOTE Summary: Constitutional amendment to guarantee voters in Michigan the right to: rank candidates in order of preference in most federal, state, and certain local elections; require that candidates for major offices receive a majority of votes to be elected; receive timely notice of changes to polling places or voting procedures; cast a ballot if in line at the time polls close; use secure and accessible paper ballots in all elections, preserved for certification, recounts, and audits; vote for eligible write-in candidates not listed on the ballot; participate in primary elections held at least 140 days before the general election....

The shoestring-budget defenses around the kitchen garden off the side of the house are less than totally effective against deer. Plastic fenceposts and mesh survived the winter and are holding up better than expected, with lengths of twine fixed to nearby tree limbs and light, metal stakes in the ground for reinforcement. Protected from human predation within city limits through various ordinances and common sense, North American deer become remarkably emboldened. People are warned against treating them as nonhuman companions and videos from rutting season corroborate. So despite additions of bamboo poles, fishing line and strips of plastic for visibility, they have yet made incursions into the kitchen garden and trampled or eaten young plants. Additional defense measures will be necessary. We haven’t observed them in the act. Motion-activated, outdoor cameras have become more affordable but the information collected may not be worth the sensation that comes with seeing hard work de...

Live musical performances are a very special variety of social gathering. People come together around beats and melodies, participating as players, dancers, spectators and listeners. These events can be a great exhalation, a release of massive, pent-up energies deriving from the experiences of all those present. Having attended many musical performance events in a wide variety of roles—including but not limited to light and sound technician, performer, dancer, listener and reveller—when they involve a lot of fun-loving people and competent show-running, they are far and away my favorite social environment. Other types of gatherings seldom match the intensity of sensory stimulation alone. But that’s only a surface-level difference. Beneath high decibels and flashing lights and before crowds assemble, mingling heat and breath, people prepared a venue while others waited and talked in lines outside, some casual and others almost visibly vibrating in anticipation. Before that, artists p...

Michigan consistently has ranked at or near the bottom of U.S. states in government transparency and accountability for over a decade. Journalists and government watchdogs have been sounding alarms while statutory remedies have stalled in legislative limbo or faded entirely from view. Two policy reforms would go a long way: banning legislators receiving gifts from lobbyists and ending the total exemption from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests currently enjoyed by the office of the Governor of the State of Michigan and by members of the Michigan State Legislature. Given the incentives at play, Michigan residents cannot rely on representatives to enact the necessary reforms. In a response to an investigation published by the Detroit News in 2024 that revealed Lansing politicians receiving gifts from lobbyists unchecked, retired litigator Bob LaBrant said a ballot measure through a citizen-initiated petition drive may be Michigan residents’ only hope. “The December 2024 lame...

Toward the end of the 19th century, the United States of America was home to many working people’s organizations. Two such organizations, the Knights of Labor and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (later known as the American Federation of Labor), have competing stories from 1882 about one of their chapters proposing that the first Monday of September each year be observed as Labor Day. Great battles for the eight-hour workday began two years later. The FOTLU held their national convention in Chicago and declared that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886.” They planned and coordinated a series of demonstrations and labor strikes in order to win their demand. On May 1, 1886, an estimated 300,000 workers across the nation went on strike, affecting more than 13,000 businesses. The population of the United States at that time was between 50 and 60 million. In Chicago, where initially an estimated 40,000 workers went on strike,...

A run for the trees On runs, sentences... Half an hour was not a winning time in last week’s Happy Little Trees 5k race but it was good enough to place in the top 15% of finishers who had reported results as of Monday morning. Late reports are likely to be added—28% more results were submitted in 2024. The nearest meet-up for the event was on Earth Day in Bay City State Park. Unfortunately, Earth Day fell on a production day at the newspaper this year. Fortunately, the race could be completed anywhere outdoors between Earth Day and the weekend of Arbor Day, which fell on a Friday. Registration fees support invasive forest pest control as well as tree planting, care and maintenance. Presumably they also support the purchase of race kit contents, which comprised a racing bib, tee shirt, sticker and finish medal. Friday afternoon the weather was close to ideal for a run, after a bitterly cold start to April that made training more challenging. Some runners in humid-continental climate z...

Security and stability of one’s shelter is a fluid situation, as so many Midwest residents were reminded this spring. But three months before the 2025 ice storm, in late January, nonprofit workers and volunteers in the Midwest and across the nation made efforts to contact and count people living without stable and secure housing. Known as the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count and coordinated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the goal is “a count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January.” “It’s basically like the homeless census,” said Chad Lytle, Northeast Michigan Community Service Agency (NEMCSA) Street Outreach Director. Lytle coordinates homeless prevention in Crawford, Iosco, Ogemaw, Oscoda and Roscommon counties. “During that time, we're counting those who are literally homeless,” he said. “Literally homeless has a little tighter definition than people might think.” The federal government’s definition is simple ...