Feb 27, 2017
Michigan has a wealth of famous — and forgotten — authors. My brother and I have profiled more than 20 of them in our Ink Trails series. Now we’re looking for more. We’ve put together a preliminary list. Who’s missing? Dorothy Maywood Bird Elizabeth Margaret Chandler Elizabeth Langworthy Connine Meindert DeJong Florench McClinchey Richard Ellman Roy Snell Constance Fenimore Woolson Richard...
Feb 21, 2017
Just as my brother and I have found a surprising wealth of talented writers in Michigan’s history, I’ve accumulated a list of current Michigan writers and poets of distinction. One of them is Alison Swan. Also a dogged advocate for protecting the place known as Saugatuck Dunes, Alison edited the award winning Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes. What caught my attention last week was Alison’s essay, now over 5 years old, on how she and husband David became leaders in the Saugatuck Dunes campaign, which continues. It’s one of the best accounts of citizen activism I’ve read. But all of Alison’s work meets a high standard. ...
Feb 18, 2017
Never, not in the worst times of any federal or state Administration opposed to strong environmental protection, have I seen anything like it. U.S. EPA yesterday issued a news release approvingly quoting special interests attacking EPA. The occasion was the “ascension” of Scott Pruitt to EPA Administrator on a 52-47 vote in the U.S. Senate. The news release is not only unbecoming of any agency’s chief, but also demonstrates that prevailing norms of professional conduct no longer exist in the front office of EPA — no more so than in other offices controlled by the current head of state. This is repugnant. Clean air, clean water and healthy people and ecosystems are part of the national interest. EPA does not belong to the factory farm lobby, polluting utilities and rapacious mining...
Feb 11, 2017
The twin news stories this week of state-permitted threats to two of Michigan’s iconic natural features, the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park and the Au Sable River, themselves raise twin questions. Why is the state sitting back, waiting for, and authorizing activities that jeopardize these two beauties? Isn’t it time for a state strategy to assure protection of Michigan’s natural crown jewels before they are put at risk? Obviously I say yes to the latter. My affirmative is based in part on state government’s own logic: that its Pure Michigan tourism brand is strongly identified with Michigan’s natural resources, especially water. Ergo, protecting the economy is more strongly linked with protecting those resources than with exploiting them. There are other reasons, including, as former Governor William Milliken once alluded, Michigan’s soul. A strategy would identify the jewels, inventory the threats, and develop means to prevent them — ranging from buying subsurface rights under state parks to prevent mining and oil exploration and development, to adopting policies against new leasing for development of sensitive areas, to buying and creating buffer zones. And much more. What are the jewels? The places that define and distinguish Michigan? That’s where the state should invite the public in. My list would begin with the Porkies and Au Sable, and also include Hartwick Pines (which the state did guard not long ago), the Warren Dunes and the Nordhouse Dunes. Give me a half hour and I’ll think of half a dozen more. What do you...
Feb 8, 2017
Via Michigan Public Radio comes the news that “the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has given the green light to an exploratory copper drilling project…in a one square mile area located on the western edge of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. ” This is a stunning development. According to MPR, the Department did not provide public notice of the proposed permit. But even sadder is the state’s lack of awareness of past attempts to exploit the park. In fact, it was born during World War II in a race against a logging company seeking to topple its magnificent forest. Ironically, during one of three subsequent attacks on the park’s integrity, outdoor writer Ben East wrote: “We in Michigan have grown firm in the belief that once an area is placed in the hands of the Conservation Commission, it is safe. To break that tradition would be the most serious mistake the Commission can make.” That’s still true. Just change “Conservation Commission” to “Michigan Department of Natural Resources.” Yes, the Department says, “any future mining would be by underground methods from land Highland Copper owns outside the park.” No one should be sanguine that this assures park protection. What follows is almost 2000 words, and almost 100 years, of history. Saving the Porcupines – Again and Again The “largest unbroken tract of virgin hardwood timber in the U.S,” according to a Department of Conservation description, the Porcupine Mountains area encompassed 130,000 acres in Gogebic and Ontonagon Counties on the shores of Lake Superior in the western Upper Peninsula. Although not towering by Appalachian or Rocky Mountain standards, the Porcupines ranged as...
