By Ken DeLaat
It’s Spring, right? I mean, these last couple of days with the snow (wet and heavy which augments my most consistent winter workout considerably) are just a bit of a last second gasp by a quickly expiring season right? Officially we’re about two weeks away as I write this but that’s only when it is “Official” as in equinoxically speaking. Spring begins when the weather turns and this small spate of snappish cold and snow is but a temporary aberration, right? Because seriously, all the signs are here. There have been rumors of robin sightings for days now and robins wouldn’t be wrong about such a thing being instinctively aware of when the ground is about to soften up and produce a few wormy repasts. Same as the loons and mergansers who have returned and have been putting away fish like the Lenten Friday crowds at St Bart’s and All Saints. Somewhere under the snow I just know there are croci ready to pop and the daffodils and tulips must surely be ready to poke their way through as well. As mentioned the ice is off the lake and while it isn’t perhaps yet time to have the dock and boat brought to the shores of N3 World Headquarters and Squirrel Suet Supplier, tidying up things and getting out the accoutrements so we’re at the ready for their arrival could certainly be on a not too distant chore list, right? Look, this chunk of chill we’re experiencing is a fluke. There’s no way winter hangs on much longer. And while it was just so pleasant to have Old Man Winter come by for his much too elongated stay, the visit has run its course. We’ve had all the fun we could possibly have with winter. I mean who doesn’t love bundling up and layering to a level that allows one to spend time outside during weather that in many circles is just unacceptable? But its on its last legs, right? And now enter Spring, ready to do its thing by tossing out those glorious first few warm days that remind us of why we live here, altering the landscape from black and white to full living color, and getting shed of the white stuff. We all like snow (goes the lie) but c’mon enough is enough. And don’t give me any stats about where this winter stands historically because I don’t give a rat’s behind if this winter was colder, warmer, snowier or less snowy than average. When I walk outside and my face hurts I could care less that the overall season is milder than most. But like I said, no worries. Why in fact the other day our good friend Todd Jacobs sent us a photo of one of the true signs that spring has arrived. I’m speaking of course of the shoe he stumbled upon near Luce. Generally this is where I launch into a time honored shtick about the mystery of the orphaned shoes, long a passion of mine and one pursued avidly often to the chagrin of traveling companions. Well, primarily my Lifetime Spousal Companion Lil who has patiently (on most occasions) listened as I pointed out such lost soles on our many trips. A venture south a few years ago produced nearly a half dozen within a short days drive each accompanied by the usual dialogue of “Look, all alone. Just sitting there. How did this come to be? Where did it arrive from and most importantly of all….. What does it mean?” As I mentioned, a woman of immeasurable patience. A patience that can be sorely tested when awoken from a small nap to have one of these forgotten footwear finds shared. But I digress. Combine the robins, the loons and their watery friends, the disappearance of the lake ice, the green revolution about to depose the reign of OMW and most off all ….? The shoe. Winter is clearly over and done. Right? By Peg Mathis
The following article was originally posted by Peg Mathis on her blog and copied on Near North now with her permission. http://pegmathis.com/ "Please know that these are my thoughts and do not represent the Newaygo Public School District, the Board of Education and/or any specific employee group. These are my thoughts and they have not been endorsed by anyone." School safety has been on the forefront of everyone’s mind both before and since the events of the last school shooting in Florida in February, 2018. Our country has become so divided that it appears almost impossible to have any civil discourse about gun control. So while the rest of the country is arguing about guns, let’s implement some ideas sooner rather than later. Give schools the proper support and resources to have at least one counselor and/or school social worker and/or behavioral specialist in every school building. We have kids in our schools that are hurting. We have kids in our schools that come from poverty. We have kids in our schools that have fractured families. Help us help them! Quit trying to cut corners on K-12 education spending and give us the funds to deal with the mental health issues in our schools. The main question I’m asked when I propose any solution like this is “How do we pay for it?” School employees are very frustrated with the amount of standardized testing, and let’s face it – standardized tests have a sole purpose of making schools look bad. The data from the tests doesn’t come back to us in a timely fashion. We aren’t allowed to see what is on the test, and/or students don’t know what questions they got wrong in a timely fashion. It has been a moving target for several years, and most educators know that this is by design and for political gain. This high stakes testing mania is wrong and it is hurting our kids. What we spend in Michigan on testing could be reallocated to help schools with paying for the support positions I mentioned earlier. I ran a google search (I know this is not very scientific) to try to determine M-Step costs. I found an article from 2015 that stated, “It’s expected that the state will pay about $103.7 million in a three year deal for M-Step.” At the risk of sounding too “social-media-ish,” let that sink in for a minute. We spend millions to “test” kids so people in Lansing and at the federal level can implement “accountability” measures. Does it really matter how kids do on a test if we aren’t given the proper resources to continue to keep them safe? Moreover, there is absolutely no correlation between performance on a test and future success in life. Don’t believe me? Ask any of our graduates who work in skilled trades, serve in the military, and/or attended college. No graduate is defined by a test score. Are we raising test-takers or good citizens who are mentally stable and can contribute in society? I know which one I prefer. School safety is a challenging issue. Some want to argue about guns and gun control. We know that parents do not raise perfect kids and these imperfect humans in our schools need social-emotional help as well as academic help. Policy-makers – please stop arguing and do something. Give schools the resources to help kids. If the excuse is there is no money to do so, then take some funds from the student assessment budget and reduce the high-stakes testing obsession. Perhaps I have offered too simple of solutions to complex problems. In fact, I know solutions need to be broad and address wide-ranging concerns. But at least I’ve offered something. It’s tiring listening to people offer solutions that have no idea what happens in schools. We need to help our kids! By Megan Wirts When my husband and I first started dating one of our favorite date night activities was mattress shopping. Yes, you read that right, mattress shopping. We never planned on purchasing one, we just liked to pretend we were going to. We would go around to different mattress stores and lay on all the beds. We would discuss in great depth pillowtop vs memory foam vs innerspring vs air bed vs waterbed with all the salespeople. Then, we would politely say that we needed to go home and sleep on it. I sometimes felt a little bad for the well-meaning salespeople working on commission, but all those years ago we were not in a position to buy a new mattress or spend a lot of money on a date night for that matter. If you don’t buy anything, mattress shopping is a fun and free date night activity. I also looked at it as good practice for the salespeople to hone their skills. In my eyes, we were all winning. Then, after we tried out all the beds we could find the expensive leather massage chairs and test those out for a while. Good times, good times. Our very first mattress that we shared together was a twin-size that came from my childhood trundle bed. It was thin, full of sharp springs, small and uncomfortable. But, it was free. It was the only thing we could afford and the only thing that would fit in our teeny tiny house we lived in before tiny houses were cool and a hipster fad. We could have slept on a dirt floor and we wouldn’t have cared at that time in our life. Oh, to be young again! We continued to sleep on that little twin-size mattress for at least another year or two. We finally upgraded to a full-size bed when we inherited one from a family member. Yes, another free bed. This time it felt like we won the lottery! No more springs digging into our backs, no more waking up with an elbow in your face. It felt so spacious! We slept on that full-size mattress through all of my pregnancies and my dear husband would literally hang off the side of the bed, because I took up all the room with my giant body pillow and giant belly. We would go mattress shopping at least once or twice a year, and at this point in our lives it was more than just having a fun and free date night, we had real dreams of being able to buy a big comfy king-size bed someday. We just couldn’t justify the cost when we had new babies, college to pay for and so much more on our plate. So, we kept that full-size bed and we would probably still have it, if we wouldn’t have lost it in a house fire. (That’s another story for another time.) After the house fire, it was finally time for a real new bed! We could go mattress shopping and ACTUALLY BUY A MATTRESS!! We knew exactly what we wanted from our previous mattress shopping date nights, and because I am frugal and a bit of a cheap skate, I didn’t want to spend all of our money on a bed. So, we went with an inexpensive, but brand new, innerspring, pillow top, king-size mattress. A KING-SIZE MATTRESS!! It was huge! HUGE! We could both lay on the bed and stretch out like a star fish and not even touch each other. It was so big my husband would text me to ask if I wanted to cuddle. This bed was the biggest bed we had ever slept on. It was amazing! Then, our kids realized that they could also fit on it. After that, our king-size mattress never felt smaller. When four people of various sizes are all smooshed together on one bed, you get knees in your back, feet in your face and elbows in your eye. Not to mention other people’s faces, with nasty morning breath, pressed up against yours. Oh, and then let’s get a big dog and add that to the mix, and how about a cat or two. It wasn’t fun and the only ones getting any sleep were the cats and the dog. After a few nights of that, our rule was that if they wanted to sleep in our room, they had to sleep on the floor. I never wanted to be a co-sleeping parent and I wasn’t about to start. Plus, it’s not cool when you wake up because you felt a warm liquid seep under your body and it didn’t come from you. Nope. No, thank you, that is not for me. If I’m going to wake up in a puddle of pee it better be my own, and that only happened one time when I was 15 years old. I thought I got up and walked to the bathroom. Instead, I walked around my room, sat back down on my bed that I thought was the toilet, and I woke up mid-pee. Oops. Once we got all the children and animals out of our bed, that mattress was great! Until, it wasn’t anymore. It became lumpy and bumpy and both of us would complain about our backs aching like two 80-year-old’s, except we were only in our 30’s. We finally decided it was time once again to buy a new bed. Which brings us to this past weekend, where we went to every single mattress store in a 30-mile radius. You guys, that’s A LOT of mattress stores. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY MATTRESS STORES?! If you do a Google search you will see that I am not the only one that asks this question. I found out through my search, that there are more mattress stores than there are Starbucks in the United States. With that many mattress stores, it can be kind of overwhelming. Even with this daunting task ahead of us, we were pretty excited about our mattress shopping date night adventure ahead of us. I didn’t want to go into this without a plan, so I mapped out all the stores, researched mattress reviews, store reviews and was determined to get us the best deal. I also knew that I wanted a memory foam mattress this time, but my husband was not convinced. He said they were too squishy and too hot. I reminded him that we hadn’t been out mattress shopping for a few years and I was sure his mind would be changed. Finally, after hours or shopping, laying on too many different mattresses to count and either being completely ignored or ambushed by salespeople, we made a decision. We decided that I was right, and we were going to get a memory foam mattress. Now, we just had to negotiate the price and get the best deal. Here’s a pro tip: everything is negotiable. Some of those salespeople will tell you that they are legally bound and cannot negotiate, that is absolutely not true. We went to a few different stores that were owned by the same retailer and some would say they couldn’t negotiate, while the others would say they could. You just need to be determined and find the right salesperson to work with. We walked out of every single store with a different price quote for the exact same bed, some were over $1000 more than the others. Eventually, after a long day of testing squishiness, bounce-ability and salespeople’s willingness to negotiate, we made a deal and bought ourselves a fancy new bed. We left feeling quite pleased with ourselves and anxiously awaited its delivery. Getting a new bed meant we needed to get rid of our old bed. What better way to do that than to post it for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Which has basically turned into the new Craigslist. The ad said, “King Size Ikea Bed Frame with King Size Mattress and Box spring: This bed is 7 years old and it is not perfect. The foot board was broken at one point and my husband fixed it with a 2x4 that you can see in the photo is not the same color as the bed frame. You can stain it to match if you so desire. Speaking of stains, the mattress definitely has some. We have children and a dog that liked to climb in our bed and let’s just say, they left their mark. We steam cleaned it as best as we could, but like I said it’s not perfect. However, it is better than sleeping on the floor, a bean bag or a pile of rocks. We need it gone by Tuesday.” Within an hour the bed was dismantled and on it’s way to it’s new home. Which meant we were sleeping on an air mattress until our new bed arrived. After sleeping on an air mattress, that has a hole in it and needs to be pumped up again halfway through the night, we have never been happier to sleep on a new mattress more in our entire lives. Now that we have our fancy new bed with an adjustable base because someone (not me) snores, we are sleeping better and feeling more rested. I’m not sure when we will go on another mattress shopping date night, but it’s more fun when you get to go home with a brand new, squishy (but not too squishy), firm (but not too firm) mattress. By Ken DeLaat
There will be no wowee in Maui, we ain’t departin’ for Sint Maarten, and the Keys is just a tease because as the Bob Dylan song goes “Get your mind off wintertime 'cos you ain’t goin’ nowhere.” This year for a variety of reasons we are Mitten bound. Not an altogether bad thing because this is truly a wondrous pair of peninsulas we have here. And it’s not like we haven’t stayed the winter in other years by choice or chance but somehow it’s decidedly different this year It wasn’t particularly disturbing to see the photos posted all over social media of friends and family basking in the sun, lolling on the beach and strolling about in shorts and tees while seemingly never ceasing to smile. And my TripAdvisor cyber penpals showing me where the top ten winter destinations are this year didn’t dampen by spirits to any great extent, though the beach cottage in Roatan was compelling enough to warrant further investigation (for curiosity's sake of course in case Lil is reading this). Even another year of living with the unrealized as yet dream of Ken’s Curacao Cafe produced barely a sliver of existential ennui. No, it was simply the high school baseball game video sent to me by my significantly older (though not as significantly as the other brother) brother. It was the type of Cabin Fever episode that had gone unexperienced for many years. I suddenly wanted, no needed, to see a game. Not on TV I mean a live, right in front of me, hot dog in hand, wearing shorts that reveal a pair of seriously pale legs, leaning on a fence, baseball game. It mattered not who would be playing it was the experience I craved. Once the benefits of an impulse driven spur of the moment departure (unlayered clothing, warm sun, beaches,a chlorine free swim or two, etc.) were weighed against a litany of considerable consequences that would surely result from such impetuous behavior, I was resigned It wasn’t going to work. I went outside (after layering up) and sat on the deck looking at the frozen lake. I recalled a few years ago….well, maybe 30 or so….while working in the Eastown section of Grand Rapids during late March, a time when a lengthy and snow filled winter determined to stay long past its welcome was crawling slowly to an end. Or so it was thought. Out of the blue another snowstorm hit and hit hard. Looking out the window of my office I noticed for the first time ever there existed a little travel agency across the street. With one more glance at the new snow collecting rapidly on old snow a visit was made. ‘A flight for 2 and a rental car by Friday for a week someplace warm ok?’ “Most flights have been booked for months.” ‘Figured that. Just see what you can do, please?’ It ended up being a small commuter jet with stops in Indianapolis, Nashville, Birmingham, Atlanta and finally Tampa.We drove to Clearwater found a hotel stayed a week and took the same commuter flight back. And we saw a ballgame. Not a lengthy trip and certainly not an economical trip but all in all a vitally necessary trip. And a lesson learned about seasonal survival. Admittedly after years of having some mid winter respite for a week or two there was confidence about going without just this once. A confidence that made no appearance the night when launching an extensive and nearly all-inclusive series of curses while shaking my fist upward at the falling snow seemed like an appropriate response after shoveling the same driveway for the fifth time. And I duly apologize to the folks who were leaving the house next door at just that moment. I would do it in person but I’ve noticed they haven’t been back since. Resignation and a little teaser of Spring these past few days have tempered the frost frayed emotions a bit. It won’t be long now and even Opening Day is but a month or so away But next year? Well, there’s this beach cottage in Roatan…. |
Letter to the Editor PolicyNear North Now welcomes original letters from readers on current topics of general interest. Simply fill out the form below. Letters submissions are limited to 300 words. Archives
March 2024
Categories |