Down The Drain; More Thoughts On Less Water

The water the first week of January 2013, has dropped even further.

Extremely low water this fall on Michigan's Upper Peninsula

As you've read in previous posts,  my family has been spending summers on Michigan's UP for generations. But only once in all those years has the water level of the "middle" Great Lakes, Huron and Michigan, approached the frighteningly low levels it has reached today. Joined at the Straits of Mackinac, these lakes, along with Canada's Georgian Bay, are one system. There a number of factors responsible for what's been happening. We have been experiencing several years of lighter than normal precipitation in the upper MId-West. The Mississippi River has been in the news recently for the same reasons. In addition, we've had a period of milder than normal winters, which allow greater than usual evaporation from the lakes. When the lakes freeze over, the evaporative process shuts down, when they don't, the dry winter air takes it's toll, sucking moisture out of the lakes which falls, down wind, as "lake effect" snow. Interestingly, the water levels of Lakes Superior, Erie and Ontario are mandated by treaties with Canada to be kept within certain parameters to ensure international trade is not deleteriously effected. These three lakes also have engineered controls in place enabling management of the water levels (read "dams & locks") 

Unsurprisingly, the biggest impact on the increasingly lower water in Lakes Michigan and Huron appears to be of man- made origin. Within the past three decades, the St. Clair River which leads from the bottom of Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair and which is the main egress point for the water of the middle lakes, has been over-dredged, in a misguided effort to allow ever larger ocean-going shipping traffic to enter Lake Huron. This has allowed hundreds of millions of acre feet of fresh water to drain out, through Erie, Ontario, the St. Lawrence finally to the Atlantic. For those of us who've been  watching this happen, hoping it was a natural cycle that would soon reverse itself, it has become painfully clear that it won't. Not without help from the federal government and that of Canada.

I've started a petition on the Obama administration's web site, "WE THE PEOPLE" to get the issue to his desk. Even if you have no vested interest in the region, please take a moment to sign the petition and spread the word. We need 25,000 signatures before January 10, 2013.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/take-action-canada-implement-water-level-controls-lakes-huron-michigan-st-clair-river/JTN8zVM5

The Straight and Narrow

  

Returning after an inexcusably long absence, we've had a busy autumn, and I am gob-smacked to realize that Thanksgiving is less than a week away. As an update to my previous post, I'm pleased to report that I'm down more than 20 lbs. My lifestyle changes seem to be working as planned. The portion control and daily exercise have not only kick started weight loss, but seem to be providing an attitude boost as well. One concern I have, as we all look the holidays squarely in the eye, is if I'll be thrown off track by the rich food and increased entertaining. Our oldest son returns from college next Wednesday, and he has the biggest appetite in the family. Not to mention that we're hosting 12 or 14 for Thanksgiving and so will have ice boxes groaning with left-overs. I'm hoping my will power doesn't desert me, and that I stay on the straight and increasingly narrow.

  

My Come To Jesus

Having recently turned the big 5-0 , I've noticed a common thread amongst all of my old friends who have also walked the coals this year. Turning fifty seems to be much like a New Year's resolution writ large, like a January freighted with more meaning, because this time the month won't swing back around, the last chance, perhaps, for a new beginning. For me, many of life's chapters can be summarized by what vices I've given up, thankfully the more pernicious of them fell by the wayside early on. I remember giving up the occasional use of marijuana when my oldest child was born.  I dropped cigarettes when I was 39. 

What I came to realize this year was that if I didn't make a lifestyle change that would get my weight under control now, I would continue the inexorable march to the portly department at Brooks Brothers. And that my bad back was just going to get worse. It's somehow odd that the friends we make in life are often of similar build or have similar traits-'birds of the feather..', if you will, so more than one old friend has been grappling with this same issue. Maybe it goes hand in hand with the seemingly ubiquitous convertible in the garage? 

What I've come to understand about human behavior regarding diets is that they're much like gym memberships purchased in January-destined to fail. So I've begun an effort to keep track of what I'm eating and more importantly, how much I'm eating. My diet has historically been healthy, though too heavy on red meats. It's really always been more of a quantity issue, not a quality issue. A trainer I work with told me about a great app for iPhone and iPad called MyFitnessPal, which makes keeping a diary of caloric intake and daily exercise quite easy. The beauty of the app is that you can enter your starting weight(quel horreur!), a target weight and a duration over which you want to reach the target. My target is 200lbs, my old fighting trim, and a duration of one year, the rest I'll leave to your imagination. In order to reach my goal, MyFitnessPal says I need to keep my calories under 2200/day, I've keeping them at about 2000, and have dropped about 8lbs in 3 weeks. It turns keeping track of your caloric intake into a game, much like trying to eek out the greatest mileage when driving a hybrid.

In addition to the epiphany that I can no longer eat what or as much as I like, it occurred to me that my thrice weekly strength training and stretching regimen wasn't cutting it. I needed to up the aerobic exercise in order to ramp up my metabolism. So I've started walking- a lot- I try to walk at least three miles each day, my preferred route is 4.3 miles with a killer hill at about the half way point. The beauty is that walking makes an amazing difference in the amount of back pain I've been suffering, and I'm losing weight at a faster pace-a win-win.

All of this has been playing out in the context of our oldest leaving for college, so there was already 

a change in the daily patterns of our household and family greater than just my new outlook on life.

Full Circle

Mom during her 'wooden spoon' years

I've just returned from several weeks vacation with my family, a portion of which was spent with my mother. It was interesting spending time with her, she and I are much alike, and find each other easy company. When I was younger and living in her home, she was somewhat fastidious and always a bit of task-master, the 'bad cop' to my father's 'good cop'. I always attributed my quasi-OCD behavior to being her son. The revelation I had this summer was that as she's aged she has become an entirely different person. No surprise, really, it's been thirty years since I lived under her roof. My image is an out of date snapshot of her in her forties. Now that I'm 50 and she's nearing her eighth decade, I've begun to notice that in some ways she, herself, needs a bit of guidance, gentle reminders now and then. The truth is, I see our roles somehow reversing themselves; the child as parent and vice versa. Partly, this was due to her spending ten days as a guest in our home (what is it they say about fish and house guests...). As I mentioned, like the younger her, I'm on the obsessive-compulsive side-a monster of her own creation, if you will. I was either reminding her to clean up after herself in the kitchen, or quietly in disbelief that she was as messy as my two teenage sons. When I was their age, she ran a tight ship, large wooden kitchen spoon in hand to aid in direction and enforcement. (Some other childhood friends shared membership in the 'wooden spoon club') I'm beginning to understand the label 'sandwich generation', we've got kids that aren't entirely out of the house, and parents that are beginning to warrant almost as much concern. Of course she won't be around forever, so what's a few dirty dishes and crumbs on the counter?

The Boarding House Reach

Fresh cut flowers from this summer's intern, Rachael Bentley

Each summer, for the past four, at least, my wife has had interns from her company come and stay with our family. Usually these are the children of old friends or family, who through the nepotism common in such situations, have finagled a paid summer gig at her company. Being parents to two boys, my wife and I have welcomed the opportunity to have these interns,  exclusively girls, it's been an opportunity to have nieces, cousins, and the loveliest of our good friends' progeny for an extended six week visit. Perhaps it's been even better than having daughters of our own, at the very least it's given our male-centric family a welcome change of dynamic. 

We have a big , old house, which seems to have been built for more than a family of four, and it positively hums for the duration of these internships. Dinners seem 'Walton-esque', and left-overs are scarce, or packed for lunch at the office the next day. I've always been a little envious of larger families,  these stints in the summer are a bit like having the big family, only without the tuition bills... Of course there's the cut-flowers and the baking, which are such a welcome and pleasant surprise, and our sons' friends seem to linger even longer when these girls are around. 

I'm already beginning to wonder who's going to come next summer.

The Long Goodbye

 My wife and I were fortunate to spend a lovely week with some dear friends at their family retreat outside Livingston, Montana. It had been many years, since a college aged NOLS course, that I'd spent any time in this part of the world. I had forgotten how breathtakingly beautiful it is, how alive one feels when hiking through the mountains, or floating down a river, still a bit swollen from snowmelt, fly rod in hand. The climate in the Absaroka's this time of year was refreshing, overnight lows in the 30's and daytime highs in the 80's. The lupines and poppies were just beginning to bloom, it was just about perfect. 

 The only thing to mar this idyllic vacation was the fact that our friend and his sibling were in the process of selling this remarkable slice of heaven. As I've remarked upon before, joint ownership of this sort of family vacation home proves very challenging. So our week was bittersweet by association, colored by second thoughts and recriminations. Emotions run high when dealing with real estate and even higher with family.

 Despite this narrative playing out in the background, the four of us had a fabulous week, and I'm a little disappointed to be back in the humidity and 'closeness' of the East.

Grain elevator, Livingston, MT

The West Boulder Creek

Fishing the Stillwater

A  view that will not soon be forgotten.

The Beginning Of The End

Well, after one high school graduation ceremony, and one college orientation, summer is in full swing. My boys are already complaining that their internships are starting on Monday, after only one week of 'true' vacation, if there is a silver lining (in addition to the fact of their actually having paid internships), it's that their lovely cousin has arrived to stay with us for six weeks, as she is interning as well. Somehow, summer has become something slightly less idyllic, less relaxed, no longer seemingly endless. Jam-packed and abbreviated by early college move-in dates, month-plus long internships, the only solace, truly, is a change of venue from the usual school-work year. There is almost more joy in the planning than the execution, as one old friend is famous for saying each Memorial Day..."summer's almost over".

Where I long to be.

The Reawakening

Apologies for the pregnant pause between posts. I've just returned from a long Memorial Day weekend to open our family's summer house. For generations my family has been making the long trek to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to take in the cool air, sylvan north woods and sheltered waters of the Les Cheneaux Islands. My great grandparents began visiting family friends in the 1920's and bought a cottage in the early 30's. For them, it was an escape from the muggy Ohio River valley of Cincinnati. 

For anyone who's shared the tradition of a family summer house, they know that these places are more 'home' than any place they might spend the other nine plus months of the year. Each of these places holds a rich tapestry of memories shared in common among siblings, cousins and generations. Every bedroom might be named, 'the indian room', 'uncle Louie's room', and so on and if not for the oral histories passed down through generations, uncle Louie's identity might be lost to the mists of time. 

So for me, Memorial Day is a time not just to reflect on the sacrifices of those who spilled their blood to ensure our national freedoms, but also to meditate on the rich tradition which I've been privileged to enjoy. As the cottage reawakens from it's winter long dormancy, so do all the memories of parents and family, some long gone.
Each generation inevitably faces a watershed moment when siblings and or cousins part ways, joint ownership can and often does prove nettlesome. When my father passed away nearly 20 years ago, my mother, not an avid boater, decided to acquire a mainland residence so as not to be island-bound at the old family cottage. Just a couple of years ago, my wife and I secured a full interest in my mother's place and were able to renovate. The house, not freighted with the same degree of aforementioned memories and history, allowed us a free hand to take things in a fresh direction. I think the reawakening was a wonderful one, hopefully it too will last for generations.

Move Over, Andy Goldsworthy

I've always been fascinated by the work of artists like Andy Goldsworthy, Jim Denevan and also Christo, though his pieces are less naturalistic and more monumental. I came across the this spread on the work of French artist Sylvain Meyer which I find quite inspiring.

via Colossal and ruines humaine

Rainin' Spain

I'm seeing a lot of Spanish design these days that very much appeals to me, and there seems to be a growing number of good Spanish design blogs as well. One that I follow on a regular basis is Desde My Ventana, which always seems to have rich content. I found this interesting Spanish farmhouse on Interiors.

via Interiors

The Rebirth Of Cool

For most of my adult life, the city of Beirut, indeed much of Lebanon was a war torn, bomb pocked shadow of it's former, glamourous self. Beirut was, at one time the Monte Carlo of the eastern Mediterranean. The city and much of Lebanon has undergone a renaissance and has recaptured the zeitgeist of earlier times. Take a look at May Douak's breathtaking 19th century villa, photographed for Architectural Digest.

 via From The Right Bank

In Her Cups

Last weekend was Alumni Weekend at our kids' school. Not being alums ourselves, we ordinarily don't think much of it, but something in the weekly newsletter caught my wife's eye. There was going to be a talk by an alumnae, an artist, who'd somehow gotten onto Wendy's radar screen. We decided to head down to Germantown Friends last Saturday to hear Gwyneth Leech talk about her current project, a wonderful, whimsical and serendipitous collection of hand painted paper coffee cups. Until recently the ever-growing cup project was displayed in the prow of the Flatiron Building at the junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. She'd gotten a terrific write-up in the NY Times. Like many of the alums of GFS that I've known, (my mother and uncle among them) Gwyneth was warm, gracious and articulate as she fleshed out her CV for the audience, and gave us the background on her cup project and a fascinating church restoration in Scotland.

Gwyneth Leech in the 'prow' of the Flatiron Building

What I'm Listening To Now

Continuing the small world and Spanish theme from the previous post, if you haven't checked out the band 'I'm From Barcelona', actually a Swedish collective, your missing something sweet...

check out Treehouse by I'm From Barcelona

Iberian Stunner

The internet is really an extraordinary thing. It has made the world a very small place in a way no other technological advancement has before. I stumbled upon the absolutely amazing Russian design blog, Nicety which featured amazing homes and apartments from around the world. This beauty is from Spain.