How clean are our beaches?

Here's an alert/announcement that may be of interest to those who follow the North Woods Call:

MEDIA ADVISORY & DAYBOOK ITEM FOR WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2013.

CONTACT: Josh Mogerman, Natural Resources Defense Council, 312-651-7909, jmogerman@nrdc.org
Gregg Smith, Lawton Gallagher Group, 231-883-9913, gsmith@lggroup.us

How Clean Are Great Lakes Beaches?

Are Great Lakes beacgoers swimming in dangerous pollution? Find out when the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) releases its annual beach water report, "Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches," on Wednesday, June 26, in Traverse City in collaboration with the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.

For over 20 years, NRDC has combed through state and federal records to ascertain how clean the nation's beaches really are. This year's "Testing the Waters" report will reveal which beaches across the country have pollution problems, and which tested clean. NRDC Senior Water Policy Analyst Karen Hobbs will be joined by an array of voices to outline data for Michigan and surrounding states, and talk about solutions to water quality issues have plagued the region, with particular attention to issues of invasive species, climate, and lake levels.

WHO:
* Karen Hobbs, NRDC
* State Representative Wayne Schmidt
* Mike Busley, Grand Traverse Pie Company
* Matt Gacioch, Short's Brewing Company
* Russell Springsteen, Right Brain Brewery

WHEN:
10: a.m., Wednesday, June 26

WHERE:
Sunset Park (between the Great Lakes Maritime Academy and Holiday Inn)
651 East Front Street
Traverse City, Michigan

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 1.4 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world's natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Livingston, Montana, and Bejing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.

Natural Resources Defense Council

www.nrdc.org

We must protect our natural resources for our health and future generations. Join me and take action today.

Last call for Shep & Mary Lou

By Mike VanBuren
From the late June 2013 edition of The North Woods Call

    The stacks of loose paper, piles of books and racks of charred smoking pipes that defined Glen Sheppard’s basement office are gone now.  The well-used ceiling maps have disappeared and the built-in gun cabinet is empty.

     Only a couple of steel file cabinets and the legendary conservation writer’s laminate-topped desk remain—and they’ll soon be hauled away.

     Nearby, at the opposite end of the basement, Shep’s fly-tying paraphernalia, fishing reels and extensive collection of tools have been cleared from the wooden work benches. Only a few stray items are left to remind us of the many years he inhabited this space as an avid outdoorsman and longtime publisher of The North Woods Call.

     Up a narrow spiral staircase on the main floor of the Turkey Run home south of Charlevoix, Michigan, the rooms have been emptied in preparation for a series of estate sales in the large garage and nearby pole barn outside, which are now stuffed with a lifetime of memories.  Furniture, outdoor clothing, fishing and camping gear, inflatable boats, hand and power tools, assorted household items, several prints by wildlife artist Jim Foote and a large collection of cribbage boards—some of which Shep made himself—are on display, along with numerous other personal items that are available for purchase.

     My wife and I are here to load and carry away 40-plus years of unbound newspaper archives that are stored in boxes, plastic bags and random stacks in Shep’s basement, as well as in the still-cluttered upstairs office once belonging to his wife and business partner, Mary Lou.

     The former business office is located just inside the back door, a few feet from the now barren kitchen dining area where Shep once held court for governors, Michigan Department of Natural Resources officials and field staff, fellow journalists and assorted other visitors—including yours truly—who made regular pilgrimages to the wooded drumlin on which the Sheppard home sits.

   Mary Lou kept track of the books, circulation figures, advertising, phone calls and most everything else with which Shep did not want to be troubled—including Shep himself—while he did the reporting and writing.

     The feisty scribe passed away in January 2011 at the age of 74 and Mary Lou followed not long after in late December 2012.  Many conservationists have called it “the end of an era.”

     So this is a somewhat wistful and reflective day for those of us who are walking in their rather large footprints. Yet the sad and decidedly dark cloud that hangs over the reason for our being here is brightened by the general cheerfulness of Mary Lou’s daughter, Jackie Anderson, who has the unenviable task of cleaning everything out and organizing the estate sales.  One sale was held a few weeks ago, while the second is occurring today.

     Anderson says she expects to hold at least one more sale—maybe more—before she is finished clearing things out and puts the house and accompanying 11-acres on the market. 

     It’s a grim task and nature is already reclaiming Mary Lou’s once-immaculate flower and vegetable gardens.  Two picturesque wooden swings where the couple reportedly sat to enjoy their outdoor Shangri-la are hanging overgrown and unused.

     But Shep would likely scoff at any latent sentimentality. “He lived, he died and he’s gone” is the only epitaph needed, he once told a friend, and he insisted on no memorial service to celebrate his life and times.  The same is apparently true for Mary Lou.

     Both were cremated upon their deaths and their ashes scattered in locations meaningful to them.  A bit of Shep resides for posterity in the woods surrounding his former home, according to Anderson, and the rest will likely be placed soon in the “Holy Waters” of the Au Sable River, a place dear to the hearts of both Shep and his father.

     Mary Lou, on the other hand, loved to travel and requested that family members take her ashes along on trips, leaving portions  behind at various special locations.  Her wishes have already been carried out in Hawaii, Ireland and the United States, Anderson said, and there are more of her remains waiting to be scattered whenever other family members feed their wanderlust.

     As for my wife and I, we elect to honor their memories by visiting one of their favorite restaurants—The Front Porch in nearby Ellsworth—where in later years Shep and Mary Lou are said to have eaten lunch nearly every day.  I was here with Mary Lou  twice myself after she sold me The Call.

     As the nonprofit ministry of a local church, the small eatery will provide just the kind of nourishment we need on a day like today, when we say our final goodbyes to these tenacious friends and defenders of the north country.   

Mothers' Day lessons

By Mike VanBuren
From the early June 2013 edition of The North Woods Call

    Last month’s Mothers’ Day celebration at our house was blessed with a magnificent display of nature’s beauty.
    In addition to the majesty radiated by women who have fulfilled the duties of motherhood with great honor, selflessness and dedication, we were reminded of God’s own glory by a colorful display of birds at the feeders in our back yard.
     There were bright-red cardinals, sunny yellow goldfinches, red-bellied and hairy woodpeckers, blue-gray nuthatches and two pairs of rose-breasted grosbeaks—all at the same time—among assorted other avian critters.
      Not bad for a collection of hanging feeders that for one reason or another have been largely bereft of life over the past winter.
      Such gracious exhibits of outdoor wonder always cause me to pause and consider the architect behind this resource-rich planet on which we live.  There is such incredible artistry, mathematical precision and divine order behind  all that we euphemistically call “Mother Nature.”
     And some would have us believe that it is all the result of random happenstance.
     The Christian holy book, however, instructs otherwise: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:20).”
   Every man and woman, of course, is free to choose whether to accept that instruction, but individual refusal to believe something doesn’t make it any less universally true.  I, for one, don’t entirely understand how so many of my fellow sojourners can miss something so obvious, but I know that many do.
     How can one not be humbled by the supernatural bounty that we see all around us—not only in the awesome appearance of winged creatures, but in all the richly diverse living things that populate the natural world?   The microscopic complexity of a single cell is in-and-of-itself enough to cause me to embrace intelligent design and reflect upon its meaning.
     But the purpose here is not to debate theology—or even reality—but simply to express appreciation for all that we have been given by our earthly mothers  and beyond.
     Fathers’s Day will be here soon, and with it yet another opportunity to count the blessings that emanate from caring parents and a loving home.  Far too many children these days grow up without the safety, support and encouragement that an intact family provides.  And for that we’re all the poorer.
      I assume that the colorful birds I see at our back-yard feeder do not contemplate such weighty issues.  Their lives and personal responsibilities are hard-wired into them to be carried out without much argument.
      But men and women have been given a choice—to internalize the truths and lessons so loudly proclaimed by the natural world, or to ignore them at our peril.
      We have been allowed to use our creativity and intellect to solve many pressing problems and invent numerous life-improving devices.  For that we can be grateful.
      Yet, while we boast about these great achievements and celebrate the glory of our own minds, we are daily fouling our collective nest.  We are abusing our resources, polluting our spiritual lives, tearing apart the world’s social fabric, and crushing the God-inspired institutions that have given structure and purpose to the human experience.
      Looking beyond the sunflower seeds, cracked corn and suet that hangs outside our windows and nourishes our feathered visitors, I’m not sure the choices we are making are the right ones.
     Are you?