Leelanau Whippersnapper

I don’t post much on here about climate change.  It’s sort of a non-issue for me to write about.  I’m of the belief that we are royally fucking up our planet in a multitude of ways and even IF (and that’s a big IF) there is contradictory science out there about human impact on the environment it is by and large a moot point.  Humans have no right to simply ignore our impact on the planet and we have no right to continue our polluting ways of the past when there are very clear and easy ways to change our behavior for the better RIGHT NOW.  I found the picture below on one of the many blogs I read and wanted to re-post it here for you to look at.  Bottled water is such an easy commodity.  Lets look for a minute at it from a business perspective.  My company sells bottled water.  You can buy a case of 24 bottles for $5.50 or you can buy an individual bottle for $1.29 each at the checkout.  I have 2 profit options.  If I sell a case of it, I make a couple dollars in profit (I’m being non-specific because I don’t need to be specific to make the point).  I take that same case and break it into 24 individual bottles and sell them out of a cooler at the register.  I’ve amplified my profit over 10 times!  Now, rather than making $2.00 on a case, I’m making over $25.00 in profit selling them individually.  This is BIG business folks.  I pay next to nothing for a case of water and turn around and sell it to non-thinking consumers for a huge profit.  So my point is this, BUSINESS drives the bottled water industry.  If people were not willing to pay for bottled water, we wouldn’t sell it.  It’s as simple as that.  Keeping that in mind, I like my business but I also like my planet.  How about re-filling your bottle with tap water the next time you get thirsty.  I bought a case of bottled water in May this year and I’m still using and re-using the bottles.  I’ve not purchased a bottle of water since… I don’t have to since I can get it out of the tap FOR FREE!

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I got a kick out of this photo:

This is the new green revolution in the US.  I get a kick out of people who claim to be concerned about our planet but who clearly don’t understand how we ended up in our current predicament.  These are the folks who buy the re-usable shopping bags every time they come in the store because they could not be bothered to remember to actually RE-USE the one they purchased yesterday.  These are the folks who buy an electric lawn mower and then 20 bags of in-organic chemical fertilizer in the same transaction as if the green purchase might cancel out the bags of cancer causing, water polluting pellets they will feed into the earth after they finish mowing.  These are the folks who buy the plastic cups made of recycled plastic not knowing that it’s STILL plastic and if you don’t recycle it AGAIN it will sit in a landfill thousands of years longer than the wax coated paper cups that cost a little more.  Going green takes a little more thought and a LOT more effort and I’ve learned that a huge number of Americans are just lazy.

The idea that we all need to be more conscious of our planet is not at all a bad one however we are stuck in an age of sound bytes and incomplete information.  You simply can’t be an outspoken steward of the earth while driving a gas guzzling Hummer…sorry folks, the newer transmission makes NO difference, it is ONLY more fuel efficient because they are ONLY comparing it’s fuel efficiency with the PREVIOUS Model’s inefficiency!  You are still only getting 8 miles to the gallon (rather than 7), it STILL requires a large engine to pull a 6 ton tank over the road.  Your “green” hummer still screams FUCK THE EARTH – I HAVE MORE DISPOSABLE INCOME THAN YOU DO!  If you actually believe auto manufacturers don’t have the ability to produce greener cars RIGHT NOW, you are in a dream world and you believe the lies.  The FACT is they can produce green cars, you however are simply not willing to demand that they do OR pay a higher price for them.  Rather than spending $20K on an 8 cylinder Cadillac, why not spend $20K on a hybrid that gets twice the gas millage and uses that fuel more efficiently?  Do you REALLY need a muscle car or do you just have a badly damaged ego and you think a car with bigger balls might make up for your personal insecurities?

Now, I won’t call myself an outspoken green citizen by any stretch but I’m not hypocritical about my habits either.  I make changes in my consuming habits that I can afford when I can afford to make them.  I generate less than 1 bag of trash per week now and I recycle as much of the products I use that I can.  I use an electric lawn mower and I don’t use chemical fertilizers.  I water my lawn using a water saving sprinkler system and I’ve helped my parents install the same type of system at their home.  I drive a compact sedan that gets 27 miles per gallon and the next car I buy will do better than that.  There are MANY areas of my life where I am not at all green and I don’t necessarily apologize for that either (right now).  It is impossible for me to escape buying products with 50 times more packaging than is really needed BUT that does not mean that I can’t properly dispose of the cardboard, plastic, and Styrofoam that comes with them.  It is impossible for me to recycle everything because the city I live in has not found the political willpower to enact stricter recycling ordinances if they even offer the option at all.  Those of us who want to be green advocates must make bigger demands on not only our government bodies but also our neighbors and families.  I used to get irritated with the piles of recyclables Sarah and Brian would collect when they were living at the cottage several years ago, ONLY because the sorting bins happened to get in my way on a regular basis.  Their absolute insistence on recycling everything they could however changed my own perceptions over time about what we were really able to do to and WHY recycling matters.  Their good habits changed my bad habits and THAT is where everyone needs to start.  I recycle more frequently now BECAUSE of their example.  It’s not always convenient (or clean) but it’s still an earth friendly practice that needs to be done as often as possible.

Anyhow, practice what you preach.  If you are going to be a green advocate, I’d better not see you sucking down “spring water” out of a plastic sport cap water bottle you picked up at the 7-11.  How about you try filtered water from your tap in a re-usable container.  A container that will cost you more to buy at the onset but you can use several million times.

That’s my Earth Day post for the year.  Spring is just around the corner, it’s time for some renewal.

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Took an interesting quiz tonight on line about my ecological footprint.  My results are below.  I’d be interesting to see how my results compare to yours.  Let me know.  You can take the quiz HERE.   If everyone on the planet lived by my lifestyle standards we would need 6.06 Earths to keep up.  Clearly I have a fairly big ecological footprint but as you can see, I am still below the country average on everything except food consumption.

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Not much news today.  Thought I would post a picture from THIS web site.  Most of you readers know I deal with paint.  I’ve learned quite a bit about this product over the years and based on what I know, I am a strong opponent of oil based paints.  The trend of all manufacturing is going green and in the paint world, this is actually a very good thing.  It’s not just environmentally friendly, it is economically feasible and an important step in reducing the availability of products that can indeed cause a great deal of harm.  Without fail, I will get customers who absolutely insist on using oil based paints for their projects.  Most of these customers are older and they just get hysterical when I inform them that we don’t have much oil to sell and they don’t like it when I encourage them to look at acrylic, most have only ever used oil and most are quite resistant to change.  We sell very few oil products at work and as a result it is in my best interest to try to discourage typical DIYers from purchasing oil based paints with very few exceptions for very specific projects.  Oil still has it’s uses (your car would just die if it were painted using an acrylic) but they are very specific.  The picture below explains why.  This year, Ohio will join a growing list of other states outlawing the sale of many types of oil based paints, Michigan will not be far behind and thanks to our Legislature, we are actually ahead of the game in this country when it comes to eliminating higher content VOC (volatile organic compounds) from the hands of irresponsible consumers.  The biggest push is simply the aforementioned fact.  Consumers in general are very irresponsible.  How many of you reading this, have had an oil spill from your car in the driveway and decided rather than take the time and make the effort to clean it up right, you grabbed the hose and blew it off into the lawn?  How many of you have just tossed that old can of paint into the trash without thinking about where it might end up?  Did you know that the Great Lakes suffer greatly because people carelessly dump their unused paint into the lakes?   Nobody thought of these things years ago and in many cases, my generation is now paying the price for that irresponsibility.  So, think twice about what you are putting into your garbage, especially if it was a liquid at one time (or still is).  A good rule of thumb for being a responsible consumer:  If you can not, or are unwilling to dispose of your product properly, you should not be purchasing it or using it in the first place.  I’m not terribly tolerant of people who refuse to take this sort of thing seriously.  Had people taken responsibility in the first place, I woudln’t have to tell you that because of you and your irresponsible behavior, you can no longer buy the product you want so badly.

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OK folks, what is wrong with this map below? Look at Traverse City area and then look at the Maple City gas station price. Keep in mind that Maple city is 20 miles from Traverse City which absolutely CAN NOT be considered a difficult distance for any hauler to travel outside a metro area. There is NO reason the price of gas should be $0.15 higher out here compared with TC. I’ve become a regular contributor to www.michigangasprices.com and I frequently update prices of gas in Leelanau County as I see them. Don’t buy your gas out here folks under any circumstance. Don’t even buy your convenience foods out here. Those of you who do are BEING RIPPED OFF BIG TIME!!!!  You can move the map around by clicking on it and holding down your mouse button.

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Here in Leelanau, there is only 1 sure way to know that spring has arrived.  Cherry Blossoms.  The sweet cherry trees are in full bloom up here right now and I was fortunate today to have an awesome day off to take some pictures.  Be sure to visit the new gallery on leelanauphotography.com for the full spread.  I spent the day today driving around Leelanau taking pictures and then the rest of my day at the cottage sitting on the deck enjoying cool breeze of spring.

Got a lot on my mind right now, can’t put much of it on this blog.  I’m ready to get out of this house and get on with my life.  Amazing how difficult that concept has been lately.  Anyhow, stay tuned, I may try to push my landlord to allow me out of my lease early.  If not, I’m sure I can tolerate living out here until August but with gas prices now at a new high (it was $4.09 in Maple City today…the highest price in the county) it’s becomming VERY expensive to commute 60 miles a day.  I am slowing weeding through shit.  In fact, when I’m doing writing this, I’m going to clean out another closet and try to see what I can get rid of.  I’ve kept a bunch of things hoping that I could eventually sell them on eBay.  Well, that’s just not going to happen.  I don’t have time right now to fuck with it.  Oh well, someone shopping at Good Will might appreciate getting a good deal of a lot of this crap.  One man’s junk is another mans treasure I guess.

Meijer was in the news here today.  They were fined something like $189,000 for breaking campaign finance rules set by the state of Michigan.  Serves them right.  I have a big problem with what Meijer tried to do (influence an election and subsequent recall of a township board that opposed Meijer’s plans to build a new store) and I absolutely agree with the price they are paying for breaking the law.  HOWEVER, I also sympathize with Meijer.  First, they own the property where they wanted to build a new store in Acme Township (outside of Traverse City).  They have for years.  Second, this area has clearly demonstrated OVER AND OVER again that another store like Meijer is not only needed but BADLY needed.  The Traverse City Meijer is one of the busiest stores in the entire company, the volume they do is crazy!  People come to shop at that Meijer from ALL OVER Northern Michigan.  Certianly Meijer is IN BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY and another store would help them achieve that goal.  It is the desire and purpose of ALL retail businesses to MAKE MONEY (that is a concept too many people always seem to forget).  Acme Township was an ideal location because it was conveniently located on the opposite end of town from the existing Meijer.  The problem was that certain factions in the community did not want a big box store to come in a “spoil” the charm of their little community.  Never mind that Meijer was bending over backwards to design a store that would “fit in” to the landscape.  OK, here is where I have the problem.  Acme is a SUBURB of Traverse City.  It is not some little village in the middle of nowhere, it nearly bursts at the seams in the summer with a population that easily doubles or triples in size with tourists and summer residents who ALL come here from big cities down state and who ALL shop at Meijer downstate.  Acme (along with Traverse City) HORRIBLY under serves it’s residents by preventing business operations that people CLEARLY want (via zoning and exceptionally poor planning).  If people hated Meijer so much, why do people travel from ALL OVER NORTHERN MICHIGAN to shop there???????  Here is my suggestion:  I think Meijer should shut down their Traverse City operations entirely and pull right on out of here.  Their new Petoskey store will serve the area.  For a good year or two people will have to shop at Tom’s and Glens (or drive 80 miles north to Petoskey) and people will have to pay substantially more for their groceries than they would have at Meijer.  People will get sick of that shit really fast.  THEN, Zoning laws will be changed to allow Walmart to move in with their Super Center (since they will play the political game right and kiss lots of ass).  Once Walmart is in they will DEVASTATE the Mom and Pop shops that had been doing decent business since Meijer left.  People will shop at Walmart since it’s their only option to save money on commodities that they need to have in order to survive. (Come on folks, follow the history of what happens when Walmart comes to town).  Tom’s, Glen’s, and Olsen’s and the other tiny stores will all go out of business leaving only Walmart and then Traverse City can become another sleazy, run down,  middle American town with nothing to offer but a huge walmart store and a pretty view of the bay.  None of the smaller businesses will have any reason to exist since everyone can get what they want from Walmart….DO YOU SEE WHERE I’M GOING WITH THIS??????

Grow the fuck up Acme Township. Why do people in this area kick themselves in the ass over and over???  Get over the fact that GROWTH HAPPENS, in 20 years you WILL have some sort of Super Center in your “little village”.  Look, I like the fact that it’s quiet up here but I hate the fact that people are so fucking stubborn.  There is growth and then there is SMART GROWTH.  Why is the latter so fucking difficult for you all to figure out????  This is why I’m not in Politics.  I would offend too many people becuase I am too black and white.  This issue is clear cut in my mind and I don’t understand why other people can’t follow the logic.  I don’t care about your emotions, I care about your ability to think about things reasonably and deliberately.  Here is the question that Acme needs to answer which through this ENTIRE thing they have failed to answer (hell they haven’t even figured out how to ask it yet):  If you will not allow Meijer (or whatever other big box store) in to your community than WHO WILL YOU ALLOW AND WHY WILL YOU ALLOW THEM AND NOT OTHERS??? That is the question they have ALL failed to answer.  When and IF Acme Township can answer that question they will start on an appropriate SMART GROWTH path.  Until then, they will fight many more of these battles.

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The following has been stolen from Wally’s Joke Mail and reposted here without permission.  I did not write these but I’m not sure Wally did either since I’ve seen these same things posted elsewhere.  Pay attention to the highlighted ones.  These are statements I find particularly disturbing and true in my neck of the woods.  Traverse City is not by definition a conservative area in the same way that Grand Rapids is but some of the back woods boys up here would sure like you to believe it’s all about American Flags and guns!

1. You have to be against abortion, but support capital punishment on demand.
2. You have to believe that governments create oppression and businesses create prosperity.
3. You have to believe that the man wearing a turban in the airport is more of a terrorist than the white man carrying a concealed gun.
4. You have to believe that federal funding is a handout and that disadvantaged people should be able to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” just like you and your daddy and his daddy before him.
5. You have to believe that someone made up global warming to scare you into not driving that gas-guzzling SUV.
6. You have to believe that being sexually confused is an abomination that God hates.
7. You have to believe that the people advocating those afflicted with AIDS should “stop whining.”
8. You have to believe that if schools don’t provide sex education and/or condoms, then kids just won’t think about sex and it will all just go away.
9. You have to believe that animal rights activists aren’t doing “what God intended,” but hunters are.
10. You have to believe that if someone has fallen on hard times it is their own fault and they should be given no help.
11. You have to believe that God lives in your own little box and that He hates all the same things and people you do.
12. You have to believe that the ACLU is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the NRA is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
13. You have to believe that the tax on your yacht is too high and that the homeless man isn’t being taxed enough.
14. You have to believe that the contributions to American history made by Caucasian men are more important than those made by women and African-Americans.
15. You have to believe that Black History Month is reverse racism, but the Confederate flag is just a historical symbol.
16. You have to believe that any war we fight is for a good reason, because the president said so.
17. You have to believe that God loves everyone, except for gay people.
18. You have to believe that this message is part of a crazy, left-wing revolution.

Some people are just irritating.  Others are just plain stupid.

The population is beginning to change now up here for the summer.  Today I pulled into The Coffee Bean to grab a cup of coffee on my way home from work and I had to park next to what I think was the BIGGEST SUV I’ve ever seen in my life.  It was the size of a small school bus, it was BRIGHT white (I hate white cars) and it was clearly driven by someone who cares nothing about how that vehicle makes them look when gas is now at $4.00 a gallon up here.  I would venture to say that the owner of that car has been made rich by the stupidity of others and is now showing off his ego. The only thing missing from this truck was a set of bulls balls for the hitch. (I don’t know who the woman is below, this is just to show you what bulls balls are).

Summer time up here brings with it some pretty crazy people.  Some even more so than the back woods meth-heads that populate the area in the winter.  These people have money, love to show it off, and care about nobody but themselves.  To the locals these people who come up here only on the weekends and then somehow think they live here are known as Fudgies…a horrendously bad nickname in the first place.  These are the folks who whistle at me at work in order to try and get my attention to help them.  Guess what folks, I don’t stop for people who whistle at me.  I’ll loose a sale before I am treated like that.  I’m not a dog, I don’t have a tail.  If you want to treat me like you would a dog than you had better have a treat for me in that fucking bag of yours or I’m going to jump on you, bite you and give you rabies you stupid fucks.  Pardon me, will you help me?.. works much better.

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Take a look at this article. Thought some of the statistics were pretty interesting.

Bottom line, the production of 31.2 billion liters of water for the U.S. bottled water market took roughly 17.6 million barrels of oil.

The simple break down is 3.4 megajoules of energy to produce a water bottle, cap and packaging with a barrel of oil producing about 6 thousand megajoules. Taking those numbers into account you arrive at 17.6 million barrels of oil, enough oil to run 1.5 million cars on U.S. roadways for an entire year.

I’ll be the first to admit that I do like bottled water but I like it only for the convenience of the bottle, the water is certainly nothing special.  It does not taste that much different from what comes out of my tap.  That said, especially in the summer I tend to recycle my bottled water.  I’ll fill it with filtered tap water multiple times and usually keep the bottle until I loose the cap (which happens surprisingly often).  It’s not much but it helps.

This county is all about convenience.  The nature of my job and my entire income depends entirely on America’s thirst for convenience items.  It is therefore very difficult for me to harp on people for buying them or using them.  Plastic bags and bottled water are only a small part of the “convenience market” but we as a society have to start changing our consumption behavior.  I think my generation will start but I don’t think any serious efforts will take place for many years to come.  I hope that someday, recycling will be mandatory EVERYWHERE and that I won’t live in a township like Cleveland Township in Leelanau County that voted down a recycling program becuase they didn’t want to pay $25 a year to support the program.  CHEAP FUCKING BASTARDS!  Oh well, I do what I can.

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