Robert Downes

Random Thoughts Robert Downes “It was 1989, my thoughts were short, my hair was long,
Caught somewhere between a boy and man;
She was 17, and she was far from in-between,
It was summertime in Northern Michigan.“

-- Kid Rock, ‘All Summer Long‘

Have you seen the new television commercials promoting the state of Utah? They feature a funky, old beater truck loaded with kayaks, mountain bikes, surfboards, tents, beach gear. You see a family driving around to all of the spectacular sights in Utah, having a blast. They’re hiking through canyons, biking across desert plateaus, white-water rafting down a raging river -- the works.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes The bright side of bankrupcy

A friend compares the current economic crisis to the stomach flu. “I hate to throw up,” he says. “You resist and resist and keep feeling sicker until you can’t take it anymore. Then you’re glad you threw up and got it over with.”
It’s a good metaphor for what ails General Motors and the Big 3 automakers. Should taxpayers give GM a heave and get it over with, or should we keep resisting the company’s bankruptcy until we just can’t take it anymore?
Either way, like the consequences of stomach flu, it’s starting to seem inevitable.
Now, it looks as if the federal government is holding up the toilet seat and giving GM a comforting pat on the back to do the Thing That Must Be Done.
Last September, the feds gave the Big 3 automakers a $25 billion loan. In November the automakers were back, asking for $50 billion more. They were told to get their act together and come up with a plan for reviving the auto industry.

Dining Robert Downes Good things happen at Shirley‘s
Robert Downes 3/30/09

The first thing you notice about Shirley’s Café Family Restaurant in Mancelona is the vibrant energy of the place. The restaurant gleams spic and span; there are plenty of smiles on the faces of the staff; and there always seems to be a good crowd of customers, drawn by the generous portions of good food.
That positive energy positively radiates from owner Shirley Tracey, who established the restaurant on US 131 in Mancelona just a year and four months ago. Since then, word-of-mouth has made it one of the most popular stops in Antrim County.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes All Aboard
Robert Downes 3/23/09

Wouldn’t it be nice to travel from Northern Michigan to Detroit or Chicago at 200-300 miles per hour on a magnetic levitation train?
That’s still in the realm of science fiction, but last week’s announcement of plans for a hydrogen-powered MagLev train linking Detroit, Ann Arbor and Lansing does get the wheels of possibility spinning for the future...
Last week, State Representatives Bill Rogers (R-Brighton) and Wayne Schmidt (R-Traverse City) announced the creation of a bipartisan task force to study the possibility of building a MagLev rail system down the medians of Michigan’s freeway system.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, the ‘firemen‘ of a fascist society in the near future have the task of burning books in an attempt to stamp out knowledge, truth and beauty. A few brave rebels save what’s left of literature by memorizing books and passing them on to their children by word of mouth.
Gee, if only it were that simple.
Today’s bonfire is the digitization of books and the way that they are being sold online via amazon.com and Google. The trend is to live-stream books for sale over the Internet. Amazon.com has 240,000 books available for downloads, with hundreds of thousands more offered by Google.
These forces, combined with the recession and the fact that fewer young people are reading books, have put the beloved institution of the book store in peril.
Booksellers are wrestling with survival issues on par with those that are driving CD stores to extinction. Rolling Stone reports that 2,680 music stores have closed in the past four years, and the CD is on its way to oblivion.
One scheme would make books available for in-store downloads onto your iPod or reading device while you browse a much-reduced inventory on the shelves. Another idea being explored is to install in-store printers which will be capable of whipping up books while you wait.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Raising Michigan’s high school dropout age to 18 sounds like a good idea in principle. But one could also argue that the new legislation may harm students who are committed to graduating by forcing them to endure the company of disruptive kids who are turned off by high school.
On March 4, the Michigan House of Representatives voted 71-31 to approve passage of House Bill 4030, which will require students to attend high school until the age of 18. The bill has gone on to the State Senate, where it faces an uncertain future.
Sponsored by State Rep. Doug Geiss (D-Taylor), the bill is the first change in Michigan’s allowable dropout age in 113 years. In 1896, the legislature ruled that students could leave school at the age of 16, primarily to help work on family farms.
Rep. Geiss makes some good points in promoting his bill. He notes that 70 percent of prisoners in Michigan are high school dropouts. He points out that requiring students to spend an extra two years in high school will better prepare them to find jobs, instead of being a drag on society.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Do your sprockets need oiling? Did you reboot your head this morning because you woke up feeling like a Vista system crash?
Well, maybe soon, because if the techno prophets are right, the human race will begin merging with our machines any time now...
(Cue up some eerie sci-fi theremin music here, folks, and hang onto your hood ornaments.)
This being our annual Body, Mind, Spirit issue, I’m delighted to report the latest news from scientists who keep track of a coming event known as “The Singularity.”
The Singularity is the point at which computers will become more intelligent than the human race and attain consciousness. At that point, we will find ourselves merging with our machines.
If this sounds like the plot of the new Terminator film or another remake of The Matrix, rest assured, it is.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes There’s a rare sight in my neighborhood these days: teams of contractors are working to finish a new home.
It’s the completion of a saga that began about five years ago. An older home was torn down to make way for the newcomer. Then, the owner‘s personal problems intervened and the project was abandoned, lingering half-finished for several years. In some places, the roof hadn’t been completely shingled, and the unsided walls were left exposed to the wind, rain and snow.
When it was begun, the new home looked to be in the $400,000 range -- a far cry from the homes in our neighborhood which total half that amount on the average. But as the years rolled by without a buyer for the “as is” home,
the price drifted down to an affordable level and
was sold.

Features Robert Downes Kitchen Magic/ Sara Dakoske
Robert Downes 2/23/09

Sara Dakoske looks like she’s having the time of her life at her job, and why not? Her day is spent designing imaginative, creative kitchens and baths for new residents at Building 50, the massive renovation project at the Grand Traverse Commons in Traverse City.
“I thought it would be awesome to get involved with the Building 50 development and it’s been very interesting so far,” she says. “Designing a kitchen or a bath here involves keeping the historical feel of the building, and also working with exposed conduit and duct work, the old windows and the dimensions of each space.”

Music Robert Downes These are high times for singer-songwriter Brett Dennen: He just wrapped up a performance on the Conan O’Brien Show; he’s been signed to perform at the 2009 Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee; and he’s backing up The Fray on a tour of Britain this April.
With a buzz building in Dennen’s direction, it’s a good time to catch the acoustic rocker on his way up. Locally, music fans will have their chance when Brett Dennen and his band perform with The Little Ones this Thursday, Feb 19 at 8 p.m. at the City Opera House in Traverse City.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Put this in your ‘One More Thing to Worry About’ file: Apparently, there are hordes of vicious wild hogs roaming the Michigan woodlands, and these pigs are in serious danger of becoming an “environmental disaster” for our state.
Who knew? I’ve been tramping around the forests of Michigan for 50 years now and count myself lucky to see an occasional woodchuck or a porcupine. But a band of up to 20 wild hogs? That would be like spotting an elephant.
This news comes from the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy (MWC), based in Bath, Michigan, which is calling for a bounty to exterminate wild hogs.
Don’t want to boar you, but here’s the skinny on a big pig of a problem, according to the Conservancy:
Apparently, these hogs are the descendants of Russian wild boars which have escaped from commercial game ranches over the past decade. They’ve been spotted in 63 of Michigan’s 83 counties and are “reproducing rapidly.”
The impudent hogs cause crop and forest damage and carry a pseudorabies virus which is “a huge threat to Michigan‘s domestic swine industry, which is already reeling from high grain prices and low market pork prices.”
Who knew there was so much drama in the pig industry?

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Signs of the Times
Residents of Boyne City were sad to see their local newspaper go under two weeks ago. The Citizen-Journal ended its 128-year run with a two-sentence farewell on page three. Like, how lame can you get?
The Elk Rapids Town Meeting also bit the dust. Both papers were owned by Up North Publishing, which in turn, is owned by the Journal Register Company of Pennsylvania.
Such are the perils of corporate newspaper ownership.
A common practice for newspaper corporations is to buy up other papers with borrowed money. Then, the corporation hollows out the paper, replacing local reporters with wire copy and cutting employees and features to drive up profits. When the paper‘s bottom line looks rosy, the corporation sells the paper to another corporation, which starts the process all over again.
Sound familiar?
But the news-corps have finally stubbed their toes with this practice, and for some, the prognosis may be fatal. Many of these chains are insanely over their heads in debt at a time when auto and real estate ads have vanished, along with classifieds.

Music Robert Downes Dozens of musicians from across the state are tuning their guitars and practicing their songs in preparation for The Great Indoor Folk Festival on Saturday, Feb. 7 in Traverse City.
The free festival will be held on the ground floor Mercato shopping corridor at Building 50 in the VIllage at Grand Traverse Commons from noon to 5:30 p.m. Visitors will find five performance “stages” spread out throughout the length of Building 50, with as many as 75 performers throughout the day.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Talk about bad timing.
When Rush Limbaugh states his wish that President Barack Obama’s policies fail, he might as well desire that millions of Americans be laid off. Of course rich talk-show hosts are unlikely to experience the anguish of unemployment, but it seems astonishing that anyone could hope for more suffering by his countrymen.
Is Limbaugh also hoping that Obama is a failure as Commander-in-Chief, leading to unnecessary deaths of our troops? If Rush really feels this way, he must be enjoying attempts to sabotage bi-partisan efforts by our lawmakers that might relieve the pain of Americans unemployed and not covered by health insurance.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Facing Up to Facebook
I got a new Facebook account over the holidays and with it came an unpleasant surprise: not a single friend from my high school or college days is a member.
Jim, Tom, Carol, Gary, Mary Jo, Ross, Linda, Anne, where are you? It’s funny how you lose track of your old high school pals through the years and then get nostalgic for them, forgetting the time they put snot in your Coke or whatever.
A bigger shock was going to Facebook’s list of members from Royal Oak High, class of ‘70, and finding that there are only 22 of us who are members. And this is out of a class that had something like 800 graduates. By contrast, the class of 2000 has 134 members, and the class of 2006 has 223.