Robert Downes

Random Thoughts Robert Downes If ever there was a time to recall Mark Twain‘s great line on statistics, this is it, considering all the doom & gloom about the economy:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.“
If you read the newspapers or follow the TV news, you‘d think the wheels were falling off America. But check the story behind the story on these widely reported downers:

Books Robert Downes Indiana Jones, look out: when it comes to gutsy adventurers and studly chick magnets, you’re no match for Lonely Planet travel guide writer Thomas Kohnstamm, who has penned a gonzo memoir of six smokin’ hot weeks in Brazil.
Er, make that “ex”-Lonely Planet writer because Kohnstamm is currently persona non grata at the travel guide publishing house, owing to the damning details of his new memoir, “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” in which he admits that he made up much of the information he collected in a Lonely Planet guide to northeast Brazil.
And not only that, but in subsequent news reports, Kohnstamm outed himself as a fraud, claiming that he made up details in 12 Lonely Planet guidebooks and didn’t even bother visiting Columbia for his research. He wrote the book from his apartment in San Francisco.
“They didn’t pay me enough to go (to) Columbia,” he is widely reported as stating in what has become a Jayson Blair-style scandal in the travel writing industry. “I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate.”

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Here’s an old idea whose time has finally come around again: hydroelectric dams.
While Grand Traverse County and Traverse City have been mulling over whether to tear down two power-generating dams on the Boardman River, more forward-thinking (or should we say “backward”?) persons in other states are giving dams a second look as a way to generate clean electrical power.
Currently, a power company in Pennsylvania is sinking $350 million into revitalizing a decrepit old dam on the Susquehanna River. When it goes on line, the dam will generate power for 100,000 homes.
Meanwhile, upgrades are underway at 23 dams in Idaho, California, Kentucky and other states, according to an article in the Baltimore Sun.
And that’s pollution-free power. Power that doesn’t add anything to global warming and comes free of charge from the motion of water through a turbine.
The Sun notes that there are 79,000 dams in America. But only 2,400 dams have hydroelectric generators, producing just seven percent of our nation’s power. Adding turbines to more of our country’s dams could provide enough juice to power 27 million homes.

Books Robert Downes A Terrible Glory
By James Donovan
Little, Brown and Company
528 pages • $26.99

“June 25, 1876. The air is filled with smoke, arrows, and the roar of hundreds of rifles. George Armstrong Custer and five undermanned companies of his famed Seventh Cavalry are trapped on a hill overlooking a river called the Little Bighorn. They are surrounded by more than a thousand Lakota and Cheyenne warriors...”
So begins the much-told tale of George Armstrong Custer, “the Boy General” whose hubris led more than 200 men to their death in what author James Donovan calls “The Last Great Battle of the American West.”
There have been many retellings of Custer’s last stand on a hill in Montana, but Donovan sheds new light on the battle by exploring unpublished resources and new forensic evidence. His claims are backed up by more than 80 pages of footnotes in small type, as well as a bibliography that cites hundreds of books, articles and unpublished accounts.
More to the point, his superb scholarship is matched by a spellbinding gift for storytelling: Donovan is adept at drawing pictures with his words, bringing the story of “the last cavalier” to life. That gift is perhaps a bi-product of the fact that he’s also the author of an illustrated book on the battle, “Custer and the Little Bighorn.”

Random Thoughts Robert Downes The woman yakking on a cell phone sailed through a red light just a stone’s throw away from the Traverse City Police Department. Of course, there’s never a cop around when you wish some jerk would get nailed, so she drove off down the street without a clue.
If there had been a child at the intersection, perhaps the driver would have been a killer in addition to a red light runner. But of course, few parents today are crazy enough to let their kids ride bikes around town like we did when we were young, because increasingly, drivers seem to be ignoring the rules of the road, busy talking on the phone, or even text-messaging while they drive.

Books Robert Downes Back when I was a kid, our library used to have a summer reading club for those of us who enjoyed the escapism of a good book. I’m not sure that many kids actually made it through an ambitious summer reading project, but the idea of enjoying a big summer novel or nonfiction potboiler retains its allure.
So, here are a few tomes to chew on while you’re down at the beach, looking for something to do besides counting seagulls:

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Tourist tips for Madonna
Dear Madonna,
Thanks for coming to Northern Michigan for the film festival this summer. Everyone in these parts is wondering if we‘ll have many visitors, what with the price of gas and all. But now that you‘re taking a break from your tour to premiere your film, I Am Because We Are, maybe more people will make the trip.
Many of your fans were lined up outside the State Theatre two days before the tickets went on sale, camping out on the sidewalk in the rain in order to see you present the film on August 2.
So the good news is that your film about the east African country of Malawi is sure to be a box office smash up this way. But you may want to wear some sunglasses and a disguise to keep from being overwhelmed. There‘s already some guy walking around town in a Madonna outfit, giving people whiplash from turning around to see if it‘s really you.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes A friend claims that people are now drilling holes in other folks’ gas tanks, siphoning gas from boats, and raiding the fuel tanks of vacant cottages to get at the precious liquid inside (slurp, slurp...).
It sounds like an urban legend, but State Police troopers in Manistee say it’s at least partly true (see Anne Stanton’s story on page 8).
Stealing gas or fuel oil seems like a great way to risk becoming your own funeral director, with the cremation thrown in for free.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Not long ago, I met an old soldier who had made the crossing in the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944 -- that was 64 years ago. Still as spry as spring at the age of 84, he came over to say hello as I was walking my bike through a local farm market. I’m sorry to say I didn’t catch his name.
“I wish I could ride a bike,” he said. “You save all that money riding a bike. But my joints are all roughed up and I lost my hearing when a cannon went off next to my head at Omaha Beach. You know what you get from the government when you lose your hearing? Not much. And these hearing aids cost $6,000.”

Books Robert Downes If there’s one book you simply must have on your coffee table this summer, it’s “A Picturesque Situation: Mackinac Before Photography 1615-1860” by Brian Leigh Dunnigan.
The book is a treasure trove of the days when the Straits area served as North America’s ‘wild northwest,’ lifting the reader’s soul with visions of our colorful, rough-and-tumble past. Filled with 330 paintings, drawings, maps and documents, “A Picturesque Situation” tells the story of the Straits area at a time when it was the western terminus to the resources of North America.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Can ordinary citizens take charge of Northern Michigan’s destiny and help shape what our region will look like over the next 20 to 50 years?
That’s the dream of the folks behind the Grand Vision, a series of workshops which has been attracting visionary citizens from six counties over the past few months to share their ideas on the future of Northern Michigan.
Starting in Grand Traverse County, where 1,500 participants shared their ideas on land use and transportation alternatives, the Grand Vision has expanded to Kalkaska, Leelanau, Antrim, Benzie and Wexford counties, with 109 governmental participating.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Relearning How to Eat
There’s a touch of suspense in our visits to the grocery store these days. We creep cautiously over to the milk aisle, bracing for the price. If it’s under $3 a gallon, a small victory has been won, but the trend seems to be heading in the other direction, and someday I suppose that $3 milk will be just a misty memory.
So, put this in the “One More Thing to Worry About” file: the rising cost
of food.
Those of you who buy milk each week probably don’t need a bunch of fancy statistics to underline the fact that food is getting more expensive, but here goes:
Food prices went up by four percent last year on top of 2.4 percent the year before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. And prices could rise as much as 10 percent this year.
So, let’s be optimists and assume the worst: by 2009, food prices could be up as much as 16.4 percent of what you paid in 2005.
But some staples have gone even higher: in the past year alone, milk rose 13.3 percent, white bread went up 16.3 percent, and eggs were up 29.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A record 28 million Americans will be on food stamps this year.

Music Robert Downes Richie Havens sure seems to be having a good time.
In fact, the folk legend has been on a roll for more than 40 years now in a life filled with honors, wisdom, travel, friends, and always the joy of making some of the most singular music in American history.
Havens, 67, is performing in Northern Michigan twice this summer, starting with a show at the Traverse City Opera House this Friday, May 9 at 8 p.m., and again at the Dunegrass and Blues Festival in August. Between those gigs, you’ll find him flying back and forth between Colorado, Oregon, New York, Paris, Switzerland and Monaco, among other destinations.
“I’m always traveling,” he says in a phone interview. “I started out playing six days a week for the first seven years of my career, and for the past 29 years it’s been every weekend all year ’round.”
Havens is a living treasure of Americana. Like Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary, he was one of the seminal influences and players in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and has maintained an enduring popularity ever since.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes While reaching for a bag of corn chips in the snack aisle recently, an unexpected thought flew into my head: Why the heck am I shopping at Meijer?
Although I’m a member of our local co-op and also support independent supermarkets in the area, there are times when the need for some hardware or whatever leads me down the miles of aisles at the big M.
But lately, you can’t help but wonder if Meijer is the sort of “good neighbor” that’s worth supporting.
It’s troubling to see, for instance, that Meijer has replaced many of its cashiers with digital scan terminals. If a large corporation isn’t bringing jobs to our community, why should we support it? I can’t imagine that many of the cashiers replaced by digital robots were exactly on Easy Street to begin with.

Features Robert Downes When Sally Pomante walked into the spotlight at the Leelanau Sands Showroom to claim the title of Miss Grand Traverse last month, it was a familiar moment. After all, she had won the same bodybuilding title as the “best of the best” 11 years ago.
Today, Sally, 51, looks rock-solid and ripped from her long hours in the gym and months of an extreme diet. At the April show, she won the masters 35-and-older class as well as the ‘short’ class in order to take the top title. Not bad for the mother of two grown children, Jen, 17, and Sara, 22. “In fact, I’m also a grandma, since Sara has two boys, ages three and one,” she says.
A resident of Kalkaska, where she lives with six pet dogs and operates her Champion Cleaning Company, Pomante has always been attracted to physical pursuits. She raced stock cars as an 18-year-old back in the day when she was running a ‘68 Camaro around the track in Elmira. She also tried figure skating and still enjoys kick-boxing.