Unemployed in West Michigan: the Current State of Affairs

If you have been following the news about unemployment, you are likely not optimistic about any further relief for the long-term unemployed, in Michigan or elsewhere.

Here's where it stands: most states give a maximum of 26 weeks of unemployment compensation to laid off or terminated workers, but since 2011, to save money, Michigan limited the number to 20, a significant reduction from the 99 weeks' workers were getting during the recession.  Still, in 2013, with federal help, Michiganders could get a maximum of 48 weeks' assistance.

In December, 2013 federal unemployment extensions expired, and, for Michigan workers, that capped the maximum benefit at 20 weeks'. Congress has been ineffectively duking this issue out since then with various proposals in the pipeline, and last week House Speaker John Boehner rejected the Senate bill temporarily extending unemployment benefits at the federal level for the long-term unemployed as "unworkable," particularly reinstating benefits retroactively since the old law expired.

The latest unemployment statistics reveal Michigan, at 7.8%, as having the 5th highest unemployment rate in the nation, after California, Illinois, Nevada, and Rhode Island. Preliminary statistics reveal that the Grand Rapids-Wyoming metropolitan area has an unemployment rate of 5.8% (January 2014). The real unemployment rate, however, which would include the long-term unemployed who have given up hope of finding a job but have dropped off the unemployment rolls, is 10.2%, state-wide. Add to that the underemployed who would seek more or better work if they could find it, and those numbers only grow higher, probably much higher and growing as the new health care insurance laws solidify the disincentive employers have to give their workers more hours.

Some Michigan lawmakers have proposed laws that would offer tax relief for unemployment compensation at the state level or re-extend the total number of weeks to 26, but these proposals do not seem likely to go anywhere in the Michigan Legislature.

Add to this the staggering amount of student loan or underwater mortgage debt Generations X and Y are shouldering, and it's no wonder that many people in this current economy see themselves as just "picking through the rubble." Good news for the average Michigan worker seems less likely all the time, although we can of course hope that the area's economic growth will have some positive effect in job creation longer term.

Les Misérables at the Civic

If you haven't had a chance to see the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre's production of Les Misérables, you're missing a real treat.
Our family always goes to see the Civic's children's musical at Christmas, but my mother, sister, and I went to see Les Miz this weekend, and I was very impressed at what a fantastic production our local talent put on. While obviously there are more constraints in a small theater with a volunteer cast, I felt just as moved by the performance as I did when I saw it at DeVos in the 1990s. Part of this is the music itself, how lovely it is, and part of it is that the play's themes of income inequality, misuse of government resources to pursue innocent (or at least less guilty) parties, the plight of single mothers, and widespread suffering resonate especially well now, although Americans haven't experienced suffering in the same way that the 19th-century French citizens Victor Hugo described did.

The Civic Theatre was the first community theater that Music Theatre International approached with the opportunity of producing  the musical. There is a short window of time - 18 months - that it can be staged by regional theaters as Les Misérables is currently not playing on Broadway, nor it is touring the country.

Those familiar with the story know that it revolves around Jean Valjean, a man sentenced to five years' hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to save his nephew from starvation. He ends up serving nineteen years in total as a result of an escape attempt, and the play opens with his release from prison. Inspector Javert informs him that he will always be watching him and expects the worst. This sets up the first conflict: how Valjean will survive when he is even less likely to have opportunities as a known convict. The audience observes him falter and right himself, fail and then come to the aid of a fallen woman with a child, adopt an orphaned girl, and, eventually, become embroiled in the Paris Uprising of 1832. At its heart, this is a redemption story.

In our local production, Valjean is played by Jeremiah Postma, who is well suited to Valjean physically and musically. Unbelievably, this is Postma's first performance at the Civic - the role requires enormous vocal range and endurance, as well as strong acting skills. Postma frankly owned the stage and was particularly adept at conveying Valjean's slow aging process and loss of vitality.

David Duiven plays Javert. I last saw Duiven as Captain Von Trapp at Christmas time. He did a creditable job conveying Javert's utter inflexibility, but sounded a bit hoarse on Sunday.

The show's three female leads, Fantine, Cosette, and Eponine, were played by Kelsey Kohlenberger, Audrey Filson, and Molly Jones, respectively. All of their voices were fantastic, Filson's being especially clear, although Kohlenberger's suited very well the tragedy of Fantine. Eponine's parts are frequently of the outsider/third wheel kind, and she blended well with Cosette's, Marius's, and Valjean's parts. Her solo pieces were some of the show's most touching.

Marius was played by Michael Peneycad, who looked very 19th-century swoony poet radical and had a strong, passionate voice. The comic relief, necessary in a story this grim, was provided by John Girdlestone and Sarah Lacroix, as Thenardier and Madame Thenardier. It was obvious that Girdlestone had professional experience - he expertly worked the crowd and was very enjoyable to watch. Lacroix complemented his talents well.

Of course, a large part of the story involves the average French citizenry's suffering, so a great chorus is necessary and was more than provided by our local Grand Rapidians. The set decoration was well done, and costuming was suitably bleak and evocative.

All in all, I heartily recommend this production. I personally cried buckets at the end.  I enjoyed it far better than the 2012 film with Hugh Jackman and don't mind doing a little informal online marketing on its behalf.  Take the opportunity to see it before its run ends on March 30.

Stomach Flu in West Michigan

Yesterday, WZZM reported that there had been an upsurge in stomach flu cases in West Michigan being reported in hospitals, higher than the four-year average. Of course, the real stomach flu rate is unknown because people only seek treatment when the symptoms get out of control and they experience more life-threatening symptoms like severe dehydration. Most people suffer at home and, if they report it at all, it's on Facebook.

If you have a child in school or work in any large organization, you may have noticed a upsurge in sickness in recent weeks. Just a heads up - whatever strain of viral gastroenteritis this is, it's a monster, highly communicable. It rips through families, leaving nearly all members exhausted and dehydrated. Besides diarrhea and vomiting, other symptoms include chills, muscle aches, headache, and fatigue. It someone in your family falls ill, hunker down for the long haul. It's highly communicable and has a very short incubation period of perhaps 24-48 hours. Locally, the authorities have focused on notifying restaurants because sick people preparing food are potential Typhoid Marys.

The most important thing with stomach flu is to remain hydrated. This can be difficult because even drinking water can provoke vomiting, but if your body loses too much water too quickly, you will have to go to the doctor or the ER where the will put you on an IV. Remember your body is like a car, except that, unfortunately, you can't upgrade your thermostat if your internal temperature gets wonky. You can make sure that what you put in it is beneficial, though. Cars run on oil; bodies run on water. No water, no run. So stay away from sugared drinks, sodas and anything with caffeine. Coffee, tea, and caffeinated sodas are diuretics, and you need water in your body, not out. Mint or chamomile teas are a good substitute, soothing to the stomach while still supplying the water the body requires.

Eat nourishing foods too, when you can. They will help you get your strength back. You may find that taking a hot bath will relax you and help you to fight off the chills. The stomach flu isn't the only thing being passed around out there. We are on the tail end of the regular flu season, and it's not too late to get that either, but increasing your intact of Vitamins C and D, as well as other minerals many Americans are deficient in, such as Magnesium and Iron, can help your body fight off viruses and bacteria.

Stay healthy, and, if you do get sick, stay at home until you get better. Even after the vomiting and diarrhea are gone, you can still infect others. This is doubly true if you prepare food or work with immune compromised people.  Winter is almost over, though. We just have to slog through this last part of ice, cold, and sickness.

Getting ready for spring - and the garden

It’s the beginning of March now, and while nearly all of us are tired of looking at the snow, some of us are planning what we will plant in our yards and gardens. I've just re-upped for a CSA share with Eden Farms, and while it's too cold (so cold!) to put up my greenhouse yet, the seed and plant catalogs have started to arrive, and I can’t help but dream of new green shoots coming from fertile spring soil. I know I have a lot of work to do when all of this finally melts, though, because winter hit before I had time to mulch the vegetable garden or my flower beds. My usual rabbit manure supplier disappeared from Craigslist, and I had plans to get some horse manure one Saturday morning in November, but then it snowed, and I didn't want to drive in it, and, well, it all seems laughable now, 110 inches of snow later. I wish I could go back and kick my November self in gear now.

Mulch tackles a number of important jobs in the garden. Besides keeping weeds down, it maintains soil temperature better and more evenly, keeping the summer’s warmth in longer - as well as the winter’s chill. Mulch helps to control erosion from wind and rain and keeps moisture from evaporating, giving plants more time to soak up rain. As it decomposes, it enriches the soil, adding its nutrients and modifying its composition, making it more chemically and physically complex and better for plant growth. A well mulched yard or garden also looks much neater and is easier to work in.

So when is the proper time to mulch your flower or garden beds? Mulching in fall is a great idea to protect your plants from icy winds and bitter cold, but when spring comes, you’ll want to rake that mulch back until your seedlings sprout and grow a bit. This will allow the ground around your plants to warm up and will allow the rain to drain better and keep from waterlogging your soil, especially this year when we have up to 5 inches of rain in frozen form ready to be absorbed. Once the ground has warmed and dried up a bit, then it will be time to rake the mulch back and add more. How much mulch is enough? The USDA recommends a total of 2-4 inches of bark or wood mulch, spread evenly over the entire area being covered.  If more quickly decomposing matter is used - such as leaves or compost - they advise using 3-4 inches. Measure your garden carefully to determine the volume of compost that you will need using this depth. It's early in the season, but some outlets, like Kamps are already offering discounts on landscaping products, including mulch.

If you didn’t mulch this last fall, don’t worry. That thick layer of snow we’ve had all winter has served as a kind of mulch protecting and insulating your plants. It will likely be a wet spring, but your perennials will eventually peek up out of the soil and then spread their leaves and bask in May’s sunshine - as will the rest of us.

Animal Abuse in West Michigan

Mlive recently ran a story about Foxy, an injured dog that had been surrendered to Kent County Animal Control. McKenzie Coleman, the woman surrendering him, fraudulently claimed she had found him tossed in a trash can. As unpalatable as it is for Coleman to have claimed saving Foxy when apparently he'd been living in her home for weeks with his eye injury unaddressed, it's not a crime to lie about your motivations for giving up an animal or neglecting to treat his physical problems. It's just unethical and irresponsible.

More troubling is the unknown and unreported abuse or neglect that goes on around us every day. I missed this report in November about a woman who was keeping 23 dogs and 7 cats in her Grand Rapids home (the City of Grand Rapids conveniently has no limit on the number of animals allowed on a property; which may be why Kimberly Savino relocated her dog grooming service/dog "rescue" here from Massachusetts.) It turns out Savino lives just around the corner from my house. I walk by her house on my way to my son's school, and I had no idea that there were that many dogs living there. The residence is large, as is the yard, but the fenced in area is small. I have heard dogs barking sometimes, but not often or loudly enough to indicate that 23 of them were on the property.

This is not the only recent hoarding case. A couple of years ago, authorities seized 352 dogs from one couple's home in Allegan County. This fall a Ypsilanti woman had 88 cats taken from her home. Unfortunately, hoarding is not just a crime, it's a criminal manifestation of mental illness. Hoarders seem to be unable to stop their behavior, no matter how much cruelty it results in because hoarding is how they address their fears and anxieties.

Of course, even worse than people who hoard animals, are people who fight animals for sport or profit. This week two dead pit bulls, bloodied with fight wounds, were found frozen on the side of a road near an elementary school in Muskegon County. Dog fighting tends to be part of a pattern of negative social behaviors like drug and weapons trafficking and illegal gambling, so spotlighting it can only help reduce other crime. But you can't stop dog fighting until people begin to see what a cruel and barbaric sport it is and put pressure on the people in their communities to stop it.

And then, finally, there is the animal abuse no one wants to talk about because it affects all of us, and that's factory farming. When the news reports rivers of manure running into area waterways the unspoken subtext is that so many animals are being crammed in so close together that the manure production is unmanageable by traditional farming methods (which usually involved tilling it back into the soil to replenish it). Chickens, pigs, cows, and other meat animals live in miserable conditions on area farms, spending their days breathing in dirt and filth, wading in feces, fighting among themselves for space or breath. To keep them minimally healthy until they can be slaughtered, farmers pump them full of antibiotics and other chemicals - the end result being that our food supply daily produces deadly contamination while at the same time it erodes our ability to fight the diseases this contamination causes.

Fortunately, we also have numerous agencies in the area advocating for animals. There are dozens of breed-specific and other rescues, and humane societies in every county in West Michigan. These agencies both address the day-to-day needs of abused and neglected animals and educate kids and adults on the importance of valuing them. The Humane Society of West Michigan regularly posts uplifting stories about animals they've placed in loving homes or kids who have foregone a new scooter or iPod for their birthdays, asking that donations be given to the animals instead. It's a relief to read this kinds of stories after a gruesome one about dog fighting.

While most West Michigan people are not animal abusers, we all need to be more aware of what is going on around us so we can stop abuse before it escalates. This is not just an ethical stance. In Detroit approximately 50,000 wild dogs roam the city creating an enormous public menace. An abused or neglected animal is a dangerous animal, and we need as few dangers as possible.

Thundersnow? C'mon!

Mark Torregrossa, the meteorologist over at Mlive, has updated his predictions for what we can expect from today's "thundersnow." Previous reports said we could expect rain, sleet, snow, ice, and "everything but the kitchen sink."  A real extravaganza.

I'm sending up the white flag. My snowblower's broken, my roof rake is broken, and my last snow shovel has a huge crack in it. I finally borrowed one from my sister because Meijer had no more in stock. The ice dams on my house are unreal as none of the snow from December (before I was raking) has melted until now. Tuesday night, my dining room ceiling sprung a leak. I climbed up on a ladder to chip away at the ice on that part of the roof, and managed to stop the leak, although I suspect the higher temperature had more to do with it than my hammer and chisel, melting the ice that had crept up under the shingles so the water could make its way down the roof instead of inside it.

My driveway is a wreck. This would have been the year to hire a snow removal service, but since our family is down one income, we didn't. Our truck can make it up the steep slope, but my car can't, so it's parked in the garage. The snow piles on either side of my driveway are taller than I am, so it's hard to throw any new accumulation up over what is already there. Some of my neighbors have been very good about clearing their sidewalks after the storms and blizzards, but many sidewalks around here remain unshoveled and treacherous. The City of Grand Rapids has again warned that those homeowners will be fined if the city has to do the work for them, but I haven't seen anyone from the city out on the northeast side yet.  Of course, I've been pretty housebound.  

My son has missed so much school that the school closings page is permanently open in my browser. School districts are cancelling winter break and scheduling make up days into the June calendar.  I. Give. Up. White flag! Please, winter - go away. But gradually, now, so we don't have flooding.

At least the house is still standing (knock wood). Around West Michigan roofs, car ports and garages, overhangs, and entire houses have collapsed under the weight of snow and ice. The only thing good about today's snow spectacle is that the rain might remove some of the snow from the roofs around here and clear some of the streets. When it freezes again, as it's supposed to, it will be hazardous driving and walking for awhile, though.

Anyone else have winter kvetching they would like to do? This is for posterity, remember. Your future grandchildren want to know about the winter of 2013-14 - the Big One.

Is Grand Rapids in for another Great Deluge this spring?

After months of snow and frigid temperatures, parts of West Michigan have the equivalent of 5 inches of rain, in frozen form, blocking their driveways, piled up against their houses and businesses, and in their streets. The usual pattern of accumulation, melt, accumulation, melt hasn't proved true this year, and unless we get a very gradual thaw, this could be a serious problem for many home and business owners in the coming weeks because the water has to go somewhere.

Beginning next Wednesday, we are in for a mini-thaw that will probably feel like summer after temperatures that have only climbed into the double digits at midday. That sudden increase will melt at least some of the standing snow and may create significant problems.

In recent days many have worried their roofs may collapse from the weight of all that snow, but under a thaw, new problems crop up. The snow accumulated on a well insulated roof will melt and refreeze and may create ice dams instead. Backed up ice can get under roof shingles and drip through ceilings, it can pull gutters out of shape or even off roofs, and it can suddenly break and fall off of a roof dropping a heavy weight on whatever lies beneath. Keep an eye on your roof to make sure this doesn't happen to you.

Ice can also melt and cause flooding. Get whatever snow you can away from the foundation of your house so that the water flows away from and not into it. We all know that melts can create ice jams and dam up rivers too. This is largely outside of our control, and we can only hope that the City of Grand Rapids floodwall system is in decent shape as there hasn't been time to entirely repair or improve the floodwall yet.  It only barely held out last year, and there was no reason to panic about flooding during the relatively mild winter of 2012-13. That winter was certainly not this winter. We may get some rain as well, which would only add to the runoff problems.

There's no reason to panic now. We can hope that the mini-thaw will not be problematic and will clear up the streets and melt down already formed ice dams. Just bear in mind that if you live near a river or in a place water pools, you should have a plan for dealing with it in mind now - before it's a problem.