WobblyReport

Let’s dispense with history lessons and focus on the here and now. Are you scheduled and expected to work on Monday, Sept. 2? If so, will you receive bonus pay for it? Too many of us will answer ‘yes’ and then ‘no.’ In part this is because the United States is the only one of 38 member-countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development not to require paid leave of any kind. In a 2007 policy report, researchers Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt conclude that “the United States is in a class of its own with respect to statutory guarantees of paid time off: it is the no-vacation nation.” Most employers offer some amount of paid holiday, sick and personal leave. Indeed, media coverage on the subject tends relentlessly to emphasize this fact. Ray and Schmitt observed, however, that “one in four U.S. workers has no paid leave or public holidays at all.” What’s more, the lower the wage, the higher the ratio. That means the less money we make, the less chance we have any paid t

County fairs have wrapped up for the most part around the region. They are a great opportunity for the community to come together, to highlight achievements and provide windows into one another’s lives. The fair has an element of torture for some. I don’t mean the anticipation of its approach or the anxiety that some fungus will spoil a prize pumpkin. I mean an annually renewed realization that one has been irreversibly ear-wormed. A 2008 article in the Northern Express explains how an advertisement for the Northwest Michigan Fair spread like wildfire (‘went viral,’ in newspeak) in the late 1980s. The very creative television advertisement included a jingle that was also frequently, for years, rebroadcast over FM radio. The fair, once held right in the heart of Traverse City, was relocated 5 miles south of town in the early 1970s. The relocation and growth of other summer events in the area led to flagging fair attendance and troubled finances. Rick Coates, then a newly hired fair ma

Many states in our country ask about political party affiliation when a person registers to vote. Michigan does not because primary elections are open, meaning voters who have not declared a party affiliation are allowed to participate. In the U.S., primary elections are contests that determine who will appear on the ballot in a general election; general elections determine who takes office. But leave aside voting and elections for a moment. What is party affiliation? We might define it the way that polling organizations measure and report it. The Pew Research Center, for example, asks respondents a single question at the end of its surveys. The question is, “In politics today, do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or Independent?” Pew’s article, “ Party Affiliation: What it is and What it Isn’t ,” goes on to explain the reasoning behind measuring party affiliation this way. “This question is not intended to measure how respondents are registered, how they have voted in the p

Rifle River State Recreation Area On runs, sentences... Rifle River State Recreation Area is massive. A full circuit of the area’s trail system would require the stamina of an ultra-runner or a sturdy, single-track-ready bicycle. A quick glance at the trail map and distance intervals between numbered locations reveals as much. Perhaps more revealingly, the worker who greeted me at the park’s main entrance on my first visit May 12 seemed unaccustomed to runners looking for the best parking area near a trailhead. “Are you looking for hills?” That sounded great, I said. The normal day-use lot was closed for maintenance, they said, but the lot near the Devoe Lake boat launch would suffice. Navigational challenges and anxieties at RRSRA are unlike trail systems that overlap or abut vast tracts of state land, or those complicated by plethoras of interior side-trails and intersections. Instead, long segments of trail open into sprawling camping and gathering spaces and parking lots. On a f

The new job duties include an opinion column every three weeks. This was successfully pitched as first in a series. Ogemaw Hills Pathway On runs, sentences... A good recreational trail keeps one on one’s toes; lulls, perhaps, a wanderer into a sense of detached familiarity but just as easily immerses a traveler in the present moment and place. The way is clear one instant, inviting, but later on cluttered with debris and uncertain, merging and diverging with old fire roads and off-road vehicle paths, offering shortcuts and side-routes and extensions. A signpost’s map has fallen off or was never installed. A natural sense of direction disorients under the canopy, after a series of switchbacks that prevent erosion and confuse the hapless. Ogemaw Hills Pathway is a most suitable environment to experience the great outdoors—physical space for psychic journeys, explorations of nature and self. The pathway’s winding trails and interconnecting nodes branch out forming a network fit to fulfill