Rod Kackley's Blog: St. Isidore Collection - Posts Tagged "michigan"
Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community
Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the story of how the people of Grand Rapids, Michigan have changed the way the world sees their community and how the community sees itself.
The creation of Grand Rapids' Medical Mile plays a role in this reinvention. Here's an excerpt from the first chapter of Last Chance Mile: Building The Vision
Michigan Street NE doesn’t sleep anymore. The people and the traffic of Medical Mile keep it awake from College to Division avenues. A full mile that slumbers but never snores. It is the insomniac of Grand Rapids.
Ambulances scream up and down Michigan Street’s spine at all hours, while Aero Med helicopters fly over its head, bringing patients, doctors and organs for transplant to Spectrum-Butterworth Hospital.
The flow of people running across Michigan Street’s shoulders never stops. Doctors, nurses, and technicians of all races, colors, and creeds all in scrubs, some flowered, some plain, some blue, arriving for work, leaving for home every eight, ten or 12 hours. They never stop crossing from the new multi-story parking garages that were built on the northern shoulders of the Mile to the huge, blue Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital building that was added on to the colossus of Grand Rapids health care, Spectrum- Butterworth hospital.
Parents are inside DeVos Children’s and Spectrum-Butterworth hospitals at all hours of the day and night praying that their children’s hearts will continue beating just as this heart of the Medical Mile keeps ticking away, a silent metronome that keeps Michigan Street NE from closing its eyes.
Doctors and nurses race across the spine of the Mile before the lights change. Some of them run into Meijer Heart Center. This is where old hearts are exchanged for new, where lives begin again, where families grieve, where families celebrate. It is the building of second chances. It is yet another reason that Michigan Street NE can’t sleep anymore. The Mile won’t let it even doze.
When another day does dawn, Michigan Street can’t even lay down beside the exhausted third-shift that will soon be home, or sit beside the thirsty third-shift toasting the end of a long night in bars promising them the happiest hours of the day from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., or at least the best prices.
Michigan Street NE has no time to rest. The first shift is arriving for work, parking on the northern shoulders of this concrete animal, walking down its spine to work on the southern shoulders of this Mile that brought new life and new dreams to Grand Rapids, the second-largest Michigan community, a community that no longer feels intimidated by Detroit.
Michigan Street is speeding up as the sun rises in the east, so bright that drivers are forced to slow to a crawl as they drive into the burning orb that is too low for their visors and too bright to see the car ahead. Traffic nearly stops in the eastbound lanes of I-196, the Gerald R. Ford Freeway, named for the city’s favorite son, Michigan’s only entry into the Oval Office in Washington D.C.
This is the artery that pumps life from the east into the heart of the Medical Mile and gives electricity to the nerve endings that make Michigan Street NE live as no other concrete animal in Grand Rapids.
For more of Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community, please visit my website,
https://www.rodkackley.com
The creation of Grand Rapids' Medical Mile plays a role in this reinvention. Here's an excerpt from the first chapter of Last Chance Mile: Building The Vision
Michigan Street NE doesn’t sleep anymore. The people and the traffic of Medical Mile keep it awake from College to Division avenues. A full mile that slumbers but never snores. It is the insomniac of Grand Rapids.
Ambulances scream up and down Michigan Street’s spine at all hours, while Aero Med helicopters fly over its head, bringing patients, doctors and organs for transplant to Spectrum-Butterworth Hospital.
The flow of people running across Michigan Street’s shoulders never stops. Doctors, nurses, and technicians of all races, colors, and creeds all in scrubs, some flowered, some plain, some blue, arriving for work, leaving for home every eight, ten or 12 hours. They never stop crossing from the new multi-story parking garages that were built on the northern shoulders of the Mile to the huge, blue Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital building that was added on to the colossus of Grand Rapids health care, Spectrum- Butterworth hospital.
Parents are inside DeVos Children’s and Spectrum-Butterworth hospitals at all hours of the day and night praying that their children’s hearts will continue beating just as this heart of the Medical Mile keeps ticking away, a silent metronome that keeps Michigan Street NE from closing its eyes.
Doctors and nurses race across the spine of the Mile before the lights change. Some of them run into Meijer Heart Center. This is where old hearts are exchanged for new, where lives begin again, where families grieve, where families celebrate. It is the building of second chances. It is yet another reason that Michigan Street NE can’t sleep anymore. The Mile won’t let it even doze.
When another day does dawn, Michigan Street can’t even lay down beside the exhausted third-shift that will soon be home, or sit beside the thirsty third-shift toasting the end of a long night in bars promising them the happiest hours of the day from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., or at least the best prices.
Michigan Street NE has no time to rest. The first shift is arriving for work, parking on the northern shoulders of this concrete animal, walking down its spine to work on the southern shoulders of this Mile that brought new life and new dreams to Grand Rapids, the second-largest Michigan community, a community that no longer feels intimidated by Detroit.
Michigan Street is speeding up as the sun rises in the east, so bright that drivers are forced to slow to a crawl as they drive into the burning orb that is too low for their visors and too bright to see the car ahead. Traffic nearly stops in the eastbound lanes of I-196, the Gerald R. Ford Freeway, named for the city’s favorite son, Michigan’s only entry into the Oval Office in Washington D.C.
This is the artery that pumps life from the east into the heart of the Medical Mile and gives electricity to the nerve endings that make Michigan Street NE live as no other concrete animal in Grand Rapids.
For more of Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community, please visit my website,
https://www.rodkackley.com
Invention of an American Community by Rod Kackley
There was never a day when Sophie de Marsac Campau did not wake up to hardship and loneliness.
Her childhood probably ended as it did for most girls in the 1800s, at the age of 14. After that it was day after day of toil. Water was boiled and clothes were washed, by hand, in that hot, hot water. If she was lucky, she had a hand-operated washing machine. Like most women, she probably just had a washboard.
Dirt was everywhere. Dust was on everything. Dust from the dirty paths that passed for streets, dust from the dried manure that fell from horses. Flies and the diseases they carried were everywhere. Thick clouds of flies were attracted by outhouses, latrine trenches and mounds of garbage behind Grand Rapids homes.
Louis Campau, met and married Sophie in Detroit, then brought her to what would become Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1827. He put food on their table by establishing a trading post.
Sophie spoke only French. The Indian women spoke their own language. The “Yankee” women who came before her spoke only English.
Sophie only had one friend. Mrs. Slater, the missionary’s wife, who spoke no French, but able to communicate with Sophie through a kind of sign language they created. They never spoke a word. What good would that have done?
Another day spent in Grand Rapids.
Aside from her husband, those sign-language conversations were the only human interaction Sophie had in this God-forsaken wilderness that Louis had decided to make their home.
This lesson Sophie learned would be handed down through generations of Grand Rapidians: if you are going to make it, you are going to make it on your own. The people of West Michigan are for the most part a very self-reliant breed. It is in their DNA. If you are first-generation, you pick it up through osmosis. Thought and culture molecules are everywhere. Grand Rapids doesn’t keep its norms and mores secret.
Another lesson learned that would prove to be very transferable to those who followed the Campau family was the lesson of capitalism, though it wasn’t known by that name in Sophie and her husband’s day. They were just making a living.
Louis, who would become one of the founders of Grand Rapids, was a fur trader. That only went so far. Campau made money however he could. Louis was a businessman above all else who woke up every day knowing that it was up to him to provide for himself and his incredibly lonely wife, Sophie.
Louis was just as much an outsider as Sophie, as were the Yankee men and women who preceded them. But he carved out a place for himself in what would become Grand Rapids. His log huts and trading post were the first scars on the wilderness that before him and his people was unspoiled.
He was also more than just a fur trading, whiskey-selling business man. He was what generations after him would call, an entrepreneur. The people who built Medical Mile were no less a pioneer than Louis, and he was no less an entrepreneur.
~ LCM~
Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the stories of the people like Louis and Sophie Campau who invented Grand Rapids, Michigan. It also tells the stories of the people who are trying to reinvent this American community for the 21st century. They hope to change the way the world sees Grand Rapids, the way their community sees itself and the way the community sees the world. Will it work? Only time will tell.
Autographed editions of Last Chance Mile are available at West Coast Coffee in downtown Grand Rapids, Schuler Books & Music on 28th Street in Grand Rapids or by clicking on the Add to Cart or Buy Now buttons on the Welcome Page of www.rodkackley.com
Last Chance Mile is also available wherever books are sold online, including Abbott Press.
Her childhood probably ended as it did for most girls in the 1800s, at the age of 14. After that it was day after day of toil. Water was boiled and clothes were washed, by hand, in that hot, hot water. If she was lucky, she had a hand-operated washing machine. Like most women, she probably just had a washboard.
Dirt was everywhere. Dust was on everything. Dust from the dirty paths that passed for streets, dust from the dried manure that fell from horses. Flies and the diseases they carried were everywhere. Thick clouds of flies were attracted by outhouses, latrine trenches and mounds of garbage behind Grand Rapids homes.
Louis Campau, met and married Sophie in Detroit, then brought her to what would become Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1827. He put food on their table by establishing a trading post.
Sophie spoke only French. The Indian women spoke their own language. The “Yankee” women who came before her spoke only English.
Sophie only had one friend. Mrs. Slater, the missionary’s wife, who spoke no French, but able to communicate with Sophie through a kind of sign language they created. They never spoke a word. What good would that have done?
Another day spent in Grand Rapids.
Aside from her husband, those sign-language conversations were the only human interaction Sophie had in this God-forsaken wilderness that Louis had decided to make their home.
This lesson Sophie learned would be handed down through generations of Grand Rapidians: if you are going to make it, you are going to make it on your own. The people of West Michigan are for the most part a very self-reliant breed. It is in their DNA. If you are first-generation, you pick it up through osmosis. Thought and culture molecules are everywhere. Grand Rapids doesn’t keep its norms and mores secret.
Another lesson learned that would prove to be very transferable to those who followed the Campau family was the lesson of capitalism, though it wasn’t known by that name in Sophie and her husband’s day. They were just making a living.
Louis, who would become one of the founders of Grand Rapids, was a fur trader. That only went so far. Campau made money however he could. Louis was a businessman above all else who woke up every day knowing that it was up to him to provide for himself and his incredibly lonely wife, Sophie.
Louis was just as much an outsider as Sophie, as were the Yankee men and women who preceded them. But he carved out a place for himself in what would become Grand Rapids. His log huts and trading post were the first scars on the wilderness that before him and his people was unspoiled.
He was also more than just a fur trading, whiskey-selling business man. He was what generations after him would call, an entrepreneur. The people who built Medical Mile were no less a pioneer than Louis, and he was no less an entrepreneur.
~ LCM~
Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the stories of the people like Louis and Sophie Campau who invented Grand Rapids, Michigan. It also tells the stories of the people who are trying to reinvent this American community for the 21st century. They hope to change the way the world sees Grand Rapids, the way their community sees itself and the way the community sees the world. Will it work? Only time will tell.
Autographed editions of Last Chance Mile are available at West Coast Coffee in downtown Grand Rapids, Schuler Books & Music on 28th Street in Grand Rapids or by clicking on the Add to Cart or Buy Now buttons on the Welcome Page of www.rodkackley.com
Last Chance Mile is also available wherever books are sold online, including Abbott Press.
Grand Rapids: Not The Backwater It Used To Be?
Finally someone gets it right. One of the people who read Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community sent me an email the other day with a real compliment for Grand Rapids, Michigan.
He wrote, "After reading your book (Last Chance Mile) I can see that Grand Rapids is no longer the backwater it was when I used to go out there on business a decade ago."
It may not seem like much of a compliment at first blush, but anyone who was in Grand Rapids ten, fifteen or twenty years ago will tell you that this city has changed.
That is the message of Last Chance Mile. Even though many of the stories involve the Medical Mile, a $1 billion campus on the northeast side of the city, the stories are really about how the people of Grand Rapids have tried to change the way the world sees their community, the way the community sees itself and perhaps most importantly, the way the community sees the world.
He wrote, "After reading your book (Last Chance Mile) I can see that Grand Rapids is no longer the backwater it was when I used to go out there on business a decade ago."
It may not seem like much of a compliment at first blush, but anyone who was in Grand Rapids ten, fifteen or twenty years ago will tell you that this city has changed.
That is the message of Last Chance Mile. Even though many of the stories involve the Medical Mile, a $1 billion campus on the northeast side of the city, the stories are really about how the people of Grand Rapids have tried to change the way the world sees their community, the way the community sees itself and perhaps most importantly, the way the community sees the world.
West Michigan Business Leaders Seek to Bridge Gap
Here's a link to a story I wrote for Crain's Michigan Business on the Mackinac Policy Conference, an annual gathering of the state's biggest political and business names.
It is sponsored by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce and for years was a strictly SE Michigan conclave.
That changed a few years ago.
The link to the story is below.
http://tinyurl.com/np3h2qw
Rod Kackley
It is sponsored by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce and for years was a strictly SE Michigan conclave.
That changed a few years ago.
The link to the story is below.
http://tinyurl.com/np3h2qw
Rod Kackley
Thank The Farmer For That Beer In Your Hand
Quenching The Thirst
Chapter One: The Farmers
By Rod Kackley
Jeff and Bonnie Steinman are betting their farm on Michigan’s craft brewing industry. The Barry County, Michigan couple spent several years experimenting before launching Hop Head Farms LLC in the summer of 2012. They are growing hops that brewers need on a 40-acre lot with 15-acres of new plants.
They also have a small test yard that the Steinmans started in 2009.
This is perfect for these two. Jeff and Bonnie are just what they say they are and you can feel their enthusiasm for their craft even in a conference call phone interview. I spoke with them from the patio of a Starbucks near Kalamazoo, Mich. while they took a break from their farming operation on a hot summer day
You have to believe her when Bonne says that she and Jeff are “plant people” who are always looking for new crops to grow. Perhaps more importantly, they don’t just like beer. They love beer. Bonnie said they are “beer enthusiasts, especially (for) Michigan-brewed beers.”
How could there be any business more perfect for this couple?
They are targeting craft and home brewers who Jeff said are having a hard time getting the hops they need, especially locally grown hops. Large hop farms are locked into long-term contracts with the macro-brewers, the giants of the industry. “So we are trying to reopen the market to some of the smaller guys,” he said. “Very few have large barrel capacity in any one state. The small breweries have a hard time. We would like to work with larger breweries but would like to help the smaller breweries with supply issues.”
The smaller breweries are really a victim of their own success, or better said, they are a victim of their own recipes. They have supply issues because the micro- and craft-brewers use a lot more hops to make barrels of beer than do macro-brewers, according to Jeff. “Even though is a small percentage, the craft brewers have really impacted the supply of hops.”
Jeff and Bonnie got down and dirty when it came time to ignite their passion. With a business model in the works for several years , Jeff said that close to 15,000 plants were hand-planted in hand-crafted hop hills augmented with local compost and covered in organic weed control paper over a period of three and a half weeks. Five varieties of hops were planted of which three were in short supply for the 2012 season already when I spoke with the Jeff and Bonnie.
More than 20 volunteers came from as far away as the Chicago and Detroit areas to assist the Steinmans in the planting of the hops. They converted a corn field located in downtown Hickory Corners to a hop farm of nearly 15,000 plants grown on a trellis system reaching over 20 feet high in merely four months.
“The farm and facilities were developed with the assistance of several different contractors contributing their expertise to the project including a trellis contractor, well drillers, irrigation contractor, and Morton Buildings and their subcontractors as well,” Jeff said. Nearly all materials and work are from Michigan businesses including treated pine poles, wire, compost, and starter plants.”
He also said they planned to receive additional assistance with the work still ahead of them through University of Illinois interns, paid seasonal employees and continual volunteer assistance that has proven invaluable.
Quenching The Thirst
Chapter One: The Farmers
By Rod Kackley
Jeff and Bonnie Steinman are betting their farm on Michigan’s craft brewing industry. The Barry County, Michigan couple spent several years experimenting before launching Hop Head Farms LLC in the summer of 2012. They are growing hops that brewers need on a 40-acre lot with 15-acres of new plants.
They also have a small test yard that the Steinmans started in 2009.
This is perfect for these two. Jeff and Bonnie are just what they say they are and you can feel their enthusiasm for their craft even in a conference call phone interview. I spoke with them from the patio of a Starbucks near Kalamazoo, Mich. while they took a break from their farming operation on a hot summer day
You have to believe her when Bonne says that she and Jeff are “plant people” who are always looking for new crops to grow. Perhaps more importantly, they don’t just like beer. They love beer. Bonnie said they are “beer enthusiasts, especially (for) Michigan-brewed beers.”
How could there be any business more perfect for this couple?
They are targeting craft and home brewers who Jeff said are having a hard time getting the hops they need, especially locally grown hops. Large hop farms are locked into long-term contracts with the macro-brewers, the giants of the industry. “So we are trying to reopen the market to some of the smaller guys,” he said. “Very few have large barrel capacity in any one state. The small breweries have a hard time. We would like to work with larger breweries but would like to help the smaller breweries with supply issues.”
The smaller breweries are really a victim of their own success, or better said, they are a victim of their own recipes. They have supply issues because the micro- and craft-brewers use a lot more hops to make barrels of beer than do macro-brewers, according to Jeff. “Even though is a small percentage, the craft brewers have really impacted the supply of hops.”
Jeff and Bonnie got down and dirty when it came time to ignite their passion. With a business model in the works for several years , Jeff said that close to 15,000 plants were hand-planted in hand-crafted hop hills augmented with local compost and covered in organic weed control paper over a period of three and a half weeks. Five varieties of hops were planted of which three were in short supply for the 2012 season already when I spoke with the Jeff and Bonnie.
More than 20 volunteers came from as far away as the Chicago and Detroit areas to assist the Steinmans in the planting of the hops. They converted a corn field located in downtown Hickory Corners to a hop farm of nearly 15,000 plants grown on a trellis system reaching over 20 feet high in merely four months.
“The farm and facilities were developed with the assistance of several different contractors contributing their expertise to the project including a trellis contractor, well drillers, irrigation contractor, and Morton Buildings and their subcontractors as well,” Jeff said. Nearly all materials and work are from Michigan businesses including treated pine poles, wire, compost, and starter plants.”
He also said they planned to receive additional assistance with the work still ahead of them through University of Illinois interns, paid seasonal employees and continual volunteer assistance that has proven invaluable.
Quenching The Thirst
