The Grand Rapids Chapter of Sweet Adelines presented the highly prestigious award of Sweet Adeline of the Year Award to Rockford resident and former WKTV Editor Colleen Pierson. The singing group is composed of 60 women who sing four-part harmony in acapella style.
The award is given to a member who exemplifies the ideal qualities shown through leadership, successes, progress and dedication.
“To be nominated was extraordinary, to win was a dream come true. I felt like I won an Academy Award,” Pierson said enthusiastically.
Master Director Denise Van Dyken was happy for Pierson. “Colleen brings so much enthusiasm, talents and humor to our group. It is a well-deserved honor.”
The Grand Rapids Chapter of Sweet Adelines are Regional Champions and will compete on the International Stage in New Orleans in September. They perform at community events, concerts, competitions, charity functions and sing the National Anthem at sporting games.
“The only thing better than singing, is more singing,” joked Pierson. “One of my best life decisions was getting involved with this talented group of women.”
The group is always looking for new members who love to sing and perform. They practice every Monday night. For more information, please visit https://www.grsa.net.
In this season of graduations and the school year ending, it is easy to focus on accomplishments and successes as we reflect on the past year as well as a student’s entire school career. However, failure is an important part of our learning process and can be a powerful educational experience. It takes some practice and humility to see failure as a good thing, as so often it is portrayed as a negative experience or something people don’t want to talk about. Teachers, coaches and 4-H leaders can help youth reframe failure and reflect on what they learned.
Think back to a time when you feel like you failed at something. Did you work on a project that didn’t turn out like you hoped? Did you plan an event that didn’t attract enough people? Did you overspend on a budget? Did you run out of food or supplies for a project? Did you say something that offended someone? Did you miss a deadline?
How did you feel immediately after the experience? How did that change over time? Often, the passage of time helps us to see how we could have done something differently to affect a different outcome, but right after the experience our feelings of shame and embarrassment may hinder our ability to learn from it. We can help change the culture of how we talk about failure so that the youth we work with can learn to see failure as part of their normal development.
Here are some common situations youth experience and some tips for how to talk about them in a way that encourages growth.
Sports team doesn’t win a game or tournament. Student doesn’t win a competition or scholarship.
Encourage discussion on the entire experience, not just the final result. What were the things that worked well? What did they observe the other team/contestants do well?
Youth misses a deadline for entering a project in the fair.
Encourage discussion about what was learned in the project experience. What could help them meet deadlines in the future? Are there other places they could share their project besides at the fair?
Youth work on a community service project that didn’t raise as much money or didn’t engage as many community members as they wanted. Or perhaps they work on something where there were more people than expected and they end up overspending on a budget or didn’t buy enough supplies.
Encourage discussion about all the different skills learned through the project. What were the things that worked well? Where could they ask for help or more resources next time?
Avoid shame or blame in these discussions and pay attention to how you express your feedback. Helping youth to see what they can learn in these situations can often be as much about our phrasing and attitude as the actual questions we use. It may help to remind everyone involved about the bigger picture of learning and developing skills to be better in the future.
Learning to see failure as an experience that can teach us as much or more than a success takes practice and patience. Model this in your words and feedback to youth about their experiences, and they will be able to see the value of failure!
Michigan State University Extension and Michigan 4-H Youth Development help to prepare young people for successful futures. As a result of career exploration and workforce preparation activities, thousands of Michigan youth are better equipped to make important decisions about their professional future, ready to contribute to the workforce and able to take fiscal responsibility in their personal lives. For more information or resources on career exploration, workforce preparation, financial education, or entrepreneurship, contact 4-HCareerPrep@anr.msu.edu.
Simple table salt ought not trouble you at mealtime. The real concern is how much salt went into processing and preparing the meal itself. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)
If you’re like most people, you won’t have any trouble identifying the usual suspects. (French fries, chips and pretzels—we’re looking at you.)
The leading sources of excess sodium in the average American diet are less obvious.
Packaged foods such as bread, desserts and even canned vegetables—vegetables, for Pete’s sake!—can be prepared with alarmingly high salt levels.
That should be a cause for universal concern.
While there’s been some debate about precise levels, current guidelines call for an intake of 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day.
| The American Heart Association goes even further, recommending all American adults try to limit themselves to 1,500 milligrams per day. This is also the level recommended for people with high blood pressure and heart disease.
African Americans are also advised to stick to the lower level.
The reality? The average American eats well over twice that amount, or about 3,400 milligrams a day, and sometimes more.
“Most people don’t realize that the problem isn’t using their salt shaker, but all the foods they eat with those hidden sources,” said Caren Dobreff, RD, projects dietitian at Spectrum Health.
Such as? “Toast and cereal,” Dobreff said. “Because sodium is widely used for flavor, as a leavening agent (think baking soda), as a preservative, it turns up in places you don’t expect.” Portion sizes can add to the confusion since few people limit themselves to a single slice of bread or a half cup of cereal.
The immediate impact of too much salt can be a bloated feeling due to water retention.
“Water retention can make your socks or shoes or waistband feel snug,” Dobreff said.
Over time, too much sodium may increase the risk of high blood pressure, stroke and heart failure, as well as osteoporosis, stomach cancer, kidney disease and headaches.
The best defense: Tune up your sodium radar.
Restaurant foods contribute to about a quarter of the typical American’s dietary sodium. Meals prepared at home account for another 10 percent. Surprisingly, less than 5 percent of dietary salt is added at the table.
This means the worst offenders—about 65 percent, reports the American Heart Association—are foods we buy at the store.
Here’s how to protect yourself from sneaky salt attacks:
Read the label
Manufacturers of packaged foods must list nutritional information on the label. This includes listing sodium content.
The fine print will help you discover, for example, that 3 ounces of deli meat such as ham or turkey can contain up to 1,050 milligrams of sodium. A cup of chicken noodle soup packs 940 milligrams, a slice of American cheese has 460 milligrams and a piece of bread has 230 milligrams. That’s pretty salty.
Check chicken labels, too, especially if the package notes, “Contains broth.” Meat processors often plump the chicken by injecting it with sodium, improving moisture retention. This enhanced chicken can increase sodium content as much as 440 milligrams.
Most red meat cuts have 100 milligrams or less, but processed meat—think cold cuts, sausages and hot dogs—can have hundreds of milligrams of added salt.
Research your restaurant favorites
While it’s harder to learn what’s in your favorite restaurant foods,
most national chains have nutrition details on their websites.
A little digging before you get there will help you discover that a slice of pizza at your local shop may well have 760 milligrams of sodium, while a cheeseburger has a whopping 1,690 milligrams. At some fast food joints, just 3 ounces of breaded chicken strips contain 900 milligrams of sodium.
And don’t be fooled when restaurants label something low- or reduced-sodium. Reduced-sodium soy sauce, for example, can still have as much as 500 milligrams per serving.
Cook from scratch
Cooking from scratch offers the most control over how much salt winds
up on your plate. A tomato, for example, contains a mere 6 milligrams
of sodium. But half a cup of canned low-sodium diced tomatoes has
already more than tripled to 20 milligrams.
A helping of regular canned tomatoes is 10 times saltier, at 220 milligrams.
“Look for ways to create flavor explosions,” Dobreff said. She recommends high-impact seasoning like citrus, vinegar, herbs and spices, such as cumin and chili powder.
Don’t get duped
As appealing as some popular gourmet salts sound—pink Himalayan,
Hawaiian black lava, grey sea salt, kosher salt and even dusting
salt—they’re still just sodium chloride.
“Some people like to experiment with them for flavor and some are prepared more naturally,” Dobreff said. “But the sodium is roughly the same.”
Plan a counterattack
When you’ve got a major salt craving, play nutritional offense. Keep
whole fresh fruits and vegetables and unsalted roasted nuts and seeds on
hand. We tend to snack on what we can see and what our arms can reach.
“Buy a lower-sodium type of pretzels or chips, for example, and count out the amount of a single serving,” Dobreff said. “Then enjoy them. But be careful to balance them out with foods that day that are high in potassium, such as bananas, citrus fruits, papayas, avocados or potatoes.”
Step into Godwin Heights High School biology teacher Cory Klocko’s classroom on any given day, and you’re bound to see few eyes on the teacher. Rather, you’ll see students discussing, hypothesizing and testing their theories to answer questions such as “Why is Addie sick?”
Addie is a character in one of three narratives provided by the Next Generation Science Standards storyline curriculum embraced this year by Klocko and his colleague, biology teacher Derek Stoneman.
Memorizing facts is one thing, but understanding concepts is quite another. Thanks to the three storylines, which cover an entire year of biology curriculum, students are ditching the flashcards and homework and finding that biology is pretty cool when it revolves around telling stories.
As one storyline goes, Addie gets sicker over time and antibiotics aren’t helping. Students have to figure out why, and the solution requires learning about bacterial evolution, growing bacteria on an agar plate and understanding antibiotic resistance, among other things.
Kierra Strickland explains a design for a hypothetical experiment. (School News Network.)
Less Memorization, More Assimilation
The new curriculum is unlike anything Madison Hall, a 10th-grader in Klocko’s Biology class, has ever seen.
“The teachers let the students find the answers as a class without telling them the answer directly, and help steer the students in the right direction to understand the material,” Madison explained.
While there’s not much to memorize and homework is rare, “every day is hard,” Klocko said. Attendance is crucial, because the learning takes place inside the discussion.
“The rigor of it is unlike anything I’ve seen or taught with science in the past,” Stoneman said.
Klocko said students were a little confused at first by the shift in thinking: “You’re not going to tell us the answers?” they’d say. But they caught on quickly, he said, and are learning the value in struggling.
They also understand and remember the material after the unit is over because each storyline “lets the students think more about what they are learning and helps the students to understand the answers… instead of just memorizing the answers,” Madison said.
Case in point: after the bell rang following the very first class Stoneman taught using storylines, he said, students were still discussing Addie.
Wendi Vogel, Kent ISD science consultant, said Godwin Heights and Union High School are two Kent County schools using the biology curriculum this year. Michigan adopted NGSS for the state in 2015, and the life science storylines are beginning to take hold here. Vogel said there were two curriculum writers and reviewers in Michigan already, and she tapped them to launch the biology program in Kent County.
Klocko and Stoneman attended a training on this curriculum last year and and decided last summer that they would follow it for the 2018-1019 school year. The NGSS storylines are a fairly radical departure from the way they used to teach — standing in front of the class, delivering lesson plans.
“It’s really refreshing. Instead of me thinking, ‘What am I going to teach these kids?’ it’s ‘what are these kids going to find out on their own?’” Klocko said. “It’s the best resource there is out there to teach science, in my opinion.”
Seeing students understand and embrace the curriculum has been rewarding for the teachers. The success of it, Klocko said, is partly due to having a collaborator in Stoneman. They meet each morning to discuss their successes and failures with the curriculum. There are no textbooks; all the material is online and readings are embedded into the problems.
Storylines and Bloodlines
“Biology this year is much more fun and enjoyable than the previous years of science,” said Skyler Lambright, a freshman in Klocko’s class.
Skyler particularly enjoyed a recent unit, which used a storyline about Duchenne muscular dystrophy to teach about genetics and inherited conditions. Students learned about the x-linked recessive disorder, and asked, “Why does this mostly affect boys?”
Students can explain the “why” fluently by the time the unit is finished, Stoneman said.
“The kids are figuring it out as they go. It’s not ‘All right, today, I’m going to tell you what natural selection is.’ It’s putting the pieces together through reading, writing and discussion and figuring out what’s happening and why. “They’re going to put together a coherent thought instead of regurgitating what I told them.”
Need evidence that students are engaged?
Klocko said he received an email from a student who had been thinking about a problem they were working on in class — at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday.
For more stories on local schools, visit the School News Network website, schoolnewsnetwork.org.
Fowling is a hybrid game that combines the equipment of American football and bowling into one sport with a similar layout as horseshoes and cornhole. (Wikipedia Commons)
By WKTV Staff ken@wktv.org
Reacting to increased public demand as well as the latest community recreation trends, the City of Kentwood will unveil four competition-grade beach volleyball courts and outdoor fowling lanes at a community event later this month.
Located at 5068 Breton Ave. SE, near the Kentwood Department of Public Works, the new facility will officially open with a grand opening on Friday, June 21, at 6 p.m., with with music, a food truck and a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“We have experienced a growing need for additional beach volleyball courts within the community and are excited to grow our recreational offerings,” Val Romeo, director of Kentwood Parks and Recreation, said in supplied material. “We are proud to offer new high-quality sand courts right here in Kentwood. We are also excited to include fowling — an activity that’s growing in popularity.”
Fowling is a hybrid game that combines the equipment of American football and bowling into one sport with a similar layout as horseshoes and cornhole. It is maybe best known as a pastime at football and concert tailgate parties. According to Wikipedia, fowling was founded in 2001 in Detroit. The object of fowling is for teams to be the first to knock down all opponent’s pins by throwing a full-size, regulation football at 10 bowling pins positioned in a traditional bowling layout.
Following the new facility’s ribbon-cutting, volleyball teams of four will compete in a co-ed volleyball tournament. Those interested in signing up for the tournament, or a variety of competitive and recreational beach volleyball leagues set to begin July 15, can sign up at kentwoodvolleyball or by calling 616-656-5270.
For the opening day tournament at the volleyball courts, participating teams can pre-register online for $25. Day-of-event registration will cost $35. All teams are also encouraged to bring a donation of canned goods to benefit Kentwood’s Little Free Pantry.
The city’s parks department plans to have the fowling lanes available for open play during volleyball league games on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.
For more information on the City of Kentwood Parks and Recreation Department and its many programs, visit kentwood.us .
You enjoy walking and even have an exercise buddy to keep you on track. But maybe your enthusiasm has started to wane.
The answer? Expand your workout circle and form a walking group in your community. By planning walks and encouraging one another, each member will have an impact on everyone else’s health.
First, see if there’s already a community-based organization that might join forces with you or offer ideas, information and resources. Maybe there’s a nonprofit that you’d like to support through a walk six or 12 months from now—check out its website to see if it offers planning pointers for fundraising events.
Next, decide how wide a net you want to cast to recruit members. You might keep the group to people you know or extend it to include friends of friends.
Hold a kick-off meeting and work out key details like the days and times the group will meet, how long you’ll walk each time and a list of routes that will keep things interesting. Set up a system for contacting one another by text or e-mail so you can send updates and reminders before each walk.
If you’d rather join a group than start one, check out Walkwithadoc.org.
Started in 2005 by David Sabgir, a cardiologist in Columbus, Ohio, it has chapters across the country. Walks are typically held on weekends for an hour and include a conversation with the local doctor who leads the chapter. It’s a great way to meet other people and get fit together.
Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.
There are a lot of great benefits to being a senior, but you may be dismayed with lessening mobility. Retirement can also have you searching for hobbies to fill the time that don’t require an abundance of energy or time. While traditionally gardening is a task that requires a lot of both, container gardening is a way to enjoy nature that won’t take as much out of you.
What is Container Gardening?
Container gardening is, as the name implies, gardening that happens in containers rather than in the ground. A container can be anything that holds soil and plants, from traditional pots to repurposed basins and tubs. Almost any plant can be gardened in a container, even some types of small trees.
If you have little or no outdoor space, then container gardening has the extra bonus of not needing a lot of room. A few window planters or pots on a balcony can give you that garden you wanted without needing a lot of yard.
You can also container garden indoors, with smaller pots on windowsills or raised on tables in a mudroom or sunroom. Containers at different heights can add even more dimension and layers to your garden.
Why Seniors?
So why is container gardening a good idea for seniors? For starters, you don’t have to be a natural gardener or someone with lots of experience to begin. Container gardening is great for a new hobby, and it doesn’t cost much to get started.
In addition, the containers you choose to garden in can be raised so you don’t have to bend down and stand up like you do with traditional gardening. If you have additional handicaps or are in a wheelchair, you can find raised planters that come to a level that you are comfortable with.
Even if you are a fairly mobile senior, container gardening can be an exercise that helps you avoid spending long periods of time out in the heat. A slight raise up from ground level can also be a big help for your back, and container gardens are easier to move and manipulate than a garden in the ground.
Picking Containers
While containers can come in any size, from small, egg-sized pots for small succulents to huge planters for bushes, it’s easier to garden in something that has a bit of room for your plants to grow. Because it’s an enclosed space, roots will only grow as big as the container allows, so a larger pot gives your plants more room.
Examples of containers you can use include:
Hanging baskets
Plastic pots
Metal planters
Planters with added trellises
Wash tubs
Clustered pots
Wicker baskets
Bowls
Terra cotta pots
Hollow concrete squares
All of these types of containers can also be raised if they don’t already come with a stand to get them off the ground and closer to you.
Prepping Your Container
Once you have a container—or several—picked out, it’s time to start considering the logistics. Move your container to where you want it to be before you start to fill it with dirt, which will quickly add weight to your container.
Another detail to consider is the drainage of your container. All containers should have a draining system like holes in the bottom—unless it is a cachepot. A cachepot is a decorative pot that a smaller, plain pot with drainage rests inside of. A cachepot should not be used as a regular container because without drainage you plant’s roots can get waterlogged.
Containers also use a different kind of dirt than a regular garden. Ground gardening soil is too heavy for plants in containers, so a lighter soil mix like houseplant soil will provide better results. You also want to make sure that the water, once it drains through the soil, doesn’t flow or fall on anything that could be water damaged. A tray or flat plate to collect water can be a big help if your container doesn’t come with one.
Here are some final tips about container gardening for seniors:
Keep the soil in your container damp. Drying the dirt out makes it difficult to re-wet and stay moist.
Have quality pruning and gardening tools so you don’t strain yourself.
Regularly fertilize the containers to give plants extra nutrients.
Keep an eye on your allergies, and avoid plants that are going to make you sneeze.
Clear out dead leaves or flowers that might be detracting from the overall look of your garden.
Keep an eye on how much sun and shade your containers get—you may need to adjust what plants you pick to find something that can thrive in different light conditions.
Play around with plant arrangements to find something that you like.
A black-legged tick poses on a leaf, waiting for an animal to brush up against it, so it may crawl on its new blood host. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)
“Many of us have heard about the tick boom,” said Rosemary Olivero, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with the Spectrum Health Medical Group. “It’s important to remember that we always expect a dramatic increase in the presence of all types of ticks during this time of year.”
The Michigan Department of Community Health has reported an increase in black-legged ticks along the Lake Michigan shorelines during the past seven years. The black-legged tick was formerly referred to as the deer tick.
Brian Hartl, an epidemiologist at the Kent County Health Department’s Communicable Diseases division, said the tick boom has been a multi-year trend.
“In terms of ticks, we don’t do any surveillance, per se, but we know the tick habitats are spreading eastward,” Hartl explained. “Historically, black-legged ticks—those that carry Lyme disease—have been on the lake shore. But they’re expanding inland from the lakes.”
But there’s more trouble to ticks than just Lyme disease, Dr. Olivero said.
“The black-legged tick can transmit Lyme disease, which is the most common tick-borne infection in Michigan,” she said. “The same tick can also transmit Anaplasmosis and Babesiosis, which almost never occur in Michigan. Other ticks (such as the American Dog tick, Lone Star tick, Woodchuck tick and Brown Dog tick) can transmit other diseases: Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Tularemia, Ehrlichisos, Anaplasmosis and Babesiosis. Luckily these infections are quite rare in Michigan.”
This arrived on the tails of the agency sharing news about a new, formerly rare tick-borne illness—the Powassan virus. Seventy-five cases of Powassan were reported in the United States in the past 10 years, but that number is expected go up as the ranks of mice and the ticks that carry the disease increase.
Symptoms of this serious infection can include fever, headache, vomiting, weakness, confusion, seizures and memory loss. Long-term neurologic problems may occur. The CDC notes there is no specific treatment, but some people need to be hospitalized to receive respiratory support and intravenous fluids or medications to reduce swelling in the brain.
Hartl said the best defense against ticks is to make it tough for them to latch on in the first place.
“Really it’s just being cognizant of your environment,” he said. “If you’re camping or hiking, wear pants or long socks to keep from getting ticks. They like to hang out in long grass and grab hold of you as you walk by.”
And if you do find a tick attached to your body, properly remove it. There are some videos online for how to do so. Dr. Olivero recommended this video for the proper way to remove ticks. For Lyme disease to be transmitted, ticks need to be attached for 24 to 48 hours.
“If you can remove it quickly enough you can keep from getting Lyme disease,” Hartl said.
Dr. Olivero agreed.
“There are two effective ways to prevent tick bites: wearing long sleeves, and using insect repellents,” she said. “Doing daily tick checks to remove any attached ticks can help prevent contracting Lyme disease from a tick. Important areas to check for ticks include the hairline and behind the ears. Carefully, using pointed tweezers, is the most effective way to remove a tick.”
An ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure: A severe sunburn in your youth can nearly double your chances of developing melanoma later in life. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)
Only half of Americans routinely protect themselves from the sun when outdoors, a recent American Academy of Dermatology survey found.
Those who don’t practice sun safety put themselves at increased risk for skin cancer, which is the most common cancer in the United States, despite being one of the most preventable cancers.
One in 5 Americans will develop skin cancer at some point in their life, the AAD estimates.
Just one serious sunburn in childhood or the teen years can nearly double a person’s risk of developing melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, later in life.
“Exposure to the sun’s harmful UV rays is the most preventable risk factor for skin cancer, and there are many simple things you can do to protect yourself from the sun,” AAD President Dr. George Hruza said in an academy news release.
Seek shade when possible, especially between 10am and 2pm when the sun’s rays are strongest.
Wear protective clothing, such as a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt, pants, a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses.
Apply a broad-spectrum, water-resistant sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher to all skin not covered by clothing. Reapply every two hours or after swimming or sweating.
“It’s also important to remember to protect parts of your body you think might not be getting any sun,” Hruza said.
“Areas like the tops of your hands, bottoms of your feet or the part in your hair may not immediately come to mind when it comes to sun protection, but they are still vulnerable to dangerous sun damage,” he explained.
Skin cancer is highly treatable when caught early, so it’s important to do regular skin self-exams and look out for ABCDEs—the warning signs of melanoma:
Asymmetry: One half of the spot is unlike the other half.
Border: The spot has an irregular, scalloped or poorly defined border.
Color: The spot has varying colors from one area to the next, such as shades of tan, brown or black, or areas of white, red or blue.
Diameter: Melanomas are usually greater than 6 millimeters (about the size of a pencil eraser) when diagnosed, but they can be smaller.
Evolving: The spot looks different from the rest or is changing in size, shape or color.
“If you find any new or suspicious spots on your skin, make an appointment to see a board-certified dermatologist,” Hruza said. “Spots that are changing, itching or bleeding could be a sign of skin cancer, and the earlier skin cancer is detected, the easier it is to treat.”
“I go to Costco every weekend. It’s my favorite part of the week.”
~ Jimmy Kimmel
Kicking off so you can kick up your heels
Circle June 4th on your calendar. That’s the date Concerts in the Park kicks off with local favorite Midlife Crisis, a classic rock band that was formed in 2001. The free, nine-week summer concert series held at 7pm Tuesdays at Lamar Park, 2561 Porter St. SW, features a wide variety of musical styles, interactive themes, and local food vendors. More info here.
Summer reads make me feel fine
Summer reading at KDL starts Monday, June 3 this year and runs through Saturday, Aug. 10. Sign up online at READsquared or pick up a paper form at your nearest KDL branch. Log your summer reading activity and earn prizes! Get more info here.
More active souls ought to check out the third annual Liquid Force Field Day on Saturday, June 1 at Action Wake Park, 3320 Hudson Trails Dr., Hudsonville, MI 49426. It’s a great opportunity to try Action Wake Park completely free of cost. Here is more info.
Fun fact:
25 years
Up to 25 years is the jail sentence you’ll get if you cut down a cactus in Arizona. Talk about harsh.
Gardening offers many therapeutic benefits to seniors; it acts as a stress reliever and lowers blood pressure. In assisted living where some seniors cannot access the outdoors as easily, indoor gardening offers you an opportunity to stay active. Indoor gardening also gives you a sense of purpose, especially when you work with herbs and vegetables to share with friends inside your community. You can share your growth with your loved ones who have an interest in indoor gardening or gift the plants to those in the hospital.
There are many different indoor plants you can bring into an assisted living facility, some great ones include:
Aloe
The succulent plant can grow up to three feet, making it ideal for livening up your décor. If you prefer smaller varieties, try the aloe vera. Aloe plants thrive in temperatures of approximately 70 degrees and require plenty of sunlight. Position your aloe plant next to a natural light source such as a window or on a balcony, and avoid watering it frequently as it thrives best in dry soil.
English Ivy
The English Ivy symbolizes timeless elegance, even as it matures and trails different furniture pieces for a picturesque effect. A new English Ivy begins with a stem cutting you can easily share with friends and family members who want to have one in their homes. Keep the soil moist, and your plant in cool temperatures of between 50 and 70 degrees for best results.
Rubber Tree
The rubber tree grows into a picture perfect 8-foot tree, with dark green shiny leaves, you can use as a statement piece in your interior design. If you prefer it smaller, prune the long stems and keep it as a shrub. The rubber tree thrives in bright to medium light at room temperature; let the soil dry out before re-watering it.
Snake Plant
The snake plant, featuring variegated leaves with yellow or white edges and a rare small white flower, is one of the easiest indoor plants to grow. It thrives at room temperature in different lighting conditions, with slightly dry air and requires very little water.
Areca Palms
If you are looking for a larger plant, choose the areca palm, which grows to a pretty 7-feet. However, if you love the plant and prefer it smaller, use a small pot to contain it. Position your areca plant away from direct light, preferably in a corner or a hallway away from the windows, and water it every other week to maintain a healthy plant.
The decision to take up gardening can drastically improve your health; there are psychological benefits to nurturing a living thing and watching it blossom. In addition to the plants above, you will come across different varieties and species specific to your geographical location. Look at indoor gardening as a fun activity you can enjoy alone or with friends even when you have limited mobility or the weather limits your ability to spend time doing outdoor gardening.
Dr. Matthew Axtman, Spectrum Health Medical Group Orthopedics, is the medical lead for the annual River Bank Run, the largest 25K in the country (Chris Clark, Spectrum Health Beat)
Springtime usually heralds the beginning of another full season of 5Ks and roadside runners.
Whether you’re training for your first race, want to be more active, or seek to cut minutes off your run times, here are 10 tips from doctors in the know:
1. Set a goal
Setting a goal, along with a timeline to accomplish that goal, is key, said Matt Axtman, DO, a sports medicine specialist with Spectrum Health Medical Group.
Your goal may be running for 30 minutes straight without any walking by May 15, running a 5K in 25 minutes by July 1, or completing a marathon in five hours by September.
A specific goal is the first step toward a runner making strides.
2. Select a program
Photo by Chris Clark, Spectrum Health Beat
After setting a goal, selecting a program and schedule is the next major step.
“The Internet is a wealth of information,” Dr. Axtman said.
On days when you’re not running, continue to do athletic activities, whether it’s lifting weights, hiking or other sports.
The most fit athletes are multi-sport athletes, Dr. Axtman said, citing Bo Jackson, a former professional football and baseball player, and Cal Ripken Jr., a baseball Hall-of-Famer known as “The Ironman” because he has the longest consecutive-games-played streak. Ripken was both a soccer and baseball player growing up.
“If you want to be an elite runner, it’s more than just running: It’s weight-lifting, it’s cross-training,” Dr. Axtman said. “We don’t like to see single-sport athletes, they tend to get overuse injuries and fatigue injuries.”
4. Listen to your body
“You’re going to have a normal soreness and
achiness (after you run),” Dr. Axtman said. “That muscle fatigue is
going to be there.”
Photo by Chris Clark, Spectrum Health Beat
But with rest and stretching, that should go away in no more than a few days, he said. If you have pain, apply ice to the affected area to reduce inflammation. If the pain lingers for more than a week, don’t push it.
And if rest doesn’t cure the pain, see a professional.
“Something that might not be a big deal initially, it could become a big deal and cause major problems if you don’t listen to your body and push it too hard,” Dr. Axtman said.
5. Proper shoes
Footwear is important, Dr. Axtman said. Having the wrong shoe can alter your gait, which can lead to more stress on the ankles, knees and lower back, and ultimately lead to injuries.
His advice? Get your foot and stride evaluated at a store that sells athletic footwear. They’ll help you select the proper shoe.“Also, pay attention to the mileage,” Dr. Axtman said. “Shoes typically last from 300-500 miles. After that, the soles start to wear out, the cushioning starts to wear out, which can alter your mechanics and lead to injury.”
6. Outdoors vs. Treadmill
All running is helpful, Dr. Axtman said.
When coming back from injury, treadmills are recommended because they have more cushioning and bounce, which leads to less impact on the body. But running on the road tends to be more difficult because there are hills and the surface material is less forgiving.
If you choose to run on a treadmill, change the incline to 2 percent, which will approximate the difficulties of running outdoors and keep you on track with your training schedule, he said.
7. Weight lifting
“You don’t need to do intense weight-lifting—you don’t need to be buff and Arnold Schwarzenegger-like,” Dr. Axtman said. “But you want to be strong, and that’ll help you run better times and run longer distances.”
Weight-lifting allows the body to perform at optimum levels.“It’s like driving in your car,” he said. “If alignment is off, your car is going to shake. And that’ll affect gas mileage (and) it’ll burn gasoline more quickly. If there’s one thing with your car, it affects all the other systems. Same with your body.
“When you’re running, you’re using core muscles to provide stability, along with your spine, and you use your shoulders and upper muscles to provide torque. It’s all important. It’ll all help you.”
8. Running partners
Unless you’re incredibly self-motivated, keeping to a training program can be difficult. Studies have shown, however, that running partners not only motivate you to show up to training sessions, but push you to run longer distances.
All running is helpful, Dr. Axtman said. When coming back from injury, treadmills are recommended because they have more cushioning and bounce, which leads to less impact on the body. (Chris Clark, Spectrum Health Beat)
“They make you accountable, so you’re more likely to show up and give 100 percent during your workout because you know that someone else is counting on you,” said Andrew Allden, who coaches women’s cross-country at the University of South Carolina, in an interview with Runner’s World.
And as another Runner’s World article once declared, “Partners make the best alarm clocks.”
9. Hydration
Knowing your “sweat rate” is important: Weigh yourself before and after a run, and calculate the difference and that’s your rate, Dr. Axtman said.
“And that’s typically how much water you can consume,” he said. “You don’t need to equal it, but get close.”
Water shouldn’t be chugged before running because that can cause sloshing, cramping and nausea while you run. It should be sipped in the hours before a run.
And for long-distance runners—say, more than two hours on the road, “we also recommend rehydrating with a sport drink or sport gel because you’re also losing sodium and minerals and want to replenish those,” Dr. Axtman said. “That’ll keep your body working optimally.”
10. Lifestyle changes
Training is wonderful, but significant barriers to serious improvement are diet and sleep habits.
“Altering your eating habits can take your weight down, which is going to put a lot less stress on joints,” says Dr. Axtman. Doctors recommend the Mediterranean diet, which is flexible and sustainable. The important thing is to eat whole foods instead of processed foods.
“If you buy it in a box, bag or can, it’s probably processed,” says Thomas Boyden, MD, a cardiologist with Spectrum Health Medical Group. “If you’re eating vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, beans and still a little bit of animal, the evidence is strong (your health will improve quickly).”
On Tuesday, May 28, the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) announced an award of $945,000 in 21stCentury Learning Center grant funds to operate seven elementary after-school programming sites in the city of Wyoming through the TEAM 21 after-school program, a consortium of the City of Wyoming, Wyoming Public Schools, Godfrey-Lee Public Schools and Godwin Heights Public Schools.
Currently, TEAM 21 serves 1,542 students, 900 of which were at risk of losing services should this grant have not been funded. Schools impacted are: Wyoming Public School District – Gladiola, Oriole Park, Parkview and West; Godfrey-Lee Public School District – Godfrey-Lee Early Childhood Center and Godfrey Elementary; and Godwin Heights Public School District – North Godwin Elementary. TEAM 21 provides academic support, enrichment, health and fitness, life skills, service-learning, and recreation opportunities in the after-school and summer hours.
Wyoming, Kelloggsviile, Godwin Heights and Godfrey Lee Public Schools students fill their summer days with fun and activities through TEAM 21, which blended summer school and recreation
“TEAM 21 is a testament of community collaboration resulting in high quality programming that is making a proven difference in the academic performance of children,” stated Craig Hoekstra, Superintendent of Wyoming Public Schools and grant fiduciary agent.
This funding brings the total number of TEAM 21 sites to 12 for the 2019-2020 school year with an annual investment exceeding $1.2 million by the MDE and leveraged by local municipal and school district in-kind resources.
“We are thrilled at the opportunity this provides for TEAM 21 to continue serving youth and families in the Wyoming community,” said Rebecca Rynbrandt, Director of Community Services. “We are blessing, investing in and mentoring our next generation of leaders.”
In addition to the seven schools awarded, TEAM 21 has continuation funding secured for five additional schools (WPS – Wyoming Intermediate and Wyoming Junior High; GLPS – Lee Middle; GHPS – West Godwin Elementary and Godwin Middle) through a separate 21st CCLC grant. For more information about the TEAM 21 program, please visit www.wyomingmi.gov/team21 or contact the Wyoming Parks and Recreation Department at 616-530-3164.
As the Festival of the Arts brings to gear up, many WKTV regulars and readers might recognize a familiar name at this year’s regional art exhibition.
WKTV volunteer Thomas Hegewald had two pieces accepted into this year’s Festival of the Arts Regional Art Exhibition. The black and white photos are titled “Layers, Sound of Raasay” and “Old Man of Story, Isle of Skye.”
An artist reception is set for this Saturday, June 1, from 1 – 4 p.m .at the Fed Galleries at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University, located at 17 Pearl St. NW. The exhibition runs June 2 – 22.
The show features artwork from artists living in Allegan, Barry, Ionia, Kent, Montcalm, Muskegon, Newaygo, and Ottawa counties.
In honor of this being the 50th Festival, there are two other Festival exhibitions: Comic/Anime/Graphic Novel Illustration Art at Madcap Coffee, 98 Monroe Center and “Bronzes of West Michigan” Photography Competition at the the Grand Rapids African American Museum and Archives, 87 Monroe Center. Both of these shows will have artists receptions from 6 — 7:30 p.m Wednesday, June 5.
The 50th Festival of the Arts opens Friday, June 7 and runs through Sunday, June 9. The three-day event features performances by local artists, craft and art tents, the art exhibitions, food booths, and this year, a food truck rally.
For more information on Festival of the Arts, visit festivalgr.org. For a complete list of the artists at all three art exhibitions, click here.
The 15th Annual Metro Cruise, hosted by the Wyoming Kentwood Area Chamber of Commerce, is still a summer-full of fun away — the event is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Aug. 23-24 — but the wheels are already rolling toward the big event.
The chamber hosted the 6th Annual 28th Street Metro Cruise Dust Off in early May at the Moose Lodge on Burlingame Avenue SW, when the Miss Metro Cruise contest (formerly the Pin Up Girl contest) was also officially introduced. The next steps in the contest will be the preliminaries set to take place, Sunday, July 13, also at the Moose Lodge, with the finals set for Aug. 24 on the Metro Cruise Main Stage.
“The sixth annual Dust Off is our first event of the Metro Cruise car season,” Bob O’Callaghan, president/CEO of the Chamber, said to WKTV at the May event. “We have over 100 cars here. This kinds of kicks off the guys going to all the (local car) events.”
It was also the kick off of the re-engineered Miss Metro Cruise contest.
“The way the girls dress, it is more in eras, not like the old (pin-up) calendar thing you’d see in the past,” O’Callaghan said. “It is really a classy operation, so we thought we’d change the name to reflect the Metro Cruise.”
And while WKTV Journal was at the Dust Off, WKTV Community Media is deep in plans for its production of a 1-hour special live broadcast scheduled to air at 7 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 23, on WKTV Comcast Channel 25, AT&T U-verse Channel 99, as well as being live-streamed and, later, on-demand on WKTV.org .
“Each Metro Cruise is one of our highlights in covering the hyperlocal stories of Wyoming and Kentwood,” said Tom Norton, general manager of WKTV Community Media. “The Chamber of Commerce does an outstanding job of putting on a true community event that has become a staple of summertime. We’re looking forward to our one-hour, live broadcast on Friday night from Metro Cruise.
“Tune in for all the close-ups before you come out and discover Metro Cruise 2019, ” Norton added. “We encourage residents to come to 28th Street and be part of the fun, but they can also be part of fun by viewing our live show, which will also be available in cable replays and on-demand, as well as following our complete online coverage of the event.”
The Metro Cruise is an annual event that “invites car lovers and enthusiasts to reminisce and commemorate the vehicles that have driven down 28th Street for decades,” according to supplied material. The event brings in more than $3 million in business to the 28th Street corridor over the course of two days, with more that 250,000 attendees at an event staffed solely by volunteers.
Some of the Miss Metro Cruise contestants at the Dust Off. (WKTV/K.D. Norris)
The Miss Metro Cruise contest is an contest that features women dressing in eras from the 1920s, 1960s, to modern-day in full hair, makeup, and costume. Currently there is about 30 participants, with a July 13 preliminary contest to select the top 10 finalists. Each finalist will receive personalized trading cards and a chance to be named Miss Metro Cruise 2019 with the top three finalists set to receive a cash prize.
The music returns to Lamar Park next week as the WyomingCommunity Enrichment Commission (WCEC) kicks off the 2019 Concerts in the Park series.
The free nine-week summer concert series held at 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Lamar Park, 2561 Porter St. SW, features a wide variety of musical styles, interactive themes, and local food vendors.
“Concerts in the Park is an annual tradition for the community and provides a great opportunity to enjoy the park with neighbors, family and friends,” says Rebecca Rynbrandt director of community services. “We encourage everyone to come out and enjoy the free concert series.”
The 2019 season features both perennial favorites as well as some newcomers. The entire program, according to Commission Chairperson Rennee Gardner is to make the event a fun, family-friendly one.
“One of the most exciting things about the lineup for 2019 is the incredible variety of performances that we plan to offer,” Gardner said. “Over the course of the season, we are confident that just about everyone can find something they enjoy.”
Midlife Crisis performs June 4
The series kicks off on June 4 with local favorite Midlife Crisis, a classic rock band that was formed in 2001. The six friends and experienced musicians draw musical inspiration from every decade, so expert a variety of songs from originals to the classics.
On June 11 is Brena Band. This six-member band has a wide variety of songs ranging from classic rock to smooth RnB, country to high energy dance music. Having been part of the wedding entertainment circuit, the group is known for its dance party-style.
The Brena Band performs June 11.
For all the polka lovers, Ray Watkoski & Family will take the stage on June 18. Having been playing for more than sixty years, this group is truly a family affair with sons-in-laws and even the grandchildren helping to make it an evening of polka fun.
Wrapping up the month of June is the city’s popular WiFi concert on June 25. The evening will feature two southern rock groups, Paradise Outlaw and Jared Knox along with fireworks taking place after the concert.
Paradise Outlaw performs at the WiFi concert on June 25.
Being that the June 25 concert is the city’s Fourth of July celebration, the Concerts in the Park takes a break the week of July 4.
The local group Jack & The Spare Tires picks up the music on July 9. Known for its sixties, seventies, and eighties covers, the band describes itself as “ a few guys that love music and just like to play whether it’s for a crowd or just jam on our own.”
Nationally known bluegrass group Nu-Blu performs on July 16.
On July 16 the national group Nu-Blu comes to the Lamar Park stage. Hailing from North Carolina, Nu-Blue has brought its unique sound of bluegrass music to the world. Earlier this year, the group was named as the permanent host of the television series “Bluegrass Ridge” and in 2018 became members of the Country Music Association.
On July 23 West Michigan country group Boardman Brown takes the stage with classic rock group Daddyz Breakdown following on July 30.
On July 23 Boardman Brown performs.
Wrapping up the Concerts in the Park series is the Shadows of the Night on Aug. 6. The group will pay tribute to the women of rock. This concert also will be part of the National Night Out event set for Aug. 6 as well.
Performances begin at 7 p.m. and are located at Lamar Park, 2561 Porter St. SW. For further details and up-to-date information, visit www.wyomingcec.org or www.facebook.com/wyomingcec.
Too much sugar is never good for you. Combine it with extra stress, and you have a recipe for disaster.
There are certain times of the year we know we will indulge in extra sweets: holidays, birthdays, graduations and work outings. These are also times when we might feel more stressed.
But is it possible to enjoy sugar in moderation and be healthy at the same time? Absolutely.
If you can master the basics of healthy eating, despite the extra stress you may be feeling, you can keep your eating in check during any occasion.
Belly up and listen
What I’m really talking about is belly fat. I take this topic very
seriously because belly fat can kill you. It can happen to any of us,
and it’s something I discuss with nearly all of my patients at one time
or another.
Shelly is one of those patients. She came to see me for her physical, and she was upset because her favorite jeans did not fit.
She was just 50 years old and still having periods, and she began to notice her metabolism changing. She had gained her usual 5 pounds over the summer because of numerous summer parties, backyard barbecues, fruity cocktails and beer.
She typically didn’t drink during the week, but it was just too easy to crack open a cold beer when she was doing yard work under the summer sun. When friends would stop over, she’d mix up some drinks. I’m sure we can all relate to these same situations.
In the past, Shelly would go back to her normal routine when fall arrived. The 5 pounds would come right off. She would only drink on the weekends and she’d begin a better routine of regular exercise and sleep.
This year, however, something was different: She didn’t lose the 5 pounds and she actually started gaining weight.
Knowing that the holidays weren’t far off, she was worried her weight would get out of control and she would have even bigger issues.
Shelly was smart to be worried.
Once belly fat starts, it gets a mind of its own and can get out of control quickly. That’s exactly what was happening to Shelly—she was gaining all of her weight in her belly. I knew she was concerned and disappointed.
She said she always had a flat belly, but now that was changing.
Icky, sticky
A recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine proves what we already know: Belly fat leads to early death in men and women by increasing our risk of heart attack and stroke—up to 10 years earlier than it might have happened if we didn’t have any belly fat.
The reality is most of us will die of heart attack or stroke at some point. But belly fat makes it happen sooner.
How? Belly fat is deep on the inside, wrapped around your bowels and liver, and craving sugar. As belly fat grows, your liver uses it to make bad cholesterol, and then the belly fat produces inflammatory chemicals to make your blood vessel linings sticky.
At the same time, the fat makes your body insulin-resistant, raising insulin levels and keeping blood sugar high by making you crave sugar.
This combination—sticky blood vessels, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol—causes plaque to build up in the blood vessels, blocking blood flow to your brain and heart muscle. All of this can lead to heart attack and stroke, and once the belly fat gets going, it doesn’t give up easily.
Bottom line: We can’t let the belly fat start.
Back to basics
Another factor that makes belly fat grow is stress—both good stress and bad stress.
Added stress can raise insulin levels and use up stress hormones such as cortisol and DHEA. It can cause our sleep to be interrupted, leaving us sleepy and fatigued. We know that sleep deprivation leads to insulin resistance, causing us to crave and store more sugar. It’s a vicious cycle.
During Shelly’s physical, I asked if I could measure her waist circumference. Measuring waist circumference is easy, but it can feel more personal than a pelvic exam.
Here’s how it’s done: Take a tape measure and wrap it around the small of your back, over your hip bones and around your belly.
We measured Shelly’s belly and it was 39 inches. Healthy is 35 inches.
After seeing that number on the measuring tape, Shelly made it a goal to lose 4 inches of belly fat.
After hearing what I had to say about belly fat, Shelly knew she needed to get off the sugar, reduce stress in her life, and change her sleep habits.
In other words, she needed to get back to the basics.
Grow with SEEDS
By having a plan, you can succeed even during the toughest of times.
When you adopt these habits and work hard to follow them every day, it is easier to get back on track if you have a stressful day or have a sleepless night.
When I talk about the basics, I am referring to the SEEDS—Seven Essential Elements of Daily Success—concept as a way of life.
Here are the seven basic things I discussed with Shelly:
Drink plenty of water (eight glasses a day). Add one more for each cup of coffee or for each serving of alcohol.
Get plenty of sleep (seven hours a night). Take power naps if necessary to be sure you are getting enough sleep.
Take your vitamins daily, including Vitamin D and a multivitamin.
Eat a balanced diet, including plenty of healthy carbs and protein, with only one sugar treat (including alcohol).
Eat plenty of fiber (think vegetables) and take a fiber pill if needed.
Exercise regularly (30 minutes a day, with a mix of walking, aerobic activity, strength training and stretching).
Start a gratitude journaland do metered breathing each night before going to bed.
You may have noticed that alcohol is mentioned more than once in the list of SEEDS.
Beer, wine and liquor are all forms of alcohol, and they all contain sugar. Since alcohol is often a part of a celebration or party, it’s important to limit your other forms of sugar (pasta, white bread, cookies, etc.) if you will be consuming a drink (or two or three) that same day.
And remember to add an extra glass of water for each drink consumed.
Shelly may not have been excited to see that her waist circumference was 39 inches, but she was happy with our discussion.
When I was young, I remember May was the only time of year we would eat fresh asparagus. Spring was the only time it was available fresh at the grocer, picked at a local asparagus farm or from wild patches along roadsides in the county.
Now, thanks to Peru and other countries in the southern hemisphere, much or our produce, including asparagus, is available fresh throughout the year.
Growing up, asparagus was simmered or steamed and served with butter, salt and maybe a dash of pepper. I am happy asparagus has become a much more versatile vegetable. Asparagus can be eaten raw but is generally cooked. It can be roasted, sautéed, added to pasta dishes, soups and stir fries and even deep-fried.
Asparagus is tasty and high in many important vitamins and minerals.
Here are a few facts about asparagus:
Asparagus is a member of the Liliaceae family.
It grows on a flowering herbaceous perennial plant.
Asparagus has been consumed for over 2,000 years, originating in the Mediterranean.
There have been wild varieties of asparagus discovered in Africa.
China is the world’s biggest asparagus producer followed by Peru and Germany.
Michigan is the No. 2 producer of asparagus in the U.S.; California ranks No. 1.
Oceana County is the leading Michigan producer of asparagus.
Michigan celebrates asparagus at the annual Asparagus Festival in Empire, Michigan.
There are about 120 farmers in Michigan growing over 9,500 acres of this green gem.
Michigan asparagus is snapped (picked) by hand resulting in a product that is tenderer.
Forty percent of Michigan asparagus is sold fresh in May and June. The remaining crop is processed or frozen.
We eat the stem of the asparagus plant.
The red berries of asparagus are poisonous to humans.
Asparagus is very low in calories, there are only 19 calories in six medium spears.
Asparagus is an excellent source of many nutrients and vitamins including vitamin K, folate, copper, selenium, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin C and vitamin E.
It is also a very good source of dietary fiber, manganese, phosphorus, vitamin B3, potassium, choline, vitamin A, zinc, iron, protein and vitamin B6.
White asparagus is favored in Germany. To keep asparagus white, dirt is mounded around the shoots so sunlight never touches the plant and therefore the plant does not produce chlorophyll.
My go-to recipe for asparagus is simple: roasting it with a little olive oil and sea salt. However, I recently purchased some fresh asparagus and decided to research various recipes. I adapted a bacon wrapped asparagus recipe. Here is the final version after a few attempts.
Bacon-wrapped Asparagus — 4 servings
Bacon-wrapped asparagus ready to go in the oven. Photo by Dixie Sandborn, MSU Extension.
½ pound fresh Michigan asparagus (I like very thin stalks)
4 slices thin-cut bacon
2 tablespoons butter
1 ½ teaspoons dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Divide asparagus into four bundles. Carefully wrap a piece of bacon around each bundle and secure with a toothpick. Place the bundles on a baking tray.
In a sauce pan, combine butter, brown sugar, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Heat until sugar is dissolved and mixture is bubbly.
Pour this mixture over the asparagus bundles and place the dish in the preheated oven.
Bake for about 20 minutes, then broil for 5-6 minutes, watching carefully and turning often, until the bacon is crisp.
Passengers and guests visiting the Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GFIA) should prepare for extra travel time getting to the airport this summer.
Beginning June 10, the Kent County Road Commission (KCRC) will be working on a project to widen and provide dual left-turn lanes on eastbound 44th Street to northbound Patterson Avenue. The work includes asphalt and concrete pavement removal, concrete curb and gutter, concrete pavement, pavement markings, restoration and traffic signal modifications.
The work will be phased to maintain one lane in each direction and left turns at the intersection, and it is estimated to be complete at the end of August.
“The Kent County Road Commission is partnering with the City of Kentwood on this intersection project, which will help to reduce congestion caused by the high volume of eastbound 44th Street traffic turning left onto northbound Patterson,” said Wayne Harrall, KCRC Deputy Managing Director of Engineering. “The application of concrete will also help 44th Street withstand the high volume of commercial trucks that travel it, and complete the concrete pavement segment from Patterson Avenue to Broadmoor Avenue.”
The Airport is also under construction indoors on Phase Two of its Gateway Transformation Project which includes updates to the baggage claim area, airline ticket counters, flooring and lighting; along with new restrooms and concessions.
“Summer is a busy time of year for us and with added construction on the roads and in the terminal building, we are encouraging passengers to arrive at least two hours before their flight,” said GFIA Interim President & CEO Brian Picardat. “The Kent County Road Commission does a great job with road maintenance and improvements and we know they will work swiftly to complete this project to have as little an impact on the airport as possible.”
Looking for an exciting way to enhance your summer, learn something new and qualify for prizes in the process?
Look no further, as Kent District Library presents its popular Summer Reading program with a wide range of books, programs and activities for children and adults. In 2018, over 18,000 people completed the program.
This year’s annual program kicks off Monday, June 3 and extends through Saturday, August 10. You can sign up at kdl.READsquared.com, or just stop into any KDL branch for details.
“We love offering great programs for all ages every summer,” said Kip Odell, programming manager. “This summer we are presenting a lot of new and exciting performers that are coming to West Michigan for the first time. Our goal is to keep reading fun all summer long!”
Those who register for Summer Reading at KDL can qualify for prizes by tallying the number of books they read, or tracking the points they accumulate by completing activities.
But perhaps the best gain – especially for students – is how reading throughout the vacation months helps forestall the “summer slide” that negatively affects learning between the end and start of the traditional school year.
Extensive research shows that children involved in summertime reading programs sponsored by public libraries are more likely to maintain their academic skills, and in many cases do better on standardized tests.
This summer’s program lineup will include appearances by 1,2,3 Andrés, Magician Tom Plunkard, Audacious Hoops and many more. Visit kdl.readsquared.com for details.
The Grand River Waterway is a proposed seven-foot deep, 22.5-mile long channel that would involve dredging portions of the Grand River between Fulton Street in Grand Rapids and Bass River State Recreation Area in Eastmanville. The channel would allow large powerboats to travel from Grand Rapids to Grand Haven and would remove 50 acres of shallow-water fish habitat. Removal of these shallow areas would likely have additional impacts that would ripple through the river environment for decades to come.
At first glance, the notion of improved access for boaters looks like a great idea for improving tourism and benefiting the local economy. However, the hidden environmental and economic costs of de-stabilizing a river channel must be carefully considered. Michigan State University Extension and Michigan Sea Grant have published a white paper on the potential physical and biological impacts of this project, and the Grand River Waterway organization has a feasibility study detailing the extent and cost of dredging available on its website.
Channelization vs. harbor dredging
Many west Michigan communities are aware of the economic benefits of harbor dredging, as well as the difficulty in securing federal or state funding to maintain navigable harbors. Harbors are typically located in river mouth areas and associated lakes, where dredging is used to maintain a deep channel connection to Lake Michigan.
The Grand River Waterway project proposes to dredge a free-flowing river environment that is very different from the “freshwater estuaries” found at Great Lakes river mouths. This project would seek to allow boats up to 49 feet long to cruise upstream 40 miles from Lake Michigan by digging out the bottom of the river and removing snags and other obstructions. This type of river modification is known as channelization and is recognized by Michigan Department of Natural Resource’s (MDNR) Wildlife Action Plan and Grand River Assessment as one of the most serious threats to big river ecosystems and the unique species that reside there.
History of Grand River channelization projects
This is not the first time that channelization has been proposed to improve navigation between Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan (see 1978 study). The section of the Grand River between Grand Rapids and Eastmanville was naturally shallow, and the first dredging project was a four-foot deep channel that was approved by the River and Harbor Act of 1881. This initial attempt was never completed, and an 1887 report concluded that highly variable water levels and ongoing problems with deposition of sand and silt made construction of a permanent channel within the riverbanks impossible.
Courtesy Sea Grant Michigan
A more elaborate engineering project was authorized in 1896 and modified in 1903 to provide a six-foot deep channel. In order to prevent the shifting sand of the river bottom from filling in the channel immediately, training walls were constructed of pilings and “mattresses” of woven pile and brush.
These walls were constructed parallel to the river banks within the river channel. Sediment was dug out from what would become the navigation channel, and this sand and silt was deposited between the training wall and shore. This effort artificially deepened and narrowed the river channel through dredging and the construction of 25 miles of training walls within the river channel. Despite the scope of this undertaking, the channel was officially abandoned by the federal government with passage of the River and Harbor Act of 1930.
Most of the training walls remain in the Grand River, buried beneath over a century’s worth of accumulated sediment. In places, the river has broken through the walls and cut a new channel. In other places, new land has formed as the river adapted to the modifications of its bed. The walls still hold back vast quantities of sediment pulled from the middle of the river circa 1910.
Erosion and related impacts to the river
Channelization projects typically lead to increased net erosion. Dredging cuts into the bottom of the river, making it deeper and faster in the dredged portion of the river. The deeper, faster water erodes more sand and other sediment, which is then deposited downstream or on floodplains following high water. The exact location and severity of effects are difficult to predict, but many studies from around the world have documented harmful, and sometimes disastrous, consequences (see white paper for full documentation).
Along the Blackwater River, Missouri, channelization caused excessive bank erosion and damaged bridges. Sediment deposition on shore was so deep that it buried fences.
In the Missouri River, Kansas, channelization led to the loss of side-channels and islands when eroded sediment was deposited in side-channel areas.
In western Tennessee, several rivers experienced so much erosion after channelization of upstream areas that channel blockages formed where sand and silt settled out in downstream areas. These blockages prevent navigation in downstream areas and lead to stagnation of river water.
Dredging typically harms water quality by increasing turbidity and suspended solids. Peak sediment loads increased by a factor of 7 after channelization of the River Main, Northern Ireland.
Channelization can lead to development of an incised river, which can lower the water table and drain adjacent wetlands (see image and videos).
Wakes from large boats lead to further erosion and muddy water. One study from the Waikato River, New Zealand, found that boat wakes were 100 times more powerful than natural river waves and carried up to 23 times as much soil away from the riverbank.
Harm to fish and other aquatic life
In addition to the direct destruction of 50 acres of shallow habitat, dredging to channelize the Grand River would likely reduce populations of gamefish and other sensitive fish species by harming water quality, reducing water clarity, reducing the number of insects and other invertebrates that fish feed upon, and damaging additional spawning and nursery habitat.
Channelization led to a 90% decline in fish food in the River Moy, Ireland.
Channelized sections of the Chariton River, Missouri, have 80% lower total fish biomass relative to natural sections.
A study of 40 Indiana streams found 50% fewer sensitive fish species in channelized vs. natural stream sections.
Destruction and degradation of spawning and nursery habitat led to fewer trout and salmon relative to less valuable fish species on the River Boyne, Ireland.
The average size of largemouth bass was 8 times higher in natural vs. channelized sections of the Luxapalila River in Mississippi and Alabama due to lack of habitat for large bass.
Removal of snags and other woody debris for navigation eliminates fish-holding areas and fish food. Snags were found to hold 20-50 times more invertebrate biomass than sandy areas in the Satilla River, Georgia.
Dozens of sensitive species are associated with the Grand River corridor in Ottawa County, including 18 freshwater mussels and 2 snails. Channelization is among the leading causes of extinction for freshwater mussels and snails in North America, and two state threatened mussels have been found in the proposed dredging area.
The proposed path of the Grand River Waterway woulddredge through shallow gravel habitat that provides quality fishing for a variety of gamefish in addition to providing spawning habitat for state threatened river redhorse.
Economic consequences
A study was commissioned by Grand River Waterway to demonstrate economic benefits of the channelization project and building of a 250-500 slip marina in the Grand Rapids area. That study did not address economic benefits that the natural, un-channelized Grand River currently provides, nor did it address the impact of dredging on current uses and economic impacts. The current un-channelized river corridor is used for activities including kayaking, canoeing, fishing, birdwatching, and hiking in numerous parks along the river that provide a peaceful environment for recreation. Existing businesses like the Grand Lady, a 105-foot long riverboat, and several fishing guides also regularly navigate the un-channelized river and could suffer from the impacts of dredging.
The area of focus for Grand River Waterway is the 23-mile stretch of river beyond the pictured Fulton Street bridge to Bass River near Eastmanville. Photo by Justin Dawes
The Grand River Waterway Economic Benefits Study also stated that “improved water quality may generate up to 49,000 new visitor days annually” even though this type of river channelization project often leads to reduced water quality. The potential economic consequences of dirtier water, reduced fishing opportunities, erosion of private and public lands along the river, and deposition of sediment in downstream areas were beyond the scope of the economic benefits study.
Even so, these detrimental but unquantified effects have been recognized by communities along the lower Grand River. Some additional unaccounted costs including the need for additional marine patrols and annual maintenance costs for dredging, snag removal, and buoys were highlighted at a work session of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners on April 9, 2019.
Opposition and support
The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution in opposition to the project on April 23, 2019, following the passage of similar resolutions by the Ottawa County Planning and Policy Committee and the Ottawa County Planning Commission. A separate resolution of opposition was passed by the Ottawa County Parks and Recreation Commission on April 2, 2019.
Additional resolutions in opposition to the Grand River Waterway have been passed by:
Crockery Township
Grand Haven City Council
Grand Haven Convention and Visitors Bureau
Grand Haven Chamber of Commerce
Local organizations with concern for the river have also raised concerns. The West Michigan Environmental Action Council (WMEAC) passed a resolution in opposition to the dredging and provides an overview of the issue on their website. The Grand Rapids Steelheaders and Grand Haven Steelheaders passed votes in opposition to the project, and the Friends of the Lower Grand River formed recently in response to the possibility of river dredging. The Friends group drafted talking points on the dredging issue and also provides several related documents on their website.
Georgetown Township’s Finance Committee passed a resolution in support of the Grand River Waterway in July 2018. The Grandville City Council voted to table a similar resolution in 2018.
Although opposition has been strong at the local level, $3.15 million in state funds were appropriated for this project with the most recent $2 million approved during the Legislature’s lame duck session in 2018. While $150,000 in state funds are to be directed toward sediment boring study, the remaining $3 million is specified for dredging and related activities on the Grand River once permits are acquired. Former state Sen. Arlan Meekhof has been very supportive of the Grand River Waterway project, as evidenced by his editorial and this rebuttal in the Grand Haven Tribune.
Current state legislators Rachel Hood (D-76th House District), David LaGrand (D-75th House District), and Winnie Brinks (D-29th Senate District) have been actively working against the dredging and recently sent this letter to Governor Gretchen Whitmer and MDNR Director Daniel Eichinger calling for a halt to all state funding related to the Grand River Waterway project.
The future of the project is now uncertain, and legal questions related to the rights of riparian landowners faced with the prospect of a state-funded dredging project have yet to be resolved.
This article was written by Michigan Sea Grant Extension Educator Dr. Dan O’Keefe under award NA14OAR4170070 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce through the Regents of the University of Michigan. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Commerce, or the Regents of the University of Michigan.
Long-term care insurance is usually used to help pay for nursing homes or assisted living care after you reach an age where can no longer take care of yourself. However, there are many doubts as to whether the care is worth the uncertainty and the cost. Learn what you need to know about long-term care insurance, including the types of plans available, who can quality, and more tips on how to plan for your future.
What is Long Term Care Insurance?
Long-term care is the name given to insurance policies that are made to help you cover the costs of living that aren’t covered under regular medical insurance. Specifically, long-term care insurance exists to cover the living expenses that come with nursing homes, assisted living communities, and other senior living facilities.
Long-term care insurance is important because it covers the things that Medicare and regular insurance policies don’t. Medicare will not cover the cost of a nursing home, so you need to be prepared with other options.
In addition to the living costs of assisted living or nursing homes, long-term care insurance can also help to cover the costs of care for chronic medical conditions that can make themselves known after retirement or in old age. It also can cover activities of daily living, or ADLs, such as:
Bathing
Using the bathroom
Getting in and out of your bed or a chair
Dressing
Eating
About 50% of people will need help with either ADLs, the costs of care for chronic medical conditions, paying for senior care communities, or a combination of all three.
Traditional Policies
The traditional way that long-term care policies work is that after finding a company that sells policies and getting approved, you start paying premiums. Policies usually have a lifetime cap of what you can pay. Once you reach an age where you need help with ADLs or need to move to a senior care facility, then you make a claim.
After making a claim the insurance company will verify with your doctor, check your medical documents, and send a nurse to evaluate your health situation. If approved, there is still a waiting period—usually between 30 to 90 days— before your policy will pay out.
A problem that began to arise with these traditional policies is that the premiums could suddenly spike. Another problem that came with a traditional policy was the uncertainty that it would ever be needed. Paying into a policy only to find out that you didn’t need long-term care helped to lead to a dramatic drop in popularity for long-term care policies.
Very few insurance agencies sell these kinds of policies anymore, although you can still find one if it appeals to you. After the decline in these policies, a new type of long-term care policy began to emerge.
New Policy Options
The new type of policy that covers long-term care is often called a “hybrid policy”. These are life insurance policies that cover you for your whole life. Hybrid policies have a locked premium that doesn’t change, and you can draw from them to pay for ADLs and long-term care living as you age.
These policies also have a money back guarantee. If you don’t end up using the policy to pay for ADLs or long-term care, then you still get a return on what you paid, either to be left to an heir in your will, or to be used for other care costs that you encounter as you age.
The downfall of these policies is that there are more expensive than the traditional policy. Because you have guaranteed money coming back to you, the initial premium that you pay is going to be higher than traditional long-term care insurance policies, even though traditional policies can have premium hikes.
Who Qualifies?
As with all insurance policies, there are people who will qualify for long-term care insurance and those who won’t. The older you are the less likely you are to qualify for long-term care insurance, so planning ahead is essential. If you already have an existing chronic health problem, you are also not as likely to be covered.
If you are worried that you are too old or have existing health problems, then applying for a newer hybrid policy is going to be the best course of action. These are much more flexible in terms of coverage, and your chances of qualifying are higher.
Have a Plan
Even if you decide that long-term care insurance is not for you, you still need to have a plan in place for when you reach a certain age. Remember, half the population is going to need assistance with ADLs or need to move into a nursing home or other type of assisted living community. These costs can come out to about 140,000 on average, and if you are paying out of pocket that’s a lot of money.
You can’t always predict ahead of time if you are going to need long-term care, and because it isn’t paid through Medicare or regular insurance policies, you need to have a plan in place for how you are going to pay for medical costs. Start planning as soon as you can so you have the most options available to help pay for long-term care.
For those of you who know how much joy Dr. Jen takes from naming our kitties, you realize that she takes her time in getting to know each cat before making a final decision on what to call him or her, and oftentimes the good doctor will make a play on words in homage to a specific attribute (or lack there of). Nothing delights her more than having someone crack up when they discover why she gave a cat the title she has, as a LOT of thought went into it.
So in March of 2019, when spritely little Sandi D. first brought in this newly neutered, fabulously fat-headed, 3-1/2-year-old (born in the fall of 2015), Dr. Jen had to chuckle when this moniker appeared to fall down from the heavens and land solidly in her lap.
As the story goes, he had been hanging around the same southwest Grand Rapids neighborhood that brought us Churro and Burdock, so our red-headed rescue machine set out her live trap in hopes of getting him off the streets. After a successful venture, she carted him off to C-SNIP for long-overdue neutering and then took him back home to get him used to the idea of being an indoor cat.
It took this kitty a few weeks to be brave enough to come out of his wine box cubby, but once he did, he greeted her only with a few hisses that really were more for effect than anything. She coaxed him into her good graces with canned food, and slowly he began to open up to her, but suddenly he fell ill and stopped eating for three days, so he headed back to the clinic.
As it turns out, not only was he suffering from inflammation/infection of the bile ducts within his liver, but the poor guy tested positive for Feline Leukemia (he was negative the month prior). Treatment was undertaken and within a few days he had bounced back completely, ready to head on down to our sanctuary to join our residents.
It is a bit of an understatement to say that people were immediately drawn to his stunning, smashing good looks, but it has taken him quite a bit of time to warm up to the fact that people want to see him—and love on him. Slowly but surely, our volunteers have made excellent progress, to the point that they can now say this about Dunkin No-nuts:
“Dunkin is very quiet and shy, but also very sweet. He has a favorite spot in a cubby and doesn’t really move from that room. He does really like it when people come up to him and give him some love, and I think he would do great in a home where he is able to bond with his owner over time. He needs a quiet home with no kids or loud dogs. He doesn’t seem to really care about the other cats at all, so he could probably live with or without them.”
“Dunkin—in a perfect world, he would be best buddies with Ellston, since they resemble each other and make a handsome duo, but unfortunately, they don’t really care for each other. Dunkin is extremely shy and reserved and is usually found hunkered down low in a cubby just watching from the sidelines. He is super-sweet to us and actually likes to be held but will go right back to his hidey-hole when you put him down. To me, he’s one of those cats that is just too overwhelmed with all the other cats. He’s not aggressive in any way, just prefers to be left alone. He’d do well in a home with older kids, no dogs, and maybe one other cat.”
Since the virus is transmissible, ideally we would like to find him a home where he will be the only cat, and given his gentle personality, we feel this would be greatly beneficial and allow him the security and space he needs to blossom. He is such a LOVELY boy!
The end of the school year is fast approaching. The warm-weather days are finally here. You’ve penciled in your must-see, must-do events for the summer.
Boating. Amusement parks. Local festivals. Pretty much anything that gives you an excuse to soak up the sunshine.
But few things rival the all-time summer classic: picnics and potlucks.
And while those grand gatherings of food and friends may seem like they’re free of worry and strife, they’re actually a golden opportunity to contract foodborne illness—particularly if you don’t pay attention to food preparation and handling.
How many people really stop to think about the safety of the food that has been sitting in the sun all day? Foodborne illnesses happen more often than you’d expect.
You can smarten up your food safety by following these sensible tips on preparation, handling and storage.
Keep it cold
Place cold items into a cooler with ice or frozen gel packs. The temperature should remain below 40 degrees. Frozen meats should also be placed into a cooler to ensure they stay cold longer.
Once the cold food is served, it should not be left out for more than two hours. If the outdoor temperature exceeds 90 degrees, this time frame drops to one hour. If your cold food has been out longer than this, you need to throw it away. To help cool food when it’s out, you can place dishes such as chicken salad or potato salad directly onto a bowl of ice.
Rule the cooler
Your cooler should be in tip-top order, with everything organized
according to accessibility, use and safety. This avoids spillage,
contamination and overexposure to the warm temperature.
If you place an in-demand food item at the bottom of the cooler, for example, you will repeatedly expose other top-level, lesser-used items to the outdoor temperature. This is unwise.
For starters, consider placing beverages into a separate cooler, so your food cooler doesn’t need to be opened as frequently. This will keep the temperature down on your cold foods. And place your lesser-used items toward the bottom of the cooler.
The trick is to limit the number of times the coolers are opened, so you keep your food cold as long as possible.
Avoid cross-contamination
Keep raw meat, poultry and seafood securely wrapped to prevent any
juices from contaminating prepared dishes and raw foods. Consider using a
separate meat cooler, in fact, or placing raw meat below the prepared
dishes.
Prep your produce
When you’re packing things up at home, take time to rinse fresh fruits and vegetables under running water. Scrub any firm-skinned produce with a vegetable brush, and make sure you cut and prep all your servings so that you’re not messing with it at the picnic.
Grill it right
If you want to use a marinade, do it while the meat is in the refrigerator at home. Don’t re-use the marinade after the meat is cooked!
Also, if you are partially cooking the meat before grilling, do so immediately before leaving the house. Meat should be cooked thoroughly and kept hot until served.
Hot foods should be kept above 140 degrees when holding for serving and they should not be left out for more than two hours.
Avoid re-using platters or utensils that were used with raw meats.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration offers a handy chart that details safe cooking temperatures. The U.S. Department of Agriculture offers seven tips for safe picnics, including this time-tested truth: “When in doubt, throw it out.”
Zaneta Adams remembers the frustration of being immobile due to an injury she received while serving in the army.
“As you have learned, I am a busy person,” Adams said to WKTV volunteer host Meochia Thompson during a recent interview for the WKTV Journal newscast. “I like to do a lot of things and having an injury that caused me to be immobile and be in a wheelchair and not be able to be myself was physically and emotionally devastating.”
In 2009, things would change for Adams who attended a retreat, Challenge Aspen, that focused on women veterans.
WKTV volunteer Meochia Thompson is with WINC Founder and President Zaneta Adams. (WKTV)
“I went and there were women that had amputations and a lot of different aliments,” Adams said. “Their husbands had left them and a different array of things, and they were making things happen. Here I was ‘Whoa is me” and I had my legs and so, I said we need to make these work.”
Adams learned how to walk again. Not only that, but she founded WINC, an organization designed to give all women veterans a space to come together.
“WINC stands for Women Injured in Combat but the organization is not just for women who were injured, in the traditional sense, or in combat, in the traditional sense,” Adams said. “We look at that all women have gone through training, basic combat training, and we have all kinds of different injuries whether they be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Pretty much any woman who has served in the military is welcome to be apart of the exciting things that we do.”
While founded in 2014, the organization has made an impact on legislation for women veterans locally and statewide with Adams admitting that she hopes to one day have a national day set aside for women veterans.
“That day is not about singling out women or saying that we are better than males,” Adams said. “It is basically bringing attention back to the fact that we serve just like men do and we have issues that we need to be addressed.”
WINC offers a number of programs including scholarships, workshops, and retreats. Most recently the organization hosted its HER2 Award, which honors those who are honoring, empowering, encouraging, or restoring persons in the military. Both individuals and organizations are recognized.
From The Beatles’ classics to “cage-free funk” — Got to love that description! — there will be something for just about everyone as the City of Kentwood’s Summer Concert Series returns with free concerts at 7 p.m. on select Thursday nights from June to August.
This year’s series features West Michigan favorites such as The Crane Wives, Brena and Melophobix. And while you can bring your own picnic dinner, food trucks will be at each concert.
“Our summer concert series is a great way to celebrate summer in Kentwood with family and friends,” Val Romeo, Kentwood Parks and Recreation director, said in supplied material. “This year’s lineup again includes a great mix of genres. We welcome all to enjoy the variety of live outdoor music and local eats we’ll have on the lawn behind City Hall.”
Concert-goers are encouraged to bring a blanket or chair, and may also bring their own beer or wine.
The lineup for Kentwood’s Summer Concert Series is as follows:
June 20 — That Beatles Thing offering hits from The Beatles classic catalogue. No more need be said. For more information visit here.
June 27 — Blue Soul Express, delivering classic soul, R&B, funk and blues. If this is not perfect for a summer boogie party, nothing is. For more information visit here.
July 18 — Hannah Rose and the GravesTones, serving up some funk, blues and rock n’ roll. If you’ve never seen them, let’s just say Hannah can wail. For more information visit here.
July 25 — The Crane Wives, described by someone as “female-fronted, harmony-driven folk-rock”; lets just say West Michigan is lucky they are taking a local break from their busy summer tour schedule. For more information visit here.
Aug. 8 — Melophobix, with “Cage Free” being not only the title of their latest release but also their funky musical outlook. For more information visit here.
All concerts will begin at 7 p.m. and conclude around 8:30 p.m. on the lawn behind Kentwood City Hall, located at 4900 Breton Ave. SE.
All across the country, children are wrapping up their school year. Final projects are turned in, the last concert of the year is performed and awards banquets are being held. Soon the bell will ring on the end of the year and children will be home for the summer.
This is a fun time, but it is also a time of transition. Transitions, both positive and negative, can be challenging times for children and their parents. What can you do to help your family successfully get into the summer routine and limit the beginning of summer chaos? Michigan State University Extension offers the following tips for summer success.
Allow for time to settle into the routine
It’s easy to think that with school out, the pressure is off, and kids should be relaxed and happy. The truth is that it isn’t always that easy. School ending abruptly changes a child’s routine and structure to their day. They miss their friends, they worry about the upcoming school year, they’re bored with long days ahead and (seemingly) nothing to do, or suddenly they’re spending an awful lot of time with their siblings. Expect the first few weeks of summer to be bumpy for children.
Set aside time for a family meeting to plan for a successful summer. What do your children want and need in the summer months? Perhaps it’s siblings respecting the private space of their bedroom or being allowed to wait until late morning to start chores. Allow children to share their feelings and be heard.
Establish rules and guidelines together
Clear expectations and boundaries for children help them be successful. What do you expect your children to do each day in the summer? How much screen time is allowed? Can screen time come before chores or is it after chores only? When can they go play with friends? How far can they go from home when playing outside?
Maintain a routine and bedtime
Routines do not have to mean firm schedules. It’s OK to let children stay up late catching fireflies or sitting around the campfire once and a while. However, maintaining predictable routines and schedules is helpful for children. They might not tell you they enjoy the routine, but knowing what comes next is a safe and predictable feeling for children. They know what to expect and when to expect it. Stick with a reasonable bedtime and support your child getting adequate sleep every night. Blackout blinds or curtains can help children fall asleep when it is still daylight and sleep in later in the morning.
Stay busy, but not too busy
Summer is a great time to be outside playing with friends and family. Schedule fun outings, camps and other activities, but don’t forget to let your child have time to just play at home. Play allows children to use creativity, imagination, dexterity as well as physical, cognitive, social and emotional skills. Authentic play experiences are essential to healthy development. Try to make time for your child to just play.
Keep learning alive
Don’t let the summer months mean an end to educational activities. Take time this summer to read with your children and engage in other learning focused activities. Sign up for the library summer reading program, go on nature walks, explore state parks. Keeping your children learning and engaged through the summer is the key to preventing summer learning loss and ensuring your children are ready to succeed at school in the fall.
Take time to plan ahead for a successful summer with your family. Include your children in creating their summer plans. Find out what they would like to do and schedule in their desired activities. Expect your children to contribute at home. Limit technology and encourage play. Relax, and enjoy your summer!
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain”
~Bob Marley
Tons of talent in one colorful exhibition
Dreaming, thinking ready for my happy day*
‘Livin’ Is Easy’ summertime exhibition opens June 1st at LowellArts. Feast your senses on depictions of beautifully weathered objects; local Michigan waterways; animal and aquatic life forms; and whimsical figurative work. More details here. *Lyrics from Uriah Heep’s Easy Livin’.
Ready for some summertime fun?
Don’t settle for the summertime blues
Soon the bell will ring on the end of the year and children will be home for the summer. Follow these handy-dandy tips to avoid the summertime blues. More here.
Look! It’s the International Space Station!
We are all made of stars
A gentle reminder that on Wednesday, May 29 (Hey! That’s tomorrow!), WKTV Government 26 will be featuring live coverage of the International Space Station Russian Spacewalk. Read all about it right here. Don’t miss it!
Fun fact:
3%
That’s how much more milk cows produce when they listen to relaxing music. Just ask the researchers at the University of Leicester. And then there is 2% milk, which is generally available at your local grocer’s. Has nothing to do with music, though.
(Do these look like Guernsey cows to you?)
The Ingenues, an all-girl band and vaudeville act, serenade the cows in the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s dairy barn in 1930. The show was apparently part of an experiment to see whether the soothing strains of music boosted the cows’ milk production. Go here to read the NPR story about it. Angus B. McVicar/Wisconsin Historical Society
Looking for a better way to bounce back from a sports injury or orthopedic surgery? The solution may be as close as your fork.
Experts say choosing the right foods—and avoiding the wrong ones—can help bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments repair faster, getting you off the couch and moving again.
“There are two things to keep in mind,” said Kristi Veltkamp, RD, who counsels Spectrum Health patients on eating well. “First, make sure you are managing inflammation. And second, get the nutrients needed to help you heal and repair.”
Inflammation after any injury is normal.
“There’s often heat, swelling or redness,” Veltkamp said. “To calm that inflammation, look for foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like those found in salmon, walnuts and flax seed. Olive oil also helps. And try to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.”
If that all sounds familiar, it should. It’s the basis of the Mediterranean diet, which is shown to reduce inflammation, Veltkamp said.
Also avoid foods that are high in sugar, refined flour or trans fats. Alcohol, which slows healing, should be avoided as well.
Building blocks
Alongside managing inflammation, you should focus on getting plenty of the nutrients required for healthy rebuilding.
Start with protein.
“The majority of our tissues are made up of protein,” said Matthew Axtman, DO, a sports medicine specialist with Spectrum Health Medical Group Orthopedics. “So even though protein is part of your normal diet, look to increase healthy sources, like chicken, fish and nuts.
Dr. Axtman recommends getting plenty of vitamin C.
“It helps build collagen, which is the basis of tendons and ligaments,” he said. Look for it in citrus fruits, kiwi, peppers and tomatoes.
Calcium is also essential, especially if you’ve injured a bone. You can find it—along with Vitamin D, which aids in absorption—in dairy products and dark-green, leafy vegetables.
Avoid salt and caffeine during your recovery because they cause you to urinate more. This makes your body lose calcium, Dr. Axtman said.
Meanwhile, those deep-green vegetables are also a great source of fiber.
“If you’re sitting around more and moving less, it can affect your gut,” Dr. Axtman said. “Fiber-rich foods will help.”
Mind and body
During the rebuilding process, it may help to take supplements for
about two to four weeks. This holds true even if you typically prefer to
get all your nutrients from a balanced diet.
“While you’re healing, consider adding vitamin A, naturally found in many orange vegetables, at 10,000 IUs a day,” Veltkamp said.
Look for a multivitamin that contains 2 to 4 milligrams of copper and 15 to 30 milligrams of zinc, which is shown to help with wound healing.
Veltkamp also recommends HMB, a protein that can help prevent muscle wasting. It’s found in sports supplements such as Myoplex Muscle Armor.
Finally, give a little thought to the emotional aspects of eating. Recovery can be as tedious as watching grass grow, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of eating from boredom instead of hunger.
“Have a list of things you can do when you feel like reaching for food for the wrong reasons,” Veltkamp said. “Like knitting, taking a bath, anything soothing and distracting.”
It’s normal to have food cravings during recovery, but that’s because food can make us feel better. Don’t be afraid to treat yourself now and then.
“Just look for healthier alternatives,” Veltkamp said. “Like chocolate-banana smoothies.”
If you want to celebrate many more birthdays, new research suggests you should speed up your weight-lifting routine.
Boosting muscle power, which is different than muscle strength, translated into longer lives, the Brazilian scientists said.
What exactly is the difference?
For example, climbing stairs requires muscle power—the faster you climb, the more power you need. But holding or pushing a heavy object only requires muscle strength.
“Rising from a chair in old age and kicking a ball depends more on muscle power than muscle strength, yet most weight-bearing exercise focuses on the latter,” said researcher Claudio Gil Araujo. He’s director of research and education at the Exercise Medicine Clinic—CLINIMEX, in Rio de Janeiro.
“Our study shows for the first time that people with more muscle power tend to live longer,” Araujo said in a European Society of Cardiology news release.
The study included nearly 3,900 adults, aged 41 to 85, with an average age of 59, whose maximum muscle power was assessed.
Over an average follow-up of 6.5 years, 10% of the men and 6% of the women died.
Participants with maximal muscle power above the median for their gender had the best survival rates. Compared to those above the median, those in the lowest and second-lowest quarters below the median had a 10 to 13, and 4 to 5 times greater risk of dying during the study period, respectively.
The study was to be presented soon at a European Society of Cardiology meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. Research presented at meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“We now show that power is strongly related to all-cause (death). But the good news is that you only need to be above the median for your sex to have the best survival, with no further benefit in becoming even more powerful,” Araujo said.
“For strength training at the gym, most people just think about the amount of weight being lifted and the number of repetitions, without paying attention to the speed of execution,” Araujo said. “But for optimal power training results, you should go beyond typical strength training and add speed to your weight lifts.”
Reprinted with permission from Spectrum Health Beat.
As spring arrives, we begin to see browning of pine needles in plantations, landscapes and along roadsides. Depending on the type of pine tree, there are several common causes of needle browning in pines.
A crash course in pine ID
The most common pines in residential and commercial landscapes in Michigan are eastern white pine, Austrian pine and Scots (or Scotch) pine. Unlike many other conifers, needles on pine trees are clustered together in groups called fascicles. Determining the number of needles in a fascicle is the first step in identifying pines. White pines have five needles in each fascicle. The needles are thin and soft and often pale green. White pines have long (4” or longer), slender cones. Austrian pine and Scots pines are part of group known as hard pines along with our native jack pine and red pine. Hard pines have two or three needles in each fascicle. Scots pines have shorter (1 1/2’” or less) needles and smaller cones than Austrian pines. Older Scots pines have orange-reddish bark, whereas the bark on Austrian pines is grey.
Pine identification left to right: Scots (Scotch) pine, Austrian pine, eastern white pine. Photo by Bert Cregg, Michigan State University.
Environmental-related issues
Conifers located along the road can be damaged by road salt. Road crews apply sodium chloride and other deicing materials to keep roads clear in the winter. Many plants, especially eastern white pine, are sensitive to salt spray from roadways. Acute damage caused by direct salt exposure is easy to spot since the damage is usually greatest on the side of the trees facing the road. Sensitive trees such as white pine can usually survive one-year’s damage but repeated acute damage can ultimately disfigure or kill trees.
Another culprit is winter injury. Many conifers are subject to needle drying of winter burn during the winter. The most common symptom of winter burn is brown or red foliage on the exposed (often south) side of the tree. In some cases, trees will have a snowline below which no damage occurs since those needles were under snow when the rest of the tree was drying. Winter burn occurs frequently on dwarf Alberta spruce but can occur on other conifers as well.
Road salt damage on white pine. Photo by Bert Cregg, Michigan State University.
In addition, several possible fungal pathogens can cause these symptoms as well.
Dothistroma needle blight
Austrian pine is commonly affected by Dothistroma needle blight. The foliage of the lower half of the tree turns brown in March to April.
Dothistroma needle blight is caused by the fungus Mycosphaerella pini. This common pine pathogen kills needles of all ages and can weaken or kill Austrian pine trees. Characteristic symptoms of Dothistroma infection is the presence of needles showing browning at the tip of the needle while the base of the needle remains green.
Dead needle tips and needle base remains green. Photo: Jill O’Donnell, MSU Extension.
The black fruiting bodies of the fungus can be seen in the dead spots or bands on the needles. Dothistroma spores spread by wind and rain and can infect needles throughout the growing season. New needles are susceptible once they emerge from the needle sheaths. The black fruit bodies appear in the fall; however, the spores are released the following spring and summer. The best protection of new needles can occur when applying copper-based fungicides as the new needles emerge from the needle sheaths and as the spores are released from the fruiting bodies. This is usually June and July. Reports suggest that pruning infected branches helps reduce disease.
Brown spot needle blight
Brown spot needle blight (Mycosphaerella dearnessii, syn. Scirrhia acicola) is relatively new to Scots pine in Michigan. Needle spots can appear on needles at any time of the year, but most commonly occur during August and September when trees suddenly turn brown just before growers are ready to harvest. Short-needled Scots pine varieties such as Spanish and French-green are more susceptible to fungal attack than the long-needled varieties.
Left: Black fruiting bodies on dead needles. Photo: Jan Byrne, MSU. Right: Brown spot needle blight symptoms on Scots pine. Photo: Jill O’Donnell, MSU Extension.
Lophodermium needlecast
Lophodermium is a severe needlecast of Scots pine, which in some cases can cause the entire tree to brown in spring. Even though we see the symptoms of Lophodermium in spring, the most important time to protect trees is from the end of July through September. This is when needles are infected from spores being released by the small, shiny, football-shaped, black fruiting bodies that form on the fallen needles. To break this disease cycle, the time to manage this disease with a fungicide is particularly in late July and throughout August, but maybe even into fall if it the weather stays warm and moist.
You can help identify the disease your trees have by knowing the species of pine and the time of year you first see the symptoms. To confirm which needlecast disease you have, send a sample to MSU Diagnostic Services. The cost for a sample is $20.
Lophodermium needlecast on Scots pine. Photo: Jill O’Donnell, MSU Extension.
Pine Tree Disease Overview
Disease: Dothistroma needle blight Symptoms appear: March/April Species: Primarily Austrian but also on Red pine, Scots pine Timing of control: May – July
Disease: Lophodermium needlecast Symptoms appear: April/May Species: Primarily Scots pine but also found on Austrian and Red pine Timing of control: August – September
Disease: Brown spot needle blight Symptoms appear: August/September Species: Primarily Scots pine but also on Red pine, Austrian Timing of control: May – June
The most effective defense against hepatitis A is vaccination, but the most vulnerable populations typically remain unvaccinated. (Courtesy Spectrum Health Beat)
The number of Americans infected with hepatitis A has grown nearly 300% in just three years, health officials reported recently.
The staggering increase has come despite an effective vaccine and is seen mostly among drug abusers and the homeless, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hepatitis A virus can linger in feces and be spread hand-to-hand, with infection occurring when a hand contaminated by the virus touches the person’s mouth.
“In the previous decade, large outbreaks of hepatitis A were rare and mostly attributed to contaminated commercial food products,” noted lead researcher Dr. Monique Foster, an epidemiologist in CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis.
Although 2016 saw two outbreaks of hepatitis A caused by contaminated food, the main culprit of outbreaks has been the living conditions of drug addicts and the homeless, Foster said.
The vast majority of the thousands of U.S. cases between 2016 and 2018 involved person-to-person transmission, Foster added.
“Since the hepatitis A outbreaks were first identified in 2016, more than 15,000 cases, 8,500 hospitalizations and 140 deaths have been reported,” she said.
Although hepatitis A can make you very sick, it usually goes away by itself in about six months, after which you become immune, explained Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.
Hepatitis A attacks the liver, he said. Those most likely to develop serious liver illness are those with other conditions like cancer or those whose immune systems are not functioning normally.
The most effective defense against this potentially deadly infection is vaccination, which is also the best way to prevent outbreaks, Foster said.
“Since the widespread availability of the hepatitis A vaccine and recommendations to vaccinate children, the overall rate of hepatitis A infections has decreased dramatically in the U.S.,” she said.
But a large population of susceptible, unvaccinated adults who were not infected during childhood remain vulnerable to infection, Foster said.
This includes people who use drugs, homeless people and gay and bisexual men, she said.
“Vaccination is the most powerful tool we have to stop these outbreaks now and prevent similar ones in the future,” Foster said.
To this end, the CDC recommends that those at the highest risk get vaccinated.
“Transience, economic instability and limited access to health care among the affected populations have made the outbreaks more difficult for states to control,” Foster said.
Siegel believes, however, that the only way to contain the epidemic and prevent future outbreaks is to solve the social problems that feed it.
“This is really not a hepatitis A problem and it’s not solvable by giving everybody a vaccine,” he said. “We have to realize it’s a public health issue and it’s a matter of cleaning up places where the virus breeds.”
Only by improving sanitation can outbreaks among the most vulnerable be prevented, Siegel said. “It’s more an issue of sanitation, public safety and cultural problems than it is one of public awareness.”
The report was published recently in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
On Wednesday, May 29, WKTV Government 26 will be featuring live coverage of the International Space Station Russian Spacewalk.
Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, who is currently serving as commander of the station, and Alexey Ovchinin will venture outside the space station Wednesday morning for a six-and-half-hour spacewalk. The spacewalk is part of Expedition 59.
This is Kononenko’s fourth time to the International Space Station. This will be his third spacewalk. This is Ovchinin’s third trip to the International Space Station and his first spacewalk.
Coverage begins at 11:15 a.m., with the spacewalk scheduled to start at 11:44 a.m. The cosmonauts will continue with the upgrades to the International Space Station.
For more information on NASA TV or the International Space Station, log on to www.nasa.gov.
NASA TV can be seen on the WKTV 26 Government Channel on Comcast and AT&T U-verse 99 Government Channel 99.
What exactly is dogscaping? Quite simply, it is landscaping for your dog’s safety and enjoyment. Dogscaping is not only for your dog’s enjoyment, it is for yours as well. If you enjoy the outdoors, like to garden or at least maintain a nicely landscaped lawn, it can be exasperating to have a pooch who does not share your passion. Four-legged friends do not always appreciate the hours you labor to have beautiful flowerbeds and perfectly groomed landscape plants around the patio.
There are a few things to keep in mind if you love your pets and your lawn. With a little planning and training, you and your dog can enjoy a shared outdoor space. Landscape design should always begin with a list of how you want to use the space. Draw a map of your property and identify the spaces and their uses. This will help you to plan how much space you have for specific dog activities. Also, list some of your dog’s behaviors and habits. Think about their likes and dislikes.
Here are a few things to consider when landscaping for you and your dog.
How much space do you have? Are you planning to share the entire space with your pooch?
What kind of breed is your dog? What are some of the breed’s general characteristics? Like humans, all dogs have different personalities, likes and dislikes. A dog’s breed can tell you general inherent characteristics and certain behaviors that are in their DNA. Try to work with those inherent traits instead of against them. This will be much less stressful for you and your dog.
Regardless of the breed, a good fence is highly recommended for your dog’s safety. Different dogs and different breeds prefer different types of fencing, but in general, a fence that the dog can see through is nice as they can patrol their territory. It is much less stressful for most dogs to see what’s on the other side of their enclosure. Also, when planning the landscape, you may want to leave a 3-foot “run” around your property’s perimeter (without landscape plants) so your dog has room to patrol.
Observe your dog’s behavior. Where do they like to run? Do they like to dig? Do they love to lay in the shade where you want to plant impatiens? Do they jump into your Koi pond every time they are alone in the yard? Try to find creative solutions so the gardener in you and your best friend are both happy.
Dogs love to dig! If you cannot deter your dog from digging in a particular area, work with it. Avoid planting your favorite plants in that spot. For example, my dog loved to dig right next to my deck. As soon as I decided it was OK, life became much better for me and my pooch. I simply planted some taller perennials around the selected digging hole and appreciated that she was not digging anywhere else in the landscape.
Train your dog to use a potty area.
Be vigilant when planting plants that are poisonous or toxic to your dog. This, of course, depends on your dog and how they use their environment. This does not mean you cannot have any plants toxic to your pet, you just need to be aware of your dog’s surroundings and habits. Some dogs like to chew on plants and others only chew up a few blades of grass from time to time. The best advice is to observe your pet and their interaction with landscape plants. Plan and plant accordingly.
Add a water feature your dog can enjoy, even a small kiddy pool filled with cool water is enjoyable for your pooch on hot summer days.
For more information about dogscaping or petscaping, there are many great books and interesting articles. One book I recommend is “Canine Design Dogscaping” by Tom Barthel. This book has a lot of great information about plant selection, dog ponds, walkways and fencing. The author includes a chapter on fruits and vegetables to feed your dog from your garden, including recipes for dog treats from the garden.
Warm weather activities seem custom-made for flip-flops.
But even Jimmy Buffett sings about how he blew out his flip-flop when he stepped on a pop top and cut his heel, then cruised on back home.
John Harris, DPM, FACFAS, a foot and ankle specialist with Spectrum Health Medical Group, certainly agrees with Buffett’s iconic lyrics. He would tell you not to wear the flip-flops in the first place. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about cutting your heel.
That’s not all Dr. Harris said about flip-flops, which he considers the scourge of the footwear world.
Top 3 reasons to throw out the flip-flops:
1. Ouch! Heel pain.
The lack of suitable, or any, arch support in flip-flops can cause plantar fasciitis—heel pain or pain across the bottom of the foot.
Anyone with this lingering condition will tell you to avoid it at all costs.
2. Pain in the … ball of the foot
Not having adequate cushioning and arch support can cause soreness on the bottom of the foot.
Treatment requires more supportive shoes with effective arch support.
3. Avoid ‘flip-flop heel’
This condition is caused by walking around barefoot or wearing shoes that don’t have a back.
A thick callus rim forms around the edge of the heel when wearing shoes like flip-flops that don’t have backs to act as heel counters. This creates a situation in which your heel is constantly being exfoliated while walking. That creates a callus.
Aside from being unsightly, the cracked rim of the callus is painful.
Other flip-flip concerns
Less common, Dr. Harris said, but equally concerning are injuries from activities while wearing flip-flops.
Doctors often see ankle sprains from someone playing basketball or other sports in flip-flops, skin abrasions from a child riding a bike while wearing flip-flops, or cuts on a foot when a person wears flip-flops into a river and they slip off and float, exposing the barefoot to sharp rocks and river debris.
In addition, a study by Auburn University points out that wearing flip-flops causes you to take shorter steps and changes the way you walk compared to your gait while wearing sneakers. This can cause muscle strain.
“Instead of flip-flops, wear activity-specific shoe gear,” Dr. Harris suggested.
He pointed out that the child riding a bike should wear sneakers, the basketball player should wear basketball shoes or sneakers, and the person in the river should wear something like Keen shoes for walking in a lake or river, unless it is a sandy-bottomed lake.
“For daily wear in the summer, I’ll wear a pair of shoes similar to flip-flops,” Dr. Harris conceded. “But, I choose a shoe or sandal that has a more substantial sole and significant arch support compared to the inexpensive and flimsy flip-flops you find at stores all over town.”
There are many brands that fit this category, he said, suggesting people look for something like Chaco, Keen, Teva or Vionic.
“They’re designed to protect your foot while allowing you to engage in activities,” he said.
All in all, Dr. Harris encourages everyone to look for summer sandals that have a more substantial sole compared to those that feature a couple millimeters of foam, often found in common flip-flops, and to look for sandals with arch support rather than just a flat surface for the foot bed.
“No matter what brand you select, you still should never play basketball or mow your lawn in flip-flops,” Dr. Harris warned. “It’s just too risky.”
