The inland ocean
We've spent the past week in a rented cottage along Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes. It is big enough to seem like an ocean when I stand on the sand at its edge: 300 miles long and 80 miles wide, much too wide to see the other side. You trade killer waves and seafood at Ocean City, Md., for moderate waves, lake perch dinners, fresh water, and no sharks or jellyfish here. The water is quite clear and reasonably warm, 64 degrees yesterday. My cousin, Kathy Winkler, who is a world-class Ironman triathaloner (she won her age group at Kona two years ago) says that Lake Michigan is the only place other than Lake Tahoe in California where she can actually see what she is swimming through on her morning two-miler. She and her daughters, her father, sister, and her brother and his wife came from California for our annual family beach reunion.
Unlike the ocean, much of Lake Michigan is bordered by steep, forested dunes. Most cottages, including this one, have long staircases, some more rickety than others, leading down to the beach. Going to this beach is more exercise than one normally gets at Ocean City. There are many cottages along the lake, but very few condo units. People hang onto these cottages for decades. The people across the street from us in the Eagle Crest cottage association have been coming here for 47 years. The woman's parents owned it, and now she and her brother share ownership. She calls it her "magical place." Because you face directly west at the crest of the dune, the sunsets here are wonderful.
Michigan, like Pennsylvania, is in the throes of a gubernatorial election campaign. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm is being challenged by Amway heir Richard DeVos, Jr. The Republicans have been reduced to running anti-Granholm ads that admit she's a nice person and a great politician, but argue that she is an ineffective leader. Of course, DeVos would be less than 100 percent effective, too, if he faced a Legislature controlled by extremists from the opposite party. DeVos is a son of wealth and privilege (his father's minions sold a lot of soap) who probably prays every night that Bush is able to permanently cut the estate tax. He is said even by fellow Republicans to be a bit stiff, the Oliver Douglas type who wears an expensive suit and Italian shoes to milk a cow. His father, and Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, now passed on, are/were extremely conservative. Van Andel funded creation "science" groups.
What I found most interesting in the TV ads I saw is that the Republican candidates don't use the word Republican in their ads. They're running as fast as they can from President George W. Bush and the GOP extremists who control Congress. With the President's support level at about 34 percent, and polls showing most people inclined to vote Democratic at all levels this year, they are quickly becoming candidates from nowhere. We can only hope that the Republican nightmare that began with their capture of Congress in 1994 will end this year.
