Summer has finally come to Northern Michigan. It has had to struggle through rain, late frost, and more rain. Then it encountered hail, high winds, thunder, more rain, and… more rain.

It is flooded up here, as in other parts of the country. My poor neighbors had just gotten their garage emptied of six inches of Lake Mitchell when another storm blew up and refilled it. As if that weren’t enough, the storm also upended a good-sized tree onto their swing, and their yard is now one big messy pond.

But I firmly believe that we have found summer, and I intend to hang onto it until at least October. My peonies bloomed and died, now the Iceland poppies grace a sparse patch of lawn. We redid the landscap ...

Gold at nearly a thousand US dollars an ounce. Platinum over two thousand. Silver, incredibly enough, at twenty dollars an ounce.

Did we honestly think we would see these prices this early on?

The falling value of the dollar coupled with instability in the markets has set this industry on its ear. Then we add low mine production to the mixture, and suddenly a reachable commodity becomes just one more thing that’s harder for the common man to acquire. We’ve had a spike like this before, but not with such a steady upward trend. Is it going to stay this way? Who knows. I, for one, think it will.

Rather than bemoan the price- which I can do nothing about- I want to address the situation ...