Advocate: Building a Legacy of Health

by Zinta Aistars
Published in Women's Lifestyle Magazine
February 2014 Grand Rapids, MI

Kay Rose

Growing up, Kay Rose watched her mother’s health habits, and now her two teenage sons are watching hers.

“I lost my mother when I was 23,” said Rose. “But I watched her struggle with health problems most of my life.

My mom suffered a stroke when she was in her 40s, and I was only 3 or 4 years old at that time. I grew up with the knowledge that my mom was a stroke survivor.”

Rose’s mother suffered recurrences of mini-strokes and ultimately had to have bypass surgery.

“She never woke up from surgery,” Rose said, her voice catching. “She had a fatal stroke on the operating table.”

Rose’s own health habits have become a part of her daily routine. She knows her habits, from what goes on her plate to her workouts, have a big effect on her health as well as the health of her growing boys.

Rose began her career as an administrative associate at American Heart Association in Grand Rapids last April. She has been volunteering for the Go Red For Women campaign for five years. Prior to her job at AHA, she worked at Weight Watchers, where she learned what a difference a few changes to her daily habits could make on her overall health.

“I’d been overweight all of my life by about 50 pounds or so,” she said. “My cholesterol numbers were elevated, but when I got to about age 40, my blood pressure started creeping up, too. I had had readings of ...

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE ON WOMEN'S LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE. 

A bike, 1,655 miles, 200 birds, one man's 12-month adventure

by Zinta Aistars
Published in Southwest Michigan's Second Wave
February 6, 2014

Josh Haas riding in Barry County (Photo by Erik Holladay) 

When Josh Haas sets a goal, he doesn't settle for the little stuff. In 2013, he decided to travel across Barry County, Michigan, on his bike as he spotted birds. Zinta Aistars talks to Haas about how that turned out. 



Josh Haas keeps New Year’s resolutions. That alone is worthy of applause. His resolution for the year 2013 was so unique, however, that he is now speaking all over Southwest Michigan about it--and the response has been enthusiastic.

On Wednesday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m., Josh Haas will be speaking about his year-long adventure spotting 200 birds while riding a bike over one year’s time throughout Barry County. The free presentation will include videos of his journey and take place at Binder Park Zoo, 7400 Division Drive in Battle Creek.      

"My wife Kara worked at Kalamazoo Nature Center as public programs and exhibits director, and I volunteered there once a week," says Haas. "That’s how I got interested in birds, especially raptors."

Raptors are birds of prey that hunt and feed on other animals, and Haas became so fascinated with the hawks and eagles that he began to photograph them. He is today, along with his father, Dave Haas, owner of a nature photography business called Glances at Nature.       

"I’d dabbled in photography even as a kid," Haas says, "but I got serious about it when I got into birding." One interest spawned the other, he says. Aside from his daytime job as a manager at the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in Battle Creek, he and his father have built their photography business not only on selling their photography, but also by offering classes and workshops along with individual lessons. 

"I’m a goal-oriented person, and at the beginning of 2013, I thought about what kind of goal to set that would include fitness without using fossil fuels--and birds."

Haas is a biker, riding various types of bicycles on different types of terrain, and it seemed a logical pairing to combine riding his bike and spotting birds. He called his journey The BIGBY, an abbreviation-acronym of The Big Green Big Year.  Traveling inside the boundaries of Barry County, where he lives on 12 acres with wife and daughter, Haas planned to spot 200 birds over the year. 

"I looked at yearly records for Barry County, and I looked at other inland counties," Haas says. "Most record around 190 birds spotted in a year. Places like Allegan County, closer to the Lake, might record 240 or 250, but farther inland, the water birds fall off. Breaking 200 anywhere inland is hard to do."

It started as a one-man journey. One man and his bike, a pair of binoculars, and an iPhone in his pocket for snapping a quick photo when a bird came into view. Haas, who is also the president of Battle Creek Brigham Audubon, used a website called eBird to track and record his sightings.      

"It’s a worldwide database for birds," Haas says. "That was the first way that I found birds. You can zero in on areas where alerts of sightings have been posted. The second way was to ...

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE ON SECOND WAVE.

What I Want Instead

by Zinta Aistars
Published in GERM Magazine
February 2014

Why would they be surprised that I fell in love with a chain saw? Instead of dolls when I was little, instead of pink and frilly ruffles and bows, instead of flouncy dresses and stick-thin high heels, instead of giggly small talk, instead of nodding prettily to everything the cute boy says, with a seductive whisk of my hand to toss my long blonde hair over my shoulder, just so, just so that it catches the light and maybe blinds him into worship.

I don’t collect boys. I don’t collect anything. Collecting things, that’s like holding onto the past. I don’t live in the past. There’s too much muck there, and I have worked too hard and too long to get the muck off my boots. I leave pinning butterflies to corkboards to others, scientists or sociopaths, doesn’t matter, not my business, no more than I want anyone paying business to mine.

I’ve been called a tomboy, and I shrug that off, but I will tell you now: I don’t appreciate that tag. I mean, think about it. Why give a girl a special name for liking a chain saw more than a bow in her hair? A girl can be one or the other, or neither, or both. If she wants to saw down trees in high heels and mini skirt, well, more power tool to her.

So I climb trees, and I have since I was a kid. Scraped knees don’t scare me, didn’t then, don’t now. When I was a kid, I’d sit in the highest branches of an oak tree across the street from our house, swinging my legs beneath me, singing at the top of my lungs. Scared the squirrels, no doubt, but I had all this music in me I just had to get out.

Now when I get that chain saw humming, I hum along, too. It’s satisfying work. Not just sawing up chunks for the wood stove, piling them up neat as a stack of Lincoln Logs in the wood bin, but pruning the tree of what is healthy and what is not, shaping it up to be at its best, keeping it clean of pestilence and disease.

My mama didn’t even know what an arborist is when I told her that’s my life ambition. Her face kind of squinched up, her eyebrows doing a curl that arched over her squinched eyes going dark.

An arbor-what? But why? She wanted to know. When I tried to explain, I ...

READ THE COMPLETE STORY ON GERM MAGAZINE.