The mission began when our last child graduated from college and we began to look to downsize our living accommodations. We have lived in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, since the late 70s, and as nature lovers were looking for some land with a little elbow room. In 2011, after about a year of searching, we found a five-acre parcel, The Sumac Grove, that suited our…

You may not read about it on the front page of the newspapers, but Japan is undergoing a second electricity crisis. The first took place last spring and summer after the Fukushima earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent meltdown of multiple nuclear power plants. That power crisis mostly affected Tokyo and northern Japan. This second crisis affects all of Japan, and it…

Driven by rising home prices and growing demand, the U.S. housing recovery is well underway, concludes The State of the Nation’s Housing report released recently by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. While still at historically low levels, housing construction has…