CONWAY -- Why should anyone in Conway care about Grand Marais, Mich.?
Well, in the first place, both are registered contestants in the Reader's Digest We Hear You America online vote, in which the winner will get $40,000.
If Conway were to win, said Foster Hughes, Conway's director of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, it would put the money into luring more tourists from the oceanfront to visit the riverfront.
If Grand Marais wins, said Janie Dowe, a volunteer at the Grand Marais Chamber of Commerce, the money will go into a fund to rebuild a crumbling breakwall. The wall prevents silt from Lake Superior from inundating residents' property and keeps its harbor as an important refuge for fishermen and others trying to get out of the way of fast-moving storms that can turn the lake into a graveyard.
The second reason anyone should care about Grand Marais is that Dowe's son, Wally, was the turf management supervisor at Wild Wing Golf Course 13 to 14 years ago. She fondly remembers her visits here when Wally was in residence, as well as to a Pawleys Island restaurant where empty peanut shuckings were thrown to the floor.
As of Friday, there really wasn't much of a contest. Grand Marais had racked up the top tally, 89,323 votes, versus 1,494 for Conway. If you stayed on the voting website - www.rd.com/wehearyouamerica - more than a few minutes, the tabulation had changed in Grand Marais' favor.
Everyone along the Grand Strand knows the reasons Conway deserves votes in the contest, but Dowe said that Grand Marais (means "big marsh" in French) is not without its enticing eccentricities as well.
Michigan 22, the highway that connects to the town's 350 residents to just about any other place, runs 22 miles before it hits another town and another highway, and is known among locals as the town's driveway. The only school in Grand Marais educates all 44 of the town's students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
They all get lots of individual attention, Dowe said.
You probably won't find as many Conwayites headed toward Grand Marais this time of year as there might be travelers in the other direction. After all, the wind chill there was 17 degrees at 2:30 p.m. Friday.
But the trip north might seem more enticing in July, when the average high in Grand Marais is 69 degrees.
Dowe said the town has been trying for years to raise the money to rebuild the breakwall, which was constructed in 1947 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers but never maintained as it should have been. Because of the breakwall, the town's harbor is the only safe storm refuge for 100 miles.
Dowe said the federal government has allocated just $1 million of the estimated $4 million cost to make the wall work again as it should while spending more than $3 million on studies about solutions.
After years of dealing with the Corps, Dowe said, town residents have decided "it's up to us to do it ourselves."
A couple of years ago, Dowe said, "sweet little old ladies" in Grand Marais raised more than $100,000 by painting wooden flowers and selling them.
"We're just a little town trying to keep going," Dowe said.
She insisted she has no idea how the town has racked up so many votes and said she knows of no one there glued to a computer screen and registering votes as fast as a cursor can move. Each person, after all, can cast but 10 votes per day, according to contest rules.
No matter the outcome, Conwayites may be able to focus on a competition with Georgetown rather than Grand Marais.
On Friday, Conway was in 47th place in the contest. Georgetown, with one vote, was solidly lodged in 2,820th place.
Perhaps what attracts voters to Grand Marais over any other town in the U.S. is the words Dowe uses to describe it.
"A phone to God is only 10 cents," she said, "because it's a local call."
Start the new year at the Christmas feast
Glenna Page, chief executive of human resources for Horry Telephone Cooperative, has some heart-healthy advice to those among us who think Christmas is for feasting: New Year's is just a week away and if you're like most people, your resolution will be to lose weight.
Start at the table, she said: Eat less. Follow that up with a walk around the neighborhood or playtime with the kids instead of a beeline to the couch.
Page should know what she's talking about. She's in charge of the company's wellness program, which was a reason it was recognized recently by the American Heart Association as just one of 13 S.C. businesses that are platinum level participants in the Association's Start! Movement program.
Page said more than 90 percent of the company's 720 employees are enrolled in a company health program that includes Wellness Wednesdays. Insurance premium discounts come to those participating in wellness center offerings and they are also encouraged to use the on-site walking trails and take the stairs rather than elevators when navigating from floor to floor at the company's Conway headquarters.
The Heart Association declared the company fit-friendly in its platinum level recognition, a state of mind that Page said can extend easily to the home with the help of education the company provides.
She said she, for instance, now uses applesauce as a substitute for oil when she makes her brownies. And she will, by the way, pit hers against anyone else's brownies made the old-fashioned way.
