an upper peninsula journal

something of nothing

2011-12-25T10:04:00.000-05:00

House for Sale

2011-06-05T15:51:00.001-04:00

I'm moving. Staying in the U.P., but moving to a new home. So, my house in Sand River is for sale. It offers a 5-minute canoe ride to Lake Superior, views of the lake, wild blueberries, bald eagles, deer, river otter, beaver, pine, birch and maple. Wood heat supplemented by propane, two baths, three bedrooms, well, here's the listing -

http://www.uparidx.com/idx/ncentral/select/residential/propview.php?view=1056723

Cluster Fly Spin-out

2011-04-23T08:12:00.000-04:00

the sneeze

2010-12-31T19:07:00.000-05:00

Buster and I walked down to the corner this morning, as usual, but it being Friday I trailed the garbage can behind me, setting it firmly next to the neighbor's can, then minced across the road to the hitching-post line of mailboxes to leave a letter for pick up. I pulled open my box's lid, popped in the letter, closed the lid with a snap, flipped up the little red flag. I turned and minced my way back across the road, headed up my road, both dirt roads covered in ice. The thermometer read 42 degrees, but we've had a bit of snow lately and on the back roads that now means slippery going and later, slush.

Heading home Buster was a bit in front on me and suddenly he sneezed, causing his right hind leg to skitter away from him on the ice. I gave a snort, a laugh, and my right foot skittered away from me on the ice. Buster regained his pace without a fall, and so did I. It was barely perceptible, this soft slapstick routine, this sneeze, slip, snort, slide. Just a little fun, down to the corner and back.

My Friend Queenie (by Buster)

2010-11-08T19:52:00.000-05:00

We buried Queenie today. Now, I don't know much about these things, but Queenie being my best friend all these years, I figured I should ponder it a bit and tell about her.

She was the boss, Queenie was. From the day we met, she bossed me and Goldie about. I didn't mind, but Goldie - a cat, in case you don't know - didn't like it, and thus began their somewhat contentious relationship. Funny how lately they've shared that space in front of the fire, the warmest spot in the house, without trouble. But the thing about Queenie's bossiness is, sometimes she let me be boss, pretend anyway, and just when my head would be full of it she'd toss a little hip check or lip curl my way and then lift her head and smile and topsy-turvy would turn right again and we'd just play, chasing around the yard or battling over chewed-up squeaky toys. Later, we'd lie down side by side, pooped.

Queenie and I were very different dogs. At the beach, while she swam and chased gulls, I snacked the shoreline and dug in the sand. On walks, I raced ahead, she trailed behind. At night, while I made a nest on the sofa or bed, she just stretched out on the floor. And when it came time to take care of business, Queenie got right to it, while I always took my time - still do - to find just the right spot, remembering, I suppose, certain early teachings I had about thorough preliminary sniffing.

When it comes to eats, though, Queenie and I have the same tastes. Oatmeal, carrots, yams, eggs, tuna juice, cheese, chick peas, not to mention dog biscuits and that hard-tack food, lately softened with a bit of warm water. (Funny, we seem to have had all these treats in just the last couple of days ...) Of course, I was always a bit fonder of coyote poop, which suits me just fine!

Queenie and I shared everything, and I admit, there were times I wanted things all to myself - the food bowl, the treats, the attention - but Queenie always, always, sidled inbetween me and what I wanted, using her big long nose like a wedge, a wedge of "sweetie pie," as it were. It sure made me mad sometimes, but now, I don't know if having everything all to myself is going to be so great. I think I'd rather have a friend, like Queenie, and share it all, like we did. Of course, Goldie's still around, and he's been my pal forever, but he's in a slightly different world - I did mention he's a cat, didn't I?

Maybe all this pondering isn't such a good idea. I don't want to get maudlin or anything. Life ends, life goes on, but life is just what we know it to be, and the thing is, since we first met more than fourteen years ago, Queenie and I have rarely been apart, so life without Queenie, that I don't know. We went everywhere together or stayed home together, and you know, in the car, she always let me have the front seat. People, on the other hand, seem to come and go all the time and I have no idea why they're here one minute, gone the next; when they're coming back; if they're coming back; and why some people think they can share the front seat, without me getting a little peeved about it.

Oh well. Lately, for the most part, I'm happy each day to wake up without that pesky pain in my neck (I've got arfritis). I get a few treats in my bowl, take a walk, run if I'm feeling real good, then have a nap, and you know, lately, Queenie's been a little, well, slow, and low-key, and not really much for running and playing. But now, well, we buried her today. But for some reason, I don't think it's going to surprise me tomorrow morning if I feel a little push from a long, skinny nose poking itself into my bowl of oatmeal, seeing if I've finished yet, seeing if I left anything behind. And I'll look for her bowl, to do the same.

a rain of leaves

2010-10-06T17:26:00.000-04:00

My favorite day of the year has come and the leaves rain down in a trickle and trance on a puff of breeze and a whispery wind through a sky that's bluer than blue and purer than springtime full of sun and skirting clouds that won't stay put but will drift away on a trail of leaves like glitter and stardust of yellow and red and umber and bronze falling and weaving and tumbling with a rustle and crinkle and fluttering wave.

Another 500 lbs. of beeswax

2010-09-17T10:15:00.003-04:00

With a second trip below the bridge (the scary five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge) to get another 500 pounds of beeswax, I began to think: This is serious. So when passing billboards for the Mystery ? Spot and when tooling past the Weird Michigan Wax Museum and the funky souvenir shops offering "Indian" goods, I made a mental note to stop next time, before crossing the bridge, and visit these places and have a little fun as well as take in the vast watery view from the top of Lake Michigan.

What makes the Mackinac Bridge so scary? Perhaps it's the low slung guard rail between me and whatever's out there.

taking pictures while driving?

The old dogs went with me, and with one being prone to bouts of playing living statues all by herself and toppling over and mimicking that commercial where the old lady's on the floor going "Help! I can't get up!" (Queenie's always had a sly sense of humor), not to mention the occasional incontinence, it makes for an interesting trip. There were a couple of unscheduled stops, pulling over to the side of the road to tend to the old girl, but otherwise it was a few hundred miles of clear sailing through northern Michigan which is, indeed, beautiful.

Starting before sunrise, heading into dawn, the sky was clear. (When I first stepped outside about 5:30 a.m. I was startled by the stars. One of the nicest things about fall is the lengthening and lingering night. At last, darkness.) The horizon was a broad pink and green band, slowly paling. Pockets of mist wafted up from the ponds and creeks, trailing through trees, the pines and cedars and maples, some maples sporting a few red leaves, here and there, and mist hung over a flat and silvery Lake Superior. Somewhere east of Munising the sun popped over the horizon, shedding a harsh light on the day.

Below the bridge, the bare orchards I had passed in January were leafy green and filled with apples. We stopped at one of the many farmstands along highway 31, a place called Bargy's, south of Charlevoix and north of Traverse City, and got a bag of fresh Fujis, a bag of green bean chips, and enjoyed a temptation to buy fresh milk bottled in thick clear glass. But, I'm not much of a milk drinker.

We were at the apiary, Sleeping Bear Farms, shortly after noon, loading 500 pounds of fresh golden beeswax into the van. (I'll skip over how we discussed whether the two boxes would slide around or not and how they eventually did, in the midst of Traverse City traffic, because I'd rather not dwell on the scary stuff.) At the farm, honey extraction was in progress, and I was lucky enough to get a tour of the facility amid the action. Sleeping Bear Farms tends to more than 5,000 hives distributed across six counties, and come August and September there can be tons of honey to harvest. They extract, store, bottle, and ship out from their spot right there in Beulah.

border crossing

Except for freaking out while crossing back over the Big Scary, there's not much more to the second 500 lbs. of beeswax story. I did have some thoughts about my first trip, the first 500 lbs. picked up back in January, and wondered why I had done anything so nutty. But how I could think it was nutty when here I was doing it again, granted, during a more pleasant time of year for driving, but still, what is this beeswax thing all about? Is it serious?

P.S. No one was hurt during the 500 pounds of beeswax sliding incident. Even the apples came through OK.

What am I doing with all this wax? Click here for the answer.

If you're interested: Sleeping Bear Farms.

Old Dogs & Wild Turkey

2010-09-03T17:09:00.000-04:00

So we're heading down to the mailbox and up ahead is this large, gangly necked bird wandering to and fro down the road. Buster and I both notice her just as we get beyond the end of the driveway, and we stop. My guess is that it is a wild turkey.

Since Buster is a bit ahead of me I know he hasn't stopped just because I stopped (not that he would anyway), and I wonder how it is that he knows this bird is there because although large, the bird is basically the same color as the road and the noise it makes is just a light gobble. How can Buster see or hear it? At 15 years old he's not completely blind, but definitely visually impaired, and he is deaf. But right now he is on high alert and looking right down the road at this wild turkey doing a trot, back and forth, a few yards ahead. Does the turkey have a scent? Even before the hatchet and the stuffing and the roasting pan?

We proceed, but the distance between us and the turkey never shortens. She continues to move down the road in her criss-cross pattern and then crosses the T intersection where the mailboxes are into the neighbor's yard where the bird feeders are. Buster stays in front of me, eying the bird's progress, the wisdom of age, perhaps, advising him not to give chase. I retrieve the mail and turn back towards home. That's when the real surprise comes. Queenie, who I thought was a goner back in the heat of May, is right behind me with her ears perked up, all agog over this wild turkey.

I don't remember the last time Queenie walked farther than halfway to the corner. On her, 15 years are not only blinding and deafening but drastically weakening and rickety. Sometimes when she's sleeping her feet and legs twitch, as if in a dream, but in her dreams she must be younger, less stiff, because her legs move more quickly than when she's awake. She gets around, but not without effort, and sometimes her efforts fail.

Heading home, Queenie and I walk side by side. Buster remains at the corner, poking around as usual, then he runs to catch up. As he passes Queenie full tilt he gives her a little side swipe and she stumbles. With a quick step hop she gets her feet back in place. She bucks and prances before returning to a plodding pace. Tonight, maybe she'll dream about wild turkey, and she'll be back down at the corner, giving chase.

My Bowed Psaltery

2010-07-25T18:34:00.001-04:00

My bowed psaltery is an authentic "Gustavarius." It is inscribed as such inside its bottom board, along with the maker's more common name, Gus Hult; the date, Sept. 18, 2003; and the number, No. 17.

My bowed psaltery is made of wood and piano strings and horse hair. The triangular top and bottom boards are solid spruce cut from the sound board of an 80-or-so-year-old piano that was washed up, had seen better days. The tuning block, or pin block, is also from a piano and is hard maple. The sides of the psaltery are made from Filipino mahogany rescued from a dumpster behind a music shop in Green Bay, the mahogany having once served as a carton for a piano traveling from the Far East to Wisconsin. The bridge - a little elongated prism of wood near the tuning block that lifts and supports the strings - is also walnut, but from closer by, an Illinois farm, the farm where Hult's mother grew up. The bow is walnut (but not necessarily mother's walnut) and is strung with horse hair that comes from a shop in Escanaba, Michigan, that sells pow wow supplies. And a little black and white gizmo on the bow is made from two piano keys, one ebony and one ivory, taken from a piano made in 1889. (Hult told me that on a violin bow this little piece is called the "frog." Maybe on a psaltery it's a "phrog.")

The psaltery is strung with piano wire. Whole notes descend the right side of the triangle, each marked with its letter, and sharps and flats the left, similarly marked. I hold the psaltery in my lap and run the bow across the strings and it gives me a sweet sound.

I found my psaltery at the U.P. Made Artists Market, and the other day Hult stopped by while I was working there to tune it (although it turned out it didn't really need tuning), to answer my questions, and to restock the market with another psaltery, No. 66. Hult, a piano tuner by trade, lives up here in the U.P. He discovered psalteries while on vacation in Berea, Kentucky, a dozen or so years ago and figured he could make his own so got some blueprints from a place in Minnesota and did. He uses old piano parts and whatnot because that's what he has plenty of.

Which reminds me of a tune ...

blueberry milk cakes

2010-07-11T13:57:00.008-04:00

My dad was no woodsman, but he had what I think is called a bow saw that I now have and use occasionally, and I am no artist, but I went to a workshop on encaustic painting and collage last week and woke up this morning thinking about making beeswax collages on pine rounds that I could cut from the trunk of that tree in the yard that toppled over a couple of years ago.

The trunk - a good 20 or 30 or 40 yards of it - sprawls up the hill from the river, its upper half up off the ground as the hill levels off toward the house. The tree came down one November day after a strong wind blew it to an angle that worried me. There were a number of trees between this tall red pine and the house, which it was leaning toward, and I envisioned a domino effect of toppling trees that ended on the floor in my living room, so I called some guys and they took the pine down at its base and hauled away the branches but left the trunk as I figured the trunk was good for something. So this afternoon I layered on the long pants and long-sleeved shirt and mosquito dope and, apologizing to the two robins nesting there, went into the barn and found the old bow saw and approached the task of sawing a few rounds off this old pine for the sake of ... art. (Or is it craft?)

Blueberries!

The pine trunk rests in the middle of a wild blueberry patch. Some years there are no blueberries, others simply masses of them. Today, blueberries were ripe for picking and better yet there are plenty of little green ones just waiting to blue up. I dropped the saw and picked a few berries for snacking and a few more for lunch.

I started in on the trunk, but I never got all the way through it. I'm almost through it, but the saw gets stuck so I'm stuck. I'll have to get back to it later. I decided to try another fallen tree, a beech which came down all on its own this spring, but a swarm of excited mosquitoes cut that effort short, and the lunch bell rang.

I decided to make a half batch of blueberry pancakes but mismanaged the recipe and ended up putting in too much milk. Well, that's why I'm no cook. I proceeded to griddle up the blueberry milk cakes. Slathered in maple syrup, who could tell the difference?

June is

2010-06-27T16:12:00.000-04:00

Rain. Rain again. And more rain. June is rain. June is long rainy days, short rainy nights. Dew. Fog. Mist. Rain. Drizzle. Downpours and thunderstorms. Then some rain. Light rain, soft rain, hard rain, barely rain, drumming rain, tapping rain, beating rain, a syncopation of ... rain. Rain that sloshes and soaks and pelts. Rain that steams and steam that rains. Soggy, sodden, drenched, and saturated. Damp. Dampness. Dripping. Wet. Rain. And more rain. Streams and rivulets and droplets of rain. And mist. Cool mist, warm mist, fog. Drifting fog, swirling fog, blinding fog. Lightening. Thunder. Mosquitoes. Rain.

Perfect Rain

2010-06-11T19:38:00.002-04:00

Dandy Do-Little Day

2010-06-03T08:13:00.001-04:00

Dandy Do-Little Day
~ June 3, 2010 ~

It’s Dandy Do-Little Day.

We may do a little,
We may do a lot.
We may laugh and giggle,
We may frown and pout.

We may sit by a shade tree,
Discuss where we’re from.
We may lounge on the patio,
Soak up a little sun.

We may dance with a June bug,
Have a parade,
Or go to the park, and
Stay the whole day.

We may find we agree,
Smile and coo,
We may argue and bicker,
Cry boo-hoo.

We may find a rat
(or a puppy, I mean),
We may find a cat -
Wouldn’t that be keen!

But whatever we do,
We’ll do it our way,
Because, after all,
It’s Dandy Do-Little Day!

~

In honor of Dandy Do-Little Day, there is a coupon code one can use throughout June at smashwords.com to remove the e-book's $1 price tag. The code is: UK95J. The book is at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/12028.

But more importantly, enjoy Dandy Do-Little Day!

The Tap in the Woods

2010-05-30T18:32:00.001-04:00

There's a tap in the woods where I get my water. This tap, a spigot on the end of a metal pipe that sticks out of the side of a grassy, craggy slope, is a few miles from my house. I drive there, hike into the woods, get my water. I'm not going to identify its location any more than that, because maybe it's secret, maybe it's not. It would depend on whom you talked to.

I learned about the tap shortly after I moved here. It must have been an indirect reference, because for a long time, although I knew the tap was there, I didn't use it, thinking that as a newcomer perhaps I wasn't entitled to this secret water from the cool of the woods - this clear, delectable (or so I heard) water rising up out of the heart of the Hiawatha National Forest (or thereabouts). Then my vet asked me about it. He wanted to know if I'd had any of that good water from the woods near where I live. I said no, and he, being a non-native, proceeded to provide specific information on its location, and I had little trouble finding it.

I have water, of course, in my house, that comes from a well. I use that water for most purposes, but don't drink it. It has iron and tannin and stuff in it and I don't like the taste. I don't like the smell. I don't like the tint of orange it leaves behind. Whenever I get my hair cut the person cutting my hair will, at some point, get around to mentioning that my hair has a not-so-great well-water smell and a bit of discoloration to boot. (Natural highlights, I say.) I could get a Malibu treatment to relieve my hair of all this, but I don't. My hair is one thing, my taste buds another, so I get my drinking water from the Culligan machine at the grocery store (39 cents a gallon refill, not a bad deal) or from the tap in the woods.

I do not visit the tap in the winter, assuming it must freeze, and the tap's only failed me once, the time when someone was there just before me, the only time I have gone to the tap and seen someone else there. On a late summer afternoon this other person was filling up big five-gallon jugs, and when my turn rolled around I only got one or two gallons before the water petered out, said enough, I'm dry.

When I first started visiting the tap, it was one of those things I was very conscious of for its difference. I mean, most of my life I have simply turned on the faucet in the kitchen or bath and had water for any and all purposes. Now here I was in this pretty spot in the woods filling up jugs with water - coveted water - straight from the ground. But when I visited the tap in the woods for the first time this spring I realized that it no longer felt like a novelty. I had pulled over to the side of the road, hiked into the woods with my empty one-gallon jugs, sat on my haunches, turned on the spigot, and was placing the jugs one by one under the gushing water in the cool dappled shade of bright new leaves that spread out all over above me and behind me and in front of me and around me and noticing, after a while, a whole colony of trout lilies just about to bloom and there was not a sound but the leaves and a breeze and it struck me that none of it seemed unusual. Getting water, cool, clear water, from a secret tap in the woods was no longer a novelty but rather - and now I had to smile - a chore at the top of that day's list.

I thought about it and realized a lot of things have become like that over the almost six years I have lived here. The fact that the vet is a musher and has raced his dogs in the Iditarod; the fact that I fall asleep to absolutely no sound except in the spring the musical peepers and at any time, maybe, the on-again-off-again conversation between the north wind and Lake Superior. The fact that my old dog Buster trots on down to the river's edge all by himself, disappears, and does as he pleases for as long he pleases and returns with muddy, wet paws and a huge grin. The fact that I only get five TV stations (three networks) and then only when the weather is calm. The fact that the closest grocery store - the closest store of any sort - is twelve miles down the road. The fact of saunas. The fact that at night during a new moon it is dark, absolutely dark, until you see the stars, and at night during a full moon darkness seems not to fall at all. The fact that during this time of year the sunset lingers long into the night, and the sunrise can't seem to wait for a decent hour to greet you. The fact that coyotes yip and wolves howl. The fact of skunks and racoons and bear and hummingbirds and mosquitoes and deer flies and dragon flies and water lilies and vees of geese going north then south and slow springs (usually) and splashy, split-second autumns and long winters and short summers. The fact of goslings. The fact of heat that comes from wood and wood that comes from a dead tree in the forest. The fact of water from a well, the fact of water from a store, and the fact of water from a tap in the woods.

Dang Me

2010-05-23T08:50:00.001-04:00

doing what comes naturally

2010-05-17T10:19:00.011-04:00

We were at the dining room table in my cousin Connie's apartment many years ago when my dad told this harrowing tale of a thirsty dog he'd seen at a gas station. The dog was so in need of water, my dad said, that he lapped up a puddle of gas before anyone could stop him, ran around and around in crazy circles, then fell over and didn't move. Oh no! What happened? Was he dead? We were all on the edges of our seats and so was my dad, though we didn't know why until he delivered the punch line: No, the dog wasn't dead, he just ran out of gas! Simultaneously my dad let out a peal of laughter, threw a napkin over his head, fell off his chair, and in a fit of glee rolled around on the floor.

Every Christmas Eve, Santa delivered presents to our front door right around supper time. The doorbell would ring and my sisters and I would jump up and race to the door, the dog barking at our heels. We'd get the door open and tumble outside and see nothing but footprints in the snow or a big splotch where someone had slipped and fallen. But my dad always saw more, because he was outside when it happened, every year taking out the garbage just when Santa arrived. We'd find him coming in the basement door all excited, brushing snow off his pant leg because he'd seen this bright light, or heard this clatter from above, and he'd looked up and there was this sleigh and then he'd fallen because he was so startled. Year after year he'd be all agog with the story.

On Christmas morning we would find a typed note from Mr. Claus thanking us for the cookies and carrots or whatever we'd left out. The note was always poorly typed with many errors due, as the note explained, to Santa's very cold fingers or, alternatively, due to his heavily mittened fingers.

For many years, in the 1960s into the '70s, our family Christmas cards were homespun, thanks to my dad. Some were collaborations with my sister, making use of her artistic talent, and some were collaborations with Niki, the family dog. The classic Allen Christmas card, the one that lives on in the minds of many, is the one that featured Niki playing the piano. I participated in the photo shoot, being in charge of Niki while my dad was in charge of everything else. Niki was not particularly obedient, but the photo card of her seated on the piano bench, paws on the keys, gaze intent on the artfully arranged seasonal sheet music in front of her, leaves one with the impression that she is indeed a gifted canine prodigy, a veritable angel.

I mention all this so that when I announce Dandy Do-Little Day, coming up June 3, and share the poem I've written with a little video, maybe you'll not judge me too harshly, but rather think oh, she comes by this silliness naturally. And maybe you'll wonder if somewhere in the U.P. there isn't someone falling off her chair in a little fit of glee and maybe, just maybe, someone in heaven is smiling and celebrating with a giggle of his own.

April 30, 2010

2010-04-30T10:58:00.010-04:00

Every time I wander near the kitchen sink the sweet and earthy scent of daffodils draws my attention. I cut them a couple of days ago, placed them in a glass vase that belonged, I'm guessing, to my mother, and put them on a ledge above the sink in the kitchen. The daffodils bloomed early this year, as has everything else, and the trees are budding and leafing out; spiky red maple flowers litter the driveway and road. There are flowers on the serviceberries (some call them sugar plums), and I've seen pink tulips in town and yellow dandelions everywhere. In the woods I've spotted spring beauties, Dutchman's-breeches, downy yellow violets, marsh marigolds, and what I think are Mayflowers and trout lilies. Every day it seems there is something new. It's been dry, exceedingly so, but last night, about 4 a.m., rain came and soon thunder, rolling along in a far-off voice, coming closer, becoming louder. I waited for the old dogs on the bed to hear it and to begin quaking, but the thunder rumbled on by leaving the soft rain to patter on by itself. The dogs slept, the slightly snoring one snoring without interruption. One advantage to being deaf, I guess, is that one no longer hears thunder.

Today the windows are open on a richly scented, earthy day. But - a fire has been lit to keep the old ones warm and because it seems rich to have windows open and a fire going. Once in a while sunshine pulls through the clouds; other times a drizzle falls. So far it is a very lax, noncommittal type day.

I have been keeping up daily walks, going one way or another, and even to the Tyoga Trail which in late April was clear, dry, and lovely as ever. But usually I walk east from home down the road a mile or so and back, or I go west and make a loop using a portion of the North Country Trail. The NCT, as it is also called, is a hiking trail that goes from New York to North Dakota, some 4,600 miles, and a few of those miles go through the Upper Peninsula, including the hamlet of Sand River. I pick up the trail from a dirt road called Railroad Lane which does, indeed, run alongside the old Soo Line railroad, and I follow it a short distance to a spot on the river that the Department of Natural Resources once dammed and flooded for, as best I can figure, duck hunters to enjoy. That didn't really work out (though maybe it did for the ducks). At the spot there is a small clearing, a decaying concrete boat ramp, a boulder with a plaque, and the river spreads out here, pooling around many islands, its wide banks displaying the worn stumps of dead trees. It feels desolate.

I follow a public access road back out to Sand Lake Road, and each time I make the turn onto Sand Lake Road I hear a plunk. Some days it's a plunk plunk. The public access road comes out at the south, marshy end of Sand Lake, and there is a log right there that large painted turtles sun on. At first it was just one turtle sunning himself, sensing my presence, diving into the lake. Then, two turtles. Plunk plunk. One day I tried to go extra slow and quiet - but I only got so close before plunk plunk plunk. With the vegetation in the marsh now leafing out, I can no longer see the turtles, but I hear them.

A bit farther down, as the road follows along the west shore of the lake, I'll startle a pair of geese or ducks. In a thrashing of wings they take off, low, across the water. I startle them, they startle me. Yesterday there was just one Canada goose, and I wondered about his mate.

It was near the flooded area that I found this feather:

It is about a foot long and two and a half inches wide. If you know what bird it is from, I'd appreciate knowing.

So it continues to be an odd spring. I am picking up NBC and Fox again on my TV (they disappeared over the winter) and shudder anew at the news, stare dumbly at shows I don't understand, and turn it off. PBS is the only network that consistently comes in, and I have been appreciating its shows on genocide, the Buddha, money and human behavior, disappearing frogs ... which reminds me of peepers. With all the early activity of spring, I've been listening for the peepers' song. They are out in some places, but I have not yet heard them on my stretch of the river. Could it be the dryness? I will listen tonight and see if the rain brings out their voices.

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Maps of the U.P.

2010-04-18T12:26:00.003-04:00

I found this image at "The Book Bench" within the website of The New Yorker in a review of "Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States that Never Made It" by Michael Trinklein. (Visit Quirk Books to learn about the book.)

This map comes from "Cusack's Diary" at andrewcusack.com (no clue). The article points out that on this map the Upper Peninsula of Michigan seems to be part of Canada ... The map is from an article in the Wall Street Journal by Michael Trinklein. It's an interesting map to play with (click here for the interactive, whole U.S. version), just kind of funny how the U.P., which did indeed long to be the 51st state, a state called "Superior," is not included in the map's depiction of that proposed state. (You'll find at the interactive site that you have to mouse over Wisconsin to get the U.P./Superior story ...)

Now here's a picture from Wikipedia's page on "Superior." The caption reads: Proposed map of Superior. Red areas indicate generally accepted areas of Superior, while pink areas are present in some definitions. The red area, for those who aren't sure, is Michigan's upper peninsula, and that little slash of red above the U.P. is Isle Royale. Pink areas are Wisconsin (on the left) and Michigan's lower peninsula (on the right).

Now, does anybody know why the name "Superior"?

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Walls

2010-04-14T09:39:00.002-04:00

The other day I helped a friend wash his walls. These are the walls of his house, the core of which is a log cabin more than 100 years old. The cabin is now his living room and kitchen, and the walls are made of flat-cut, hand-hewn cedar separated by chinking that fluctuates in width. Bud has been in this house for more than 30 years, and he knows some of its history (give him a chance and he'll show you a whole long list of previous deed-holders), but he doesn't know exactly who built the cabin or when, the only clue being a name written on a log in the kitchen which matches a name in the abstract, dated to 1909.

Bud thinks his cabin is an example of some kind of Swedish-style log cabin, and that a broad adz would have been used to flatten the sides of a log top and bottom, with the craftsman then straddling the log and cutting the remaining rounded sides off with a downward motion (no matter how dangerous this may sound). About two-thirds of the way around the living room, cleaning rag in hand, I realized the logs were, of course, much older than the cabin itself, much older than a mere 100 years.

The logs are massive and have many faces - visages of hardened pioneers, weathered ranch hands, burly lumberjacks. They are chiseled and marred, grooved and uneven, full of small craters where knots have popped out. And in places they are burnt. Many years ago, after freeing the logs from paneling and layers of wallpaper that had been nailed up rather than glued, Bud wondered about the blackened areas and worked at removing them. A neighbor told him the black was charring, the result of fire, and that the logs were probably salvaged from a forest fire, just as the logs in his house had been.

We started our work by the wood stove and moved around the room counterclockwise. I led with the vacuum cleaner, and we both worked with rags and cans of Scott's Liquid Gold. It's not that the walls were so dirty, but the logs have so many ridges and ledges and dips and rises that dust easily settles in. And the logs were dry. But by the time we were done their sandy brown color had turned to rich chestnut, and their lines and markings and swirls and movement were more distinct. While moving around the room we also cleaned other woodwork, cabinetry, a bookshelf, and the rafters that cover half the living room, holding up a loft. A few cobwebs and some old dead flies had been vacuumed up, and a few cat toys were booted from behind the sofa. We opened windows and a soft spring day wafted in, feeling right at home.

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Publishing Dandy Do-Little

2010-03-31T12:42:00.018-04:00

March 31, 2010, 12:42 p.m.
As I write this, "Dandy Do-Little" is #280 in the publishing queue at www.smashwords.com. Smashwords is a do-it-yourself website for publishing e-books and an outlet for e-books published through the site. If you are a writer with a book, you can publish; if you are a reader, you can choose from thousands of titles. Some books are free, others cost a bit, but they are all e-books, a concept I am aware of but had not explored until 10 days ago, when I suddenly wondered if I could publish "Dandy Do-Little" as an e-book. I'm not sure what sparked the idea, but on Sunday night, March 21, I wrote in my journal: Can I do something like publish Dandy Do-Little as an e-book? Later I put kind of a half-circle around that sentence and wrote in the margin "smashwords" and underlined it.

I wrote "Dandy Do-Little" in 1996. In about 7,000 words it tells the tale of how Buster (now 15) and Goldie (older than that) came to live with me. But, I play with the facts and it is actually Dandy, the dog I had at the time, who finds these two and takes them in and tells the story. Yes, it is a talking animal book. I suppose it is also a children's book, though every time I read it I enjoy it. Well, I'm close to the material.

I made 100 or so copies of "Dandy Do-Little" by setting it up in book format using cheap software and running copies at Kinko's. I stapled the binding and covered the staples with a strip of black duct tape. The cover and book were illustrated with rubber stamp art. I still have, I would guess, 80 or so of these books in the shed. My marketing effort consisted of giving the book to friends and family and I sold two at an art fair.

I learned about Smashwords from Dan Poynter, a prolific and highly successful self-publsher who spoke last spring at the annual convention of the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association. At the time, I was the association's newsletter editor, and had the privilege of sharing dinner with Poynter and a few fellow UPPAA members. Poynter surprised me - I figured any successful self-publisher was also a shameless self-promoter and therefore, probably, I wouldn't like him. I was wrong. The guy was great. He was funny, personable, and he shared his experience with wit and wisdom and listened attentively to our experiences. He mentioned Smashwords, extolling its virtues as an e-book publishing site, and I wrote the name down for future reference. At the time, I thought, I had no use for it.

So it took almost a year for "Dandy Do-Little" and Smashwords to come together in my mind. Then it took 10 days for me to read Smashwords' Style Guide, get a grasp on what I needed to do to publish "Dandy" as an e-book, and to do it. I uploaded the book at 11:20 this morning, and it is now #237 in the queue.

1:37 p.m.
#181 in the queue.

It is another incredibly nice spring day in the north woods. The thermometer reads 69 degrees, the sun is shining, and a soft breeze noodles up from the south. We have yet to see flowers and budding leaves, but then again, it's only March. I have been sitting on the deck in a lounge chair freshly dug out of the barn. I have been thinking: It has taken me an incredibly long time to realize that I am not what I write and what I write is not me. The words come out of me, but then they stand on their own.

#173 in the queue, and I wonder what those 173 books are about. Are they romances and thrillers? Political diatribes and personal memoirs? Maybe there's a how-to or two or an anthology of ... humorous quotations? Self-discovery? A who-dun-it or a how-I'll-do-it? Historical fiction and essays. A family history. I've always been attracted to books that are meant just for family, and my sister's father-in-law, Don Williams, published his history not long before he died. For many years "Grampa Don" owned and operated a paper box factory in Santa Barbara, California, but how did that come to be? Well, it makes an interesting story. And of course, it offers something to think about. Speaking of his father, Don wrote:
He had taught me how to take nothing and make something out of it. He taught me to believe in my dream and don't give up on it until it either works, or you have learned every way there is that it won't work. Then, take what you have learned and don't be afraid to move on. He taught me how to do with what you have until you can do better.
#164 in the queue.

2:13 p.m.
Still #164 in the queue.

Here are the particulars. "Dandy Do-Little," one dog's brief account of finding a cat and a rat (I mean puppy) and taking them both to heart, is now available as an e-book in the following formats: HTML, JavaScript, Epub, Sony Reader (LRF), Kindle (.mobi), Palm Doc (PDB), PDF, RTF, Plain Text. You may purchase the book for $1 through https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/12028. You need to join Smashwords (all that's required is an email address), and then you can pay with either a credit card or through a PayPal account. Also, you can read half of "Dandy Do-Little" for free. The easiest format, from my non-experience with e-books perspective, is HTML, which will open "Dandy" right there in your web browser. A neat feature is that you can pick the font you want and its size, not to mention text color, page color, and line spacing. Format it your way! FYI - I have paid nothing to get "Dandy" on Smashwords, and their take is 15% of sales. PayPal takes its cut first, which can be 33% or more.

Still #164 in the queue.

2:41 p.m.
#135 in the queue.

I have been out collecting birch bark to use as a fire starter. With this odd warm spring we're having, the fire in the wood stove has been allowed to go out, and this means having to start fires from scratch. Dry birch bark is a great fire starter, and there's plenty of it on the dead birch trees out in the woods. This is one thing I love about the woods - one can see decay and death. The slow process of it. How it leads back to life, feeds life, has its own beauty. In the city and suburbs dead or dieing stuff is always being lopped off, dug up, hauled away. Then sterile weed-free compost is hauled in to start new stuff growing. Everything's got to be clean and neat. That's one way to do it, of course, but I like the mess of the woods.

#107 in the queue.

3:15 p.m.
#45 in the queue.

How will I market "Dandy Do-Little," the e-book? Well, we've got this blog post, though that's kind of like getting free air time on a 1950s' all-night radio show "... is anyone out there ...?" and I'll email family and friends. Uh, and I think I had other stuff written down somewhere ...

I would love for people to read and enjoy "Dandy Do-Little" and to say to their friends, hey, you might like this little book, but if that doesn't happen, it's not a concern. The book is out there, and by mere happenstance I know it will be read occasionally. As for making a buck or two, well, one book sold turns a profit and two books sold earns me that buck (plus a little) and three books sold gets me a little more and ... well, I've never made much money from writing and I don't expect that to change. But a little money, well, that would be nice.

"Dandy Do-Little" is now #30 in the queue.

3:42 p.m.
Done!

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Dandy's Song

2010-03-30T08:05:00.001-04:00

There Must Be an Angel .... Could not decide which version I liked best. First, Stevie Wonder's harmonica. Second, woman alone at piano singing love song. Third, well, my cup runneth over.

The Odd Spring

2010-03-18T19:27:00.005-04:00

The Twilight Zone, Episode #310, might go something like this:

Almost three weeks of sunshine in March in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Almost three weeks with temperatures in the 40s, 50s, even a 60-degree or two marked in a farmer's field that is still awash in snow crystals. This is early March, long before March 20, the official first day of spring; long before and continuing through St. Patrick's Day, a day traditionally set aside for a good old-fashioned blizzard; and long, long before the few hardy folks who live on this wind-swept, lonesome peninsula even contemplate putting away snow shovels and salt buckets, boots and scarves, snowshoes and skis. Where there should be snowmobilers, there is quiet trickling water. Where there should be dwindling wood piles, the wood is plentiful. Where there should be whiners about cold and snow and slush and neverending winter, there are broad smiles and shrugged shoulders.

Where does something like this lead?

March 17, 2010

I took a walk along a dirt road through the woods, just for a mile or so and then back. Usually at this time of year it is snow-covered, or ice-covered, or, at best, a slushy, muddy mess. But today it's mostly dirt, mostly dry, and the sun shone, and I slung my jacket over my shoulder. I had taken the same walk the day before and seen no one, and today it was the same, but for the three dogs who barked at me, though with two being beagles, I should say bayed. I used to dream about stepping off my porch and finding myself walking in the woods, with absolutely no one ...

This weather, this sunshine, this warmth is an aberration.

The woods are barren - no leaves on the trees, no buds - and dirty clumps of snow cling alongside the road and back amongst the trees. Tufts of wintergreen and sprawling pine and cedar bring a little green to the otherwise greyish, brown, straw-colored landscape, so full of last year's decompositions. Ponds of melted snow, looking like weak tea tossed out a window, are grim in the shadows, rosy in the sunlight. There is, indeed, a startling blue sky.

No leaves, I should say, except for a half dozen or so old crinkled oak leaves rattling in a light breeze. It sounds familiar, like a typewriter, like someone using a typewriter, a faint clackety clack, and yes, that's my father typing downstairs in his basement office, a place he would go just about every weeknight after supper to read, or watch a ball game, or pay bills, or sleep, or edit a manuscript, or to type something. He used a two-finger typing method, relying on just his index fingers to rapidly peck out words, and the oak leaves rattling on the breeze seem to be playing the same tune.

March 18, 2010
There's a kind of hush ... Today, the woods are quieter still. I do not hear the oak leaves as I pass by, and a stream of water rushing two days ago across a side road has narrowed to a crawl. Water that cascaded through a culvert merely flows. Two days ago there was a racket of moving water, water which seemed bound to move, to get somewhere further down the road, and all that water, or most of it, seems to have gotten there. Melted snow still trickles lightly past stones and rocks and twigs and leaves and occasional beer cans, but yesterday there was less water than the day before, and today there is less than yesterday, and what we should be seeing is a blizzard with two feet or more of fresh, heavy, water-laden snow, burying the stones and rocks and twigs and leaves and occasional beer cans.

But at that, I smile. I shrug my shoulders.

Funny how when snow decomposes, it smells fresh, like spring.

* * *
A woman named Jane also took a walk this week and caught some water on video:

Little Quartzite Falls Part 1
Little Quartzite Falls Part 2

* * *

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500 lbs. of beeswax

2010-03-02T10:57:00.006-05:00

Recently I loaded the dogs and myself in the truck for a trip downstate to a place called Benzonia which is near Traverse City and the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. We were headed to Sleeping Bear Farms, a large apiary (or honey farm, if you please) from which I had just bought 500 pounds of raw, unprocessed beeswax. I found the wax for sale on eBay and dithered for just a couple of days before purchasing. I arranged to pick up the poundage rather than paying for shipping and looked forward to a road trip to a place I'd never been. I figured it would be about 11 or 12 hours on the road and I'd finally get to cross the Mackinac Bridge, a decidedly scary experience. So in the middle of January in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I hoped for good driving weather and headed out.

We left early, the dogs and I, as the dogs wanted to go. I had to leave the cat at home, alone, with a third litter box set up, which turned out to be foresightful as he did use all three during my 13-(or so)-hour absence, but the dogs had made no secret of their desire to accompany me, so off we went to pick up 500 pounds of beeswax. I kept thinking, I have no idea what I'm doing, 500 pounds of beeswax?, and I've certainly felt that before, the part about having no idea what I'm doing, and, true, it's never quite stopped me, even though sometimes maybe it should have (I also think), but heck ...

It was dark when we left and the snow was soft on the road and thick in the air. We drove slow, and I told the dogs: See, this is one big reason why I disliked working as a tax preparer in Munising that one winter. Remember that winter? I'd leave you every day, all day, and drive off on this road, with all this snow swirling around, piling up under the tires, making me tense, "skiddish" (ha ha!), starting out each morning just like this ... Buster sat next to me on the front seat, alert, though soon he would be snoozing with his chin on my knee, and Queenie stretched out in the "extended cab" space behind the front seat, quietly accepting this separating arrangement, as always, because it gives her the space she needs.

What made me think of that phrase: "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"? One of those things that is true, perhaps, but ultimately meaningless. I suppose it is meant as an "inspirational phrase," as I have always taken it to mean that one can choose to be optomistic, one can forget the mucky past!, see today, now, as the starting point to a new and better life. Today is the first day of the new & improved "ME"! TODAY, this morning, this hour, this second, is a new beginning (if one needs a new beginning), and then ... the next second comes ... and another new beginning? If one so needs ... I thought of the people in Haiti, wondered if they were thinking, aha, today is the first day of the rest of my life. Holy shit. In those moments after the earth shakes your world and your life crumbles to the ground, does anyone think with great delight, aha, now I can truly start the rest of my life. Ain't this grand.

But of course, it's true. Each moment has its choices.

The dogs love these quasi-philosophical meanderings of mine, and soon they were peacefully asleep. That's what a good road trip is all about. Of course it's also about stopping to relieve oneself, which we did once we turned off the Seney Stretch (a long, straight, east-west portion of highway that slices through the eastern U.P.) and headed briefly south before continuing east along the northern arc of Lake Michigan. The road had improved considerably once we got past Munising, away from Lake Superior, but still it was cold and snowy and blowy at the rest stop, so we moved along quickly and soon found ourselves at the Mackinac Bridge.

Yikes.

The Big Mac is younger than I am, but no less scary. It spans the Straits of Mackinac, about five miles of choppy water connecting lakes Michigan and Huron and dividing the state of Michigan's upper and lower land masses. All that water below and all that wind above. One stops to pay a toll before heading south onto the bridge, and I was thankful for the pause. The bridge's speed limit is 40 or 45 mph (I can't remember exactly), and trucks are bound to go even slower. I was thankful for that. The bridge has four lanes, two this way and two that way. It is a suspension bridge -- I can't even describe it. Being on it scared the heck out of me and no rational explanation comes to mind. I thought: If I look to the right what's to stop me from turning the wheel to the right and then I'm over the edge and plunging into icy waters ... so I kept my eyes on the truck in front of me. I spoke out loud about "holding a steady course." I probably said things like "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit ..." and then I was off the bridge (but not in the water) and in the lower peninsula.

All of a sudden the speed limit was 75 mph. But snow and attention-grabbing road conditions continued and it was another three hours or so before I got to Sleeping Bear Farms. Of course, staying on 75, the interstate that runs like a zipper through the northern part of the lower peninsula, was taking the long way, but I didn't know that. After a while I had to exit and cut back west, going through towns like Kalkaska, Bates, Acme, then the booming burg of Traverse City. The section of Traverse City I saw, well, I wouldn't wish it on any small, picturesque, tourist-type town. There were blocks of large, generic-looking resorts built along the shore of Grand Traverse Bay, and no doubt this brings money to the city coffers, but, well, I wonder what it used to look like ten or twenty years ago. I suppose people are happy with it; I found it ugly and crowded and looked forward to getting through it, past it, which I eventually did.

I found the apiary huddled beneath a stand of pines, a large, unassuming tan pole building at a crossing of country lanes. The dogs and I burst out of the truck and roamed around. I got a tour of the facility, which was inactive at this time of year. Many of Sleeping Bear's bees had gone south, to Florida, to make Tupelo honey, and the rest had gone west to pollinate almonds. In the spring they'll be back, spread out in fields around this spot, near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, making what the apiary calls star thistle honey, due, one would guess, to the proliferation of star thistle in the area. I bought a pound of honey and accepted a gift of "real raw" honey and can attest: This honey has a wonderful, distinctive flavor. I guess one would have to say it tastes like ... star thistle.

After loading up the 500 pounds of beeswax, which was in two large cardboard boxes strapped and wrapped to a pallet that fit neatly in the bed of the Ranger, I was advised to take Route 31, the scenic route, back to the bridge. Route 31 follows the Lake Michigan shoreline, and after I got back through Traverse City, what a delight it was. For a number of miles on either side of me there were orchards of apple, cherry, and I don't know what all, but neat little trees in neat little rows, their barren branches peacefully awaiting the adornment of spring blossoms; farm buildings attached to each orchard, and a plethora of farm stands, shuttered for the moment, but I could well imagine the overflowing baskets of July, August, September; the bright colors of red, yellow, green fruits and vegetables; people in their summer shirts and shorts and sandals and sunglasses picking the colorful fruits from the baskets to put in their own sacks and bags; and for some reason I imagined myself living there, riding my bicycle up and down this road collecting fruit that I would carry home in a basket strapped to the handlebars of my single-speed Schwinn with coaster brakes. In reality, I imagine Route 31 is clogged with large vehicles in the summer, people trying to get away or to somewhere, somewhere they can kick back and relax, maybe at one of those big resorts in Traverse City.

On this grey wintry day I zipped along Route 31 enjoying the scenery. Charlevoix seemed quaint, Petoskey less so, and Bay Harbor -- what in the heck is Bay Harbor? First, The Bay Harbor Equestrian Club, high on a hill. Then the Bay Harbor Golf Club. Then the Bay Harbor Raquet Club, the Bay Harbor this club and that club, all these imposing buildings and gates and entryways to ... Bay Harbor. OK, I get it, I'm in Bay Harbor. Buster, Queenie, my 500 pounds of beeswax and I are in Bay Harbor. What's the big deal? Everything was prefaced with Bay Harbor. Maybe it's a set for a prime time soap opera.

The bridge came and went and scared the hell out of me once again. We stopped at the rest stop just past the bridge, back in the U.P., where we had another snack, the dogs and I, having snacked throughout the trip on cheese, hard-boiled eggs, carrots, a pbj for me and dog bones for them, and then as the day's light fell, we retraced our treads through the eastern U.P. On the Seney Stretch we listened to an oldies station and the dogs put up with my singing (have I mentioned they're deaf?), and when we pulled into the driveway, a couple of hours after dark, I still didn't know exactly what I was going to do with 500 pounds of beeswax, but I knew I'd do something, I knew it would come to me.

P.S. A friend sent me a link to this video on YouTube. It's a short MGM "TravelTalks" - Roaming Through Michigan.

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U.P. 200: A Sled Dog Race

2010-02-21T14:02:00.001-05:00

This morning I sit at the end of the lane in an old webbed lawn chair sunk precariously in the snow alongside the snowmobile trail. The trail follows the old, abandoned railroad grade which, in other seasons, is good for walking along and finding rusty, old spikes, nuts, bolts, anti-creepers, and numerous pellets of iron ore. In the winter it is also a good walk, the snow being hard-packed by the snowmobiles and occasionally you find a souvenir bootie shed by a sled dog, but, of course, there are those snowmobiles whizzing by, which isn't so bad, really, just loud, both coming and going, and always there's a bit of fume left behind.

I am not here on this uncommonly mild February morning for the snowmobiles. I am here for the sled dogs. The winter sun, still arcing low but nonetheless higher than it has been for almost two months now, beams down from a cloudless, crisp blue sky and we are having a little spring, temps in the thirties, chickadees hopping about, bird song on the air, a stilled wind, and walking down here with lawn chair and tea thermos in hand I am reminded of those February days when I would wait in line for Wrigley Field Opening Day tickets. It's difficult to pinpoint the similarity between standing outside on a cold city sidewalk with a throng of people waiting for a chance to buy a ticket to use on another possibly cold day to sit with a throng of people watching a baseball game and this, this short walk this morning to sit alone at the end of a lane in the woods in order to watch teams of sled dogs and mushers pass by, but there must be something, some similarity, putting them together in my mind.

I am waiting here not only to watch the sled dog teams that, at this point, are only about 20 miles from the finish line of the 240-mile race they began Friday night, but to capture movies of them. The first chance I have to do that comes along, and here it is.

I wonder if I will get another chance, this time without snowmobiles, and of course I do.

The race is the U.P. 200. I first saw it nine years ago, and that story is told in this month's Marquette Monthly. Last year I was a volunteer at the local checkpoint for the Midnight Run, the U.P. 200's sister race of about 93 miles, from Gwinn to Munising, with the mandatory rest being at the town I live closest to, "town" being a somewhat loose term, depending on what you're used to. The Midnight Run teams stop for a few hours in Deerton, their rigs ringing the grade school which is just down the road from the town hall, where the mushers warm up with some coffee, and that's about it, that's the the town. I got up at 3 a.m. to help these teams get back on the trail to finish the race, and as I was getting in my truck to head over to Deerton I flashbacked to the days when I would get up at 3 a.m. to start my daily job of delivering newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and, for a while, The Wall Street Journal, again in the city, again, another time, another place, but, I guess, the same life.

Art? or Cosmic Message?

2010-02-10T13:25:00.004-05:00

Just a little snow

2010-01-01T13:22:00.002-05:00

Lately I've been more concerned with old dogs and slippers than paying attention to the world around me which is, now that I look up, full of snow. Usually snow makes me wax poetic, snow and winter and crisp air, nutmeg, spices, cinnamon and honey, and all that bit about hauling in wood and crackling fires and snuggling in with tea and quiet, all those words about quiet, and this year it's passing me by, poetry wanes.

Until this morning, that is, which is just another morning of howling wind, a new year, perhaps, but not really a new wind, a fresh breeze?, bone-chilling's more like it, fresh, yes, but not really new, and a young voice on the radio recited the weather forecast and it was a litany of snow. In the next few days we will have patchy snow, snow showers, snow flurries, blowing snow and drifting snow, lake-effect snow, heavy snow, light snow, an accumulation of snow and an amalgamation of snow. (Okay, I added that last one. Poetry {ahem} returns.) Last week we had snow drizzles and freezing snow and when it didn't freeze we had rain and sleet which are, in essence, melted snow. We've been hit with snow pellets and buried in snow flakes. We've shoveled gently falling snow and given up the shovel in a blizzard of snow.

All of which makes me think of one of my favorite songs.

Need more snow? Stop by the buddha weather page.

The Chilean Slippers

2009-12-28T14:25:00.000-05:00

The slipper saga continues, with a twist.

A few days before Christmas, two boxes arrived with the mail. I brought them in from the porch, and both dogs crowded around. They think every package that comes to the house contains something for them, and usually they are right. These packages were from my sisters, and indeed, I thought, there could be presents afoot.

I put both boxes on the floor. Buster sniffed doubletime and overtime, up and down and all around while Queenie tried vainly to get her snozz in on the action. (Queenie's nose is much bigger than Buster's, but slower.) I removed the paper from box number one, revealing another box, and after close inspection we moved on to box number two. Aha. In this box were many small packages wrapped in gift paper. One rattled suspiciously like dog treats, so that we opened amid much excitement. A couple of treats were quickly consumed, and then the dogs resumed nosing and pawing at the other packages, which I thought should wait for Christmas, so I moved them off the floor to a table. Or so I thought.

I was in one room, a noise that sounded like wrapping paper being torn up into little pieces came from another room. I investigated. Buster was opening a present while Queenie watched. I picked up the gift and read its tag - it was for me. Well, I might as well open it. Aha. Slippers. From Chile, no doubt, where my sister spent some time this fall. Odd slippers. Knitted ankle-high uppers with sheepskin soles. Kind of raw sheepskin. Fuzzy wool on the inside (like a litter box), but rawhide on the outside, and I mean the kind of rawhide that comes packaged and labeled as a dog chew. I tried the slippers on. Warm, but slippery, and of great interest to the dogs. I took them off. I went back to the other room. Admittedly, I was being a bit dull.

A while later Queenie was found chewing contentedly on my new Chilean slippers. The only question is, will this prevent Goldie from peeing in them?

Does my slipper look like a litter box?

Old Dogs & Winter

2009-12-22T13:55:00.004-05:00

An Upper Peninsula Production

Two Old Dogs & A Winter's Day

My dogs, Buster and Queenie, are 14 years old - that's 98 in so-called dog years. Buster has the red jacket. He wears it to keep the chill off his arthritis, which developed in his neck when he was about five or six years old. (It's not the only jacket he has - these things seem to multiply - but it is the favorite.) At the time of his diagnosis an x-ray was taken, and the vet showed me the area of Buster's spine, just kind of up above the shoulder blades, where something had worn away between the vertebrae, so now bone was grinding on bone. Well, I thought, no wonder he's in pain. The vet suggested I limit his activity and provided prescription pills for when his pain seemed bad.

Over the years I've tried a number of things to keep Buster free of pain and to reduce it when it overcame him. Some things have worked better than others, but we no longer use any prescription medication and we do not limit his activity. The fact is, when Buster is running and jumping and rolling around he is happy, and there is no way to stop it, and apparently no need.

Queenie's hind legs are no longer strong and sometimes they give out on her. For that matter, sometimes her front legs give out, too. In the past year or so she's lost weight, about 10 or 12 pounds, and in the morning she moves like a rickety old skeleton balanced on tired old broomsticks. Sometimes Buster seems unable to move in the morning, when he's first gotten up, is standing, hunched, swaying slightly, perhaps listening for those sounds he'll never hear again, wondering where his youth went ... Then he shakes himself and gingerly heads to the door.

This year the cold will be hard on them, and getting them through the snow may mean I'm tieing a little keg around my neck and heading into the drifts, rescueing these old dogs from winter, but today the sun was out and the bones felt fine. Especially now, curled up in front of the fire.

Happy Holidays.

TV Roundup

2009-12-12T20:11:00.000-05:00

So it's seems only natural that after losing my job I would rescan my television's digital converter box to see if I was picking up any new stations. I've been receiving the local PBS station - 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 (it occurs to me that digital TV is more like fractional TV) - and I knew the local NBC affiliate, TV6, was sending its signal from the same location, so in theory I should receive it, but it had, at first, been a weaker signal. When I rescanned it popped up in two versions, 6.1 (TV6) and 6.2 (Fox UP). And then along came WZMQ at 19.1 (This TV) and 19.2 (myNetworkTV). The best of this whole lot is myNetworkTV, especially when you consider that I have already lost 6.1 and 6.2, due, I believe, to the recent blizzard. Apparently they just blew away, got stuck in a snowdrift.

On 19.2, last night, "Dragnet." Black and white, no commercials, three characters plus a guy mopping the floor. Friday and his partner picked up a guy wanted for murder. It took me a while to recognize the guy as Lee Marvin, a very young Lee Marvin, but Lee Marvin nonetheless. After a skirmish in the guy's apartment, the action switched to the questioning room at headquarters. The guy, Lee Marvin, doesn't know what Friday and his partner are talking about, this murder, this whole scenario they're laying out, but after a lie detector test the guy can't stop talking about murder and how everyone's got it all wrong as to why people murder, because there's no need for a big motive for murder, no need for big bucks or big blondes to be involved, no need for a reason to kill, just a few pennies will do, not that he's killed anyone, you understand ... but then, of course, he has and he confesses, in fact he's ready to confess to 10 or a dozen more murders, but he's hungry. Let's eat. He wants to go to Helga's Health Shop, right there in downtown L.A., so they do. It's about to close - Friday, his partner, and this mass murderer are the only customers. They sit at a table. The murderer has a salad, yogurt, molasses bread and a vegetable burger. Friday and his partner each have a Swiss cheese sandwich and grape juice. They eat and talk. The murderer tells how he killed his most recent victim and then talks about some of the others. He asks Friday's partner what kind of bread he's got. "Wheat germ." The murderer, as we know, has molasses bread and briefly extols its virtues. He asks Friday to pass the salt - what is lettuce without salt? He asks Friday if he can have some of his juice - "Looks good." He tells Friday and his partner, See? I didn't kill those 10 or a dozen people for any big reason - you don't need a big reason to kill. Maybe a few bucks, that's all. Meanwhile, there's a guy mopping the floor. The murderer wonders why this guy's got to mop the floor while people are still eating. Friday asks the murderer if he's ever seen a psychiatrist.

Then there's "Man with a Camera." The man is Charles Bronson, a photographer. The camera is definitely not digital - it's big and bulky with a big flash, a big bulb, and again it's all black and white. In the first episode I saw, the man was hanging out on a city street on a sweltering night looking for people to snap with his big bulb. He sees two women arguing in an alley, then hangs with two guys talking on a stoop and a middle-aged woman whose flabby arms hang over the sill of an open window. Then screams and commotion. One of the women runs from the alley, her dress torn. It was a man, she cries, a man. No, she doesn't know who, she didn't see him. But everyone else knows who - it's got to be the piker in the neighborhood, the snake, the guy who's pulled enough tricks on everyone else that it's time he got his. But, the man with the camera says, I saw you in that alley with a woman. No, no, she says, it was a man. And everyone knows who and he's the one they'll go get, tonight, right now, and the man with the camera is flashing away taking pictures of all the angry contorted faces, up close, ugly faces. Well, one thing leads to another, but in the end, as the mob's about to go in and get this guy who deserves to be gotten, the woman who had fought with and torn the other woman's dress steps forward (it had been a fight over her husband), and the man with the camera, now the man with the photos because he's called his pop to come get the film and develop it asap and bring the pictures back asap will ya, shows everyone their picture, shows everyone their mean, angry face, and gives a little speech about wanting to believe the worst or somesuch, I don't really remember that part of it.

But my favorite new show is "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon." It's in color. Sgt. Preston is a mountie of some sort in the Yukon during the gold rush era. He's got a sled dog team and a partner, his wonder dog, Yukon King. He also has an unerring sense of right and wrong and bravery. This man's got a job to do - protect the good people of the Yukon from the bad people - and he will do it, show after show, fighting the slicksters and bamboozlers along with King who snarls and snaps at grubby, unshaven throats until the good fight's over and Preston pulls him off. Once everything's tidied up, Preston leans down and hugs his trusted friend, saying, "This case is closed, King." In one episode King and Preston and the whole team were stuck in the ice on a trail through the tundra and the wind was howling and the snow blowing and it was freezing though you really just had to imagine all that because as Sgt. Preston stood on the runners of the sled urging his team on, a bushy hat perched high atop his head, ears, nose, clean-shaven chin and cheeks exposed to the bitter elements, he really looked no worse for the blizzard and sub-zeroity of it all; in fact, he looked quite composed and, somehow, all warm and well-rested. And somehow, all that is appealing.

"Dragnet," "Man with a Camera," "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon," "Ozzie and Harriet," "Mr. Ed," "Petticoat Junction," "I Married Joan," "The Jack Benny Program" - they're the shows I'm receiving these days on my digitally converted TV, but only when the weather permits. Reminds me of something like one step forward and two steps back, do-si-do, skip to my lou, and swing your partner 'round and 'round.

Weekend Movies

2009-12-06T13:11:00.003-05:00

An Upper Peninsula Production

30 seconds at the Poor Artists Sale
Calumet, Michigan
December 5, 2009

Sometimes it's more about what you find than what you're looking for.

Special Featurette

20 seconds the next morning

November is

2009-11-19T18:34:00.001-05:00

November is a snap of the fingers, a flick of the switch; simmering pies, hapless turkeys, a frosty morning rimed in white, still under a lacy camoflague. November harbors a disappearing world, the russeted autumn of October disappearing like yesterday's lessons from the chalkboard, visible but hard to remember, where were we? It all disappears. And November is nut-brown oak leaves as large as my hand spread across the road, frozen in frosting that melts midday, a faint trace of leaf outlining a vague murder in the middle of the road as the frosting drips like MacArthur's Park, a rain forest in the November wood, melting; November is dark in the evening and afternoons, afternoons when the switch of a light circles me back to afternoons practicing chords on a piano, I can hear minor chords, minor sevenths, then I realize it's dark and switch on a light; and November is dark on a cold morning and the fire has burned down and it's darker yet under the covers and even hungry animals remain motionless while November pushes toward the next season with its ads and sales and promises of peace and joy that do nothing to illuminate November and what is. November is a deer hunter's delight and blaze orange caps and camoflague gear block the aisles in Wal-Mart and the hunter's widow gets special nights on the town full of lights and delights that push her to; November is deer knocked dead by autos and darkness; it is deer strapped to car tops and hoods and thrown into pickup beds and hung from poles; it's a mingling of cinnamon and pumpkin and roasted turkey and smashed potatos dripping butter and frost and a fire in the night; a shadowless night; the scent of pine on a crisp breeze; a gale of wind on its own, never mind you, where you are, it whistles past, scuttles the leaves, scrapes against a window pane and whispers soft and low: winter. Aha. Snap your fingers. Flick the switch.

Riekki Responds

2009-11-06T08:30:00.003-05:00

Note: This is Ron Riekki's response to what I wrote about his book "U.P."

Leslie wanted me to write a response to what she wrote about "U.P." I'm just going to jot down thoughts as they come to me reading it a second time, but I will say that after the first read my thoughts were that I've been impressed with the level of writing of the reviews for "U.P." Melinda Moustakis's review in Third Coast, Kevin Allardice's review in Meridian, and Todd Mercer's review in Foreword Magazine all come to mind immediately as very well-written.

Leslie's review is a compassionate read and, just like in workshop, really a quality of the perfect audience for a book. I also like the way she weaves the The New Yorker and Dr. Seuss into the first page, this clash of high and low culture that fits with the novel. It's literary and at the same time an f-u to traditional literature. I reference Dr. Seuss in particular in the novel, so the "Horton Hears a Who!" comparison fits. And so does New York as this imagined world of success and excess. Antony in particular fantasizes about an NY lifestyle in the book, but it's all fantasy, not based on his ever having been there or ever getting to go there. Ever. But the writing style is meant to jar against the The New Yorker short story. I got a subscription to The New Yorker for a year once so that I could read every short story that came out in it and I have to be honest, I was incredibly disappointed in that year's read. I liked the articles, but not the short stories as the writing for the most part felt like it was written with protractors. There was a passionlessness, a flatness, like my old basketballs in winter. I've always had this problem throughout my writing life: I've taken writing workshops at Central Michigan University, Brandeis University, Boston University, the University of Virginia, Western Michigan University, and Charles University in Prague; I've also taught writing workshops with Gospel Mission, Charlottesville's Boys and Girls Club, and at a medium security prison and the writers who have blown me away consistently were those urban teens and middle-schoolers, the homeless, and prisoners. The writers in university workshops can be so problematically safe; whereas, the storywriters with a much closer connection to the streets have a power to their words, an immediacy. I wanted "U.P." to be in that style, which consists of neologism and cursing and a Charles Bukowski dismissal of the standard rules of punctuation and a hip-hop disregard of the rules of spelling, and a general avant-garde reaction against The New Yorker and MLA or Chicago style. I wanted it written in Detroit style. When I think of Neil LaBute, Elmore Leonard, Nelson Algren, Clarence Cooper Jr., Donald Goines, Philip Levine, these writers with Detroit connections, it's an outsidership and it's aggressive and I wanted that tone, even though it was set in the U.P. I wanted Detroit and Ishpeming to blend.

I have had great reviews, but one Alabama reviewer, as Matt Davis (head of Ghost Road Press) complained, only talked about the cursing in the novel. My problem with someone going to see Pulp Fiction or Apocalypse Now or reading Irvine Welsh or listening to Compton's Most Wanted or N.W.A. and only commenting on the cursing is that something bigger is being ignored. So I appreciate Leslie's ability to get through that language and not only to get through it but to understand that it's character-defining. What this means is I'd like to ask the woman who said the language in the book is "flowery" if she had anything else to say. Leslie thankfully does. She also speculates about the biographical non-fiction that people are always curious about. Which character is the author and which character is the Other? Who are those other characters in real life? I've had three people claim to be Craig. And my cousin Jimmy insists he's J, although my cousin Jimmy is about as far away from that character in real life as you could possibly imagine. Although they both do share that letter J, just not the cerebral palsy, stuttering problem, affinity for mohawks, the heroin-addicted dad, lack of siblings, and James Bond addiction that would be required to make him a candidate for J.

Who's the real Riekki? I tend to not care but interviews force a Socratic examined life. Not that I mind interviews. I like to do interviews, because interviews tend to sell books, and selling books means the odds that I'm going to get to write more books increase, and I like to write. A lot. That's who R.A. Riekki is more than anything. I've sacrificed everything to be a writer. So it's nice to go from an unknown to a fringe player. I always wanted to be a cult writer, because I never felt I was a Pulitzer Prize winner like a friend of mine authentically hopes she's going to be. I think it's that Detroit thing again. Whether Iggy Pop, MC5, Alice Cooper or Goines, Cooper Jr., or LaBute, the outsiderness of that city seeps into a Michigander once you've lived in that state long enough. It's a cold state. A suffering state. So I guess a trip there or even better a long, long living arrangement there is a good start to understand me as a writer. And to understand the characters. Because place is central to the novel. And Leslie wisely understands that there's an omnipresence to that place, the novelistic nowhereland, in the same way that Jackass struck a chord and made deep connections with young males throughout the U.S. Take teens (or even twenty-somethings), give them boredom and probably a good dosage of absent, alcoholic, or incarcerated fathers and give them a video camera or a pen and suddenly you have Steve-O. Or Craig.

Leslie's final paragraph I wish we could talk more about. It left me with questions, clarifications. Producer/actor Steven Wiig and I are not cousins in the literal sense, but we are cousins metaphorically. We both grew up in Negaunee and both wanted to do anything to get out, to do something bigger, and I think we first saw that "out," that "escape" that both she and Jeff Pilson of Dokken and Dio recognized in the book, that wish to run away to another more exciting world, we both first truly visualized it in the movie theaters of Ishpeming and Marquette, the Delft and the Butler. So for us now to be in California and him being in Milk and Into the Wild and me getting to work for two VH1 shows, we're getting tastes of what we dreamed about as kids in those two theaters - we're connecting to bring our story, the story of "U.P." and the story of the U.P. as we experienced it to the screen. Will it happen? Who knows? But the 37 weeks that it's been on Ghost Road's top ten bestseller list is a good start.

There are more than ten million people in Michigan. My goal now is to tell as many of them as possible so hopefully they'll buy the book. The more people that buy it, the more likely we'll get a film crew over there. And God knows that state needs the work. It'll be interesting if this story that I wanted to tell about the struggles with unemployment in that state help out later to create some jobs there. We'll see. But for now, I appreciate Yoopers like Leslie letting fellow Yoopers know about this book.

(I have to add this. I had a Menominee area bookstore refuse to carry the book saying that it was set too far away from that city. I almost fainted. If Yooper stores aren't going to help carry it, I don't know who will. Are Negaunee and Ishpeming and Rock really that far from Menominee? I'd love to go to that store and pull off all the books they have in it that are set in New York! Support Yooper books and authors!)

Tell me, what's it like growing up in the U.P.?

2009-11-06T08:00:00.005-05:00

"U.P.," a novel by R.A. Riekki, begins with descriptions of Michigan's Upper Peninsula that are cold and dismissive. I bristled; after all, I am here for the quiet and the woods and the lack of commotion and pressure; I've always believed in Mayberry; and I enjoy the fact that the peninsula, as a recent article in The New Yorker put it, is "underpopulated." But I did not grow up here, and Riekki's book is about the U.P. as his characters know it, and he puts us in their heads as they each tell the central story of the book and along the way share their separate lives. We see the world through their eyes, their lives, and their lives are those of four teenage boys growing up in the Upper Peninsula towns of Ishpeming and Negaunee in the late 1980s.

Hollow told me Ishpeming's Indian for 'Heaven.' If that's true, heaven sucks. There have been times our house was so covered with snow I had to dig a tunnel for my dad to get to the mailbox. That don't happen in heaven.

The only thing to do up here is get in trouble. Or ice fish. (Craig)

The Upper Peninsula is a massive piece of wooded and marshy land that geographically is attached to northern Wisconsin - one must cross a five-mile-long bridge over icy water to reach the rest of Michigan, which is also a peninsula, the "lower" peninsula. I have heard the northern part of the lower peninsula referred to as "upper Michigan," and some also refer to the Upper Peninsula as "upper Michigan." They are not the same thing. When I lived in Chicago, many people assumed I had to drive through Michigan to get to its northernmost reaches, but that would be ridiculous. The quickest way is to drive through Wisconsin.

The Upper Peninsula is often left off maps. Recently some school children in the U.P. took it upon themselves to write to a text book publisher to inform "We are here! We are here! Please put us on your map!" as if the publisher were just a big Horton and the U.P. a dust ball full of Whos. And down in Lansing, the state capitol, they had to pass legislation regarding this map issue, this issue of casually forgetting about the existence of the Upper Peninsula, and they made it illegal to leave the U.P. off maps. As if that would stop anybody.

It's one thing to be a person who doesn't mind if the world passes her by; it's completely another thing to be a child caught in an existence that ignores you. Here's J, telling us about being at a restaurant with his mother and her friends after church.

... And Aunt Baker died, who is not my aunt, but they call her Aunt. Croaked from skin cancer. They discovered it two weeks ago and said she had five months to live and boy were they wrong because she died Tuesday. Andy Hill passed away during a catnap. Mmhmm. Break-dancer. I interrupt, "break-dancer?" Mrs. Surunnen mumbles, "No, silly, brain cancer." Mom frowns, but all I can think of is Old Lady Surunnen using "silly" and "cancer" in the same sentence. They go back to acting like I don't exist, because I don't. ...

The boys in "U.P." are Craig, Hollow, J, and Antony. Two are seniors in high school and two are juniors, and the story they have to tell transpires over that period of their lives. They take turns writing, and each voice is distinct, becoming more distinct as the story moves along. Some entries - each a chapter - take on a lyrical quality, like poetry, like a song, as a character writes seemingly stream-of-thought. In college and for a time after I used to sit at my typewriter and write like that, thought after thought, punctuation and grammar and structure as it came to me, as it came out of my head without rules, and even though it may be hard to read and to understand, there's an authenticity to this type of writing, and there's an authenticity to it in "U.P." that makes me wonder how Riekki did it without going crazy. Because in "U.P." things do get crazy. And it's almost as if the crazier it gets the more lyrical it gets, as if OK, I'm writing gibberish but see, it makes sense. In this world, in Antony's world or Craig's world - in my world - it makes sense. And that's the truly scary thing - because Antony and Craig did not create the world they live in. And Riekki did not create this world. We did - we created this world where kids can feel so alienated and so distant and yet so trapped, so unable to see that life is more than what is in their head, that this world is more than what their family, their school, a chord or a song dishes out, that this world is more than what they feel ...

Or is it?

Music plays a big part in "U.P." One character identifies with rap, one with heavy metal, one with punk. No matter how divergent my life from these lives, I understand this and it makes sense, because we all do identify with certain music, and if you're a kid and you're looking around your world and you can't identify with anything else, you're gonna grab on to whatever's speaking to you and easing or feeding your pain.

At the start of "U.P." I had a great problem with the language - after all, these are teenage boys talking. I can't watch violent movies and any form of entertainment that's all "sh--" and "f---" (see, I can't even write the words) I find tiresome. But, the characters in "U.P." don't all talk the same way, and the language each uses very much becomes a part of their character and defines the character. If you read much about the Upper Peninsula or visit here, you know much is made of the way people - natives - talk. The "eh?" on the end of a sentence. The rounded "o," the Finnish inflection, the "dat" the "dose" the "youse." It's easy to make fun of; it's easy to laud as "cultural heritage." But - this isn't how Riekki's kids talk.

I bought the book in Ishpeming, and the cashier told me she went to school with Ron's (Riekki's) mom. Also, she offered, a friend of hers had read the book. I asked how her friend had liked it and was told the friend said the language was "flowery." Well, if flowers can swear like a rap song, describe every way a kid can point a rifle at himself and not commit suicide, and relate teenage sexual exploits as a teenage boy might relate teenage sexual exploits, then the language indeed is "flowery." And no doubt it is as much a part of these kids' cultural heritage as the correct pronunciation of "sauna," eh?

From my 52-year-old female perspective, being inside the head of any teenage boy is a scary place to be, but abandon and abuse that head and it becomes downright dangerous. As "U.P." moved along I came to feel we were less and less in the landscape of the Upper Peninsula and more and more in the landscape of the mind of a kid or kids anywhere who are brought up in environments where the adults escape but never leave. The means of escape - alcohol, fear, religion, Harleys, gossip, grinding jobs, prison (actually nothing much different from the kids' beer and pot and music and sex and violence) - remove them from their kids' lives, but not without harm, not without an ever-present wound that gets passed down, one generation to the next, as nobody seems able to find the right band-aid or magic elixir. The adults in "U.P." - the mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles (the four boys are bound by the fact that they are cousins) - are integral and peripheral and easily ignored by these kids who can never forget where they come from.

Families in the U.P. are a competition of kids, armies of children. ... either dens of bored Christians or asylums of future felons. Either way, people in the U.P. beget like the Bible. That is what Finnish Lutheranism and vodka does. There is not much else to do in the U.P. (Hollow)

It seems to me what Craig, Hollow, J, and Antony want more than anything is to escape. They want to escape the U.P. and their lives, but have no idea how so they burrow in deeper and come out screaming. What they need is to escape the narrow lives forced upon them. The U.P., their lives, and the lives they're dealt are not all one and the same, though without a doubt they look as if they are. Sadly, either way, it's hard to see an escape for any of them, well, maybe two of the four, but it's up to the reader to imagine the closing bios that aren't there, such as: Today, Hollow Leannes is ... Jason Seppukunen is ... Antony Seurat is ... and Craig Leannes is ...

Is one of them writing this book? Could be. I don't know much about Riekki. I know he grew up in the Upper Peninsula, studied writing elsewhere, wrote "U.P." and saw it published in 2008 by Ghost Road Press. He emailed me about doing an interview or guest blog. Through subsequent emails I have learned he is now in California, doing odd jobs, "pushing for option money for the film version of 'U.P.'" (I quote Riekki because I don't really understand what that means and don't want to get into it), and working on the screenplay version of the book for producer Steven Wiig, another U.P. native who has acted in Milk, Some Kind of Monster, and Into the Wild and who works with heavy metal band Metallica. (Hmmm. Are Riekki and Wiig cousins?) Riekki's next book, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Boogey Man," comes out in 2010, also through Ghost Road Press. (He's informed me there's no cursing.)

One might think that the person who wrote "U.P." would be happy to be out of the U.P., so I suppose Riekki is. We all must find wherever it is that we're happy, and that isn't necessarily a place, though place can play a part. And I've been thinking lately that what one needs in life is the ability to decipher between life as handed to one and life as the creative thing one wants to live and experience. If what you're handed isn't what you want, you've got to search for what you do want. And the only thing you need to do that is the vision to see beyond your present circumstance and the guts to take a chance. It's not easy, especially if you're a kid or a victim of some type of abuse, but also because society's all about keeping things the way they are, no matter how lousy that might be, because that's the only way society can perpetuate itself. And anyway, visions can get screwy, and sometimes the chances taken really are the wrong ones ...

Riekki Responds

Some links
"U.P." on Amazon
Ghost Road Press
An interview with Ron Riekki about "U.P."
An interview that has more to do with music
A review of "U.P."
Another review of "U.P."

Does my slipper look like a litter box?

2009-10-27T12:34:00.004-04:00

I'm of the opinion that slippers are a crucial wardrobe item and that they must satisfy three criteria: warmth, comfort, and a look that bespeaks the same. I recently found just such a pair at Target at the great sale price of $12.99. For a while, I was immensely happy. These slippers were perfect, and I do mean "were," because those slippers are no longer a pair. One of them has departed on the weekly trash wagon. I could add to the criteria that a slipper should not look like a litter box, but that's obvious, isn't it? And truly, when slipper shopping what human being is going to pause and say, "Hmmm. No. Don't think so. Looks too much like a litter box." And can you really foretell what a cat might mistake for a litter box? That seems to be the crux of the matter.

Here's what happened.

After one of my long (redundant) twelve-hour Saturdays at work, I came home with a well-focused plan: let dogs out and in, dispense treats, get fire going, let dogs out again, in again, give more treats, check litter boxes, change to sweats and slippers, make sure that fire's going, fix a bowl of Cheerios, pick out a DVD, brush fur off the sofa, settle in. It's the same thing every Saturday, because we get in these ruts. (Some Saturdays, though, I listen to Elmer on the radio rather than watching a DVD.)

On this Saturday everything was moving along pretty well. It had been a particularly long (again) day at work - I work at a shelter for victims of domestic violence and abuse and on any given day there are any number of issues to deal with; on Saturdays I am the lone staff person on site and I do not leave the site, a three-story house, for the duration of my shift. For twelve hours I am "on," and sometimes not much is happening and at other times everything is happening at once. This was one of those days when it simply seemed too much was happening, and being home where nothing was happening seemed damn good.

So, as I said, things were moving along according to plan. Then I put on my slippers, took a few steps, had to stop to acknowledge the fact that my right slipper felt a little damp, had to take another step to confirm it, had to stop and take off my slipper and smell it and egad - cat pee! If you've ever smelled cat pee, you know what I mean. If you've never smelled cat pee, you've never had a cat. And you may never want to have a cat, because they do the strangest things. Like peeing in slippers.

Goldie, my cat, casually looked up from the water bowl. Then he went back to lapping up water, taking his time, because Buster, one of the dogs, was standing by and Goldie likes to make Buster wait. I was exclaiming and asking "Why? Why did you pee in my slipper?" Goldie was Tonya Harding and I was the other one, the one on the ground holding her knee/slipper wailing, "Why?"

There is no answer. I know this. Goldie has two litter boxes cleaned twice a day because he likes it that way. (We had a little trouble with errant peeing a while back, hence the second litter box at the other end of the house. Ever since he has seemed busy and happy with both.) I knew for a fact that both litter boxes were clean when I left the house that morning. So why pee in my slipper? And why just the one? And why not the floor around my slipper?

So the slippers went outside and I pulled on some warm socks and the next morning I emailed some people I know who have cats to ask them: Why? Of course, nobody knew. Some suggestions were:

He's old.

He's male.

The slipper looked like a cozy place to pee.

Perhaps there was tuna juice on the slipper.

His mind is slipping.

In addition, I was reminded of the cat(s) who used to poop in shoes (and the lesson here is don't leave your shoes next to the litter box). For the record, my slippers were not near either litter box and did not have tuna juice on them. Goldie is about 15 or 16 years old and is a neutered male. I don't think his mind is slipping, but I do think he mistook my slipper for a litter box.

"Isn't there a book, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat?" my sister Penny wrote in an email. "Well, you've got the Cat who Mistook my Slipper for a Litter Box. Perhaps the slippers need to go up somewhere."

The slippers were suede with a faux shearling lining, and Goldie used to pee occasionally on the faux shearling-covered pad that Queenie, another dog, used to sleep on. I attributed that to the slightly passive-aggressive relationship they share, but maybe ...

Connections can sometimes mislead, but this connection seemed to go somewhere. Goldie mistook my slipper for a litter box.

I threw out the peed-in slipper and kept the good one and waited for the slippers to go on sale again. Then I gave up and last week I went to Target and paid full price for a new pair of slippers, exactly like the old pair. When they are not on my feet, they are up off the floor, on a chair, on a bench, or in a basket. I know the danger remains - one day I may slip up and leave the slippers lying about, looking like litter boxes, beckoning Goldie, but maybe I'll get lucky and this time he'll pee in the left slipper, leaving me a good and dry right slipper, which I can then pair up with the left-over left slipper squirreled away in the closet.

Wild apples

2009-10-20T10:57:00.002-04:00

It's that time of year when driving down the highway or walking down the road you see apples hanging heavy in the trees. Red and yellow apples dotting the landscape. Trees you never noticed before suddenly laden with fruit. There's an urge to stop and try them all, to steal the apples hanging like burdens on craggy limbs.

When my sister was here visiting from California in early September her apple-inspired exclamations went something like this: "Look at all those apples! ... Whose are they? ... There's more apples! ... Can we pick some? ... Will you look at all those apples!"

It was like when I was a kid and the family drove once or twice a year in the station wagon across Illinois, from Chicago to Aledo, from the Windy City to the Hog Capitol of the World (or was it the Hog Capitol of the Midwest? or maybe just Mercer County? anyway - where my grandmother and aunts and uncles lived), and I marveled at all the land, all the empty land going by clickety-click outside the window. A farm here, a silo there, a barnyard of cows and rows of corn everywhere. I used to ask my parents, "Who lives here? Where are we? What town is this?" And I was told it isn't a town, it's the country.

I told my sister, "Let's wait to pick apples at Bud's house. He says he's got the best-tasting apples hanging on a tree right outside his living room window. We can eat those apples."

So we waited and traveled through some northern country and when we got to Bud's place we enjoyed apples right off the tree by his house.

Now it's mid-October and maples and birches direct the color show but yet wild apples fetch a glance. I was at Bud's house again last week, and he wasn't around (he was in town getting a free lunch - go figure), so I took a walk around his country. There's this old wagon out in a field that I wanted to visit because its wood is so finely weathered and tufted with spiky, apple green moss that I find it a comfort.

To get to the wagon I walked through chest-high unmown hay, carefully picking out slim alleyways created by deer. Periodically I came upon wide depressions in the grass. Here I would stop to get my bearings and to look for the next pathway, the next leg in the maze. When I came to a large clearing, the mown part of the field, I saw the wagon nearby, at the clearing's edge. I hopped in and settled back, listening to the breeze that played in the leaves of the trees and in the tall dry grass, and then I took the easy way back, through the mown part of the field, 'round past the bee yard, but wait -

A tree ripe with apples, shiny red apples, caught my eye. It was hunkered deep in the hay behind the bee yard, behind the pole building, near some pines, hiding. I waded in. I yanked an apple. I bit into it. Oh my. Best damn apple in the world.

Fifty-two

2009-08-24T09:47:00.000-04:00

For those of you who forgot my birthday, today I am fifty-two, and I couldn't be happier about it. I have developed a theory about ages and our reactions to them, and here it is: Starting at thirty, anytime we hit a "Big-Oh" birthday we fuss, be it Four-Oh, Five-Oh, Six-Oh, Whatever-Oh. We have all these notions about what that Big-Whatever-Oh birthday means, gathered from the verbosity of the world around us, and for whatever reason those notions are, for the most part, negative. Then that Big-Oh birthday passes, we find a way to cope, we settle into the decade, and the next birthday, the whatever-one birthday, passes with little notice. The whatever-two birthday approaches and no one cares ... you know why? Because no one who is anything-two can be old. It is simply impossible to be old at two. So in this decade, I'm just a baby. At something-two I may be terrible, but I cannot be old.

I am twice as old as I was at twenty-six. I don't even remember twenty-six.

I am only half as old as I will be when I am one hundred and four. I cannot even imagine one hundred and four. I wonder, who will still love me when I am one hundred and four?

For the record, my fifty-second birthday dawned clear at fifty-seven degrees, as calm as a dead man's heart and as green as you might expect anyplace to be with as much rain as we've had this summer. I awoke from a dream in which my family - my mom, my dad and two sisters - had come to visit me at the shelter where I work. There was no one in the shelter but me, so although it was breaking the rules, I let my family in. They roamed throughout the three-story house, and then all the shelter residents began to return and I had to hide my family, sneak them one by one into an office and close the door. Later we were outside, watching kids pass by in Halloween costumes. I awoke with two ninety-eight-dog-year-old dogs in bed with me and one centuried cat pacing the floor, singing an aria for his breakfast. There are no plans on the day, though a trip or two to the beach seems likely, to walk, gather stones, slip into Lake Superior for a dulcet moment, and there's wood to stack. But at any age, the fewer plans the better.

Sweatin' to the Oldies: My Alethetone Story

2009-08-01T11:04:00.005-04:00

This article originally appeared in the August 2009 issue of Marquette Monthly. I always modify these things a bit.

It was a hot, dry, windy day, the kind of day that jangles the wind chimes and scurries the dust up the driveway, through the house. At first it feels delightfully hot and summery; then nerves fray.

Time to relax in the sauna.

Not what you thought, huh? A sauna on a hot day? Maybe you're not from the U.P.

One hears much about saunas in the Upper Peninsula - like pasties, swimming in Lake Superior, and mosquitoes, saunas are a "yooper" thing. And one of the first things a yooper will snicker at is any mispronunciation of the word "sauna." But I don't think it really matters if one says "sow-na" (correct) or "saw-na" (snicker snicker) because no matter how you say it, it is still a wonderful thing, and that hot, dry afternoon was no different. The temperature outside passed 80; sauna temperature topped 180. Shots of cold water on hot stone made billows of steam that my dry skin sucked up and released, relaxing muscles, nerves, and brain in the process.

This particular sauna, somewhere in the western outskirts of the U.P., is nothing more than a small, two-room cabin built around 1940 and renovated in 1977. The first date is sketchy, but the last date is firmly etched in the sauna's cement floor near the wood-fired, rolled steel stove, which was made by a local guy who worked at the local sauna company. The sauna room walls and benches are cedar and there are two large galvanized steel buckets filled with cold water, two long-handled dippers, and a window that opens to the yard. Soap and shampoo are stored on the window ledge. A water pipe with an on/off valve rises up from the floor and attaches to a short length of hose.

The other room, the "cooling" room, has a floor, walls, and ceiling of painted wood. There's a bench for sitting and hooks for towels. There's an old painted dresser, a wringer washer, a new storm door (still in its carton), a sack of bird feed, a boom box, various trinkets and signs on the walls, a paper lantern shade covering a dusty electric light bulb, a faded wooden lawn chair folded up, rag rugs scattered about, for a while a new gas grill in its box, then out of its box, being put together, a tonneau cover off a pickup truck (again, just for a while), and various and sundry other items needing temporary shelter, including, depending on the season, bees, flies, hornets, and mice.

But on this hot, dry day much of the paraphernalia was elsewhere, and the old phonograph – did I mention the old phonograph? an Alethetone (True Tone) phonograph manufactured by The Stevens Organ & Piano Co. in Marietta, Ohio, probably some 90-odd years ago – was at last unburied. Sure, I'd seen it before. It's a dusty, dry, wood cabinet about four feet tall set atop short spindly legs. A strip of veneer is missing off its top. A steel crank droops tiredly from its right side. The fabric covering the speaker is an odd old orangey color, kind of like your kooky old aunt's lipstick, and it never once occurred to me that the phonograph might work. But then, well ... it all happened so quickly.

We were cooling off in the cooling room when my friend, whose sauna it is, nonchalantly lifted the lid of the Alethetone, cranked the handle, put the needle on a record, and moved a switch that started the turntable turning and the music playing. The sauna filled with song.

"When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along ... "

The music poured out of the Alethetone with a lilt and a bounce. The underside of the top of the Alethetone was a rich, dark, shiny wood, and the cabinet turned out to be filled with records by the likes of Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Vic Damone, and songs like "Ukelele Lady," "Skylark," blues and boogie, and "Roll 'em Girls (Roll Your Own)" - which turned out to be a song about women rolling their stockings down.

I was so taken aback by it all that it was a while before the two things that stick with me now surfaced: One, the phonograph required no electricity, no batteries (think about that for a moment); and two, oh boy, would Elmer Aho would love hearing about an Alethetone in a sauna.

Elmer Aho* hosts a radio show, American Country Gold, Saturday nights from seven to midnight on WJPD. The first time I heard the show was on a cold and snowy February night when I was at home, alone, and temporarily without a TV or CD player – all I had was an old radio with a grimy tuning knob and a dimly lighted dial. I remember sliding past a scratchy country tune and then turning back. The scratchy aspect was strange as it didn't sound so much like static, but rather more like a needle in the groove of a well-loved LP – but what DJ plays anything but CDs? I continued to listen, not really much of a country music fan, but enjoying this song all the same.
Then there was a skip.

"My (hiccup) My (hiccup) My (hiccup) ... "

I wondered if there was someone there to give that needle a push, and soon a broad scritch-scratch answered my question. OK. I was hooked. I had discovered Elmer Aho. A few years later I met Elmer and had the opportunity to learn a little about him.

Elmer, a young man in his 70s, drives into the WJPD studio in Marquette from his home in Gwinn toting a variety of LPs, 45s, CDs, and cassette tapes. He's been listening to country music all his life and has been a songwriter and performer since he was a teen-ager. After teaching art in the Gwinn schools for more than 20 years, now he's been a DJ for more than 20 years. Elmer knows his stuff, having been to Nashville hawking his songs a number of times, and Elmer knows his listeners, having been born, raised, and having lived most of his adult life in the central Upper Peninsula.

Elmer loves to hear from his listeners, and throughout the show they call in from places like downtown Ladoga and, as Elmer says, "the suburbs as well." Off-mike Elmer chats with callers, finds out where they're from, what they're doing, and takes requests for music that spans five decades, from Hylo Brown to Dolly Parton, from folk to boogie, from local Finnish favorites like Tanya Stanaway to local country favorites like Tiny C. Hart. On the air, Elmer tells us this one's for the snowplow drivers at the mines, or the guys out at deer camp, or the gals at Mather Nursing Center. As well, plenty of songs are going out to folks in their saunas - a sauna being a Saturday night tradition in the U.P.

In the cabinet of the Alethetone, I found "Throw Your Love My Way" by Ernest Tubb. Before Elmer, I had never heard of Ernest Tubb. Now I knew. I placed the heavy black disc on the turntable and spun the crank. I laid the heavy needle in the groove and flipped the switch that spun the platter. Soon a catchy country tune with a twang and a sway filled the cooling room. I returned to the sauna room, threw some water on the rocks, sat down and leaned back into the steam. My foot dangled in time with the music. I really must tell Elmer, I thought, about this Ernest Tubb record I've found, in the cabinet of this old Alethetone phonograph, in a sauna, somewhere out here in the suburbs of the U.P.

* Yes, yes, I previously wrote about Elmer.

To hear the Alethetone and to read other stories about it, click.

What are they smokin' in Marquette, Michigan?

2009-07-10T15:50:00.000-04:00

I love reading the "Marquette City Police Log," appearing daily in The Mining Journal, and I doff my hat to the staffer who compiled the one that gives us a strange picture of Monday, June 15, 2009. I have deleted the addresses that appear in the log and just a few of the entries.

9:31 a.m. 911 hang-up found to be child playing with telephone

10:10 a.m. black cat killing animals in caller's yard

11:23 a.m. male holding baby while riding bicycle

11:44 a.m. bicycle stolen

11:48 a.m. crow removed from chimney

12:17 p.m. vehicle's broken back window apparently caused by rock thrown from mower

12:35 p.m. alarm report found to be phone beeping
...
2:17 p.m. helicoper landing
...
5:02 p.m. man in apple suit assaulted
...

I'm not the only one noticing - in the May 25 issue of The New Yorker (where I first learned to pay attention to the small print) I noticed the following at the bottom of page 87:

CONSTABULARY NOTES FROM ALL OVER
From the Marquette (Mich.) Mining Journal.
1:04 p.m., skunk with jar on head, officer broke jar off, skunk uninjured.

House in the Wood

2009-07-07T14:32:00.001-04:00

Lakenenland Revisited

2009-07-01T14:39:00.003-04:00

This article originally appeared in the July 2009 issue of Marquette Monthly.

Lakenenland, the Upper Peninsula’s premiere sculpture park, is going strong. There are two perch- and bluegill-stocked ponds, a gazebo where you might find fishing poles, a band shell under construction, one of the nicest little outhouses you’ll ever see, always a new sculpture or two, and of course the camp fire ring with plenty of wood and the coffee-and-cocoa stocked cabinet. The guest book (just the latest of several filled with testimonials from around the world) is always fun to read.

February – We got lost from Los Angeles and found your hot chocolate and fire. Thank you.

Tom Lakenen is the man behind the park and the sculptures, which are created from scrap iron pieces big and small. He makes each at his home in Chocolay Township, and as he finds time he moves them out to the 37½-acre park, about 10 miles east of Harvey on State Highway M-28. Tom is a welder by trade and belongs to the boilermakers union. When I talked to him he was in Hawaii, where welders are scarce, helping to construct a combustion turbine. He’d been on the island of Oahu throughout the spring, toiling long days but otherwise enjoying the fine tropical weather. The inspiration for his art, he said, comes from the metal he works with.

“You’re always getting some weird pieces. I look at it and wonder what it is.”

Right now there are more than 70 sculptures at the park covering the gamut from pure whimsy to bold political comment. Wandering down the lanes Tom has cut through the woods—you can walk, drive, ski, snowmobile, whatever suits your fancy and the season—you will encounter bigger-than-life cartoon characters, a “corporate greed” pig, a smiling astronomer, an alligator, two guys in a boat, wild motorcycle riders, a bear, mermaids, abstract pieces, and just-landed Martian bugs. Fin tubes from a radiator became Tom’s tribute to 9/11. As you walk by, the two rust-colored miniature towers eerily disappear then reappear, and it’s like catching a ghost in the corner of your eye, then losing it.

Soon, if not already, Tom’s latest sculpture will be installed. It depicts a team of sled dogs pulling a crazy character in a wild yooperesque tractor. Many of Tom’s pieces have a strong feeling of movement, as if something is about to bust out of the steel, and this last piece is a must-see for any sled dog enthusiast. The U.P. 200 and Midnight Run sled dog races pass through the park, and on the Friday night and Sunday morning of race weekend, Tom said, 75 people or more may gather to watch the dogs go by and to enjoy the bonfire.

Since its start in 2003, Lakenenland has been free and open to all. With just a few hand-lettered signs posted here and there, Tom explains his vision of a sculpture park that is designed solely for enjoyment. Everyone’s welcome to view the art, warm themselves by the campfire, cook up a hot dog, brew a cup of coffee. With the creation of the ponds and a donation of fishing poles from U.P. Whitetails Association, visitors can also bait a hook, toss their line, enjoy a little fishing. Tom’s had some trouble with Chocolay Township and Marquette County authorities—there are regulations, after all—but he deals with that as it comes up. In addition, he hopes that his supporters will voice their support for the park in letters to the township.

Along with adding sculptures, Tom works at expanding the park’s use, hence the outhouse and now the band shell “for any musician who wants to come out and play,” he said. The band shell would also be available for stage productions—Shakespeare at Lakenenland, anyone? As with everything Tom builds, the pavilion is made from items that were headed for the junkyard (Tom calls his sculptures “junkyard art”), including roof trusses from Hedgecock Field House at Northern Michigan University and walls made from a number of doors out of NMU’s music building. “Stuff that was on its way to the scrap yard,” Tom said.

Although the park is free, there are a couple of spots to deposit a monetary donation if a visitor so wishes. One of Tom’s signs suggests that any donation to improve the park would be welcome, and recently a visitor did leave a large bottle of homemade mosquito repellant, a concoction of yarrow extract and sheep sorrel. This same visitor told a story of meeting a bicyclist from Texas at the park, a hardy soul who had cycled to Manitoba, Canada, and who was heading back south, through the U.P., when he noticed Lakenenland by the side of the road.

Wherever you’re from, whether you’re powered by foot or gas, whether you’re in a stroller or using a walker, on unemployment or in big business, why not pull off the road and take a gander at Lakenenland? Build yourself a campfire, relax, enjoy.

6/4 – Came all the way from Worcester Mass to see your amazing art. …
6/5 – Thank you so much. This is so cool. We brought 52 kids from 4-H here. They had a blast!
6/11 – Very cool, thanks for sharing!
6/13/09 – Rode my bike from Texas just to check out Lakenenland …

Upper Peninsula Authors Tour 2009: Donna Winters

2009-06-25T18:32:00.005-04:00

Romance and summer go together and driving along an Upper Peninsula highway on a warm June day through a town named Garden, which can only, in passing, be described as "quaint," one naturally feels slightly dreamy and romantic. It's a smooth two-lane highway that curves through woods and farmland offering up an occasional glimpse of the still blue waters of Big Bay de Noc. I was on my way to meet Donna Winters, the woman behind Great Lakes Romances, a series of historical romance novels set in various Michigan locales.

Three of Donna's novels, including her latest, take place in Fayette, a thriving iron-smelting town of the late 1800s. The town no longer exists, except as a state park, and Donna and her husband, Fred, live just south of it. In the first of the Fayette books, "Fayette - A Time to Love," the reader not only gets a romance, but a strong sense of time and place and a how-to on "pig" iron and the smelting process. As well, one is reminded that in those good old days a good wife not only had to know how to cook and serve a tender chicken, she also had to know how to chop its head off.

Donna began writing romance novels in 1982. At the time, she and Fred lived downstate, near Grand Rapids. Fred was a history teacher; Donna a proofreader.

"In the early 1980s, romance became a huge phenomenon among readers," Donna said. We were sitting in her home's library, a rich wood-paneled room lined with book shelves. "At that time, I was employed as a proofreader for technical data, which was a job I hated. I heard about these romances being written, and being written by housewives who were not particularly trained as writers, but they were selling them, and they were successful, and I thought I would like to try writing a romance. I had never read a romance, let alone done any writing.

"I found this offer from Harlequin where they were going to send me three of their Harlequin romances for free if I sent the proofs of purchase from Hefty trash bags - I didn't even send them from the trash bags, I sent them from the little food scrap bags, I had four of those - and they sent me these three free books, and I read these three free books which were reprints of 1950s' romances that were British. I thought, 'I'd like to try writing. I'd like to try it.' So that's how I got started."

Donna wrote three novels set in contemporary times and sent them off to publishers, but it wasn't until she had written a few sample chapters of her fourth novel and steered it toward a Christian publisher (Donna bills her work as "wholesome fiction") that she saw her work turn into a book. She quit her job, and when her publisher, Thomas Nelson Publishers, pulled out of the romance market she switched gears to take advantage of the recent surge in romances with a historical twist, even though, she said, "it's 100 times the work. ... My husband taught history, so he was thrilled." She signed on with Christian publisher Zondervan. Then, in 1988, Donna said, the market she was writing for dried up.

"We had to make a decision whether I would continue to write or look for some other kind of job. We decided to go ahead and take the responsibility to put [my books] in print. ... Taking control was a positive move, and I love that today," she said. "People have come at me with a lot of encouragement to send my work to publishers who have sprung up in the meantime for exactly what I write, but, you know, I have never been interested in sending them anything. ... It's a whole lot happier for me not to have any kind of a contracted schedule. I'm writing on my schedule."

Donna started her own series of historic romance novels, the trademarked "Great Lakes Romances," which she publishes herself under the name Bigwater Publishing. The first book in the series is set on Mackinac Island.

"I wanted to write about Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island," Donna said, "because I thought it had the greatest marketing potential, and I was absolutely correct. Nothing I have done since then has sold as much. The era for that was the mid-1890s. ... Actually, 1890s was a lot of fun. We're past the pioneer hardship days. We're into the more interesting costumes and furnishings for the home and home architecture and all that, which appealed to me a great deal. ... This is an era I can stick with."

With a print run of 5,000 books, there was some selling to do. Enter Fred and his cherry red VW van.

"He got in the bus, he drove up to Traverse City ... He sold a whole carton of books," Donna said. "He was so shocked. He was so happy. He was so thrilled. ... We had a whole lot of money riding on being able to sell and market that book. Being a teacher he had the summer off, I was home taking care of my mom, he got in that bus and he went up there and he started going different places, and he made sales. He'd get on a pay phone, 'I just sold a carton of books!'"

By the end of the year they had sold more than 2,500 copies of "Mackinac."

For a number of years, Donna and Fred's schedule included caring for their respective mothers, and often that priority precluded working on the books, be it the writing of or selling of. Still, there are a number of titles to choose from set in a variety of places, including Sleeping Bear Bay, Cat's Head Point, Caledonia, and South Haven. In addition, Donna has reprinted some classics from her favorite time period, including two set in Chicago: "Sweet Clover, A Romance of the White City," by Clara Louise Burnham, and "Amelia," by Brand Whitlock. She also has reprinted "Snail-Shell Harbor," by J.H. Langille, which seems to be the only book written during and about the iron-smelting days of Fayette.

Fayette is a small peninsula, with Big Bay de Noc to the east and north and Snail Shell Harbor to the north and west. Here's just a small slice of Langille's description circa 1870.

There is scarcely a more romantic spot in all this region. The point itself, with its short, dense growth of cedars and white birch, pushing to the very edge of an abrupt shore of bright limestone, forms a motley contrast with the tall, dark-green forest clothing the higher land, which rolls up against the horizon beyond. The water is clear as crystal.

In 2003, Donna and Fred moved to their current home. They converted a garage into a storage and shipping facility, and as well Donna writes there. Although she is not a native Michigander, Fred is, and this stokes the interest in continuing with Michigan-based settings and history.

"My husband was born in Michigan, has always lived in Michigan, and he will die and be buried in Michigan," Donna said. "He seldom leaves the state and loves and has read about Michigan history all his adult life. Because of his heritage in Michigan - his parents were from Detroit, his grandparents lived in Detroit, and his grandparents on the other side were Bay City - and his respect for it, his encouragement was always to write about Michigan. With that kind of encouragement ... How many married women writers get the whole-hearted support the way I have gotten it? ... I know plenty who didn't. I can tell you, my husband's been a gem."

Although each book has the inevitable love story, each also brings an interesting time and culture to life. In "Jenny of L'Anse Bay," set in 1867, one learns about Ojibway culture as our young heroine falls in love with Hawk, the son of a chief. (At one point, Jenny has great trouble with a certain dish being served at an Ojibway feast ...) In "Isabelle's Inning," a story Donna adapted, one learns a little about baseball and a great deal about the "horseless carriage" and various reactions people had to this new-fangled mode of transportation. In the second book of the Fayette series - one I have yet to read - the heroine is a champion for "orphaned wild creatures and hurting family pets."

A little less than a year ago, Donna's mother, who had been living with them on the Garden Peninsula, died at age 93. Now, there is more time for Donna to write according to her schedule, which ideally is "to get up early in the morning, write until it's time to walk the dogs." She plans to use some internet marketing techniques to steer traffic to her website (see link below), and Fred may just get back in the old VW bus and head out on a sales spree. The bus, which I had a chance to ride in over to Fayette, is in good shape despite its 38 years. It has a Great Lakes Romance insignia on its side, the original AM radio, windows that you actually have to roll down, and a top speed that hails from a slower era. It sits in the driveway, rarin' to go.

Donna reads from her latest book, "Fayette - A Time to Leave," with Snail Shell Harbor in the background.

For more information, visit Great Lakes Romances.

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June is

2009-06-24T19:52:00.007-04:00

June is cold and hot and altogether unruly until it's not; a steady rain and then a steady sun; a dust of pine pollen sweet and dry; ticks and mosquitoes and black flies and deer flies; one morning realizing how thick the air is with birch seed and maple seed and pine pollen and other pollen and gnats and mosquitoes and black flies and deer flies and dragon flies and full green leaves and ferns and grass and weeds and trees and bramble and the very first, yes, the very tourist. June is a tight buttery ball, a lotus yet to blossom; and it's a bevy of blooms and a bounty of bites. June is a release and a gathering, a piñata bursting forth with flip-flops and beach buckets and sand shovels and tank tops and an old floppy hat smelling of must and bug dope; one long day interrupted briefly by night. June is a party, a snap, a quick display; a lawn mower churning, a whiff of cut grass. It's a romance novel, a bite, a rash, a garden; it's the very last frost and it's a heat wave; a crooked finger waggling us closer, come closer, can you see that? Summer. A placid shoreline drifting gently.

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Last Station Standing

2009-06-19T20:01:00.007-04:00

When the television Pooh Bahs all converted to digital signals June 12, I was sure I was to be left TV-less with no foreseeable cure. It's not that I wasn't prepared; I had a converter box hooked up back in February, and up until the time I actually began plugging in cords, I believed what I'd been told, that it would be easy. It might've been easy without a VCR/DVD player to figure into the mix. The instructions didn't cover that. But after the better part of an afternoon, all equipment seemed to be working in harmony. Then came the big test - TV6, the local NBC affiliate out of Marquette, would be switching off their analog signal for a minute toward the end of the evening news broadcast so we all could see if we were "digital ready." Despite my efforts, I was not. Then our president extended the digital conversion deadline, and I had time to investigate the situation.

What I found out was, you don't just need a box, you also need a precisely positioned antenna. Through antennaweb.org I learned that if my roof-top antenna was pointed at exactly 258 degrees (degrees of what, I don't know - luckily the numbers are on the rim of my compass) I might (you see, there's still a question of distance and obstruction) receive TV6, and at 260 degrees I might pick up TV13, the local PBS station. Just for the record, with the old-fashioned analog signal I was receiving TV6, TV13, and channel 3, a CBS affiliate from Escanaba originating out of Green Bay. (I had done away with satellite TV more than a year ago, deciding I did not want to pay for TV when despite 60, 120, or however many stations, still there was nothing on. And to boot, the satellite service prohibited my connection to local stations. I could watch news from New York City, but not news from down the street.)

A week or two before June 12, TV13 converted to digital and I lost reception. One pleasant day I spent some time on the roof, up and down the ladder, in and out of the house, positioning the antenna as precisely as I could, scanning and rescanning my converter box, but all I got was a yoga program breaking up into isolated squares of color drifting off into oblivion and squibs of audio going in and out. With analog, I could watch a program through the occasional bouts of poor reception, but a poor digital signal is as good as no signal at all, and "No signal" is what slides back and forth and up and down your TV screen, like a game of Pong going "nyah, nyah," when the world goes digital and you live in Sand River, Michigan.

Growing up, my mom called our television the "idiot box," and she was always trying to curb our time in front of it. She hated "Leave it to Beaver," which my sister and I loved, and she always seemed to be vacuuming when the Beav was falling into billboard teacups and otherwise messing up his clothes. I doubt we watched more than an hour or two a day, but we were constantly threatened with a half-hour limit, which truly would have ruined a good "Gunsmoke" or "I Spy" episode. I suppose Sunday was our biggest night, what with "The Wonderful World of Disney," "The Ed Sullivan Show," and "Bonanza" all in a row. Now my mom is worried about me not having TV - What? No idiot box? How will I know what's going on in the world?

A few days before the digital conversion I picked up a TV13 guide at Snyder's, a local drug store, just to see what I'd be missing on public TV, which I admit I seldom watch. I flipped through its pages longingly, then placed it near the old set, just in case. I already knew what was on TV6, as I was hooked on the habit-forming, two-hour-dinner combo of Oprah, local news, then national news. Would I be going cold turkey?

To prepare myself, I bought up the first five seasons of "The Andy Griffith Show" on DVD. Matched up with my "Dick Van Dyke Show" complete series set, if I did lose TV I could revert to my childhood dinner-hour fix of Dick and Andy. In the late 1960s and early '70s, WGN-TV showed back-to-back reruns of these shows right around 6 p.m. Not that we ever ate dinner in front of the TV, except on Sundays of course, when we had hamburgers and chips and carrot sticks, settled in for "Disney," and called it a "tea party."

Around 9 a.m. on June 12, 2009, I turned on my TV. Nothing, nothing, and on channel 3 a program about how to hook up your converter box, etc., etc., in spoken and sub-titled Spanish and English. I tuned the TV to channel 4, turned on my converter box, and scanned for channels. Three were found - 13-1, 13-2, 13-3 - but would they come in?

Clear as a bell! For whatever reason, public TV was coming in beautifully - all three versions of it. This, of course, is one of the touted advantages of the digital switch - more stations. As I flipped from 13-1 to 13-2 to 13-3, I wondered exactly what was advantageous about three different stations showing the same cartoon pig slowly singing the alphabet, but heck, I had reception, and I still, technically, had three stations, which is what I had before the switch.

Later I studied my TV13 program guide with a bit more relish. The guide has a very similar feel to the TV Week supplement that used to come on Sundays (and I imagine still does) with the Chicago Tribune. There is a page or two with boxed program information - the kind of sterile listing we've all become used to - but there is also a daily listing of evening programs, and I found myself reading through that, enjoying the brief descriptions provided for some of the programs. Not that the descriptions were so interesting ("The great apes seem to have emotional lives similar to our own. But just how smart are these animals?"), but because they brought to mind the back pages of the TV Week before cable days, when TV was free and the networks showed movies all night until sign-off, not the same ones over and over but scads of different movies each week, good, bad, new, old. The TV Week, in its last few pages, listed the movies for each day and described each movie in just a sentence or two. What great reading that was! And this then brought to mind my father's classic summation of "King Kong": Gorilla fails to adjust to urban life.

Perhaps it's true what they say: Less is more.

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The Alethetone

2009-06-08T15:37:00.000-04:00

An Upper Peninsula Production

"56 Seconds Awaiting Explanation"

What's the story?

One of my favorite assignments in grade shool was this: Choose a picture from a magazine, cut it out, write a story about it. Look at the picture and create a story to go with it. It was a favorite because I enjoyed it, and it was a favorite because how can you get it wrong? It seems to me the teacher was saying you tell me, which is refreshingly different from I'll tell you.

I tend to make up words first, then add images. But it's good to flip things now and then. And this is kind of a double-flip. Here's the video, where's the story? You tell me. What do you think the story is?

Upper Peninsula Authors Tour 2009: Tyler Tichelaar

2009-06-01T15:15:00.015-04:00

This is the first in a loosely planned series of stories on Upper Michigan authors.

On a rainy day late in May - it just happened to be his 38th birthday - I talked with Tyler Tichelaar at the dining room table of his small house in Marquette, Michigan. The table was covered with stacks of books, including many he had authored. Tyler has published five novels, including his latest, "The Only Thing That Lasts," which he initially wrote about 20 years ago.

"I wrote my first book when I was in high school, and I thought what was going to happen was I would finish my first book, I would send it out and get it published, and then just make money off of it, and be able to support myself writing books. It didn't quite happen that way."

Tyler got a response from a publisher - they wanted him to split the cost of production - but by this time Tyler was attending Northern Michigan University, working at McDonald's for $4.25 an hour. He wrote to the would-be publisher explaining that he just couldn't afford it. The correspondence ended with an encouraging letter from an editor, so Tyler kept at it, writing, sending out chapters and manuscripts to various publishing houses and receiving standard rejection letters that once in a while offered the proverbial carrot.

Meanwhile, life went on. Tyler graduated from Northern, went on to get a Ph.D in literature from Western Michigan University, and secured a teaching appointment at Clemson in South Carolina. When his job was cut, he decided to return to the U.P.

"I was homesick," he says. "... I realized that the way the job market was in academia I'd probably be moving around from one school to another ... I didn't want to deal with that, so I thought I'd come back to the U.P. and find something else to do and spend my time focusing on writing."

Tyler took a job at a call center, otherwise known as an answering service.

"I just answered the phone and took calls from the customers. We had a bunch of clients, everything from health care places to funeral homes to car washes. We'd just take their phone calls, pretend to be them."

That Tyler was homesick is not surprising - his Upper Peninsula roots go back seven generations. He often explains that it was stories told by his grandfather that inspired him to write historical fiction, to tell the tale of a place - Marquette - through the lives of the people who founded it, worked its earth and rock, worked deep in the woods, worked in the churches, banks and saloons; people who married (or not), raised families, suffered and prospered and gossiped a little and showed prejudice and mercy, who succumbed to pride and overcame difficulties.

Tyler's first three books, "The Marquette Trilogy," published in 2006 and 2007, weave an expansive tale that spans Marquette's first 150 years - 1849 to 1999 - with characters whose lives ... well, how does one put it? Tyler writes fiction, but the place is real and actual historical figures are present in his novels, mostly in bit parts, and I know enough of local history to recognize the names. But when a famous novelist named Robert O'Neill came along, I admit I wasn't sure if he was "real" or not, so I looked him up. Okay, he's fictional, but Tyler's latest novel is O'Neill's autobiography, brought to us posthumously by John Vandelaare, O'Neill's literary executor, the character who carries a good portion of the final book in the trilogy, "Superior Heritage." Vandelaare is a character one imagines to be most drawn from the author himself, but Tyler will remind you, with a laugh, that this is fiction. Still, when I began reading the autobiography, well, there it is - am I reading a novel, or am I reading an autobiography? To quote a favorite movie: Who are these guys?

"It's almost like these people lived, and they existed, but their stories weren't told," Tyler says, "and they'll come pound on my brain and say 'Look, you have to tell my story now. ... You need to tell my story, and you need to tell it the right way, and maybe you told just a little part of it in this other book, but you were focusing on this person's story, and that person's perspective isn't the same as mine.'"

Tyler's characters don't die - even when they do. Case in point: Annabella Stonegate. Feel free to take a moment to view her myspace page.

Tyler grew up in a thickly wooded area south of Marquette called the Crossroads, somewhat of a neither-here-nor-there, but maybe everywhere, place. He attended high school in Gwinn, his mother was a medical transcriptionist at the hospital in Marquette, his father worked for the railroad. Some people live in small towns or outside of them and feel confined - for them, possibilities lie elsewhere, and, as Tyler said, most of the people he went to school with have moved on to other places, seeking opportunity.

While working at the call center, Tyler finished writing "Iron Pioneers," the first book of the trilogy.

"When I finished 'Iron Pioneers,' and I was still writing the other two books, finishing those up, I sent 'Iron Pioneers' out several times and, for the most part, got some nice comments back, but they basically said they didn't see that it would be a big seller for them. These were New York publishers. ... Finally, I just decided one day, why should somebody in New York decide whether people in Upper Michigan get to read my books?"

Tyler began to explore the possibility of publishing the book himself, and eventually brought it out through iUniverse. Now he publishes under his own publisher name, Marquette Fiction, while outsourcing layout and printing to Back Channel Press, a book production firm in New Hampshire. There are many choices for independent publishers, especially on the Internet, but the range and quality of services offered and the up-front and down-the-road costs vary. Tyler did his own research, and as well he joined the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association to learn from those who had gone before him. Writing a book is one thing. Turning pages of manuscript into a finished product is another. But selling that finished product, that book - well, for most writers, selling is akin to getting on a roller coaster in the dark after drinking ten milkshakes and you're scared of heights anyway.

"I would never let anybody read any book that I wrote," Tyler says of his pre-published days. "I would just send them out to the publisher because I was afraid of people telling me they aren't any good, and I thought I'll just wait for a publisher to print it and then people can read it. I was a closet writer. I didn't even tell most people that I wrote books. Very few people probably even knew I was writing novels, except maybe my family and my closest friends. When I finally decided this was what I wanted to do - I mean, this was my goal in life, to be a published author, and I finally decided I was going to do it rather than waiting or letting somebody hold me back. I definitely felt a lot of nervousness about it."

At the call center, Tyler had moved up the ladder to supervisor, then manager, and as a manager, he did a bit of selling. He realized if he could sell something he didn't care that much about, surely he could sell his own novel. He got "Iron Pioneers" in some local book stores, began studying up on marketing techniques, and the following year published "The Queen City" and "Superior Heritage," completing the trilogy.

Through his pursuit of marketing ideas, which included writing book reviews at Amazon.com and signing them with his book information, Tyler was finding a path that would eventually enable him to leave his job at the call center. He was interviewed on Authors Access Internet Radio early in 2007 and soon after joined them as a regular guest co-host. He also wrote book reviews for Readers Views and did editing, proofreading, and some publicity writing. He started his own business, Superior Book Promotions, and earlier this year felt confident enough to leave the day job behind. By this time "Narrow Lives" - a stand-alone novel which complements the trilogy - had been published, and his book sales were showing a profit.

Tyler keeps a framed photo of Oprah Winfrey atop a small bookcase in his dining room. He has signed it, as if from her, as if she were his biggest fan. He's had it since he published his first book, first reached his goal of being a published author.

"When I published the first book I went to this class about the law of attraction," Tyler says, "... the last night of class we all had to come to the class and pretend it was like a year or so in the future, and what ever it was that we were hoping to attract had already happened, and so I got all dressed up and brought my book and pretended I had been on 'Oprah.' I decided to bring her picture with me and forge her name on it, and then everyone was asking me these questions, 'Well, what was it like to be on 'Oprah'?"

Tyler doesn't think his books are to Oprah's taste, but he does believe they will meet someday. Exactly how or why, he doesn't make clear; it's just inevitable. For now, he's busy promoting his books and providing editorial services to other authors. And he's thinking about the books he has yet to write, the stories yet untold, the characters lurking in his head, the perspectives unrevealed.

"When I drive around Marquette," Tyler says, "I look at all these houses, and even though I know probably hundreds if not thousands of people in this town and am related to a bunch of them, I wonder to myself who are the people in this house, and what is their story, and how am I connected to them without even knowing it?"

Tyler reads from "Narrow Lives," a collection of first-person stories told by characters found in "The Marquette Trilogy." This motion picture could be titled "One Minute and 12 Seconds with Lyla."

For more information on Tyler and his books, visit Marquette Fiction.

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Getting the Bees out

2009-05-21T14:46:00.006-04:00

"Baby Bees" or "46 Seconds with Les McBean"

Just another Upper Peninsula Production

This spring I helped Les McBean, owner of White Birch Apiary, get his bees out. I may be lauding my role a bit, but, well, let's see - I filled feeders, lugged syrup, fetched marshmallows, and cut floats all while sloshing through knee deep snow, slush, and mud in strong winds and variable other climatic factors - what I'm saying is, I worked, but my work was the least of it.

More than 1,000 pounds of bees (which is, believe me, millions of bees) arrived in the Upper Peninsula April 18. They travelled in small wood and screen cages, either two or three pounds of bees per cage, each cage equipped with a canful of syrup for food and a separate cage for the queen. They came across desert and mountain and wheat field and river, all the way from California to northern Wisconsin in an air-conditioned semi. In Wisconsin, most of them found their home. But the U.P.-bound bees had a ways to go, so McBean went and got them, stacking and hauling the cages in a trailer hitched up behind his truck. Once in the U.P., some of these bees would be picked up by other beekeepers in the area, mostly hobbyists, but the majority would fill the hives at White Birch Apiary.

April 18 was a Saturday that capped off a string of nice, warm, dry, and seemingly spring-like days, but a snowstorm - also spring-like - was predicted, and it hit the Monday after the bees arrived, dumping a couple of feet of heavy, wet snow on our dreams of sun and honey. The caged bees stayed huddled in the pole barn, awaiting release, being sprayed with a little syrup to keep them happy and being moved from one room to another to keep them warm, but not too warm.

By Wednesday, my work day, the snow was turning to slush (by Thursday morning most of it would be gone), and I learned what it is to release bees. Basically, you open the door and give them a little push into the hive. Sounds simple, but.

The hives - each a wooden box in which frames of honeycomb hang - are in separate yards - communities of 30 to 40 boxes - that you have to drive to, so first you load cages of bees and syrup and feeders and marshmallows and tools and equipment into the truck. Then, once you reach the yard, you haul the cages of bees and syrup and marshmallows and feeders and various and sundry other equipment out of the truck. Then the work begins.

First, take the top off of a hive and remove some of the frames. The hives are low-down, just off the ground, so you're kneeling. Then take your bee cage and remove the can of syrup (which is akin to opening the door), knock the cage several times on the inside of the hive and shake well, until all the bees are out. The bees immediately settle into crawling around the hive. Some, though, take to the air, flying around, perhaps irked, perturbed, and dang ready to sting. (Luckily, I'm well-protected in a bee suit, not to mention, but I will, cold and sodden boots.)

My job was to fill the feeders with syrup. Feeders are black, molded plastic vats the same size as a frame, and there is one to each hive. The syrup is a homemade half-and-half mixture of sugar and water. (Later I would learn how to mix up a batch in a steel barrel using a canoe paddle for a swizzle stick.) Along with this, I had to make sure each feeder had a "float," or an island, if you will, cut from a piece of pink, semi-rigid insulation board. The float goes on top of the syrup, as you may have guessed, providing the bees a platform from which to sup. (Without a float, I was told, the bees would drown.)

Once the bees are knocked free, the frames that had been removed from the hive are replaced, and the queen, yet in her own little wood and screen cage, is snugged tight between two combs. First, though, the cork in the queen's cage is popped and replaced with a mini marshmallow. In time - the correct amount of time, I am told - the marshmallow is consumed and the queen officially enters the hive, reigning over the workers and drones and getting on with the business of mating and laying eggs.

It's akin to singing "Hallelujah" and let the summer begin.

That day we released about 80 cages of bees, one cage per hive. McBean and an experienced helper did the releasing - I did the grunt work. Did I mention hauling the bees from the truck to the hives on a sled? Did I mention the slush and the snow and the wind? Did I mention cutting floats on top of a hive box and a cold wind coming along and blowing them away? Over here a feeder was missing; over there they needed syrup; "Need a float!" came the call ...

And bees are flyin' all over, and there's snow and there's slush and there's mud.

I may be a whiner, but you know, it really wasn't too bad. I watched bees being set free; I watched bees immediately looking for work; I watched bees holding up - uh, slow down, gals. This ain't California. There ain't no pollen and sunshine here. Yet.

I returned to the apiary a couple of weeks later. It was warm and sunny and, except for the odd patch in the woods, no snow. Pastures were a shock of green and trees were daring to show buds. Standing in a field, I felt swallowed by a world of buzzing, chirping, peeping, honking, and an odd "ga-lump ga-lump" that I thought was the pond draining. Later I was told it was a bird, an American bittern.

McBean had been working hard checking and rechecking the bees, and it was time to check again, to see how the hives were progressing, to follow up on some replacement queens, and to juice up bear fences. In most hives, the bees were busily coming and going, some packing saddlebags full of golden yellow pollen which made them waddle a bit, just like bow-legged cowboys. To boot, there were a few fights here and there - resident bees keeping non-resident bees out of the hive, tumbling about on the front porch like brawlers out of a saloon. Inside, a wag dance, a wiggle and sway describing where good nectar could be found. In some hives, frames were beginning to fill with pollen and brood and honey.

But it's the queen we need to see to know how a hive is doing. In order to find the queen, McBean pulls out a frame and looks. Once in a while he softly pats a thick, buzzing, undulating clump of bees to get them to spread out, and once in a while he gets stung. But he always finds the queen. Can you?

Here's a hint:

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More on White Birch Apiary: Where the honey flows

May is

2009-05-18T12:07:00.003-04:00

May is a soft day dawning early and fading late, a slow melt into a pooling dreamsicle sunset. May is a stalwart daffodil, a freak snow storm, an endless drizzle, the audible pop of budding beeches, birches, and maples. May is a fog and a clearing, a calm expectancy, a chorus of peepers and the roar of the lake. May is a river still and reflective; May is a river rising and falling on blowhard whims. It's a gentle breeze and a jangle of windchimes; it's ticks and spiders and ducks and geese and house flies and what we call "no-see-ums-but-you-sure-can-feel-ums." May is the first mosquito and (one hopes) the last frost. May is thoughts of gardens and flowers and warm earth; May is a birth of shade. May is flowering maples and blossoming sugar plums, a woods filling in with greens and yellows and reds and pinks and bursts of birdsong; a patch of snow on an 80-degree day. May is a seesaw, a sidling forward, a hanging back, a mere toe in the water of changing seasons.

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My First Motion Picture

2009-05-07T21:27:00.001-04:00

An Upper Peninsula Production

"Jeepers Peepers" or "46 Seconds in May"

Buster's Way

2009-04-29T08:36:00.001-04:00

April's a funny month. One day it's winter, the next day it's summer. Or more accurately - for five or six days it's winter and then there's one moment of summer. Like we had all this snow last week, and then on Friday for about seven minutes late in the afternoon it was sunny and 78 degrees. Once in a while it's like spring, in the 40s or 50s, drizzly or sunny, buds on the trees, a little green grass here and there, birds yakkin' their heads off, vees of geese heading north, a great blue heron hunting for snacks in the river, and it reminds me of an orchestra tuning up - bits and pieces of melody come through, but basically it's just pure cacophony.

The other morning I expected it to be cold, but when I opened the door it was balmy. The temperature had risen overnight. Days of rain had left us in a humidor, and the aroma was pure spring. I suddenly thought of Buster's Way.

Buster's Way is a walk the dogs and I take that starts at a scenic turnout along the lake about a mile down the road. We cross the highway and take a path into the woods, along the river, same river that we live on, only farther down and on the other side. The path leads to the snowmobile trail - the old railroad grade - and continues alongside it, heading west. We don't walk this path in the winter (then it's better for cross-country skiing), so maybe that's why a whiff of spring made me think of it. I don't know.

This path wasn't always called Buster's Way, but one day while on it Buster refused to turn back, so we followed the trail farther than usual. Then he disappeared from sight. Queenie and I plodded on. I became slightly peeved. The woods opened up to our right and there stood Buster atop a slight rise. As soon as he saw us he dashed down what appeared to be a trail, obviously intent on following it. Queenie looked at me, I said OK, and she trotted after her pal. I followed.

The trail flowed up and down in gently curving swells. It was wide, and like the rest of the path, sandy and covered with pine needles. At the top of each rise Buster stopped, looked back, watched for me. As soon as he saw me, off he'd go, down the hill, around the curve, carrying on with his adventure. Buster is 22 pounds of intent, and most often it is useless to try to dissuade him from what he has in mind. I choose my battles.

Eventually the trail flattened and straightened out, and I saw it led to the highway. I was able to get Buster and Queenie to stop so I could get their leashes on, and we crossed the road. We were just down a bit from the scenic turnout. When we reached it, we cut through a buffer of trees and came out on the beach.

This, now, is Buster's Way. Sometimes known as Turf 'n' Surf.

I have read about "intent" and "purpose" in various self-help kind of books. In one you reach up and pretend to grab on to a strap, like in a bus or subway train, and let the wave of intent pull you along. All I have to do is snap on Buster's leash. In another, purpose just kind of comes to you, flows to you, once you are open to it, and yes, I don't get it, unless they mean like every morning when Buster's had enough sleep and lets me know it's time for breakfast, then treats, then go outside, then more treats ...

This morning, Buster was intent on taking a walk. I made him wait until the sun had warmed things up a bit, and then we headed out. We walked Buster's Way, and when we got to the beach, he peeled out like a shot of cooped up spring. Queenie got held up sniffing something in the grasses; I went back to get her. Buster sped back up the beach, gave me a look, turned and tore flat out once again. Queenie bucked, then ran in her hobbled way after him.

I wonder how a little dog can have so much purpose about him and how I can have so little. I wander through life. Focus eludes me. I meander down a path a little dog shows me. Buster chooses his paths and pursues them (forgive me) doggedly. Even though I don't know his reasons, I have little doubt that they exist. But where do they come from? Queenie's more like me - happy to let someone else lead, occasionally distracted, going off on her own, but happy to go along, not really knowing why, just trusting ... something. What is it?

Buster had a brief career as a book reviewer. Click here for a sample.

Book Reviews by Buster: Millie & Timbuktu

2009-04-28T16:22:00.000-04:00

For a while I did a bimonthly newsletter for a volunteer group that saved lives at a local animal shelter. Every so often my dog Buster helped out with a book review. The following is from the August/September 2000 issue of Whiskerings.

Millie's Book, as dictated to Barbara Bush
Timbuktu, by Paul Auster

I thought it appropriate to read "Millie's Book" for this issue's review, what with the presidential election coming up and all, and the first thing I found is that it's out of print and hard to find. But Ms. Leslie found a used copy that looked like it had never been read. After reading it, I know why. Vapid. I toyed with the idea of a one-word review: Vapid. But my strong strain of terrierness forces me to speak until the rat is thoroughly flushed - and that's the most interesting thing in the book! George Bush (the elder) once scooped a rat out of the White House swimming pool! Oh yeah, and Millie kills squirrels. No account of the hunt and chase, just "I loved running on the grounds. I caught several squirrels, a possum, and chased a little red fox one night." She then proceeds to tell about some meeting of the National Arborist Association - now if she had given them a chase that might have been interesting!

I think the main problem with this book lies in its amended authorship, "as dictated to Barbara Bush." My guess is that Bar, as she is known, threw in all the boring stuff about the lovely former first ladies who did this or that to whichever White House room when, as well as all the high-falutin' name dropping. I mean, who cares? And if you've seen one photo of Millie, you've seen them all. She's got the same expression on her Springer Spaniel face whether she's sitting in the tulip garden or sitting in one of the hundreds of chairs she's pictured in.

As I said: Vapid.

Then Ms. Leslie came home with "Timbuktu" by Paul Auster. It is wonderful. Profound, touching, provocative. Although not written by a dog, it is told from a dog's perspective, and I lick Mr. Auster's hand for channeling canine so well. Mr. Bones lives a real dog's life with a real person and has real, compelling thoughts and dreams.

Oh my. I just realized a book of fiction seems more real to me than a book of non-fiction. But that's the kind of book "Timbuktu" is, and sometimes that's just the way life is.

Driving Directions to Talca

2009-04-06T15:31:00.001-04:00

I am torn today between wanting to write about things passing (weather, burritos, moods) and this wave I got caught up in while thinking about my nephew in Talca, Chile. I wondered: How many miles between Marquette, Michigan, and Talca, Chile?

I asked Google and Ask.com, which mostly brought up stuff about Marquette and Talca and Catholicism. Yahoo Maps "could not calculate directions," so I gave maps.ask.com a shot. This bogged down the computer, so I went into the other room and pulled out my hefty Rand McNally Cosmopolitan World Atlas, New Census Edition, 1981. On pages 2-3 there is a map of the world, which I thought might be helpful, until I got distracted by this statement:

Antarctica has no legal time.

What does that mean?

The map was titled Comparative World Time (Legal Clock Time), and if I knew what time it was when I was doing all this, I would tell you. But think about it: Antarctica has no legal time. Does that mean it has no time? Does it have illegal time? What time is it, then, in Antarctica? Any time? No time? All the time? Some time? Has Antarctica lost track of time? Can one ever be late in Antarctica? Can one ever be early? And when the alarm clock goes off, what time is it? If it seems way too early, can one just set the clock back? How might one define the concept of "illegal time"? I did not pursue these questions on the web, as I much prefer just to think about these things, the fact that there is no legal time in Antarctica, and how that surely says something about time overall.

For some reason, the fact that there is no legal time in Antarctica made it impossible for me to figure out the mileage between Marquette, Michigan, and Talca, Chile, by using this tome of an atlas, so I returned to the computer. Much to my surprise, there was all the information I needed - maps.ask.com had come up with driving directions. Lo and behold, the 8,653.6-mile trip would take me 156 hours, 22 minutes, and 52 seconds (no mention if that included bathroom time), and on the way I would see Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. I would travel on a good number of local roads, following directions such as "Bear RIGHT (West) onto Local road(s)," which I imagine as being quite dusty and picturesque with burros and squat stucco buildings and brightly colored rugs and shirts and flowers as big as my face and dark brown sandals. Without a doubt I would get lost, turned around, have adventures, and when I asked for directions I would explain how I didn't know if it's one road or two that I'm looking for, but see (I turn to Page 4 of my directions), I'm right here (I point), Direction #147, bear right onto local road(s) ...

Wouldn't it be marvelous if one could actually take such a trip without any fears? If one could cross borders and time zones and history and culture and experience another's world without judgment? Perhaps one can. I don't know. I stay home.

It's that time of year for baseball but snow, flowers but grey, spring but cold. A biting wind, an inky river, a silvery sky. Tomorrow might be sunny, but today is the kind of day one might spend wondering who is in Antarctica and why, and how do they set their clocks? Do they even have clocks? If so, why? Can't they just decide amongst themselves that it's now, say, 3 p.m., and go from there? Let's eat?

As my mother always says: This, too, shall pass.

The Talca Two

Tyoga Trail: Part Four

2009-04-01T15:59:00.003-04:00

This article originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Marquette Monthly.

The Tyoga Historical Pathway is a 1.4 mile loop, a tangled trail cutting through the gnarled woods that cover the rocky land between Lake Superior and M-28 in western Alger County. The trail circles and winds through the lumber-camp town of Tyoga, which existed here from about 1905 to 1908, and the town’s tale is told through 22 signposts that help to keep one on trail as it narrows, submerges, rises up, widens, crosses creeks, and climbs rocks laced with the roots of towering hemlock and cedar. Remnants of the town exist, but the idle hiker might rightly wonder where, exactly.

A sign tells us: “You have been walking down the main road from Tyoga into country a former resident described as an ‘awful wilderness’. Proceeding down the pathway one enters the cleared Tyoga townsite which mother nature is gradually reclaiming to brush and trees.”

Each time I am here, hiking along the Laughing Whitefish River in waist high brush or scrambling over moss-covered boulders, I think the reclamation is complete, and there is something appealing about that.

Enter John Parlin.

A recent Onota Township Newsletter reports how he and others are working on clearing the Tyoga trail of blow downs and brush; identifying birds, tagging trees, creating brochures; getting a new sign made to put up on M-28; identifying old foundations; and writing a book, a history of the Tyoga Lumber Company. Throughout 2008 I have noticed the work along the trail and appreciate it, but since I also enjoy the elusive nature of Tyoga—a signpost is the only clue that “The Tyoga Lumber Company Store, pictured here, stood a short distance straight out from this marker. …”—I worry about these people intent on clearing up trails and history and wonder: Will Tyoga change?

For Parlin, a part-time resident of Sand River, which lies just west of the trail, it started with change. Parlin likes to fish, and he wanted to fish the Laughing Whitefish River, at that time clogged with beaver dams. Parlin approached the Department of Natural Resources about removing the dams, and he was given permission to take out two that were causing flooding problems along the Tyoga trail. One thing led to another, and Parlin, also a history buff, adopted Tyoga in 2003 with the DNR’s blessing—Parlin signed an agreement to help maintain the trail by clearing brush, removing blow downs, and making capital improvements.

It was somewhere around this time that I also discovered and fell in love with Tyoga—its seclusion, its wildness, and its faint whiff of a long-forgotten story. There is a sign that reads in part: “Somehow, if you listen closely, you can still hear the broom swinging, Mrs. Nestor Koski screaming as she chased a black bear out of her kitchen …”

I had passed a small and crooked marker for the historical pathway a number of times before giving in to curiosity and turning off M-28 to follow North Point Road—a dirt road—deep into the woods (about two miles). As a newcomer to the area I was just beginning to learn that this is what you have to do—you have to forget the fear that this rutted road may lead you nowhere and that’s where you’ll get stuck, and instead, just keep going until you’re somewhere, trusting that you can always get back if need be. In this case the somewhere was Tyoga.

At the trail head is a large sign with a map and some history of a long-ago town.

“When the Tyoga Lumber Company was incorporated on March 7, 1905, three million board feet of logs had been cut in the woods and Tyoga, sawmill and townsite, was well under construction.”

You mean people actually lived in this wilderness?

Parlin’s interest in Tyoga’s history brought him together with other local history buffs Bea Anderson and Chuck Foreman, and as well Mike Zuidema, a now-retired DNR forester who researched Tyoga and brought the pathway to completion in 1987. These four have spent the last couple of years pulling together a book about Tyoga, to be published, they hope, in 2010.

“We decided that we wanted to preserve this memory, and we’re writing a book which is pretty extensive,” Parlin said. “It’s really a ton of fun.”

The Tyoga terrain is varied and the trail becomes difficult at times as it leaps up a rocky outcropping or traverses a bog. Blue confidence markers on the trees help to keep one on track, as do the numerous plank and log walks and the interpretive signs. One of my favorites begins: “Bed Bugs! Two hours before daylight, six days a week, the lumberjacks were awaken by the woods boss as he stuck his mug in the bunkhouse door way and yelled, ‘Daylight in the swamp!’ Compared to these bed bug ridden sleeping camps, the comforts at the boarding house were well worth the extra expense.”

Zuidema wrote the signs that relate the history he unearthed after a chance meeting at the now-defunct Laughing Whitefish River State Campground. Zuidema was in charge of the rustic campground and had been thinking of putting in a hiking trail to enhance it. One day while at the site he met and struck up a conversation with a local man. He told of his plans to explore the other side of the river, and the man responded, Zuidema said, with “Oh, by Tyoga.” This was the first Zuidema had heard of Tyoga. He proceeded to do some research, and over the next several years the trail and Tyoga took shape.

Onota Township helped secure funding to establish the trail, and today the township is considering reentering the picture. According to township supervisor John Shauver, the township’s planning commission is looking at a number of options to fulfill the need for a local park and recreation area, and taking on fiscal responsibility for Tyoga is one possibility.

“Tyoga’s been used by a number of township residents in the spring and fall for fishing in the Laughing Whitefish, with a number of good fish coming out of there,” Shauver said. Before the campground closed in the early 2000s, residents would camp for a number of days while fishing, and restoring the campsites would be a priority if the township were to get involved.

Another sign reads: “Brook trout fishing on the Laughing Fish River was excellent and 3½ pounders were relatively common. Charlie and Arthur Risku, whose father hewed railroad ties in the woods with a broad axe, were just young boys when they lived at Tyoga. The brothers used to go down by the dam with a wheelbarrow when the water was let out after the log drives from upstream logging camps and pick up trout which were left high and dry.”

Parlin recognizes that the natural aspect of Tyoga is just as important as the historical and lauds the area’s biodiversity. He and Zuidema have identified more than 20 species of trees along the trail, and many are now either labeled outright with their common and scientific names or tagged with a number that will correspond to a forthcoming brochure. Parlin’s wife, Tory, is identifying Tyoga’s flora, and Scott Hickman has listed 71 bird species spotted in the area. Parlin wants more people to use the trail, especially children, and sees great potential for the trail to be used as an educational tool.

“You need to teach kids to be confident in the woods,” Parlin said, “and I don’t mean a GPS. I mean a compass and common sense. ... Bea has spent her life in the woods. I could drop Bea out of an airplane anywhere here and a couple of hours later you would see her out on M-28 because she’s followed a stream ... You need to know not to panic in the woods.”

Catherine Kimar, who began working with Parlin as part of her studies in Outdoor Recreation and Leadership Management at Northern Michigan University, grew up near the trail and remembers walking it as a kid.

“I remember all the interpretive signs and running ahead of my parents and finding all the little markers along the way,” Kimar said.

I hiked Tyoga with Kimar last October, and she mentioned a book by Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Wilderness: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.” Louv writes about the effects on children of a decrease in the amount of time spent outdoors, citing a trend over the past generation or two for children to be indoors more often, either watching television or playing video games. In addition, there is a trend for the time spent out of doors to be more structured, usually by participating in organized sports. The causes for these trends are many, and Louv is careful not to belittle them, but nonetheless the effect, he asserts, is profound.

“Our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature,” he writes, “... but as the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.”

Kimar bucks the nature-deficit trend, admitting she does not suffer from the disorder. She told me how she and her sister usually would skip watching Sesame Street in the mornings to go outside and play in a tree house, to make up games, to run through the woods.

“It gives you an appreciation of nature, which is something a lot of people miss out on,” she said. “... People really do think that we can impose our own order, control nature, but it’s kind of like trying to squash a tic.”

Nature runs rampant in Tyoga, but walk the trail with Parlin and Eric Drake, an archeologist with the U.S. Forest Service, and a town emerges. More accurately, get off the trail, for Tyoga lies underneath the duff, where there are remnants of foundations, and imbedded in the roots of felled trees, where you can find chips of brick and mortar. There’s your Tyoga.

Drake said that his job is to identify pieces of the past, then document, preserve, protect, and interpret them. Looking across a somewhat open area alongside one part of the trail, I see small trees, hillocks, brush, grass, moss, boulders; Drake sees the possibilities of 100 years ago. It’s his training, but it’s also his experience.
“I think of my grandfather,” he said. “He was very practical, a farmer, and where would he put the shed? Where it’s flat.” And off he goes, walking the knobby expanse, finding corner stones, flat areas, measuring off what once was.

Tyoga is tricky in the spring, buggy and rich in summer, beautiful in the fall, snowed in throughout the long winter months. By April I am eager to get out on the trail, to walk it, to read the signs, to breathe its air, to pause on the bridges that span the river and watch the water rush by on its way to Superior. Sometimes I go too early, wanting to avoid the first hatch of black flies, and I end up walking through heavy, knee-deep, wet snow. Late last April I was ultimately stymied by a large swampy area that sucked up the trail and left me feeling uncertain. I had been startled by a deer, my boots were soaked through, and I was cold. It was an inhospitable day at Tyoga, and I reluctantly turned back. I had barely made it a third of the way around, just barely past a sign that ends: “... the future of Tyoga looked bright.”

Tyoga Trail: Part One
Tyoga Trail: Part Two
Tyoga Trail: Part Three

March is

2009-03-19T14:00:00.002-04:00

I don't know what March is in your neck of the woods, but here, March is 20 degrees below zero; a sheet of ice; a crust of snow; a dwindling fire; and a soft southerly breeze billowing sheets on the line; open windows; 62 degrees; 70s rock 'n' roll; a soggy, scattered wood pile; tax returns; a flighty old friend; remnants of dog poop from February, January, and possibly December; 40 degrees; a walk atop three feet of snow; mud; slush; snow showers; rain showers; dripping, plunking, trickling, gurgling, pooling, and freezing water; 53 degrees; suddenly sinking through snow up over your knee and pitching forward slightly but where are you going to go? you're trapped; a pause between songs; a skip in the record; a frisky north wind twisting sheets into knots; tattered brown leaves stirred up by a breeze; an old dog snorting gleefully as he rolls on his back atop a foot of crusty 7-grain snow; 48 degrees; sitting on the deck in the sun; the amazing return of evening light; a pull and a push and a nudge and a yank; birthdays (of some of my favorite people!); 37 degrees; talk of a St. Paddy's Day blizzard, no matter what the weather; flocks of chattering birds; meeting new neighbors; a recipe that goes: a little of this, a little of that; Ginger Rogers dancing with Red Skelton; onion rye bread, just for something different; a cautious walk of mincing steps; 17 degrees; a crack in the ice.

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Caving in

2009-03-04T19:11:00.000-05:00

It was another morning of subzero temperatures, a dog adrift in the snow, and fresh county snow plow crud in the driveway. Winter's not letting go, so I shrugged. Why not let winter have its way? I bundled up, threw snowshoes in the truck, and headed to the Eben ice caves.

I'd never been to the caves, but a couple of years ago I cut a little map out of the paper showing how to get there. All I needed to find was North Eben Road off M-94. Most folks might guess Eben Road to be that one road that cuts through Eben, and they'd be right. But, if you miss Eben, you miss the road. (I was gawking at towering snow banks.) However, on a return pass through town I realized where I was and turned north, which took me through rolling and frosted farmland. The next turn was hard to miss, and that led to a dead end where three cars were parked.

Well, I thought, I must be there.

My eyes followed a well-packed trail that went up a snow bank, crossed a large field, and headed into the woods. The snow was probably three or four feet deep, but a couple just leaving told me I would not need my snowshoes as the trail was solid. At the far end of the field, I passed another couple leaving, then another, and that accounted for all the cars, so I was alone.

Shortly after entering the woods there is a sign for the caves. Officially, they are the Rock River Canyon Ice Caves in the Rock River Wilderness Area in the Hiawatha National Forest. According to the sign there are two canyons in the area, Rock River and Silver Creek, and each is about 150 feet deep. The caves are a half mile or so into the wilderness along a trail that would become steep, the sign read, and possibly icy.

At first the trail was easy, the winter woods friendly and serene. The snow that remained plastered on the north side of the trees reminded me of caterpillars, many with a curl at their top end, usually about halfway up a tree, like a snowy worm recoiling from its knobby cousin heading down. Giant balls of snow were offered up by smug and stumpy waiters, and the trees and their dark shadows created a never-ending doodle. I felt as if I were in an art gallery, the ultimate art gallery, and who knew for how long the exhibit was booked. Tomorrow it might all be different.

I met up with the canyon, and the trail took a dive. No problem; I've been slipping and sliding, practicing for this, all winter. Then my feet flew up and I landed on my butt, which gave me an idea. I had snow pants on, and even though at this point I didn't need them for warmth, I realized they would be good for sliding down the trail, so that's what I did, sitting down at the top of the incline that traversed the canyon's face and giving myself a push. My mother, who is almost always with me, cried, Oh no! What if you go over the edge?!

The trail zigged and turned upward and there was the ice, a thick draping of it, hanging from a cliff and seeping out of rock. The cliff juts out, allowing the curtain of ice to create a cave. Within the cave are more columns of ice and stalactites of ice - icicles, I guess - and the colors are amber and green and gold and white and an icy blue. The ice is smooth and bumpy and hard as rock. There is a symphony of trickles, ice dripping through columns, riffling through folds, murmuring within hollow walls.

Some icicles have cracked and fallen - there are chunks of light green and blue scattered about in the snow. I step under the overhang for a minute, but with the icy slick floor, the icicles overhead, and the cloistral nature of the cave, I don't stay long. For some reason I think of the time I was walking along a beach and a seagull dropped a shell on my head ... It was nicer, I thought, to lean back into a snow bank, listen to the trickling water, look up at the ice and trees and sky and small poofs of snow that exploded as branches cracked.

Actually, I don't know what caused those poofs of snow. It was a calm day, but every so often there would be a loud pop, and I would look around and see a puff of snow drifting down, like confetti out of a toy champagne popper. There was a slight breeze - occasionally I could hear two old leaves rubbing up against each other - but what caused the cracks and pops and poofs of snow, I don't know.

I headed back, taking my time, resting for a while on a fallen tree, and wishing I could sit on my butt and slide up the trail as well as down. I passed four snowmobilers who were heading in (they had left their rigs in the field, but their outfits and helmets suggested their mode of travel), and near the parking lot I passed two girls on snowshoes and then a trio of teenagers. Before getting in the truck I shed my jacket and rolled down the window, thinking how despite it all, and even in March, winter's pretty damn beautiful.

Winter Storm Warning

2009-02-17T14:13:00.002-05:00

A beautiful thing happened this morning. It's called a Winter Storm Warning. It comes from the National Weather Service, and it puts things plainly.

A Winter Storm Warning remains in effect from 1 am Wednesday to
7 PM EST Thursday.

Look for light to moderate snow to develop during the overnight hours tonight. Expect the snow to intensify during the day Wednesday as north winds increase and temperatures fall. Wind gusts of 35 to 50 mph are possible Wednesday afternoon through Thursday morning... which will result in blizzard conditions at times. Look for conditions to improve slowly Thursday afternoon and evening. Total snowfall amounts of 10 to 18 inches are possible from this storm... greatest over the higher terrain from Negaunee to Skandia... Trenary and Chatham.

It puts it plain, but all those ellipses leave me wondering...

I need this warning. Even living where I do beyond the tension line there is a tendency to fuss and plan and think "If only... if only I could do this just right, at just the right time, then everything would be... just right..." and before I know it I'm thinking that I can control things and if things aren't working out just right then all I have to do is exert more control and... pretty soon I'm feeling downright nutty. Better to just let go.

So I hear the Winter Storm Warning on the radio a few times and finally... oh. Relief. I stop, I listen. Blowing snow. Blizzard conditions. Marquette to Munising... along the lake, where the north winds howl and snow straight-lines past the window where I sit, watching, unable to see a thing.

I abandon my plans and let winter tell me what to do, and soon I am outside, hauling in wood with a surge of light-hearted energy.

Last week we had a thaw, and today the remaining snowcover, with its supportive crust, is perfect for hauling wood. I do not sink up to my knees, and the plastic sled, loaded with logs, glides easily behind me. A light, fluffy snow is suspended in the still air, barely falling, barely there. While working I think of the friend who helped me with the decision to heat with wood, who's heated with wood for years. I think of the friend who made wood for me this summer, who took me into the Ottawa National Forest and showed me what type of tree to look for (dead, not rotten, hardwood, not too big, not too small), and I recall the mist and drizzle and ten thousand and one mosquitoes. I mostly buy wood, by the truckload, cut and split, from a guy in Big Bay, and I think of him, always pleasant and nice to talk with.

Once a week or so I stack wood on my porch so when I need it I don't have to go outside. The stack, about 9 feet by 3 feet, will last a week or longer, depending on the temperature, wind direction, and wind velocity. Some days the chore takes half an hour, but other days longer, especially if I'm having fun, and today I am. Of course it doesn't matter, the time, as the day's plans have already been crumpled up, tossed aside, forgotten...

I haven't always paid so much attention to weather warnings. After all, I spent years in Chicago and we got weather there and we don't let it slow us down. I remember school being closed once, in 1967. Schools are closed often up here, even during last week's thaw, when all the roads either iced up or turned to slush. But I understand it now, and if it starts snowing and blowing tomorrow I'm not going anywhere. One winter I drove to a job every day, and the morning I spun out on the highway - going 45 miles an hour trying to pass a guy going 40 because I had to get to work and all it was was a little slush - I had one of those eternal moments of no control as the truck suddenly wrested itself from my hands and spun in circles across the road, coming to rest just off the shoulder, facing south when I had been headed east. I felt the motor running, so I pressed down on the gas. I crossed the road and pulled in behind the guy I'd been trying to pass, who had pulled over and stopped. He was waiting outside his truck. I remember thinking he could be Jesus Christ with his long dark hair, beard, and red buffalo plaid jacket. Once back on the road, not budging from behind this guy, I thought how I really did not want to die on my way to prepare taxes...

So this afternoon's plan is to get to town for groceries in case it's snowing and blowing tomorrow. And later on I may just sit out in the snow and thank it for being.

Traunik Part I: The Hall and the Schoolhouse

2009-02-06T08:44:00.000-05:00

Whenever I think of writing about Traunik, I begin by thinking "... in the middle of nowhere ...," and that hangs me up. Everywhere is nowhere and everywhere is somewhere—I’m beginning to see that—and so is Traunik nowhere and somewhere.

Two roads pass through Traunik, H01 and H44, and where they cross is where it is, generally speaking. Although Traunik once had its own ZIP code, it has never had boundaries. In 1927 Louis Mikulich, owner of a general store on the northeast corner of the crossroads, applied for post office status for the burgeoning area. He submitted three names, and somewhere some postal employee chose Traunik, which happens also to be the name of a village in Loski Potok, Slovenia, from where many of the area's residents had emigrated. Now it occasionally happens that folks in Slovenia spot Traunik, Michigan, on a map and come to investigate. And every July Fourth members of the Traunik Slovenian Club come back to eat sausage and potica and strudel and to polish with corn meal and polkas the aged hardwood floor of the Traunik Hall.

The Hall
"We no longer have a sense of community," Frank Bartol, 79, says as we sit at his kitchen table talking over cups of tea and fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. Frank was born in Traunik, Michigan, and has lived there most of his life. "The community exists in our history and, because we got together to preserve the Traunik Hall and create the Traunik Slovenian Club, that sense of community exists once or twice a year because people come from wherever they live to celebrate the Fourth of July."

Frank lives just a shade north of the crossroads in a tidy tan house with his wife, Judith. Go down to the crossroads, take a right, and there's the Traunik Hall, a squat, single story building with a basement, painted white with dark green trim. A large wooden deck spans the front and double-hung windows march down each side. After passing through a small entryway, one comes into a large, airy, wood paneled room—a dance hall with a raised stage at the far end. The floor is worn and shiny. An old pot-bellied stove squats laconically in a corner. Unadorned, single strand light bulbs dangle from the ceiling. Short lace curtains on the windows filter sunlight, and between the windows are photo displays, each with a theme such as "Logging," "Entertainment," "Children," and "Getting Together," each telling the story of Traunik. The smell is antiquity, slightly sweet and musty.

The hall's basement houses a utilitarian kitchen with long rows of folding tables and chairs, painted concrete walls, log pillars (to stabilize the dance floor), and a concrete floor. At the far end an American flag hangs beneath an old whitewashed wooden sign that proclaims in big black block letters: Traunik.

From the start, the hall, built in 1922 as Lodge 387 of the Slovenian National Benefit Society, has been a place for celebrations, playing host to weddings, anniversaries, reunions, as well as Fourth of July festivities. Even when the society dwindled after World War II and the hall eventually was bought by a local family, it was rented out for special occasions. Then, in 1993, Frank acted on an idea. He sent a letter to 150 or so Slovenians with Traunik roots who now lived elsewhere. In the letter he outlined plans to create the Traunik Slovenian Club and asked for financial pledges to raise money to buy the Traunik Hall. Within a month, he says, enough money came in to buy the hall and, as well, to set up a maintenance fund.

The hall was dedicated on July 4, 1993, with Frank's father, also named Frank and 98 at the time, unveiling a boulder on which a plaque had been affixed. It reads:

To this place they came, beginning in 1912, and when enough had come to form a community, they named it Traunik, which means "meadow" in Slovenia, the country they left behind in search of a better life.

They brought with them a willingness to work and a desire to succeed, and out of the forest they shaped fields, homes, and a good life for their families.

This memorial is dedicated to them by their children and grandchildren, now scattered about the world but tied by invisible bonds to this spot, where once the night air was filled with Slovenian melodies, and an ethnic community pulsed with life.

The younger Frank wrote the dedication. Now he's one of two locals who maintain the hall, a key holder, so to speak, but no official title. "It's a club in name only," he says, as there are no by-laws, no officers, just an annual newsletter and the Fourth of July dance. As many as 200 may gather for that event, though once, in 2000, there were as many as 400 revelers polishing the old wood floor, including the mayor of Loski Potok, whom Frank had invited as a special guest in honor of the millennium. As always, others may use the hall, but one gets the feeling it's the Slovenians' soles that keep the floor gleaming.

The Schoolhouse
Frank showed me the hall that day, after our tea and rolls, and pointed out the schoolhouse next door, which we had talked about also, as it is the second of three buildings in Traunik built more than 80 years ago and still in use today, each honoring its intent. The school, now a Head Start Center, is a modest building with a black, hipped roof topped with a cupola that protects the school bell. Frank attended the two-room school from 1935 to 1942, and he recalls how the bell used to ring four times a day; now, not so often, but still, once in a while. He delights in hearing the same clanging tone that he heard as a boy and telling the story of how he saved the bell, a few years back, when the roof needed fixing and the contractor suggested removing the belfry to simplify the job. Frank wouldn't hear of it, and the roof, cupola, and bell are in their best shape ever.

In 2007 Frank wrote "Still Sits the Schoolhouse by the Road," a book about the school and his years there. He published the book on his own, as many writers do. Frank was an English teacher for more than 30 years, he has written sections included in local history books, and, for a while, he wrote a twice-weekly column that appeared in two daily Upper Peninsula newspapers. He subsequently adapted those columns into two books. He likes writing, he says, but "I never sold myself as a writer. I never tried to peddle it."

It is here, I think, that distraction was kindled, a distraction in my mind that all these months helped to hinder my writing of this story. I was going to write it as an historical piece centered on the general store, which is now called Lily's, and which is how I first came to know Traunik. I stopped at Lily's one day after strawberry picking in nearby Trenary, and Jeff, one of the owners, began relating to me a history and a present day story that caught my interest and brought to mind: "... in the middle of nowhere ...." I wanted to write the story, thought I could sell it, and thus began framing it, imagining an audience, an audience that would be intrigued by history, happenstance, hard work, and faith.

"I hate selling," Frank says, "but I like writing." I tell him I understand, for I feel the same way. He goes on to say he doesn't understand why a writer's work is presumed to be in need of alteration by others when the work of other artists and crafters is not. Imagine a painter, he says, selling a painting and then seeing it later, hanging somewhere, and perhaps a tree has been added or removed. It sounds absurd, because it wouldn't happen; paintings are not edited. Frank's newspaper columns were edited, of course, and he says, "It wasn’t my writing anymore."

Over the past few months I have thought about this, with Frank's words—"It wasn’t my writing anymore"—jostling around in my head. One morning they conjured up a picture. I saw a street musician, just a person with an instrument and a song, standing on a curb somewhere, the world rushing by, the occasional coin flipping through the air, glinting in the sunlight, landing in a hat in the middle of nowhere.

Coming soon … Traunik Part II: The General Store

Hamming it up in the U.P.

2009-02-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

This article originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of the Marquette Monthly.

On a summer's evening, they're out in the woods on what they call a "fox hunt," men and women, in teams of two or three, each following a waggling antenna, listening closely to the staccato beeps of Morse code coming through their handheld radios. The beeps eventually lead them to the "fox," a small transmitting device hidden deep in the duff. Once the transmitter is found, the team pulls off a tag and reads the clue that helps them find the next transmitter.

"This is all for fun," Paul Racine, KB0P, a member of the Hiawatha Amateur Radio Association (HARA), said. "When it comes down to emergencies, the FCC tells us we have to provide communication ... We already have our own equipment, because we bought it. We already know how to operate it, because we've been using it for our hobby and practicing, experimenting. So then, when there is an emergency, we’re prepared to go on the air."

On a winter's night, they're out in the woods hunkered down in an igloo or truck, tracking the progress and safety of sled dog teams traveling from Marquette to Grand Marais and back, going where cell phones can't go, providing a foolproof communication system for the U.P. 200 Sled Dog Race. They'll provide the same service—emergency communication—during the Noquemanon Ski Marathon and Ore to Shore Mountain Bike Epic.

"Why do our signals work better than cell phone signals?" Paul echoed a reporter's question. "First of all, we're very skilled with our equipment—we understand the theory behind communications."

To join the world of ham radio, which encompasses not just the earthly world but outer space—care to eavesdrop on the crew of the space shuttle?—one needs a license, and that means passing a test. The test covers electronic and communication theory, FCC rules and regulations, and how radio signals work. HARA offers testing four times a year, and other ham clubs in the U.P. also offer testing.

"We do like to hold a class if we can," Rich Schwenke, N8GBA, also a HARA member, said. "If anybody’s interested, we'll help them get started, answer any questions that they got." And when a new ham gets his license, Paul said, "We usually get together and go over to his house and help him put up antennas. We all try to help each other out." In addition, the club has donated general theory and test books to the Peter White Public Library.

Most amateur radio enthusiasts start with an interest in electronics. Some are tinkerers, like Paul. "Hams are very resourceful. We make things out of nothing," he said. "We make things out of junk. We make antennas out of broken tape measures and PVC pipe. We may buy our own $300 radio, but we also build our own stuff out of junk."

In fact, once a week members of HARA get together for Project Nite to restore old radios, build things, and to socialize.

Hams have a keen interest in communication. A lot of times they are at home, in a basement or den, surrounded by a bank of equipment, talking to Joe or Betty or Sven next door or halfway around the world.

"It's like a family," Paul said.

Amateur radio's been around for close to 100 years, starting off with transmission of Morse code before there was voice capability. Paul and Rich have no doubt that amateur radio is here to stay.

"Ham radio started off years ago when things were simple," Paul said. "Ham radio operators, throughout the years, have pioneered a lot of technology. We had email back in the 1980s, except we didn't use the Internet, we used radio."

"It's not going to go away," Rich said. "If you’re in the right location at the right time you can take this handheld and talk to the space shuttle." Enough said.

"There are different aspects," Paul said. "There’s the microphone, you can sit and talk with people, or use Morse code, the telegraph key. It depends on what you're in the mood for. We can hook computers up to the radio and type to each other just like the Internet."

Rich agreed that amateur radio is "very versatile. You can set up headphones and a mike on your computer, on your laptop, and you can talk anywhere in the world. You can talk to 5 different countries at the same time ... as long as they're on the air." You can send pictures, video, "simple," he said.

With all the fox hunts, Project Nite, work at special events and chatting with each other and astronauts, hams seem to have a lot of fun, including dressing in funny outfits and attending "hamventions," but their federally mandated mission is completely serious. In an emergency, hams are there, giving their time, using their own equipment and calling upon their own skills and knowledge to open critical lines of communication.

During some large forest fires near Ishpeming and Champion in the late 1980s, Paul recalled, the police and fire radio channels became jammed and communications went down. The amateurs were called in to help, and soon headquarters and outposts were talking again.

The fox hunts are actually an exercise in "direction finding," helping a ham sharpen a skill which may come in handy if, for instance, an Alzheimer patient wanders off. Many patients now wear a small transmitter which a handheld radio can pick up. The Sheriff's department may have two receivers, but the hams come in with a dozen or more as well as search experience gained from their weekly summer outings.

In 1959, before there was such a thing as a toll-free 800 number, ham radio operators enabled TV6 to run a March of Dimes fundraiser. Pledges were radioed in from across the U.P. to a headquarters set up outside the television studio. The pledges were written down and then run inside to be announced on the air.

Rich said that right now HARA has more than 100 members, and it is just one of many amateur radio clubs in the U.P. There is no requirement to belong to a club, so the actual number of hams in the U.P. is unknown, but nationally the Amateur Radio Relay League in 2007 reported a membership of more than 150,000, which was an increase from the year before.

HARA holds monthly meetings in the basement of the Negaunee Health Department, and it was there on a sub-zero January day that Paul demonstrated the use of a handheld radio, checking in with ham WD0BCF in Houston.

"My name is Larry, and I'm in Houston, Texas," the voice said. "The temperature is 51 degrees, and everyone down here is complaining about the cold snap. I've been a ham now since 1966, if I remember correctly. Grew up in southern Michigan."

Mike (KE8IL) in Marquette, a ham for 30 years, checked in via "walkie-talkie," working through a repeater and a handheld radio. A repeater is an antenna that picks up a signal and sends it on, thus "repeating" it. The towers in Marquette, Gwinn, and Munising come into play during the U.P. 200, when hams will be stationed along the trail to relay information back to race headquarters. The signals get through not only because of the towers, but because they can go through trees and buildings—unlike cell phone signals, which get caught up in obstruction.

But the hams will also be prepared to continue talking even if something goes wrong with the towers. If that happens, they switch to shortwave radio bands. With shortwave, the signals will bounce off the atmosphere, in essence being relayed by nature. This requires larger, more powerful equipment, but keeps the lines of communication open. HARA raises money to buy much of this equipment and as well raises money to put up the antennas.

Rich showed me some of HARA’s equipment. "That sells for about $1200 ... To pay for this we have a fundraiser the first Saturday in February at the Negaunee Township Hall," he explained. "We sell raffle tickets, and we try to get equipment, which we sell, donated to a club table, and often people donate some money to the club. This is our fundraiser that we try to finance all this with. And we do work with FEMA, we do have some FEMA grants to help pay for some equipment. It is rather expensive."

The handheld beeped. It was the repeater, the antenna, announcing its call sign in Morse code, as required by the FCC, every 10 minutes. It sounded like the beginning of an old RKO movie.

"Because we know Morse code you can watch some of these movies and sometimes you notice it's real Morse code and sometimes it's just random beeps ... ” Paul said. Just another fun perk of being a ham.

The 30th annual HARA Swap and Shop fundraiser, an electronic flea market offering new and used radio and computer equipment, runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. February 7 in the Negaunee Township Hall. Admission is $4. For more information, the Hiawatha Amateur Radio Association is on the Web at www.qsl.net/K8lod/. The American Radio Relay Association, at www.arrl.org, lists other clubs throughout the country.

Police Blotter Poetry

2009-01-28T12:31:00.000-05:00

The police blotter in the daily paper I receive is a mundane and sometimes curious list of what people see, hear, smell, suspect, and report. It's full of noise, drunks, dogs, thefts, lockouts, disputes, accidents, oddities, and inspiration.

1:55 a.m. Caller reported orange light on the lake, possible boater in distress, turned out to be the moon rising, but officer found minors partying on the beach ...

3:40 a.m. Skunk wandering around with glass jar stuck on its head.

3:45 a.m. Drunken person passed out.

5:23 a.m. Drunken man in hot tub refusing to leave ...

8:46 a.m. Dog waste in yard extending to bus stop.

9:36 a.m. Skunk with its head stuck in a jar.

10:12 a.m. Larceny of a garden hose.

10:23 a.m. Belligerent, cursing workers.

10:31 a.m. Barking dog.

10:52 a.m. Drunken men throwing apples.

11:41 a.m. Bat in wood stove.

11:51 a.m. Skunk in trap.

11:58 a.m. Neighbor's cat keeps coming into yard.

12:20 p.m. Report of fight in progress.

12:36 p.m. Two dogs in white sport utility vehicle.

1:26 p.m. Possible tampering with coffee pot.

2:00 p.m. Coyote sighting.

2:01 p.m. Man went into medical center with a bear cub on his shoulder.

3:27 p.m. Caller reports her ceramic pig is in the river.

3:37 p.m. Squirrel in fireplace.

4:35 p.m. In-laws drove by residence making hand gestures.

5 p.m. Two lawn chairs, not resident's, left in yard during the night.

5:02 p.m. Larceny of golf clubs.

5:16 p.m. Dog bites mail carrier.

7:07 p.m. Loud noise complaint, same three chords being played on guitar.

7:59 p.m. Dog barking.

8:19 p.m. Disorderly juveniles swimming and climbing flag pole.

8:21 p.m. Boat adrift, later got started.

8:25 p.m. Smell of marijuana.

10:42 p.m. Loud people yelling.

10:47 p.m. Barking dog complaint.

11:48 p.m. Bonfire in backyard.

12:55 a.m. Trespassing, unwanted drunken person climbing on a roof ...

Cold Snap

2009-01-19T16:37:00.000-05:00

The other morning - it was a Friday - I opened the door to let the dogs out and was stunned by the silence. It welled up and resounded through air so still that even in robe and slippers I was aware only of the quiet, not of the bitter cold. I don't understand it, why silence gets louder the colder it gets, but there it is. Trees crack - perhaps something inside snaps - and it sounds like a gunshot. But the silence wraps around it, louder and far more powerful.

The dogs took care of business, moving quickly, plowing through fresh inches of snow, slowing down only when paws froze, paws then dangled in the air as they skip-hopped back through the door. A moment's jostle and commotion, then I closed the door behind them, taking a last look at nothing but snow drifting down, without a sound.

Outside the kitchen window, the thermometer read 10 degrees below zero. It was the first morning since the cold had started on Tuesday that I could see the bashful red stripe; on other mornings it had been obliterated by snow. This, I knew, was the coldest morning yet - I could tell by the quiet - but it certainly wasn't as cold as other places. I heard Pickle Lake, Ironwood, all of Minnesota, and Chicago were colder. Still, later when I went out, I gasped as my lungs contracted in horror, shocked, I suppose, by the frigid dryness of it all.

Then over the weekend the temperatures rose into the teens and twenties and it felt like spring. That may sound funny, but when it's 30 degrees warmer at 7:33 a.m Monday than it was at 7:33 a.m. Friday you can feel it. And when the fine dust of a snow that fell throughout the deep freeze is now large jolly flakes, you notice.

The snow, by the way, does not end, and there is no place to put it. Because you have to move it out of the way to get around. Over the past few days the powder has built up another 10 or 12 inches, and one sinks into it as one walks. It seems weightless, like white crystallized air, but walking through air should not be this hard. And shoveling air, you would think, would not make one weary. And air certainly doesn't take up so much space, but try telling that to a balloon. Still, snow gets moved around and it piles up and the world takes on new shapes and colors. The fallen snowflakes cast light shadows on one another, and today the landscape is greyish white.

As we walked this morning, I tried to make the analogy that people are like snowflakes, in that each is unique, but mass a whole bunch together and they all begin to look alike. But the analogy didn't work. That's the way snowflakes are, I thought, but it's not the way people are. Or is it? It was quiet, but not severe. Trees were popping like champagne corks but it was all muffled, as if the party were one flight up or two doors down. We sank deep in the fresh snow, yet still, there was a feeling of spring.

Fit Strip, Marathon, Love

2009-01-10T14:54:00.000-05:00

This article originally appeared in the January 2009 issue of the Marquette Monthly. The photo is a snapshot of a 1978 Mining Journal, housed at the Marquette County History Museum.

It's hard to know exactly where an idea is going to lead. In 1978 Rico Zenti, Jr., had an idea that would put exercise stations for chin-ups, sit-ups, leg stretches, and the like along a walking and jogging trail in Marquette. Zenti took the idea to the city’s parks and recreation board, which led to radio station WDMJ, which led to a series of fund-raising events for the Fit Strip. There was a dunk tank at the Marquette Mall where for a donation folks could try to waterlog the mayor, the police chief, the city manager, and others; a teen dance; an auction; and the sale of bumper stickers that declared: I’m a Fit Stripper.

Then there was the radio marathon. At noon Wednesday, September 13, WDMJ disc jockey John Heller went on the air. He stayed on the air until noon Saturday, September 23, breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous on-air broadcast. Except for 5 minutes of allowed rest each hour, Heller was awake and broadcasting for 10 days—240 hours—straight. Through hourly pledges, more than $1,400 was raised for the Fit Strip.

The day before the marathon started the 22-year-old Heller was quoted in an article in The Mining Journal: "There is nothing inside me that says I can do it, and there is nothing inside me that says I can't do it."

Heller, now a software engineer, lives in Brookfield, Wisconsin, with his wife, Melodie. Together they have raised three daughters. When remembering the marathon, Heller emphasizes the support he received from his co-workers.

"The unsung heroes of all this were the other people at the station," Heller wrote in our email exchange. "Normally, WDMJ was on the air 6 a.m. to midnight. During the marathon, we were a 24-hour operation. Someone had to stay with me all the time, in case of a medical emergency or I decided I needed a brief nap. Also, Guinness required a witness to verify what was going on at all times. Skip Schneider, our morning announcer, and Tony Miller, who worked evenings, put in almost as many hours as I did. Others pitched in too; people from our sales department and some of the part-time announcers."

He also remembers the people of Marquette and their support. At the time, WDMJ's studios were at 815 West Washington Street, and there was a picture window facing the street—anyone could walk or drive by and see how Heller was holding up.

"For the first week of the marathon, Marquette barely took notice," Heller wrote. "At least, that was my impression looking out of my window ... . By Day 8, you could feel the electricity beginning to build. Most people took a wait-and-see attitude, and as we got closer to the finish, the whole town seemed to go nuts. On Friday night, Day 9, things really began to happen. A belly dancer stopped by. Old college buddies seemed to come out of nowhere to wish me success. My ex-girlfriend came by but my pals Skip and Tony would not let her in the building. And the food just kept coming. As a bachelor, I really enjoyed the great food that so many local restaurants sent over."

"At that time the radio station was a local station," Schneider, now advertising manager at The Mining Journal, said, "and very much a part of the community. We highly encouraged people to stop by and see him."

Each day a doctor checked Heller's vital signs. An article in the September 17 Upper Peninsula Sunday Times reported that his blood pressure dropped from 134 over 80 on Day 1 to 110 over 90 on Day 4; that Heller was snacking on "carrots, celery, and fresh fruit" and avoiding caffeine; that his eyes weren't quite focusing; and that he admitted "my attention kind of drops on and off." But, he said, " ... the really great part is that for two years I have watched the cars drive by this window, and now, suddenly, I can see people looking back."

Schneider recalled that "John held up remarkably well. There were times he got a little ... well, you could tell he was drifting."

"I remember the great sense of camaraderie and teamwork from the whole staff. We were really winging this as it went along and everyone pitched in to make it work," Heller wrote, and a newspaper article from September 20 confirms this. It reports on how, after three days, a large sink in the station's basement was rigged up as a shower for Heller.

The record Heller was attempting to break was set at 222 hours and 22 minutes. That record fell on Day 9, and The Mining Journal sent over a reporter. She found Heller "looking handsome, but a bit rumpled." Co-workers told stories of Heller pointing at things that weren’t there, asking questions about boats that weren't there, and becoming difficult to waken from his 5-minute naps. On the other hand, according to the reporter, "Heller said he felt great and it wasn't all that hard."

"Finally, on Saturday, September 23, the marathon ended," Heller wrote. " ... I signed off at 13 minutes after noon, in honor of Radio 13. I don't remember much from that day. A police man drove me home. ..."

As Schneider recalls, "The mayor and city manager carried him out to a police car ..."

"The thing I remember most about the marathon was the people of Marquette," Heller wrote. "I loved the city so much because everybody seemed to enjoy living there. Despite the brief summers and brutal winters, nobody complained. It was that spirit that made the marathon so much fun."

So the next time you're strolling along, jogging down, or skiing the Fit Strip, which wanders through the wooded west end of Park Cemetery, stop and do a sit-up or leg stretch and think about how it came to be—how it was just an idea and how people got behind it. And as well, think about this:

"The most important thing about the marathon didn't happen while I was on the air," Heller wrote. "It happened in two parts, one before the record-breaking broadcast, the other after.

"[I was at the] dunk tank at the Marquette Mall. I remember this one young woman tried to dunk someone. She didn't have much of an arm, but I was captivated the moment I first saw her. After the marathon was over, we had a party to celebrate the successful fundraising. I arranged to meet her at this party. I'm glad I did. That was Melodie."

You just never know where an idea might lead.

Less than a month after Heller broke the longest on-air broadcasting record, a disc jockey in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stayed on the air for 250 hours, setting a new record. Heller called to congratulate him.

Living in the Land of I Don't Know

2009-01-06T16:06:00.000-05:00

I live in the land of I Don't Know.

I remember once being in a car with my older sister. It was not long after she learned to drive, and we were headed down a leafy, suburban street, a side street that was neither busy nor wide nor long. She was at the wheel, I was in the passenger seat. It was a warm, sunny day, and my window was down.

We had just entered a section of road about two blocks long that passed in front of a grade school. At the start of this section of road was a sign about the street now becoming one way, with a rather lengthy explanation, as it was one way only on school days between certain hours in the morning and then again in the afternoon and perhaps something different on alternate Tuesdays. My sister had been down this road before, but whether she had ever stopped to read and digest the information on the sign, well, probably not. I, on the other hand, often read signs and it is likely that I told my sister, as she headed down the sometimes one way street, that it may have indeed, at this moment, become one way. But paying attention to me was not high on my sister's list of things to do, so it was the car coming at us, deliberately head on, that actually caused her to slow down.

Eventually we stopped alongside this car, my open window meeting its open window. A woman stretched across the front seat to speak to us, and a glimpse of her made me collapse like a leaky water balloon. She was indignation defined.

"This is a one way street!" she said loudy and quite clearly.

My sister, who had leaned across our front seat, replied quite cheerily, "But I'm only going one way!"

For a few summers when I was 11, 12, maybe 13 or 14, my dad and I mowed the lawn together. We had an electric mower, and as I pushed it along clipping the grass, he would mind the cord, making sure I was not about to slice it in two, thus causing a commotion. He also cleared the path of sticks, stones, dog poop, and did the bag emptying, which went like this: He would flag me down; I would stop, switch off the mower, the on/off switch being near my right hand; he would unlatch the bag attached to the right side of the mower and empty it into another bag, sometimes having to dig crud out of it or off of it with a putty knife; then he would reattach the bag, give me the "all clear," and I would start her up and continue on.

But one day I was being daydreamy and impatient. As my dad chipped away at some crud I started playing with the on/off switch. On - click/whir. Off - click/quiet. On - click/whir. Off - click/quiet.

"Don't do that," my dad said.

"Why not?" I asked.

Maybe I should add we'd already been working in the hot sun for an hour or more.

"It's not good for the switch," he said.

"What do you mean? I'm just turning it on and off." Now that I think of it, on this day I was probably a lot closer to 13 than 11.

"You can only turn it on and off so many times before it breaks," my dad said.

"Really?" I asked. "How do you know?"

"It's logical. Or did you think you could turn it on and off forever and it would never break?"

I thought about that for a moment. "No," I said. "At some point it would break."

"OK. Then stop doing that."

"But the number of times it would take to break it is huge! I only flipped it on and off a few times. A few times doesn't matter."

"How many times has it been turned on and off overall?"

"I don't know."

"How many times can you turn it on and off before it breaks?"

"I don't know."

And there was my answer.

So you think you know about on/off switches, but you don't. And you think you know about one way streets, but you don't. You think you know about the weather, but how many times have you froze or burnt or gotten caught in a storm? You think you know how to lose weight, but there it is again. And maybe you think you know what someone meant by that, but do you?

You think you know about love, but you don't. And maybe you think you know about life, but I doubt it.

You think you know how to stay young, but still you grow old. You think you know how to win, but you lose. You think you've found the answer, but you're wrong. And you think you've got it made ... until it all comes undone.

You think you can never win, but of course you can. And even though you know you left your keys right there, where are they? Do you know?

The Potholder Paradox

2008-12-30T15:04:00.001-05:00

As I watched NBC Nightly News last night I was once again gripped with the thought that I am a lousy patriot. I was weaving a potholder with my new "Metal Pot Holder Loom & Loops" received from my sister for Christmas a few days late because they were concerned if I received it early I would open it (which I would have) and proceed to make everyone potholders for Christmas. (Now why do that when there are so many birthdays coming up?)

(Note: The dictionary I just consulted lists "potholder" as one word; my loom & loops box makes it two words. Except where directly quoting the box or committing a typo, I will use the dictionary spelling.)

I watch NBC Nightly News because 1) I like Brian Williams; 2) I like his substitutes, Lester Holt, whom I remember from Chicago TV news days, and Ann Curry, who recently reported from a trek she was making (or attempting to make) to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro; and 3) NBC is the only station I receive that is not at all fuzzy. Quite a while ago I quit paying to receive TV stations and settled for what was coming in for free, which would be NBC, a slightly lined CBS, a mostly snowy ABC, and the usually clear-pictured, but I feel somewhat dull, local PBS. So NBC Nightly News it is. (Of course in February that might change, as I still need to buy a converter for my non-digital-ready TV set.)

If I were not weaving a potholder while watching the news I might not have been troubled by my patriotism. We all know the economic news, and I'm sure most of us now know that the holiday shopping season was a bust, and of course this is causing stores to close, and somehow, if you didn't go out and do a lot of shopping in December, you feel, maybe, as if it's partly your fault.

But didn't the whole mess start because we weren't living within our means? Now that we've cut back and are trying to be sensible stores close and people lose their jobs. Again it's our fault? Or do you blame somebody else?

The nightly news is a funny thing.

My sister also purchased and sent a pack of 150 refill loops (100% polyester), so she was not being at all chintzy (as I originally thought, because the refill loops arrived before the loom, and I thought maybe that was all I was getting), so the fact is now I am able to make next year's birthday and Christmas presents and stay out of the stores, which are closing anyway. Of course, not even 300 loops (150 loops came with the loom) will make enough potholders to cover everyone, so I'll have to purchase more. Unless the idea I have of making my own loops pans out ...

They will tell you, well, she never sent birthday presents anyway, and they are right, so what am I worried about? I'm not causing these stores to close; I never supported them in the first place. I am not a shopper, except for the necessities and a bauble here and there. I do not buy the latest electronic gadget or fashion apparel. I don't have a microwave or a cell phone or a snow blower or an iPod. I do have a truck and a computer and a DVD player, a $5-a-month subscription to Netflix, and "Astaire and Rogers: The Complete Film Collection." I don't have a mortgage, but I do have two dogs and a cat. I try hard not to spend a lot of money and I wonder: Does that make me a lousy patriot? Stores are closing and people are losing their jobs and what am I doing about it? I'm sitting here weaving potholders so I won't have to shop, won't have to spend ...

My new "Metal Pot Holder Loom & Loops" is for "Ages 5 & Up." The girl on the front of the box looks clean and happy as she stares off into space, working on her weaving. "AMAZE Your Friends!" I had this same loom & loops toy 40 or more years ago, but the loom was blue - my new one is red. And I recall it being adjustable, with some type of screw arrangement at the corners that allowed you to change the size of your potholder, or maybe that was just how it was held together. My new red loom is one solid piece. And it is metal, which is nice. How disappointing if it were plastic ... But of course, it's made in China. Once again, my patriotism ...

But enough. I have a hankering to get back to my weaving. A lot of birthdays coming up in the next six months or so. Just for the record, another sister sent me books for Christmas - all used. I prefer a used book and the feeling it carries that somebody somewhere some other time read these same words right on this very page. My first pick from the bunch is Robert Heinlein's science fiction classic: Stranger in a Strange Land.

A Winter's Moment

2008-12-15T16:30:00.000-05:00

The sun is shy this time of year. It hides behind snow-filled clouds and even when the clouds break apart or take a break and head off elsewhere the sun stays low and circumspect, hiding below the bare branches of the trees, as if afraid to peek out and hit us full blast because it knows how weak it is, knows that at this time of year it cannot warm us. Fact: Right now, cloudy days are warmer than clear days. Come late January or some odd day in February there will be a sunny day and we will all turn around and wonder: What the heck is that? Warmth? Where is it coming from? Oh! Aha! The sun! You old friend ... But right now, as we approach the winter solstice and the shortest, lowest span of sunlight this year, our bright old friend is weak and ineffectual. And it knows it.

Today (at the moment) is a brightly sunny day. Just after daybreak the mercury in the thermometer outside the kitchen window noodled around just above 10 degrees. Now it has fallen below that mark. Long grey and black shadows stretch across a crusty yard of snow, contrasting sharply with its whiteness. Yesterday it was cloudy, snowing, raining. At about 35, 36 degrees the snowflakes were large, loose, and laden with moisture; they eventually gave themselves up to rain. All day we anticipated and talked about the predictions: snow to rain to falling temperatures to ice to bitter cold to hazardous driving.

But before all that I took a walk with the dogs up to the bend in the river. The trail cuts through a narrow woods of red and white pine, cedar, maple, birch and beech that survives as a buffer between the river and the road. It is pleasurable in all seasons, but in winter, after a snowfall, it is a wonderland. Each pine needle captures its allotment of snow and holds it out for inspection, a multi-level display that towers over us like church steeples and protects us like canopies and mosquito nets. The smallest twig is highlighted, the merest slip of dried grass is accented, and the snow crowns the littlest conifer with the brightest tiara. It undulates and flows; it covers and whispers and beckons. The snow helps us to see a world that was there all along.

Just before the bend I noticed a tan X created by a couple of dry stems of grass lying in the snow by the side of the trail. I paused, thinking, "'X' marks the spot." But what spot is this? A spot I walk by every day, just about, a spot along the morning trail. The X is in front of a tree, a young white pine dressed up in its seasonal fringe. Without any thought it comes to me: "This is my gift."

In the winter my old dog Buster wears a coat to help keep the cold off his 13-year-old arthritic neck. Most often it is a red coat, which helps to prevent his blondeness from melding and disappearing into the winter white. He dashes down the trail, chasing and overtaking his friend Queenie, knocking snow off lower branches as he brushes by.

Beeswax

2008-12-04T16:44:00.006-05:00

Beeswax can wax your moustache or seal your dreadlock, shine your furniture, thread your needle, quiet your squeaky drawer, turn a screwy screw, loosen that rusty nut, get the wax out of your ears or plug your ears, clean your iron, clean your oil spill, polish, add patina, help waterproof. You’ll find beeswax in art and you’ll find beeswax in crafts. You’ll find beeswax in oboe reeds, bagpipes, accordions, and didgeridoos. It lurks in your cosmetics and balms and ointments, in your candy and your crayons. I hear it can soothe a cracked hoof and help you pluck a duck.

In short, there’s very little beeswax can’t do. Well, it can’t make you dinner; it can’t make you thinner. It can’t trim your toenails or answer your emails. It can’t do your math or draw you a bath. It won’t win you the lottery (or even slip you a ten), and it won’t show you where you went wrong or point you in the right direction. (Or will it?) No matter, beeswax can brighten your dark corners, sweeten the air, and shoosh your squeaks.

But what, exactly, is it?

I like The New World Family Encyclopedia description from 1954:

BEESWAX, the fatty substance secreted by bees and used by them in constructing the honeycomb. It is not collected from plants, but is a secretion elaborated within the body of the animal from saccharine matter or honey, and extruded in scales from beneath the rings of the abdomen. …

So beeswax is the result of a digestive, or shall we say elaboration process that takes place inside a honey bee. The process turns sugar into wax which the bee then uses to cap off honey-laden honeycomb cells. In order to get at the honey, a beekeeper must first remove the wax, and thus every beekeeper ends up with two products: honey and beeswax. The encyclopedia entry continues: “… It is an article of commerce, useful in modeling, for candles, and diverse other purposes. Before being put on the market, it is purified and bleached or whitened.” But these days I think most people prefer their beeswax to be unbleached, imbued with its natural honey color.

Another use of beeswax is in the apiary industry itself—beekeepers provide their bees with wax foundations on which to build their honeycombs. And then there are beeswax candles, which may be the most widely recognized use of beeswax. Beeswax candles have a brighter flame and burn cleaner and longer than paraffin candles. They also have a subtly sweet scent of honey and flowers and wildness, which they come by naturally. I’ve read that beeswax releases negative ions when burning, thus cleaning the air and brightening one’s mood. A few centuries ago the Roman Catholic Church decided beeswax candles were the only way to go, and churches today still prefer these candles to others.

Beeswax is easily molded and has long been used for making ornaments. Not much affects beeswax—it is considered a stable compound—and beeswax ornaments may well last forever, smelling sweetly all the while. Unless, of course, you store them away in a hot attic—beeswax will melt soon after topping 140 degrees.

I became interested in beeswax while helping a beekeeper friend sell product at an outdoor craft fair this summer. Mostly he sells honey wholesale to stores, but he has two shows he attends each year, one in the summer and one in December. At the shows he sells honey, maple syrup, gift baskets, beeswax candles, beeswax ornaments, and blocks of beeswax. In typical fashion I was there to help, yet when someone asked me what a person might do with a block of beeswax I just shrugged my shoulders and said, “Well …”

My friend the beekeeper jumped in with some beeswax uses (the person still looked a bit confused, which is not a comment on my friend, but rather on a person who is perhaps more used to working with WD-40 and spit and who prefers frozen chicken drumsticks to fresh duck), and a bit later a young woman stopped by the table, buying without a word a few blocks of beeswax.

“What do you do with all that beeswax?” I asked.

Rather than saying “none of your beeswax” she said, “I’m a bookbinder. I hand stitch books. I run the thread through the beeswax first. It’s easier that way.”

I was still trying to process “I’m a bookbinder.” I mean, how many bookbinders does one meet in a day, a week, or a year? I guess it depends on who you’re hanging with. Before I could think of an intelligent question or comment, she was gone. (It was a hot day, if that’s any excuse.)

Now it’s time for the December show and I want to be prepared when someone asks me about beeswax, so I went online to do a little research and came up with some answers. Now when someone asks, “What does one do with beeswax?” I can say, “Got a duck to pluck?” I am reluctant, though, to mention the duck plucking, because although I’ve read about it, I’ve never done it, and I don’t want someone coming back to the show next year with some kind of scar, blaming the beekeeper, calling him a quack, because I said something about ducks and beeswax that turned out to be not quite true. After all, I am trying to help. But beeswax seems to be one of those materials that’s been around for so long and used for so many different things that I feel, well, people should know about it. Especially the candles, which I have used. And I’ll tell you something. They burn more brightly. They last longer. And they smell lightly sweet. Like honey.

If you're in the neighborhood, stop by the Poor Artists Sale in Calumet Saturday, December 6, and look for the table with the beeswax.

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Bee
Where the honey flows

Winter

2008-11-20T20:04:00.000-05:00

For the past several days a northwest wind has been racing down from the Arctic across the frozen tundra of Canada, sailing across Lake Superior past my house in a rush of winter. Its mission? To freeze everything in its wake. It is a cold, dry wind sucking up water from the relatively warm lake, turning it into snow. Looking out the window you see nothing; looking out the window again you see a streaming mosaic of white. At times the flakes are so dense you cannot see the trees; at other times it's all as flimsy as fishnet stockings.

Mostly the snow sallies on past, leaving just a smattering of its brethren behind to hold court on the north side of each tree and structure while the vast horde of it hurries on to somewhere else, somewhere around Trenary, Traunik, or Sundell, the so-called highlands where the ground rises up to meet the wind and the wind stalls, abruptly dropping its load with a thump.

This is winter, and it feels like we've started smack dab in the middle of it. Half of the wood pile is protected by a tarp, but half is yet uncovered - except by snow.

The snow shovel is out, but then again it was never put away. The snow scoop leans up against the house next to the rake.

I've switched on the lights in the pump house and crawl space to help keep the water mechanicals warm, and I've plugged in the heat tapes that prevent the water pipes from freezing.

On the radio, the local news begins with school closings.

I've run a pail of water and loaded up on candles, matches, and batteries for when the electricity goes out.

The ice scraper and snow brush have moved from the back of the truck to the front, I've filled the window washer reservoir, the flashlight in the glove compartment works, I've got four new tires (!), and maybe I'll throw in an extra jacket and some snow pants.

In the house, I've lit the small propane wall heater on the far side of the kitchen that helps to keep that end warm. The wood stove is hot, and except for early in the morning the house is toasty. I begin each day by stirring the stove's sleepy-eyed embers and piling on logs and maybe some crushed newspaper. I wrap myself in a blanket, huddle around a cup of hot tea, and wait, listening to the roar of the waves and the wind, a roar that always seems louder in the dark. Snow pellets ping against the window. In each corner of the sofa a dog is curled, and the cat hunkers down in front of the stove. Eventually, flame, and then a fire takes hold. Eventually, we begin to warm. Eventually, someone stirs, and a ripple effect of slow movement ensues. The light comes up outside. With a few extra layers of clothes to put on and boots and a hat and gloves and the one dog's jacket, preparing for the morning outing takes a bit longer. Then, as we step outside, the wind smacks our faces and we wake up.

The Hunt

2008-11-13T11:36:00.000-05:00

The grocery store was uncommonly crowded and busy today. Kind of like it is before the 4th of July, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Only instead of being crowded with frazzled women, it was crowded with glassy-eyed men. Middle-aged men with mustaches and caps, blue jeans and boots, stocking up on chips and canned goods looking slightly out of place but without a doubt knowing where they were going: deer camp.

Deer season starts November 15, and it's as big a holiday as any around these parts.

Pardon my pilfering of a presidential phrase, but let's be clear: This is firearm deer season. Each year it runs from November 15 through November 30. Men and a few women disappear into the woods and hunt deer with firearms (rifles). There are other deer seasons, such as muzzle loader (a different kind of rifle) and bow (or archery) as well as youth (meaning kids only get to hunt), but it is the adult firearm deer season that causes local businesses to shut down, leaving just a rag-tag sign on the door: "Gone hunting." There will be ads in the paper to remind us that such-and-such-a business will be closed Saturday or Monday or Wednesday or whatever day or days due to deer season; women (and maybe a few men) will head south to Appleton or Green Bay to shop, to see a show, to celebrate being a "hunter's widow," or just to have their own kind of fun.

As with most holidays, grocery shopping is an important part of the season. Many hunters congregate at camps out in the woods. These camps are usually a small cabin or two that have been in the family for years, opening their doors, shaking their dust, and airing out each November as they host hunting parties of extended family and friends. Some camps may well be fancy log cabins with indoor plumbing and down comforters and roaring fireplaces and big screen TVs - I don't know - but mostly what you hear about are camps that sound like log shacks listing toward rickety outhouses. The wool blankets have been nibbled by mice, the wood stoves are drafty, the cribbage boards are old and battered. They are places where memories are burnished deep in cheap chipped plates. No matter; when you're at camp you're away from civilization, so hunters pack their pickups with chips and canned goods and beer and soda and maybe a frozen pizza or two.

People around here will tell you hunting is about tradition, and by that they mean it's about something good, something that's worth maintaining and passing on. It's about being with family and friends, about being in the woods, about forging bonds, about solitude and self-reliance. It's about skill, knowledge, patience, an understanding of nature and of deer - an understanding of your prey. It's about biology (after you kill it, you have to gut it, hang it, preserve it), it's about cooking, it's about meat on the table. Each year the local paper dishes out a number of venison recipes, from stew to steak to sausage.

And yes, it's about bagging a buck, the bigger the better, the larger the rack the greater number of points.

I know, hunting is controversial. I grew up in an urban area far from the hunt, thought hunting was just about killing, and always held the belief that that was surely cruel sport. When I first came to the Upper Peninsula on a vacation one August I was worried that if I took a walk in the woods with my dogs one of us might get shot by an overzealous nut in red-checkered plaid and high-laced boots. This did not happen, and over the past few years living here I have learned that in August I am more likely to be startled by a bear in a blueberry patch than a bullet in the butt, and that although in some cases hunting may indeed be a cruel sport, few things are one thing and one thing only. Even among hunters there is controversy, with some old-timers believing their methods were more, shall we say, "sporting" than ones in vogue today, and there seems to be many opinions among hunters on how best to "manage" the deer herd to keep it robust and healthy.

But today I went to the grocery store and roamed the aisles and bumped carts and searched for items and compared prices with men in caps and mustaches and jeans and boots. They are hunters, I am not. Big deal.

Lessons from the Cranberry Bog

2008-11-10T14:50:00.001-05:00

This article originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of the Marquette Monthly.

There are cranberry bogs throughout the Upper Peninsula, I am sure, but my evidence is purely anecdotal. I have heard of bogs in Marquette and Alger counties, down in Nahma, and Whitefish Point is the Cranberry Capital of Michigan, as named this past spring by our esteemed legislature down in Lansing. Many years ago Henry Rowe Schoolcraft recorded "The Three Cranberries, A Chippewa Fable," but try today to get somebody official to talk about cranberries in the U.P. and maybe you'll run up against what I did: silence, referrals to folks on vacation, phone numbers that have been disconnected. So I went straight to the source, which of course, is the bog itself.

I remember my first day in a cranberry bog. I was sitting on an overturned plastic bucket gazing at golden orange and russet trees, trees that formed a ring around the bog, enclosing one in its particular essence. I had been feeling good because it was autumn and the smell of drying leaves and fresh north breezes was strong. I plunged my hands deep into a pail of firm, fresh-picked, blood-red cranberries, let them run through my fingers like jewels, realized being in this bog, miles and worlds away from anywhere, was bliss.

That day I had at first hunted in vain, trudging on and on through the short brambly cranberry bushes, treading carefully on spongy earth, spotting a berry here, a berry there, but not finding that one good spot to stop and pick. Finally, I just sat down on my settin’ bucket and studied the spot in front of me. At first, nothing; then I gently pushed aside some branches and there were berries—one, two, three and more. I picked the nearest ones, then reached deeper into the brambles, finding more and more berries as I went. I leaned forward until I was stretching and reaching for berries almost out of reach. I had to pull back. I took a breath and looked down. Right in front of me I had missed a berry or two. I took another breath and looked up, just for fun. Then I made a quarter turn on my bucket and studied the new spot in front of me. Aha. There they were. Berries—one, two, four and more.

The other morning a friend called and asked if I wanted to go cranberry picking. This bog abutted a river, and we paddled our canoe in as far we could. We had to cross a small area of muck on foot, and my friend, in the lead, got sucked down. The bog had her by the right ankle. She struggled, then we struggled together. We pulled and yanked and almost fell over. Finally, with a big slurp, her foot came free. Then, her other foot went down. We fought back. Free again! Sucked down again! The muck again grabbed her right foot and took it down to within an inch of the top of her black knee-high rubber boot. It was beginning to look as if we’d have to leave the boot behind, but then, with a final grunt and tug, the muck gave up the fight, boot and all. We headed into the bog. I disappeared from view twice, once stepping into water up to my knee and another time sinking to mid-thigh. With few cranberries to be found and perilous ground all around, we quickly headed out of that bog.

Cranberry bogs are fascinating places, and I have seen only these two, the one along the river and the secret bog I was introduced to last year. The ground, if not downright treacherous, is at best spongy and uneven, with dips and hillocks mostly hidden by bushes and long, tall grasses. The berries themselves grow low to the ground on tender green vines, often lying on silvery moss or soggy dead grass and twigs. Last year, in the secret bog, we came across numerous small, fluorescent orange mushrooms. In the river bog there are a number of hip-high wild roses waving their hips high, the hips looking surprisingly similar to the low-lying cranberries. The secret bog lies hidden in the woods, a reminder, perhaps, of what used to be—a glacier, a lake. A friend who has picked there for many years relates that there used to be a pond, with ducks, and then she tells the tale of a family in a row boat that went cranberry picking one day and never returned.

Over just north of Whitefish Point is Centennial Cranberry Farm. They annually harvest tons of cranberries using the flooding method, which means they flood their bogs just prior to harvest time, using machines to loosen the berries from the vines. Cranberries float, and once they’re floating workers rake them to one spot where they will be loaded onto conveyors that will move them into a truck that will take them to a processing plant. The farm also dry picks some berries to sell fresh in their store and through their website, www.centennialcranberry.com.

Just to our south, Wisconsin produces more cranberries than any other state in the Union. According to the website of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association: "Wisconsin cranberry growers annually harvest enough cranberries to supply every man, woman and child in the world with 26 cranberries."

My take from the cranberry bog is, at best, a small bucketful. Some people make cranberry sauce; I make cranberry bread and cranberry juice. Cranberries are easily frozen, and of course one can string them up with popcorn for decoration. My favorite recipe calls for slicing each berry in half, one cupful of half berries per loaf of bread. Add to that a cupful of hammer-shelled and chopped walnuts, and you have a nice evening's activity.

Cranberries are loaded with Vitamin C, fiber, antioxidants, and all that good stuff that helps to keep down the bad cholesterol and bolster the good, and they have a long reputation of relieving urinary tract infections to boot. They are native to North America, and wild cranberries are just as large and sour as their cultivated brethren.

Now, in case you missed them, here are the lessons I’ve learned in a cranberry bog.

Be still; the berries may come to you.

Reach, then pull back—you may have missed a few.

Keep a friend with you, preferably one who is strong enough to pull you out of the muck and who you will always be happy to pull out of a sinkhole.

If, when in a cranberry bog, you sit still, reach out, pull back, get free of the muck, and still you have no berries, move on. There’s another bog out there.

If someone picks more berries than you, don’t worry about it. Be happy with what you have. Go home. Enjoy.

Tyoga Trail: Part Three

2008-11-03T10:09:00.005-05:00

My autumn walks on the Tyoga Historical Pathway have taken a different turn. First, for two of the three walks I have not been alone. Second, I have been off-trail.

The reason for two of the three walks was to gather information for an article about the trail. Here's what's happening:

exact locations of Tyoga's buildings and rail line are being identified;
the trail is being routinely cleared of brush and blow-downs;
trees are being identified and some marked with name plates and numbers that will correspond to a brochure;
birds in the area are being identified and catalogued;
wild flowers and plants are being catalogued;
and a book about the Tyoga Lumber Co. is in the works.

One interesting thing learned: Liquor was not commonly allowed in a lumber camp. Apparently, sawing down huge trees in the woods was deemed dangerous enough without throwing alcohol into the mix. But, now, if there was a town built up around and alongside the camp ... that was a different matter. Then, there could be alcohol. So could it be that the town of Tyoga existed simply to afford the lumberjacks a Saturday night toot?

The reason for the third walk was to get all that information out of my head and to get back to what I love about the trail - its remoteness, its mystery, its untold stories. As well, though, I needed to coalesce, to fit all this new information together with my old perceptions and figure out how to write the article, where to start.

The day of the third walk was the day of the first snow. It came down in sudden squalls like puffs of icy smoke. The few days preceding had been cold and rainy; now it seemed we were edging ever-so-slightly closer to winter, to November, to a change of season. In winter, Tyoga is hard to get to. Its access road is not plowed, and I do not know who, if anyone, goes out there on a snow machine or snow shoes or cross country skis. So on the day of the first snow, I knew that soon Tyoga would be buried, and I would not be walking the trail for a number of months.

Tyoga is spectacular on a dark, snow swirly, late autumn day. The trail is damp, slick, and laden with leaves, an occasional bright splotch of red and vibrant green moss edge out the potential dreariness. Odd little Martian-like plants, wheat-colored, probably some kind of spindly mushroom, teeter up out of the thick moss, bobbing their heads, stretching an inch or two high. Hard crystals of snow, like pale glass beads, huddle in small depressions and pockets of leaves, massing together in coldness rather than warmth. I am struck, as always, by the amount of new growth that comes up from old growth - the ferns curling up out of jagged stumps, the moss and mushrooms that cover boulders and fallen trees and downed branches, the saplings that grow straight up out of a bed of rotting pine, the sheer mass of leaves underfoot, feeding it all, all I do see, all I don't see.

And this, I thought, you don't see in the city. In the city, you are not allowed to see that life springs from death. Or maybe just that the line between death and life is messier than we think. In the city, if a tree falls it is hauled away and its stump ground down or poisoned. Autumn leaves are blown into piles and carted away just moments after we revel in their beauty. And so we miss the true beauty, the fading of color, the drying, the decomposition and the slow emergence of life once again. Of course, things have to be kept orderly in a city, and in this, I'm sure, something is gained, but also, no doubt, something is lost.

One of the people I walked Tyoga with is a student at Northern Michigan University. She mentioned the book "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv. Another was the man who a few years ago kindled fresh interest in the trail, who recruited people to clear brush, and who started investigating anew Tyoga's history. He told about being on the trail with a grandchild and encouraging him to use the blue "confidence markers" to stay on the trail - the same markers I was using this spring. With him and an archeologist (who was uncovering 100-year-old foundations) I went off-trail in Tyoga, and that surprised me. What is it about me, I wondered, that had me assuming one should not venture off the trail?

On my third autumn walk in Tyoga, when I was solo, I did not hesitate to veer off-trail to explore whatever caught my eye - most likely the underside of the stump of a fallen tree - and with the snow squalling around me and winter coming, I felt an uncommon peace. A few days later, I wrote down this quote from "Last Child in the Woods," which Louv attributed to Bernard Berenson:

"I had no need for words. It and I were one."

A Copper Consciousness

2008-10-26T09:53:00.004-04:00

Dawn, one morning
A still sunken sun and a sky-high slip of a moon provide just enough light to walk the wooded path to the spot on the river bank where I can see the frosted-over cranberry bog. The sky is clear, but I think I hear rain falling, but what I hear are birch leaves, pouring down, covering the path. The light comes up with a tinge of copper. Leaves, no longer vibrant with fall color but not yet done, are a bit dull, like 1973 pennies. Yellow birch leaves, dullish red maples and oaks (like dried blood), lightly browned pine needles (like sautéed garlic), and those yet curling, cinnamon dusted ferns mix with this particular morning light, this coppery burnishment that moves us into the day.

Dawn, a different morning
I arrive at work as the sun rises over the harbor. I cross the street and strong shafts of light shoot straight across the water, straight up the street, straight through me, straight into the red sandstone blocks that make up St. Peter Cathedral. My eye is trapped. The church, tottering on the corner, is glowing copperishly. I think of a book I am reading, a novel that ties together families and generations, all of whom live and work and love and die in this town whose street I am crossing, and suddenly I know that Molly, one of the characters in the book, saw this same light at some point in her life; she saw the cathedral glow.

A different book
I am reading a borrowed book, and it is about copper. One chapter tells the tale of a copper boulder that once rested quietly on a river bank in the far north woods, the tale of a two-ton rock, a mass of native copper, a benign boulder, and how it ended up being bought, sold, moved, fussed over, argued about, transported, confiscated, and put on display. Today this boulder, which has traveled rivers and great lakes and seen Detroit, is stored away in the basement of a museum in Washington D.C. A few years back, a Native American tribe from the native copper's native land asked that the boulder be returned. The request was denied. The boulder, they said, is not sacred.

23 skidoo
The title of the lecture indicates we'll hear about ancient copper mining on the northern tip of this peninsula where I live, but after more than an hour of talk about Brittany and Orkney petroglyphs, maps of the Atlantic, and 23 oarsmen, I am ready to jump ship. When technical difficulties cause the lecturer to say, "Let's take a break," I do. Crossing the parking lot I hear faint music. I stop. I look around. Through broad second floor windows on the building I just left I see people dancing. I listen carefully. It sounds like "My Blue Heaven," Frank Sinatra.

Night
On the way home I stop along the lake to gaze at the stars. The Big Dipper is low, dipping toward the water. The Milky Way arches overhead. Back where I had come from, back in town, coppery orange lights glow and shimmer, kind of twinkling. I briefly wonder why non-twinkling lights should look is if they are twinkling. Is it the distance? An air quality? The lake? The water? No matter. I'd rather be here, wondering, than anywhere else, knowing.

References:
Dawn, a different morning
A different book

The Many Tales of Pirate Dan Seavey

2008-10-23T14:43:00.000-04:00

Dan Seavey: This article originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of the Marquette Monthly.

Trying to track the tales of Roarin’ Dan Seavey, the Great Lakes Pirate, is like being on a tiny ship in a November gale on the north end of Lake Michigan, searching for port through a kaleidoscope. By all accounts Seavey was a rogue, a thief, a drinker, a fighter, a man involved in such nefarious activities as bootlegging, prostitution, piracy, and murder. He was also a prankster, a legitimate businessman, an expert seaman, a U.S. Deputy Marshal, and a man who treated children kindly by giving them ice cream, apples, root beer, and the good advice not to steal.

“He was just an ordinary guy,” said Dale Vinette, 93, who was one of the boys Seavey treated to tales and root beer down at the docks in Escanaba, Michigan, in the 1920s. At that time, Seavey, born in 1865, was well into his middle age and perhaps mellowing a bit. “He wasn’t rough-talking,” Vinette said, “he was very mild-mannered, quiet, I think he kept his talents as a thief undercover. He was only in jail once in his life.”

And that once didn’t last very long. It was, however, Seavey’s most infamous escapade: the alleged 1908 theft of the Nellie Johnson and her cargo of cedar posts. It was this scrape that would add piracy to Seavey’s legend, and to this day he is the only man ever arrested for piracy on the Great Lakes. It is a particularly murky story, and recounting it feels like trying to hold water in a leaky bucket on that tiny ship tossed in a storm. Various reports of the incident diverge in details large and small, but here is what seems to be agreed upon: On June 17, 1908, Dan Seavey sailed the lumber-laden schooner Nellie Johnson to Chicago where he tried to sell her cargo. A number of days later, Seavey was arrested for piracy aboard his yacht the Wanderer by Federal Marshal Tom Currier, who was aboard the revenue cutter Tuscarora, which had been dispatched to hunt down Seavey.

But where, exactly, did the Nellie Johnson disappear from? Was it Montague, Michigan, as reported by a June 30, 1908, New York Times article? Or Grand Haven, Michigan, as more recent accounts state. And how did Seavey come to be in control of the ship? According to the transcript of “Captain Dan Seavey – Great Lakes Pirate,” a 1953 WDBC (Escanaba) radio broadcast, “… Dan weighted down the captain with some iron chains and tossed him over the side.” Other accounts are less dramatic and baldly suggest that Seavey drank the Nellie Johnson’s captain and crew under the table before sailing off in their boat.

Everyone agrees that Seavey made it to Chicago, but whether he actually sold the cargo of cedar posts is a mystery. According to some accounts he did, according to others he did not. Sale or no sale, Seavey did sail back to Frankfort, Michigan, and at some point the Tuscarora began its pursuit, apparently having been notified of the theft of the Nellie Johnson by her captain, R.J. McCormick. A 2005 article in the Wisconsin Maritime Museum’s Anchor News put it this way:

“The owner and skipper of the schooner, Captain R.J. McCormick, found the schooner missing when he returned from a visit to the local bars. Because of his inebriated state, he had a difficult time trying to convince the local authorities that Nellie Johnson had actually been stolen.”

The popular story is that Seavey lay low in Frankfort, having hidden the Nellie Johnson upriver. But The New York Times preferred this tale:

“After a chase up and down Lake Michigan, Seavey abandoned the schooner at South Haven and went on board his own yacht, the Wanderer, in an endeavor to escape.”

Seavey eventually did attempt to escape the Tuscarora in the Wanderer, but how, exactly, was he caught? There are many possibilities. From the WDBC radio broadcast:

“A revenue cutter, Tuscarora, lay in wait out of sight just north of Port Betsie. Dan led the cutter a merry chase. He shot out the red buoy which marked the harbor and dropped a red lantern on a barrel into the water. The Tuscarora ran aground.

“But the wind changed, old Dan was a goner. The cutter fired a shot across his bow and took the Great Lakes Pirate to Chicago in heavy irons.”

The September 2006 edition of Wisconsin’s Underwater Heritage, the newsletter of the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association, had this recount:

“ … his vessel was no match for the steamer Tuscarora, so Dan was soon overtaken, boarded and arrested for piracy.”

From Anchor News:

“Tuscarora gave chase and captured Seavey … During the chase, the intense heat, generated by the boilers, burned the paint off Tuscarora’s smokestack.”

And The New York Times:

“ ‘Wanderer ahoy!’ bellowed Capt. McCormick of the Tuscarora through his speaking trumpet, and followed the hail by a fierce command to stop.
“Seavey only took another tack. Deputy Currier gave the order and a shot from the cutter’s forward gun went whizzing over the water past Seavey and his craft. That ended the chase.”

Agreed: Seavey was caught, arrested for piracy, and taken to Chicago to be charged and tried. What happened next is, once again, open to speculation. Seavey was not charged with piracy (or maybe he was?), but it doesn’t really matter, for in a few days he was let go and everyone agrees he returned home happy and noticeably well-dressed. Some speculate he was actually part owner of the Nellie Johnson; some say that McCormick, encouraged by his inebriated state, gave the ship to Seavey to repay an old debt. And there’s always this: Seavey knew a good lawyer …

Vinette lets loose a soft chuckle and recalls that Seavey said he won the boat in a poker game.

But what Vinette remembers best is the root beer. He told of Seavey coming to port in Escanaba with a cargo of fruit from Washington Island or Benton Harbor that he would then sell to a wholesaler in town. After tying up his boat, he’d head straight to Blue Ribbon Johnson’s Saloon.

“We went fishing down at the Merchant Dock,” Vinette said, recalling the names of some of his boyhood pals. “When [Seavey] would leave his boat, we’d go over and steal apples and peaches.”

Seavey caught on to this, and his solution worked well for everyone.

“When we’d go down to the lake, we’d go by a place called Blue Ribbon Johnson’s Saloon. It was on Main Street,” Vinette said. “That was prohibition days, and we had ‘blind pigs’ in Escanaba. These fellows had all owned saloons before the ban on liquor came out. So they ran these ‘blind pigs.’ At Ribbon Johnson’s they had a big oak root beer barrel on the bar. We’d go in the side door and see if there was anyone in there we knew. Dan Seavey used to hang around there ... and Dan would see us and he’d say, ‘Okay you kids, stay here now, I don’t want you to steal my apples. I’ll buy you a root beer instead.’ So he used to buy us root beer. We got to know when he was in town, so we’d purposefully go by that saloon.”

The early background on Seavey’s life seems clear. He left his boyhood home of Maine at age 13 and joined the Navy at 18, serving for three years before taking on a deputy marshal position with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, working in Oklahoma and Wisconsin, reportedly watching for trespassers and smugglers on the reservations. By the late 1800s Seavey was in Milwaukee where he owned a farm, ran a tavern, was married with two children. But he abandoned this life, and some accounts blame beer king Frederick Pabst for Seavey’s sudden departure from Milwaukee, claiming that Pabst urged Seavey to go off in search of gold in Alaska. According to the WDBC transcript, “… the lure of easy money drew him to Alaska during the Gold Rush. He sold his saloons, fish boats, farms and went north to the gold fields. He came back broke.”

In 1900 Seavey washed ashore in Escanaba, and the legend begins.

“Dan Seavey was a lake captain with a rather spotty reputation … His raucous personality and outrageous adventures earned him the nicknames ‘Roaring Dan’ and ‘Dan the Pirate!’ During the early decades of the 20th century, he became a feared and famous troublemaker in many ports around Lake Michigan …” (From Wisconsin’s Underwater Heritage.)

Marquette’s own maritime historian Frederick Stonehouse, quoted in a 2007 Chicago Sun-Times article, called Seavey “a low-life scum.” In an e-mail correspondence he amended that to “low-life petty thief,” claiming Seavey “would sell a bag of returnable bottles if he could get away with it … to call him a pirate demeans the word.”

But whichever bottle you choose to look at Seavey’s life through, it plays out like a brawl in a Western saloon. There are a number of tales of fights Seavey engaged in, all with a familiar crack, bam, slug, and pow:

“The battle started just after dinner. Several hours later the saloon was a total wreck. Every now and then the fighters would stop for a drink of whiskey.”

This tale is from the WDBC broadcast, and it describes a fight in Naubinway, during the time when Seavey was wearing his deputy’s badge. He was in town to arrest the man he was now fighting.

“Dan shoved the outlaw against the bar, breaking most of the bottles. Captain Dan became worried for fear there wouldn’t be enough alcohol left and decided to finish the fight. He knocked the man down and shoved a piano on the outlaw’s neck.”

The “outlaw” died. As the story continues, “Dan handed him over to be buried, sent in his report, and went scott free.”

In addition to piracy, thievery, fighting, and heavy drinking, all seem to agree that Seavey was a bootlegger and a pimp, of sorts, running boats of ill-repute off the Garden Peninsula. His antics have provided fodder for many curious reporters, some making more of the tales than others, and some, perhaps, even doing their part to create the legend. Here’s another excerpt from the WDBC radio broadcast:

“Captain Seavey had a large flour sack full of Indian skulls, dug up from a burial ground in the wilds of the north. He used to carry some of the skulls into the semi-darkness of a Frankfort saloon and scare the daylights out of the drunks.

“Dan took great delight in walking up to some guy and placing a grinning skull on the bar alongside of him. After greeting the barfly, he would yell in a horrified voice, ‘Yeowww. This is my last drink. Look there behind you.’

“After a hurried look, the fellow would fall off his stool and either leave by the door screaming or dive through the closed window.”

Of such stuff legends are born.

Carl Behrend, a Munising songwriter and folk singer, has penned a rather melancholy tune about Dan Seavey the Great Lakes Pirate. The refrain goes: “The only thing about a pirate’s life, the good times just don’t last.” And as well storms end and tiny ships come to rest, whether in a safe port or at the bottom of the sea. Seavey spent his last years in a nursing home and, at age 83, was laid to rest in a Marinette, Wisconsin, cemetery. By all accounts he was penniless.

Rights

2008-10-22T08:36:00.000-04:00

If I have rights, why shouldn't you have the same rights? If you have rights, why shouldn't I have the same rights? What are the criteria? What judgments can I make about you and you about me?

If I have rights, and you are given the same rights as me, how does that diminish what I have? If you have rights, and I am granted those same rights, how does that diminish what you have? Is there a limited supply? Not enough to go around?

Mystery & Light

2008-10-10T14:39:00.002-04:00

Paulding Light: This article originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of the Marquette Monthly.

Up ahead, deep in the dark woods, a light appears; a pinprick of white, barely visible. Without warning it expands, seems to be hurtling toward you, brightly shining, glowing, growing. Just as suddenly it retreats and dims. Subsides to a pinprick; is gone. This is the Paulding Light, Version 1.

We had seen the light as soon as we pulled up to the barricade at the end of the dirt road. Looking straight ahead, down the dark tunnel in front of us, a tunnel created by the lane cut through the thick woods to accommodate power lines, the light had appeared, as if on cue. My buddy cut the truck’s motor, turned off the headlights.

“There it is,” he said. “The Paulding Light.”

We got out of the truck and moved in front of the low metal barricade, leaned back against it. It was dusk, and the bright light rushing toward us obscured everything around it. Once the light disappeared, a vague glow hovered in the sky.

"Whoa,” I said. “That was weird.”

The Paulding Light, seen from this one spot in the woods a few miles south of Paulding in Ontonagon County, Michigan, is a nightly phenomenon. It is also a decades-old mystery, a compilation of vague ghost stories, or maybe just car lights passing on a highway. Does it matter? Every night, people come to watch.

“There it is again.”

This time the light was red, a dim dot of harlot red at the end of the tunnel. It grew slightly brighter, slightly larger, but, unlike the white light, did not fast-forward toward us. In fact, this light did not seem to move at all. Then it faded. It felt like an eye test of sorts, as if I were at the optometrist’s office and needed to raise my hand or click a clicker to indicate yes, I saw the light, the Paulding Light, Version 2.

A second car pulled up, its headlights cutting through the mist. There was a murmur of voices, car doors slamming, then quiet. Dark.

Many accounts of and explanations for the Paulding Light can be found on the Web. No, the light is not always the same - though some say it is - and no, it doesn't appear every night - though some say it does. Some claim it is just the headlights and tail lights of cars traveling on Highway 45 a number of miles to the north. Others say it is the earth, belching luminous gases. There are alien theories, reports of “shadow people,” and something about the spirit of a disgruntled Native American dancing on the power lines.

And then, of course, there are the ghost stories, most of which rely on the fact that during logging days there was a rail line in the area. Ghost Number One is a railroad switchman who was sandwiched to death between two trains as he signaled in vain with his lantern. Apparently, yet tonight, he’s still signaling. Ghost Number Two is a murdered trainman, and Number Three is a murdered mail carrier/sled dog musher. These two ghosts are looking for their respective murderers, at night, with lanterns. Ghost Number Four is a father looking for his lost child, and Ghost Number Five is a young boy looking for his sister, a poor soul who was decapitated by a train as she played on the tracks. Could it be him with the lantern? Searching at night for his sister's head?

“Have you seen the light?”

Another vehicle had pulled up, dispensing a gang of women who were eager to witness the Paulding Light. They were led by a veteran, a woman from Minocqua, Wisconsin, who said she had visited the light many times over the years, too many times to count. To her it is a deep mystery, and the car light theory? Bunk. Definitely not car lights, she said. Why? Well, the last time she and her husband were here the light moved rapidly toward them, coming as close as that second pole there. No doubt. Indisputable. The light was right there. Also, she has seen tandem lights, green and red, swinging to and fro. She and her husband have shot video of the light; and she brings her friends and neighbors to see the light. Car lights? No way. She can attest to the Paulding Light, versions 3, 4, 6, 7, and 23.

The red light appeared. The women, clustered behind the barricade, oohed and aahed. The light, they said, was moving oddly, jumping all over.

“Did you see that?! Did you see how it moved?”

Suddenly, I realized the light was moving. It seemed to veer up and to the left. Then it disappeared, and I was not sure what I had seen. I’ve been told - and the accounts are legion - that on summer nights this spot at the end of the dirt road gets crowded, becomes a party. No doubt. Beer, dope, the woods, a light, the power of suggestion. My buddy, who has seen the light many times, claims he’s seen it do all kinds of crazy things, whirly things, spinning-type things, very hmmm-type things. It’s quite a tourist attraction, this light, and up the road or on the Web you can get your souvenirs. Hats, T-shirts, key chains, all adorned with little glow-in-the-dark ghosts.

The white light appeared again, shot toward us, faded, disappeared. The red light came and went, and it did repeatedly move up and off to the left, sometimes quickly, sometimes lazily floating. Chatter and laughter flowed. A comment was made about how it was like that back page in the Sunday comics, you know, where you put your nose right up to the page then slowly move the page away, staying focused on that one spot, and ... an eruption of laughter drowned out the rest of that musing. We all knew what she was getting at. Sometimes, what looks like one thing can turn into another. It’s a matter of perspective. It’s M.C. Escher. It’s the tri-fold trick on the back cover of Mad Magazine.

One of the women announced: “It’s just car lights.”

I have read that the light has been the subject of a Ripley’s Believe it or Not investigation and that $100,000 has been offered to anyone who can prove the light’s origin. Is this true? If so, please direct me to the details. As well, I have read that the light has been subject to the scrutiny of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. But I missed that air date.

Maybe you’re thinking there must not be much to do around here if people are driving into the woods at night just to look at and talk about car lights. Maybe you’re right. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a forest, surrounded by ghost towns, dilapidated cemeteries, abandoned rail lines, overgrown two-tracks, bars, trees, bear, deer, wolves, ghosts, and casinos. It is dark enough at night to see the Milky Way, and sometimes the Milky Way is so close you can just reach out and touch it.

So, what is the Paulding Light? Will we ever know? My theory is it is all of the above - and more. It is our imagination; it is a rational explanation. It is a stranger’s altered view; or your own memory of something similar. It’s what you’ve heard; it’s what you’re told; it’s what you believe; it’s what you see. It is the dark, and it is the light.

Not my video - taken by lionstar and posted on YouTube May 2006

Fishing

2008-10-03T12:56:00.000-04:00

Most days, of course, can be vastly improved by a walk in the woods. Especially during a presidential election year when certain words and phrases become inescapable and ultimately meaningless (maverick, Main Street, Wall Street, Joe Six Pack, crisis) and especially when it's October and the Chicago Cubs are still playing baseball. That scenario - the Cubs in the playoffs - is begining to remind me of the small town you drive through, blink, oops, you missed it. But there's no blinking away a presidential campaign. Except maybe in the woods, alongside the Ontonagon River, just north of the falls, where the fish aren't biting, at least not today.

Walking may take you farther into the woods and further away from cacophony, but sitting transports you. You don't have to move. You don't have to think. As a matter of fact, it may be better if once in a while you don't. At first it seems still; what is there? There's nothing. A leaf drifting past. A river flowing past. A rock being smoothed by water. Bubbles forming and popping in little eddies. A seed pod nodding on the end of a dried stalk. A current of air pushing along a scent of damp leaves, mud, cool water. The sound of a partridge lifting itself off the ground. A soft rustle of leaves; leaves that are turning and drying but leaves that are not yet ready to let go.

Each tree is becoming distinct, shedding its mask of green, beginning to show its true color. Is it yellow? Red? Orange? Gold? Rust? Umber? Brown? Green? Why is it they turn different colors at different times? The young maples and birches seem to go first; the old oaks last.

There are layers of fallen trees, decaying trees, one on top of the other, and from them grow new trees and mosses and mushrooms and ferns, straight up from the dead. There are stones and pebbles and ripples in the sand. A fishing line flashes through the air and lands with a soft plop, a worm on a hook disappearing. The river moves slow, fast, in one direction, then another, moving around and over rocks and boulders and logs, always finding a way and always talking about it in gurgles and splashes, even going around in circles, still moving forward because it's impossible not to.

I watch the man fishing and wonder what he will find.

Harvest Moon

2008-09-15T19:10:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend the winds turned and began blowing in off the lake. This cooled things down and made the promise of autumn secure. It also caused waves to crash over the spit of sand that develops each summer at the mouth of the river, eventually sealing it off from the lake, allowing the river to rise and spread out like a happy bubble, a small pond aspiring to bigness. Then, helped by shovels or nature or both, the mouth opens, and the bubble pops. The big pond water swirls out to the lake and is gone.

But over the weekend the river gulped up fresh lake water, soaked up rain, and kept its mouth shut. This morning all that water buried the river's small grassy island and flooded the cranberry bog. In the air was a strong smell of fish.

Throughout the woods there is a fading of green. A red leaf, a trio of pale yellow leaves, a branch of rusting leaves. Ferns that have all summer spread out beneath the pines like a thick coat of green icing have drawn back into curls of cinnamon. The grass browned long ago, during the sereness of August, and although September's rains give it a burst of bright green hope, it won't last. Soon it will be covered with an icy rime.

No longer do our days last forever, and it was dark when I got home from work last night. I switched on the light by the counter and discovered that during my absence a jar of soup had been delivered, enough for a hearty meal. A meal full of carrots, corn, peas, celery, tomato, meatballs, chick peas, pasta, onion, zucchini, and kidney beans.

Last week I picked apples from a tree on my friend's farm. The lower reaches of some trees had been plucked clean by deer, and some trees had just not produced, but there was one tree on the edge of a field full of small, slightly tart, dull red apples streaked with lemon yellow from stem to sepal. On a crisp morning, I filled a plastic bag. Once home I plopped the bag on a shelf on the front porch. Now every time I step through the doorway, I am enveloped by a sharp juicy scent.

About mid-morning the river was flowing in two directions, in and out. In on the south side and out on the north side. The next time I looked, the island was back in plain sight. The water was still. Winds had shifted slightly westerly; apparently the mouth of the river had opened, the pond had drained, returned to normal, returned to river. The long, mossy, grey-green grasses of the island arched up and over and back to the ground. By mid-afternoon there was a hint of shadow, a hint of sun breaking through a deadpan sky.

Before light this morning we started a fire in the woodstove, my dogs and cat and I, because we knew it would be this type of day. A day going nowhere, doing nothing. A day with a strong smell of fish, a trace of wood smoke, a hot bowl of soup, a tart apple, and curls of cinnamon.

Where the buffalo roam

2008-09-01T13:05:00.001-04:00

Beaver Grove Bison: This article originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Marquette Monthly.

If I say, “Picture a buffalo herd,” does your mind go to the open plains of the Dakotas where grass and sky stretch beyond the horizon, beyond imagination? Do you see hundreds of buffalo idly grazing on a grassy expanse? Do you see an uncountable number galloping as one in a billow of dust, a long snaky line of shaggy brown with no beginning, no end, trailing off into a sunset? How about a handful of about 18 buffalo tearing across a stubbled field surrounded by woods of pine and maple?

If you can picture the latter, maybe you’ve been to Beaver Grove Bison on County Road 480 just south of Marquette, Michigan, and perhaps Jerri Haglund was tossing hamburger buns over a 7-foot fence as the bison came running, because the bison love hamburger buns.

Buffalo and bison are one and the same. Bison is the scientific term; buffalo is the term used by early explorers, those who saw a beast that looked like the native buffaloes of India and Africa and who perhaps heard the French calling them “les boeufs.” In those days, the American buffalo herds were vast, spanning a range from the Rocky Mountains eastward, trickling past the Mississippi to the Atlantic, stretching from Canada into Mexico. In 1800, the estimated number of buffalo was as high as 60 million, and those commanding herds are etched into our collective memory, stirring up feelings of pioneer spirit, freedom, and wildness. It is a messy fact that our European-American ancestors killed these buffalo mercilessly, not hunting them for food or warmth but simply to get rid of them. By the 1880s they had nearly succeeded.

Luckily, 100 or so years later, ranchers in the Great Plains began raising bison for meat, and buffalo started staging a comeback, of sorts. Now one can find bison ranches in all 50 states and buffalo burgers at the county fair. The National Bison Association estimates that in 2002 there were 500,000 bison in North America with 232,000 on ranches in the U.S. In the Upper Peninsula there are at least 168 bison, including the 18 in Beaver Grove and a herd of 150 at the Circle K Ranch in Rudyard, which Orville and Susan Kabat started in 1988. (There is also a rumor of three buffalo in Champion, but the rumor is also that they are kept as pets.)

Jerri and her brother, Bob Haglund, started Beaver Grove Bison about eight years ago with seven animals bought from the Circle K. Jerri and Bob grew up in the house they live in, and, Jerri said, they have always had animals. Their dad, now deceased, was a hobby farmer, raising cows and horses, mostly as pets. Bringing in buffalo was Bob’s idea.

“Since I was a kid I wanted them,” Bob said. “I was fascinated by them. … They’re unique. Something no one else has.”

As a kid, Bob never heard of anyone raising buffalo on a farm. All he heard was that buffalo are wild and can’t be controlled. Then he noticed a small herd at the Bahrman’s place in Skandia. Suddenly the idea that buffalo could be kept on a farm didn’t seem so farfetched, but convincing others would take a while. Although his idea of raising buffalo took hold in the 1980s, Bob said serious research didn’t start until about 10 years later.

“We got a computer, and Jerri got a cowboys and Indians book, and on the back it had the website for the National Buffalo Association,” Bob said. “So we went on there and started doing research, and we started going around, hitting farms, like Orv’s and in Wisconsin.”

Still, some people told Bob he couldn’t do it. Increasingly his response became: “Well look it, people do it.”

For now, both Haglunds work other jobs, Jerri in a bank and Bob construction, but they hope someday to concentrate on the farm and the bison. Bob’s fascination with buffalo has not waned.

“Every day you learn something new about them, they do something different,” he said. “They’re fun. … A lot of it’s body language, the way they handle themselves.”

Bison are raised as naturally as possible without antibiotics or added hormones. Year-round they live outside, grazing on grass, sometimes hay, and, in Beaver Grove, the occasional hamburger bun.

“They’re pretty much maintenance-free,” Jerri said, “as long as the fence is up.”

The fence surrounds the 30 acres of pasture upon which the buffalo roam. Although kept captive by fences, bison are not considered domesticated animals. As Jerri said, “The buffalo still have that wild streak,” and you can see it in their eyes. Occasionally the Haglund’s main bull gets that “look” and charges the fence, but as yet has not broken through. Jerri warns that “when his tail goes up and curls, then he’s mad.”

Susan Kabat said that one thing that has impressed her over the years is the bison’s independence. They are hardy, she said, never getting sick and having no trouble giving birth on their own. And although not native to Michigan, bison seem well suited to the vagaries of U.P. weather.

“They like the winter,” Jerri said. “They love the winter. When it’s storming they’ll face the storm. They won’t go in the barn. … They stand around in the rain. … They’re outside all the time.”

Jerri enjoys learning about the bison by observing them. She recalled a time this past winter when Bob was looking for one of the calves. “He’s like, ‘OK, where’s that calf?’ Well, the mother had it buried in the hay. It was laying in there and she covered it with hay and she’s laying right next to it and just its little head was sticking out. She was keeping it warm. They’re very protective of their babies.”

Bison are huge animals with a mature bull weighing up to 2,000 pounds. They generally are not mature until eight years of age and can live up to 25 years. Cows can be bred at two years and may have a calf a year throughout their lives. In general, it is young bulls that are killed for their meat; the Haglunds take their bison to Rainbow Packing in Escanaba, maybe four or five a year, Jerri said. The meat can be purchased from the Marquette Food Co-op or directly from the farm. At the Circle K, the Kabats’ 150 bison graze on 800 acres, and they process about 50 animals each year.

“We’ve developed the market in the eastern U.P.,” Susan said, selling ground buffalo and steak cuts to restaurants and retail outlets, including Marquette Meats. “Once people try it, they’re hooked,” she added.

Both the Haglunds and the Kabats conduct tours of their operations. The Haglunds participate in farm tours conducted by the Co-op, and on those days Jerri grills buffalo burgers for attendees to sample. They also operate a burger stand at the Hiawatha Music Festival, the Marquette County Fair, and the U.P. State Fair. “We’re getting a lot of repeat customers,” Jerri said. And take note: If you ate what you thought was a regular hamburger or cheeseburger bought from the stand, it was not. It was a buffalo burger. Megan Penney of the Co-op said that their bison sales are steady at 10 to 15 pounds a week. The meat costs about a dollar more per pound than ground beef, but “the people who like it, love it,” she said.

There are a number of things that make bison meat attractive. Although similar to beef, bison is leaner, with fewer calories and less cholesterol. The animals are allowed to live naturally and to remain wild. Local bison have nourished themselves on local grass and hay and apples, and local bison have weathered the U.P.’s harsh elements and thrived on its fresh, sweet air. To eat an animal raised in such a way, it seems to me, might be to share in its fortitude.

But, how does buffalo taste?

“A lot of people are skeptical of trying it,” Bob said. “Any time you put ‘wild’ to something ... buffalo are wild. They got that wild taste.”

I tried a buffalo burger cooked up by Jerri at the Marquette County Fair. It was very good, slightly spicy. I also tried buffalo jerky from the Marquette Meats on U.S. 41, between Younkers and Super One. After a sample taste, I bought a small bagful and, much to my dismay, ate it all before dinner. One night I grilled a buffalo burger at home. Keeping in mind the leanness of the meat, I brushed both sides with a teaspoon of olive oil before putting it on the rack over the coals. I cooked the meat to a fine medium rare, about four or five minutes per side. The result was juicy and delicious.

At Marquette Meats, a mounted buffalo head from the Circle K is on display, surrounded by photos of the herd. Also posted is a diagram of uses for each part of the buffalo. Native Americans of the Great Plains hunted buffalo not only for food, but for everything from shoes to cradles to pipes to tools to jewelry and soap and clothing. Today, that particular concept of “reuse” has been lost, and other than occasionally mounting a head to be sold for decoration and the rare hide tanned for a robe (available at Chocolay River Trading Co. in Harvey), many usable parts of the bison go unused. Jerri explained that most tanners don’t have the equipment for tanning a buffalo hide due to its thickness. Now imagine a hide so warm it can look straight into a U.P. winter storm.

A dirt road leading to Gentz’s Golf Course runs alongside the Haglunds’ property. Traveling down this road you may catch a glimpse of a strange yet familiar creature. He’s got a huge head, a big shaggy body, skinny legs, a twitching tail, and, if you get close enough, a piercing eye. You’ve just seen a buffalo, right here at home in the U.P.

Beaver Grove Bison is at 336 County Road 480, 906-249-1126
National Bison Association
County Fair

Taking my story to the roving rabbis

2008-08-26T15:49:00.000-04:00

In the past few weeks I have listened to the stories of a 93-year-old man who grew up in a port town on Lake Michigan and who knew the one and only Great Lakes Pirate; I have heard the tales of a middle-aged couple who are embarking on the adventure of refurbishing and restocking (organically) an old general store at a dusty crossroads in the middle of nowhere; I have heard how a brother and sister came to be raising buffalo in the north woods; I have learned how one young man has been spending the past few months digging himself a home in a hillside; I have heard about the mystery of the Paulding Light; I have learned of the mysterious act of "turning the knot" when one tats. This is just what comes to mind, and what I can share. Being knee-deep in other people's stories, like wading in a cool lake on a hot day, suits me.

Then the roving rabbis came to town, and I knew it was time to tell my story.

How it started
A small item on the religion page in the Saturday paper caught my eye. It was eight inches of type in two columns capped with the headline: Traveling rabbis visit U.P. A small inset photo with the caption Sebbag and Bergovoy showed two young men with beards and broad-rimmed black hats. Butch's repetitive line in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" came to mind: Who are those guys? Stories about Jews and Judaism are rare in the local paper, even on the religion page.

The article began:

Two young Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis are visiting the Upper Peninsula as part of a summerlong community outreach training. They will be equipped with books, programming ideas and lots of optimistic Jewish cheer to reinforce Jewish pride and enhance Jewish education.

No dates for the visit were provided, but the email address was RovingRabbis@YacArt.com. I wrote: Can we meet? I'm not Jewish, but maybe I am. Can I tell you my story?

Two Jews at the harbor
The next afternoon I met Yaacov Sebbag, 24, and Yosef Bergovoy, 21, at the park down by the harbor. It was a brilliantly sunny day with a cool breeze off the water. They told me they had been spending a lot of time at this one park bench, enjoying the scenery, and that is where we sat and talked for the next two hours. A few boats came and went; gulls pranced around, flew off, flew in; some young girls walked by, gabbing and giggling, and one looked at us and said "hi."

"You're Jewish," Yaacov told me. He shrugged his shoulders and looked me straight in the eye and smiled. "Most people don't have as much documentation as you do."

The fact is, I knew I was Jewish. Yes, I had grown up attending a Presbyterian Sunday School and celebrating Christmas and Easter, but a few years back some previously unknown family history came to light, and I learned my maternal great-grandmother was Jewish. When I told this to one of my best and dearest friends, who has always known she was Jewish, she said: "So you're Jewish."

Somehow it's different when a rabbi tells you.

Jewish heritage, it seems, is passed down through its women, so even though one may never practice the religion - or even know they have the right to - a person whose maternal lineage is Jewish, is Jewish. Yaacov explained the two aspects: one, you either have the blood or you don't; and two, you either practice or you don't.

I worried briefly that these roving rabbis would be akin to evangelical Christians and now, knowing I was Jewish by blood, would try to convert me to Jewish practice. (At one point in our conversation I told them I wasn't much for rules ...) But they weren't out to convert me, they said, just there to help me learn if I wanted to. So I went on to tell them the whole story, as I know it, of how the Jewishness in my blood came to be hidden. It is not a story I will tell here. One reason for telling it to the roving rabbis was to try to gain some perspective on it, some insight, something - whatever it is - that will help me to write the story as it is supposed to be written. Eventually.

Residual effect
In time, everything I gained from our conversation will incorporate itself into my writing and my life, revealing itself in bits and pieces, eventually helping to make a whole, or maybe not. Already pieces rise up. Until yesterday, I had been thinking that although I may be Jewish, my Jewish heritage has been lost, so what does it matter? But right now I see in the previous paragraph I chose the word "hidden" to describe my Jewish blood rather than the word "lost," and I feel the shift in meaning, and I know it to be true. Nothing has been lost. Hiding, yes. And hiding, after all, seems to be a pervasive part of Jewish history. I remember well "The Diary of Anne Frank."

While hanging clothes on the clothesline today I thought: We may all be human, but how we practice our humanity, there's the difference.

I remember Yaacov saying something about this country being a great melting pot, and I had been thinking the same earlier. Thinking, as we all melt and run together, what's left to distinguish us as individuals?

We have free will, but God, or the universe, or some higher power has the plan. Exactly how does that work?

Another story untold
I was torn while talking to the rabbis Yaacov and Yosef. I wanted to take notes, ask questions, and write the story of the two Jews who came to seek out other Jews in this sparsely populated, beautiful, out-of-the-way place. Where would they eat? They brought their own food ... Where would they find Jews? You'd be surprised ... In Wal-Mart they were approached by a young man, a student at the university here, who was from my hometown near Chicago. A Jew. He told Yaacov and Yosef: I am glad there are other Jews in the U.P. "Yes," Yaacov replied, "but not for long. We leave Tuesday."

But there are more Jews, perhaps, than we know. Gathering stories, with stories to tell.

August is

2008-08-16T06:00:00.001-04:00

I don't know what August is in your neck of the woods, but here, August is a lazy canoe on a slow, winding river; a turtle sunning on a log; a postcard; the scent of pine at 6 a.m.; a dusty road; damp beach towels doing a line dance; sand; red tomatoes; deer flies; wildflowers; a slow, quiet song; a 10-cent, 70-page notebook, college-ruled; waist-high grass; the county fair; an old dog rolling on his back in tall dry weeds; the color blue; being immobile in a lawn chair, thinking about the color blue; the smell of sand and sun and pine at 3 p.m.; lake swimming; smooth black stones picked up along the lake shore; grasshoppers; crickets; warm, hazy afternoons; cool evenings; idleness; a subtle rustle of wind and leaves at 4 p.m.; a daydream; a love letter postmarked at a one-room post office; a gentle nudge; the Milky Way; a shooting star caught in the corner of your eye; the scent of pine on a watery breeze along about 10 p.m.; wild blueberries; blue sky; a blue-green lake; cool-headed breezes caressing warm bellies; a birthday; the last chance to procrastinate; a drop in blood pressure; lotus flowers; shortening days; lingering nights.

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County Fair

2008-08-08T13:33:00.002-04:00

At the Marquette County Fair there are pigs named Happy, Pig, Oink, and Betty. A lamb named Chops; cows and goats and hens and rabbits and a horse named Rock Star who sleeps through it all. Championship rhubarb and berries and quilts and flowers and dill and seven blue-ribbon purple beans laid in a neat row on a round white plate. Blue ribbons, red ribbons, a festoon of ribbons; jams and jellies and pies and cakes. Displays of old tools, old living rooms, old kitchens, old sleds and sleighs and skis. Displays of a different time when time was different. Outside a tangled snaky line leads to a Croatian food booth. Next to the line, hundreds of chickens turn on parallel spits over hot coals and with each revolution legs flop over in unison. They say the county fair is as American as apple pie; I go for the buffalo burger, ignoring the nachos, hamburgers, corn dogs, mini donuts, pizza, ice cream, and elephant ears. On stage Tiny C. Hart and the Hartbeats play classic country tunes. They fall into burning rings of fire, waltz across Texas, drink in bars, admit to being the only Hell their mama ever raised. Two-steppin' couples turn the nearest walkway into a dance floor and Tiny croons about lips that can't say goodbye. Clatter from the Midway wafts through on the breeze, mixing and blowing away with the Croatian chicken smoke. It is all color and sound and merry-go-rounds. Bumper cars and tilt-a-whirl and fishing for prizes, pop the balloon, get the ball in the basket, play Kentucky Derby, win a prize, lose your money. Guys flirt with girls and girls giggle and flirt with guys. Kids fly through blue evening air on metal swings and 3-year-olds ride a Western train on an oval track while listening to the music of a 1956 sock hop. Each ride plays its own: hip-hop, country, rock. Back at the bandstand the Hartbeats play honky tonk blues. Classic cars jam the dance floor with staccato beep-beeps and brash i-OOO-gahs. Fins and Ramblers and fire trucks; pick-ups, convertibles and campers. Tawny brown and green grasshoppers leap out of the way. Tiny C. Hart plays on, singing an American song.

Where the buffalo roam