Beyond the Tension Line

Moving

2009-05-22T14:16:00.002-04:00

Got a bee in my bonnet and moved the blog to a new URL: http://u-p-journal.blogspot.com/. New name (an upper peninsula journal), new look, and a new page devoted to U.P. Author Events. Please visit. Thanks.

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

2009-04-29T08:36:00.006-04:00

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

2009-04-28T16:22:00.001-04:00

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

March is

2009-03-19T14:00:00.001-04:00

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.

Caving in

2009-03-04T19:11:00.005-05:00

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

2009-02-06T08:44:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-28T12:31:00.004-05:00

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

2009-01-19T16:37:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-06T16:06:00.003-05:00

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

2008-12-30T15:04:00.011-05:00

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.

POTHOLDERS FOR SALE!

To order potholders, visit our Stuff for Sale page.

A Winter's Moment

2008-12-15T16:30:00.003-05:00

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

2008-12-04T16:44:00.010-05:00

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.

Bee
Where the honey flows

Beeswax products are available through our Stuff for Sale page.

Winter

2008-11-20T20:04:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-13T11:36:00.004-05:00

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 U.P., 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

2008-11-03T10:09:00.004-05:00

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."

Tyoga Trail: Part One

Tyoga Trail: Part Two

A Copper Consciousness

2008-10-26T09:53:00.007-04:00

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
23 skidoo

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

2008-10-22T08:36:00.004-04:00

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

2008-10-10T14:39:00.001-04:00

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.

Fishing

2008-10-03T12:56:00.005-04:00

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

2008-09-15T19:10:00.004-04:00

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

2008-09-01T13:05:00.003-04:00

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

2008-08-26T15:49:00.008-04:00

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

2008-08-16T06:00:00.003-04:00

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.

County Fair

2008-08-08T13:33:00.019-04:00

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

Scrabble

2008-07-28T09:00:00.002-04:00

Any time the word GOON gets played twice in one Scrabble game you've got an interesting game going, and the following sequence of play started with my worthy opponent tiling the second GOON of the game. I had tiled the first, but that is of no consequence. But in Scrabble everything is of consequence. It must be, for every play affects every subsequent play, all words connect, intersect, attach one to another. So the very first word must affect the very last, and so the first GOON must somehow bring about the second GOON, which, as I started out saying, led to the following Scrabble highlight.

I had started the game strong, racking up points by readily finding words on my rack that scored in the twenties or at least double digits. My opponent, meanwhile, was quietly bellyaching about yet more vowels ("... you know they're all just one point ..."). I compassionately commiserated, because, of course, we've all been there: not much to work with, just doing the best we can. Then the tiles turned and I had a rack of one-pointers and he started making a comeback. I took it in stride. With about two-thirds of the tiles played, it was pointed out to me that the game was now a close one. "Hmmm," I thought. Then he played GOON, in the left lower quadrant.

The board had stayed fairly open, not getting jammed up in one corner or another as so often happens, and this was the third quadrant we had moved into; the third Triple Word Score we were nonchalantly chasing. GOON brought us that much closer; my play of AIRS, making GOON GOONS, brought us just one tantalizing space away. So many possibilities ...

But my opponent had the Q and a chance to play it using the I in AIRS. He tiled QUIP, parallel to GOONS with one column separating.

I had been hanging on to a U just in case I got the Q, and now I saw a chance to play my U with his Q, get all the points of a Q without the anxiety of a Q sitting on the rack, let's see ... Q, U, O ... I, T. QUOIT. I studied it, trying to think if it was a word or not. It seemed I had seen it somewhere before, probably in a Scrabble game, but I could attach no meaning to it. I couldn't resist, and down QUOIT went.

I play Scrabble strictly for pleasure and not all that often. However, I have a mother and sister who play to win (their pleasure) as often as they can. They play with each other; they play with whomever they can sucker into it. They are fairly matched but usually beat anyone else they play with. They are nice about it and will tell you, the loser, how well you played. If they happen to lose, however, it's not always pretty. But usually a pretty good story. One particular game sticks out. It was many years ago. My sister invited me to play with her and my mom and for some unsuspecting reason I did. I must have gotten lucky, because well into the game I was ahead, and this was remarked upon. The exact exchange that prompted my mother to then call me an "interloper" I don't remember, but it had to do with me being in the lead. Anyway, my own mother called me an "interloper." Luckily, I was far enough into adulthood that it did not affect my overall development. Much.

If I were challenged on QUOIT and lost - if QUOIT was not in the dictionary - I would lose my turn. I was prepared for that. My worthy opponent asked what QUOIT meant. I admitted I did not know. "But I know it's a word," I said. "Either my sister or mother has used it, in the Scrabble of my past, and they know what they're doing." Much to my surprise, QUOIT went unchallenged. But the temptation to know its validity was too great for my friend, so he looked it up. Sure enough, there it was. Some kind of game...

My worthy opponent played elsewhere on the board. I was not paying much attention as I was fully consumed with my next move. It involved a simple word using a Z, an I, the P in QUIP, and the Triple Word Score. The problem was the move would create a secondary two-letter word, or possibly not a word: AI. As in "ai yi yi." It was my turn. I laid down ZIP.

Silence. Then, "Ai? What's that? That's not a word!"

I shrugged. "Ai yi yi," I said. Or at least I think I said. I may have just been laughing.

AI was challenged. AI was not in the dictionary. I took a look at the dictionary, which was a red paperback condensed "office and school" (not a "real") dictionary.

"Where's the real dictionary?" I asked. "The blue hardcover one we used the other night."

Eventually it was found. And there it was. Ai. An exclamation.

"Ai yi yi," I said. Or was I just laughing?

Because I was laughing so hard I did not realize that my worthy opponent was taking his turn even though he had challenged my AI and lost. I was laughing so hard I had to leave the room. When I thought I had myself well enough composed to return to the game I remembered my father and the fact that he had refused to play Scrabble with my mother and sister - with anyone, actually - and I suddenly knew why. The realization did nothing to quelch my amusement.

With QUIP my opponent had scored 30. With QUOIT I had scored 28 and with ZIP and AI 44. I went on to win the game 326 to 282. If I have ever scored over 300, I don't remember when. And next time, no doubt, my worthy opponent will win, for luck, opportunity, skill, and the occasional risk will fall together in a different pattern.

But ai, like quoit, it's just a game.

Strawberries

2008-07-17T14:45:00.002-04:00

Once the strawberries ripen, that's it. People will talk, write, pick, eat strawberries. They will make strawberry pies and strawberry jam. They will give strawberries to neighbors and friends. They will drive miles and miles to Ostanek's strawberry fields, somewhere near the middle of nowhere, to crouch down in the hot sun and pick quart after quart of strawberries. Some go once and pick for hours; others go for a little while and return often during the two to three weeks of picking. Some are strawberry freezers and jammers; others just truly love to eat strawberries fresh from the field.

It starts with a buzz in the head. When it's warm, sunny, early to middlin' summer, one starts thinking it's strawberry time. Then, an article appears on the front page of the local paper. Headline: Strawberries ripe for picking; How sweet it is. A call is made to Ostanek's to get the picking report. I called the Monday after the Saturday article. The recording relayed the fact that the field had been "overrun" Sunday, so Monday they closed for ripening. I called Tuesday: still ripening, will open Wednesday. So Wednesday a friend and I started out about 8 a.m., heading for the strawberry fields of Trenary.

In the middle of July you can't beat a morning with a clear sky, temperatures in the low 60s, and a slight breeze off the lake. I wore a flannel shirt over a sleeveless T but had to shed the flannel when we stopped at the gas station in Trenary to pee. Driving through Trenary proper took just a minute a two, despite the thickening traffic (a truck behind us and a van or two in front). All were headed to Ostanek's, which suddenly opened up on our left as we rounded a curve. A dirt drive led us into the vibrant green fields. The right side of the drive was already lined with the cars, trucks, and vans of berry pickers. We found a spot, pulled in, hopped out, adjusted hats, grabbed our bins, headed toward a shack at the end of the road.

Painted on a board propped up by the shack were some rules and hints, such as pick half the row on your left, half on your right; where to find your 6- and 8-quart picking baskets (by the side of the shed); where to return your 6- and 8-quart picking baskets (by the side of the shed); that you'll have to pay extra for overflowing quarts; and I don't remember what else. A boy in a red T-shirt said we could leave our bins in the shed as we each grabbed a 6-quart basket and looked about for a man in a green cap who, we were told, would direct us to a good picking row. After standing behind a man in a green camouflage cap for a minute or two, we were kindly told, "No, you want the guy in the green cap over there."

Aha.

Finally, we were picking.

Picking strawberries is easy. I settled on a down-on-one-knee posture and quickly filled my quarts. It's a two-handed job of lifting a group of berries from the ground, perhaps uncovering them first from a shelter of leaves, then pinching the stem close to the berry with one hand and plucking the berry with the other until the picking hand is full. Drop the berries in the basket. Do it again, moving slowly down the row, picking both sides.

A light hum of conversation drifted across the field. Old friends greeted one another, caught up on recent family events, talked about strawberries. Strangers commented to one another on the goodness of this year's crop. Some people joked about the number of "test" strawberries being eaten. A cell phone went off. A howling poodle, tied up back at a car, in the shade with a bowl of water, was mentioned on and off. The atmosphere was soft and congenial, the air laced with a sweet stickiness, the aroma of sun-warm strawberries.

As I started on a second 6-quart basket, I picked more slowly. It was like settling into cool water on a hot day, just soaking, just drifting, just picking. The poodle's howling waned, perhaps as he received more visitors (he had quieted down immediately when I stopped to visit with him). Conversation came and went like waves, softly lapping. But inevitably the basket filled, and I knew I had more than enough strawberries. I walked out of the field, weaving slightly until I hit the road.

My hands were red and sticky, my forearms slightly itchy, so I rinsed off with water from the tap of a big blue jug. I had paid $16 for my 12 quarts of berries, transferred them to the bin I had brought, returned my baskets to the side of the shed. When my friend finished her picking, we drove the truck up to the shed to load the berries. I said good-bye to the poodle, and we headed home on the the backroads so we could stop at Lily's, a new food store in beautiful downtown Traunik. But that's another story.

Preparing strawberry fields for the future.

Coyote Poop and Quiet

2008-07-06T09:04:00.005-04:00

I called to Buster the other day as he headed into the woods, nose to the ground, tail up, tail wagging. We had been walking one way and then he went another so I stopped, called, waited. He ignored me. A familiar feeling of exasperation welled up, and then I remembered: Buster is deaf. This is a recent development, and as I headed after him I thought how nice it must be, trotting along, no longer able to hear someone else's suggestions of what one might do, where one might go, how one might behave. I thought how happy he must be in his deafness. I caught up to him, lightly tapped his waggling rear, and he jumped and turned, looking at me with surprise. I made a backward wave motion with my right hand, a gesture he recognizes as "come with me," and he obliged.

What I wonder is: Does Buster know he's deaf? Perhaps all he knows is that suddenly - or gradually - there is a lot less to hear. He does acknowledge whistles and sharp claps. I wonder if he wonders why those are the only sounds I seem to make anymore.

Buster has always had a mind of his own. He is unconcerned about what others think of him, more so than any being I have ever known. Often I'll catch him considering an action, something he seems to know he's not supposed to do, but the consideration is: Can I get away with it? If he thinks yes, he does it. If he thinks not, he abandons the idea and moves along. Lately this concerns coyote poop, which Buster finds delectable and I find disgusting. It is an ongoing battle. When he finds a stash he sniffs it thoroughly. If it passes inspection, he'll start chomping away. Once I catch on and start making my way over to him, his mental wheels begin to turn. How long can he hold his ground? Can he finish this morsel and search for another? He gauges distance, he gauges pace. His goal is to swipe as much coyote poop as possible and run with it before I get near enough to catch him and empty his mouth. He wins, time after time. And once the poop is ingested, he carries on, skipping along, following wherever I'm headed, tail high, tail waving, back and forth, like a victory flag. Buster is 13 years old and nothing he has picked up in the woods, on the beach, or on the streets of Chicago has had much effect on him, except, I guess, to make him happy. There is a sense of joy in his jaunty gait. With a mind like that, wouldn't he be likely to think any problems that be come from without rather than within? In his quiet world, how could he know that it is he who has changed and not everyone else? Maybe if we could ask, Buster would say, "Finally, the world has shut up and is leaving me be."

We'll never know, of course, and not just because he's a dog. We all see, hear, smell, sense things differently. You say "poe-tay-toe" and I say "poe-ta-toe." I say, "My, the lake is blue today," and you say, "It looks green to me." We know it's all one and the same; we know it's all different. Buster may not hear the world around him, but still he listens. That's all that matters.

Where the honey flows

2008-07-01T12:55:00.004-04:00

White Birch Apiary: This article originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Marquette Monthly. The first two photos are by Darlene Wrona.

***
Honey is nothing less than concentrated nectar; … the essence of its surroundings … flowing gold into the pot through the transforming power of the bee. - From “Sweetness & Light: The Mysterious History of the Honeybee,” by Hattie Ellis
***

I went and visited a guy north of town, north of Bruce Crossing, that is, who makes and sells honey. He’s not to be confused with the guy south of town who used to make and sell honey. That was Cole’s Apiary, run by Otto Cole and then his son Walt. They’ve been out of business twenty some years now. In fact, it’s the guy north of town, Les McBean, who bought all their stuff, “everything related to bees,” as he puts it. McBean calls his business White Birch Apiary, and you’ve probably seen his honey bears and honey jars and jugs of honey in local grocery stores and gift shops.

“I have a huge white birch tree on the north side of my house,” McBean says, explaining the origin of the name. “People think it’s white birch honey. Birch trees don’t make honey. Basswood does, but birch trees don’t.”

That’s right, White Birch Apiary, with the gold label, sometimes a little crooked because McBean puts those labels on himself. Yep, thousands of labels, all by hand. Screws on the tops, too. So now he’s got carpal tunnel syndrome. A beekeeper for 21 years and a teacher of beekeeping workshops for the Michigan State University Extension Service, McBean works by himself for himself with the help of Bug’s, an orange cat. And, well, he is a beekeeper, so “I get stung 15 to 20 times a day,” he says. But don’t go thinking he’d change a thing. Being a beekeeper may not be what he set out to be, but now it is definitely what he is.

Back in the 1960s McBean, originally from Peck, Michigan, spent three and a half years at Northern Michigan University studying business before heading off to California, trying out a couple more schools, being refused by the Marines, ending up in a flight path that took him around the world and then some. He was on the “hippie trail,” hitchhiking, riding the Orient Express, seeing Malaysia, Nepal, India, Turkey, Iran, Thailand, Hong Kong; meeting people and seeing things that would shape and change his life; says he got the best education he could have gotten anywhere, traveling those years and then doing what he thought he’d never do: coming home.

In the mid-1970s McBean bought a wobbly log cabin in the middle of the Ottawa National Forest, north of Bruce Crossing, and life began to gel like a little drop of nectar in a honeycomb cell. He was dreaming, he says, “a corny dream” to live off the land. For the next few years, though, McBean worked, not quite happily, for the forest service. Then Cole’s Apiary came up for sale. “I needed a job and it was there and I talked with the guy and I thought I’d give it a shot,” McBean says.

But like a beeline with curves, he first taught English in Japan for a year, making enough money to buy the apiary. But when he returned to Bruce Crossing, Walt Cole wasn’t ready to let go, so McBean started from scratch, buying 25 colonies of bees—more than a quarter million bees destined to grow to more than a million by mid-summer. Then, around mid-summer, Walt did let go and sold to McBean, lock, stock and hive—150 hives, to be exact. Suddenly McBean was in business with millions of bees doing what bees do: making honey.

“My first year I had 18 to 20 barrels of honey and no customers,” McBean says, “so I had to sell it to the wholesale brokers, the commodities market in Chicago. I didn’t get any money for it. I got like 52 cents a pound … I thought, ‘This isn’t working.’ … That’s when I decided I’m going to have to build up my own market and label under my brand name. … Of course, I do twice as much work.” In order to keep the business going, for a number of years he taught English in Japan during the off-season.

Today McBean has 300 bee hives in seven bee yards in pastures north and south of town (yes, Bruce Crossing). Along with caring for all those bees, in a year he will bottle and sell about 13,000 pounds of honey. This makes him, he guesses, the largest beekeeper in the Upper Peninsula.

Beekeeping is shrouded in otherworldliness. The white wooden hives, designed by a preacher in the mid-1800s, squat like rejected hat boxes in vibrant green pasture marked off by a low electric fence that wards off bears. The beekeeper, in white coveralls, heavy gloves, pith helmet and veil looks vaguely like a mad scientist from a 1950s’ B-movie. Then there’s the smoker—a tin can with a fire inside, a spout, and small attached bellows for puffing white smoke on the bees so they will think “Fire!” and crawl back into the hive, away from the beekeeper.

Yet beekeepers get stung.

“I was working with Walt, this was just before I bought the business,” McBean begins, “and we had moved some colonies to a new location and gone back the next day to pick up the last hive. I was dressed for the job, fully protected with bee suit, veil, and gloves. Walt, being the old-timer he was, took off his veil when we put the hive on the back of his truck. We were only moving the hive about a mile, so I left my veil on. I got out of the truck and picked up the hive and saw Walt waving at some bees. I went ahead and moved the hive to the stand and looked around for Walt and at first couldn’t see him. Then I spotted him lying in the field, trying to pull his suit over his head. He was being attacked by the bees. I got the smoker and ran over to him and smoked him down to get the bees away. He said he figured he got stung about 100 times. We got in the truck and he said, ‘Let’s go have coffee.’”

Walt warned McBean that someday it would happen to him, and sure enough it did.

“About ten years later I went on my ATV to a yard just about a mile from my home. I had some bear problems and wanted to just take a look at the yard. I was wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a t-shirt. When I got to the yard everything was OK, but I noticed one hive which needed a honey box. I could tell because the bees were clustering outside. I had some boxes stacked up waiting to be put on so I walked over to the hive and took off the cover and sat it on the ground, picked up the honey box to put it on the hive and started to get a few stings. I lifted the cover from the ground, and as I did, a few hundred bees which were clinging to the inside of the cover came after me. I ran to my ATV and jumped on and headed home trying to brush the bees off me. I got stung all over.”

McBean enjoys the inside work of an apiarist as much as the outside. In the fall you’ll find him in a room partially heated by a wood stove inside a large pole building, listening to music and extracting honey. A bee makes honey by sucking nectar from a flower, spitting it into a honeycomb cell, fanning it with her wings to dehydrate it, and sealing the cell with a bit of wax, which she also makes. This is a bee’s way of making and storing food, and it is the surplus store that a beekeeper harvests. In the fall, McBean gathers full, capped honeycomb frames from the hives and places them one by one into the “uncapper”—a machine which removes the wax caps with a bit of chain flagellation. The uncapped comb is moved to a holding bin, then to the radial extractor, which is somewhat like that carnival ride that spins, the floor drops down but you stay plastered against the wall, howling. In the extractor the honey gets whipped out of the combs and falls to the bottom of the machine. When it’s full, McBean opens a spigot and the honey flows. It is stored in barrels, and prior to bottling McBean will filter and heat it to about 140 degrees. Honey labeled “raw and unprocessed,” however, will not be heated above 110 degrees, allowing it to retain its natural bits of pollen and live enzymes, which some claim is more healthful, counteracting seasonal allergies among other things.

Over the years beekeeping basics have changed little, but the bees themselves are a different matter. Honeybees, not native to North America, were brought over by the Dutch in the 1640s. They spread quickly across the country. “When a bee colony gets too crowded, they’ll swarm out, and it’ll go off into the wild,” McBean explains. But now there are few wild honeybees left. Since the late 1990s honeybees have succumbed to all sorts of maladies such as Colony Collapse Disorder, disappearing bee syndrome, and the varroa mite. Large numbers have simply left the hive, disappeared, died, and no one really knows why. But they are social creatures, and in the hive they’re all over each other. Then, one bee goes out and finds some choice nectar, she comes back and tells the others, the rest go out and soon they are all over the same flowers. That’s pollination 101. And that’s the importance of bees. In California, add a few more hives to the almond field and the crop is doubled or tripled and so are the dollars lining someone’s pockets. Consider the fact that some bees are employed as migrant workers—their keepers packing up hives and moving them around the country to whatever field is blooming, being paid pollination fees, the humans, that is, not the bees—and you can see how any parasite or malady might rapidly spread. McBean likened it to Typhoid Mary going to the mall. Probably on a Saturday afternoon.

But McBean’s main concern is the U.P. winter and the fact that his bees no longer seem able to survive it. For the past three springs he’s had to bring in bees from California. Then, if May is too cold with too many days not reaching the 60-degree mark, his bees won’t leave the hive, which means they’re not eating. Basically, they order in, and McBean delivers.

“It’s like your chickens or your cows,” he says. “It’s your herd, and you have to make sure that they’re healthy, that they’re happy, have a spacious home, food.”

Once it is warm enough, the worker bees, all female, are out foraging for nectar. In the spring it’s a sweet snack of popples, pussy willows, maple buds and dandelions. They gather the nectar, turn it into honey, feed themselves as well as the newborns that are climbing out of their honeycomb bassinets at a rapid rate as the queen of the hive lays more than a thousand eggs a day. By July the bees are making the honey that McBean will harvest. They’re wiping their feet on and sipping nectar from trefoil, wild sweet clover, basswood, and spotted knapweed, the flowers that bloom all around town, north and south of Bruce Crossing.

Bee
Beeswax
White Birch Apiary honey is available through our Stuff for Sale page.

Golden Years

2008-06-19T13:59:00.003-04:00

So much fussing and fretting over tomorrow, the next day, next week, the ubiquitous "future," our so-called Golden Years, gas prices, war, global warming, Social Security, terrorists, floods, earthquakes, he loves me, he loves me not, money, jobs, children, parents, disease, injustice, blind umpires, cheatin' hearts, bad raps, cold feet, hot flashes, bad hair, no hair, inexplicable acts, I'm right, you're wrong, no peace, no love, no understanding, no vacation, no rest, just weariness all the time, the blues, the reds, and Kansas in August.

According to an old Irving Berlin tune, There may be trouble ahead / But while there's moonlight and music / And love and romance / Let's face the music and dance.

I am pleased to present ...

::::::: My Mother and Hannah :::::::

Canoeing with Dogs

2008-06-11T15:37:00.009-04:00

One might think life precarious enough without getting in a canoe with two old dogs, and one might be right. Then again, what's life without a little precariousness?

The canoe is green, made of hard plastic, a Coleman three-seater. I sit in the middle. Buster, a 20ish-pound scruffy terrier mutt with a mind defiantly his own, sits directly in front of me. Queenie, a border collie mix, a perfect mix of sweet and smart yet nonetheless slightly off balance, sits behind me. Both dogs, indeed, are senior citizens.

Along with an old cat (who absolutely refuses to go canoeing) we live on a river that most days flows gently into Lake Superior. On a good north windy day, however, the flow reverses and the river floods with rippling swells, the water level rising rapidly. On sultry days the water level drops and stagnation sets in, the river becoming dull as an old penny, vainly dressing itself up with creamy yellow and white water lilies, their broad green pads beaded with sparkling blue damselflies. Long-legged water bugs dart through the lilies chasing gnats and mosquitoes, and the occasional frog pops up to zap either the pursuer or the pursued. A great blue heron may stop by to dine on frogs or minnows that slide through the grasses that border the river's island, a vaguely marshy spot rising up along the river's spine, and often a kingfisher alights on the remains of a sidelined craggy tree trunk. Ducks and geese and mergansers wander through in the spring, and if one pauses to look up, a bald eagle may pass by. The river is home to sun-basking turtles, beaver (one can paddle only so far upstream before being stymied by a dam), a cranberry marsh, and river otter.

It was two otters who caused consternation one day as I paddled to the lake with the dogs.

The otters were playing, diving down, bobbing up, and dunking each other at the head of the narrow channel that flows on our side of the island. Other than turning back my options were few, so even with otters directly in our path and Buster at the prow of our ship I paddled on, wary yet curious, thinking without much doubt that the otters would see us soon enough and swiftly disappear. But as we drew closer they continued to play and splash, oblivious to anything but their own fun. I now thought Buster would spot them at any moment and worried what he might do. Jump canoe? Stand up and bark? Cause a ruckus? Cause tippage? I stopped paddling but still we drifted closer and closer, otters playing, Buster gazing in their direction, me wondering, and Queenie ... who knows?

Then Buster spied the otters. We were barely 10 feet away. He scrambled to the front of the canoe, stood with his front paws on the bow. His body stiffened fore to aft. He growled low in his throat. His tail trembled. I reached forward and put my hand firmly on his back. He barely flinched. Those dang otters continued to play and we continued to drift toward them. Buster glanced down at the water, up at the otters. I said quietly: Don't think about it.

Meanwhile, behind me, Queenie had gotten wind of the situation. I'm not sure she actually saw the otters, but she and Buster take cues from each other, and she knew something was up. She was as far forward as she could get while remaining behind me, the lift of her ears and the thrust of her quivering snout bringing her well into the circle of excitement. Now, barely three feet from the otters and nary a second from capsize, the otters froze. Their slick brown heads, poked just above water, turned in our direction. They disappeared in an instant.

Buster could barely contain himself. Something - anything - disappearing below the surface, underground or underwater or undercover, is more tantalizing than he can bear. The canoe rocked as he whined and fussed, his nails scrabbling and clicking on the polyurethane. Queenie joined in, though I'm not sure she actually knew what it was all about.

In the end, the canoe stayed afloat and on to the beach we went.

The beach along the lake is our usual destination, and it is the final approach that can be most fraught with peril. We paddle under the M-28 bridge, a short tunnel opening onto sea air, which smacks the dogs right where they live - in their noses. The noses turn upward and begin to twitch frantically as if caught by a baited hook. What will we find on the beach today? What snacks? What delectables? What trails of old tales? Will it be gull poop or dead rotting fish? Scurrying crayfish or sea-soaked sun-bleached possum bones? For the dogs, the beach is an ever-changing depository; a cafeteria line of debris.

We beach the canoe at the mouth of the river where a fluctuating spit of sand develops, the river turning suddenly eastward before doubling back to merge with the lake. Every once in a while gulls squat on the spit and Queenie's excitement peaks - gull-chasing is her pure pleasure, and to see them sitting there, so nonchalant, so unsuspecting, is more than she can bear.

One day, with a gaggle of dallying gulls up ahead, I heard a soft whine behind me. The next thing I knew I was watching Queenie swim to shore, watching her pull herself out of the water, watching her barely able to stand she was so completely soaked but taking off at a dead run anyway, low to the ground, straight at the mob of sitting gulls. The gulls took flight. Buster and I sat there, stunned. The canoe had barely moved.

June 6, 2008

2008-06-06T18:29:00.003-04:00

Suddenly it is 85 degrees. Yesterday there was a fire in the wood stove to stave off the cool dampness; today there is a hot dusty breeze blowing through the house. It blows the daily crossword puzzle off the kitchen table and causes an occasional clatter in another room. Doors open and close for no reason, frightening the dogs.

Everything, it seems, is getting caught up in a puff of summer. Dragonflies, black flies, and mosquitoes ride the wild surf of a southern wind. Golden tails of birch seed scatter. Tiny white seeds nestled in tufts of cotton swirl and twirl and drop and rise up. Overnight the grass has grown wavy, the dandelions robust. The trees are full, the woods dense.

Along the old railroad grade a giant chokeberry has bloomed, its perfume strong as Nehi. The delicate flowers of the sugar plum have set sail, leaving behind small, red, ripening berries. Ivory bells dangle from blueberry bushes while wild strawberry runners run rampant. Bristly raspberry canes dangle into the road.

Up the road a bit, a patch of blue forget-me-nots.

Meanwhile, out at the farm ...
Miss a day at the farm and you're left with a secondhand tale of a runaway pig that goes something like this.

One day a pig on the loose was reported to the police. The police rounded up the pig, did not know who it belonged to, called the local humane society, who suggested calling the farm south of town (don't they have pigs?). So the police called the farm, and they said sure, bring us the pig. Later, a semi trailer pulled up. Worry set in. What kind of pig requires transport in a semi? (Now, I don't know how big this rig actually was, but to hear it told, it was pretty darn big. Friends driving by who were going to stop and say "hello" kept on moving because it looked like trouble.) Anyway, the cops get out and one of them is wielding a video camera as if something big is about to happen. Then they unload the pig, and what it is is a 50-pound pot-bellied pig. Later, the pig's owner calls and the wayward swine goes home.

When it comes to farming, all I know is what I'm told.

Where the music spins

2008-06-01T12:47:00.003-04:00

Leftovertures: This article originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Marquette Monthly. It's been slightly remixed here.

The working title of this article, "In Search of Vinyl: Criss-crossing the Central U.P. in a Quixotic Quest for Tom Jones" (sub-title: "What’s so unusual about that?"), had to be thrown out. It was all too easy. One trip to Leftovertures in Manistique, and I was done.

"Tom Jones is not a big mover," Gene Carley, the shop's owner, informed me.

Tom Jones? Not a big mover? Excuse me, but has he seen Tom Jones lately?

Leftovertures is a 22- by 33-foot haven for high quality used LPs. Carley also sells new LPs, new and used CDs, DVDs, videotapes, rock 'n' roll posters, banners, T-shirts, and PlayStation games. It's worth a visit not only for the prospect of finding music from your past and music you've never heard of, but for the great wall displays and the rather startling, free-standing, life-sized cardboard Elvis that seems to leap out at one from between the stacks.

Carley, who grew up in the U.P.'s Garden Peninsula and now lives in Cooks, claims he's not making money at this business, but that he does it for the love it, for the love of record collecting and selling, for the love of music, and for the love of vinyl. Many claim that music recorded on vinyl sounds better, fuller, than music recorded on CDs or downloaded from … now where exactly do those downloads come from? … and Carley and his wife, Debbie Soulia, are firmly in that camp. Even at home, Debbie said, all they listen to are LPs. As a matter of fact, Carley pretty much stays away from the Internet, doing most of his buying and selling either at the store, at the Dickinson County Fair, or at one of the record shows held periodically at the Marquette Mall. Soulia said they will also go to someone's house to see a collection, and then they usually end up talking and having coffee with the collection's owner.

"I want to go there, touch the albums, see them," Carley said. "And talk to the owners," Soulia added.

Part of the LP experience, of course, is the packaging: those alluring 12½-by-12½-inch cardboard covers that spark memories and curiosity. So many covers just beg to be picked up, admired, flipped over, read, perhaps pondered a bit. Just as the music at Leftovertures spans genres and decades, so does the artwork and text on the album covers. From Journey to Sinatra, The Best of Chickenman to Lily Tomlin and excerpts from the "Grapes of Wrath" read by Henry Fonda, you've got it all. A sensual overload.

Which brings us back to Tom Jones.

Carley picked out no less than seven Tom Jones albums for me to consider. I told him how I had only lately become interested in Jones' music and how it seemed appropriate to acquire his music on vinyl — in the original packaging, so to speak. Of course one can turn to the Internet for such items, and I did search for Tom Jones on EBay, garnering a list of 228 items. But the experience of gazing at a two-diimensional listing could not compare to being able to pick up the real thing in my hands; smelling the slightly musty, cardboardy smell; slipping the disc from its cover and inspecting its shiny black grooves; mulling over the song list without eye strain. At Leftovertures you can do all that, and as well you can hear what you are about to buy. Soulia put "Western Favorites featuring Rex Trailer and His Cow Hands" on the turntable. Now who knew cow hands could sing so well?

Carley inspects each record he takes in, assessing its condition, and more than half, he said, will be recycled or thrown away because they are in such bad shape.

"Condition is probably the most important part," he said, so he hand cleans each record and slides it into a paper sleeve. The album is then clad in a clear plastic sleeve. The records Carley sells not only sound good, they look good.

Most of the LPs at Leftovertures are priced in the $4 to $7 range. Carley finds that many people think their vinyl collection is worth more than it is, but unless it's something like a Beatles or Elvis Presley first issue in good condition, he said, LPs are just not worth that much. Key factors for pricing are age, condition, and demand. And demand may be hard to figure. "God Bless Tiny Tim" is priced at $15 because, Carley said, "People want Tiny Tim." My Tom Jones albums (which we all know don't move) were marked at $4. A new release of the Ramones' 1977 "Rocket to Russia" is $15. (Did you know the Ramones are hot right now?) Carley does consult record guides when pricing his merchandise, but usually goes cheaper than the guides suggest.

Leftovertures has customers coming in from Marquette as well as downstate Michigan. From tourists to locals, the store's biggest seller seems to be classic rock, such as Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and Led Zeppelin. The people buying are young, college-aged adults.

"Older guys like me collect blues," Carley said.

He has one customer collecting spoken word records, and then there's his dad, who collects polka. One thing Carley has noticed throughout his 10 years in business is that many people come into the store and browse for hours, tripping down a musical memory lane, making occasional exclamations such as "Oh! I remember this album!" or "Oh! This was the first album I ever bought." But they don't buy anything. Carley said as long as they've had fun, that's all that matters.

Sometimes albums come in bearing their own memories. There was a Hank Williams LP in perfect condition, except for one track, "Your Cheatin' Heart," which was worn clear through, Carley said, as if it had been played over and over and over again. And then there were the 30-some marijuana seeds nestled in the crease of a Jethro Tull album ... Ah, remember those days?

"Psychedelic music is hard to find," Carley said, "because those records that people really partied to are just trashed."

Carley also works at Hiawatha Behavioral Health, so Leftovertures, at 308 Deer Street, is open limited hours: Monday through Thursday 3 to 5 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. You may want to call first: 906-341-8149. Record shows are held every few months at the Marquette Mall and you'll find Carley there, usually with mega-collector Ed Johnson of Newberry and Boogie Bob from downstate (boogiebobsrecords.com).

And in case you’re wondering about the name, "Leftovertures," I refer you to a 1976 Kansas LP, if you can find it.

Bee

2008-05-29T17:18:00.009-04:00

The other day I had the distinct pleasure of sitting in a bee yard surrounded by dandelions, long grass, sunshine, and honey bees. The yard was a green space dotted with 40 or so white lidded hives, each with a large rock on top. I wore a white bee suit topped off by a pith helmet and veil. The bees were busy, as they should be in late May, and their comings and goings crossed my line of vision every which way. They flew back and forth, north to south, east to west, zig to zag. Their hum filled the air, and for a moment there was nothing else, just bees making honey, just bees being bees, sweetness on the wing.

I think about bees and I think about chaos. Look into a bee hive and you see thousands of bees in a mad scramble crawling over and under and around each other. Outside the hive they dart from bloom to bloom. They move with a kind of kinetic imbalance, heading one way then another, as if constantly catching themselves before heading off in the wrong direction.

But to associate bees with chaos is wrong. A bee is not aimless. A bee is the embodiment of having a job to do and doing that job with no superfluous movement, no meandering thought. A bee is single-minded. The roles in a hive are well-defined, and the basics are this.

A worker bee collects nectar and pollen, starting the transformation of nectar into honey within her body. In the hive she transfers the nascent sweetness to a honeycomb cell to store as food or passes it on to another worker, who feeds it to the larvae, the bees to be, who are also snugged away in the cells of the comb.

A drone, after his chance to mate with the queen, doesn't do much, but perhaps that's a purpose in itself.

The queen, after her one mating flight in the spring, lays eggs, one to a cell, more than a thousand a day.

Eventually there are so many bees making so much honey that there is enough to share with others who covet honey as food, such as man, such as me.

I was in the bee yard helping a beekeeper move some of his hives from nucleus boxes into larger, standard hive boxes. Not that I was really much help. I couldn't stop my mind from wandering, from being fascinated by the bees and their movement. He told me so much about what he does and why - he was telling me about bees and being a beekeeper so I could write a story - but so much of what he said flew in one ear and out the other. Certainly, I thought, I'll retain some of it. Certainly I'll be able to make a story out of it. After all, that's why I am here; that is my purpose.

Alas, I am not as purposeful as a bee.

As we were leaving the yard a bee landed on my hand. I had taken off my big protective bee gloves a bit earlier. I raised my hand to get a closer look.

"Just shake it off," the beekeeper said.

So I did.

Where the honey flows
Beeswax

Saturday Nights with Elmer

2008-05-22T10:33:00.002-04:00

A tribute to Elmer Aho

Imagine driving along a two-lane blacktop highway that cuts through a forest of pine, tall trees lining the road; it's twilight, it's May, and you are learning that twilight in May goes on forever. The sun sets, leaving behind a deep orange scratch tearing open the horizon which you see, first in flashes through forest green, then in fullness through a sudden clearing that reveals a broad, deeply purple lake. You flip on the radio. There's Willie Nelson, singing about blue skies, nothin' but blue skies.

Imagine the depth of winter: Outside, a deep freeze; layers of snow sparkling, undulating under a full moon, long shadows from bare trees cutting a checkerboard across the yard. Inside, a fire in the woodstove. You turn on the radio. There's Bobby Bare, urging you to get singin' in the kitchen.

Imagine a September evening. The bugs have dwindled, the trees are full, nightfall quickens. Sitting out on the patio you watch the occasional car, camper, 18-wheeler pass by on the highway. Wood smoke from a neighbor's campfire trails through the sky. You switch on the radio. There's Red Foley, singing about another lonely day.

Midnight ...
I've spent another lonely day,
thinking of you.

Have I mentioned it's Saturday night and you're listening to American Country Gold with Elmer Aho?

Midnight ...
tomorrow is on its way,
empty and blue.

It was Elmer who introduced me to Red Foley and his song "Midnight."

I'm so lonely,
so lonely at midnight for you.

It may not have happened if Elmer hadn't had a heart attack and had to ease back into his Saturday night, 7 to midnight show at WJPD, 92.3 on your FM dial. Traditionally he plays "Midnight" at the end of the show, and, you see, I'm no longer a stay-up-until-midnight kind of gal. But I am a Saturday-night-with-Elmer kind of gal, and one Saturday night last September Elmer ended his show around 9:30, and I heard "Midnight" for the first time, and I swooned.

Midnight ...
oh what a lonely time to weep,
I ought to know.

Midnight ...
I should have been fast asleep,
hours ago.

The lyrics work. The guitar works. The voice works. The slow lopin' cowboy boogie works, moving me to dance and smile 'cause yeah, I'm so lonely and

Still I'm crying,
I'm crying 'cause I miss you so.

♪ ♪ ♪

I wouldn't call myself a country music fan, but I do like music of most kinds and having spent most of my life around Chicago I've been able to listen to, live or otherwise, most any type of music I wanted. There are a gajillion radio stations in Chicago, AM and FM, and at least half will change their format on an annual basis, giving you something new or old or somewhere in between to listen to. During the summer you can take your pick of outdoor jazz, country, blues, and gospel festivals. You can find symphony orchestras and local rock and punk and mariachi bands tuning up and letting loose at neighborhood parks and in concert halls. The big names never stop coming through. The smaller, more obscure names never leave.

Yet there is nothing like Elmer.

For that matter, neither is there anything like Les Ross, Sr., and the Finnish American All-Stars. Imagine: An 80-year-old guy playing the harmonica with no hands, no holder. But that's a different story.

Elmer plays what he calls classic, traditional country from Johnny Cash to Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings to Jean Shepard, Ernest Tubb, George Jones, Roger Miller, and a bunch of folks whose names I don't know. He also plays local music, much of which is Finnish (including Les Ross and his "lumberjack harmonica") and some of which is country (imagine Tiny C. Hart and the Hart Beats). Elmer even plays himself, most often his classic "Gwinn Model Town Blues."

I admit, to appreciate Elmer you have to appreciate country music. You have to appreciate lyrics such as "I'm tired of playing second fiddle to an old guitar" and "My tears have washed 'I love you' from the blackboard of my heart." You have to enjoy songs about trains and trucks, love and heartache, roller skates and buffalo herds, chickens and tambourines. When a singer suddenly starts yodeling, it must make you smile. Then, you can move on to Elmer.

Listen to Elmer for a half minute and you know: This isn't your everyday radio show. This is local; this is genuine. This guy knows his music, and he knows his audience. Elmer takes requests, and requests come in from all over, including, as he says, "the suburbs," like Mohawk, Fulton, Ahmeek, and Tamarack; suburbs like Shelter Bay, Deerton, Au Train, and Trenary. Many a Saturday night Elmer will tell us that we have to hold back on our requests because he's got too many to get to already. There are requests from wedding parties, from the guys out at deer camp, from one sweetheart to another. Dedications go out to places like Chuck's Pub in "beautiful downtown Palmer," to the snowplow drivers at the mines, and a tinkling ivory tune goes out to the piano lady at the vet center. Without fail, every Saturday night somebody's going to ask for "Singin' in the Kitchen," and Elmer's going to play it.

Elmer spins the platters for all those who like something just a little bit different.

And just imagine - it is platters that are spinning. It is the original issue, the LP, the record, the 33, the 45. Sometimes there's a skip, a scratch, or a piece of dust catching the needle, and we all get caught up in a little transcendental loop-de-loop of repeating time, a hiccup of melody. Then Elmer gives the needle a little get-along, and we're back in the swing, we're back in the heartache, we're back in the groove. Sometimes a tune begins playing at the wrong speed. Elmer chuckles. Sometimes (but not too often) he announces one song and plays another. Elmer doesn't serve up perfection, just a dang good time.

At eight o'clock, we get our Western set. Goodbye, Old Paint, and git along you li'l dogies down that old dusty trail. A little before nine, Elmer warns us it's time to roll up the rug; the bluegrass set is about to begin, and we may feel like doin' a little jig. If it's May or June and he has to mention the word "snow" in the weather forecast, he apologizes, and he apologizes sincerely.

So, imagine a haunting song sung in Finnish accompanied by accordion and mandolin. You don't understand a word, yet you know.

♪ ♪ ♪

Midnight ...
I lie in bed awake and stare,
at nothing at all.

Wondering ...
wondering why you don't care,
wishing you'd call.

Tears keep flowing,
like drops from a waterfall.

♪ ♪ ♪

Imagine: It's Saturday night. You turn on the radio.

Tyoga Trail: Part Two

2008-05-15T11:00:00.010-04:00

Of the 20-some signs one can enjoy along the Tyoga Historical Pathway, my favorite is "Bed Bugs!"

"... Some lumberjacks claimed the sleeping camps so bad that the only way they could get to sleep was to turn their underwear inside out and quickly fall asleep before the lice got inside again. ..."

This sign is about halfway around the 1.4-mile hiking trail, and it's hard to read it without feeling a little tickle here and there and the itch to move along. But at this point there's no turning back; one can only continue and hope that the bed bugs are as long gone as the lumberjacks and the town of Tyoga itself.

I returned to the Tyoga trail this week on a sunny mid-40s day. A strong breeze off Lake Superior was holding back more spring-like temperatures, but in the woods spring was in full swing. All traces of snow were gone, and in its place were broad patches of fledgling meadow rue, bright green spikes of new grass, a beaten down carpet of old pale brown leaves, and rampantly emerging lily of the valley, wild strawberry, and trout lily, to name just the ones I know.

The trail was still tricky with windfalls blocking my path now and again, bringing out the gymnast in me - the gymnast I never knew was there - but overall it was easy going. It was squishy and wet in spots, but my boots stayed dry.

My favorite part of the trail comes soon after the bed bug warning, just beyond the site where the Tyoga Lumber Company Store stood, selling, as a plaque informs us, "Food, tobacco, clothing and various odds and ends ... ." It's where the trail meets the old railroad grade for the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway, which brought in the supplies to stock the store and hauled out lumber. It marks the beginning of a stretch of trail that is relatively straight and easily navigated, a beautiful, dappled corridor cutting through a forest of hemlock. Very soon you cross a foot bridge that spans a gurgling stream, and it's a perfect place to stop, sit, listen, gaze, drift away.

At various points along the trail I stop to listen. Mostly it is still. Occasionally the twitter or call of a bird or two. The wind through the trees. The dim roar of Lake Superior on those north-windy days. The squeaking of tree trunks and limbs as they rub against each other. In the fall, a constant trickle of falling leaves. I look around. Just a forest with trees, boulders, moss, lichen, hundreds of tiny wildflowers not yet bloomed, rocks, roots, and water. Deer poop. Berry canes. Fallen trees, rotting away, giving life to moss, lichen, wildflowers.

A bit further on is the sign "Widow Makers," telling about the rough life in the logging camp, how easily accidents and death came about due to "... a falling limb, an exploded boiler, or a wrecked train ... ." Just beyond the sign are two wooden crosses, presumably marking old graves, but I've never known if the graves are real or just there for effect. I've always found it to be a very good effect.

I lost the trail a couple of times, veered off when walking around an obstacle or two, but I was always able to regain it. Two or three years ago I'm not sure I could have done that. I am beginning to know Tyoga, and that feels good. Every time I visit I try to discern exactly what it is that draws me to this trail, exactly why I so enjoy Tyoga, but I cannot grab onto it. I can feel it, but I cannot capture it. It's almost as if it captures me.

When I got home I decided to look for bed bugs and found instead a tic. Oh yes. Spring is here.

Tyoga Trail: Part One
Tyoga Trail: Part Three

Peeper Musicale

2008-05-08T09:02:00.004-04:00

It was the summer solstice a few years back when I first became aware of the peepers. It was 10:30 or so at night and dusk was falling. Despite a light now-and-again rain, I'd spent most of the long, mild evening outside by the campfire, listening to the hum and purr and occasional yakety-yak-yak of human voices. As darkness rose, voices dwindled. People departed. For a time, the rumble of car engines, shouts of "Where's my ...?" and good-byes mingled with a noise coming from the woods. What was that noise? Was it a ringing? A singing? An insect? A bird? Maybe it was just a ringing in my ears, some left-over noise from the party.

The last headlight withdrew and faded; it was quiet. But ... it wasn't. There was a strange, pulsating, lilting, screeching, singing, noise coming from ... somewhere. Coming from ... all around.

"What is that noise?"

"Peepers."

The call of the peeper is hard to describe. It is B-movie scary - an incessant screeching in the woods - and as well a lyrical song of spring, a veritable symphony of lilting trills and staccato peeps. It is a monstrous noise created by a tiny inch-long frog; it is a love song sung by a froggie gone a-wooin'. It is a romance; it is a nightmare.

In the midst of a peeper serenade, it sounds as if there are thousands of frogs spread out all around, high and low, near and far. One half is trilling - trilltrilltrill - while the others peep - peep peep peep. The trills roll, one atop another, like waves too close together. The peeps pile on top of the trills like machine gun fire, with eerie pauses and grand crescendos.

The noise is a conundrum. I have read that the peeper's song is just one note, but that only stirs the confusion and the imagination. One note per frog? Or one note for all? One peeper, one note - this I have never heard. But, that's not quite true, for isn't what I am hearing in the throes of a peeper love fest just one peeper, one note, many times over? If I could see a peeper and watch him peep then maybe I could distinguish individual peeping, but that's not likely to happen. It's easy to hear a peeper, but not so easy to see a peeper. And they rarely, if ever, peep alone. In fact, I have read that they peep in threes, making a contest of it, giving the lady peeper some peeps to muse over, which would lead one to believe that the peeps do vary. But - three times three thousand is more like it, each peeper displaying his peeping prowess in a royal battle a cappella.

Amid such a din, it is difficult to focus one's ear on the sound of one peeper, though I almost did it the other night. I stood on the bank of the river surrounded by a multitude of lustful frogs. To listen better, I closed my eyes. Suddenly, one of the loudest peepings stopped. Only then, when this peeper turned quiet, could I distinguish his voice from the rest.

Whatever else it is, peeper music is joyful. These little frogs do most of their courting on spring nights, after the ice has melted back into the pond and a balminess rises from the earth. Indeed, there is no better troubador of spring than the peeper. The first night that I heard them this year, a fire in the woodstove had the house nicely toasted, so I opened the windows, let the fresh air in, sank back in my chair, and reveled in the advent of love.

The peeper photo is from Wikipedia's Spring Peeper page. Go there for audio clips!

April 29, 2008

2008-05-01T09:18:00.004-04:00

Halfway down the dead-end road, about 50 feet into the woods, is the cab of an old milk delivery truck, resting and rusting between a couple of trees. Its tires are gone, as are its headlights, windows, and much of its engine. The lettering on the driver's side door reads:

Pike Dist. Co.
Newberry, Mich.

I say it's a milk truck, but I don't know, that's just what my neighbor tells me, that it's a milk truck from the 1940s. But whatever the truck hauled is long gone, and why it sits where it does I don't know. My neighbor says it's there because that's where it stopped, but there is no faint road or path, no nearby falling down house or garage, no slight depression or rotting timbers or stones or rocks to hint at an abandoned foundation. Why stop there? The truck cab simply is, in the woods, day after day, going nowhere.

The truck is on my mind because I walk by it almost every day, and today it is much more visible than usual, being neither covered by snow nor hidden behind foliage. This is my fourth spring in the woods, and each spring I have noticed this window of time and space when the snow is gone, but the buds have yet to burst, and I can see into the woods in a way I just cannot at any other time. The deep carpet of fall leaves has been flattened by months of snow, now forgotten. Branches are bare, wild flowers and berry bushes have yet to erupt and obscure. One can look into the woods and see, well, old abandoned cars, but also old trails, foundation remnants, leaning trees, broken and fallen trees, new raspberry canes, promising wisps of blueberry bushes, and old sawdust piles from back when this area was a logging camp.

Mostly what you see, though, is space - unfilled space that makes the world seem clearer and somehow bigger. And the time when this happens is time suspended. It comes after a few days of warm temperatures, after you've doffed your jacket and thought, okay, spring is here, and then the next morning you're trying to get a fire going because it's dang chilly again and it stays that way for a few days. Spring interruptus. Time suspended. The greening and budding slows down, waits. And a window into the woods opens.

And so it is during spring that the bare bones of the past are most visible. To me it feels like clarity, a reminder that you can dress up, cover up, hide behind flowers and berries, but underneath it all the abandoned cars, forgotten homes, and paths once taken or forsaken remain.

Farm Report
There's no stopping spring out at Seeds & Spores Family Farm - planting is in full swing. We started off in the greenhouse transplanting tiny tomato seedlings, then moved into the hothouses to plant young sprouts of broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, and beets. It took just one step to go from temperatures in the 40s to temperatures in the 70s.

While planting, conversation flowed, off and on, as it always does, and I think it has something to do with sitting in the dirt, looking at the dirt, doing something with a plant in the dirt, that allows conversation to flow in unexpected directions, swinging easily from a tale about a transmission flush, to the general topic of colon cleansing, to confessions about daily (or not!) teeth brushing, which brings with it the sidecar thought of flossing, which reminded me of my dad, who liked to insist that it was fine to use the same piece of floss over and over again and that not to do so could be considered wasteful.

There are 16 piglets on the farm, nine of which were born the night before.

Tyoga Trail: Part One

2008-04-23T09:35:00.006-04:00

With a little thought, I would have realized it was too early to go out on the Tyoga trail, but my mind was all a-jumble with signs of spring, including a number of days without snow, quite a bit of sunshine, temperatures nipping at the 60-degree mark, finding one of Buster's long-missing winter booties on the morning trail, fuzzy buddies on the beech trees, and, to cap it all off, a "Peeper Report" on the evening news. Peepers (small frogs with big voices) had been heard over in Daggett. This can only mean spring, so out I headed to one of my favorite spots, the Tyoga Historical Pathway.

The Tyoga trail, as I call it, is a 1.4-mile hiking trail a couple of miles north of M-28, just off a dirt road that eventually leads to a boat launch on Lake Superior. The trail runs alongside the Laughing Whitefish River, crossing it once and then back again as it loops around the town of Tyoga, a town no longer there, a town which flourished briefly about 100 years ago, a town built around a sawmill built in the midst of about 7,000 acres of virgin timber that included hemlock, pine, and hardwoods, a town nearly forgotten until someone got wind of its story, mapped out the location, and brought Tyoga's tale back to life via brief vignettes and old photographs displayed on trailside plaques. If not for the plaques, it would be hard to believe a town once existed here. The woods are dense, the marshes are sudden, and the boulders are steep and craggy.

In winter, the trail is inaccessible as the road leading to it is mostly unplowed. In summer, the woods can be unbearably buggy. But in autumn, the trail is exquisite, alive with color and scent and mysterious light. In spring, it's merely a chance, for there are other, more prosaic signs of spring, such as deep snow lurking in the shadows and melting snow giving rise to surging rivers, squishy swamps, complacent ponds, and sneaky streams. All wet, all cold. These are the signs I quickly recalled as I headed down the Tyoga trail.

The trail starts off hugging the west bank of the river. Due to a high level of tannin, the Laughing Whitefish is murky as tea, and this morning apparently high on caffeine. The river was frolicking and kicking up its heels in the bright sunshine, dancing over fallen branches and skipping over stones, tumbling and twirling to its own music. At first the trail was clear, but it wasn't long before I was walking in knee-deep snow. The bridge was just ahead, maybe on the other side ...

Still deep snow. But it lessened as the trail turned away from the river and climbed into the woods, where melted snow ran in gurgling streams and pooled between hillocks and roots and boulders, doing its best to submerge my path. Add in the winter's windfall of trees, including one huge white cedar that had once stood trailside but now lay broken across the trail, and you're looking at one path that's hard to follow.

But the Tyoga trail is often hard to follow. Even on the nicest of days I have had to stop and look for the blue blazes painted on the trees, marking which direction to go. It is never a very wide trail, and often it seems to be nothing more than a lightly chiseled groove, a hesitant suggestion, a scarecrow flopping its arm this way, or maybe that way. But I have walked the trail a number of times now, and I'm beginning to know its twists and turns and to recognize when a change in terrain is due. This first part, where I was now, could be some of the toughest, as the trail scrambles up and down boulders, skips over streams, and wrangles its way through rascally roots. But I was just about through it, skirting the obstacles, keeping an eye out for blue-splotched trees, and now at the point where the woods fell back a little bit, opened up a little bit, and the earth turned to meadow.

A swamp up ahead. I felt sure the trail was under there somewhere; I could hop from one hummock to another; maybe that would work. I looked for a trail marker, came up empty.

Where in blue blazes was I?

I backed up to my last marker, sensed the direction I should go (the swamp) and hopped ahead a bit, looking for a splotch or a plaque. Nothing. Suddenly, I felt something moving swiftly toward me. I froze. I turned my head slightly and caught sight of a deer bounding in my direction. He froze, stopping about 20 yards from me. He looked around cautiously, looking for me, I presumed. Eventually he turned, but stayed hesitant. I admired his black and white trimmed ears and tail, his incredibly knock-kneed hind legs. He took off, away from me, and I realized my feet were soaking wet and cold and I'd somehow run out of blue blazes. I decided to call it a day.

The Tyoga trail runs clockwise, and I was now countering it, having to check behind me for the blazes. I'd just been by this way, hadn't walked very far, you might think it would be easier, heading back, but it wasn't. At one point I stopped, dumbfounded. I wasn't lost - there was that downed white cedar just behind me - but I could not find the trail or the next blue blaze, and the way I thought I should go wasn't turning out right. I backtracked once again and stood still. Aha. There's the way.

Soon I was walking in my own footsteps in the knee-deep snow. Near the start of the trail is a small sandy area along the riverbank, across from the three-story sawmill that no longer exists, not even a whisper. The spot was bathed in sunlight. I sat down and loosened my soggy boots. The river sang, and I smiled. Tyoga would have to wait for another day.

Tyoga Trail: Part Two
Tyoga Trail: Part Three

For Golf Nuts and The Unduly Curious ~only~

2008-04-17T12:30:00.009-04:00

For Golf Nuts
The club with the big wood head that I first used to hit golf balls off the deck is a MacGregor Tour Flight 5, with "Lady MacGregor" stenciled across the top of the mallet. (Is there a "Gentleman MacGregor"?) The grip on that club was a bit ookie, as in gummy, so later I switched to another big-headed club, the Grafalloy M29 Boron Graphite Trident Golf 1. I believe these clubs are called drivers, or woods, but have no idea where to put the all-important number that describes them. Should it be a #5 MacGregor Tour Flight? Or a #5 wood, a MacGregor Tour Flight? Ahem, excuse me, a Lady MacGregor...

I have been told that the set of clubs I have (the set that used to belong to my mother, in case you haven't read about the bloomin' golf balls) is a good set. Judge for yourself. A complete list follows.

In the Bag, Part One
Woods or Drivers
1 - Grafalloy M29 Boron Graphite Trident Golf
3 - Grafalloy M29 Boron Graphite Trident Golf
5 - MacGregor Tour Flight

Irons
2 - Betty Hicks Autograph Custom Bilt
3 - Golf
4 - Crown Viper
4 - Lady MacGregor
5 - Golf
6 - Lady MacGregor
7 - Crown Viper
8 - Lady Macgregor
Sand Wedge - Championship Kroydon
Pitching Wedge - Lady MacGregor

The most interesting club is the Betty Hicks. First, because it's the only Betty Hicks in the bunch, and second, it is the only club that is well tarnished, with an old, rusty, put-me-to-rest appearance. The brown leather grip is peeling at the top and is worn away to a rough, fleshy color at the bottom. So I asked about it and yes, it was a well-used club, my mom claiming to have made many a good shot with it. My sister added that nobody uses a 2 iron anymore. Hmmm. Maybe they should...

For The Unduly Curious
Ever been shocked, amused, or amazed by the contents of someone else's wallet, purse, medicine cabinet, or pants pocket? Well, next time you get the chance, check out the debris in a golf bag.

In the Bag, Part Two
16 little pencils, 3 with erasers
4 white paper cups, crumpled
Cutter insect repellent
Keychain flashlight, non-functioning
1 blank scorecard, Chick Evans Golf Course
4 blank scorecards, Wilmette Golf Course
1 blank scorecard, The Tides Inn
4 plastic bags
3 gloves, crumpled
2 tags, The Greenbrier
1 tag, Broadmoor Golf Club
2 tags, Southampton Princess Golf Club
1 tag, La Paloma
1 receipt, Wilmette Golf Course, 9/19/00, 9:37 a.m.
3 Halls mentho-lyptus cough drops, gooey
2 metal shower hooks
4 things I don't know how to describe
10 white golf balls, slightly sticky
1 funny green rubber thing, maybe a training tee?
14 plastic spotters
1 Golf Handicap Information Network card, 1992
46 tees (including 9 from The Greenbrier, 1 from Michigan Shores, 1 from Hertz, and 1 from a "Mr. Ted")
1 quarter

As my sister would say: "What, no grilled cheese?"

The day the golf balls bloomed

2008-04-10T14:52:00.008-04:00

There are 14 golf balls in this picture. Can you find them all?

The golf balls were planted over the past couple of months, starting after the beginning of November, when I received a pre-inheritance from my mother: her golf clubs.

My mother was a golfer, and long after she quit playing her set of clubs remained in the storage cage in the sub-basement of her apartment building. They could not be given to Goodwill or the Salvation Army because, as was the case with so many things, "Maybe one of you girls would like to have them." The "girls" are my two sisters and me, a trio of gals age 50 and over, and not one of us wanted the golf clubs. Two of us don't golf (I'm in this category), and the other has a set of clubs that she is, basically, happy with (don't get her started...). We had all made our positions clear. Still...

Getting rid of stuff is hard. We usually don't do it until we have to, and my mother, moving from the Midwest to California, had to. Although she had made progress, there was a long way to go. It seems we imbue our stuff with memories and stories that we can't let go of; we want to hold on to things for complicated reasons, or we want to pass things on for even more complicated reasons. But a set of golf clubs is heavy and unwieldy. It certainly wasn't going to California (which also happens to be where my sisters live), so the clubs, nestled contentedly all their lives well below the tension line in a suburb of Chicago, came north, beyond the tension line, with me. It was my idea, and I have no idea where it came from. It was probably desperation, and it seemed to make sense at the time. After all, the damn clubs had to go somewhere. Why not the back of my pick-up?

At home I put the clubs in a shed and forgot about them. Then one day, a few weeks or a month later, I tripped over them and decided to try them out. I stuck a red plastic tee between two of the deck boards, placed a dimpled, fluorescent yellow ball on the tee, picked out a club with a big, wood head, and swung hard. I missed. I swung again. I missed. I swung again. With a satisfying smack, the ball left the tee and sailed to the left, landing amongst the trees. I was hooked.

Some of my favorite shots:

the one that went over the shed;
the one that landed on top of the shed;
the ones, and there have been a few, that took off straight and hard, smartly cracking against the front of the shed;
the one that veered right, hit a tree, hit one of the stakes keeping the wood pile in place, hit the tarp that covers the wood pile and swooped up, hitting another tree before falling to earth;
all those that have ricocheted off trees going ping, ping, pong.

I also enjoyed how different snow coverings affected the landings. When the snow pack was crusted over, the ball would bounce and roll, eventually coming to a stop by dropping into a foot or paw print, or maybe ka-chinking into a hollow around a tree trunk. A light, fluffy snow covering resulted in lost balls. Sometimes they would plop down lightly, keeping their heads above water, but other times they would roll and sink, leaving behind a fine trail that dipped underground, creating a burrow deep in the snow. These were the balls that disappeared.

My practice was to shoot six or a dozen balls, then go and fetch them. One day I realized I was several balls short of what I had started with; I knew one was on the shed roof, some were lost in the depths of the open shed (I still haven't figured out exactly where they're at), but others had slipped without a whisper into the snow. One day, I thought, this snow is going to melt, and all my golf balls will reappear.

That day happened April 8, the day the golf balls bloomed. I grabbed my basket and went out and collected them, sixteen in all. So, Mom, how did you know? How did you know I'd like having your old clubs?

Gypsy Broccoli

2008-04-06T12:47:00.008-04:00

Two days after the blizzard, the sun shone bright and the thermometer crept boldly past 50 degrees. Streams of melting ice and snow cascaded off the roof and rambled down the muddy roads. Three pairs of Canada geese, honking as crazily as if they were in crosstown traffic, flew downriver, heading to Lake Superior. The breeze, whispering softly of its southern origin, dispersed a cool, crisp scent. Snow lay two feet deep in the yard, and the ice on the patio was two inches thick, but the air was ripe with spring, so I headed out to the farm.

Seeds & Spores Family Farm practices the latest in friendly farming - community-supported agriculture. It is a small operation of five or so acres growing a variety of produce and flowers, shiitake mushrooms, and raising cattle, hogs, laying hens, and Thanksgiving turkeys. From June through October it supplies more than 125 families, or subscribers, as they are called, with weekly bins of fresh food. As well, the farm helps supply the local food cooperative, the farmer's market, and a handful of restaurants. It also offers a down-on-the-farm experience for a loyal group of volunteers, of which I am one.

"Do you know your farmer?" is a bumper sticker one can see around town, and yes, I know mine - two guys named Jeff. And their wives. And their children. And, in a sense, all and any of us who go out to the farm and plant a seed, pull a weed, pick a bean, wash an egg, harvest a mushroom, dig a potato, pick a tomato, thump a pumpkin, bundle some parsley, pluck a turkey, wash some lettuce, hum a packin' tune or dance a rain jig on a hot, dusty day. But the ones who orchestrate it all? That would be the farmers. That would be the two Jeffs.

One of the two Jeffs had called to tell me that despite the blizzard it was planting time. In the greenhouse, where flats of tomatoes and peppers (among other things) were already sprouting, the air was warm and moist, reminiscent of a long-ago July. Just give me a lawn chair and a piña colada ... who needs Jimmy Buffett and tickets to Florida? I was given planting instructions and a palmful of brown, round seeds, each the size of a pin head: Gypsy broccoli. I dropped the seeds, one by one, into the little squares in the flat of soil. They nestled in the dirt and were on their way: destiny. Their metamorphosis, in just a few short weeks, would be dramatic. From speck to spectacle, from figment to food, from barely there to a bevy of nutrients. So many of us fear change, but where would our food be without it? Stuck in a mousy brown, pin-head sized seed, hunkered down in the dirt.

The Fool's Blizzard

2008-04-01T11:22:00.010-04:00

For some, a sure sign of spring is a baseball home opener. For others it's the first daffodil or snowdrop. Some listen for the swift gurgling of a trout stream while others pore over patio furniture ads. But an April Fool's Day blizzard?

Ah, no doubt, spring is close at hand.

This year's storm was predicted early on, anticipated on the front page of the Sunday paper under the headline "Get ready." Most people I talked to got ready by planning on having Tuesday off of work with the kids out of school. And that seems to be the case. Heck, even the library's closed today.

I noticed the first flakes a little before five p.m. Monday, as the dogs and I walked to the corner for the paper and mail. The paper was stuck in its usual place in the snowbank. (After one particular fierce storm a month or so ago, the orange plastic tube for paper delivery was plowed under.) The temperature was just north of freezing, the wind light and southerly.

At five-thirty a blizzard warning trailed across the bottom of the TV screen.

At six the evening news led off with the nascent storm, booting the local murder trial from the lead for the first time in weeks.

By bed time, though, I wondered. The snow was more like a sloshy rain and the wind a mere whisper. Was a blizzard really likely?

At one a.m. I awoke to the sound of the upstairs neighbors teaching their pet elephants how to dance. Or were they throwing bowling balls at each other? Wait a minute ... I don't have upstairs neighbors. The phone beeped, indicating the electricity had come back on. When did it go off? A bit unsettled, I got up and looked out the window. The pines were lashing about, tossing needles and twigs at random, as if they were three-year-olds left unattended after sucking down too many cans of Mountain Dew. Yahoo! Clumps of snow and slush were dropping out of the sky, clods hurtling against the windows, pummeling the roof.

By seven, the windows I could see out of offered up a world as white as the windows I could not see out of. The snow was drifting and drifted. It clung, thick and wet, to every branch, every little twig, every small, trembling needle. The wind blew fiercely from the north, north east, bringing in new snow, or, in moments of pure whimsy, just whipping up that which had fallen, wanting to play with it again. A pile of wet slop had piled up against the door.

And so it goes on April Fool's Day. A friend called to make sure I was all right, and I told her I was thinking of going into town. She asked if I were nuts, then, if you do go, she said, can you pick me up some sliced Swiss cheese? About eleven I went out to survey the possibilities and saw I would have to drive through at least a foot of drifted snow and then under a fair amount of dangling snow to get out. The wind was howling, blowing, kicking up a fuss.

Perhaps, you think, a strange sign of spring. But we all know you have to start somewhere. And sometimes the place you start looks nothing like where you end up.

Home is where the art is

2008-03-27T09:07:00.001-04:00

It had been a while since the dogs and I had walked through Lakenenland, a sculpture park tucked into the woods off M-28. Tom Lakenen, the sculptor, had added quite a few new pieces, but the old favorites were still there. Tom's rules for his park are simple, because there are none. It's always open, there's no fee, and on display are 60 or more sculptures made from scrap iron. You can walk through the park, or ski, or snowmobile, or, once the spring thaw is over, drive through in your Maserati or 4-wheeler or Chevy Impala. Tom doesn't really care, as long as you have fun.

It's the local government he has trouble with, but without that trouble, which forced him to move his sculptures from his home, the park probably wouldn't be here in the first place.

Tom's sculptures run the gamut from whimsical beasts to local, national, and international political statements, taking on such subjects as war, corporate greed, and unions, past and present. Tom is a union man, a family man, a construction worker, and an alcoholic. But once he quit drinking, he has said, he began creating. And what he has created in Lakenenland is an extensive welcome mat to his world, where scraps of vision weld with scraps of steel. Tom calls it "junkyard art." To many, it's treasure.

Once a friend and I skied to Lakenenland. When we arrived, Tom and his wife and kids were there as well as a few snowmobilers (the park is on snowmobile trail #417). A bonfire was roaring. Tom offered us hot dogs and hot chocolate. We sat at a picnic table to rest, eat, and talk.

Tom always keeps plenty of logs on hand for a fire. There is an open shelter that protects maps, a guest book, glass cases that display the articles written about Lakenenland and business cards left by visitors, a crate for returnable cans and bottles, a suggestion/complaint tube, a donation tube, and old Christmas decorations. There is a cupboard stuffed full of crackers, donuts, coffee, sugar, instant soup, napkins, mustard, and snack mix. Today, after I had signed the guest book, made note of the various places others had recently come from (mostly the Midwest, but also California, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Ontario, Canada), a group of snowmobilers pulled in off the trail.

"What? You didn't start the fire for us?" one asked as he pulled off helmet and gloves.

"I didn't know you were coming," I said.

They had come from several miles east, where it was colder, they reported, and had brought their own hot dogs and buns.

"You've been here before?"

"Oh, yeah, we always stop here." The group was from Ohio and lower Michigan and proceeded to make themselves at home in Lakenenland.

Lakenenland's official Web site is: lakenenland.com

Google "Lakenenland" for other reviews of the park. I also found an "unusual-rare" jigsaw puzzle of Lakenenland on eBay. Small world, eh?

Give Me Liberty

2008-03-24T09:59:00.010-04:00

The other day John Stossel gave a talk in a small auditorium at Northern Michigan University. A sign on the wall indicated capacity for the room was 487 persons. There were at least that many, people of all sizes and ages, from the blue-fingernailed to the blue-haired, from the spiky-haired to the sharply dressed with a thin red tie. They were crammed into every seat rising like a crescendo to SRO conditions in the back. Stossel arrived through a back door straight from the airport and received a standing ovation as he walked down a side aisle to the stage. Except for the fact that he was an investigative reporter on some TV news show, I knew nothing about him.

During his introduction I learned: he’s written books; worked the consumer beat for 20/20 and other TV shows; has won 19 Emmy awards; has a syndicated column which runs in the local paper; graduated from Princeton University in 1969 with a BA in psychology.

I took an immediate liking to the guy when he started off by telling us that he knows some people know exactly what they want to do in life, but that “that really creeped me out when I was in school.” Stossel said he didn’t know what he wanted to do when he left college and while applying to grad schools decided to take a free ride to Oregon to interview for a reporter position, and there it began.

“Working was much more fun (than school), and they paid you.”

He told anecdotes of starting out as a consumer reporter busting advertisers who made false claims (can all brands of aspirin really be proven to be most effective?), and soon he saw government regulations growing and thought that was good, thought that was necessary. But somewhere down the line he began to shift, began to see the rules and regulations as a burden, as a drain on creative energy and innovation. Now he believes strongly in “raw competition,” believing that a free, unregulated market is the consumer’s best protection.

“John Henry never said ‘Give me absolute safety or give me death,’” Stossel declared.

A tall, thin man with a narrow face, Stossel, who now lives in Manhattan, has slightly graying thick dark hair and a thick moustache. He wore a red, long sleeved T-shirt underneath a black suit jacket with black pants. Although strongly opinionated – legalize drugs and prostitution, deregulate markets, allow price gouging – he does not seem unduly set in all his opinions, admitting that there are still some things he’s trying to figure out. And this is what I liked about him – he obviously has strong views, but those views evolved over time and experience. And they are, at least to a certain extent, still evolving.

One thing he claims to be trying to figure out is what he sees as some kind of innate hatred of business, despite the fact that most of life consists of voluntary business transactions in which people seem to be happy, saying “thank you” to one another. Buy a cup of coffee, he said, and you’re thanking the coffee seller and the coffee seller’s thanking you, the coffee buyer. Isn’t everybody happy? Stossel has been accused of being a conservative, but he counters that he’s a “liberal turned libertarian.”

Stossel’s talk was engaging. He looked at his audience more often than his notes, and his audience responded with a seemingly unabashed fondness, often clapping and laughing at his anecdotes and pithy comments. (“When they said Northern Michigan, I didn’t know they meant NORTHERN Michigan …” was a crowd pleaser.) And he also knew about NMU’s recent proposal that would require smokers driving through campus to keep their car windows closed – a perfect example of good intention run absolutely amok. (For clarification, see NMU’s 2008 Smoking Survey Results.)

One of his few visual displays was a chart, “Days Off Your Life.” It delineated the risk of certain things we tend to be scared of – airplane crashes, terrorism, second-hand smoke – by showing us exactly how many days each of these fears is likely to shave off the average person’s life. (I admit that the means of how these days were figured was unclear to me.) The number one thing likely to reduce one’s life span? Poverty. Second-hand smoke? Negligible. Terrorism? Three days off your life.

“Frankly, as I was driving out here, I can’t believe you’re much worried about terrorism,” he said. The crowd chuckled. But apparently some people are very worried about cigarette smoke drifting out of a car window.

During a question-and-answer period, Stossel was momentarily thrown by a man who wanted to give Stossel the shirt off his back. “What?” the dapper Manhattanite asked. A softly rounded fellow with scraggly grey hair flowing down his back and a face buried under a massive grey beard sauntered toward the stage and pulled off his T-shirt. (Fortunately, there was another shirt underneath.) Without missing a beat, he climbed on stage and handed Stossel the shirt, which was inscribed “Politically incorrect and dangerous.”

Someone asked Stossel about gun control laws. He started relaying some story about Al Sharpton and people in cities being aghast at the thought that anyone might be allowed to carry a concealed weapon, though in many states it is legal, though he wasn’t sure about Michigan…

“I have one with me,” the questioner piped up, explaining that she was a 35-year-old woman commuting 78 miles to campus and you bet she’s going to protect herself.

When it was over I left by the nearest door. The late afternoon sun shone on a yet cold, snow-covered last day of winter. Stossel came out another door. He stopped to have his picture taken with a fan. I wondered where he was flying off to next. Another college in the middle of nowhere? Back home to NYC? I don’t agree with everything he said, but he was thought-provoking. And he reminded me of one reason I moved here: Fewer rules.

Easter Morning

2008-03-23T08:55:00.008-04:00

Easter morning and
a cold wind blows we
know because trees
tremble and snow
slants precariously north-
south and we stay
in to pity the poor,
frozen Easter bunny.

Parallel-O-Gram

2008-03-13T13:22:00.006-04:00

The 45th parallel, or "tension line," cuts across northern Wisconsin and north of it, life changes. Tension lifts. Tension shifts. Tension drips away, drop by blessed drop, like tears one is happy to shed.

This may be true only for some, I know.

"Beyond the Tension Line" is my life above the 45th parallel. How the 45th parallel came to be known as the tension line, I don't know, though I did research it, in an admittedly lackadaisical way. It has been suggested that the tension line is biological--that many species of plants and animals have their southern boundary near the line and others their northern limit. This certainly ties in with my idea that certain types of people simply find that they are more comfortable the farther north they go, while others begin to blanch and freak out as soon as the road narrows and buildings fall away.

The 45th parallel is the equivocal halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. Equivocal because, according to a geographical marker on Highway US 41 just south of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, the 45th parallel is only the "theoretical" halfway point, from which one would need to travel a little more than 3,117 miles to reach the North Pole but a little less than 3,098 miles to get to the equator. So the "true" halfway point is actually a bit farther north. (If you're in Michigan on US 41, look for a marker 710 feet north of Menominee. If you're on Highway 141 in Wisconsin, look for a marker three quarters of a mile north of Beaver. And if you're interested in seeing these markers and reading a scientific discussion on this point without having to travel at all, check out this Web site: Halfway to the Pole. If you would prefer a good read about a natural disaster, try Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History.)

Whether biological, theoretical, or true, there is no doubt that beyond the tension line the world becomes a different place. A place less habituated by humans. A place where life is reduced to two lanes, each going its own way, and whichever way you are going you just might find no one else there or someone going along at a mere 55 miles per hour, someone who, perhaps, is just enjoying the scenery and, you think, slowing you down. Once you have driven beyond the 45th parallel broad open spaces and vast areas of trees--areas that you cannot even identify as "farm" or "country"--take over. These are woods and forests, bogs and clearings, rivers and creeks and lakes. Much of it is national forest. (Allow your eyes to stray far enough north on a map and you'll even notice a 42-mile-long national lakeshore.) All this uninhabited space. You either love it or you are worried to death that you are suddenly going to keel over and die and no one will ever know because there is no one there. Except that old guy in front of you going 50 miles per hour ...

But there is a rich life here. It may take a while, but eventually farms, towns, people become clear. The woods are full of untold stories. It helps to slow down a bit, to take one's time, to wait and see what appears out of the thick of the forest, the deep of the blue, the shadows of a ramshackle barn by the edge of the road. It's up to you whether you slow down or speed on by.

Anatomy of a Salve

2008-03-01T12:38:00.003-05:00

Grandma Salve: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in the February 2008 issue of Marquette Monthly.

Big Bay, Michigan, rests on the edge of a bulge in the midriff of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on the shores of lakes Superior and Independence, a town of 265 or so, hanging tenaciously onto itself, its past and its future. Its past, of course, cannot be changed: There was one shining moment when Jimmy Stewart, Duke Ellington, Lee Remick, Otto Preminger and others from Hollywood came to town to make a movie based on a book that was based on an incident that occurred at the Lumberjack Tavern. It was called “Anatomy of a Murder,” nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1959. Big Bay’s future? Depending on who you talk to, the future is either severely threatened or blessedly blessed by a sulfide mine proposed for a site on the Yellow Dog Plains a few miles south.

But this story is about Big Bay’s salve.

I was introduced to Grandma Salve at a local craft show, drawn to a simple display of 2-ounce, clear glass jars stacked in pyramids, some jars open for sampling with little white plastic spoons stuck in the ivory-colored goo. A printed pen and ink drawing of Grandma’s face smiled up from the top of each white lid. A short pamphlet described the salve as being made from beeswax, camphor, phenol, and vegetable lipids and claimed it would help heal acne, hemorrhoids, scrapes, cuts, blisters, diaper rash, insect bites, and burns. I thought they should just call it “Miracle Salve,” like in that Andy Griffith Show episode when Opie tries to sell jars of an incredible ointment that is sure to cure all known skin ailments including “poison ivy, athlete’s foot, prickly rash, complexion, and spring itch.” Miracle Salve didn’t work, except on the mange. I wondered if Grandma Salve would. For $5.95 plus tax, I figured it was worth a try.

I put Grandma Salve on a funky rash and the rash disappeared. Dry cuticles? Banished. Mosquito bite? Bah. Wood stove burn? Ahhhhh …

I contacted the Grandma Salve company and soon was sitting down with Mary Cram, Joyce Cram, and Pam (Cram) Bowers, three of the nine Grandma Salve partners. The Crams grew up in Big Bay, and they told me that if you were growing up in Big Bay in the mid-20th Century, fell down and skinned your knee, or got a cut or a burn, it’s likely your medical treatment consisted of a good swathing in “grandma salve.” At that time, the salve came out of any old jar Pauline Cram, their mother and the salve’s maker, had available. Now the salve is being made and sold commercially by Pauline Cram’s nine children, who range in age from 55 to 66.

Pam told me about the salve’s origin, which she learned from her mother.

“My grandfather, my dad’s father, was a diabetic, had one leg cut off,” Pam said. “Back then [1930s] your prosthetics were a wooden leg, and he used to get sores quite a bit, and my dad used to take him once a month to town.” One month Mr. Cram couldn’t get his father to the doctor, so the sores got worse. “(My grandfather) told my mother … that there was a salve that his mother made, and he was going to make some to see if it would help. He made it. He showed her how to make it. … The following month my dad took him back to the doctor. The doctor told him: Whatever you’re using keep using it ’cause it’s working.”

Pauline Cram continued making and using the salve, especially on her children and other children in the neighborhood. As Pam explained, “You didn’t go to the emergency room unless something was dangling off and she knew it was broke. … Anything you got, it was grandma salve and band-aids, no stitches. That was the end of it. And it worked, eh.”

Even then it was called “grandma salve.” Mrs. Cram would cook some up as often as needed, for whoever needed it. “Go to Pauline, she’ll give you some salve,” Pam said with a smile. “… Right before winter she’d make it, and if you had a cold or something she’d make you stand over it, because of the camphor. … The whole house would smell of it.”

“She gave it away, but she never gave anyone else the recipe,” Joyce said.

Although the sisters carry the recipe in their heads, Pam made sure it was written down. “My mom was a really good cook, but when you would ask for a recipe she would say, ‘Oh, a little bit of this, a little that,’ you know, and that’s the way she cooked. So one day I told her – we were making grandma salve – and I said: You need to sit down and write that out.”

“We have a safe like the Bush Bean thing, right?” Joyce asked.

Laughter.

“But no dog,” Mary added.

Pauline’s handwritten recipe is framed and locked away.

Pauline, now 93, was one of 10 children and the first in her Yugoslavian family to be born in the United States. Her father, a logger, eventually settled on the Yellow Dog River.

“She only went to 8th grade,” Mary said of her mother, then paused. “She’s probably one of the smartest people I know.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Joyce added.

“A lot of common sense,” Pam said.

With nine children, common sense and a little grandma salve came in handy. For instance, there was the case of the wedding and the burned feet.

“Now tell the story about Dad when Nora’s wedding … ” Joyce prompted Pam.

“When he cut his feet?”

“When he burned his feet. Remember when the dresses caught on fire?”

Gales of laughter.

The six Cram girls shared one big bedroom in the family’s three-bedroom house. The night before sister Nora’s wedding, one of the girls hung something too close to the light in the closet – the closet which held the dresses for the wedding. A fire started.

“Dad came,” Pam said, “and we were screaming. He came to put out the fire and he got burnt.”

“The bulb had busted, and there was all the glass,” Mary added. “ … He was barefoot.”

With the help of his sons and some water from the bathroom, Mr. Cram was able to put out the fire. But his feet were badly cut and burnt.

“He couldn’t even put his feet in the shoes he was supposed to wear at the wedding …” Pam said “They slit the tops and dressed his feet with grandma salve – it seems to help the pain a lot, too.”

After using the salve for many years on their own families, sharing it with friends, neighbors and co-workers, and being told now and then that they should try selling it, about three years ago the Crams started talking about just that. Pam had recently returned to Big Bay after a number of years in Montana, and most of the others were still in the U.P. There were meetings with a lawyer, and the Grandma Salve trademark was obtained in 2006. The siblings created a limited liability corporation and started packaging their product.

“It’s all been one step at a time,” Pam said. “Now, how are we going to market it, how are we going to do it. … We haven’t really pushed it. We have a Web site. We do craft shows.”

The salve can be found in Big Bay at brother Joe’s Cram’s General Store and at local craft shows. It can be ordered online at grandmasalve.com. It’s also being sold at a health food store in Michigan’s lower peninsula and at a hardware store in Montana. Pam has emailed Oprah Winfrey, the queen of promoting good causes and good products, and also the University of Michigan Program for Injury Research and Education, which works closely with the school’s Trauma Burn Center. At this point, though, most sales have been by word of mouth.

“We’ve proven to ourselves from the … craft shows that it’s marketable,” Pam said. “People are coming back. … Remember that guy at the craft show? Remember we were sitting there and he comes up and put his elbows right in our face and I’m looking at him and he goes, ‘See them?’ I said, ‘Uh-huh.’ He says, ‘They were really bad and you sold me some of that salve. Look at how nice they look.’ Then he goes, ‘It worked so good on my elbows I put it on my dog’s elbows!’”

Maybe it is a miracle salve after all. As Pam said, “It works. It just works.”

Grandma Salve is available through our Stuff for Sale page.