Archive for the ‘Poetry/Essay’ Category
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
 By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor
You’ve read every book on the New York Times bestseller list, and gifts of holiday cash have left your book budget bulging. What to read next?
When was the last time you grazed titles by local authors or books about local places and people? You may be surprised. It’s a feast for even the ravenous reader, with titles in every category: cookbooks, children’s books, coffee-table books, mysteries, essay collections, fictional stories, nonfiction narratives, spiritual tomes, inspirational pages and numerous histories and biographies.
The ‘Buy Local’ mantra isn’t just for the holidays. Shop at local booksellers’ and help keep the money in northern Michigan.
Here’s a sampling of “local” books to keep you company this winter. There are many worthy others waiting to be discovered.
Ready to drool? Find 66 mouth-watering recipes made using extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar in the new cookbook, In the Kitchen with Fustini’s, sold at Fustini’s storefront in Traverse City. Go green with Oryana’s practical, spiral-bound and affordable What’s For Dinner, a compilation of 80 recipes from a popular in-store program by the same name, which uses fresh, local, wholesome and sustainably-grown ingredients. If old-fashioned goodness is more your style, try Bob Schramski’s Favorites from Adeline’s Table, taste-tested re-creations from his Cedar grandmother’s recipe box. For a copy, call Schramski at (231) 947-3166. Northport summer resident Mario Batali’s latest cookbook from publisher Harper Collins stresses the importance of meal-time togetherness in Molto Batali: Simple Family Meals from My Home to Yours.
Equally filling are the latest essay and other collections of “place” by poet/essayist/playwright and Interlochen writing instructor Anne Marie Oomen, (An American Map), award-winning author Jerry Dennis (The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes), former local newspaper columnist and home gardener Dee Blair (The View from Sunnybank), and former NMC instructor and newspaper columnist Henry Morgenstein (TC, I Love Thee).
Traveling a bit further afield is Ron Jolly’s (and Karl Bohnak’s) 563-page book, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Almanac, offering an exhaustive collection of all things Michigan north of the Mighty Mac (culture, history, education, people, land and water features, weather and events), organized by county.
When you’re hungry for history, check out Vintage Views along the West Michigan Pike by M. Christine Byron and Thomas R. Wilson — about travel and tourism sparked by the first continuous, improved road between Michigan City, Ind. and Mackinaw City, Mich. Or check out two recent releases: John Mitchell’s Grand Traverse — The Civil War Era, pieced together from diary entries and Grand Traverse Herald accounts; and Echoes of Distant Thunder, the historical fiction story of a civil war veteran’s search for peace, written by Interlochen Public Radio regular Frank Slaughter, a gun corporal (First Michigan Light Artillery, Battery D) in a re-enactment group.
There’s an account of Michigan’s governors (Stewards of the State) and Sleeping Bear Dunes (Sleeping Bear: Yesterday and Today) by political columnist George Weeks and numerous titles by Leelanau historian Larry Wakefield. Cottage Book Shop owner Barbara Siepker interviewed 75 cottage owners for the award-winning Historic Cottages of Glen Lake, and Traverse City students Molly Tompkins and Ryan Ness interviewed over 80 sources for their Light the Night history of Traverse City’s Hickory Hills ski area.
Don’t overlook local historical organizations, which compile their own histories, such as the Empire Heritage Group’s Some Other Day and Benzie Area Historical Museum’s Shared Moments. BAHM offers titles by others, too, including Bruce Catton’s Waiting for the Morning Train and Grant Brown, Jr.’s Ninety Years Crossing Lake Michigan, a 2009 Michigan Notable Book.
Historical accounts of the former Traverse City Regional Psychiatric Center abound, and two of the latest are Northern Michigan Asylum, by William Decker, M.D., and the photographic montage Traverse City State Hospital, by Chris Miller.
If your ’buds lean toward biographies, read about Suttons Bay attorney-activist Dean Robb: An Unlikely Radical, by Matthew Robb, or Traverse City’s champion of the disadvantaged in The Heart of a Priest: Father Fred’s Life & Ministry, by Paul LaPorte.
Combining real events, purposeful prose and an unconventional approach to storytelling, Glen Arbor Sun editor Jacob Wheeler penned the nonfiction narrative of local resident and business owner (Wild Birds Unlimited) Judy Barrett’s search for her adopted daughter’s birth mother in Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl’s Journey through Adoption. As northern Michigan mystery writer Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli wrote in her Northern Express review, “It is refreshing to read a book where the writer doesn’t supply dishonest answers or takes an untenable stand.”
Speaking of Buzzelli, her latest novel, Dead Dogs and Englishmen, (fourth in the Emily Kincaid mystery series), received glowing words from Kirkus Reviews. The latest works by acclaimed mystery writer Aaron Stander (Medieval Murders) and true crime author Mardi Link (Isadore’s Secret) will also keep you guessing.
For sheer escape, award-winning author and poet Jack Driscoll offers the fictional “Star Dog,” about a divorcee who takes a 1,000-mile journey after winning thousands at a casino. Driscoll’s first novel Lucky Man, Lucky Woman, won the 17th annual Pushcart Editors’ Book Award, and his subsequent short story and poetry collections have also received awards. A former creative writing instructor at Interlochen Arts Academy (IAA) and its writer-in-residence for 33 years, he will read from his latest work, The World of a Few Minutes Ago, at IAA’s Writing House, 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 1. Michigan author and poet Judith Minty will join him and read from her “Killing the Bear” tale, now found in a limited-edition, hand-printed, hand-bound book illustrated with wood engravings by local artist Glenn Wolff.
Last year, Michael Delp, currently a creative writing instructor at IAA, published his first collection of short stories (As If We Were Prey, described as “visceral”) joining his other published works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
Looking for adventure? During his life, one-time Suttons Bay resident James B. Hendryx — known for gold-and-adrenaline-rush stories — gave us almost 70 novels. (At the time of this writing, some were available at Dog Ears Books in Northport, which has numerous Michigan titles.) Try Blood on the Yukon Trail, Snowdrift or Raw Gold.
A hearty appetite for literature can be sated with the latest Dunes Review journal and 2011 chapbooks by Denise R. Baker (poetry) and Joan Schmeichel (short fiction) — all published by Michigan Writers.
A new year invites introspection. Rabbi Chava Bahle’s workbook, “Return to Bliss,” offers “a guided spiritual journey through the practice of teshuvah/return and devekut/God consciousness.” Matt Sutherland’s “Go Seek: Journaling to Spiritual Fulfillment” provides the inspiration (via quotations and ideas) and space for expressing oneself during a suggested eight-week mind/body/health spiritual quest.
A cross between the self-effacing humorist Erma Bombeck and the candid Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love), Traverse City author/artist Kristen Jongen (Growing Wings) continues her colorful collage of memoir, poetry and artwork in Attempting Flight, her second book. Michael Moore’s voice is uniquely his in Here Comes Trouble, the first of his memoirs. Each chapter is its own story, so you can pick up and put down the book’s 427 pages without losing the thread.
Children’s books by northern Michigan authors include Lynn Rae Perkins (Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth), Heather Shaw (Smallfish Clover), Erin Anderson (Look About You: A Magical Childhood in Michigan’s Wild Places), Dick Evans (Discover the Magic of Rainbows) Mike Kelly (Roy G Biv and the Color Wheel — with a music CD by local songwriter/musician Adair Correll) and Ron Schmidt (Twin Tales).
For moms and moms-to-be, there is Into These Hands: The Wisdom of Midwives, edited by Geraldine Simkins. For men and women who hunt, there is Richard P. Smith’s Deer Hunt and Understanding Michigan’s Black Bear, along with other Smith titles. Musicians and others who can’t get enough of the blues might appreciate The Blues in Black and White: The Landmark Ann Arbor Blues Festival by Michael Erlewine. Native American author, artist, teacher and storyteller Lois Beardslee offers books for children and adults, including Rachel’s Children, The Women’s Warrior Society, Lies to Live By and others. Amateur astronomers, science geeks and art aficionados might be astounded and interested to learn that NMC instructor Jerry Dobek updated and reissued E. E. Barnard’s A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, published by Cambridge University Press last year and still seeking a local bookseller.
Ask for these books at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, Brilliant Books in Suttons Bay, Dog Ears Books in Northport, Leelanau Books in Leland, Interlochen Bookstore and Traverse City booksellers: Horizon Books; Brilliant Books; The Bookie Joint; So Many Books, So Little Time; Higher Self Bookstore, Barnes and Noble and Books A Million.
This GlenArbor.com story is sponsored by LVR Realty and Leelanau Vacation Rentals, whose exceptional staff will make your vacation a memory to treasure.
Tags: Michigan authors, Michigan books
Posted in Poetry/Essay | No Comments »
Friday, November 18th, 2011
 By Mary Sharry
Sun contributor
On sweltering nights when you cannot fall to sleep no sound is larger than the buzz of a mosquito or a trapped moth striking the screen of your bedroom window. In the north woods, in the village of Empire, through open windows you hear the call of a coyote or an owl, an occasional rustle in the leaves and brush as an opossum or porcupine scutters through, the perfect stomping of deer hooves. There is no cooling breeze; the night feels warm and sticky. Well past midnight you rise to look out the window and watch a bat dart back and forth where moths cluster beneath a village street light.
In the afternoon sunlight, July air smells of suntan lotion rising from the beach and drifting on vaporous currents into the village. In the daytime the sounds are mostly of lawn mowers and mopeds, children laughing and the birds — chickadees, grackles and blue jays at the feeder, crows in the distance; and in August, you hear the hottest sound of all, the shrill buzzing of cicadas. There are occasional rumbles of thunder as a storm passes through, cooling the earth for a while, although the rain makes the day more humid later on.
This summer we have been through some extremely high temperatures and humidity. Sagging and droopy feeling, we ate light meals, mostly salads, and drank iced tea. The memory of those days fades when frigid winter weather arrives. Then it’s hard to recall the steamy atmosphere of the past season, and how it felt to drip sweat while your skin stuck to a chair.
Long ago I lived in the city of Detroit where on those sultry summer days before there was air-conditioning, people sighed and wiped their faces on damp and wrinkled handkerchiefs. In the daytime they sought relief in shade under storefront awnings or beneath old trees. Ice cream cones melted too quickly to enjoy and the ice in lemonade quickly melted while the glass sweat droplets and rings onto front porch railings. Dogs and even the old men became snarly. Mothers mopped the brows of their children. Babies cried an inconsolable misery. People placed fans in their windows, facing them into a room to bring in any tinge of cool morning air or outward to draw out the late afternoon heat.
Long ago my mother and I suffered through those murky days and oppressive summer nights in our upstairs flat in Detroit. We placed a sheet on the living room floor and with our heads on our pillows we’d lie there listening, and finally drifting off, to the sounds of the city – streetcars running through the night on their steel rails, buses, taxi cabs, train whistles, sirens on police cars and fire engines, and the horns of the freighters on the Detroit River.
A few years later my mother secured a teaching job in a small rural town. The month was August and on our first night there, again in a rented upper flat, the air was too stifling to lie in our beds, so we placed a sheet on the living room floor. We lay there, wide awake most of that night, and listened to an eerie silence. The night deepened into greater stillness interrupted only by the call of crickets. We couldn’t sleep because of the quiet.
Today I hear that silence as a gift and welcome the sounds of the night — the coyote call, a fox barking, the crickets, an owl. We’ve survived the muggy days and nights. Soon the leaves will fall and the seasons will change rapidly. We’ll close our windows to the biting chill.
When winter winds howl, when ice has formed on the car windshield, when you trudge through knee-deep snow to get the newspaper, try to remember those dog days of summer. Snow shovels and scoops for the driveway, ice scrapers for the car, and crampons on boots for walking to the post office — in a few months these will be part of our world.
The winter night is still and dark, the stars spill across the sky. The moon rises, the coyotes still call, the foxes bark, but the mosquitoes have all gone. Blessed be the changing seasons and the weather of this land in the great north woods.
This GlenArbor.com article was sponsored by Miser’s Hoard in Empire, a beautifully curated collection of new and old, including representation of the work by local artist, Tim Lewis.
Tags: Detroit river, Empire Michigan, Mary Sharry
Posted in Poetry/Essay | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
 By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor
As autumn recedes under the lowering, snow-filled skies of winter, curl up in a warm place with the newest book of essays by celebrated nature writer Jerry Dennis, with wood engravings by the incomparable Glenn Wolff. Or better yet, follow the writer outside, as he takes you on a guided exploration along The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes. The book continues Dennis’ complex relationship with a region that he says is difficult to easily define or know, as it encompasses so many diverse elements, loved or used or thrown away by so many.
Yet, “It is land held together by water. That is one feature shared throughout,” whose shore becomes a place of acute observation, action, meditation and mediation both literal and symbolic, between the natural and the human, the beautiful and the damaged, the raw and the refined. And always, the coldness that accompanies our most extreme season, which holds a surprising abundance for Dennis — and, he hopes, the reader — who choose to know a place more deeply.
His most recent previous book, The Living Great Lakes, took him on a more linear journey, a kind of survey of the passing shores inhabited by diverse flora and fauna, structures, peoples, history and lore, while sailing on a two-masted schooner from Traverse City to the ocean at Bar Harbor, Maine. Here, the essays take a different tack: less easily arranged, but more densely woven into encounters with family, friends, neighbors and wild creatures; natural history lessons; statistics; memories and feelings; all filtered through Dennis’ accessible, engaging prose. He includes the fresh retelling of some familiar narratives, a seasoned storyteller bringing forth new insights and vivid imagery from powerfully felt experiences, as in “Beach Walking.” In “Winter Comes to the Keweenaw,” he describes his family’s search for agates along Lake Superior; he seems to urge the reader to become, like the colorfully stratified stones themselves, “bound to the place … and acquired layers of remembrance.” He ponders the surprising categories of things that come in waves, and celebrates the intimate relationship between books and nature. His final chapter, “Field Notes,” provides an unexpected bounty of distilled images and ideas that take on truly poetic force.
Like any long-term, committed relationship, to know is to love — despite (perhaps because of) faults, difficulties and the inevitable ups and downs of the process: “When we reach deeply into the world, the world reaches back,” he posits in his chapter, “Winter Walks.”
While Dennis acknowledges the impossibility of comprehensively knowing the Great Lakes, whose immensity seems to defeat even their most ardent champion, he also knows that we must keep trying. We must face into the wind with sisu — like the stalwart Finns who populated the Upper Peninsula at the turn of the last century — in order to save our unique, wild and beloved place, as well as ourselves.
Jerry Dennis and Glenn Wolff will sign books at Black Star Farm, south of Suttons Bay, on Saturday, Nov. 19, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m,, to benefit the Fishtown Preservation Society. Dennis’ books are available at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, Leelanau Books, Dog Ears Books, Horizon, and other local venues. For more information, visit www.jerrydennis.net.
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Glenn Wolff interview
 We spoke with nationally known artist Glenn Wolff, whose wood engravings grace the cover and pages of The Windward Shore. Wolff grew up in Traverse City, and attended Northwestern Michigan College (he was honored as distinguished alumnus in 2011), where he studied printmaking. After receiving a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, he established a career as a freelance illustrator in New York City. Since 1987 he has been based at his Traverse City studio at www.glennwolff.com.
Glen Arbor Sun: How many book collaborations have you and Jerry done over the years?
Glenn Wolff: Six altogether. It’s Raining Frogs & Fishes and The Bird in the Waterfall were full-on collaborations: covers, end papers, and about 80 illustrations in each book. Then I did chapter illustrations for A Place on the Water, From a Wooden Canoe, and The River Home (I only did endpaper maps for The Living Great Lakes, so I’m not counting that). In 2007 we collaborated on the limited-edition letterpress book Winter Walks with Chad Pastotnik from Deep Wood Press — probably one of the most fun projects ever. Jerry, Chad, and I also collaborated on a broadside titled The Trout in Winter. Jerry and I currently have a seventh book proposal out there now: our collection from the “Natural Enquirer” columns that we did for Wildlife Conservation Magazine back in the ‘90s.
Sun: How did your first book, 1992’s It’s Raining Frogs & Fishes, come about?
Wolff: I was visiting a mutual friend to discuss an illustration workshop we were going to teach when Jerry called. She said, “You guys need to get together!” and handed me the phone. We had lunch, hit it off, and hatched the idea for Frogs and Fishes at that meeting.
Sun: What’s your creative process when you’re working on something? For instance, do you go on a hike and simply absorb what’s out there? Do you make preliminary sketches, then continue to work in the studio, or take photos, or some combination of these?
Wolff: All of the above. Sometimes I’m sketching in the field (my favorite), often finishing off an illustration in the studio, frequently buried in a reference book that describes the angle of the sun during a rainbow, the life cycle of a mayfly, or the benthic layer at the bottom of a lake. The thing I try to avoid the most is taking photos to work from. It always seems false to me, and if I have to do it, it is just for a technical note.
Sun: Remind me what technique these “wood” cuts are. Did you learn or hone this method from your work with Chad Pastotnik? How do you add color?
Wolff: We all did linoleum block prints in school. This is basically that same process of relief printing, only one carves into the end grain of wood for wood engravings. There is also a composite called “resingrave” that I use on most of my prints now. It’s harder than linoleum, a bit more consistent than end grain wood, and allows one to get a lot of nice detail. Chad has helped and mentored me a great deal with this process. The color, usually watercolor, is added by hand after the print has dried.
Sun: What is your favorite medium at the moment? What exciting projects are you working on now?
Wolff: I’m really enjoying the diversity of several styles at the moment. Straight pen and ink illustration, wood engraving, and mixed media painting on wood. I’ve just finished several new engravings for another limited edition book with Chad. This one is a short story by Judith Minty called “Killing the Bear” and should be out around Christmas. It’s very sparsely written, and I found it quite haunting. I’ve also finished doing 50 botanical label illustrations for a store in Florida that just opened. They are for a line of flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegars. That was a collaboration with Emily Mitchell and Tim Nielsen from Nielsen Design Group — good friends and my favorite graphic designers. Yesterday I got the go-ahead from Red House Records to do the cover artwork for Claudia Schmidt’s next CD, Bend in the River, and will be working on that over the next month.
Sun: Are you showing in galleries?
Wolff: YES! I’m currently represented by Gallery 50 in Traverse City. I am also in a group show at Gallery in the Woods in Brattleboro, Vermont, and have a solo show at Uncommon Ground in Chicago, which will be moving to the Images Cooperative Gallery on Dec. 5, with a reception on Dec. 10. I am also represented by the Elaine Fleck Gallery in Toronto, and Kuhlhaus Gallery in Harbor Springs. AND I’ve just had the honor of being invited to be the artist-in-residence at the Old Art Building in Leland next summer.
Sun: I see some of your prints at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor. And I know you and Jerry Dennis will be at Black Star Farm on Nov. 19. Anything else?
Wolff: I will have prints and originals at the Zonta Festival Art Nook on Sunday, Nov. 20 at the Hagerty Center in Traverse City. And I have an online-only special of the wood engraving featured on the jacket of The Windward Shore. The hand-colored limited edition of 100 is matted with acid-free backing, in an acetate sleeve. Orders in November include a copy of the book signed by Jerry and me, with a pencil remarque by me also, at www.glennwolff.com
Sun: I wish you could have done an illustration of the sentence on p.77 of The Windward Shore that goes, in part: “Open the cover, and out would rush starlings…”
Wolff: I love that sentence, too. Some words need nothing, are cinematic, and basically are just too damned good to profane with illustrations!
This GlenArbor.com article is sponsored by LVR Realty and Leelanau Vacation Rentals. With more than 130 Great Places to Stay, Leelanau Vacation Rentals offers top quality vacation properties.
Tags: Black Star Farm, Cottage Book Shop, Glen Arbor, Glen Arbor Michigan, Glenn Wolff, Great Lakes, Jerry Dennis
Posted in Local Personality, Poetry/Essay | No Comments »
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
 By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor
Seven strong swimmers. Five kayakers, one in a borrowed orange plastic open water kayak paddled by my husband, David Early. Me, resident geek and novice on my stand-up paddle board (not a paddleboat, a paddle board), my ATX dubbed “Yellow Belle.” Our brave leaders are Kati Rooney and spouse, Jim Hennessey. We are the proverbial motley crew — except we have a purpose.
This is the sixth annual Esch to Empire swim. Yes, the swimmers will swim from the Otter Creek beach to Empire beach, a beautiful stretch of shoreline. Kati tells me how the swim began: “In 2006 Jim and I and our mutual friend Sandy Dukat (accomplished world champion disabled swimmer and Paralympic skier) decided that we wanted to swim a longer distance in Lake Michigan than we had been swimming. Jim and I have spent summers in Leelanau County since 1995 and suggested the distance between Empire and Esch Road. We asked some of our friends from the county to paddle with us on our swim. July 16, 2006 was the first of what has now grown to six consecutive years of swimming the four-mile distance as a group with paddler accompaniment.”
This year the swimmers are, besides Kati and Jim, David Reinisch, Eric Kiefer, Kathy Heikkila, Dan Miller and Amy Powell. The support kayakers are Reni Dengl, Mary Eschbach, Kerry Alspaugh, David Early, Robin Johnson and me on the stand-up board. Our contribution to the day: to track, stay abreast, nudge the swimmers back when they go out too far, shout encouragement over the wind, and generally keep an eye out for boats — that’s the biggest task since the boats have trouble seeing the swimmers. But really, we all just want to live the pleasure of our lovely lake.
 Kati says, “The purpose of the swim is to enjoy the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan and the awesome shoreline between Esch and Empire. Each year we pick which direction we swim based on the wind. We like to have it at our backs. This is not a competitive event — it’s an opportunity to safely swim a longer distance with the support of kayakers. There is no starting signal or finishing line — just the mutual love of swimming open water.” They’ve done this swim five times before, though never quite this late in the season.
Friday, August 26 dawns a lovely Michigan day. There’s a sweet south wind puffing some chance clouds, which means light wave action, but nothing cresting. That open water is clear and brilliant blue. For an hour we shuttle cars to the right lots, drop off equipment and picnic makings, and then we’re all gathered on that gorgeously long beach just north of the Otter Creek outlet. I can’t help noticing the swimmers, lean and strong, lots of great upper body strength, stretching and shaking out like pros.
Kati notes: “Several of us now swim together most of the summer and have increased our mileage and our distance goals. Five of us swam across the Straits of Mackinac this summer with kayak and powerboat support. The Empire/Esch swim is no longer the intense challenge it once was (I never thought I could swim more than one and a half miles) but every year it’s a different kind of swim — different memories of landmarks, water temps, wave conditions, muscle soreness, fatigue.”
As I watch them don goggles, swim caps, I respect their experience; and I understand. For the open water. On the beach, Kati tells me as they swim, they often spread out, head into deep water. She grins, “It’s like flying when you’re out there.” She is excited, happily impatient to start, but we chat a bit longer as the kayakers skirt themselves in. Then at some unspoken signal, we are wading over the pebbly shore into Lake Michigan’s quick breeze. Kati seats herself, removes her prosthetic leg, stashes it in a kayak, and once in the waves, moves like a water gazelle. And as I push my board among these competent athletes, I wonder what I am doing here. Because to be honest, I am probably one of the most non-athletic persons on the planet. I have been SUP (stand-up paddle) boarding for only a year, and am strictly a leisure border, also being pretty much non-competitive on most levels. I am a fan of silent singular sports, so SUP boarding fits, being the quietest of all. Though it can be a good core workout, the meditative “walking on water” is the spiritual attraction for me. But Kati has assured me that swimmers like boarders with them because they stand out on the water, being higher than the kayaks, and thus easier for boaters to see as warning. I think that’s about right — better they hit me first. Also because the stand-up pace kept by flatwater paddlers like myself tends to be laid back, it’s easier for us to stay with the swimmers — which is sometimes boring for kayakers. But as I’m launching, I’m thinking that my lifesaving certificate is literally 40 plus years untested … and then we’re on the waves.
And it is pure fun. That sweet south wind is just about as friendly as it can be, and the waves are manageable, just enough swell for a little rush now and then, but easy to navigate. I use my paddle mostly to steer among the swimmers, rarely for speed as the wind is pushing me. Without effort I stay with them as the seven head on a northwest diagonal out just beyond the sandbars. My husband, in the bright orange plastic kayak, heads to the front, figuring his vivid color will be easiest for boats to spot, and stays with the two front swimmers for the duration. The rest of us fall into place, eventually lining up with one or two swimmers. For a long time, I’m following swimmer David, calling back and forth with Kerry on her kayak as we keep counting, making sure that everyone is with us. At first, the swimmers seem to flock, but as the swim progresses, they scatter, some close to the bars, some preferring the deeper, cooler waters. Kati has told me that she starts swimming in Chicago the first part of May when the water is in the low to mid 50’s. “By mid July I am used to the waters of Lake Michigan and know that I can tolerate temperatures as low as the mid 60’s for the two or so hours it will take me to finish the swim.”
I watch the swimmers, watch how their bodies fall into the regular pattern of the crawl. The crawl is an amazing act of endurance to me — and though I learned the rudiments of the stroke in my youth, I have always preferred breast and sidestrokes. Still, the crawl is beautiful to watch, and I find myself mesmerized with the strength and steadiness of it. The small elegant splash of their arms triggers an odd association in my mind, and I laugh to myself when I realize the splash looks like an image from an old world painting I love, the small splash of Icarus in one of Brueghel’s most famous paintings, the Fall of Icarus. Better not tell the swimmers that! But then I realize this is different. Here the image is remade, not as a fall, but over and over as an act of survival, Icarus as I have always wanted to imagine him, swimming steadily beyond the broken wings to one of the great islands where he makes a new life. I laugh; I can be such a geek.
As we paddle with the swimmers, I have enough confidence to look away from them to the majestic shoreline, south bluffs of sand and clay dotted with juniper and wild shrubs. I sing a small boarding song I have invented, based on a medieval prayer by Anne of Norwich, “All shall be well, all shall be well …” It is that kind of day, that I can think these meandering poet thoughts. Geeking again.
As we pass the point, that slow curve of high dune that has thrown down a boulder field as halfway mark, I watch for the shoal effect, where the waves might kick up a bit, and become rough for swimmers. But the swimmers are beyond that. Having rounded the point, they have fanned out like bright stars. Now David’s orange kayak is far away, and the frontrunners will easily finish in two hours. Kerry and I switch places and she follows swimmer David who doesn’t yet realize that he is drifting toward South Manitou Island. I follow Amy, who is swimming steadily, her pink cap sharp against these darker waves. After we pass beyond the boulder field, the wind pops up a bit more. Amy stops, treads water for a minute. I ask if she is OK, and she asks how much further. I tell her we are over half way. She settles back to her crawl.
After the point more waves slosh the surface of my board. I notice the water feels cool, and guess that with the south wind, some cooler water has collected beyond the point. The air is still warm. But then I see a kayaker heading to shore, following one of the other swimmers. I think what good sense, go in when you are cold, get warm. I focus on Amy who is still swimming steadily, but more slowly. I find a way to circle her in order to stay with her, coming round to head into the wind, paddling hard to get behind her, coming round again. It’s a little challenge I give myself so that I stay close to her. Then she pops up again. I holler over the wind, asking if she is ok. She says she is really tired. I tell her that she should come to the board, that she can hang on and rest. Then she says, “I think I’m too cold.” And all the tiny quiet wings of warning flutter inside me. “I’m coming right over,” I say. I maneuver clumsily alongside her, go to my knees to touch her shoulder, hoping to help her balance onto the board. Her skin is like ice. I mean, not just goose-bumpy cold, but like ice. Yes, this woman needs to get out of the water.
Kerry sees us, returns with the kayak. Amy climbs on Yellow Belle, and we hightail it to shore. In my anxiety, it seems like we paddle a long time, crosswise the force of the waves, but it’s probably only a few minutes. All the while, I wish I were stronger, faster, in better shape as I try to paddle over the top of Amy’s head without hitting her. (That would be just the headline: geek wipes out swimmer with paddle while trying to help.) But we all get to the beach and Kerry helps her to shore. She’s a little too cold to leave, so we walk her down the beach, and somewhere in that mile, Robin comes running with hot coffee.
I understand from conversations with Kati that mild hypothermia is one of the challenges of open water swimming, that the temperature can change suddenly, and even a really strong swimmer, with lots of experience (as Amy has), may face this challenge. They know what to do. Amy is bundled and given hot teas, and sits in a heated car until her body temperature stabilizes. She feels sad that she didn’t finish, and a little embarrassed about the fuss, but before the hour is over, she happily serves us mimosas. Kerry and I are thrilled she is ok, and happy to high five it with all of them. They are all delighted with the swim, high from the powerful exercise. Kati’s prosthetic leg is back in place and she is managing the sand with her usual grace. All are eating the fresh healthy food so necessary after a long swim. The sixth annual has been a success.
I wonder what is next for this lively group — besides next year’s swim(s). Kati shares a dream. “We have recently decided that we would really like to share open water swimming with the young swimmers in the Traverse City/Leelanau area. We are constantly amazed by the beauty of the big lake and some of the smaller lakes and we’d love to share that with young people who train in a pool but haven’t experienced the feeling of open water swimming. We are planning to connect with some of the swim coaches in the area to see if there might be any interest in us helping to develop some kind of Open Water Swim Club in the region for young swimmers.
After the lively post-swim picnic, I walk back to Yellow Belle and launch into the waves which are now a bit higher, faster, thinking I will definitely refresh my lifesaving skills next summer, just so I can maintain the right to be among these brave swimmers. But then, as I settle into the sense of flying that the board gives in those bigger swells, the wind speaks again, and there is the humble song, “All shall be well …” The sun is high and warm and pushes me over the swells. Here, the open water of Lake Michigan. I know what Kati means. Here are my wings, only slightly clipped, but still in place. I let the wind take me.
This GlenArbor.com story was sponsored by the Yarn Shop, a creative force in Glen Arbor since 1955.
Tags: Empire Michigan, Esch beach, Esch road, Lake Michigan, paddleboard, Sleeping Bear Bay, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
Posted in Poetry/Essay | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 11th, 2011
 Calling Kabul
By Anne-Marie Oomen
I remember in present tense. The first day of classes. Cool, blue-skied, full of the wonder of teaching after the summer freelancing. First hour, an 8 a.m. playwriting course, and I am offering up the get-acquainted talk and diagnostic “How familiar are you with …” questionnaire that will inform me of their knowledge, but will also buy me one more day to play catch up. Catch my own breath before these amazing young people lure me into the long breath of their learning and their lives. While they write, I slip out for copies. Our secretary meets me in the hallway. A plane flew into the World Trade Center. Another. The Pentagon. I’m department chair, and I’m supposed to remain calm, but I gasp out loud, and for a minute, literally can’t catch my breath, or let it go, can’t get the air right in my lungs, and then I hear, up and down the hallways, TV’s coming on. Newscasters’ voices garble and overlap. Teachers open doors, step out, announce or ask. Voices tremble on the edge of fears, tears. My own. We already know the world has changed irrevocably. As the day winds on, images of lost men and women, falling towers, become part of our collective memory.
But there is one incident that I personally regret. An international student comes to me. She says her parents are teaching in Kabul, that she wants to call them. I think a minute. I honestly doubt she will get through. Phone lines are jammed. I encourage her to wait. She looks at me oddly. They are in Kabul. I am not thinking about what that means. Kabul? It’s a capitol, one of the “stans,” isn’t it? Afganistan in not on my radar. al Qaeda, terrorist cells, Taliban, Bin Laden, these are words that will become familiar in the days that follow, surrounded by disbelief, then awe and fearful understanding, but I don’t have a relation to them yet. But my student has already begun to visualize a world I barely comprehend. The map of awareness in her mind is spread over the many countries in which her parents have taught and she has lived. I wish I had led her to my phone and said, Yes, call them right now. They will get out. They will come home safely. This is one telling difference. Through this tragedy and loss, the world map I carry, and thus the world attitude, has become larger — in all its complexity. I know better the names of countries, their relationships. I have read more about cultures, religions, war and diplomacy than I ever thought I would. The places, stories, words — both terrible and transformative — have given me lines of connection. Cities and geographies, rivers and topographies, and most of all, people from other places, help me live in broader consciousness. This does not negate sorrow, but opens it, lets it/me breathe.
I know where Kabul is. Today, I believe I would help her call.
Remembering the firefighters
By H. Michael Buhler
For me, September 11th started the evening of the 10th. I was coming home from a long-overdue barrage of errands in Traverse City, and came upon a desperate teen on the side of the road, his pickup truck hood up, a little smoke, and the unmistakable smell of a fried clutch. I didn’t have a car phone at that time, and very few carried cell phones up north, because service was spotty. I drove the boy home to Honor, down by the fish hatchery.
In a post 9/11 world, would that happen now?
Tuesday I had taken the day off, so after almost two hours of catching up on emails I checked the news: “Plane hits World Trade Center”. But with my dial-up service, I could get no web pages to load after that. So I switched on CNN to see why a Cessna could have possibly flown into Manhattan. And of course, it was chaos, and there was no Cessna, and two buildings were ablaze. I know that somehow I got a shower and got dressed (with the TV blaring), and watched in disbelief as one tower after the other collapsed, not having considered that possibility. I calculated the size of the buildings, and made a prediction about how many might have been lost (regrettably I was close, I recall). It seemed so distant from Glen Arbor, and there was the contrast of mayhem on the big screen, and the prospect of mowing my lawn that day out the picture window.
As the camera crews fanned out amidst the rubble, I remember the sounds of all those car alarms, muffled, under ash and rubble.
A few weeks later I began my fire classes as a volunteer for Chief John DePuy on the Glen Arbor Fire Department. And it was then I learned that those weren’t car alarms: they were motion detectors sounding off on motionless firefighters.
The sun also rises
By Mary Sharry
The Sun rose on a clear autumn-like day in the village of Empire on the morning the airplanes cut their way into the twin towers, disintegrating and vaporizing all on board. All we need to say is 9/11 and everyone knows to what we refer. My friend, whose birthday is on September 11, says the reminder of that date will never be the same for her, nor will it be the same for any of us.
Deepak Chopra wrote his book The Deeper Wound as a need to sort through his own feelings and to help others struggling with the emotions arising from the aftermath of destruction. In writing about helplessness and vulnerability, Chopra says: “When you find that you have no defense against your own fear, you begin to feel vulnerable. In many ways it is healthy to feel vulnerable. It shows that you are not cut off, either from yourself or others. But the feeling of helplessness is extremely difficult to live with. This alone can raise dread, and the mind struggles to regain control.”
On that day I felt those emotions which led to fear, anger and bewilderment. After my daughter had called from where she worked at the Friendly Tavern here in town to tell me to turn on my television, to see what was happening, I watched in disbelief. After the first tower collapsed, I walked downtown and saw people on the sidewalks and standing in the middle of Front Street, crying, their arms around each other. I went into the Friendly to see my daughter. Customers and employees stood before the television. Speechless. Helpless. People with tears in their eyes. The whole world wept before the sun set on that day. We felt changed forever.
Now the waxing moon rises over the village of Empire. The sun will come up in the morning. Some things will be changed; some will remain as they were. Life goes on, as it must. We are changed, and I think we have come to realize how connected we are to one another. There is no other way but to know this, to feel another’s pain and to express not hatred and hateful reaction, but to express love and caring for one another, for our land, for all lands and for this beautiful planet, this earth, our beautiful home.
No home is an island
By Pat Stinson
I was due at a 10 a.m. job interview with a mail-order company located 25 minutes from home and was readying myself for the drive. Since we made the decision in ’95 to forego television watching, and because I didn’t listen to the radio or read the newspaper with my coffee or tea in the morning, I was unaware of the first airplane strikes. This was long before Facebook and the instant clamor-chatter of social media.
Around 9:25, I hopped in the car. I remember I had just passed the intersection at M-72 west and County Road 651 when I tuned the radio to NPR and heard the news. My first feelings were of incredulity — it can’t be, who would do this, how could an airplane topple a building — followed by a degree of numbness, then anger and helplessness as the theories unfolded. So many questions were swirling in my mind that the movements required to get me to the interview were all automatic. Cliché, but true … I don’t remember a thing thereafter about stopping, turning, traffic or passing vehicles.
When I arrived for the interview, people in the office were already discussing Afghanistan, the Taliban and how we’re hated here in the West. When I met my interviewer, he gave me a perfunctory tour of the operation, then we both admitted that we weren’t in the mood for the usual give-and-take an interview requires. I left the place within 25 minutes and returned home, where my husband, Mark, had begun the day’s interior sanding and painting — a project for our fall vacation week.
I broke the news to him, turned on the boom box for updates, and changed into my painting clothes. He sat on one of two kitchen chairs not covered in plastic and silently listened, the broadcast echoing slightly in the almost-empty room. My intuitive older cat, Zinc, leapt onto my shoulders as I brushed paint against the walls and heard unending reports from New York City, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside. It was mind-numbing. Painting seemed ludicrous, a joyless effort. My cat’s warmth was real and reassuring.
We were grateful to be spared the relentless, repeated television images of the attacks.
I never did return to that mail-order company to finish my interview. Six months later, I had made the transition to self-employment, writing and editing copy for businesses and occasionally doing some freelance reporting. I’ve worked happily from my home office, but I’ve learned it — and my home — cannot be a sanctuary from the world. I read the news in the morning now and keep a much more critical eye on our government’s actions, outside and within our borders.
Honoring a name
By Waleed Al-Shamma
It was a day like any other, as has been said a thousand times before. I remember coming downstairs as I was preparing to go to school. I was a fifth year junior studying business, something I was deeply dispassionate about. I walked into the living room to find my roommate watching the news. It was rather unusual to see him awake that early, particularly since he had stayed the night at his girlfriend’s house the night before. He was watching CNN, again a little unusual. The footage was of one of the twin towers in New York burning, wreckage falling to the ground. My immediate thought was, “Oh great, what Schwarzenegger movie is coming out now?” As I recall, I said something to that effect to my roommate. To which he responded, “No, this is real. This really just happened, a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.”
I sat down and began watching with him in disbelief. There was an eerie silence between us as we were both glued to the television. Then the second plane hit. Speculation faded, this was not an accident. This was a deliberate act. Though this word has often been thrown around with an ignorant, almost flippant attitude, for 10 years since, this truly was terrorism. I went upstairs in shock to finish getting ready for school. I remember crying in the shower and praying to a God I wasn’t sure existed, praying that the perpetrators of this attack were not Arabs, not Muslims. I guess I knew right away that they were.
As the days and weeks went on and we all kept wondering if and when there was going to be another attack, I was also wondering what this would mean for Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, or, sadly, Americans with darker skin of ambiguous racial backgrounds. I remember President Bush having astronomical approval ratings, north of 90 percent. I was never fond of his views or his methods, but I too was struggling to find fault. We were hurting, and we looked to our leaders to heal us. I remember him encouraging us to go shopping. I thought, “really, that’s your solution?” I also remember him explicitly telling Americans to be calm and tolerant toward fellow Muslim Americans, that these terrorists weren’t true Muslims, and that the United States was not at war with Islam. That’s one of the very few moments I can ever remember being proud of my president during the Bush years. What would follow was nearly a decade of squandered opportunity.
The war in Afghanistan was predictable, if not even a little justifiable, as much as any war can be. We were out for retribution and, in spite of my pacifist ways, I was ambivalent. On the one hand, I knew that war was not going to solve our problems and may well exacerbate them. On the other hand, there would be no love lost if someone skinned bin Laden alive and fed him to the sharks. My biggest problem was, and I suppose remains, that no one in the mainstream media or in Washington, D.C. was willing to have an honest conversation about our government’s role in fostering the animosity behind the terrorists. There is never an excuse for what they did, but I believe it is incumbent upon us to ask why they did it. “They hate our freedom” is an absurd answer. Ani Defranco nailed it in her poem entitled “Self Evident” scarcely two weeks after 9/11. Outside of the shunned or ignored Ron Paul, there is still no voice as honest about our role, our foreign policy.
Ten years later, upon reflection, I guess I am remiss that we have done little to understand. We remain woefully ignorant about the rest of the world. Our role as arbiters in the Arab-Israeli conflict is shamefully biased, such that the fallow peace of the holy land shows no signs of even being planted, much less taking root. Americans are as uninformed as ever about Islam, a religion with deep roots in Christianity, and we continue to spread misinformation while switching seats when possible. Osama bin Laden was no more a Muslim than Adolf Hitler was a Christian. Just because those are labels they applied to themselves, does not make them true or acceptable to the community at large.
The first 23 years of my life, I went primarily by “Wally”, a nickname provided thoughtfully by my Syrian-born father and American-born mother to help me fit in and honor my maternal grandfather. A few days after 9/11, I began introducing myself more and more as “Waleed,” my full given name. In certain situations it has made me nervous, but I felt it was more important to open up an otherwise strange, foreign world and culture to people in whatever little way I could. This has grown easier for me over the past decade and I am hopeful that as the names and customs of peace loving Muslims and Arabs grow more familiar to the average American, perhaps their acceptance and understanding will too.
Torture of repetition
By Jacob Wheeler
(from an email written in stream of consciousness days after 9/11)
I was sitting in a newsroom office in Copenhagen, Denmark (just before 3 p.m. in the afternoon in Europe) when the news flashed across my computer screen that two airplanes had hit the World Trade Center … and I immediately realized that two coincidences like that don’t just happen when the work day begins. I heard a succession of grunts from co-workers — most of whom had friends and colleagues in New York — and when I walked out of my office to share the news, I was met halfway with gasps that the Pentagon had been hit too … and that even a fourth airplane had crashed. Was this a Hollywood movie? I didn’t remember buying my ticket or purchasing popcorn.
I sat down at my computer again, watching the New York Times webpage struggle to load, as I sifted through the news in real time and grasped the significance and severity with each word. There was no pundit’s analysis and no defiant politician to bundle it in a nutshell yet — just a domino effect that worsened with each update … until the Twin Towers fell down on thousands of people. The president was in a Florida classroom, the country in a coma, and only that videotape of the second airplane from Boston, cruising in from the left side of the screen — a two-winged shadow straightening itself out at the last instant and cutting gracefully into a skyscraper next to the one already smoking — only that video to accompany us through the first hours.
Again, in from the left side of the screen, a two-winged shadow straightening itself out at the last instant and searing gracefully into the World Trade Center: a bird, which sees something of interest inside the house and fails to notice a window in the way, isn’t that the one we buried in the garden when I was 6?
Again, in from the left side of the screen, a two-winged shadow straightening itself out (do we know what’s really happening?) at the last instant and plunging. WAIT, no sign of the plane for a split second, it must have never happened. An Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in which the hero majestically casts the errant plane away from the skyscraper and saves the city! But wait, there’s the equal and opposite reaction learned in physics class, as the plane becomes a fireball emerging from the right side of the building.
The screams of people on the street, the CNN news correspondent in a three-piece suite, meticulously picked out of his closet the night before and laid on the dresser because nothing surprises this ace. But what’s this? He was just responding to the newsroom alert call after the first plane hit at 8:45. Is the video recorder on repeat mode? Stop playing it OVER, AND OVER, AND OVER again.
Again, in from the left, STOP! The update now is only a looming, surreal voice I might have heard or I might only have imagined while I was sleeping, hovering above me during a jetlag-induced afternoon nap. Pentagon, hit … plane in Pennsylvania, down … Bush, the opportunist president, talking to elementary school kids in Florida 10 months after his highway robbery … in hiding now as the world crumbles in a nuclear winter cloud of asbestos and smoke and jet fuel, or at least for a dozen big-city blocks in each direction. What, in hiding? What, Air Force One disappeared? … bunker in Berlin, shot in the head, Thousand Year Rei … the Russians, warships moving across the board nearing Cuba … this isn’t a boardga … grassy knoll, it came from the grassy … no, couldn’t have been an echo … the bullet, no the plane, came from the left!!!
The pounding in my stomach does not subside, but increases instead with each replay of the awful video. Pain creeps down my sweaty body and now it hits me in the crotch every time that plane enters the screen. Can’t breath. Need to cry, need tears, but there’s no oxygen to feed my fire. My father spoke of this throbbing pain whenever he watched the unforgiving Zapruder film of Kennedy’s head exploding in the motorcade in Dallas. Said he cursed, and had to leave “JFK” in the theater. Damn you, Oliver Stone. He was 12, and remembers sitting at the neighbor’s swimming pool, when he learned that the president had been killed.
And now my generation has our where-were-you-when-it-happened traumatic moment.
This GlenArbor.com exclusive is sponsored by Deering’s Market, open year-round in downtown Empire.
Tags: 9/11, 9/11 anniversary, Ani Difranco, Cedar Michigan, Deepak Chopra, Empire Michigan, Glen Arbor, Glen Arbor Fire Department, Glen Arbor Michigan, Interlochen Arts Academy, Maple City Michigan, New York City Fire Department, September 11, terrorist attacks, the Deeper wound
Posted in Historical Feature, Poetry/Essay | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
 By Bronwyn Jones
Sun contributor
I walk to the island in my mind. I start in Leonia, New Jersey, the town I grew up in. At some point I am sixteen again and wearing heavy-duty hiking boots as I trudge up the stairs to the pedestrian walkway that leads across the massive, vibrating George Washington Bridge. The broad, serene Hudson River lies far below and the buildings of Manhattan stretch out to the distant lower end of the island. The World Trade Center isn’t there yet. I remember the feeling of space, and slight dizziness, suspended at such a great height; the exhilaration of crossing from one state to the next on foot.
Now it seems my whole life has been defined by the view from that bridge, the lifeline out of the suburbs to the culture and excitement of the big city. My father, an artist, painted that view over and over; before the lower deck was added, before Route 80 was completed, before the huge high rise apartments crowned the Jersey Palisades. One painting is a night time landscape looking up at the underside of the bridge and over to Manhattan, a complex, fiery string of lights reflected perfectly in the vast expanse of inky river water. It was, it is the island of my dreams, always.
By the time I was seventeen I had driven, bused, walked over the river countless times. From the Port Authority bus terminal at 175th Street, the number 5 bus took me on my daily journey through Spanish Harlem to my high school at West 91st Street, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. It was housed in an old brownstone. There was no dress code and we called the teachers by their first names. Instead of gym class, friends and I often walked south on Broadway to Lincoln Center. I remember the feel of the black, mica-flecked marble of the central fountain. I can feel its smooth sun-warmed surface beneath me and the cool spray from the water forced into gigantic plumes rising high into the air.
That summer I stayed with a friend who lived nearby on Riverside Drive. In the evening the two of us would wait outside the New York City Ballet Theater and often at intermission exiting patrons would give us their ticket stubs. We saw second halves of many ballets from perfect mezzanine seats.
My wisdom teeth were pulled that summer and I recuperated at my friend’s apartment. I remember her father taking pity on me one night and kindly trying to find something I could eat without too much pain. Back then I didn’t really understand what he did for a living. I saw him again for the first time in years on TV just days ago. A civil engineer and author of the book, Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail, he has been called upon by the media to explain to us all the structural mysteries of the two World Trade Center towers that we have watched fall over and over again on our TV screens.
New York City is not only a place I grew up in, lived in for years, it is my interior landscape and soul home. The memories blot out everything else. When I cook now, I smell the city’s garlic smell, overlaid with auto exhaust and the steamy, rank exhalations from manhole covers on the uneven streets. I see the buildings, hear the noises, feel the textures of the different neighborhoods, run hard through rush hour crowds to catch up with people I love.
After I graduated from high school, the Empire Szechuan restaurant up on Broadway and 99th Street became a favorite hang out. It was open late. I lived in a large apartment at West 98th Street with five female musician roommates, and after a concert at either Manhattan School of Music, where I was a harp student, or down at Lincoln Center where all my roommates were ushers, we ate bowls of hot and sour soup. They were deep, round bowls full of thick pieces of pork, tofu, tree ear mushrooms, with a slick of chili oil shining on the surface, lightly dusted with black pepper. We had long conversations over platters of freshly folded and fried dumplings, mounds of chicken and peanuts, shrimp still in their shells and thick with chopped garlic. We knew the waiters and it would be years before the restaurant became a citywide franchise.
These images and sensations have come back to me randomly and with urgency. They seem vivid and then fade as I try to touch them with language, even as neural pathways in my brain are shifting to accommodate the pictures of charred rubble, the pulverized concrete dust and entombed fragments of human beings. The newer images threaten me with a dark, vertiginous emptiness. The ache is a dry socket, white bone exposed. It is huge. Its thudding pulse pulls apart my sense of home.
We have all been stunned, and we mourn all over the country. Yet, if we were patient this horrible experience of loss could give us, so rich and privileged by comparison, a new understanding of the suffering elsewhere in the world, suffering we have glimpsed but so often taken for granted. We could begin to see and feel the ravaged landscapes of the Khan Goulis Palestinian refugee camp, we could peer into the homes of the women in Kabul who risk their lives holding clandestine schools for young Afghani girls, we could hear the anguished cries of the children of the Afghan woman who is led out onto the floor of the crowded stadium in Kabul and executed with shots from a Kalashnikov to the back of the head, we could look deep into the dulled eyes of Iraqi children dying from chronic dysentery. This empathic journey is the hard path toward every place on the globe where the ordinary dreams and hopes of human beings, the landscapes of place and community in their minds and hearts have been completely destroyed. Gone. And for all the children everywhere born with this enormous loss already etched into their young hearts, there may not be love and justice enough in their abbreviated lifetimes to approach healing, much less hope and the promise of fulfillment.
This is the door that opens to the tiny closet in Ursula LeGuin’s mythic story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. It isn’t a stretch to see America from the perspective of someone living in deep poverty as the land of Omelas — a place of wealth, freedom, celebration, power, and imagination. In LeGuin’s story, Omelas is evoked as a pre-lapsarian world of handsome, athletic men, women and children; of festivals and beauty, kindness and expressions of love and generosity unencumbered by greed or manipulation. However, all that is good in this land depends for its existence upon one spot of pure misery. Omelas, in all its magnificence, would cease to be if it weren’t for the suffering of one child locked since birth in a dirty closet where it sits naked and shivering in its own excrement, never to know light, love or relationship. Periodically, citizens of Omelas take their own children and briefly look together in dismay upon this child.
We are there ourselves now, in a metaphoric sense, able to peer in and taste the despair, the wordless fear. But LeGuin’s story doesn’t end with those who shrink in horror at the plight of this child, yet go on with their lives. Her story ends with those who walk away from Omelas, unable to accept the contingency of their prosperity upon anyone’s abject misery, a child least of all.
Children everywhere will walk into the future we leave for them. Their young imaginations will try to transform what they can of the darkness and the tragedies.
A mother, rushing away from the burning World Trade Center towers, clutching the hand of her little boy, later tells a New York Times reporter that her son looked up, saw the falling bodies of people on fire and said to her, “The birds are burning.” But it is we, the adults, who must be the true alchemists, the peacemakers, the stewards of this planet for the next six generations. Right now we can make the choice to do no more harm. For all the children, everywhere, already on this earth, we can refuse to define justice in terms of retaliatory violence. We can feed our youngsters, hold them, love them, and bring the burning birds back: the phoenix, alive and strong, arcing upward out of the ashes.
This GlenArbor.com exclusive is sponsored by Duneswood Motel, which offers peaceful, relaxing, affordable vacations for womyn in the heart of the National Lakeshore.
Tags: 9/11, Bronwyn Jones, September 11, terrorist attacks
Posted in Historical Feature, Poetry/Essay | No Comments »
Monday, August 8th, 2011
 By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor
Writing a review for a dear friend is always a risk because, well, what if you don’t like the book? Fortunately, it is an honor and pleasure to review Jacob Wheeler’s beautiful first book Between light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl’s Journey through Adoption (University of Nebraska Press, April 2011). My initial interest was not just watching a talented young writer arrive on the nonfiction scene. I also live in a world laced with international families, both intact and broken by various boundaries, and like most families, my own has been affected by adoption. That said, when I pick up a fellow writer’s work, I also want that book to lead me beyond my personal interest. I want to be moved, to experience their moment, and I want to learn something beyond the normal encyclopedic information. I want to respect the craft.
So I was thrilled to discover Between Light and Shadow is an outstanding example of two relatively recently developed genres of journalism: narrative journalism in which history or an event is related in third person as a story with scenes, dialogue, arc — where we do not see the author; and immersion journalism, in which the author writes in first person and plays a role in the unfolding of the tale. I’ll say up front, it’s a risk to do both in the same book, but Jacob Wheeler succeeds with grace.
Thus the book is divided into two sections. The first, “The Journey” includes a serious study of Guatemalan adoption practices as they were carried out until 2008 when the government finally stopped what was called the “baby drain” from Guatemala’s homeland. Laced into this solid reporting is the narrative of several families who have adopted Guatemalan children, though the primary narrative focuses on Ellie Walters (her American name) who was adopted at eight years old by Judy Barrett and Bob Walters of Traverse City. Between the highly educational and clear information about both the benefits and corruption of Guatemalan adoption, we are introduced to Ellie’s (Berenice) journey. From her remote home village to the orphanage where she was abandoned, from her initial meeting with the Walters family to the halting journey to Michigan — this odyssey is as gripping and rich a piece of journalism as this reader could wish.
In the second section, “The Return, ” Jacob focuses almost exclusively on the story of the two families as both metaphorical model of light and threat of darkness in this complex and challenging process. In an attempt to support Ellie’s need to connect with her birth family and to understand some of the haunting memories she retained, the adoptive parents hopefully engage Jacob’s assistance in locating Ellie’s birth mother. Here we see Jacob enter the story, speaking as himself, “immersing” in the effort to facilitate the search. While he maintains the discipline of documentarian, like everyone in the story, he finds himself pulled irrevocably into that soul-torn place between the light and shadow of this multi-faceted situation. Though he is miraculously able to locate Ellie’s birth mother and is able to mediate a meeting between the two mothers, and later between Ellie and her siblings, these are murky emotional waters and their under-the-surface precipices are being negotiated in a country where accurate records, social services, and proper legal proceedings are often compromised. In order to avoid the ramifications of this nearly tragic return, Jacob, like everyone in the book, must make a choice to participate beyond his expectations. To immerse. To become fully involved.
The end of this story explores deeply and sensitively the gray areas of international adoption, shows the sunlight and the shadow for both adoptive family and birth family, for both mothers and for the lovely daughter at the center of the story. It is not a perfect ending, but it is not to be missed.
As a writer, I appreciated Jacob’s ingenious two-part structure unified by this singular and deeply personal adoption story. The structure exemplified the sentiment of the story: the duality of loyalty and love set against the harsh realities of survival, illegal trafficking, and emotional triage. His writing style is straightforward, without much ornament — and in this case, little is needed. His description of the natural beauty and desperate poverty of Guatemala, his careful depiction of the human situations, his thorough analysis of the legal and illegal aspects of the adoption system, and his faithfulness to both families, tells it true in clear and lucid prose. Jacob Wheeler’s choices as a writer make this book both an important document and a suspenseful tale of two families. His choices as a human being make this a story with a soul.
Jacob Wheeler will read from Between Light and Shadow on Friday, Aug. 12, from 3-5 p.m. at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor.
Tags: Anne-Marie Oomen, Between Light and Shadow, Cottage Book Shop, Glen Arbor, Glen Arbor Michigan, Guatemala, Guatemalan adoption, Jacob Wheeler
Posted in Poetry/Essay, Upcoming Event | 2 Comments »
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
By Elizabeth Westie
Dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth’s Aunt Helen Westie Wetterholt, a frequent contributor to the Glen Arbor Sun, and an Empire mainstay who passed away in May, at 93 years old. Read her obituary below.
Things in Empire mostly stay the same. It is one of life’s true miracles, and a gift to us each summer. Sophie the dog and I have just taken our morning walk. We stopped at Deering’s (Sophie tied to the post near the public water fountain) and I bought Norconk asparagus and dogfood. A fancy Traverse City restaurant where I dined last night featured “Norconk asparagus” on the menu, as though it were a well-known delicacy. It’s well known here in Empire!)
We greeted Phil and chatted with the friendly cashiers. A pair of orioles is nesting in the big tree next to the Weese’s garden, which is in full glory. We miss the moonflower in Alice Diggins’ garden, but she had a lovely show of lily-of-the-valley and forget-me-nots earlier this summer. Their scent was on the breeze, along with the wild phlox. We walked up and down the tree-shaded streets and friendly alleys where one sees evidence of people’s less public lives. We passed the village offices where Jack’s barbershop (former headquarters of the Dirty Old Men’s Club) once stood. We passed into a reverie about Bolton’s general store, where we once bought candy, balsa wood airplanes, overalls, bandannas and fabric for summer sewing projects. And the library, remembering the bookmobile that used to park on Front Street once a week. Fun as that was, the library is a distinct improvement, with its fine collection of books and dvds, and its excellent staff.
We passed by Holly’s lovely garden, where Mr. Fradd once had a sign inviting us to “Walk In,” and marvel at what a great job she’s done with the place. Sophie smelled many a spot where deer had left their scent. Back at home, we admire Marie’s uniforms hanging on the line, and note that Bob has mowed more than his share of the lawn, as usual. It isn’t necessary to pass a line-drying ordinance here in Empire. Later, I did my banking and heard the day’s news. ( Last spring Jennifer sent me a friendly note warning me that my account was about to become dormant, but that she could withdraw a dollar and deposit a dollar to reinstate it. Now that’s real “community banking!”)
We return to Empire each summer to fill up our tank for another year “away”, and dream of the day when we will not have to leave. Some of us figure out a way to stay forever. On the wall of the red house on Niagara Street is a quote from E. B. White, “Every day was a perfect day and every night was peaceful.” It perfectly expresses our days in Empire. We wake to the sounds of birdsong and check to see if it’s an “Empire Day,” when the sky is that perfect Empire Blue. We inhale the crisp air and listen for the lake. We go to bed after viewing the sunset over the lake and sharing conversation with our neighbors and other members of the Sunset Club, known and unknown. We go to bed by starlight, seeing the Milky Way, which is nearly imperceptible in much of the modern world. We whisper a prayer of thanks to those who worked to dim the streetlights.
Our hearts are filled with gratitude to the Taghons and the Deerings and the Oberschultes and the Weese’s and many others, old- time families and newer residents who “get it” (and who will forgive me for not listing their names!) for maintaining this little hamlet in such fine style and with such love, energy and hard work! We owe them a debt of gratitude we can never repay.
My father said it best in a poem entitled “Hey Kim” written in about 1974.
Hey Kim –
Why did you come here to Empire?
Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it doesn’t
exist? We made it all up!
We invented it to “run away from all
the sorry scheme of things entire.”
So we got a lot of sand and green things,
and flowers and a lot of water and
branch-holding tree limbs and some
beautiful persons like tom and florence
and the millers and chapmans and jasons
and deerings, and little dirk barr and
big brother tim, and we put them all together
with glue and papier mache, and we
brought in cape may warblers and robins
and cardinals to sing, and hung the sun
and quite a lot of stars and moonbeams.
It really is not what it seems when we
wait for spring to come here.
We wanted to “mold the world much
closer to heart’s desire.”
Somebody should have told you
about this before.
Of course I was here!
You looked in all the wrong places.
I was the needle in the needing haystack
needing to be found. I was reading a
book called “Some Other Day”
I was up on the bluffs in the old orchard
eating the plums
swimming at cripple creek and lying on the sunsand
and chasing rout at the iron bridge
on the Platte where it’s at.
Waliking toward the sleeping bear and skipping flat stones at the shore
and much more.
I was here – I saw you once or twice.
Didn’t you see where my eye’s wings
Carried me ‘round the full moon?
I guess this was tonight – Time and Place
I’m not very good at.
I have a lovely hat.
I thought you saw me on the back
Of the loon diving for fish, I don’t much
like it raw,
and sailing around with the swans
Didn’t I go that night as a gull
to fly toward the sunset?
Most of the time I was in the old
two holer next to the barn, shitting the real word
in the place where it belongs.
Helen Westie obituary
TRAVERSE CITY — Helen Westie Wetterholt , 93, died peacefully in Traverse City on Monday, May 9. A longtime resident of Empire and the Leelanau Peninsula, Helen was born at home in Dodgeville on Feb. 5, 1918, to Hjalmar Ojala Westie and Anna Sandell Westie.
Helen spent her childhood in Dearborn and Rapid City and picked cherries during the depression on the Old Mission Peninsula. She was part of a large Finnish family and took great pride in her Finnish heritage.
Helen was a 1936 graduate of Fordson High School in Dearborn. Helen went on to attend the University of Michigan from 1936 to 1940 and received a teaching certificate.
She married her husband, George J. Wetterholt, in 1943 in Dearborn.
Helen was a beloved English teacher in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She especially enjoyed teaching 7th grade at Friends’ Central School in Philadelphia. Later, she had a catering business in California and was for years a housemother for the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority at the University of Florida.
It was during her teaching at Friends’ Central School that she developed her Quaker beliefs and spirituality. She regularly attended Quaker meetings in Gainesville, Fla.
She was passionate about literature, music and the arts. She was often quoting poetry, attending classical music events in Philadelphia, Interlochen, Gainesville and Traverse City, or writing. Though a teacher, she was a journalist at heart. In retirement, Helen was a contributor to the Glen Arbor Sun, giving vivid accounts of living Up North in northwestern Michigan. She also published a memoir and collection of stories titled ‘Put Me in the Kip’.
Helen loved languages and traveled the world with George and later with her many friends, nieces and granddaughters. She is fondly remembered as The Bumblebee because of her frequent travels in the United States and abroad. Helen never knew a stranger and thus easily made friends worldwide, especially in Europe. Her writing talent made her an avid letter writer, corresponding with family and overseas pen pals.
She spent her retirement years in Empire near her beloved brothers, Charles and Frank Westie, and their families, while wintering in Gainesville, Fla. More recently, Helen lived at Glen Eagle Retirement home in Traverse City. Fittingly, her passing occurred while the trilliums were in bloom, her favorite Michigan season.
Helen is survived by her son, Dr. David (Annick Cristin) Wetterholt, of Saratoga, Calif.; her daughter-in-law, Sherrie Wetterholt, of Bloomington, Ind.; two granddaughters, Kirstin (Michael) Maxwell, of Martinsville, Ind., and Laura Wetterholt, of Barcelona, Spain; and a great-granddaughter, Isabel Maxwell, of Martinsville.
Local and remote survivors include her sisters-in-law, Ardith Westie, of Traverse City, and Margaret Westie, of Glen Arbor and Naples, Fla.; nieces, Katharine Westie, of Coral Gables, Fla., and Glen Arbor, Anne Wiesen, of Glen Arbor, Judith Weaver, of Traverse City, Susan Westie Hilton, of Empire and Traverse City, Elizabeth Westie Brattin, of Worcester, Mass., and Bonnie MacDonald, of Phoenix and Empire; and nephews, Kurt Westie, of Empire, John Westie, of Jericho, Vt., and Daniel MacDonald, of Phoenix.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Hjalmar and Anna; her ex-husband, George Wetterholt; her son, Stuart Wetterholt; and her two brothers, Charles M. Westie, Ph.D., and Frank R. Westie, Ph.D.
A celebration of her life was held on July 17 at Empire Town Hall.
Tags: Empire Michigan, Helen Westie, Norconk asparagus
Posted in Local Personality, Poetry/Essay | No Comments »
Sunday, July 31st, 2011
 Book Review by Zinta Aistars
Reading a Bonnie Jo Campbell book is like sitting down for a cuppa, or a cold one, with your very best gal pal. You can let loose and relax, kick off your shoes, loosen your girdle, because she does, her story does, the way it weaves in and around you and floats you along, easy, easy. Just like a river. No pretenses. Nearly effortless. No masks required, because Campbell will see through them, or, more accurately, doesn’t seem to have a clue that masks exist. She is what she is, and her books reflect that authenticity. Maybe no one has convinced Campbell that some in the harried human race believe masks are required gear for survival.
Not in Campbell’s world. She is the rare blend of a literary talent with a knack for telling a good tale. While there are plenty of one, and quite a few of the other, a solid blend of the two is a rarity. We begin to float down her Once Upon a River (W.W. Norton & Company, July 2011), rocked by waves without ever being jerked around, not even at the sound of a gunshot.
Campbell’s novel tells the story of Margo Crane, a 16-year-old girl, beautiful without knowing it, or caring one way or another. Margo has grown up in Michigan country, not far from the Kalamazoo River on a smaller river called the Stark. “The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart.”
This is a girl who handles a gun like an extension of her own body. She idolizes Annie Oakley. She lives with her father in the back country, her mother abandoned her years ago, and she is nowhere more at peace than when she is drifting on the river, watching painted turtles or catching fish or counting herons. She knows how to skin a rabbit and she shoots to kill when she sees game.
A reoccurring theme in Campbell’s books is the woman wounded by life and by men, as a result tough and wise and independent — a survivor. Margo Crane joins that line-up. She isn’t educated in academics, but she knows how to maneuver through life like a river, and little scares her. Like many young girls, she almost doesn’t get it when she is raped by an uncle — was it her fault somehow? It is unclear to her when to defend herself, but when defending someone she loves, the line of fire is very clear. More than once, more than twice, she must shoot with that uncanny ability she has to hit an acorn across a field to save the innocent from the brutality of a man gone wild.
“She studied the railroad-tie fence post from its base to its top, as it rose to about her own height. She studied the green fruit with the burr acorn on top. Beyond it was the smooth expanse of river. She wrapped the sling around her left hand and elbow and pushed against it. When she nestled the stock in her shoulder and pressed her cheek against it, her stance and grip were solid. The Indian disappeared, and she was alone with her gun and her target. She looked through her sights … for Margo there usually came an instant like now when she felt solidly rooted to the planet. Without a conscious decision to do so, she smoothly pressed the trigger straight back and held it there as the rifle sent the bullet down the barrel on its way to the acorn.” (Page 213)
Margo’s journey floats her down that river by ripple effect from her actions, a stream carrying her along, but it is the stops she makes along the way that bring in the conflicts of the story. Tossed out of life as she knows it when her father dies, in part due to her sharp shot, she searches for the mother who abandoned her. She finds her, if not quite what she is looking for, but finds also mutations of love, mutations of hatred, and sometimes the two intertwined.
An inescapable lesson for a pretty woman is to always watch for the man who will hurt her, as nearly all of them do — even the ones who seem to care about her. Rape is always a threat, and sometimes more than just a threat. She is conflicted in how to handle an unwanted pregnancy, thinking she wants one kind of resolution while moving almost unwillingly toward another.
The real love of Margo’s life, alongside the river, turns out to be Smoke — a man too old to be a threat or even a caretaker, but someone who allows her to become one. With his crass manner, not unlike her own, he teaches her to allow for gentler moments. Each of them have a battle to wage in their lives, although each to a different end. Yet that is how a river moves between its banks: living and dying intertwined, youth and old age, the gentle moment leaning against the instant of brutality, moving along in the direction life navigates you, but occasionally managing to paddle to shore, until you are pushed into the rapids again.
Campbell understands that the world is generally made to fit one kind of person — the kind that does not exist anywhere but in the hopeful mind. All the rest of us just have to make do. Her characters are those who do not fit but eventually surprise with how exceptionally well they make do.
Once Upon a River continues Campbell’s literary journey, easing along in irresistible flow. We can’t help but be carried along. Emerging from these waters, we feel refreshed, if a little wiser, if a little more sure about fitting in with a world of misfits. We all are one. Campbell makes that feel like the best way to be, if not the only way to survive.
Bonnie Jo Campbell will read from Once Upon a River on Friday, August 5, from 1-3 p.m. at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor. She is the author of two short story collections, Women & Other Animals (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999; Simon & Schuster, 2003) and American Salvage (Wayne State University Press, 2009; W.W. Norton, 2009) and the novel Q Road (Scribner, 2003). American Salvage was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has won a Pushcart Prize and the Eudora Welty Prize. Her stories, essays and poetry have appeared in many publications, including The Smoking Poet. She was born and lives now in Kalamazoo.
Tags: Bonnie Jo Campbell, Cottage Book Shop, Glen Arbor, Glen Arbor Michigan, Kalamazoo River, Once Upon a River, The Smoking Poet
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Monday, July 18th, 2011
 From staff reports
Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear offers the inspiration for creative writing in their Path to the Page Writing and Hiking workshop on Thursday, July 28 from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. with instructor Anne-Marie Oomen of Interlochen Arts Academy. Participants will learn about the history of select farmsteads during their three-mile walk on the Bayview Trail through the Port Oneida Rural Historic District.
Oral history will be given of each farm, along with time to write, with guidance, instruction and readings from Oomen. Writers at any level are welcome.
A box lunch is included in the $70 cost for the program. Advanced registration is required. For further details or to register call Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear at (231) 334-6103 or visit www.phsb.org. PHSB is a nonprofit partner of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore committed to preserving the historic structures and landscapes within the Park.
Tags: Anne-Marie Oomen, Interlochen Arts Academy, Port Oneida, Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
Posted in Poetry/Essay, Upcoming Event | No Comments »
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By Pat Stinson
