We are talking, together, in common and without apparent hierarchy, about the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s idea of the good. We are talking seriously about what it means to seek the good, to live the good life, to address Aristotle’s question on the purpose of being human. I am in Aspen, but all this is making me think about things in Michigan.
You don’t really know where you’re from until you’ve been somewhere else and come back. That’s because anything is only itself in relationship to some other thing. A day is only a day in relationship to the night. An apple stands for every fruit until you’ve tasted a mangosteen. America isn’t America until you’ve been to El Salvador.
Traverse City author Jerry Dennis will read “This Land, This Water: A Winter on the Great Lakes”, excerpted from his book “The Windward Shore” at the July 14 oil pipeline protest at the Mackinac Bridge.
The cold winter weather of 2013 that lingered well into May has delayed the emergence of our beloved trillium, prolonging their bloom time into June. The large flowered trillium (trillium grandiflorum) has a single, stout stem arising from a deeply buried bulb, three leaves and three big white petals. A Michigan Protected Flower, trillium are fragile and should not be picked, as this kills the entire plant. Besides, they lack fragrance and wilt quickly. In an emergency situation people can eat the leaves and bulb. White-tailed deer also eat trillium, and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources predicts that between habitat destruction by humans and grazing by deer, trillium could disappear in the next 30 years. So enjoy the trillium today, and do what you can to ensure their survival for your great grandchildren.
James Filkins makes moody, optimistic music that sounds like the natural outpouring of a real guy who has played long enough to have a sound and understand what he’s trying to say with his instrument. Listening to his finger-style guitar tunes, one imagines a languid outdoor scene, enough time to just hang out for a while — days and weeks, even — and the kind of weather that makes everything seem just fine.
After a successful inaugural year, the Glen Arbor Art Association will begin its second season of Readers Theater with “The 39 Steps”, a fast-paced thriller about spies, secrets, murder and mayhem directed by Teddy House and featuring an all local cast. The adaption of the Alfred Hitchcock story is slated for Saturday, Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. with a Sunday matinee, Dec. 2 at 3 p.m.
The Michigan Writers, started in 2001 by a group of area scribes (including Norm Wheeler, Joe VanderMeulen, Bronwyn Jones, and others), initially focused on collaborating to help each other improve their work and get published. But the roots of what would become a thriving regional writing network can be found in a small yet vibrant publication, founded around 1996 by Empire poet, essayist, playwright and teacher Anne-Marie Oomen.
Dorothy Brooks of East Lansing plans to use her Glen Arbor Art Association two-week residency to “write a series of poems (10-15) with Lake Michigan as theme: seen from my own unique perspective.” Brooks has spent many summers in northern Michigan on its lakes, rivers and woods and now wants to “breathe the lake” and absorb and record what she finds.
The Leelanau Press, a nonprofit publishing company, is undertaking a major effort to recognize the work of artists who have painted in this unique northern Michigan gem. A future publication, Art of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, and a major exhibition at the Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City will celebrate what has recently been media-designated as America’s Most Beautiful Place.
Nine years ago the Sun ran a story entitled, “Heart of a hobo beats inside 90-year-old Honor man” about Clive Haswell, a wordsmith and train hopper during the Great Depression. Last winter, we heard from Dalena Nichols in Locust Grove, Oklahoma, who knew Haswell from a visit to the Platte River and read about him on GlenArborSun.com. She sent us these unpublished words by the hobo poet: