The Glen Lake Library in Empire is hosting the “Ode to Asparagus” poetry contest as part of the upcoming 2012 Empire Asparagus Festival, to be held the weekend before Memorial Day weekend. Poems will be judged in adult and youth categories, with prizes awarded in each group.
During the night trees snapped and limbs crashed around my house, but Saturday was characterized by an uncommon quiet. Even the snowmobilers that regularly race the nearby road were nowhere to be heard. I suppose they too were home digging out from the overnight snowfall — 29 inches in some places, I’m told — and attending to basic survival.
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?
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.
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.
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.
On the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Glen Arbor Sun writers Anne-Marie Oomen, Mike Buhler, Mary Sharry, Pat Stinson, Waleed Al-Shamma and Jacob Wheeler reflect on September 11, 2001.
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.
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).
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.