2015 has been a good year for local literature. New books about Leelanau, books by Leelanau County authors and at least one old favorite await eager readers in area bookshops. Here’s a sampling:
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After the shock of entering the dense-leaved maple canopy sheared to the ground and shouldered aside like the dead dropped in their tracks, after all that what I finally see are breaking points. The storm’s catastrophe bars comprehension except in stages, but every moment our eyes are open it becomes more real: massive trunks stacked like proverbial pick up sticks — all cliché but what else do I have in the first moments of first seeing? But this is no game. Still, I am so stunned I have no fresh language to describe this — it’s all too dense, thick with damage. The heart aches and the mind can’t find the way to the words, or even the real. When do I see the breaking points? The crack and twist, wood’s open wounds, the new right angle that is all wrong for the verticality of a tree. Not until the end.
From staff reports Local author Anne-Marie Oomen will read from her newly published book Love, Sex and 4H, on Tuesday, July 28 at 7 p.m. In this engaging and entertaining memoir, Oomen describes coming of age in a small town in rural Michigan, balancing the wholesomeness of her farm upbringing with the turbulent social and […]
Visit the Cottage Book Shop on Saturday, May 23, from 1-3 p.m. to help this Glen Arbor mainstay celebrate 30 years in the community. Owner Sue Boucher and her team have a fun afternoon planned with six local authors signing their books.
So, you’re a woman of a certain age. You’re looking into the mirror that is TV, and the idealized face reflected back looks nothing like the one you’re wearing. What’s a girl to do?
Author Anne-Marie Oomen offers the third in three lessons about how to write about your summer vacation in Leelanau. Use sensory language to describe your best summer moments; use strong, action verbs to keep memories locked in place. Now she explores the “so what” factor.
Action. The brain really likes action. In fact, the brain loves action, even when we are veging out on the beach, action runs in the drift of our minds. After all, we are part animal, and we still have that watchful animal awareness that what moves might be predator or prey, so it gets and keeps our attention. But how does this translate into that more sophisticated thinking we do when we write, even just one paragraph.
What I did on my summer vacation: the age old cliché, the assignment for school children that both children and teachers dread, in part because it’s so often boring—both for reader and writer. Why is that? Or why is it that when we look at the hundreds of iPhone photos we took of the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb, we never get the rush of flying down the sand. What happened to that feeling of bubbling laughter when Uncle Jack fell through the inner tube into the Crystal River? We think, for example, we can keep the Leelanau County wine tasting alive with pictures alone, but even though pictures recall the image and some association, they don’t recall the narrative, the story of the moment. That’s the limitation of pictures, glorious as they are. So we need words too. We tell the story of the picture, sometimes ad nauseum, to our neighbors back home, but even that, over time, loses its power. That is, until the senses get involved.
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.
Nadine Gilmer narrates, and reflects on, the Northern Michigan autumn tradition of pressing apples to make apple cider. It’s hard to imagine apple cider making not being a community event. Aside from the sweet promise of fresh apple cider, this is a labor-intensive job. One person washes the apples while a couple of other cider-makers set up the press. Then one person holds the bowl at the end of the spout to make sure none of the juice is wasted. One feeds handfuls of apples into the machine while a sturdy volunteer turns the crank.