Traverse City author Kathleen Stocking’s new book, From the Place of the Gathering Light—her second book of Leelanau County essays—is the topic of conversation at the next Talk About Art interview June 9, at 2 p.m. at the Glen Arbor Arts Center, 6031 S. Lake St., Glen Arbor.
I heat with wood. Most of us up here do. Wood is still cheaper than any other fuel, and it’s available. Some of us cut our own wood, but to do that you have to have a woodlot, a truck, a saw in good condition, and time. My husband and I cut our own wood one winter, but in retrospect it seems like that’s all we did.
One of the most puzzling marriages in Michigan history, perhaps in American history, has to have been that between Henry Schoolcraft and his Native American wife, Jane. Henry, whose name now graces roads, schools, and counties in Michigan, was an explorer who worked for the United States Department of War. He was the Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie from 1823 to 1833. Jane was the daughter of an aristocratic Irish fur trader, John Johnston, and his wife, Ozhaw-Guscoday-Wayquay, daughter of a powerful Chippewa chief.
Bob and Ruth Elliott had been classmates at East Lansing High School, 50-some years before they began a late life friendship that would become a wonderful marriage. They had known each other, but only slightly, in high school. “Bob had been president of our student body his senior year,” Ruth says as the two of them sit talking at their cottage on Lake Michigan on a heady blue-and-gold September day.
Libraries are the great equalizer in America. Not everyone can afford to buy a book or a computer, but almost everyone can afford to go to the library. Libraries are the cornerstone of democracy. Free access to information is what democracy depends on in order to have an intelligent population.
Award-winning essayist Kathleen Stocking will discuss her new memoir, The Long Arc of the Universe — Travels Beyond the Pale, on July 28 at 7 p.m. at the Glen Arbor Art Association, 6031 S. Lake St., Glen Arbor. The summer edition of the GAAA’s “Talk About Art” series brings the Leelanau County writer back to her home turf to discuss the world travels that became this new work of creative nonfiction. “Talk About Art”, now in its eighth year, is a series of free conversational interviews with area artists. No reservations are required.
Writer Kathleen Stocking wants to change the world. The acclaimed author of Letters from the Leelanau and Lake Country has just published her third book of essays, The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale. In it, she takes readers along on her incredible journeys from her home in seemingly peaceful, picturesque northern Michigan to some of the world’s most unstable and terrifying places. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, she brings her skill with words, language and storytelling to protect herself, as well as teach an incredible range of students: from hardened criminals in maximum security prison to the offspring of Central American despots; from poor African-American children traumatized by gang warfare in their urban neighborhood to Third World children in Thailand and Romania.
The Glen Lake Library will host Kathleen Stocking, author of the newly published memoir The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale, on Thursday, June 30, at 7 pm. Stocking is well-known locally for her previous books Lake Country and Letters from the Leelanau. Her latest book describes her varied and eye-opening experiences over the years, from work in the California prison system, to teaching and traveling throughout the third world.
Samaritans’ Closet, a plain brown house over the bridge in the village of Lake Leelanau, is becoming a destination thrift shop. On this particular day the chartreuse leaves of the willows and poplars are just beginning to show. The red twig dogwood is redder than usual and the maples are a dusky ruby and pink. Cardinals call, “Teacher, teacher,” in the marsh along the narrows.
Amidst the pain, it’s important to remember this lesson: the Aug. 2 megastorm — though it may have been the storm of the century — is one of several cataclysmic events that have changed this land we call Sleeping Bear since the glaciers receded and left behind the great lake and the rolling dunes and forests. And after each event, the land and its animals adapted and tended ahead. Alligator Hill will do the same.