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May 27, 2004
Empire displays community “Spear-It”
By Ashlea Turner
Sun staff writer
For asparagus lovers, a drizzly spring day was fitting for the 1st Annual Empire Asparagus Festival held last Saturday, May 22nd. Folks from all over the region came to celebrate the town’s new favorite vegetable, asparagus. At the climax of the asparagus harvest season, Empire partied for hours with a whole day’s worth of events.
The day kicked off with a rainy fun run/walk, attended by over 20 adults, children and pets. The 2.5-mile route meandered through the village, passing by many community garden plots filled with young asparagus. Robin Johnson and Heidi Skinner, both village residents, planted over 100 donated asparagus crowns, as well as complimentary perennials and annuals.
After the tour many asparagus-loving children attended a wealth of kids’ games and activities, including a popular asparagus spear-throwing contest. While the kids were having fun throwing their food around, parents indulged in some deliciously rich cream of asparagus soup, provided by Joe’s Friendly Tavern. Holly and Judy Decker, owners of the Cottonwood Inn Bed & Breakfast in Empire, served it up ‘til the last drop was consumed by thankful patrons.
While consuming the homemade soup, many festival visitors wandered through the classic car show, finding themselves in awe not only of the wonderful automobiles, but of the owners’ spirits on a damp day. Moving east on Front Street, hungry visitors attended the Asparagus Recipe Contest in the Town Hall, where they were able to sample 18 asparagus-based dishes. Over 40 people anxiously waited for the judges to make their decisions before they were able to sample and vote in the “People’s Choice” category. The “People’s Choice” award went to Richard Cooper for his asparagus and morel soup.
For over 30 poetry lovers, the “Ode to Asparagus” poetry contest reading was the place to be in the afternoon. People between the ages of 9 and 90, from Michigan, Idaho, Great Britain and beyond submitted over 50 poems for the contest. The adult winner of the contest was Michael Delp, a poet and instructor at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Wild asparagus, cooked asparagus and, of course, asparagus pee were themes that resonated in many poems.
A highlight for many came at 2 p.m. with the Asparagus Festival Parade, featuring over 20 different “spear-ited” floats and costumes. In Empire, parades go around twice because it’s just too much fun to go around only once. So onlookers were able to catch a second glimpse of the creative floats, as they miraculously escaped the rain.
The most popular event of the day, however, was the Lion’s Club Chicken & Asparagus Dinner, along with a wine tasting featuring three local wineries, Black Star Farms, Ciccone and Bel Lago. The TC Kitchen Band performed to a full house in the Town Hall as people from all over continued to file in. All in all, over 300 people were served fresh asparagus and chicken dinners.
Organizers aspire to make the Empire Asparagus Festival an annual event and continue to celebrate the first commercial crop to be harvested in the area. Who knows? Maybe next year will feature an asparagus-eating contest? Better start practicing now!
An Asparagus Life
- by Michael Delp
At night I lie down in the garden,
the full moon rising like a beacon,
turn my head toward the wisdom of asparagus,
their long spears curling secrets into my ears:
Rain coming soon.
A river asleep under the field.
A flyrod gentle as wind hidden in the barn.
June, a month of high clouds and dense fog.
And on the table at noon tomorrow,
that asparagus pie my wife is dreaming.
Posted by editor at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
State of the Arts: Suzanne Wilson was a visionary and pioneer
By Jacob R. Wheeler
Sun editor
Taped to my refrigerator, in an apartment far from northern Michigan, is a postcard-sized Suzanne Wilson watercolor of the lighthouse on South Manitou Island. The old white tower looks down on a serene beach setting. Spruce trees creep up to the water’s edge, and I can almost visualize Suzanne filling in the foliage with quick brush strokes while she sits in a folding chair yards away.
Mine is not the only home graced by Suzanne’s immortal art. From Florida to the American southwest: from sunny France to interiors all over northern Michigan, her legacy will prevail long after those who knew her cease sharing their memories and anecdotes.
To many, Suzanne Wilson was a great artist and a wonderful friend. To some she was the “heart and soul” of the Glen Arbor artist community. But anyone lucky enough to spend time in our neck of the woods this summer will undoubtedly notice the void left at the Lake Street Studios where she used to wallow away the hours, brush in hand, under a shady tree — just steps away from bustling Cherry Republic and the pedestrian mayhem at Art’s Tavern.
Suzanne passed away early on the morning of December 9, 2003 after a bout with cancer, leaving behind three daughters, a couple grandchildren and countless friends who are more alive for having known her. She died as she had lived — on her own terms. During her final evening, those with her moved her bed to a window so she could see the full moon out in the crisp winter sky above Elberta, MI. She had been giggling a couple days before, remembers daughter Amy Stupka. “It was important to us to know that she was fine with dying. Her spirit really did light up the room that last night, and every time I’ve seen the moon since, I’ve felt her presence.”
Suzanne was born in 1940 in Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, whose wild and free spirit never left her, many would attest. She began painting when she was a tender four years old and attended the prestigious John D. Pierce high school in Marquette, which had a profound impact on her. She often summered in the cultural meccas of either Ann Arbor or Interlochen, where her father Raymond played trumpet. Suzanne met her first husband, Daniel Stupka, while studying at Northern Michigan University, and together they had three daughters: Allison, now living in Ann Arbor, Amy, in Asheville, NC, and Andrea, in Elberta.
Her first fulltime job was as art director at The Leelanau School, where she lived in the rustic Bourne Cottage and directed the Deertrack Art Workshops. There she met Norm and Mimi Wheeler, whose names are nearly synonymous with that of the school. “[We] were drawn to and strengthened by her incredible creative spirit, her laugh, and her wisdom,” remembers Norm. “She could see the light and shadows in people as in a landscape. Despite [second husband] Don and I finding frequent evidence to the contrary, Suzanne always said that things had a positive way of working themselves out, so when she moved into Glen Arbor and got the Lake Street project going with the Brickers and Midge on sheer will and artistic determination, she showed us that she was right.”
To be a Glen Arbor local is to have a story of Suzanne, and many tales were shared at a memorial service last Sunday, May 23. After all, Suzanne’s name is firmly imprinted in the annals of this town’s history. More than two decades ago she was integral in pioneering Glen Arbor’s art movement along with several others. As Beth Bricker Clark, daughter of fellow pioneers Ben and Ananda, documented in the memorial edition of the Glen Arbor Art Association newsletter: “In 1983 Becky Thatcher and Ananda Bricker invited all the artists they knew [including Suzanne] to a potluck at Ananda’s beach. This group, informally organized, then met every Thursday morning at the Soda Shop [now the Western Avenue Grill] to discuss plans on how to market their art. The following year five studios opened, with several artists exhibiting at each place. Between 1984 and 1986 a Co-Op Gallery was established, first at The Homestead in a seasonally empty ski warming house, and two years later in the Arbor Light Building (where it remains) — becoming, I believe, the first art gallery in Glen Arbor.”
The story of the precious Lake Street Studios is also a tale of Suzanne’s vision, passion, and ingenuity. Beth Bricker Clark continues: “When the Wescott property on Lake Street was offered for sale, Ananda, Suzanne and Midge Obata were captivated by its central location and by its majestic trees. The trio bought four of the lots offered — Midge bought the house and the building that became the Thread Shed, and Ananda and Suzanne formed a partnership and together bought the garage, which became the Lake Street Studios. It didn’t take long for them to realize the remaining lots were ecologically valuable with the wetlands, swales and some of the oldest standing white pine and oak trees in Glen Arbor. They asked the newly formed Leelanau Conservancy to help purchase the property.”
As Ben and Ananda Bricker can attest, things were far from easy in the early going, and the existence of the Studios and the Association today is a testament to the perseverance of Suzanne and her friends. “When we bought the Wescott property it could hardly be called an art studio. It was an old car repair garage with the roof fallen in, dead porcupines and other long forgotten residents, piles of rotting bags of hazardous materials, and junk scattered about. The porch roof had fallen in and a year’s worth of trash had been tossed atop it. We remember taking at least 13 truckloads to the dump. There were some good things we salvaged but most of it was wet and rotting. We went to work on it and slowly people started to volunteer to help. Don Wilson assessed that the beams could be restored. Eventually there was a monetary gift that had nowhere to go. Thus the Glen Arbor Art Association was born to receive this gift.”
Midge Obata remembers Suzanne as “the guiding inspiration in the foundation of the Association. Because she loved music, originally the association was called ‘Music around the Lakes’. “[In 1986] we started art classes for adults and children in a classroom that was donated to accommodate the increase in students. She also started a Sunday lecture series. She had a special desire for giving migrant children art classes … She also was strongly in favor of the Artist in Residence program because she believed in communication with artists all over the world through an international artist exchange.”
Even after establishing the Studios and the Art Association, Suzanne worked hard for Glen Arbor. A passionate environmentalist, she served on the Township Planning & Zoning Commission to help control development in a time when Glen Arbor was becoming a prime, and crowded, tourist destination during the summer season. Margaret Marchand remembers a eulogy Suzanne wrote when a large white pine was cut down for a strip mall in town, adding that, “She had a loving sense of place. We can honor her vibrant life by caring for the land and the water”:
Suzanne Wilson: “When Beethoven was writing his Pastoral Symphony that tree was putting out its first roots. While Cezanne was painting the pines of Provence that tree kept growing, so that when the first settlers sailed into this beautiful bay, that tree was tall enough to be seen standing over the fragile strip of land to be named Glen Arbor.”
Posted by editor at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)
Living up to her name: Grace Cochran was a pillar of the church
By Jacob R. Wheeler
Sun editor
As the sparkplug behind community events, the eternal optimist and the spiritual aid at any time of day or night, Grace Cochran left an indelible mark on the local community as well as on Christian Scientists all over the country. Grace passed away on December 29 in her home in Glen Arbor though she lived up to her name until the very end. A memorial service will be held on Saturday, July 3 at 10 a.m. at the Yacht Club.
“You can’t mention Grace without talking about her faith, her love of God and will to share it with others,” says close friend Peg McCarty. “That was the special gift she gave to this community. She wanted to help others on their own journey seeking to reach God.” Grace was involved in nearly every facet of the flourishing local Christian Science community — teaching Sunday school or serving in the Reading Room and helping people with their research that is such an integral part of the faith. She gained enough experience as a spiritual healer that the Mother Church in Boston accepted her as a licensed Christian Science practitioner, making her available to clients 24 hours a day.
Her faith and her love for the nature that is such a force in northern Michigan bring to mind a quote from Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science faith: “All nature teaches God’s love to man, but man cannot love God supremely and set his whole affections on spiritual things, while loving the material or trusting in it more than in the spiritual.”
Grace’s friends in the local Christian Science community, as well as her children, Philip, George, Corinne and Annabel Moore, and grandchildren attest that her faith was what illuminated her for 75 happy years. “Her relationship with God kept her alive,” says daughter Corinne. “Her courage and conviction were the inspiration she gave to the community as well as to her children, and that spirit will never leave us. She humbled us with her faith.”
The love affair with northern Michigan began early in Grace’s life. A native of downtown Chicago, she began attending Camp Kohana as a 5-year-old and high-schooled at the Pinebrook School for girls from 1942-46. (Camps Leelanau and Kohana were once affiliated with The Leelanau School, while Pinebrook is now the girls’ dormitory at the private boarding school in Glen Arbor.) Corinne says her mothers’ trunks would literally travel back and forth between Kohana and Pinebrook. Grace got her degree from Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts and met her future husband, Phil Cochran, on a blind date. Their happy marriage began in 1951 and lasted almost half a century, until Phil passed on in February, 2001.
Almost from the moment they retired to Glen Arbor in 1981 the Cochrans became community leaders. While Phil served as chairman of the board at The Leelanau School during its most successful period in the early 90’s, Grace immediately became a stalwart of the Christian Science church. She also served as president and board member for the Traverse Symphony Orchestra and the Glen Lake Community Library, a board member for WIAA-Interlochen Public Radio and the Glen Lake Garden Club. She carried her love for art up to the north woods after serving as a docent at the Art Institute of Chicago.
And there were certain community events that Grace would never think of missing, as friend Jan Heston can attest. Fourth of July weekend was naturally the busiest time of the year for Bill and Jan Heston when they owned Steffen’s IGA (now Anderson’s Market), yet on one Fourth during the Glen Arbor parade Grace stopped by and challenged the Hestons to take the time to go over to Old Settler’s Park on the east end of Big Glen Lake and take part in the annual flag raising ceremony. “Always 100 percent behind decisions and organizations, she encouraged you and made difficult things seem possible,” says Jan. “’Of course you can make it,’ were Grace’s words. So we haven’t missed one since.”
Grace remained empowered and inspired up until her passing, remembers Sue Woodward, her hospice helper. Intent on hearing one last great performance, Grace dressed up and attended the Traverse Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas concert with Sue’s help just over a week before she died. “She asked me, ‘what do you think I’ll look like when I pass on? Do you think my hair will be blond?’” Woodward remembers. “I told her it will sparkle like the sun hitting Lake Michigan.”
Posted by editor at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)
Springtime in Provence: A Sequel to Carpe Diem
By Jo Anne Wilson
Sun correspondent
SAIGNON, France (March 18, 2004) — It’s the middle of March and I’m in Southern France. I needed a break after a bitter Northern Michigan winter. Here, the climate is mild and the sun shines three hundred and twenty days a year. Serious snowfall happens a couple of times a season and may amount to three inches. After this month of rest and relaxation, I’ll return to the States.
In July, I’ll leave my two cats in Michigan, follow my dreams, and come back here to live for a year. I’ll reside in one of five stone cottages on the Domaine de Claparèdes, an old restored lavender farm. Fields of lavender surround the cottages, and the original farmhouse is now called Les Lavandins (Lavender House). Each cottage serves as a vacation destination and I’ll be acting as the guardienne. I’ll oversee the running of the property and have the unique opportunity to meet guests from all over the world. Claparèdes literally means “rocky pile” and there are a lot of them around. Many of the stones remind me of Lake Michigan beach stones. I suppose a geologist could tell me why, but I’m content with them as reminders of my Michigan home.
The property sits on a plateau above the medieval village of Saignon. It’s a five-minute drive or a half hour walk down to the village. The road twists and turns through fields of lavender with spectacular views of the Luberon Mountains and Mt. Ventoux in the distance.
There’s not too much in Saignon: church, school, post office, bakery, a couple of small restaurants and the Auberge du Presbytère. The Auberge, a small hotel, was an old monastery and is listed in the Hôtels du Charme. I go to the bakery each day for a fresh baguette and buttery croissant. Most of the village sleeps in the winter and comes alive during the summer tourist season, much like Glen Arbor.
For groceries and other needs, I drive an additional five minutes into the valley and the town of Apt. Apt has 3,000 fewer inhabitants than Traverse City and is settled around an 11th century cathedral, not a bay. One section of the town has a cobblestone street constructed over an old Roman road. Apt is also the site of a large outdoor Saturday market, which goes on year ‘round. The town has supermarkets, restaurants, bakeries, a superb art supply store and plenty of cafés. Even in mid-winter, it’s possible to sit outside in the sun and enjoy an espresso.
Looking out of my window, with its blue shutters, I see yellow forsythia. The almond trees are in bloom and their blossoms create a pinkish haze against the sunny provençal sky. It may only be March, but it’s already springtime in Provence,
Readers are invited to explore Jo Anne’s website www.meetmeinprovence.com and the Claparèdes site www.provencecottages.com.
Posted by editor at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)
On the second page: Asparagus is ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear
By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
Or one could write “Lilacs,” or “Apple Blossoms,” or “Prom Gowns,” or “Temporary Barricades,” or even, as Swift Lathers wrote, “Boiled Dandelions.” Growing up in Oceana County in the 50s, I read The Smallest Newspaper in the World, The Mears Newz, published weekly by Mr. Swift Lathers, of Mears, MI, near Silver Lake and its sand dunes. You can see by the cover that 1950 was the thirty-sixth year of publication. The headline always broadcasted something new each week as being “ripe in the land of Mears,” followed by a long ramble of advertisements, local news blurbs and ad hoc observations by the colorful and eccentric Swift Lathers: “Last Saturday evening as I was returning from the broken plate glass windows of Dune Forest Village I went down the sand dunes at Silver Lake and met a G.I. agricultural night school pupil who had been drinking. He was coming up and I asked him if he was looking for some of his folks. He said if he thought it was any of my blank business he would tell me but that he didn’t consider it was.”
“Swifty” printed The Mears Newz for many years on his own printing press in his house, now the home of the Oceana County Historical Society. (Later on he walked into Shelby to print it at the offices of The Oceana Herald, where my great uncle, Rex R. Royal, was the editor, having inherited the local weekly from his father and my great-grandfather, Harry M. Royal.) Mr. Lathers was short, with a red Irish complexion and a shock of white hair, and he wore bright clothes in vivid colors: blue pants, an apple red shirt and a green tie. He didn’t drive a car, so he had to walk from Mears to Shelby, Hart, Pentwater or Crystal Valley delivering papers and stopping at the farms along the way to collect gossip and snippets of “news.” You could see him coming. I can still hear my mother say, “Here comes Swifty!” Anne-Marie Oomen, the poet from Empire who grew up in Crystal Valley, reports that her mother didn’t like it when Swift Lathers came walking by, because whatever he got out of you in casual conversation often ended up printed in next week’s Newz. After a chat with the Oomens one August he wrote ‘A ragamuffin band of Oomen children were out in their field eating beans right off the stalks last week.’ Oh, was Ruth Oomen embarrassed!
In later years as he walked along the roads of Oceana County, Swift would take rides, and my father Robert Wheeler often picked him up. He would ask questions and beam and slip me a quarter, and then he would rail against bureaucrats and the soil conservation district, both of which he saw as detrimental to the fruit farmers. There were as many cherry and apple trees within a five mile radius of Mears as anywhere in the world, (“including Grand Traverse County”, my Uncle Rex claimed), and Swift Lathers was as fierce an advocate of farmers and their way of life as anyone since.
Swift Lathers and his wife owned a large chunk of the Silver Lake Sand Dunes. Those dunes don’t cover as large an area as the Sleeping Bear Dunes, but they are balder and just “sandier.” The Lather’s cottage at the foot of the easternmost dune was gradually being covered by sand when I was a kid. Next to it was our “Dune Climb”, a place where kids exhausted themselves trying to climb to the top and then totally sanding themselves when they rolled down sideways. You could dig down into the sand in June and still find snow. When his kids were young Swift and his wife had carried all the lumber and materials they needed up onto the dunes to build a miniature village complete with a saloon and livery stable and mercantile. He called it Dune Forest Village, and it was more fun for kids than anything Disney ever made. But sand and vandals dismantled the village by the mid-50s, and Swift’s son started Bill’s Dune Rides. With fat, bald tires and bench seats welded on the back in rows, the Dune Cruisers took you up onto the sand to view Lake Michigan and the silver-blue water of Silver Lake. You could take the Scenic Ride (for old people only, we kids thought), or the Thrill Ride. It was the same adventure provided in these parts by the Warneses up on the Sleeping Bear. At the western end of the Silver Lake Sand Dunes one can still find Mac Woods Dune Rides whose advertising billboards have been staples along US 31 in western Michigan for over 40 years.
And the Oceana County of Swift Lathers is now the Asparagus Capital of the World. The National Asparagus Festival the first week of June has divided its celebrations between Shelby and Hart since the 60s with parades, cooking contests, the Mrs. Asparagus Queen and throngs of people as enthusiastic as we see around here at cherry-time.
So Empire’s Asparagus Festival this weekend took me back to my childhood, and it’s wonderful to see another town along Lake Michigan celebrate those succulent and masculine green spears. Seeking a way to write a column in each of this summer’s issues of the Glen Arbor Sun, I thought of Swift Lathers and the Smallest Newspaper in the World. I can’t match his wit or his charm, but I’ll try to convert his headlines into new ones about what’s “ripe in the land of the Sleeping Bear.” Help me by telling me YOUR stories. Write, call, email! This may not be the smallest newspaper in the world, but it can be the most fun!
Norm Wheeler’s columns will appear on page 2 of the Glen Arbor Sun all summer long. Write to us at gasun@mikeshouse.us
Posted by editor at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)
Triple-treat yourself to the Treat Farm Trail
By Jane Greiner
Sun staff writer
This is the time of year when spring wildflowers uplift the hearts of nature lovers everywhere. One of the best places to see them in delightful profusion is along the Treat Farm trail just south of Empire. The trail offers the triple treat of a woods walk, historical farm buildings and a magnificent Lake Michigan view.
The walk in to the farm is a pleasure in itself. It takes you on a gentle uphill dirt road through beautiful woods where white Trillium (named for their three leaves and three petals) cover the hills all along both sides of the trail. Tiny pink Spring Beauties grow rampant, not to be outdone by an abundance of shiny white Dutchman’s britches, and their cousins Squirrel Corn. Many Jack in the Pulpits also line the edges, and patches of blue Myrtle (Periwinkle) are visible. The ground is covered with the spotted-leafed yellow Trout Lilies, banks of big-leafed Bloodroot and patches of Large-Flowered Bellwort with their droopy yellow flowers. The abundance of wildflowers is as exciting as the variety.
For those who can’t get enthused over flowers, there is the fun of visiting the old Treat family farm itself. The barn is the first thing you see. The National Park Service has restored part of it and torn down some of the later additions.
You can take the steps to the white farmhouse, which sits on a small knoll beyond the barn. The NPS has maintained the old farmhouse, and you can sit on the front porch and try to image what it must have been like to live there in the shadow of the dunes with the farm fields spread out before you. Did the farmer and his wife take the pleasure in the sheer beauty of the surroundings as we do today, or were they too busy with the heavy demands of farming to even notice? Did the children love the woods and the dunes and the Lake, or did they hate the isolation? And what were those interesting round outbuildings built for? Were they springhouses, fruit cellars, or what?
On the far side of the field is a wall of high dunes with Lake Michigan just on the other side. To continue to the Lake, you can follow the path across the field below the house, which takes you to the foot of a dune. Rather than climbing the dune, follow the trail walking along below it. Before long it curls out around the end of the dune to a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan over 100 feet below. The view is spectacular. You look down over a few treetops to the sparkling waters far beneath your feet. Birds fly below you. From this high angle, you can see right to the bottom of the lake for quite a distance from shore. You can also see miles up and down the shore and out over the lake.
The Treat Farm trail is not heavily used. We sometimes pass another couple on the trail or sometimes see no one at all. The distance from the trailhead to the farm to the Lake is only about half a mile long, making for a one-mile round-trip. Although the first part presents a slightly uphill-grade, it is one of the gentlest slopes in the National Park. Dogs are allowed on leashes. The combination of beauty, ease of access, and low usage makes it one of my favorite trails in the entire Park. One caution, there is plenty of poison ivy along the trail later in the season.
How to get there: The trailhead is a gate at the west end of Norconk Road. Norconk (Stormer) crosses M-22 about a mile south of Empire.
Posted by editor at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)
Spring Heals
By Jane Greiner
Sun staff writer
After a long northern winter, everyone looks forward to spring. But spring is especially welcome to me this year because both my parents died this past winter. Though long expected, their closely spaced deaths left a hole in my heart, which has been slow to heal. Now I am nobody’s child; I suddenly feel like a 58-year-old orphan.
But spring rolled in regardless of my sense of loss. It is a force of nature that lifts up all life — infant, orphan, and aging — and infuses it with a burst of sap, energy and hope. I looked to this spring to bring me consolation and healing, and it is already delivering.
Each time I walk out into a new spring day, it is as if I am wading into a pool of warm breezes, bird songs, grassy smells, green, flash and sparkle. Such a palpable energy source infuses every living thing, including me, with a sense of wellbeing. Each warm day, each ray of soft sunshine, is another physical reminder that life goes on without fail.
One of my folksinger idols of the 60’s, Phil Ochs, wrote a song called “Changes.” A verse in it goes like this: “Green leaves of summer turn red in the fall. To brown and to yellow they fade. And then they have to die, trapped within the circle time parade of changes.”
Nature is a parade of changes, an unstoppable parade. I am as much a part of that procession of change as the Trillium blooming in the woods. With spring the sun shines, flowers bloom, birds migrate, people rake, turkeys display, bikers ride, and every one of us experiences, however briefly, that feeling that all is well with the world. In short: spring heals.
Posted by editor at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)