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June 29, 2006

Transformative Portal: The Paintings of William Allen

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

Leelanau County artist William Allen has been known both locally and nationally as a metal sculptor, with works included in permanent collections as diverse as the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the University of Florida, the Detroit Zoo, Crystal Mountain’s Art Park and the collection of Jeopardy’s Alex Trebek. Yet in recent years, Bill has pursued a quite different and colorful medium, which initially “shocked the hell out of” his wife of 17 years, and which is creating a sensation among artists and art lovers who have heard the rumors and come to see for themselves. Over 400 abstract paintings of all sizes stack against the walls of his studio near the northern end of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and 25 of these have been chosen to appear in Glen Arbor’s Center Gallery at Lake Street Studios from July 7 to 13.

The self-taught artist’s reputation as a sculptor of metal animals — flawlessly executed, realistic in detail, and often life-sized — was honed in northern Michigan for over 20 years. But even as commissions, awards and patron demand for these works grew, he began to experience the dissatisfaction that can spiral an artist down into a creative void.

“I was desperate to try something different,” than the animals, he explains, which despite being a major source of income, had begun to feel like a burden. With his wife Nancy Krcek Allen, a well-known chef, educator and writer (who pens a recipe series for the Glen Arbor Sun), Bill decamped for New York in 1996, seeking the creative fire that would reignite his artistic passion.

“In New York, I began moving away from replicating animals to more abstract, stylized sculptural forms,” he says, gesturing toward an array of primeval figures, which radiate a raw vitality and fierceness that the earlier works, though beautiful, don’t possess. He credits the reawakening of his artistic spirit during this period to several factors.

“Living in New York was very stressful in some ways,” he comments. But one positive influence was the Outsider Art movement, which Bill embraces for its “fearless energy.” He found this personified in his art studio partner, Bryant, who “was very much an outsider artist and musician. He had so much creative energy — all that mattered was to be able to express it,” Bill says admiringly. He also immersed himself in works created by other, so-called primitive cultures. “I used to go to the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art] a lot. My favorite places were the Oceanic and African art sections.” Another major artistic influence was 20th century modern art, especially that of Picasso.

After four years in the metropolis, the Allens were more than ready to return to a quieter life in Leelanau. However, Bill had been home less than a week when he learned that his mother, a retired university professor, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For the next year, he did little with art, choosing instead to spend as much time as he could with his mother in Indiana during her final illness.

This descent into the underworld affected Bill profoundly as an artist. He found that he needed a more urgent expression than metal, for the complex feelings and images engendered by his mother’s death, and turned to quick-drying acrylic paint on wood as a medium. These first works were primarily in monochromatic shades of gray, white and sooty blacks, which he achieved by using his acetylene-welding torch like an airbrush. Many pieces depict human figures, some wraithlike, others more skeletal, in poignant, moody interaction within spare, haunting landscapes. One very early, large piece, of tall dark figures with upraised arms against a swirling, light-filled tunnel, clearly shows the confluence of the earlier New York sculptures with the newer, more immediate mode of artistic communication.

Over time, the dusky, shadowy tones of his work began to carry small, hopeful glimmers of greens and reds, as late winter landscapes must finally surrender to the first tentative signs of spring. Inevitably, these too have given way to the joyous demands of life in all its chaos and vitality, taking on lush forms that the viewer perceives as thrusting plants, flying bats, swirling leaves, and yes, even the suggestive forms of the animals Bills once loved to create from metal.

Current paintings are jazz-like, kinetic bolts of yellows, blues, oranges and reds punctured with black exclamations. Sharp gouges pierce the paint to score the wood underlay, and many works incorporate peat moss or sand that Bill collected in Utah several years ago to provide texture and visual depth. He frequently uses his hands to manipulate the olio of materials, with results that often please, surprise and encourage his artistic exploration. He rarely reworks a finished piece, but lets it stand as a lively testament to whatever moment he was in at the time of its creation.

Unlike many artists, Bill is not overly attached to one fixed interpretation of a piece. In fact, his openness to a dialogue between himself and the viewer extends even to an artwork’s orientation on the wall. Holding a painting, he rotates it several ways before deciding that maybe it could hang a certain way.

“I like people to take their own story; it gets wheels turning, gets people communicating,” he says. He then shows a large painting in which one person — a minister — had seen Noah’s Ark, as well as an ethereal dove figure and a gun. Indeed, once pointed out by the artist, these forms become visible. “Others see what they want, which I like!” he exclaims.

However, this extraordinary receptivity to his audience doesn’t impede his own impulses.

”It’s very important for people to see and respond — that’s the second half of the whole process,” of creating art. ”Of course, you want to be accepted and liked by others, but that can’t be the motivation for what I do,” he continues. His is the deeply felt need to create, to play — not simply with the ungoverned impulses of a child, but with a strong awareness of adult complexities and issues that life inevitably brings, including not only death as loss, but birth, metaphor and ultimately, transformation.

Bill’s studio is a quick commute from the home he and Nancy built, and he considers it a necessary refuge from the distractions of daily routines. “I have to have a really simple life, otherwise I couldn’t do this,” he comments. “When I’m in play mode, I have to be able to go into it,” for long periods of time. He finds that winter’s slower pace is more conducive to getting work done. “Summers are always busier, but even if I’m not seriously pursuing a painting, I’ll still put in a couple of hours to keep it going.”

His wife Nancy is “completely supportive of my work. She knows what creativity is, and understands how important that is to me.” The couple share a deeply creative spirit, and allow each other the space to craft their separate disciplines, though both work primarily at home. Later, Nancy concludes, “I always knew what his work meant to him, and I’ve always respected and loved him for that. He’s a great role model for me. He’s so dedicated to working as an artist. He’s never wavered from that purpose.”

William Allen’s sculptural work is represented in northern Michigan by Main Street Gallery, Leland, 231/256-7787. Bill’s website, which features many of his paintings through 2004, is www.wmallensculpture.com. Bill’s opening reception at Center Gallery at Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor is Friday, July 7, from 6-9pm.

Posted by editor at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

Locals give the Gulf Coast a hand in Katrina’s wake

By David Early and Daniel Herd
Sun contributors

Ten months after Hurricane Katrina brought New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast to its knees, the area is still reeling. Here are the stories from two local residents who worked with Habitat for Humanity and FEMA this spring to help put the region back together.

Boats sinking, spirits rising

The 140-foot tugboat the Linda Susan didn’t exactly look seaworthy, but it was being prepared for one final voyage. William Ladnier, his brother Greg, and his father Pat had been working for over five months to get it ready to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to create “fish havens” for red snapper, grouper and triggerfish. This would be the tenth such vessel (along with a half dozen army tanks) they had contracted with the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources to scuttle. Next to the Linda Susan was moored the Windward Sentry, a 192-foot cargo ship that had served as home and refuge for the entire Ladnier family during the worst hours of Hurricane Katrina.

I was in Biloxi, Mississippi for a week volunteering for Habitat for Humanity by preparing foundations for five new houses. Several other organizations including the Salvation Army and various church-affiliated groups were represented there. We slept in what was left of the Mayvar Shrimp Company warehouse, which had been under 14 feet of water after the storm. Each day I enjoyed my morning coffee on the narrow porch and looked out at a nearly totally destroyed boat storage building that still contained a few boats on its upper levels. Three days before I arrived, I was told, one of those boats dropped 32 feet and smashed to pieces on the concrete floor below. We would gather every morning for breakfast in a makeshift cafeteria built underneath the bleachers of a high school football stadium and then receive our assignments for the day. When we returned for lunch there were often a hundred volunteers being fed. Most were from the southern states, but people came from all over the United States and Canada. A group from the Air Force base and three teams of Americorps workers were there too.

The extent of the damage I observed was more than I was prepared for. Imagine a giant hand starting at Northport and smashing every structure within 1000 yards of the bay all the way to Petoskey, and you have some idea of what I saw. Recovery in a physical sense will take many years; emotional recover may take even longer. Habitat’s progress is not now limited by resources but by manpower. Still, in spite of organizational and logistic difficulties, homes are being built and families have a chance to put their lives back in order.

The best part of volunteering to do anything like this is the opportunity to meet and work with great people from all over. During my volunteer days for Habitat, I was fortunate enough to be working with Susan Wiseman from Grand Junction, Colorado who was making her third trip to the area. She had been with the Red Cross shortly after the hurricane hit, driving a regular route delivering hot meals to people who had lost everything except their spirits and sense of humanity. Susan spent three weeks feeding the stomachs and morale of dozens of families including the Ladniers, a family she introduced me to.

The Ladniers, now living in one of the infamous FEMA trailers so prevalent along the Gulf coast, had done their best to put their lives back together. Responding to Susan’s kindness, they had invited us to tour the boats, told stories, shared an amazing homemade gumbo (seasoned with sassafras) and were gracious hosts under difficult circumstances. Pat and his wife Mary gave accounts of struggle and survival.

On Sunday morning, August 28 of last year, as the winds increased and the waters rose, the family boarded the Windward Sentry and headed for safer harbor through the Back Bay of Biloxi to the Industrial Seaway Canal about 15 miles from their D’Iberville home. This was the one asset they could take with them; it was also the one structure that might keep them alive. So that’s where they stayed for 17 hours, fighting surging water and powerful winds and watching smaller boats crash into bridges, roll over and sink. Later on Monday afternoon William set out in a smaller boat across a lifeless bay to find nothing left of his home except a concrete slab strewn with trees, furniture, appliances, garbage, and fragments of the thousands of houses that had been destroyed in Katrina’s path. They had lost their home and belongings, including her books, his 35-millimeter slides from five years in the U.S. Navy, but they had their health and the two boats that would provide their livelihood for the near future. Now they would sink one.

I worked for five days in 90-degree heat digging footings for the one-level homes that would be built by other crews after my departure. I had been warned to drink plenty of water, seek out shade, and “pay attention.” One of my co-workers noted that living in an area now so devoid of anything beautiful was beginning to wear on him. I was starting to have the same feeling.

That said, the last day of my work was an especially bright one for the Ladniers. The state inspector had cleared the boat for sinking. After salvaging everything of value William and Greg had spent days scouring the hold to remove grease, oil and fuel. The dirtiest work was over, but there was still more to do. Holes would have to be made in the hull of the boat so that it would sink properly and without rolling. But a major hurdle had been cleared and a celebratory gumbo was simmering on the stove in the small trailer Pat and Mary called home.

The only dark news of the day was that the sinking, originally scheduled for an afternoon three days later, would have to be postponed because a tropical depression forming just off the Yucatan Peninsula was predicted to bring 14-foot swells to the area. What we didn’t know was that the depression would soon turn into the first named tropical storm of the season — Alberto.
— David Early

Picking up sticks

After four hours of orientation, equipment allocation and paperwork (always paperwork) I got back in my rental car and drove from Vicksburg towards the coast to Hattiesburg, where I would spend the next four months. As part of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, I deployed to the affected area to help in the cleanup effort. While the majority of the damage was inflicted upon the Gulf Coast, Mississippi's second largest population center, Hattiesburg, was also devastated, having received 125 m.p.h. winds and an extended period of rain, which brought thousands of trees down, destroying homes and utilities. This area, about 60 miles from the coast, lost power for more than two weeks and this during late-summer humidity and temperatures that topped 100 degrees.

The extent of orientation before I arrived consisted of a brief email and a few sheets of paper, all later found to be horribly inaccurate or misleading. They mentioned bringing lots of bug repellant, worrying about blisters, and remembering to drink enough water. I worked from an air-conditioned rental car and had $40 a day to spend on food, which made hydration easy and comfort a given. As you may start to wonder now, absent from this introduction is the knowledge of what duties I performed. I knew almost nothing and gained my only real insight by speaking with another National Park Service employee freshly returned from his own 30-day stint. His advise: “Bring lots of books and get ready to be bored.” As it turned out, I read only two books throughout the five months, during three of which I headed the second largest U.S. Corps of Engineers debris removal project in Mississippi. The first month was less than exciting.

The emergency center in Hattiesburg consisted of an abandoned office building, recently brought back into operation to hold the 300 or so Army Corps of Engineers personnel working from it and was nothing more than a few large, open rooms and a lot of computer cables. All incoming people were housed in hotels and, though mine had an awful smell and lacked sufficient light, I almost giggled at the idea of spending an entire month in a hotel — fancy when compared with the deployment briefing, informing us that housing would be tents or FEMA trailers.

The job, carried out by thousands of people after each hurricane, consisted of writing load tickets to contracted companies, providing them with the verification necessary to be paid by FEMA. It took 15 minutes to learn. For a month, ensconced in a government rented KIA (all personnel were provided with separate rental vehicles), I led a group of three dump trucks, a back hoe and two flag persons, as we trolled the streets of Mississippi for storm-related debris, usually left out by people cleaning the trees, trash and refuse strewn across their property by Katrina.

As the end of the month approached, my direct supervisor Tom, a lock operator from Minnesota, asked me if I would take another position, that of team leader for the private property debris removal project. Instead of cruising around looking for debris, residents would sign up for crews to come onto their property to remove all storm-generated debris. The team consisted of 30 people and looked to be running smoothly, so I accepted.

Three days after accepting the position, I realized that at our current rate of completion, the project would take 8.17 years. Something needed to change. The projection I gave my supervisor was that within two weeks we needed to more than triple in size and force the contractor to provide additional crews. You see, all work was being performed by contractors, sub-contractors, and subs of subs. So, though all federal responders were told to bring gloves, work shoes and safety equipment, if any of us were ever found to be lifting a log, or pushing a broom, we could be sent home immediately — fired for working.

Although employed for eight years with the federal government, this fact still confused and infuriated me. It was accepted as regular practice for a large company, the primary contractor to provide logistical control and financing, while a sub-contractor, sometimes three levels below the prime, performed the work. For this, the prime retained between 45 and 60 percent of the contract dollars. While those of us who left our gloves in the car and wrote claim tickets received a good wage, those running the equipment and picking up debris often were being paid no more than $10/hour.

Although frustrating aspects pervaded the work, I was also treated to many wonderful experiences, making the deployment more than just a job or a way to help the affected area recover from the devastation. The people of Mississippi, especially those suffering loss, are some of the most welcoming, friendly and helpful I have ever encountered. Along with this, the group of federal and local employees — brought together by the opportunity for economic gain — are some of the most dynamic, fun and positive people I have ever met. Faced with what seemed an impossible task and burdened with the shackle of federal bureaucracy, this group helped in the removal of over seven million cubic yards of debris and the cleanup of almost 6500 private properties.

Either from practical necessity or comic effect, I would stand on an eight-inch high stump to give my morning address to the room full of orange and red-shirted people, and upon leaving I accepted my certificate from this same log and wrote in a goodbye: It is an awful mess, both from the storm and from FEMA’s response and what wonderful people were brought together from it. The area will never be the same and there will be more hurricanes, but like I was told by an 84-year-old woman who had four trees come through her house, “What more can you do? You pick up the sticks and move on …”

— Daniel Herd

Posted by editor at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

Spanglish: A Mexican-American in our midst

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor

Part two in a series on local Hispanics living in northern Michigan

I remember two childhoods. There is one in Mexico, with my cousins and my numerous relatives, and good food, and noise and life filling every nook and cranny. I also remember my childhood in the United States This one had Burger King and its playgrounds, daycare, friends, condensed soup and Labrador retrievers. Sometimes I feel like I grew up twice because those two settings are so different, they’re not even comparable. For a child, it’s almost like going to another world in your head, except that it’s real and you need an airplane to get there. And for that matter, I remember a third childhood spent waiting for my flights in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. I’ve had two childhoods that were completely different, although both were happy, because my mother is Mexican, born and raised, and my father is American.

Let me take you back. My mother was a young woman in Sahuayo Michoacan Mexico, a mountain town not known as the typical tourist destination. My father had a shoe company. He designed the shoes, and a shoe company in this town made them. His trips to Mexico were on business. They met in a traditional little restaurant near the plaza and corresponded for about a year before they married and moved up to the cold north. When I was to be born, 15 years ago, my mother flew down to Mexico and had me surrounded by the comfort of her own family and language. Because I was born in Mexico but had two American citizens for parents, I was granted dual citizenship. Throughout my childhood I stayed mostly in the U.S, where my parents lived and worked, but we also took extended trips to Mexico to visit our family.

My mother always spoke to me in Spanish so as not to mix the languages together, whereas my father spoke in English. This way I learned both languages at the same time and was able to separate the two. My trips to Mexico also taught me my motherland’s culture, and I can juxtapose it with that of America. When I see Mexico it’s from a Mexican’s point of view, and the United States doesn’t seem foreign to me either. Nothing that many Americans find surprising about the land south of the border seem in the least bit strange to me because it’s what I grew up with.

I love my unbiased position that gives me a clear view over the faults and wonders of each culture. It also helps me see what’s wrong with stereotyping.

The attitudes of people up here have improved. Upon arriving in northern Michigan, my mother was asked if she had a phone in her house. She does, in fact she has a few. Now we can watch Mexican channels on television, so we are raised knowing that there is technology in Mexico.

Mexicans aren’t all dark-skinned, dark-haired people who walk around on dirt floors and cook strange foods over an open fire. They have floors and kitchens. Even visitors to Mexico think that my mom’s people are poor because of their differences in lifestyle. For example, many houses have open spaces, or a room with no roof over it. This is usually a room where clothes are hung to dry — easier to do in a hot climate. No, Mexicans don’t usually have air conditioning or heating or thick walls, but that is only an adaptation they have made to the climate.

Mexicans are also raised with the idea that clutter is bad. As Americans we don’t realize how much junk we have, most of which we don’t even need. Mexicans simply cut that out of their lifestyle. As for dark skin and dark hair, yes, there are more dark-haired people in Mexico than in the United States, but many would never be indentified as Mexicans. I even have a cousin with dark read hair and freckles who looks Irish. And I have a blond cousin and another one with very light brown hair.

Food is another misconception. Taco Bell is not Mexican food. And Americans invented nachos. Sure, we do use tortillas and beans, but that’s about it. Mexican food, in my opinion, is better. The snacks that the vendors sell on the streets include garbanzo beans (my personal favorite) and different kinds of fruit. Yes, there is the occasional churo, which to the American eye would look like a giant French fry covered in cinnamon, but it’s still better than a Big Mac.

Living in northern Michigan, we appreciate fresh cherries. What if the oranges were just picked the morning you ate them? It’s a different world when everything you buy is fresh. Shopping south of the border can be lovely and even a little medieval, especially when entering the markets. And the big surprise is that Mexican food is nowhere near as spicy as it’s perceived up to be here. We have sauces that are far removed from ketchup for our tacos but they are usually very mild. It’s only the masochistic eaters presenting both countries who apply the hottest sauces. My mother had never used cumin until she came to the U.S. Cumin, though used in copious amounts in every so-called Mexican dish here, is rarely used in Mexico. And we don’t eve use melted yellow dipping cheese. Instead, we use queso fresco, which is something like feta cheese only less salty.

Of course, Mexicans have their own misconceptions about Americans. They think that everyone from El Norte has blond hair and blue eyes. They also think that we have too much money and spend it on frivolous things. When Mexicans come to the United States and shiver all the time, it’s usually not from the actual temperature change, but from a preconceived notion that this country is freezing. (Not all of Mexico is hot either. In the mountains there is snow) Sadly, many Mexicans also think that all American girls are easier because of their liberal lifestyles and have no restraints at all, running wild and doing things not sanctioned by the church.

Because of these stereotypes, both nations are wary of each other. Mexicans are afraid of America’s wild stupidity, and Americans are afraid that Mexicans will rob them blind. But neither of these are reasonable fears. There are a few exceptions, and they stand out because we always tend to focus on the dramatic. These little misconceptions easily manifest into stereotypes.

Just for the record. Mexicans aren’t dirty. In fact, if anything, they are more vain than most Americans. They bathe more often and are religious about fixing themselves up. The Mexicans I know always wear shoes because they don’t like to get their feet dirty.

I loved growing up in two different countries and seeing two completely different cultures. I wish everyone here could experience how genuine and full the life is in Mexico, and the way activities like shopping in the market can feel so medieval yet modern at the same time, or the way you fall asleep to dogs barking on the rooftops of houses, or the roosters crowing and vendors calling out the name of their products, or the way the door is always left open and a constant stream of friends and relatives are encouraged to enter and talk with the utmost emotion and honesty. And I wish that all Mexicans could experience this life of secure luxury we have here in all its decadence, or the American way of seeing the world as open and ready for us to devour, and the thousands of choices we have here, from countless ice cream flavors to more important things like jobs and futures, and the opportunity to do what you want with your life.

Posted by editor at 09:23 PM | Comments (0)

Maybings is Ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor

A colander of noodles floats in a pot of boiling water in the steamy corner of the kitchen. On the stovetop, savory bubbles pop through homemade Thai Peanut sauce. Sarah Jane Grierson says, “I’m just helping,” as she starts a batch of Sweet & Sour sauce from scratch. The weekend specials at Maybings, Glen Arbor’s new Asian inspired Eastern & Middle Eastern eatery, are at full simmer.

For some people, everything starts at once. Andrea Dean and McCord Henry just helped their son, McKai Leland Henry enter this world on June 4 at 11:01 p.m. (8 pounds, 4 ounces, 21 inches). Almost simultaneously they opened the new Maybings Take-out on Western Avenue in Glen Arbor. In the front room of the converted house is a small art gallery. Andrea shifts McKai to the other hip as she explains how the gallery will sell “my jewelry and photography, paintings by Jenny Evans, and soon stained glass by Hadley Wilkerson. We want to add more art and get a rotation going of works by some of the local artists.” There are some fine, eclectic pieces in the gallery for the eyes, but then the aroma leads you by the nose into the kitchen.

McCord is working on the menu for the summer. “Well, to start with we’ll have homemade egg rolls from scratch.”

“Everyone says they’re the best egg rolls they’ve ever had,” Andrea chirps.

“There’ll also be Greek pasta salad,” McCord continues, “As well as hummus, sesame chicken, fried rice, falafel, and veggie and grilled cheese sandwiches.” Maybings will also feature daily dessert specials (“like chocolate cheesecake and rhubarb strawberry”), and a Daily Special. “Today it’s the Tongol Tuna Sandwich. And we’ll have some Chef’s Choice specials depending on mood, weather, and ingredients.”

The aim of Maybings is to serve food that is all organic, fresh and from scratch. “Our goal is to be fast, efficient, but especially to focus on food that’s not generic. We want to be an exception to the usual 45-minute wait to eat in Glen Arbor when it gets busy.” Zoned for take-out, Maybings has no inside seating, but there are a couple of tables outside on a patio. McCord Henry brings the experience of working nine seasons at Art’s Tavern in Glen Arbor as a prep and grill cook, and Andrea has similar experience from five seasons at the Village Inn in Empire.

McCord also moonlights in the restoration of vintage autos. “I apprenticed in Florida with Ron Mattheson at Sky Dog, Inc. making extreme hotrods. Up here I’ve restored a 1955 Studebaker, a 1968 Plymouth Valiant, and I drive a restored flat black 1964 Mercury Comet. (Surely this is the favorite all-time car for astronomers: two members of the solar system in its name!)

And how did Maybings get its name? Andrea explains: “We were opening in May, and we’re both inspired by an art nouveau enthusiast named Bing.” The young couple wants to keep Maybings open all year.

“The ideal would be for Andrea to eventually run Maybings and for me to get an auto restoration shop set up,” McCord smiles. “We’ll see.”

The giddy excitement of this new family with their tiny son and brand new business is infectious as they grin for the camera. The Glen Arbor Sun wishes Andrea, McCord, McKai, McCord’s sister Marion Marxer who is helping out this inaugural summer, and Maybings good luck. For Asian-inspired Eastern and Middle Eastern take-out call Maybings, 334-2442.

Posted by editor at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)

Bears in Glen Haven!

By Jane Greiner
Sun contributor

There is hard evidence that a bear recently walked across the beach not far from the Cannery in Glen Haven. Two visitors came upon the tracks and thinking they were perhaps cougar prints, the man made plaster casts of the imprints. He took them to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Visitor Center and brought them to the attention of Ranger Ken Hyde, the National Park’s biologist.

Hyde went back to the cannery with the visitors, found more paw prints, and identified them as bear prints, not those of cougars. He then traced back the bear’s trail.

Hyde said the bear had “come all the way down to the water and then gone back over the the fore dune. He had come clear to the water, about 50 yards north or up from the Cannery, and that’s where the visitors found (the first tracks).”

“We tracked it up into the terrace between the woods and the fore dune, and he had walked all around back there,” Hyde said. This was about 100 yards east of Glen Haven.

The ranger managed to find enough good prints to make two good plaster casts — a front and a back foot. His casts clearly show the five toes with claws and the different shape of the round front paw and the elongated, human-like, back foot.

Hyde is from the state of Washington where he was familiar with both black and grizzly bears and believes that the prints he saw were definitely those of a bear.

“So we let the campground know that people should take care of their food, putting it away. Keep food in the trunk, including coolers.”

What should people do to protect themselves from bears? “Make some noise while you are hiking,” Hyde advised, and if you come across one “don’t run away from a bear. Make lots of noise so he figures out you are a human. He may not be able to tell what you are, especially if you are downwind from him.”

“We haven’t had any cub sighting — that’s when we’d start to get a little more worried,” he added.

“Birdfeeders, food coolers and garbage are the three things that draw them in. Try to watch those because when you get the bears acclimated, that’s when you start to get problems.”

In closing, Hyde said, “But thank the public for reporting those wildlife sightings.”

He said they have had several calls on the piebald deer, some on unusual snakes and turtles crossing the roads. “We are always interested, sometimes a call allows us to go help the animal off the road.”

Posted by editor at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)

Summer Salads

By Nancy Krcek Allen
Sun contributor

Salads are the ideal summer meal: when they accompany a larger meal they can be cool and light or when they are the meal they can be satisfyingly chock full of vegetables, protein and starch. Salads don’t have to heat up an already hot kitchen. All you really need to make a great salad is a sharp knife, a cutting board and a sense of color, texture and flavor.

For many years I’ve noticed that when I abandon recipes and choose my ingredients by color the food is more appealing. I’ve come to believe that a balance in color equals a balance in flavor, texture and nutrients. Salads are the perfect place for this approach. They can incorporate a wildly different selection of ingredients from leftover grilled chicken and yesterday’s bread, rice and steamed asparagus to smoked fish, pasta and beans. In other words, just about anything in your pantry might go into a great salad. Perhaps you sleepwalk through the produce aisle, drawn again and again to the watery crunch of head lettuce served baroque with blue cheese, or romaine tossed slippery and sweet with Caesar dressing? Salads can have far more passionate aspirations than you might suspect. With salad making, combinations are everything. Indonesian gado gado salad blankets shreds of curly cabbage, green beans, carrots and cucumbers with a spicy peanut sauce. California salads are compositions of apples and walnuts over endive. Italians top crispy little pizzas with arugula anointed with olive oil, salt, and lemon. The French toss butter lettuce with bitter greens like chicory and escarole and serve them after the main meal with mustard vinaigrette as a digestive.

Dive deep into the produce section for salad-makings like baby spinach, radicchio, chicory, escarole, mache, Bibb, endive, baby chard, oak leaf, green leaf, flat leaf parsley, and baby mustard greens. Wash them in cold water and spin them dry. Layer your green gatherings with paper toweling in ziplock bags and refrigerate.

Lettuce isn’t necessary for salads. Grains and beans, chopped raw vegetables and fruit can form the base for your next creation. How about diced cucumber, avocado, radish and pickled ginger or diced beets, dill and fennel?

Dressing for salads are essential — they pull a simple salad together with style. Although bottled dressings are great in a pinch, you might consider doing as the Italians do: extra virgin olive oil, salt and either fresh lemon juice or red wine vinegar. I go a step further to prepare a large quantity of French style emulsified vinaigrette. You can vary it a thousand ways by adding herbs, bleu cheese, dried cherries, mango, capers, olive paste and more.

City Kitchen classic mustard vinaigrette
Makes about 2 cups

1 heaping tablespoon Grey Poupon Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil or a mixture of half canola and half XVO

Pour the mustard, vinegar and water into a blender (or food processor) and blend till smooth. With the machine running, slowly, in a thin stream, add the oil until the vinaigrette is thick, creamy and delicious. Add water to thin and make less acidic.

Variations for 2 cups mustard vinaigrette:
Curry: 2 tablespoons toasted curry powder
Cumin/Southwestern: 2 level tablespoons ground toasted cuminseed
Herb: 2 tablespoons chopped herbs like basil or cilantro or parsley or dill
Pesto: 2 tablespoons basil pesto
Roasted garlic: 2 to 4 tablespoons finely chopped roasted garlic
Wasabi: 3 to 4 teaspoons wasabi paste
Dried cherry: Simmer 1/4 cup dried cherries in 1/2 cup water till soft. Puree and add to mustard vinaigrette. Sweeten with 1 to 2 tablespoons maple syrup.

Just about any combination of cooked or raw vegetables will become wildly appealing with this dressing. I like it with avocado and cucumbers.

Asian sesame/rice vinegar vinaigrette
8 to 10 servings

1/4 cup Japanese brown rice vinegar
2 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce—I like San-J shoyu
1/4 cup Asian (roasted) sesame oil

Whisk together the ingredients.

You can find the TLC Tomatoes’ hydroponic bibb lettuce in grocery stores now. Its sweet tenderness is perfect for these rolls. Experiment with other combinations of fillings.

Fresh herb and salad spring rolls
4 servings—about 8 rolls

Mustard Vinaigrette

1 large head Bibb lettuce, leaves separated but left whole, washed and dried
1 cup assorted torn basil and flat leaf parsley leaves, washed and dried
2 pounds asparagus or green beans, trimmed and steamed till tender (about 5 minutes)
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, grilled and sliced into thin strips
1 package Thai dried rice paper wrappers

Prepare the vinaigrette and set it aside. Place a pan of warm water on your counter. Wet and wring out two clean cotton towels. Place one on the counter. Arrange the lettuce, herbs, asparagus, and chicken on a platter. Quickly immerse two rice paper wrappers in the water and let them sit until softened, about 1 minute. Keep the remaining wrappers covered in plastic or in their bag while you work.

Pull the wrappers out of the water and let them drain for a few seconds. Lay both side by side on your cotton towel and cover with the second towel. Blot well. Lay one wrapper on top of the other. If your wrappers are round, fold over the right side. Press to break the rib of a lettuce leaf and lay it on the bottom of the wrapper parallel to your counter edge with the top of the leaf overlapping the folded edge. The end of the lettuce leaf should be at least 1 1/2 inches from the opposite unfolded edge. Layer an eighth of the parsley and basil, asparagus, and grilled chicken breast strips over the lettuce leaf.

Fold up the bottom of the wrapper and tuck the unfolded left edge over. Continue to roll, as tightly as you can without tearing the wrapper. If the wrapper tears, simply lay it on top of another soaked and blotted wrapper and continue to roll. Lay the completed roll on its seam side into a pan and cover with plastic wrap. Finish seven remaining rolls. Cut the rolls in half and serve them on a plate drizzled with some of the vinaigrette.

These rolls are ideal traveling companions. You can make them ahead but be sure to wrap them well. If the wrappers dry out they become tough.

©2003Nancy K. Allen, CCP

This is my northern Michigan adaptation of the classic French Nicoise salad with tuna, green beans, tomatoes, and olives—all food found in or near Nice. It is a composed or arranged salad.

Michigander salad
Four servings

Mustard vinaigrette
Pickled forest leeks, finely chopped
1 cup drained and rinsed canned Great Northern white beans
1 large head hydroponic Bibb lettuce, whole leaves, clean and dry
8 small new redskin potatoes, steamed till tender, about 10 minutes
1 pound smoked whitefish, skinned, boned, and flaked
1 pound asparagus or green beans, steamed
1 large tomato, cut into wedges

Mix the vinaigrette and leeks together to taste. Toss the white beans with some of the vinaigrette. Slice the potatoes while warm and toss them with some of the vinaigrette and set the remainder aside.

Arrange the Bibb leaves on a platter. Arrange the beans, whitefish, asparagus, potatoes and tomato decoratively over them. Serve with the vinaigrette.

©2003Nancy K. Allen, CCP

Individual pizzas with shrimp and chopped salad
Four servings

Frozen pizza dough or 4 small prepared frozen pizza crusts, thawed
Extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves finely minced garlic
2 tomatoes, thinly sliced into rounds
Vinaigrette
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

18 to 24 large cooked shrimp, shelled
2 cups clean, sliced arugula or baby spinach
3 to 4 tablespoons toasted walnuts

Preheat your oven to 425F. Divide the dough into four equal balls. Shape each into a disk that is 1/4 inch thick and 6 inches or so round with thicker edges for a 1 inch crust. Place the pizza disks on an oiled sheet pan and then brush the dough with olive oil. Divide the garlic and sprinkle it on the pizza. Cover the garlic with tomato slices and salt. Bake the pizza rounds until golden, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Whisk the vinaigrette together and season it with salt and pepper. Dice the shrimp into large pieces and toss them with the salad greens and the vinaigrette to taste. When the pizzas come from the oven place them on plates and top each with the salad mixture. Garnish them with walnuts and serve.

©2003Nancy K. Allen, CCP

Spicy Thai chicken salad

4 servings
Sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon palm sugar or maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon Thai chilli paste or red curry paste

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast, grilled and finely sliced
3 scallions, finely minced
1 medium carrot, shredded
1/3 cup finely shredded Thai or Italian basil
cilantro leaves
1/2 head Romaine leaves

Prepare the sauce. Taste it and adjust it to your liking. Toss the chicken with the sauce, scallions, carrots, and herbs. Arrange the Romaine on a platter and top with the chicken salad. OR finely shred the Romaine and toss it with the chicken mixture. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

Raeeda's fetoush salad

Sumac dressing
1/4 cup each: olive oil and fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon sumac powder, available at Middle Eastern stores
salt and pepper to taste--optional

2 cups thinly sliced red onions
3 cups lightly packed mint leaves or Romaine, washed, dried and torn
1 cup parsley leaves, washed and dried
2 medium tomatoes, wedged or coarsely chopped
1 pita, toasted and torn

Whisk all the ingredients of the dressing together and set aside. Prepare the salad ingredients. Toss the onions, mint or Romaine, parsley and tomatoes with the dressing. Top with bits of toasted pita. Pass a small bowl of sumac powder for each diner to sprinkle on his or her salad, if desired.

The sumac is slightly sour and somewhat fruity flavored. It makes a wonderful dressing for any summer vegetable salad. You could also toss this salad with chopped romaine.

City Kitchen tabouleh

Yields about 2 quarts

2 cups fine cracked wheat bulgar
2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 large tomato, medium dice, about 2 cups (or roasted tomato)
1 large bunch flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped, big stems removed
2 1/2 to 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon salt, more to taste
4 whole scallions, finely chopped
2 cups peeled, seeded and finely diced cucumber
OPTIONAL: 1/2 cup torn mint leaves

Mix the cracked wheat and boiling water in a large mixing bowl and cover. Set it aside for 15 minutes or until the water is absorbed. Fold in the remaining ingredients to the cracked wheat bulgar. Allow the tabouleh to rest in the refrigerator. Taste before serving and add more salt and lemon if necessary.

Wheat-free tabouleh: substitute 2 cups quinoa for the cracked wheat that you have simmered for 15 minutes in 2 1/2 to 3 cups boiling water.

Summer cucumber and smoked salmon pasta salad

8 to 10 servings

1 pound large tube pasta
salt
6 to 8 small to medium redskin potatoes
1 large English cucumber, peeled or fresh Kirbys, peeled and diced
About 3 peeled ears of corn—2 cups corn kernels
1/2 pound smoked salmon, diced into 1/2 or so inch pieces
2 to 4 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh dill
Mustard vinaigrette

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Use cold water--hot water has sediment. When the water boils, salt it well, enough so the water tastes gently salty. Add the pasta and boil it until it's tender but not soft and mushy. Use the box directions as a general guideline--NOT gospel. No, flipping it on the wall to see if it will stick is NOT a good indicator of doneness. Your teeth are.

While the pasta is merrily bubbling, prepare the vegetables. Cube the potatoes and cucumbers into half inch or so cubes. Make them precise and pretty. Cutting techniques are what separate home cooks from professional ones. Next, cut the corn from the cob. If you want less mess, stand the ear of corn with the stem side down into a large mixing bowl. Cut down the ear from top to bottom and the kernels will fall into the bowl not on your floor. Keep the potatoes in a bowl of water until you cook them so they don't turn black.

Set up a steamer and steam the potatoes and then the corn until tender. The potatoes will take about 5 to 10 minutes depending on how well you did cutting them into uniform sized pieces. The corn will take a minute or so. Chop the dill--we don't want a lot of large stem but some smaller stem is okay. Don't overcook the vegetables--only till tender. Cool them.

When your pasta is done, pour it through a colander and immediately run cold water over it to stop its cooking. Now if you were in Italy and performed this heinous act, you'd be run out. But we're in America and making a pasta salad, not pasta so it's okay. Toss everything together with vinaigrette to taste. Season with salt and pepper if desired.

Posted by editor at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)

National Lakeshore is our ‘Land of Lakes’

By Jane Greiner
Sun contributor

It is amazing that there are 21 lakes within the boundaries of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. You can live here for years and not know about some of these small lakes hidden in the woods. Others you drive by regularly without ever stopping to count their numbers.

I talked to Steve Yancho, chief of natural resources at the park, and he came up with a complete list of lakes plus numerous other water features within the lakeshore.

Lakes Near the Northern Boundary

Bass Lake is one of two Bass Lakes in the park. It is an easily accessible, sandy bottom lake visible on the east side of M-22 about six miles north of Glen Arbor. There are several access points plus a short two-track off the main road where you can park along the sandy shore and swim, fish or kayak. No motorized boats are allowed. There are still two small cabins at one end of Bass Lake, but most of the lake is wild. The surrounding land is open, the shore is firm, the bottom is sandy, and there aren’t too many mosquitoes. All these features make Bass Lake one of the prettiest places for a lazy day picnic. There are no restrooms here but some are available at nearby School Lake.

School Lake is the biggest in the park and has a nice wild feel to it with almost no houses in sight. It has a good boat ramp, though no motorized boats are allowed on the lake, and good rest room facilities. There isn’t much of a beach, but the bottom is sandy enough for wading and swimming. Access is off Bohemian Road, a short distance south of M-22. School Lake and Bass Lake are actually connected by a shallow channel, which makes it possible for canoes and kayaks to get from one lake to the other.

Narada Lake, a picturesque lake full of trees and stumps, is visible from M-22 about five miles north of Glen Arbor. There is a narrow trail through a tunnel of trees to a little canoe launch area. The lake is currently closed to visitors in order to protect nesting loons. There are many fallen trees on the west shore of the lake where there used to be an access road. This section was practically clear-cut by beavers several years ago. You can walk there and see the huge pointed stumps and conical log ends that are left by the beaver. For someone who has never seen the power of a beaver, this is worth a stop. You can even see tree trunks with rows of big tooth marks left by beaver where they gnawed the bark off the trees the way we eat corn on the cob. Because Narada is so full of stumps and appears to have no open shoreline, it is mainly of interest to nature lovers, fishermen and artists.

Shell Lake is a nice nature lake near the northern end of the park. There are two different two-tracks off of Elliott Road; the first one is pretty rough and stretches quite a ways but finally reaches a little sandy beach area where you can swim or launch a kayak. The other, better track traverses an open field to a small, somewhat mucky boat launch area adequate for canoes or kayaks. Shell is especially good for fishing. There is also a beaver lodge at one end of the lake which you can see from a boat. There are no restrooms and no motorized boats are allowed.

The best thing about Hidden Lake is its name. It is indeed quite hidden and takes some effort to get to. It is a very small, shallow, somewhat inaccessible lake in the same end of the park as Shell Lake. You can park where Good Harbor Drive is closed off and walk about a mile west along the trail, much of the way under the power line. When you get close, turn left on another old road and the lake will appear immediately to your right. You can see it from the trail and, if motivated, find your way through the tangle of trees and underbrush to get down to the squishy shore. The lake is too small to boat or fish and too shallow to swim.

Glen Arbor and Empire Area Lakes

Tucker Lake is a lake I “discovered” after driving past it numerous times. It is very close to Glen Arbor and somehow I always passed by without noticing the boat ramp sign near the corner of 675 and Westman Road. It is a very small lake. About a third of it is weed-choked, but there are several fishing spots in the open areas. It is surrounded by swamp and woods. Perhaps because it feels so isolated, it’s a fun place to fish. The ramp is pretty good for such a small lake, but the mosquitoes can be nasty. No motorized boats are allowed.

The Mill Pond is easily overlooked as you drive along M-109 going south out of Glen Arbor toward the Dune Climb. It is on the right side of the road, just past the entrance to the Little Glen Lake picnic area on the opposite side of the road. The Mill Pond is a nice nature lake, a little bigger than it appears at first. There is a beaver lodge on the lake that you can see from the road, but don’t try to walk in there. You can sink to your hip in the marshy area surrounding it. Last summer there were both herons and egrets that seem stayed there most of the summer. This lake can be enjoyed from the road.

North Bar is probably the most popular inland lake in the park for swimming. It’s all sandy and shallow which makes it good for little kids and for early-season swimming. It has a big sandy beach, not surprising since it is just across a low sand dune from Lake Michigan. Many bathers wander over to the big lake as well. North Bar has an excellent boat launch. You can carry in a canoe or kayak or check with the Park Visitor Center for access to the ramp. No motorized boats are allowed. There are restrooms at the parking area. You can access North Bar by going north out of Empire on LaCore Street and then on Voice and Bar Lake roads.

Taylor Lake is a small nature lake about a mile south of Empire on M-22. It is surrounded by marsh and woods and separated from the road by about half a mile. There are no paths or trails to it that I know of, though I was able to walk in there using a compass and topographical map. It took some effort because, although part of the way was fairly open field, the remainder was through tangled woods. When I finally got there, the lake was pretty to look at but nearly inaccessible due to the soft shoreline. I could barely get close enough to take a picture. Being in the woods and surrounded by the marsh, it also felt like a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Platte Plains Area Lakes

Otter Lake is one of the nicest fishing lakes in the park. There is a rickety dock there and a mushy boat launch suitable only for canoes or kayaks. No motorized boats are allowed on the lake. The lake is quiet, with pretty surroundings, and only a few cottages. There are plenty of shallows and a few coves and some deep water. I have seen eagles on this lake on several occasions. There is a wonderful 4.6-mile hike around this lake called the Otter Creek Loop. Some friends saw a pair of otter cross the road next to the lake as they were hiking this trail a few years ago. There are no restrooms at Otter Lake, but there is one on down the road at Bass Lake. You get to Otter Lake by turning down Trails End off M-22 about five miles south of Empire.

Bass Lake, the southern one, is probably the best-known all-purpose lake in the park for hiking, canoeing or fishing. There is a big parking lot and a restroom, and a sturdy dock where kids can fish or swim. The dock has a park bench where you can sit and dream. The boat ramp is excellent and handicap accessible. You do have to carry your canoe or kayak to it from the parking area though, and no motorized boats are allowed. There are a couple of good hiking trails around the lake or off in the other direction. On the trail around the lake are places where you can get to the water to fish from shore. Bass Lake is a great starter lake for teaching kids about fishing, hiking or boating. Bass is the last stop on Trail’s End Road.

Deer Lake is a much smaller lake connected to Bass by a shallow channel. You used to be able to paddle to Deer Lake from Bass. However, a fisherman told me that beaver have built a lodge between the two lakes and so choked the channel that you would have to portage around it. The beaver activity seems to have raised the water level of Deer Lake as well, killing many shoreline trees.

Deer Lake strikes me as more of a nature lake with a wilder feel to it. A friend of mine once saw otter playing in Deer Lake. Deer Lake seems shallower and weedier than Bass Lake, and somehow slightly forbidding. I kayaked in there briefly to explore and fish and then headed back over to Bass Lake where I felt more comfortable.

It is possible to drive in beside Deer Lake if you have a four-wheel drive vehicle that you don’t mind getting scratched up. There is a horrible, deep-rutted two-track off Trails End shortly before you get to Bass Lake that takes you back there. Be sure to stop beside the lake and take a look at all the trees cut down by beaver. You can see the typical pointed stumps and the tree trunks lying beside them. If you do drive or walk in on the road, I recommend you turn around at this point. The park has posted warnings about a hawk that is nesting further in, which literally dives on anyone approaching its nesting area. This is not something you want to experience.

Lakes Near the Southern Boundary

Mud Lake is a beautiful lake to look at despite its plain-sounding name. You can see it from Lake Michigan Road near the fish weir. There are no houses on it and it feels secluded and quiet even though it is actually close to the road. The shore is nice and sandy and you could carry in a canoe or kayak, but there is no actual boat ramp. Although the shore is shady, the trees are big and old with very little underbrush, so the shore feels relatively free of bugs. Mud Lake is very shallow and has a muddy bottom. When you dip a canoe paddle in, it just disappears in muck and silt, and stirs up a rotting vegetation odor. Mud Lake is probably best enjoyed from the shore.

Loon Lake is a big, sandy bottom lake, with a great boat ramp. This is one of the few lakes where motorboats are allowed. There is no beach there but I have waded near the boat ramp, and the bottom seems firm. There are only a few houses along one shore of it, to the left of the public access. Countless people have crossed the northern tip of the lake as they floated down the Platte River. That end of the lake is extremely shallow. I have seen many people get out of their canoes or inner tubes and drag them through ankle-deep water until they cross the sand bar and get back in them. Loon is a good fishing lake with a very nice boat ramp, dock, accessible picnic shelter and restrooms.

Round Lake is another one of those lakes that are easy to miss. It is the southernmost lake inside the park, and lies just off M-22 on your way to Crystal Lake. In fact, Round Lake was probably part of Crystal Lake before the lake level was lowered. Round Lake is small and sandy, and appears shallow. There is a little drive right up to the edge of the lake where you can easily put in a canoe or kayak. Despite its diminutive size, it’s a pristine lake, and a pleasant place to wade, fish or kayak.

Bow Lakes

There are two Bow Lakes and a Bow Lake Valley Pond, all in a separate section of the park located southwest of Big Glen Lake and bordered on the south by Baatz Road. The lakes themselves are privately held. There are no public access roads or ramps. I attempted to visit the lakes but they are nearly inaccessible because of rugged terrain and lack of public trails.

The three lakes are fairly closely grouped and the lower two have some ecologically fragile aspects to them, so if you go there, please tread lightly.

1. Bow Lake
2. Bow Lake
3. Bow Lake Valley Pond

Manitou Island Lakes

Michigan State fishing regulations apply to all the lakes in the park, including those on the islands, according to Steve Yancho. But lakes on the islands do have a few special restrictions. There is no live bait allowed on North Manitou Lake in order to protect it from invasive species. Also there are “special trophy bass regulations” there, meaning to be legal a bass caught there must be 16 feet long.

4. Lake Manitou, the biggest island lake, is located on North Manitou Island. Only artificial lures are permitted.
5. Tamarack Lake is a very small lake on North Manitou Island.
6. Florence Lake is a medium-sized lake and the only one on South Manitou Island. Artificial lures only.

Other Waters

That’s the list of 21 inland lakes inside the boundaries of the park. Yancho pointed out that there are, of course, several lakes on which the park has frontage including Big and Little Glen Lakes (on which Yancho says the park is the largest landholder), Long Lake (near Crystal) and Rush Lake (also near Crystal) — not to mention the 67 miles of frontage on Lake Michigan, about half of which is shoreline on the mainland and the other half on the Manitou islands.

Then there are rivers and streams, which include Platte River, Crystal River, Otter Creek and Shalda Creek.

Finally, Yancho noted, there are countless “ridge/swale” wetlands below Boekeloo Road and over by Peterson Road in the southern end of the park. In years past, Yancho said, when water levels were high, people could take canoes in there and go from pond to pond. Now water levels are low and many of those waters may not be navigable. Looking at a topographical map of the area, I counted over 60 of these small bodies of water in that area.

A friend looked at the entire list of lakes and remarked, “Just think what a fabulous deal it is to get all that for just $20 a year. In other places people pay that much just to go to one lake for a single day.”

I have to agree with her. Each year when I purchase my annual pass to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, I am happy to pay the price, knowing what a great gift it is to have access to all the well-known park features and its 21 inland lakes.

Posted by editor at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)

Mississippi couple finds refuge in Glen Arbor

By E. Byron Dennis
Sun contributor

An experience of a lifetime.

When Hurricane Katrina relieved us of all our material possessions, it led us into one of the highlights of my life. At age 81, my wife of less than a year and a half, Bettylu and I were faced with the prospect of beginning a new life. We had only recently begun a new life together in May of 2004 and set up housekeeping with all new furnishings in a nice apartment on the beach at Long Beach, Mississippi.

We had already planned a trip in September through New England for the foliage tour, so we completed that. Then we were invited by Bettylu's sister and brother-in-law, Pat and Bob Barker, to spend the winter at their vacation home in The Homestead resort near Glen Arbor. Since the house was vacant and I had never experienced a winter “up north,” we said, “Why not?” On October 15, 2005, we arrived at The Homestead. On the way up here, we passed through miles of foliage that easily surpassed any I had ever seen in New England. Thanksgiving brought the first snow. Bettylu grew up in Indiana, so she had seen this sort of thing. Being a fourth-generation Mississippi boy, I had never seen over six inches of snow at one time in my life. I had trepidations, but thought, “You only live once,” so why not take on a new adventure.

Now that we have found a new place to live, in Houma, Louisiana, I can truthfully say that it has been one of the most delightful experiences of my life. I spent three and a half years of World War II in the South Pacific and made many friends in Australia and thereabouts, as well as a lot of places in the U.S., but have never met better people than I have met in northwest Michigan. I am a strong believer in the old adage, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” It has been delightful, living with the people of northwest Michigan. I hope that God has a few extra blessings for the people here. It seems that many people, maybe too many, are being attracted to this area. I sincerely hope that they come resolved not to disturb the way of life here. As we return to the Deep South, I will always carry the most pleasant thoughts of my experiences here and hope from time to time to return for a visit.

Thank you, Michiganders

Posted by editor at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2006

"Take me out to the ballgame"

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Play ball in northern Michigan!

Wuerfel Park, the new minor league ballpark in Traverse City and home of the Beach Bums, isn’t quite as glamorous as Chicago’s Wrigley Field or Detroit’s Comerica Park. The pitchers don’t throw fastballs as hard as they do in The Show, and that crafty batter laying a squeeze bunt down the third base line just a few feet away from your box seats will probably never play on national television.

Photo by Ryan Romeike

But you’ll forgive that, just as you’ll forgive the cookie-cutter architecture of Wuerfel Park that looks more like a subdivision development than a ballpark. You’ll forgive the radar gun behind home plate, which records erroneous pitch speeds of 40 or 50 miles per hour every time a gust of wind blows off Lake Michigan. For here you are in northern Michigan, no more than 45 minutes away from your house or cottage or campground, watching professional baseball. You are safe at home.

For $6 each the “bleacher” seats in the grass picnic area beyond the outfield walls are a steal. Or better yet, cough up an extra four greenbacks and place yourself in the box seats behind home plate so you can follow the intimacy of the game. Watch the pitcher shake off signs as the sweat rolls down his forehead. Watch the shortstop move a couple steps toward second base when he expects the runner to break on the next pitch.

These are rituals that bloom every spring in towns and cities, stadiums and sandlots across America: a rebirth, a budding of optimism that this year could be the one for your team. Out come the lilacs and forest green, and with them the t-shirts and grill kits, and the smell of leather gloves and peanuts.

Northern Michiganders finally got to honor this tradition on May 24, which was opening night for the Traverse City Beach Bums, as nearly 6,000 fans gathered at Wuerfel Park at Chums Corners to honor this greatest of all American traditions. It mattered not that the home team got walloped, 10-2, by the Kalamazoo Kings, for after years of patient waiting, team owners John and Leslye Wuerfel finally brought professional baseball home to Traverse City.

No one bellyached too much about the traffic on US-31 on the way here. And the fans shrugged off having to wait in different concession lines for their beers and ballpark franks. Instead, they cheered when starting pitcher Robbie McClellan opened the game with a strike and punched out the first Kalamazoo batter with an impressive curveball. They clapped for the Beach Bums’ hustling leftfielder Mike Reese who gave chase after a foul ball that dropped out of his range.

And the Traverse City fans confirmed their reputations as orderly and polite stewards of the game during the Grand Traverse Pie Company-sponsored “pie eating contest” between innings when two locals were invited to walk onto the field and eat more raspberry and cherry goodness than their competitor could, but both refused to even dirty their faces.

They were just happy to be here, not unlike the nine Beach Bums out on the diamond, chasing their dreams of playing in the Majors some day, even though they play for only a few hundred dollars a month and most will never make it past A ball.

For those players, and for all of us, baseball is a game that invokes our childhood memories — a fountain of youth in the heartland. The first time we see that green outfield grass we can’t help but think back to the very first time we caught a ballgame, even if it was eons ago.

At Wuerfel Park on opening night I found a cameraman/aisle attendant/grounds crew worker named Dale manning his post by the Beach Bums’ dugout on the left side of the field and looking out for any errant foul balls that he hoped to snag with his ancient left hand, marred by broken, purple fingernails but every bit as good as a mitt. Dale thought back to when he was in sixth grade and his father, an automobile worker in Flint, took him to old Tiger Stadium for the first time. He was scared, he remembered, as they drove down Trumbull Avenue through the bad part of town, until he passed through the turnstiles and spied the green grass, that is, and he couldn’t help but smile.

Dale is retired now, but his wife encouraged him to get this part time job and pushed him out of the house, just to give him something to do. Worried about the chance of rain, he showed up early to the ballpark on opening night, just as anxious as any player on the field. For this game, in this setting, means as much to the hometown fans as it does to the men in the dugout.

Posted by editor at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

Dreaming of cheeseburgers at the top of the world

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Peter Richards was dying.

He wasn’t spouting blood or hearing his last rites read to him, nor was he watching all 19 years of his young life flash before his eyes. But the Glen Arbor-raised adventurer had lost 15 pounds in just a few days and he couldn’t continue climbing toward the top of the world. Eighteen thousand two hundred feet up at Camp One would have to suffice. The Summit of Mount Everest would have to stay in his imagination.

“I was having dreams about food. All I wanted was an Art’s cheeseburger and a root beer float,” Peter remembers about his trip to the Himalayas last fall. “I’d been eating dried and powdered stuff: granola bars, goo, carbohydrated energy and protein that you chew. But I just couldn’t gain any weight because my metabolism was so fast. I had lost so much weight. My body was going through what would be equivalent to sprinting for days at that altitude. And I couldn’t go on.”

Peter Richards, now 20 years old, who recently finished his sophomore year at Northern Michigan University and is currently spending the summer in Telluride, Colorado, was part of a group of four that attempted last September to reach Everest Camp Three, at a mind-numbing 22,500 feet, where the air is so thin and the climate so harsh that yaks, not humans, are the most dominant species on the food chain. Ascending past Camp Three to the Summit (29,035 feet) costs tens of thousands of dollars and you have to use axes and crampons and rope yourself to someone else in the group because the path is all snow and ice and rock.

The Midwestern delegation was led by Bill Thompson, 40, who owns a sporting goods store in Marquette called Downwind Sports and actually reached Everest Camp Two four years before this trip, a police officer from Green Bay named Joe, 35, and another student from Northern Michigan named JD, 21.

Thompson gave a slideshow presentation at Peter’s Outdoor Recreation class in the fall of 2004, the beginning of his freshman year at the school notorious for adventurers and environmentalists. Climbing Mount Everest happened to be number 15 on Peter’s “list of things to do in my life,” which he had compiled the previous spring. On a whim Peter approached Thompson after the slideshow and told him he wanted to go, as much for the adventure but also because Peter is a photographer who aims to shoot for National Geographic some day. “He laughed at me first,” Peter remembers, “but I was at his store at 8 the next morning to get information for the trip.”

The problem was the cost.

Flying all the way across the Pacific Ocean and into Chinese-occupied Tibet and hiring guides to take them (partway) up the world’s tallest mountain would cost $8 thousand per person — no small feat for a poor college student. So once Peter asked (told, actually) his parents for permission and secured it as long as he could raise the money himself and prove he was healthy enough, the ambitious kid worked four jobs all summer long (including at Empire’s Surf & Kayak Shop) and secured donations from local businesses Boone Docks restaurant and Cherry Republic.

Peter reached an agreement with Boone Docks’ owner Bob Ewing that he would bring home a picture of himself waving a Boone Docks banner at Everest Base Camp, and he trained all summer long, running up and down the Dune Climb to prepare his lungs and heart, and willpower, for Everest. Peter kept a small picture of the great beast of nature in his room in Glen Arbor with the words, “Reach for your dreams” under it, and by the fall he was ready for the great human challenge.

On September 25 of last year the Midwest team left Marquette and traveled through Detroit, Tokyo and Beijing before arriving in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, two days later (not including another day lost to the International Dateline). They stayed in Lhasa for three days to acclimate themselves to the elevation of 12,000 feet and took in the local sites, including visits to the Potala Palace, which was home to His Holiness the Dalai Lama before he was forced into exile in 1959, (the Chinese only keep the place open today because it brings in so much tourism money) and the Ganden monastery outside Lhasa, which was destroyed by Chinese artillery. There the delegation witnessed a debate between Tibetan monks.

From Lhasa they drove for five hours on dirt roads in their minibus, crossing over the Lhasa and Tiger Rivers, to Shigatse, Tibet’s second largest city, in the foothills of the Himalayas. There they visited an 85-foot statue of the future Buddha and stayed for a day in a 10 x 10-foot hole in the wall without electricity before driving up into the mountains to Shegar, or New Tingri. On one mountain pass where they stopped for lunch at 17,120 feet, the clouds parted, giving Peter his first look at mounts Everest and Lhatse.

The men descended to Rongbuk, at 16,350 feet, where they camped outside for the first time, on the gravel plain just below Everest. They were the only westerners there because this was the off-season, and at night they heard wild dogs yipping and fighting each other.

The steep climb from Rongbuk up to Everest Base Camp (16,900) took Peter, Bill, Joe and JD four hours of hiking over shale rocks (“much tougher than the Dune Climb,” our local hero attests), and they camped there for three nights in a little Tibetan tent village to acclimatize themselves and drink as much water as they possibly could. “I had three Nalgene bottles with me and every day I would fill up and down each of them twice. That’s what kept me alive,” Peter remembers.

There at the Base Camp of Mount Everest, in a place that seemed light years from northern Michigan, Peter met a Tibetan guide who carried a backpack with the words “Traverse City” written on it, and that amazing coincidence instilled confidence in him.

But once the group of four began ascending toward Camp One, at 18,200 feet, Peter was reminded how far he was from home. “We just kept hiking, up and up for eight hours, with my pack that probably weighed 40 pounds.” Their only guide at that point was a yak herder and his three beasts of burden that carried most of the group’s haul bags. “There are two walking speeds on that trail: slow yak pace and fast yak pace,” Peter jokes. “The yaks take up the entire path, so you can’t pass them.”

By the time they reached Camp One on the north side of Everest eight hours later, as Peter tells it, “I’d never been so happy to see a barren rock field in my whole life.” Relief was in store for them in the form of a mountain stream of glacial runoff another mile up the path — “the coldest water on earth.” In fact, this water was so pure that Peter filled a jug of it and brought it home with him.

The group of four camped for three days and nights at Camp One, during which time Peter experienced the most bone-chilling nights he could ever imagine. Despite wearing four pairs of socks, all his fleeces, jeans, a down jacket, hat and gloves, all while cocooned inside his sleeping bag, he still froze. The thermometer inside his tent plunged to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Meanwhile, Peter was losing weight like a snowman in a sauna. And when it came time to leave for Camp Two, he couldn’t go on. He told his companions to continue on without him. But of course, Bill Thompson’s gang wasn’t going to leave anyone behind.

Despite feeling disappointed and guilty for letting the group down, Peter and his fellow Northern Michigan student JD also looked forward to returning to a more hospitable climate, and their descent to Rongbuk took them only four hours. “No worries,” JD told Peter along the way. “Of course we all wanted to go higher, but this has already been so much fun. And it was smarter to come back down than to go any higher.”

Peter Richards didn’t reach Everest Camps Two or Three, but his trip to the tallest mountain in the world was far from a waste. He still treated himself to countless once-in-a-lifetime experiences. In Rongbuk Peter sent postcards from the highest post office in the world — a 6 x 6-foot corrugated metal tin shed with only a bed for the postmaster, a grumpy and anal retentive man, says Peter, who charged $10 per postcard.

The 19-year-old slowly regained his weight in Rongbuk and Shigatse by shoveling down yak, noodles and steak as fast as his slender frame would permit, and Peter was glad to sleep in a bed again, though it felt as hard as a rock. Back in Lhasa the group toured famous Buddhist monasteries and the Barkhor market square, where everyone walks in a clockwise pattern through the kiosks and shops, and the stupa in the center. Their guide Lakpa introduced them to more monks with whom they dined and drank tea at the high monastery in Lhasa.

And thanks to the extra time the group had in Lhasa, Peter stumbled on what he now considers his calling. The group visited the Dickey Orphanage, Lhasa’s only privately-run orphanage, which is home to 80 kids, one of whom was only 24 days old and had been abandoned in a toilet and saved by Lakpa. Many of these kids had physical handicaps, birth defects or are blind, according to Peter. Not to mention the Tibetan poverty and pressure from the Chinese government for a family to have (or keep) no more than one child. The director of the orphanage was a businesswoman from Lhasa who had met the Dali Lama in India and was encouraged by His Holiness to start an orphanage.

Upon hearing her story, Peter realized that what he wants to do with his own life is document the suffering of orphans all over the developing world through his photojournalism.

In falling short of one great quest, he inadvertently embarked on another.

Not bad for a sophomore in college.

Posted by editor at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

Dive into lovely lavender soaps on Lake Street

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Cookie Thatcher prefers to think of her blends of lavender soaps as “flavors,” and that makes her the new chemist in town. At her new shop, Bay Lavenders, next to Becky Thatcher Designs on Lake Street in Glen Arbor, she uses only essential oils, free of manmade perfumes, and mixes them with honey, herbs, locally-grown spices and a few secrets to come up with the perfect bar of soap for a given person. Bay Lavenders originally opened in August of last year.

Naturally, women love this store, since they can dive into the lovely lavender scents after shopping for jewelry at her sister Becky’s next door. But Cookie also has a soap called Autumn Mist that’s just for men or, as she puts it, “women who love men.”

“What is Glen Arbor? It’s the water, woods and fresh, clean air,” Cookie surmises. “That’s what I try to put in this soap, so that when people take it home with them they will be reminded of the wonderful, fresh clean scents of this place.

For Cookie the soaps offer a visceral experience, like a good glass of wine.

“The Autumn Mist, for instance, is a walk in the woods on a rainy autumn day and drinking Jasmine tea afterwards next to a fire. In my soap the lime is the rain, the balsam is the woods, the patchouli oil is the fire and the lavender is the Jasmine tea.”

Bay Lavender soaps are all handmade, and especially good for people with sensitive skin. They are the perfect northern Michigan creation because, Cookie says, Leelanau County is ideal for growing lavender. In fact, lavender and grapes prefer the same soil and climate. “Lavender is more forgiving, since the frost won’t hurt it.” Cookie gets most of her lavender from two county farms, but especially Leelanau Lavender Breezes on East Johnson Road in Northport because, she says, the couple that planted that farm both have PhDs in the field and they do everything exactly right.

Cookie also grows her own lavender in a beautiful garden right behind the shop, and she encourages folks to stop in and watch her make the soap. In this age of outsourcing and lack of identification with what the consumer buys, Cookie wants her customers to see and understand how local her products truly are.

Cookie currently produces her lavender soap in the evenings after working for Becky all day. She spends six months a year in Glen Arbor and the other six months in Key West, which she has done since 2001, and she has worked for Becky since 1990.

Bay Lavender is in the building that used to be Rich Quick’s old gas station and storage shed, which sat behind what’s now the Art’s Annex until it was moved to its current location next to Becky Thatcher’s in April of last year. The building retains its original wood, but the pretty exterior singles have replaced the more industrial-looking aluminum siding. Cookie says it smelled of oil, antifreeze and tires before she moved in, but now she’s replaced that with the wonderful sent of lavender soaps.

Posted by editor at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

Invisible in our midst: Hispanics and migrant workers in northern Michigan

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

They live amongst us. They drive on the same country roads. They enjoy the same sunsets. And they still play an integral role in harvesting the crops that we not merely eat, but identify with spring, summer and fall in northern Michigan.

The Hispanic and Latino workers indispensable to our asparagus, cherry and apple industries may no longer number in the tens of thousands like they did in the mid-twentieth century — before the introduction of mechanical cherry tree shakers and before recent talk of a wall along the U.S. border to Mexico and National Guardsmen peering south across the Rio Grande — but the thousands that are here are still members of our community.

Photo by Gary Howe

Some are documented migrant workers who travel back and forth between the Midwest and Texas as the crop seasons fluctuate in order to keep working. Some are Latino-Americans who have grown up here, speak flawless English and look as Caucasian as every descendent of Irish, German or Polish immigrants. And some crossed a river or a desert in the dark of night to get here, to improve their fortunes, and often to escape unspeakable horror back home.

Northwestern Michigan College held a Symposium on Immigration on May 23 that featured health workers, educators, human rights advocates, local farmers, a priest, a border patrol officer, an attorney and, most importantly, an immigrant, on a panel that discussed the national immigration debate and its ramifications for northern Michigan. Unlike many issues that we read about in the national news but seem far away, the immigration debate playing out in Washington, the anger rising in the southwestern United States, and the xenophobia spreading across the land are all hitting home in a big way. With that in mind, the Glen Arbor Sun will run a series of articles this summer offering local perspectives on the national debate and feature several local Hispanics/Latinos who find themselves caught in the middle of this drama.

[For an in depth look at the migrant worker’s experience in the mid-twentieth century in and around Empire, please read this article we printed three years ago on our website at www.glenarborsun.com/archives/2003/09/largely_forgott.html]

Unease over the direction the debate on immigration is taking and the victims being left in its path manifested itself in many ways during the NMC Symposium. From an economic standpoint, Leelanau County farmers Don Coe and Don Gregory both worry that not just legislative changes but also the racism directed at Hispanics will make it very difficult for them to hire the workers they need to complete the harvest.

“We house 50-60 people in the summer who work harvesting cherries,” said Suttons Bay farmer Don Gregory. “About a third or half of them leave after cherry season because they have kids in school, and education is important to them. They return to Texas or Florida.

“Come apple time, we will need in excess of 100 apple pickers. We run ads in the paper for seasonal work, but we don’t get any help. That’s why we need migrant labor. If we needed more pickers, they would help us find more pickers.

“But what once was an atmosphere of joy has turned on its head. Over the last three years our migrants have been operating in an environment of fear, whether they are year-round or part-time workers, documented or undocumented. Some of our families won’t come to Traverse City to go shopping anymore. They shop in Suttons Bay instead.

“I don’t know if we’ll have enough employees this year to get the job done because some families aren’t traveling from Texas.”

Don Coe, the proprietor of Black Star Farms vineyard near Suttons Bay, echoed that sentiment at the Symposium.

The migrant workers are largely gone now, he said, “driven out by the paranoia of extremists and prejudice policies — prejudice is driving the debate today.”

Coe also took issue with the discourse used in the national debate. “(Migrant workers) aren’t ‘illegal aliens.’ When I grew up ‘aliens’ were people who came from Mars and would shoot us with Ray Guns.

“The workers I have employed aren’t ignorant peasants either, and they are not underpaid.” Coe stated that migrant workers at Black Star Farms are paid livable wages of $10-12 per hour. “These were workers with brawn, willing to do jobs we couldn’t get others to do.

Gregory and Coe both talked warmly about workers who they have befriended “like family” over the years, even to the point of attending their employees’ quinceañeros — the all-important fifteenth birthday parties — in Texas.

Honoring their native cultures shouldn’t be viewed as a slight of this country, Coe insisted. “They’re not disloyal just because they may march with a Mexican flag during a celebration. We are not expected to parade with other flags when we live abroad.”

Tomaso Nuño, an immigrant from Mexico who spoke at the NMC Symposium, summed it up: “We appreciate this country very much for all it has offered us, but we will never forget our home countries.”

Furthermore, Coe said, the Latinos being sacrificed in the political debate represent the future of local farming. Of 53,000 farms in Michigan, 11,000 of those are actually owned by Latinos. “That’s the fastest growing population, replacing the Stans, the Bills and the Olies. Why? Because sons of white farmers aren’t going into farming.”

Naturally, many of those showing up in every corner of the United States looking for work are not legally allowed to be here. Empire attorney Lea Ann Sterling estimated that as many as 6,000 of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country live in northwest Michigan. And that is at the heart of the argument for those who favor mass deportation and tighter security at the U.S. border to Mexico. If you want to reap the benefits of our country, they say, obey our laws.

But undocumented workers represent only some of the hard-working Hispanics in our midst. And yet all are paying the price for the finger pointing that has shot to the surface in this debate.

“A couple years ago when the economy here was doing well no one noticed (Hispanic workers),” the Teleman Corporation’s April Sanches said at the NMC Symposium. “But when things go bad, the economy slows down, and Americans run out of jobs, they notice who they claim are taking their jobs.”

Racism has reared its ugly head, and not just on AM Radio. Adam Allington of Interlochen Public Radio reported a case of Traverse City police pulling over a local Hispanic earlier this spring for driving with a Dream Catcher in their rear window — in other words “driving while Mexican,” concerned citizens claim.

To help local Hispanics with mounting legal hurdles and to protect them against racist tactics, attorney Lea Ann Sterling recently hired fluent Spanish speaker Wendy Bailey to her Empire staff. The biggest demand Sterling faces is local Hispanics coming to her seeking assistance in gaining legal residency or citizenship for themselves or their spouses. But for Mexicans and Central Americans, unlike Europeans for example, entering the United States legally is no cakewalk, and often almost impossible. U.S. embassies in Mexico City and Guatemala City make potential immigrants pay upwards of $100 for a phone card just to call and apply for a visa, and then wait in line for days if not months. For many, going illegally across the Rio Grande becomes the only way to get to El Norte. Once they are here and apply for residency, Sterling says, they would have to return to their home countries for at least a year to wait out the process — and chances are their applications will be rejected.

There used to be an Amnesty program that let undocumented immigrants stay in the United States if they paid a $1,000 fine. But that federal program was not renewed after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Many would argue that not American Muslims, but Hispanics, have suffered the most from the 9-11 fallout and the guise of the war on terror. “I can’t do much for them unless they filed before April 30, 2001,” Sterling says.

When undocumented workers are caught here, they are often denied their rights. According to Lea Ann Sterling, Miranda rights are often not followed, even here in northern Michigan. And Father Wayne Dziekan of St. Michaels/St. Gertrude’s Church says that undocumented workers who are arrested and deported often never receive pay for the work they did.

The respect for human beings is at stake here, as is northern Michigan’s good reputation as a community that respects and protects its own.

But for a local farmer like Don Gregory, it all comes down to dollars and cents, and product output. “When we make a decision to put apple trees in the ground, that’s a 25-30 year investment. Should we even plant those trees if we won’t have the workers to pick them?”

Posted by editor at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)

Frontier Construction LLC is Ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear

By Norm Wheeler
Sun contributing editor

Another chapter in the story of ambitious young locals starting up their own business features Joel Diotte, 33, Matt Diotte, 32, Jeff Cook, 32, and Pete Stern, 36: the Frontier Group LLC. Now affiliated with ICF Energy Star Homes, the Frontier Group is constructing a spec home in the Timber View Ridge Development just over the hill east of the Dunes Golf Course on the north side of M-72. Using the most recent materials and methods in super energy efficient homes, they use foot-thick ICF foam prefab blocks that are filled with six inches of reinforced concrete. “This enables an insulation value far beyond what is possible with traditional stick construction,” explains Jeff Cook. “It performs at the equivalent of an R-50. That’s matched by the 17 inches of insulation in the ceiling, also R-50.”

Joel Diotte adds, “Energy Star homes have zero vapor transfer or air infiltration. It’s a totally sealed building envelope. I think this is the future of building because of rising fuel costs and the depleting sources of quality wood.”

“As an Energy Star building partner we’ll have this home rated by a third party to test for compliance,” Matt Diotte continues. “There’s a point system for the walls, heating system, and the make up air system. Because the building is so tight there’s an air exchanger as well.” The home also features domestic and in-floor hot water heat from a boiler rated at 98 percent efficiency. Designed by the four men, the comfortable two-story house has an open floor plan with a walk-around kitchen island and dining room, a living room with a cathedral ceiling, and a master bedroom suite, all above a ground floor containing a huge recreation room and extra bedrooms. There is plenty of triple pane sliding glass, and a porch that hangs in the trees in the wooded setting. It should be finished by mid-July.

In order to join in with his boyhood friends in the Frontier Group, Jeff Cook left a job as a food broker in Grand Rapids to come back north. “I saw the need for homes like this in Leelanau County,” Jeff remarks, “and we all grew up together – we’ve been friends since grade school.” Matt and Joel Diotte started building homes four years ago, and the brothers have served as fine stewards of our natural environment basically since they were toddlers. At the tender ages of six and seven, Matt remembers, he and Joel helped their father Kip plant a forest off of Trumbull Road. The two boys are now full grown, as are the trees they created. They both graduated from Glen Lake and are Leelanau County lifers. Joel and wife Angie have a young family here, and Matt still moonlights as a waiter at Funistrada. Pete Stern operated his own painting business before joining the Frontier Group. “Pete also does construction – everybody does everything – and Pete provides the important comedic relief,” Joel laughs.

The Frontier Group’s spec home can be seen off N. Hermies Pass on Misty’s Trail in the Timber View Ridge Development. It is listed by Bob Ihme with LVR Realty LLC @ 334-6100. To contact the young men of Frontier Group LLC go to www.frontier-construction.com or call 231-409-1769.

Posted by editor at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

Summer Entertaining Series: Hors d’oeuvres

By Nancy Krcek Allen
Sun contributor

Hors d’oeuvres are celebration and entertainment rolled into one or two bites. Seventeenth century French chefs borrowed the term “hors d’oeuvre” from architects who used it to designate the structures not connected to a main building. Hors d’oeuvres may be food that is outside of a main meal, but that doesn’t mean they can’t satisfy as a full meal might. With their dazzling shapes, colors and big flavor hors d’oeuvres enchant the eye while they fill the belly. Though these tasty bites are eye-catching, they must still be easy for guests to eat while standing, holding a glass of wine and conversing; no greasy edges, falling bits of garnish or bigger than two bites.

It’s appropriate that the term “hors d’oeuvre” came from architecture. Many of them look as if they came from Frank Gehry’s careful, playful hands. Hors d’oeuvres, as simple as a dish of olives or pickled onions or as complex as a platter of architecturally designed delicacies, can present endless variations on seven basic categories of creative method. These are: stacking or topping as with canapés, tea sandwiches, mini blini and bruschetta; rolling as with spring rolls, sushi and grape leaves; stuffing as with mini tomatoes or dumplings; skewering as with satay or shish kabob; dips and dippers like black bean salsa with corn chips or olive tapenade with grissini; baked things such as focaccia, mini quiches and cheese puffs (gougere) and finally, small pieces such as assorted olives, pretzels and nuts.

Summer entertaining and hors d’oeuvres were made for each other. You can design hors d’oeuvres ahead, their variety can please any taste and most are perfect for lighter summer diets. Try tea sandwiches spread with goat’s cheese and herbs, grilled shiitake mushrooms basted with olive oil and sea salt or whole wheat tortillas spread with guacamole, cilantro and baked chicken, rolled and sliced into small rounds. Whole wheat tortillas make wonderful mini tart shells when briefly heated then cut out to three-inch circles, brushed with olive oil or melted butter and pressed into a mini muffin pan. Bake them at 350F until lightly colored. Fill them with a mushroom ragu or a dab of baba ganoush.

A fascinating hors d’oeuvre table will cause a bottleneck of gawkers. If your repertoire is getting worn, here are some hints to liven it up.

1. We eat first with our eyes. Each hors d’oeuvre should be beautiful and tasty, whether it is fancy or homey.

2. Choose a varied group of hors d’oeuvres. Make sure each contrasts cooking methods, colors, textures, shapes and flavors. For instance, you might put out a bowl of marinated green and black olives, bruschetta topped with tomatoes and parsley, shrimp wrapped in cucumber, and meatballs on small skewers.

3. Collect lively plates and bowls. Presentation is second only to flavor. Look for Asian style square plates and odd shapes and colors to brighten your table.

4. Buy a piping bag with a few tips, several sets of round and shaped cutters and a mini muffin or tartlet pan. Scour Asian markets for skewers and food items to inspire spontaneous hors d’oeuvre creations.

5. Prepare dips, crackers, breadsticks and butters ahead and freeze them. Martha Stewart’s Hors D’oeuvres Handbook has many excellent suggestions and recipes to aid you.

Japanese chicken rounds with teriyaki sauce
Makes about 20 to 25 pieces

2 whole (4 lobes) boneless skinless chicken breasts, butter-flied open but not separated
2 carrots, julienned and steamed until tender, 3 minutes
16 to 24 asparagus, steamed tender, 5 minutes
1 red pepper, finely julienned
Marinade
1 to 2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons freshly grated gingerroot
Teriyaki sauce
1/4 cup sake or sherry
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
2 tablespoons maple syrup or sugar

Gently pound the breasts and flatten them to a uniform 1/4 inch thickness. Take care not to create any holes. Marinate the breasts in the soy and gingerroot for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400F. Remove breasts from marinade, pat dry and lay flat. Lay 1/4 the carrots and 3 green beans, and a few of the red pepper strips across the long way on each breast. Roll the breast up firmly. Repeat until all four are done. Place them onto a cookie sheet or baking pan, seam side down. Place them in the oven and bake until they ooze a clear juice and register 160F on an instant read thermometer, about 20 to 30 minutes.

Mix the teriyaki sauce ingredients together in a saucepan. Lower the heat and simmer until it is slightly syrupy. Slice the rolls into 1/4 inch thick coins. Place on wooden skewers. Pour the teriyaki sauce into a small bowl. Serve it on a platter with the chicken rounds.

Negi means round and maki means roll in Japanese.

Grilled beef negimaki with Korean galbi sauce
25 to 30 rolls

2 pounds sirloin tip roast
3 to 4 bunches scallions
Sauce
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin
1/2 cup Chinese rice wine or sherry
honey, brown sugar or sugar to taste
optional: chile paste to taste

toasted sesame seeds
canola oil for brushing

Place the sirloin tip into the freezer until it’s firm but not hard frozen, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Meanwhile, prepare the scallions. Bring a pot of water to boil. Cut the scallions into 2 inch lengths. Cut the thicker white part in half the long way. Blanch the scallions until just tender, about 1 minute. Run cold water over them and drain. Blot them dry in paper toweling. Set them aside.

Mix together the sauce ingredients and set aside. Slice meat very thinly on a meat slicer across the grain. Alternately get your butcher to do this for you. Cut the meat into approximately 2 inch by 3 inch rectangles. Layer meat into a hotel pan and brush with a little of the sauce. If your meat is already cut, do this part ahead and refrigerate the beef to marinate while you deal with the scallions.

With the narrowest end of a beef slice near you and parallel to the counter edge, lay a couple pieces of scallion parallel to the bottom of the beef slice and your counter edge. Sprinkle a little sesame seed inside. Roll up the beef and set in another pan seam side down. If you're worried that they won't stay together you may resort to toothpicks when no one is looking. Brush the beef rolls with more sauce and set aside in the refrigerator until you are ready for them. Heat a grill or grill pan. Brush the beef rolls with a little canola oil and grill briefly until medium rare. Serve while warm.

If you’re Eastern European, vary this recipe with black bread, cream cheese and smoked salmon with cucumber and dill.

Shrimp and cucumber canapes
Makes 24

1/2 cup white wine
Stems from dill below
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
12 medium shrimp, thawed and de-veined but not peeled
6 slices very thin white sandwich bread (3” by 3 12/”) (Pepperidge Farm)
3 ounces lemon shallot butter, room temperature
1 English seedless cucumber
1 small bunch dill

Pour the wine, dill stems, 2 cups water and salt into a saucepan. Bring it to a boil. Add the shrimp, cover and turn off the heat. Allow the shrimp to sit until they turn opaque, about 1 minute. Drain the shrimp, cool and peel them. Slice them in half lengthwise and remove any debris from their backs.

Cut the crusts off the bread and spread one side of each with the herb butter. With a sharp vegetable peeler, peel, then slice the cucumber lengthwise into long, thin strips. Place the cucumber overlapping to cover the butter. Cut each bread slice into 4 squares. Top each square with one half shrimp and a dill sprig.

Herb Butter

Mash together 3 ounces (6 tablespoons) unsalted room temperature butter with 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, 1/4 teaspoon lemon zest and 1 tablespoon minced shallots. Season butter with salt and pepper. Keeps refrigerated two weeks, frozen, several months.

Smoked salmon and cream cheese rolls on black bread
Yields about 30 pieces

1/2 pound cream cheese at room temperature
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted and chopped roughly
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon zest
salt to taste
1/2 pound thinly sliced smoked salmon
1 small square loaf very thinly sliced black bread--at least 15 slices
fresh dill or chives for garnish

Cream the cream cheese with the lemon juice until fluffy. Stir in the nuts, chives, lemon zest and salt to taste. Scrape mixture into a piping bag without a tip or with a very wide plain tip.

Place a long piece of plastic wrap on the work surface. Lay the salmon down in a single layer on top of it to form a 3" wide by 6" or 7" long rectangle of salmon. Pipe a six or seven inch long and 3/4" wide log down the bottom third of the salmon rectangle.

Use the plastic wrap to lift the long edge of the salmon over the cream cheese log. Tuck it tight and pull out the plastic wrap. Roll the salmon all the way--with the plastic wrap as helper. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate to firm the cheese before cutting for one hour or more.

Cut each slice of black bread into 2 triangles. Slice the salmon rolls into 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick rounds and place on the black bread. Top with a piece of dill or chive.

©2000Nancy K. Allen, C.C.P.

EXTRA RECIPES

Gougere
Makes 6 to 7 dozen

8 tablespoons or one stick unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese

Preheat your oven to 425F. Line two sheet pans with parchment. Pour one cup of water, butter and salt into a small but heavy saucepan and bring mix to a boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat and dump the flour in all at once. Stir vigorously until mixture is smooth.

Return the pot to the heat and cook the mixture until it begins to leave a film on the bottom of the pot, about one minute. Scrape the dough into a mixer bowl and set it aside to cool for 5 minutes. Beat the eggs in one at a time until the dough is smooth and just falls from a spoon. Fold in the grated cheese.

Scrape the dough into a piping bag fitted with a large plain or star tip. Pipe the dough in small, even blobs about 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter, onto the prepared sheet pans. Moisten your finger with water and smooth out the tops of the blobs. Bake the puffs for 12 minutes and reduce the heat to 375F. Bake them until deeply golden, about another 10 to 15 minutes. Slice a puff open to check. It should be firm and cooked on the inside, not doughy or sticky. Poke them through their middles and return them to the oven if they are not finished. When done, let them cool. You may freeze gougere for up to a month. Slice off their tops and fill with tasty things and put the top back on. Leave out the cheese if you wish to use them for sweet things.

Spinach phyllo triangles

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 red onions, finely sliced
1 ten ounce box of chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
2 tablespoons fresh chopped dill leaves
8 ounces feta cheese
salt and pepper to taste
24 sheets (about one pound) phyllo dough sheets
1 cup melted butter
1 cup fine dry breadcrumbs

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium to low heat. Add the onions and cook them covered until they are soft and tender, about 20 minutes. Uncover them and raise the heat to high. Cook them until they begin to brown and caramelize. Add the spinach and dill and remove the pan from the heat. Scrape the vegetables into a bowl and let it cool to room temperature. Stir in the feta.

Preheat the oven to 400F. Lay a sheet of phyllo on your counter and brush it with butter lightly. (Keep the unused phyllo well covered with plastic wrap.) Sprinkle it with breadcrumbs and cover with another sheet. Butter this sheet lightly too. Cut the dough into six 2-inch wide strips from the narrower side of the phyllo sheet.

Place a tablespoon of the filling in the bottom left corner of each strip and fold the phyllo into a flag fold to form a triangle. Brush it with butter and place it on a sheet pan lined with parchment. When you have formed all the triangles, bake them until golden, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Polenta circles with Gorgonzola and roasted red pepper or red onion jam

5 cups boiling water
1 cup Italian polenta—not instant and not American cornmeal
2 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
Kosher salt
1/4 pound Gorgonzola cheese, sliced into small bits
Red onion jam, toasted walnut halves or finely sliced bits of roasted red pepper

Bring an inch or two of water to a boil in a double boiler. Pour three cups of boiling water into the top of the double boiler. Slowly drizzle the polenta into the boiling water, whisking as you do so it doesn’t lump. When you have all the dry polenta into the water, switch to a spoon. Wood works well here.

Stir the gluey mixture to get it smooth, turn the heat to a simmer under the pot and cover the polenta. Cook the mixture for 1 1/2 hours, stirring and adding the remaining boiling water as is necessary to keep the polenta from turning into cement. Four cups of water to one cup of polenta is usual for this use but you may add more to make it the consistency of mashed potatoes and serve it with a mushroom ragu or tomato sauce. When the polenta is creamy and has lost its graininess, stir in the soft butter and salt to taste.

Butter a commercial half sheet pan with sides and pour the hot polenta onto it. Quickly, with a damp spatula, spread the polenta smoothly about 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick. Let the polenta cool. Cut out small rounds (or whatever shape you decide) with a cookie cutter.

Place the polenta shapes on a sheet pan and top them with cheese or the red onion jam. Top the jam with cheese. Heat them briefly in a hot oven or under a broiler to melt the cheese. Garnish the cheese rounds with a toasted walnut or tiny strips of roasted red bell pepper criss-crossed on top. Serve them while warm.

Red onion jam
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 1/2 pounds red onions, thinly sliced
1 cup red wine or Marsala
1 tablespoon sugar, more as needed
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, to taste
salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium low heat. Add the onions and cook until wilted then cover and cook until very soft, another 15 to 20 minutes. Stir. Add the wine or Marsala, increase the heat and cook until it evaporated. Add the sugar and vinegar, to taste, and cook until dry. Season onion jam with salt and pepper to taste.

Posted by editor at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)

Singing in the Summertime

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

Do you remember the pure fun of singing as a child? Growing up in the 1960s, some of my earliest memories include kids sitting on the floor around a nun with a guitar, belting out, “If I Had a Hammer,” and “This Land is Your Land.” At the playground, my sister and I would soar on swings, while our voices flew above the tree leaves, raucously chorusing, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Feelin’ Groovy,” and “The Sound of Music.”

Somehow, as we grew older, the notion of singing as fun became lost in performance and judgment, talent shows and celebrity. Now, rather than gathering around an accompanist to sing, many people gather around the television to watch the wannabe stars of American Idol, or hunker down in concert seats while others make merry with their professional voices.

Photo by Ginger Campbell

Dick DeVinney of Glen Arbor aims to change this trend, in Leelanau County, at least. Three years ago, the intrepid choir director began Summer Singers, sponsored by the Glen Arbor Arts Association, as a way to offer musical participation to anyone who wanted to sing, regardless of their experience or perceived ability.

“The number one thing you need to bring to the Singers is enthusiasm,” Dick explains. “There is no typical [music] person in our group; it’s open to anyone who wants to come,” even if they can’t make all the practices, due to family commitments or travel. Dick notes that choir members come from all over the area, including Northport, Benzie and Traverse City, to take part in the weekly “sing out” at the host site in Burdickville’s Community Reformed Church.

Dick brings a wealth of musical knowledge, experience, and people skills to this joyful endeavor. He retired to Glen Arbor several years ago, after several concurrent musical careers in Grand Rapids. He taught music theory and computer music at Grand Rapids Community College full-time; was organist and choir director at an area Methodist church; led adult choirs on two tours of Europe; and wrote concert reviews and music features for the Grand Rapids Press. In his so-called retirement, he and his wife Marian own and operate Synchronicity Art Gallery in Glen Arbor, and he is the organist at Leland’s Community United Methodist Church.

Dick emphasizes that the Summer Singers is not about him, but about creating a great mix of people who love to sing. This year, he hopes to expand the musical repertoire, including works by John Rutter; Randall Thompson’s “Alleluia”; a vocal jazz piece, “Autumn Leaves,” arranged by Traverse City Central High School’s music director Jeff Cobb; and the traditional “You Go to My Head,” which he hopes will both challenge and delight participants.

Choir practice can be bewildering to the novice singer, including references to half steps, treble and bass clefs, sharps and flats. However, this need not be cause for alarm. Music is pattern, rhythm, a secret language that becomes more accessible the more it’s practiced. And the reward is pure euphoria, ascending in a physical wave from the solar plexus and out of the throat on the wings of a poignant line of melody or robust harmony.

Developing the skill of active listening also proves useful, although it requires concentration to discern others’ sung notes. During a particularly enthusiastic song rehearsal last summer, Dick stopped the group to briefly discuss listening. “When others are singing loudly, the tendency is to try to sing more and more loudly, too, but soon you can’t hear what your fellow singers are doing. If you sing more quietly, you’ll actually be a better group, because you’ll be able to hear what everyone else is doing.”

Listening also helps tremendously at the beginning of a song. There is a mysterious alchemy that occurs when a choir simultaneously nails the opening notes, as they pull that A, G, or C out of thin air. Asked how this serendipity happens, Dick smiles like the Mona Lisa and says, “It just comes together.”

Veteran Summer Singers tenor Dick Kay of Empire states that, “I do this because it’s fun!” although he comes from a singing background that was limited to long-ago school choirs, and more recently, the Leelanau Community Choir, which meets in Suttons Bay in winter.

Alto Joellen Evans of Cedar recounts some of the gifts that music has brought into the lives of her family. “I met my husband John in a church choir in the Detroit area when I was 15, and he was 16. Our high school had a strong music program, and both John and I got scholarships to Interlochen [Music Camp] in singing. All of our children have had many opportunities in life because of music, and two of our kids became music teachers.”

The recently retired postmistress of Maple City is also an accomplished choir director, leading 45 adult Sunday singers in four-part harmony at the Leland Methodist Church for over 30 years. She describes her husband (and fellow Summer Singer) John as “my star tenor,” and it’s clear from the warmth and affection in her voice that music has woven strong bonds into their decades-long marital collaboration. (John also plays trombone in the Encore Winds, and has been a frequent pit orchestra member at Glen Lake High School’s musicals.)

Joellen reflects on the importance of singing as a lifelong passion and avocation. “After working hard all day, often the last thing I wanted to do was go to choir practice! I felt like I could be dragged kicking and screaming there — but five minutes into practice, it’s heavenly!”

She continues, “There is nothing quite as intimate as singing with other people. It’s a real sharing of who you are, even with people who are totally opposite of what your belief systems are. You’re in it together, as strong as your weakest singer, so people pull together to help each other out.” A Shaker hymn, performed by the 2005 Summer Singers, perhaps sums up the feeling best:

“…and when we find ourselves in a place just right,
we will be in the valley of love and delight.”

Summer Singers will meet for eight Tuesdays, beginning June 20 until August 8, from 7-9 p.m. at the Glen Lake Reformed Church in Burdickville (this is not a church singing group; the church has kindly lent its space to the Singers for a third year). ALL ARE WELCOME regardless of experience or ability. Contact Dick DeVinney at 334-7695 for more information.

Posted by editor at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

The goddess of dogs

By Mary Sharry
Sun contributor

If someone hadn’t stopped me, I might have sacrificed my own life for the life of a certain dog when I was only nine years old.

I loved dogs, abhorred inhumane treatment of them, and wept over a story about Beautiful Joe, a dog whose ears had been cut off by his cruel master. When Skippy, my dog, died I offered prayers to his spirit. Before an orange-crate altar — a shrine displaying his photo, some candles, and bits of his fur, I proclaimed myself the Goddess of Dogs.

Soon after my sanctification and then my parents’ divorce, I went to live in Detroit with my grandparents in the parsonage of the church where Grandpa was a minister. My new home was a Tudor-style structure with mullioned windows, textured plaster walls, and carpets that smelled of jute and shoe polish.

Tall elms lined the street of my new neighborhood, which was a cultural mix of Germans, Poles, Belgians and Italians. Grandpa carried a good amount of Scots-Irish blood in him. I was an almost unidentifiable breed of mongrel.

Two doors away lived an Italian family who never seemed to speak in normal voices. They shouted. Through the autumn air you could hear insults coming from their house. The expletives were a mixture of their native language and broken English, which blended into a third tongue. These sounds were often accompanied by the howl of Toby, their pet beagle, and a corresponding “Shut Up” response.

Emilia, the daughter of this family, became my best friend. She confessed to me that she wanted to be a nun when she grew up. I confided my passion for canines, and told her I thought of becoming a veterinarian when I grew up although I did not go so far as to reveal the real me — my goddess self.

Emilia’s hair was dark, and her brown eyes reminded me of Skippy’s. I was fascinated by the faint growth of hairs over her upper lip and, although I never told her, I envied her possession of that shadow of whiskers.

Sammy was Emilia’s brother. Freckle-faced and red-haired, he was eleven years old, and mean. He didn’t resemble his sister at all, which made me consider how dogs could be brother and sister, but not littermates.

One afternoon Sammy came running down the sidewalk toward Emilia and me with Toby at the end of a leash. Toby’s toenails scraped along the pavement as his little legs tried to keep up with Sammy. I pleaded, “Slow down. Wait for Toby. You’re hurting him.”

“Sic ‘em,” Sammy said and unhooked the little dog’s leash, but instead of attacking, Toby ran to me and licked my arms and wrists, gratefully wagging his tail.
* * *

Emilia’s grandfather lived in the basement of her family’s brick bungalow. The basement smelled of cigarettes, garlic and salami. Down there, from a clothesline, hung sausages and spicy pepperoni, which the old man made just as he once did in the Old Country.

The grandfather slept on an army cot, and would venture upstairs only to go outside to his garden. When the old man spoke, his voice rolled through thick phlegm and jagged brown teeth. His heavy, accented words were difficult to understand. I pretended not to hear him when he growled at us kids to stay out of his tomatoes, even though we were nowhere near his garden.
* * *

My goddess transfiguration came about one day when I was outdoors in my Grandpa’s backyard. From there I heard the slam of the screen door at Emilia’s house and Toby’s distinct hound dog yowl. Her grandfather hollered and cussed in his ragged voice, “You goddam beetch, ah-ma gonna keel you!”

I looked across the two driveways that separated the backyards between our houses and saw the old man swing Toby through the air by the collar. The dog’s glossy ears flew at angles, his legs hung limp, and I saw the terrified white of his eyes.

Swiftly, I ran over there and wrapped my arms around the middle of that horrible human beast. I kicked at him while he dragged the helpless hound across the concrete. The old man let go of the dog. Toby slunk around the corner of the house. The remains of a sausage lay upon the pavement. Now the furious monster’s hands were on me. His grooved yellow fingernails pressed into my head, my shoulders, my arms. My face was buried in smells of sweat and putrid tobacco.

Suddenly, an even greater force wheeled me from the red face of the old man. I heard my own Grandpa’s stern voice say over and over, “Now see here. Now see here.” He must have heard the commotion from upstairs in his bedroom and rushed over to Emilia’s.

Other than the black Sunday robe he wore in church, I had never seen him dressed in anything besides a white shirt, black vest and trousers, and well-shined black shoes. Here he was in his stocking feet, clad only in a white t-shirt and trousers with suspenders that looped about his hips. Amazingly, he scolded, not Emilia’s grandfather, but me. “Stop now. Here! What is the matter with you?”

I cried out, “I hate him. I hate him.”

Grandpa apologized to the other old man