Glen Arbor Sun

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August 23, 2007

Firefighters practice their skills

Glen Arbor firefighters demonstrate methods used to extinguish a car fire during the annual Open House.

Photo by Joanne Rettke

The Glen Arbor Sun has concluded publishing for the summer, but we'll print three "off-season" issues, on September 13, November 7 and January 17. Look for coverage of the Tour de Leelanau bike race, recently discovered log cabins in the National Park, holiday shopping and natural essays on the changing seasons in our fall and winter issues.

Posted by editor at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

Chatter au lait … and Coffee, too

By Joanne Bender
Sun contributor

They meet daily at the Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company in Glen Arbor, winter, spring, summer and fall. Outside or inside, depending on weather conditions. “They” includes the “regulars” and most are “locals.” Why? To talk, to laugh, to chide one another and to have a cup of java.

The group has been meeting every day for a number of years … whenever they’re in town. On this particular Wednesday in mid-August, Mike, Morrie, Ken, Gretchen, Tom, Dick, Dan, Eunice and Jim were sipping and slipping into their day.

Camaraderie abounds!

Early morning arrivals choose the table, pull up chairs and someone begins talking. Others chime in and newcomers arrive, the circle widens and the new arrivals pull up chairs without any introduction. They are welcome.

Picking up fragments of many conversations is confusing at first. But soon one picks up a thread of interesting verbal exchange and joins in. Everyone is very comfortable with everyone else.

Ears buzz as chatter swings from talk of bikes, to books, then back to bikes, then on to golf and best courses, then back to bikes. In between one hears a punch line for a joke.

Someone has dubbed this gathering “a support group for those who don’t work.” They may not work anymore (though some still do) but most have enjoyed interesting and varied careers … from being a physician, an artist, a psychologist, a resort owner, an investment banker to a federal judge and many other occupations in between.

A varied and very interesting bunch they are.

Stuart, a retired federal judge, rides a recumbent bike, a “Tadpole” with two wheels in front and one in back, and has spread his love of riding this particular model to Dan and Mike. And Mike is looking for one to purchase. Mike now rides a tour bike, but is ready to move on. Someone chimed in with the fact that recumbent bikes can cost $2,000 each.

Quickly the conversation shifts to discussion of the Crystal Lake Golf course and what terrific shape it’s in. It’s also a good deal, according to Dick. He reports that it’s only $25 to play 18 holes Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and “$20 on Tuesday and Thursday, “though it’s crowded on those days,” he reports. He also mentions having hit the roof of a house with a golf ball recently after hitting an apparent errant shot.

Mike tells a story about scales and Dan compares it to a tale about a semi truck full of canaries that weigh less when flying around inside than when stationary, so the driver regularly bangs on the side of the truck to keep them air born. (This reporter misses a point somewhere … still, everyone nods heads and chuckles).

Back to bike banter … Dan has an Imron (which he bought from Stuart four weeks ago) and Mike is looking at Optimas (made in Holland), Green Speed (Australian) or Wiz Wheelz (manufactured in Grand Rapids).

Someone says recumbent biking is “an infectious disease” spread by The Judge, Stuart, who is also dubbed the group’s “resident liberal.”

The talk shifts to books. Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, and his newest novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns are recommended. Mike doesn’t think these are men’s books … he prefers Ludlum or Baldacci. Tom disagrees, saying he enjoyed The Kite Runner. Tom also recommends reading Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book about a radical Mormon movement. Gretchen suggests reading Three Cups of Tea.

Then Dan’s mother, Eunice, visiting from the Chicago area, speaks about Glen Arbor being a wonderful place in which to raise children. Dan and his wife Jan owned and operated a local resort for 20 years.

Eunice is in town to attend a conference at the Interlochen Arts Academy.

She plays the cello and will join musicians from all over the world this week to play in various chamber music groups.

Eunice mentioned having played her cello in the former Czechoslovakia in 1990 during a chamber music concert with the only other two English-speaking musicians in attendance and what a rewarding experience that was.

Tom, a retired physician, and his wife, Gretchen, will spend three months next winter in St. Martens with friends, where Tom will be teaching a couple of days each week.

Someone says something negative about presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and another defends him and his health plan for Massachusetts when he was governor. Another speaks negatively about Hilary Clinton and then she is praised.

That’s it. Time for everyone to leave. And without any fanfare and few salutations, that’s what they do: all smiling, still good friends, already planning their next venture for the day.

Parting good-byes are not necessary. They know they will rendezvous again tomorrow. Same time (from around 8-10:30 a.m.), same place, but perhaps not the same conversation. And maybe Peter, Lois, Don, Marcia and Paul, regulars absent today, will join them, too.

Posted by editor at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

New photographer sends a Ripple throughout local art scene

By Corin Blust
Sun contributor

Jeff Ripple may be “a Florida boy at heart,” but after marrying local Pam Lincoln last July he has begun to embrace the idyllic rolling hills and gentle landscape that characterizes Leelanau County. Ripple’s breathtakingly detailed wilderness photographs are on display at his new gallery and studio, Ripple Effect, on Front Street in Empire, next to the Blue Heron.

Jeff was born in Ft. Lauderdale, but his family moved around the American South quite a bit during his childhood. Before Ripple was seven years old he had already lived in Florida, Las Vegas, Missouri, Tennessee and South Carolina.

Even though Jeff is colorblind, he has “always been into art.” He drew and painted as a child, but “when I was about 17 I got to a point where I couldn’t do wildlife anymore so I gave up on it,” focusing instead on writing. He attended colleges in Iowa and Missouri before graduating from Florida Atlantic University with a degree in English.

That English degree led Jeff to write natural history books. He has published nine books to date on subjects spanning from Sea Turtles to Manatees and Dugongs to the Florida Keys. Jeff’s most recent book is Day Paddling Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp and 10,000 Islands, published by Countryman Press in 2004. His books feature epic photographs and eloquently written information.

Jeff’s photography and articles have also appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Outside, BBC Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation, Boating Life, Sail, Men’s Fitness, Falcon Guides and Audubon Field Guides.

After taking a three- or four-year hiatus from making his own visual art, Jeff found himself in the Ozarks, wishing for a better camera. “It’s a beautiful landscape there and there was so much I wanted to do with that, I wanted to make art of that, and all I had was a horrible little instamatic,” he remembers.

Once he moved back to Florida, Jeff “was bound and determined to get a real camera,” which ended up being an old Canon 81 35 millimeter. “A friend showed me how to load the film, and I started out with that,” he recalls.

About a year later, a coworker showed Jeff a book by landscape photographer David Muench, and “it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They were mostly big desert landscapes and the amount of detail from the foreground all the way back, the crispness and the depth, I was just enchanted by them. I knew that was what I wanted to do, make images like that.”

So Jeff, who is an entirely self-trained photographer, bought some books on photography and “set up in my yard with concrete blocks and worked on my depth of field until I could get the camera to do what I wanted.”

Over 20 years later, it’s clear that Jeff Ripple has certainly become a master wilderness photographer. His images, which often incorporate water, are rich with crystal clear detail, a wide variety of textures, beautiful backcountry settings, and light that spills luxuriously over the frame, elements that culminate to create a rare sense of drama.

Today he works with a “big wooden camera and very slow film, anywhere from a second to more than a minute” so that he can get a good “sense of activity- swirling water, clouds, wind,” in his photographs, he explains. His camera folds up into a box, which he then fits into a waterproof backpack and takes into the field on his kayak, or shoots from the platform he built on top of his van. This enables him to really get out into the wilderness and capture some images many of us would normally never see.

Visit his gallery and you will find yourself lost in the wilderness that Jeff so carefully documents. His large format photographs are especially enthralling because the wealth of detail he captures is so clear and crisp, it is the next best thing to actually being in the landscape; possibly even better because Jeff’s take on the land is so carefully visualized.

Since Jeff is relatively new to Leelanau County, he is still getting adjusted to the difference in climate from Florida. “I like sunshine,” he says, “It’s the lack of sun in the winter that would do me in.” Nevertheless, Ripple still enjoys the landscape around our area. “It has really expressive skies, and a kind of pastoral-type landscape, it’s not rugged. It has a very pleasing feel to it, and wonderful light, being a peninsula.”

Look for Ripple Effect in the third annual Fall For Art in Leelanau galley tour, October 5-7. Jeff Ripple will also be conducting photography classes next summer. To find out more about Jeff’s work or to purchase prints, stop by the gallery on Front Street in Empire, visit www.jeffripple.com or call (239) 642-2255.

Posted by editor at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

Mike Vanderberg: Free Thinker, Anarchist, Village Anchor

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

Since the sudden death of Mike Vanderberg on August 11, at the site of the recent Dunegrass Music Festival, residents of the Village of Empire and beyond have responded to the news with shock, sadness and a sense of disbelief. This generous, eccentric spirit created and presided over village politics, institutions, events and even controversies for nearly three decades, leaving his mark on virtually every aspect of life in the picturesque coastal community.

Glen Arbor resident Beth Bricker, whose daughter Hannah Clark attended the alternative Blue Heron School that Mike helped start in the 1980s, described an impromptu midnight parade that family and friends created on the night after he died. His wife Carol and daughters Amelia, Alyce and Ashley walked barefooted down the street, while Mike’s old truck, festooned with vines, held a band of musicians who hopped out periodically to serenade spectators. A motorcyclist, speakers belting out “Amazing Grace” and the 1960s hit “Lean On Me,” acted as parade marshal, stopping any traffic that threatened to disrupt the ceremonial cortege, as it made its way from Front Street to the Dunegrass field near St. Philip Neri Catholic Church on LaCore Street.

In addition to his work with the Village Planning Commission, which he founded with a small group of residents, Mike created and nurtured several cultural events that have since become solid village traditions, including February’s annual Winterfest, with its infamous Polar Dip in South Bar Lake, and Anchor Day, celebrating the town’s maritime heritage. His best-known creation is the Sleeping Bear Dunegrass and Blues Festival. Originally a one-day showcase of local bands, the festival has expanded over 15 years to become a four-day extravaganza of regional and national music acts, drawing over 10,000 participants to the most recent event, which ended on August 5.

Doug Chapman of Cedar is one of the core Dunegrass volunteers who worked with Mike since the festival’s second year; along the way, the two kindred spirits became “dear friends. He had a thousand friends and his family became my family.” He describes Mike as “a freethinking engineer of the creative force. And yes, he was an anarchist against the dark force that tried to stop the flow.” Each year, it seemed that the festival would founder under the weight of disapproval from village administrators and irate neighbors of the original site on M-72, across from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore headquarters. Yet somehow, each year, Mike and Carol magically managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat, and Dunegrass played on again.

Doug also recalls the saga of the dog Lopez, a family pet whose misadventures in the village resulted in a harsh sentence that was never carried out, thanks to Mike’s stonewalling. “The judge sentenced Lopez to be put to death. When [the Vanderbergs] wouldn’t produce said dog, the judge ruled, ‘Well, somebody’s got to sit in jail for 30 days.’ Mike volunteered to do it. Temporarily I harbored the condemned fugitive ‘til I found it a home in Alaska. Mike never held a grudge; if he had one, he’d say it right out and deal with it,” he says.

In addition to saving his daughter’s dog, Mike paid bail for arrested acquaintances, arranged airfare home for a troubled teen, offered the use of his truck to stranded strangers, and kept open arms and an open door at his house, offering refuge to a number of sojourners for both short and extended periods of time. Some of these, mainly young people, became known as “The Pod,” a communal family that has flourished under the Vanderbergs’ free-spirited nurturance. One of Mike’s extended family, Sarah Jane Grierson, sang a hauntingly beautiful solo at his funeral on August 15, while longtime Dunegrass cohort “Wild Bill,” who traditionally closes each festival with a flute rendition of “Amazing Grace, concluded the service with the hymn.

Like everyone else, Mike had his feet of clay, but they only served to make this complex individual more intriguing, and increased the respect and admiration many people felt for him. The Glen Lake Library on Front Street is neighbor to both the Vanderberg residence and the Blue Heron building where many of the family and friends’ creative impulses unfold. Library director and Village Council member David Diller, who saw him almost daily for 10 years, recalls his early impressions.

“I couldn’t help but walk past their house and think, ‘What an interesting group of people live here. Is this a youth hostel or what?’ At first, they seemed to be freewheeling scofflaws, but the more I got to know him, the more respect I had for his ability to be his own guy. He didn’t always follow the rules, and it was well-known that he had some demons, but he was well-intentioned, very creative, and made the community a lot more interesting.”

He reflects, “He made interesting lifestyle choices. The Pod seems pretty foreign to most, but it worked for him. I admired him — and the family — for the way they choose to be independent nonconformists. The Vanderbergs have their own style, which is hard for some people to accept, but ultimately, they’re real assets to the community. Mike was a breath of fresh air, and very, very committed to Empire.”

Phil Deering, owner of Deering’s Market, also recalls his former manager with great warmth. “He was my manager for at least 10 or 12 years. Anyone calling up, needing anything, he was there. He made sure we had Anchor Day, and Winterfest, the Polar Dip. I was on the Planning Commission with him at least 15 years, he was there making sure the community didn’t get too far away from its roots.”

Phil continues, “He was always looking after the underdog, and if people said, ‘Eh, that ain’t going to work,’ he’d come up with a way to make it happen.” Other employees, including Shaunna Peacock of Empire, who worked with him for about four years, says, “He was loved by all and will be greatly missed.”

About Dunegrass, Phil muses, “I wondered how much fun he was having [in recent years] … great to be successful, but at the same time, it got pretty big. He put his whole heart and soul into it. I think, at least before you left, you got to see your dream come true.”

Recently, Mike left Deering’s to pursue other business ventures. He took a crash course in sound recording at Northwestern Michigan College, and outfitted the Blue Heron building with recording equipment, so that musicians could record CDs. He also started a labor collective, matching up carpenters, painters and others for jobs people needed done. His work as local coordinator for recent Dunegrass Festivals occupied him as well, although in the past three or four years, he entered into a partnership with Grassroots Productions, who booked the music acts, while Mike remained as local coordinator with vendors, volunteers, village administrators and nearby property owners.

Perhaps Mike’s greatest gift was his ability to provoke others into new thoughts and untested actions, then calmly ride the waves of strong opinion and stormy opposition to a place where people could come together, to make a stronger community that is friendly, family-oriented and fun. Like the famous anchor on the beach, he remains one of Empire’s most stalwart symbols.

A celebration of Mike Vanderberg’s life will be held on his birthday, September 30, at the Empire Town Hall. Look for more details on this and the fundraiser for the Vanderberg family in the September 13 issue of the Glen Arbor Sun or visit us on the web at www.glenarborsun.com.

Posted by editor at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)

Kids’ Camp popular at Township Park

By Joanne Bender
Sun contributor

Mahrle Siddall (4), Sophie Ramont (7) Marcaira Midgley (4) and Audrey Ramont (4) were hard at work creating sand paintings, with a few googly eyes and colored puffballs added for astonishing effects. They were just a few of the happy kids busy at the art table at Glen Arbor Township Park on a Tuesday this summer.

This is just one activity supervised by Kelly Woodward and Leah Hilton, staff members, every Tuesday and Thursday for nine weeks all summer long. The group of campers at Kids’ Camp, sponsored by the Township, spent happy hours creating, running, jumping, climbing, laughing, giggling and lunching.

Camp was open to children ages three to six, but a few two and a half year olds and a couple of seven year olds were warmly welcomed, too. Some days saw 20 to 25 kiddies attending. The ninth week was a “bonus”, an additional two sessions requested by happy parents of the children.

Special activities were planned for each meeting of the enthusiastic campers.

They were seen beading, making bracelets and necklaces. They constructed rainmakers from tubes filled with rice, they hiked up Alligator Hill and they toured the Glen Arbor Fire Station. On that day, rain fell following their trip so they dined on their sack lunches inside Cherry Republic.

Other activities included planting lavender, poppies and sunflowers in containers that took root at Kelly’s house and then were taken home by each camper. They enjoyed filling Cherry Republic jam jars with Petoskey and Mancala stones, a colorful gift for their moms.

The children enjoyed making foam visors with different foam shapes adorning each one. And they loved the day when playing with a parachute stretched by each child and bounced balls in the middle. “And we hid underneath it, too,” added Gray Raymond, age five.

Gray’s fifth birthday was celebrated at camp on August 14 when he brought cup cakes for everyone.

Kelly is a senior at the University of Michigan, majoring in political science. She plans to work for “Teach for America” for a couple of years after she graduates next spring. Leah is a junior at Albion College, majoring in physical education on the elementary school level. Leah would like to be a “nanny” for a family in a large city following graduation in 2009, prior to beginning a teaching career.

Staff for the camp, which was the idea of (a few years ago) and is still organized by Glen Arborite Becky Sutherland, also included Sara Stratz, Chelsea Klumpp and Will Thomas.

Posted by editor at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)

Tireless Connie Binsfeld looks forward to Narrows Bridgewalk

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Connie Binsfeld, the Burdickville resident and former lieutenant governor of Michigan under John Engler, hasn’t missed a single Labor Day Bridgewalk, and she doesn’t plan on watching from the sidelines this year either. The popular annual trek across the Carl Oleson Jr. Memorial Bridge, which splits Big and Little Glen Lake at the Narrows on M-22, officially marks the end of summer, and will take place this year at noon on Monday, September 3.

Binsfeld has led the procession throughout the Bridgewalk’s first 10 years, either on foot or riding in a golf cart or a sheriff’s squad car, and though she isn’t as mobile as she was during her 28 years in public office (she retired in 1998), 2007 shouldn’t be any different.

“For us the Bridgewalk is nostalgic. For over 50 years we’ve crossed that bridge, since the days when we lived on Little Glen Lake,” says Binsfeld. “Longtime residents and newcomers alike both enjoy the walk.” Binsfeld’s favorite Bridgewalk memory was in 2000, when a ceremony to celebrate the millennium unfolded and flowers were thrown into the lake as a tribute “to those who came before us.”

The t-shirts commemorating this year’s Bridgewalk are designed by local artist Lois Saltsman, printed by Roger Poppa at Petoskey Pete’s and available for purchase at Dune Wear and T’nT Video in Glen Arbor, Roman Jones in Empire and at the event itself. Proceeds benefit the Boy Scouts. As usual, the Bridgewalk will end for lunch at the Narrows Deli on the south side of the bridge.

From the Glen Arbor Sun archives: an interview with Connie Binsfeld, August 1998, the same year she was elected to the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame

“My mother really didn’t want me to run for public office. She was always real patriotic, giving American flags to all her students. Yet when I told her I was running for the Michigan House of Representatives, she said, ‘Oh dear, I wish you wouldn’t do that. Those politicians — they’re just not very good people. I wish you wouldn’t become one of them.’ My mother sent me a news clipping from the local newspaper when I was elected, that encouraged politicians to ‘stick their thumbs in their mouths the first six months they're in office.’ She eventually came down to Lansing, got her picture taken with former Governor (William) Milliken and changed her mind.

“People asked me to run for County Commissioner when the Park bill passed [39] years ago. We were concerned about protecting what we had, and still helping the National Park. It was an interesting time; people were against all the planning and zoning. Before they could do what they wanted, now the Park was coming in. We had to create a marriage between the Park and the people.”

Posted by editor at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

Local author Anne-Marie Oomen steers us on a journey of discovery

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor

When Anne-Marie Oomen found the book International Code of Signals in the lifesaver’s museum at Glen Haven in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, she “was fascinated by these hundreds of codes to guide the ships and sailors,” she recalls. The book, prepared and published by the Defense Mapping Agency of the U.S. government in 1993, includes letters and combinations of letters for the semaphores used at sea to alert other ships what is happening on board, such as UT: “where are you bound for?”

Anne-Marie, who chairs the Creative Writing Department at Interlochen Arts Academy and lives near Empire, started using the codes as prompts for poetry. Codes like PR1: “you should come as near as possible” and D: “keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty,” were perfect ways to write, not about ships and sailors, but about everyday life and the moods that everyone experiences. As she wrote her poems from the codes, a persona sprung from the page, a character complete with her own story. And so the book, un-coded woman, was born.

Un-coded woman, published last year by Milkweed Editions, tells the story of a young woman named Beatrice (Bead for short), and her life near Lake Michigan. Each poem gets its name from the codes in International Code of Signals. The first poem, titled KS1: “I Have Taken the Line,” describes the meeting of Bead and her boyfriend Barn, on her journey away from the south. From this poem Bead embarks on a journey of discovery and the beauty of life, through poems and the ever-present message of the codes, Anne-Marie says. “They’re poems but they tell a story, which is interesting because we think of poetry as telling the truth.” Anne-Marie has certainly created an original book, and browsing through it will convince the reader that all stories could be told through poems. The details are condensed and concise, just enough for the reader to understand the plot and enjoy a lovely poem at the same time.

Un-coded woman is Anne-Marie’s first book of poems and follows two memoirs, Pulling Down the Barn (2004, Wayne State University Press) and House of Fields (2006, Wayne State University Press), all of which are available at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor and other local bookstores. Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields were recognized as Michigan Notable Books. Pulling Down the Barn revisits her childhood on a farm in downstate Oceana County, whereas House of Fields is about her education and was published at nearly the same time as un-coded woman last fall. After Pulling Down the Barn became a Michigan Notable Book in 2005, Anne-Marie was urged to write another memoir quickly, which led to House of Fields. The award eased her road to publishers. “The first book was sent out a lot and there were so many close calls,” says Anne-Marie, remembering the rejection letters albeit with encouraging notes inside from the editors. “Then it is like a wall that you break or a door that finally opens, and the second two were much easier to find homes for,” she explains why her two most recent books shot into the market. “And I think I’ve gained confidence in how to talk to editors and publishers.”

Anne-Marie’s current project is another memoir, this time of her travels and experiences away from home, and has the working title of Finding my America. This is a book of “essays of place” from what Anne-Marie calls her days as a bohemian. She is very excited about her new project, which she claims is her favorite work to date. “I think we all learn about ourselves [when we write] but I think that these new essays about place are my favorite right now,” she attests, which makes sense since travel is such a huge inspiration.

But travel and events aren’t the only sources of Anne-Marie’s inspiration. “Most of all language inspires me, language used well, used in unique and different and fresh ways” she says, “it just gets me going.” And chairing the Creative Writing Department at Interlochen doesn’t hurt, since during the school year she meets every day with writers of every age and background, who often feed her muse.

Anne-Marie, who also founded the Dunes Review literary magazine and is one of the founders of the Beach Bards Bonfire poetry circle, recently returned from a six-week trip to Maine, which she used as a writing retreat. She rented a cabin there and took advantage of the alone time, without distractions, to work on her current project.

“I’ve always been what I call a scribbler,” Anne-Marie says. “I think everybody, I hope everybody has a way of coming to self expression, writing is mine. It is the lens through which I see the world.” Anne-Marie didn’t become serious about writing until her 30s when her first marriage ended. Since then she has written many plays, chapbooks of poems and essays. Her play Northern Belles has been performed around the Midwest.

But writing wasn’t always easy for her. One chapter in House of Fields deals with her struggle to learn to read and her obsession with it when she finally gets the knack. Yes that’s right, Anne-Marie Oomen once trailed the rest of the class in reading.

Anne-Marie is certainly one of the most important writers in northern Michigan for both her talent and her versatility in describing the northern life through poems and prose. We look forward to her next new book, written in a familiar voice, narrating the world away from home.

Poems from un-coded woman, by Anne-Marie Oomen
Milkweed Editions, 2006

00
My Radio Direction is Inoperative

For a while, running away blooms yellow as cucumber
with that scent that cleans like rain,

but in the end all you’re doing is getting lost
all over, and for all those miles and road meals,

it doesn’t stop the wish like a hard kiss
to know why the screen door slammed,

why the bruise of Mama’s hands never hurt me,
why the mast of Daddy’s limbs always did,

or why I am named Beatrice.

It’s like this: Just when I think memory is tucked
into some shotgun with the safety on,

that delicate odor of cucumber goes tacking
on the wind; then there’s the forced kiss

of remembering, a cracked-ice click just
before all the guns go off at once.

For short, they call me Bead —
a thing so small it should be forgotten.

B
I Am Discharging Dangerous Goods

I toss the ruddy roe
into the weedy current —
nothing as gone
as the look of eggs
spreading like a sheer cloud
in river wash.

The fish eat the roe.

I know I am part of it,
but not the part I want to be.
Folks will never say,
but I am the second sound,
letter that comes after,
long-haired woman,

tosser of eggs,
charged with danger
and knowing —
a million tiny golden apples —
or stars — ticking their soft
if, if, if.

BL
I Am Having Engine Trouble, but Am Continuing …

Pickup stalls on Snitch Road, engine dead.
My headlights can the night, sight
a critter climbing through osier.

She waddles the ditch,
slips into shallows. My beams toss back
her gloss, then just her wake.

One of the last in these parts.
Talk to me, I whisper.
I want to know:

Will you stop the creek,
shape one of those wide ponds
bordered with stump poplar?

Will you burrow under, hollow
out the mud? Build a fortress of
the lost ifs and dead maybes.

Geesh. Questions cheesy as old frosting.
Beaver’s Gone. Truck engine flares.
I backfire my way home.

Darkness just gets darker,
keeps its secret animal
invisible as the trouble some call love.

RI
There Is Good Holding Ground in My Area

For a while, no dead fish
stinking up the shore
and sleep is a fine new weather.

On the high ground, he runs a fence
to keep out deer. I plant tomatoes, beans,
collard greens I crave,

and even though they freeze out, enough
will live to fill us until the cold comes on.
I’m learning, certain desires are like that.

Once, he walks out with a hoe
to help with the pigweed and knotgrass,
catches me with a fist of wet loam,

smiles a new star, wraps
his beefy hands around mine. I let him.
Maybe dirt moors us more than water.

GM
I Cannot Save My Vessel

Shrub of purple lilac, heart-shaped leaves,
stone basement caved as an old face —
settler’s homestead where the foxes hide
their den under what was a potato bin.

If I’m quiet, they let me creep through,
watch awhile. The kits like popcorn.
They toss it, tiny white birds
Broken in their small teeth.

They could hear the lake all day.
They could drink from shallows,
chase minnows. The bitch brought
catch from the last of the run.

I was so sure they were a secret,
a thing I could hold
like only a few other things I hold,
a book of codes,

a past.
The pelts showed up
at Wild Market
three weeks after they disappeared.

Barn said some fool at Art’s Bar
told him some other damn fool
had tamed them, they were
that easy to trap.

I heard once the old homestead wives
buried their stillborn babies
under lilac bushes. I want
to crawl into their den,

let it cave in,
let the white birds fly
up into the purple air
with all the secrets.

YZ
The Words which Follow are in Plain Language

Instead, I run away.

Then the cursed wonder of it,
waking up in the sun in the cab —
having gotten stuck on some muck track
and busted the timing chain
in my rust-peppered pickup —
walking five grimy miles
back to the highway,
two more to the local tow,
then the phone,
and through all that limping sunlight,
the crows singing their glee club
chorus about what jerks we all are.
And I look up into the trees
thinking to tell them they are
f***ing correct
when it comes to me —

I still have it, I still have it,
this uncertain life,
this one plain, stained thing
with some small horizon
still splitting it in two.

Just to feel it
I kick some side-road rocks so hard
I break my steel-toes
I turn around, head to the only place
that feels like home.

The Code of Signals

These are what I use for meaning:
distresses between vessels,

ciphered glances over a shot of scotch,
cool curve of his arm in sleep;

how I speak when speech is shaped
by weather, groceries, short distances.

I have learned that love makes words
with storm, water, even fists

and the secrets we keep from the world
turn on themselves, become an alphabet

coded with the currents of our days —
a scum line which, when finally read,

spells out,
oh, what the hell is it? —

Sorrow?
Rare, befuddled joy?

Posted by editor at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

Ah! Sunflowers

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

For gardeners and farmers, summer is partially understood in terms of what is coming ripe at what time, so early on there are sugar snap peas and eventually fresh garlic, and eventually tomatoes and squash and soon there will be melons. We know where we are in the season based on what is coming ripe in the fields. At this time of year I’m mainly paying attention to the flowers, which I helped to transplant into the ground last spring. What began as long rows of tender seedlings has exploded into profusions of color and fragrance.

For flower growers, summer starts with peonies and lilies and progresses with zinnias and snapdragons. By early August, we begin to see the first sunflowers unfurling their bright petals in the jungles of stalks and rustling where they have been steadily reaching toward the sky for months.

These are by far the most beloved of the flowers we grow for sale and yet their arrival is a moody event for many of us on the farm. Their appearance carries with it the realization that we are ever so gradually leaning toward fall, and we begin to be aware that summer is winding down and we lament that the number of beach days is on a decline rather than an increase.

In a small act of defiance, we don’t cut the first flush of sunflowers as if to spare anyone else noticing that the days are getting a little shorter and the light is bending differently across the fields. In early August, we reason that other people—those who buy flowers—will be similarly ambivalent about the appearance of these emblems of late summer, and so we spare them for a week or so, focusing on a baudy palette of mixed flowers.

But now, my fellow flower girls and I are in the sunflower patch for several hours a day, looking each bloom in the face before we cut and gather what we find into tall buckets to take to market. The bees are in there with us, buzzing away, and increasingly zealous. Our afternoons pass to the hum of thousands of pollinators who dive head first into the flowers, sometimes sticking in the sweet center where some of them will die decadently.

A customer at Hansen’s Supermarket in Suttons Bay was buying sunflowers recently and asked why some of the blooms face straight up toward the sky, while others face to the side or even bend a little in odd directions. She wanted to know if they track the sun as it travels across the sky. Jenny Tutlis, on whose farm I work, explained that sunflowers we are cutting always face the rising sun. The question may come from the fact that young sunflowers in the budding phase exhibit heliotropism, which is to say, they follow the sun throughout the day. As they mature, those motor cells in the flexible segment of the stem just below the bloom, firm up and no longer move from east to west as the sun does.

Our own awareness of what is happening up above is shifting around right now. After the spectacular Perseid showers on the weekend of August 12th, I sense a shift in the cosmos, as if those meteors were relics of summer, falling, falling away into the lakes whose surfaces have become choppier. Now the sun slants somewhat starkly and the winds have kicked up the way they do every year at this time, preparing the waters for surfers and cooling off the land temperatures. Indeed, summer is drawing to a close.

Lately I’ve been revisiting Georgia O’Keefe’s life and art. While reading about her fascination with painting large portraits of flowers, I came across a remark she made in 1976 about this practice of looking closely at subjects so often beneath the notice of others. She said, “A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower — the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small. So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they may be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I make of flowers.”

I often bring home leftover flowers from the farm and have them around the house, brightening up the dark corners and sweetening up every room. I like to give them away as well and it seems a tremendous joy to bestow upon someone; a simple gesture that always elicits pleasure. Even the slightly bedraggled zinnias or sunflowers missing a petal or two are sure to bring pure happiness to someone who has just spent the day wrangling small children or driving back and forth from an indoor job. Like the poet Mary Oliver so aptly puts it, we should all get closer to these things of beauty when we can for “each of them, though it stands/ in a crowd of many/ like a separate universe,// is lonely, the long work/ of turning their lives / into a celebration / is not easy. Come // and let us talk with those modest faces, / the simple garments of leaves, / the coarse roots in the earth / so uprightly burning.”

Posted by editor at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

The fight to save Tiger Stadium

From staff reports

September is just around the corner, and for the second year in a row, our beloved Detroit Tigers are eyeing the playoffs, and if the pitching holds up, another trip to the World Series (they haven’t done that since 1934-35!). But while baseball’s all the rage downtown at stylish Comerica Park, her predecessor, old Tiger Stadium may be on its deathbed.

Photo courtesy of Flickr.com, circa 1987

The 95-year-old park, which was recognized as an endangered historic place in 1991 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, birthed a lifetime of memories for countless Michigan sports fans, yet hasn’t hosted Major League Baseball since 1999 (or any baseball since 2000 when Billy Crystal’s movie “61*” about Roger Maris’ chase of Babe Ruth’s single-season homerun record was filmed there) and could face the wrecking ball soon. The Detroit City Council voted 5-4 in late July to demolish the stadium, keep the playing field for youth baseball and use the rest of the land for low-rise housing and stores, according to The Detroit News.

Enter 89-year-old Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell, the voice of the Tigers from 1960-2002, who is lobbying Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to redevelop the site and save the old “house by the side of the road” from oblivion. Harwell and his attorney are seeking funding to keep Tiger Stadium alive. In the spirit of historic preservation, and baseball memories, we hope Harwell succeeds.

Here are a couple stories about the old ballpark to put you in a nostalgic mood:

Play Ball
By Jack Lessenberry
From Michigan Radio, August 1

Tiger Stadium didn’t get as much press coverage as the owners would have liked when it first opened. Seems the front pages were dominated that week by the sinking of some boat called the Titanic. Still, the opening of what was then a magnificent state of the art baseball palace in Detroit caused quite a stir 95 years ago.

The year before, a rickety wooden structure known as Bennett Park stood in the same spot, on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull.

But in 1912 that vanished in place of a new concrete wonder, first called Navin Field. It was named after the Detroit Tigers principal owner, shrewd, penny-pinching old Frank Navin, a man who loved to gamble, but who would fight a player for months over a thousand-dollar raise.

Stadium financing was rather simple in those days. Navin wanted a new field, so he paid for one. After he died, the next owner finished enclosing the ballpark and renamed it Briggs Stadium after himself. Not till 1961 would it officially become Tiger Stadium.

Now, all indications are that it is about to become rubble. Ever since the Tigers played their last game there in September 1999, there have been countless schemes for redeveloping it.

Photos by Sarah Schenck, The Michigan Daily

I never thought any of them would become reality, for a number of reasons. The people talking about turning the ballyard into luxury condos or boutiques had everything they needed except financing.

And men with money don’t commonly invest it in that part of Detroit. One who does have money and is willing to invest it is Mike Ilitch, the current owner of both the Tigers and the Detroit Red Wings, The Little Caesar’s pizza baron has poured millions into Detroit.

For the first six years after Comerica Park opened, the Tigers were a wretchedly bad baseball team. If someone had put an independent minor league club in the old park and charged eight dollars a ticket … attendance at Comerica might have swan-dived.

Now, however, things have changed. The Tigers are American League champions, and virtually every game at Comerica is sold out.

If there is anything Detroit doesn’t need, it is another vacant lot. Baseball is about history, and the place where Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle once played doesn’t deserve to disappear.

I think Ernie Harwell’s restoration project might well work, if done right, and it might well help revive the old Irish neighborhood called Corktown that surrounds the stadium. And in any event, it would be worth a try.

Just remember baseball’s two greatest maxims:

It ain’t over till it’s over, and … you never can tell.

Check out more of Jack Lessenberry’s columns from Michigan Radio at www.jackshow.blogs.com

Last Hurrah at the Corner of Michigan and Trumbull
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

This story originally ran in the Glen Arbor Sun in the fall of 1999.

DETROIT — Baseball immortal Kirk Gibson stood in the red dirt behind home plate at Tiger Stadium on the last weekend of the season, toeing the ground where he's walked many times before slugging a ball into the upper deck.

Yet the retired outfielder, whose gritty style of play epitomized the city in which he began and finished his career, wore tan, shiny loafers and a sport coat - looking more like he was attending a funeral than a baseball game.

There was talk of death in the family two weekends ago at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, and the mourners showed up in the tens of thousands to say good-bye to a staple figure in their lives. The Tigers abandoned their beloved park after the season’s last home game on September 27th.

“Sparky used to tell us, ‘The Babe is buried but baseball lives on’,” said Gibson, referring to longtime manager Sparky Anderson — the last skipper to guide Detroit to a World Series championship, in 1984.

Nostalgia also was in the air as some of the greatest Tigers in history were named to the All-Time Team before the second-to-the-last game. There were Gibson, Jack Morris and Alan Trammell: household names on the 1984 championship team. There were Al Kaline, Bill Freehan and Mickey Lolich from the 1968 championship team. Relatives of Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer, Hal Newhouser and even the infamous Ty Cobb — the man who once screamed racial slurs at baby-faced Babe Ruth from an opposing dugout — showed up to honor their names on the all-century lineup card.

Tiger players in the ballpark’s final game wore the All-Time Team’s jersey numbers, according to their positions in the field, with the exception of number-less Gabe Kapler who took Ty Cobb’s old spot in spacious centerfield. Cobb played in the days before teams wore numbers on their backs.

The final game hinged upon strikes, balls and outs. Like any other summer day, managers called for stolen bases and sacrifice bunts to push runners into scoring position. But in the course of three hours, those players, executives and fans who paid homage to this ancient ballpark reflected on entire lifetimes of composite summer afternoons. It inevitably brought some to tears.

“We have nostalgic feelings,” said Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell, who’s described nearly every play to many devoted Tigers fans with his soothing, grandfather-like voice. “I’ve spent more time at this park than I have at home. But you have to go on with your job.

“As fans, we’re going to miss the feeling of being right down by the players. The number one characteristic at Tiger Stadium is the double decks all the way around the park.”

But Harwell, who has been in the announcing business since 1948, is excited about the move to Comerica Park next year.

“I like these new stadiums,” he said, referring to similar new models in Texas, Baltimore and Cleveland. “They’re throwbacks to the old era with limited seating capacity, not ‘cookie-cutters’ like the stadiums in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.”

The current Tigers team also is enthusiastic about moving to the new ballpark, and it played like it the last weekend at The Corner. With an 8-2 victory in the last game and 6-1 and 11-3 shellings of Kansas City the two previous days, the Tigers looked like an inspired team playing in the heart of the pennant race — not the dismal team that lost more than 90 games and narrowly avoided the American League Central Division’s cellar this year.

“The atmosphere was like 1984,” said Tigers manager Larry Parrish. “It meant a lot to play well here this week with all the fans.”

The demise of Tiger Stadium drew 45,000 to the last game and more than 41,000 fans to the other games during the last series — an incredible contrast to earlier in the season when the team played poorly and fans saw little reason to visit the ancient shrine.

“The biggest thing for us is having people in the stands and consequently we’ve been playing some pretty decent baseball,” said Tony Clark, the team’s power-hitting first baseman. “That's something we don’t have a lot because of how the ball's been bouncing for us.”

The Tigers out-slugged and out-pitched the Royals in each of the last three games, behind two homers on Saturday and three home runs on Sunday and Monday.

In the season’s home finale, Mike Moehler held Kansas City to two runs as Luis Polonia, Karim Garcia and Robert Fick hit longballs. Fick, recently called up from the minor leagues, hit a grandslam onto the roof that would be the last hit ever at Tiger Stadium.

But more important than the three victories, the Tigers also hustled on every play, even when the games were all but put away. When Dean Palmer climbed onto the Tigers dugout and dived into the stands after a foul ball, in the eighth inning on Saturday, he wasn’t trying to catapult the Tigers into the playoffs. He was paying homage to the kind of baseball that blue-collar Detroit has relished for decades.

Posted by editor at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

A slice of heaven in Chef Gene’s kitchen

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

This summer, area residents and visitors alike have been making pilgrimages to the Cedar City Market, where they are embraced by the warmth of freshly brewed coffee, cinnamon rolled into golden pastries and nourishing, seasonal soups, all created by Chef Gene Payerk. He entered the culinary world less than a decade ago, but has already established a loyal following throughout Leelanau County with his disturbingly delicious desserts and other palate-pleasers.

“I like ‘scratch’ cooking,” relates the quiet, trim man in the crisp white jacket who has presided over Chef Gene’s Kitchen since the end of April. “When I make sandwiches, I could just use the bread here [in the store]. I’d rather make the two-day dough, roll it out three times — in my mind, that makes it a little better, a little fresher.” He continues, “With fast food, there’s a whole generation that didn’t learn to cook from their parents; it’s gratifying to be able to have that knowledge,” and to pass the results on to his appreciative customers.

His cinnamon rolls, bedecked with dried cherries and walnuts, and lightly drizzled with frosting, fly out the door each morning. Architect-builder Dale Scheiern of Cedar delivers his verdict as he reaches for a warm pastry on the store’s big wooden counter: “They’re a unique cinnamon roll; the dough is more croissant-like, with a flaky texture. Gene doesn’t need to rely on frosting to cover it up and give it its flavor.”

Shari Rosinski of Maple City also stops in regularly on her way to work. “It’s the best cinnamon roll in the county,” she declares, gathering enough treats for herself and the 10 women with whom she works at Bahle’s in Suttons Bay.

Other offerings from Chef Gene’s Kitchen include pies with jewel-toned fruits that wink from vents in flaky, hand-rolled crusts, buttery croissants, sandwiches and wraps, and breads that include sourdough, wheat, sourdough rye and dill parmesan. Soups are created fresh daily with mostly local ingredients like wild leeks, morels and asparagus; varieties include beet borscht, roasted garlic potato, cream of broccoli, beef barley and his popular clam chowder every Friday. He welcomes special pastry orders, including birthday cakes, and at customers’ requests has recently launched a delicious Balaton cherry pie made with the sugar-substitute Splenda.

Gene grew up downstate in Warren, a blue-collar, largely Polish enclave on Detroit’s east side with strong ties to the auto industry. After high school, he began work in a factory that created prototypes, such as brakes, for automobile parts companies like Bosch. He also attended Macomb Community College, earned three degrees in the industrial-manufacturing field, and eventually became a manager at his plant.

Seven years ago, at age 35, doctors discovered a life-threatening heart defect that would sideswipe Gene’s steady career, and set him and his family on a course that would ultimately lead to a new, more nurturing life in northern Michigan. After surgery to replace his faulty aortic valve (a congenital condition), and then an endocardial infection that necessitated another valve replacement, Gene faced a year of recuperation, and some hard choices. He quit his manufacturing job, and enrolled in the Macomb Culinary Institute, where he immersed himself in classes that included cooking basics and history, as well as specialties in baking and pastries.

He and his wife Joan, a mammogram technician, also made a momentous lifestyle decision. The couple had honeymooned in Leelanau, and dreamed of someday retiring to their favorite vacation destination. Suddenly, “someday” was now, and in 2005 the Payerks and their two children moved to an 11-acre farm in Centerville Township. There they cultivate 800 viniferous grapevines, asparagus and 80 fruit trees, including cherries, Honeycrisp apples, Asian pears and Red Haven peaches. The family also plans to convert a post and beam barn, restored by Joe Fabiszak of Cedar, into a bed-and-breakfast someday.

Out of the kitchen, Gene enjoys his 1950 Ferguson tractor on the farm, boating on Lake Leelanau, and beach time at Good Harbor with his family. Even with all of the hard work — the chef is in his kitchen at the Cedar City Market every day (most mornings by six a.m.), and also sells his goods at the weekly Glen Arbor and Suttons Bay Farmers Markets — life in Leelanau looks as heavenly as a slice of his cherry pie.

The Glen Arbor Farmers Market continues through August 28, and the Suttons Bay Farmers Market through October 6. Chef Gene can be reached at Cedar City Market at 228-5415.

Posted by editor at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Manitou Music Festival finale showcases Ann Arbor Violinist

From staff reports

The Manitou Music Festival is delighted to host what will be an enchanted evening of music with a performance by classical violinist Gabriel Bolkosky and pianist Michele Cooker. The concert is set for Thursday August 30 at 8 p.m. at The Leelanau School north of Glen Arbor. Tickets cost $15 in advance and $18 at the door. They are available for purchase at the Glen Arbor Arts Association and Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor, Cedar City Market in Cedar and Oryana Food Cooperative in Traverse City.

Gabriel Bolkosky has been praised for the way he “takes audiences into his confidence and includes them” and described as having “the serenity of a master without a hint of coldness.”

He is executive director of The Phoenix Ensemble, an Ann Arbor-based nonprofit arts organization dedicated to helping artists and the educational community. His debut solo album, “This and That,” was released in 2005 to critical acclaim and features both jazz and classical music. Other recordings include explorations of klezmer with “Into the Freylakh (The Shape of Klez to Come),” of the nuevo tango music of Astor Piazzolla (“The Oblivion Project Live”), children’s folk music with the children’s-music group Gemini (“The Orchestra Is Here to Play”), and contemporary music of composers such as Xenakis and Boulez with his former group Non Sequitur (Non Sequitur).

Bolkosky is a sought-after guest artist, performer, and teacher at schools and workshops throughout North America, including at Harvard, Dartmouth, Brandeis and Princeton and many Suzuki institutes. He has also taught workshops on improvisation and composition to nearly 5,000 students in Aspen, Colorado and the Walden School in New Hampshire.

He previously served as assistant director for Strings Attached, an intensive string program for children in inner-city Cleveland, and as assistant to Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In Ann Arbor, Bolkosky directs one of The Phoenix Ensemble’s signature events, PhoenixPhest!, an annual amateur chamber-music festival held each May, and maintains a private violin studio.

This past April, Gabriel joined forces with local cellist Crispin Campbell, original founder of the Manitou Music Festival, and Grammy award winning pianist, Paul Sullivan to create the Solar Trio that performed this past April in venues around the state.

Joining Gabriel onstage is the gifted pianist, Michele Cooker. Michele has performed in concert series and participated in festivals throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. She has appeared on PBS and has performed programs broadcast live for WFMT-radio in Chicago and the CBC in Canada. Ms. Cooker teaches piano privately at the Kerrytown Concert House, where she is a member of the Board. This combination of violin and piano will indeed be one ‘enchanting evening’ of music.

Posted by editor at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

Manoominikgiizis, Ricing Moon

By Lois Beardslee

Excerpted from Lois Beardslee’s forthcoming book of poetry titled We Live Here. Past excerpts by Beardslee in the Glen Arbor Sun are from Not Far Away, The Real Life Adventures of Ima Pipiig (AltaMira Press), which is due out in September.

Morning. Before the wind was up.
Before the angriest of her relations shook the skies.
She moved in gentleness.
Lit the first candle of the day.
Coaxed the stove into crackles and heat.
Sipped strong, hot teas.
Mashkiiigobug.
Bgoooosinh.
Wapooswawaaaaskwanminan.
Papashkikiu.

She stole time. Before the wind was up.
Before the neediest of her relations shook the household.
She moved in gentleness.
Slid out onto the lake.
Stirred the rails and the sheebsheebsheebducks into consciousness
Stole silent glances from restless life forms.
From grazing ruminants.
Huuungry snakes.
Spiraling preeedators.
Mindful prey.

She made love. Before the wind was up.
Before the most jealous of her lovers shook her presence of mind.
She moved in gentleness.
Reached out for long, supple stalks.
Held the body of that rice to her own.
Felt the give and take of the stems.
The strength of the husks.
The firmness of the berries.
The viscosity of the moisture.

Morning. Before the wind was up.
Before responsibilities and foolishness wooed her away.
She moved in gentleness.
Planning ahead for the next liaison.
Joining together in a marriage of convenience the most mature of those wiiild rice stalks.
Some for the ducks.
For wooorms and snails and buuugs.
For the faaamily.
The rest for the bottom of the lake.

Posted by editor at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2007

The circus is coming!

From staff reports

For the first time this decade, the circus is returning to southern Leelanau County. Hosted by the Empire Sleeping Bear Eagle’s Club # 4404, the Kelly Miller Circus will arrive at the Eagles’ property on M-72 east of Empire for one day on Saturday, August 18 and raise the tent between 8:30 and 9 a.m. Everyone is invited to come out and watch the animals being unloaded and fed, as the elephants raise the big top. Guides will be furnished for school groups and anyone attending.

The traditional “old style” circus will present two performances at 2 and 5:30. The Kelly Miller Circus’ performance this season promises to be more exciting than ever with many new acts and entertainers to amaze and amuse you. Buy your tickets in advance and save by emailing laurasielaff2@hotmail.com.

Empire Lion’s Club member Hal Pendleton brought the circus to town the last time, he remembers, in 1998 or ‘99. In fact, the Lion’s Club sponsored them five times during the ‘90s. “Kelly Miller present people-type acts,” Hal remembers. “Trapeze, clowns, with some animals but (other than elephants) they’re not too big on that.” In the past, the circus has been held in Empire close to the corner of M-72 and M-22, where the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore headquarters now sits. One particular year Hal remembers his wife Frances was allowed to ride an elephant bareback into the center ring as the sponsors were introduced. “If you’ve ever ridden on a circus elephant bareback, you’ll remember it,” he attests. “The back of the elephant is like my chin after not shaving for three or four days. You can feel it right through a pair of jeans!”

Kelly Prechtl remembers the first time she attended the circus in Empire, as an eight-year-old girl. “This was the first time I had ever seen an elephant, and it was so different than what I had expected from TV. It was so big and I remember being scared, but not wanting my mom to know I was scared so that she would still let me ride it. When I got on I realized the skin was so leathery and thick, but its ears were really smooth. I have to admit that the smell was strong like a horse barn, but the excitement that I felt was like Christmas! I remember that was the first time that I felt really brave.”

Posted by editor at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

Reenacting the pre-industrial era at Port Oneida

From staff reports

The Port Oneida Rural Historic District in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park) will come alive Friday and Saturday, August 10 and 11, during the sixth annual Port Oneida Fair. The two-day event will showcase the crafts, skills and traditions that made rural life productive and enjoyable in the late 19th and early 20th century. The fair, sponsored by the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes and five other partner groups, will take place at five farms and a one-room schoolhouse. Part of the enjoyment of the fair is moving between the farms by walking through the fields, biking, taking a shuttle bus or horse and wagon. There is no admission charge to the fair, which will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Additional detailed information can be found at www.leelanau.com/fair. Among the new features added to this year’s fair are an antique fire truck and a visit by Mark Twain.

As part of this year’s Fair, the Manitou Music Festival will also present Nobody’s Darlin’ in concert on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. at the outdoor stage behind Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor. According to festival director TJ Ewing, “Nobody’s Darlin’ are a perfect fit as a capstone concert for the Port Oneida Fair. This all-woman, five-piece, string band, based in Grand Rapids, specializes in Old Time Americana, Bluegrass, Gospel, and throws in some classic country tunes just for fun.” Watching a performance by Nobody’s Darlin’ conjures up the essence of a simpler time, before electric guitars and pyrotechnics. The sound of Nobody’s Darlin’ strong female voices meld fluidly over acoustic instruments that resonate true string instrument tones. Their music successfully blends old timey, country and bluegrass in a refreshingly authentic way. The “Darlin’s” influences include The Carter Family, Doc Watson, Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, Split Lip Rayfield, Dolly Parton and Jimmie Rogers.

Concert tickets are $15 per person and can be purchased in advance at the Glen Arbor Art Association, Lake Street Studios, Cedar City Market, and Oryana Food Coop in Traverse City, or at the door. For more information visit www.manitoumusicfestival.com or call the Glen Arbor Art Association at 334-6112.

Last year the Port Oneida Fair was visited by Civil War re-enactors. The cavalry, the heavy artillery, the infantry and the sharpshooters all marched into Leelanau County, and all but the cavalry will be back this year. Many of the early settlers in Port Oneida and Northwest Lower Michigan were veterans of the Civil War. The war was a major event in their lives and the lives of their families. The Civil War units demonstrate authentic uniforms and equipment and show their camps and drills. The soldiers will also talk about their experiences during the war. The soldiers will be accompanied by military band, Women’s Aid Societies from both the North and South and a peddler who traveled with the army. This is a rare opportunity to experience living history in this part of the state.

In addition to the Civil War re-enactors, over 100 exhibitors will demonstrate early farm skills and crafts from barn building to quilt making. On hand will be spinners, blacksmiths, buggy makers, potters, broom makers, weavers and many more. Each exhibitor is happy to explain their craft while you watch them work. A favorite each year are the big gentle oxen who will be mowing hay, followed by a team of work horses raking and loading the hay on to a wagon. Kids can help unload the wagon and build a haystack. There will be lots of other activities for kids to try such as traditional games and toys. Everyone will also be able to experience some of the daily chores like cutting wood or washing clothes by hand. Traditional community bands, fiddlers and a variety of other musicians will provide music during both days of the fair.

The Port Oneida Rural Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, showcases life at the turn of the century through a community of 18 farmsteads from the late 1800s to mid 1900s. The District is the largest historic agricultural community fully protected by government ownership in the nation. The Port Oneida community has stories to tell about the pioneer and maritime past of Northern Lower Michigan. Over the years, these farms and cultural resources have been loved by many for what they add to the pastoral Leelanau landscape. Now these historic buildings and meadows are interpreting history through such events as the Port Oneida Fair.

Posted by editor at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

Seldom seen, always present: Outlaw art & adventure theology in Leelanau

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

Recent visitors to the Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA) on Pine Street, behind Lake Street Studios, may have been surprised by a large pyramid, traced in steel and enclosing a suspended boulder, that now graces the approach to the building. Yet some have encountered this Art Brut sculpture before, in quite a different setting: peering towards Sleeping Bear Bay from a wooded bluff on Pyramid Point. How the piece, Trismegistus (Mihrab), materialized in Glen Arbor is merely the latest chapter in a decades-old saga that includes mythological gods, heroes, alchemists, outlaw artists and adventure theologians weaving their magic across Leelanau County.

Last December, GAAA board member Beth Bricker received a phone call from Tom Ulrich, assistant superintendent of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. The NPS had found an unusual, manmade structure nestled illegally on public land, and rather than destroy it (as other structures have been), he proposed that the arts group take custody of the sculpture.

Bricker and fellow artist Becky Thatcher trekked out on a wintry day to encounter the outlaw art. ”It was amazing, seeing it out there,” Bricker recalls. “I loved how the points of the base really gripped the ground, sort of claw-like,” she demonstrates with her hands.

The art association agreed that the powerful piece deserved saving. After an undignified sledge-hammering out of the woods and into the bed of a pickup, the wounded Trismegistus was fortuitously put into the care of new GAAA board member William Stege. The recently retired banker — also an artist and longtime metal smith — instantly recognized the work’s integrity. “The way it was constructed is very clever, very well-made,” he says. “Someone really knew what they were doing. This is better than a lot of the sculptures I’ve seen at the Chicago Art Institute.”

Although he was unable to replicate the original metal spiral, which wrapped the approximately 350-pound boulder and secured it from the apex of the pyramid, Stege skillfully restored the piece and recently installed it with fellow metal artist Ben Bricker in its new locale at the GAAA headquarters.

In an era where the cult of the individual ceaselessly worships at the pool of Narcissus, just who would create an unsigned work of fine art, then walk away, leaving it to the vagaries of weather, vandals or the interventions of civilized man? For years, Leelanau residents have heard rumors of an Outsider artist whose oeuvre in stone, wood and steel, strung along the necklace of the 45th parallel, reflects a preoccupation with ancient world myths, midaeval Christian symbolism and modern Jungian psychology. Kenny LaRoche’s quest to create a cathedral comparable to the sacred edifices of Europe and the Near East — a “stone book,” according to Victor Hugo — in Leelanau has been met by strong reactions: enthusiasm and passion by some, bewilderment, skepticism and even legal threats by others.

His most ardent supporters (some might call them acolytes) act as spokesmen and mediators of the artist, while Kenny prefers to communicate more non-verbally through his numinous architecture, including early works like Trismegistus, Baitin’ & Waitin’ for Satan, Fallen Warriors, and more recently, Shakkhina and the magnificent Rose Window, temptingly well-hung 60 feet up a tree, and perilously near public lands. As one spokesman, Skippy, explains, it’s all “metaphor with an attitude.”

“Kenny’s work is seldom seen, but always present,” offers another supporter, the Captain, with a smile. “Think about how many people don’t see his outlaw ‘art park,’ including some, six or seven feet tall, sitting on the bottom of Lake Michigan. Nature totally redesigns the art, covered with zebra mussels, or constantly moving in the wind; She’s taken the seed into Her womb and nurtured it.”

Several of the cathedral’s architectural elements like the east and west porches, installed as gifts of the artist on public lands in Leelanau Township and the National Park, have been destroyed or forcibly removed, radical interactions with the art that were anticipated by a philosophical but unrepentant Kenny. Skippy eloquently notes that all cathedrals share a similar fate: “They rise and fall with the whims of weather, fire, local politics and history. … They are living monuments to what people think lies behind the masks of god as the masks wear away.”

The tension between the artist and those with whom he communicates extends from casual encounters with hunters, hikers and park rangers to the established art world. Some people see issues of safety, liability or preserving nature, while others cheer a poke in the eye of rule binders and authority figures of all stripes. Several works hide in plain sight in village squares, art galleries or garden settings, waiting to be noticed by observant eyes, including a 40-foot tall erect penis with stone seed spewing out, commemorating humanity’s bittersweet experience of loss. How does that play out in a largely conservative community?

“Kenny’s not having an [art] opening!” chortles the Captain. “It opens its own self,” in the interplay between object and viewer. “All of us are vulnerable to our life experience,” he continues. “You’ve got to go beyond your insecurities and take risks,” which include everything from the artist’s dramatic, sometimes life-threatening installations to observers’ interactions with art that might galvanize their thinking about individuality, connectedness, or the intimate spaces between the sacred and the profane. Skippy reflects, “It is the work of Alchemy — and of all of the ‘arts’ — to raise and redeem the Spirit which has fallen into Matter,” even if that spirit then chooses to undergo kenosis, or a descent into the mortal frailty of the human world.

For Trismegistus, now visible in Glen Arbor, the icon has moved from wild wooded site to tame town setting. It has perhaps become a Skeuomorph, a “material metaphor,” according to communications theorist Marshall McLuhan (and paraphrased by Skippy), “lifted from its primary function and exalted to the merely Decorative.” Yet Hermes, shapeshifter and patron of liars and other tale-tellers, may have the last laugh, provoking a new chapter in the ongoing story of Kenny LaRoche.

The Captain offers this food for thought: “You can always justify your means and ends by the heroes you select.” Like Hermes, or the Buddhist monkey king Sun Wukung, or other trickster gods, the juicy gift they offer hides a dark prima materia that humanity craves, and which rocks us back on our heels in an endless spin cycle.

He concludes, “We all fight with the urge to control; ‘Here’s the Story, folks.’ The most exciting pieces Kenny has done are ones he’s given to the community and just walked away. He’s grateful to the GAAA for bringing in the piece, if it creates new dialogue. Come and experience it, and go tell your own story.”

Posted by editor at 03:18 PM | Comments (0)

Saving the world, one bucket at a time

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor

“When you get started with one network of aid organizations, you never run out of missions,” says Chris Skellenger, a local musician and gardener whose humanitarian work started with the non-profit Safe Passage, which helps kids growing up in the Guatemala City garbage dump, and has led to other charitable missions. His objective is to save people in rural areas of developing countries from poor nutrition by adding food other than grains to their diets. It’s easy to understand Chris’ enthusiasm for helping the “third world” as he steps through aisles of plants in his greenhouse dubbed “little Africa,” while explaining how bucket kit irrigation, his new pet project, works.

Bucket kits cost only about $7 each are able to irrigate a garden that receives little or no rain water. The bucket is filled twice a day from “gray water,” water that has already been used for washing or cooking. Hoses connected to the bottom of the bucket run through rows of plants, and each plant receives water from tiny openings in the hose that drip a drop at a time. Drip irrigation was introduced in the United States by Dick Chapin, chairman of Chapin Watermatics and Chapin Third World Products in Watertown, New York.

Chris has set up a mock situation in his own North Coast Nursery near Maple City. In the small greenhouse, no water other than the water from the bucket can reach the plants, thereby simulating a “little Africa.” The garden is filled with corn, tomatoes, watermelon and other staples of the food pyramid that people in developing countries often lack. The plants are doing just as well as any others at North Coast Nursery, thriving and nearly ready to be harvested.

Chris and his wife Sue have already traveled to Honduras and Belize in Central America to distribute these kits and instruct the “on the ground” (or year-round) organizations on how to use them. Next they plan on going to Lesotho, the small landlocked African nation surrounded entirely by South Africa. Chris says, “Central America is a popular place for organizations to go, but we’re trying to get to areas that are considerably less developed and where starvation is a daily threat.” Although he admits that in Latin America he was surprised by “the level of poverty, the lack of government involvement in reducing that poverty, and how many on-the-ground organizations from all over the world were working there.” But at the same time he, “thought it would be more physically dangerous in terms of anti-American attitude. That turned out to not be true, people everywhere where just wonderful.”

The Skellengers first became involved with the bucket drip irrigation system through an article in Guideposts magazine, prompting them to start their own non-profit organization called 11 Oaks, whose website, www.11oaks.org, outlines the importance of nutrition for a healthy human and reports on recent fundraising events and trips to the sites. To raise money last year Chris and his buddies played music at the Hayloft Inn on M-72 and raised enough for he and Sue to take 40 buckets to Belize. This year they’ll begin fundraising in November or December with their sites set on Lesotho.

Chris stresses the importance of a balanced diet and the effect this has on people. He says that, “in places where there is little water, it’s like eating oatmeal for six months.” And oatmeal doesn’t provide enough nutrients to stimulate the brain properly. “When people are healthy they don’t develop a culture of hopelessness.” The website states, “in order to learn, you must have access to information and a balanced diet so that the mind can grasp concepts and retain information. The concepts of nutrition and hygiene must be introduced. In other words, the brain can’t learn if the body’s not healthy. Some cultures think it’s normal to get sick once a month and lose half of their children by age 5.”

What a perfect way to really help people in need: by stimulating their own thought process rather than blasting them with ideas from the developed world. Being members of Safe Passage and owners of a plant nursery, Chris and Sue Skellenger are the perfect people to promote bucket drip irrigation.

Posted by editor at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

Female brewers reclaim their art

By Debra Townsend
Sun contributor

Stacey Block isn’t about to let big beer companies tell her what kind of frothy ale she should fancy. Stacey is a brewster, as female brewers are referred to, and along with only two other brewsters in Michigan, she is reclaiming the craft that originally began in women’s hands thousands of years ago.

In its earliest days, beer was made only by midwives and nurses that brewed medicines and tonics from plants and roots. In Europe, during the industrial revolution, commercial breweries began to sprout in cities when governments saw the opportunity for taxes and revenues. By 1445, the first “men only” Brewer’s Guild was established. In the years that followed, being a brewster offered a good chance of being hung or burned at the stake. A majority of the women who were condemned to death as witches were listed as brewsters, alewives or midwives. By the mid-nineteenth century, brewing had become a man’s world. In Europe, brewmasters, or male brewers, are trained in schools where processes are standardized, contributing to the comparatively bland homogeny of European beers in contrast to the robust and varied flavors of American micro-brews today.

When President Jimmy Carter legalized home-brewing in the 1970s, people began making beer at home, which increased the diversity as home brewers experimented with various grains, hops and yeasts. The resulting array of brews is broad enough to appeal to all tastes. Just in the last decade, micro-breweries began to pop up in downtown urban revival areas and are quickly spreading across the country.

Stacey, peering into a massive stainless steel kettle where the “mash” begins its journey to the taps in the front room, is currently brewing at Arbor Brewing Company in the college town of Ann Arbor and The Corner Brewery in nearby Ypsilanti. The owners of each of the two establishments, Matt and Rene Greff, say they were thrilled when Stacey came to work for them. Having started home-brewing in five-gallon buckets in their own kitchen 20 years ago, they appreciate the fresh mindset that an early brewer has, someone who’s not afraid to try new things and break away from tradition. Matt and Rene say, “we hoped to find someone with professional brewing experience ... but not too much.” Having known Stacey for some time, they hoped she might apply for the job. “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a female brewer?” Rene asked Matt. The idea fermented into a successful brew for all.

Arbor Brewing Company starts a new batch four to six times a week, with Matt scheduling the order of beers to be made. Letting their palates decide how strong the brews should be, they critique the batches with the taste buds of connoisseurs. The strains of hops and grains chosen will affect the finished beer, as do temperatures, process times and any spices that are used. Though the micro-brewery and brewpub together currently offer 22 beers, including the favorites, the cask-conditioned I.P.A. Sacred Cow, the lighter Brassiere Blonde and the Special Bitter Red Snapper, their minds are always brewing up new ideas.

Last October, Stacey (Roth) Block was married on the stage of the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. She and her husband Tom decided to wait until spring to have their wedding reception at northwest-lower Michigan’s own Short’s Brewery in Bellaire. Stacey and Tom have been friends with Joe Short since they worked together at Michigan Brewing Company in Webberville near Lansing, and continue to get together to collaborate on new ideas. Joe worked with Stacey and Tom to make Dan’s Pink Skirt Pale Ale, a 6.7 percent I.P.A., to serve at their celebration and Joe has kept the batch on tap until it sells out. As a model of Stacey’s preference towards a beer that makes your salivary glands sing for more, the Pink Skirt was named by fellow brewer Dan Rogers, and is defined as “not a beer for wussies.”

Stacey’s been in the industry for five years, beginning as a bartender at Michigan Brewing Company, where she says Dan influenced her palate and style. While working in the business, she enjoyed tasting different beers. Although she was studying limnology (water) and entomology (insects) in college, she says she realized her science background was leading her to be curious as to how the beers were made, and not long after it became evident to her that brewing was her passion.

“I love it because its hands on,” says Stacey. “You know at the end of the day you’ve done something ... you get to enjoy what you’ve made and watch other people enjoy it too.”

Stacey continued to work in the field in bottling operations, and hanging out with other brewers to learn in her spare time. Eventually, she was offered the opportunity to test her skills at Grizzly Peak in Ann Arbor, where she first began brewing. Stacey admits that she had to prove she could handle the job before she was hired; be able to take on the physical aspects of brewing despite her gender and small stature, including lifting the 50 pound bags of grain to fill the hopper and cleaning the tanks. Her desire to prove herself hasn’t changed much since then. Says Stacey, “I feel like I have to be better than any other male brewer because I may only get one chance to prove myself ... and not just be some chick.” Stacey believes it is passion, not gender, that makes a good brewer, and her co-brewers definitely agree.

Now she splits her time between the Arbor Brewing Company brewhouse and the Corner Brewery with Matt and one other brewer, Ryan Hale. With six 10-hour days being the norm, Stacey says she’s glad they not only get along so well, but they all find it easy to pick up where the other has left off. Watching them from just inside the brewhouse, a glass enclosure filled with the kettles and tubing that are the updated version of the traditional cauldron, it’s easy to gauge their respect for each other, and fun to watch how excited they get when they collaborate on a new project. The beers they make are now available at the Grand Traverse Resort, Oryana Food Coop in Traverse City, Shop n Save in Benzonia, and will soon be on tap at other northern Michigan establishments.

The owners of the brewpub and microbrewery say that their clienteles, a diverse and growing group who want more than just average beer, are mostly 20- to 40-year-old urbanites. “Some are here because they have defined tastes, and others are here to taste what defines a good beer,” says one aficionado. The atmosphere is like a community gathering, with as many women as men milling around the room, having friendly conversations about good food, concerts, and of course ... beer.

It’s interesting to think that when prohibition ended, beer distributors advised big breweries to make milder beers. Those who are savvy on the subject insist that women were the driving force behind prohibition, and that only by appealing to women’s tastes for smaller beers, could the market be regained.

Stacey might have something to say about that.

Posted by editor at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

Wiigwasimakakoon Birch Bark Baskets

Excerpted from Lois Beardslee’s forthcoming book of poetry titled “We Live Here.” Past excerpts by Beardslee in the Glen Arbor Sun are from “Not Far Away, The Real Life Adventures of Ima Pipiig” (AltaMira Press), which is due out in September.

Curiously, the individual who was chosen by the Great Mystery to accurately share the secret of basket making with Ojibwe women and girls.

Was the offspring of an adolescent girl and the west wind, was raised by a cantankerous grandmother, and had a character as fickle as the circumstances of his birth.

So he selected only the most discerning of Ojibwe women and girls with which to share this useful and artful knowledge-gift

And he wrapped his gift carefully in a bundle of long, hot summer days tied up with basswood fibers using very special, very difficult, tiny knots that he himself could not untangle.

It was only by virtue of her ingenious knack at disentangling superfluous knots and her extremely good looks as well as her reputation as a good cook and seamstress

That my grandmother was courted, actually stalked, at the age of twelve or thirteen, by the instructive basket maker himself.

It was with nimbleness of fingers and strong-armed foisting-off of handsome and not-so-handsome men that my grandmother practiced and honed to perfection her skill

At completely peeling the skin off of unsuspecting birch trees on hot, summer afternoons, when she really should have been taking her children or grandchildren for a refreshing swim.

Victimized by my own small stature and my status as a genetic and mental receptacle for all things cultural, as well as my ability and eagerness to paddle a canoe at a very young age

I was subjected to lengthy lessons on the proper means of hunting the elusive perfect birch tree, as it crept, silently, deeper and deeper into the woods, as far as possible from our dormant canoe.

Upon our safe return — paddling into the wind for hours, maybe days, on end—with a vessel-load of cool, wet bark, appropriately weighted down with deadfall trees, antler sheds, firewood, a couple of fresh trout, and maybe six or seven rocks for some project she intended me to accomplish in my free time

Ninooko spread her goods out before her and sang sweet songs, peeled roots, snipped, stitched, punched, sewed, folded, manipulated, realigned, configured, reinforced, scraped, enhanced, and imbued with beauty large stacks of winnowing baskets and storage packs for sugars and meats

While I sat by quietly, in amazement, eating wild rice and sipping sweet tea.

Manoominikgiizis
Ricing Moon

An uncle on my father’s side
laughed
when we brought home
handfuls of rice
from that small back bay pond

Said he was gonna
“show us how to do it right.”
The next year
he came back to stay all summer
and tended that rice.

He pinched that rice
he spoke to that rice
he bundled it up just so
so it would ripen the way
an old man knew it could ripen.

Then he took us out
in an old flat-bottomed boat
made us tap tap tap
those smooth cedar poles
made us tap tap tap

With cedar rice poles
Snorted
when the chaff went up his nose
rinsed his fingers in the lake
then took a drink.

He took us
through channels
he’d contrived
with the determination of a nuclear physicist
over mud-flat shallows.

We’d rise up on the gunwhales
rest on our hands
to shift our weight
after the man with belly fat
got his end stuck in shallow muck.

Every time we complained
he’d have a story
about each complaint
that he told in detail
until we threatened to jump into the lake.

We’d sigh out,
“No more, no more, no more
the mysteries
are all about these snow-free hillsides.”
But he said, “Not in shallow back bays.”

Not on late summer days
when self-centered boys
should learn from old men
what real ricing is about.
“This is not even the hard part yet.”

We still had to parch the rice
we still had to husk the rice
we still had to winnow the rice
we still wanted peanut butter sandwiches for lunch
we still had to be little boys.

We saw
a big snapping turtle
big enough to nibble off
all of our toes
but the old man just laughed.

I saw three big pike
close to the shore
waiting patiently for just the right minnows
so I threw a handful of rice
but they were too smart.

So I threw rice at my uncle while I sang out,
“Some for the ducks.
For wooorms and snails and buuugs.
For the faaamily.
The rest for the bottom of the lake.”

Abinibiikaa
When the Water is Warm

One summer
Some boys were diving from a cliff into Black River water
Just before the tannin-hue dispersed into Lake Superior
And my mother took off her flowered black summer sundress
Right in front of those white boys
Because she knew she was beautiful.
Then she jumped right off that cliff with them.
And every year after that for the rest of my childhood
My father waded into the river, dove down in that very spot
To make sure that the Ice People had not moved any boulders during our absence.
Then we pulled off our clothing
And dove into the Black River in our underclothes
Because we knew we were beautiful.
Even dogs followed us over that cliff
Flew after us in clinging dependence and love
Barking with every leap and laughing with every leap
We took turns holding each new baby
Until he or she was old enough to jump into a late summer river too
Somewhere in respite between
Working for nothing and working for everything.
We were like fat fish looking for lovers
Before an autumn of harvest
Swelled our bellies and made us eager to sleep.

Posted by editor at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

Young novelists return to Glen Arbor Art Association

By Corin Blust
Sun contributor

Even though they were lucky enough to be artists in residence at the Glen Arbor Art Association last summer, Jeremiah Chamberlin and Natalie Bakopoulos have decided to return this August for another residency in Glen Arbor. They will occupy the apartment in the relatively new Art Association building from August 12 -25 and use the time here to make progress on their first novels. The pair will read from their work at a presentation, free and open to the public, on August 21 at 7:30 p.m. at the Art Center between the Leelanau Coffee Roasters and Lake Street Studios.

Jeremiah, who knew from childhood that he wanted to be a writer, grew up near Interlochen, about half an hour southeast of Glen Arbor. He studied creative writing in high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy, where his parents have worked for 30 years.

After high school Jeremiah continued his craft at the University of Michigan, a decision influenced by a visit from Charles Baxter, a professor in the English department there. When Jeremiah heard Baxter read at Interlochen he knew he wanted to study with the professor. “The language transported me right out of my body,” he recalls. “When it was over, I came back to my body and I knew I had to study with him.” After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1997 and his MFA in 2004, between which he lived in Madison, Wisconsin and was writer-in-residence at Interlochen in ’02, Jeremiah became a writing lecturer in the English Department at U-M.

Natalie, whose father is Greek and mother is Ukrainian, spent her childhood in a “close-knit immigrant community in a suburb of Detroit.” She received a degree in Zoology from Michigan State University then continued to receive her Masters in Fine Arts from U-M. She began graduate school studying physiology but realized that “the urge to become a writer was something I couldn’t ignore. As a child I read so much, it would be a beautiful day and I would be inside reading — I have always loved language and literature.” Natalie also teaches in the English department in Ann Arbor.

One of the remarkable things about a residency at the Glen Arbor Art Association is that the only obligation an artist has during their time here is to make progress on their work — a rare opportunity that can produce stunningly productive results. “We did two months of work in two weeks” during the couple’s stay last summer, Jeremiah attests.

Both he and Natalie blame this amazing productivity on the freedom from everyday chores the new setting provides them. “It’s almost like a Monastic retreat,” says Jeremiah. “The Art Association really gives the valuable gift of time and space to writers and artists,” adds Natalie.

The opportunity to be in Glen Arbor is especially fitting for Jeremiah, whose first historical novel is set right here in Leelanau County. His book will “follow the struggles of one cherry farming family as history marches past them,” with a special focus on the lives of the two brothers in the family from 1957 until the early 1990s.

Writing a piece of historical fiction based on the Leelanau Peninsula while in Ann Arbor may provide “objectivity and perspective” on the area, but Jeremiah loves the opportunity to “touch base with the place,” something that can prove to stimulate a rich landmine of ideas.

One evening while driving back to Glen Arbor from dinner with friends in nearby Frankfort, Jeremiah and Natalie crossed the Narrows Bridge separating Big from Little Glen Lake and suddenly “a whole scene was set off by the environment; I could see my characters driving across the piece of land, too, and interacting with it,” he remembers.

For Jeremiah, being in Leelanau County “recharges your imagination. It’s about the small details you notice when you are actually in a place,” such as the way the islands in Lake Michigan seem to change their appearance from the shore every day depending on the weather, or “the way a walk on the beach actually smells,” he explains.

Even though his novel is “still evolving,” Jeremiah has already planned to examine how migrant labor, Vietnam, and other political, environmental and economic events change the family in his novel. He will read an excerpt from the finished parts of the book during the couple’s presentation at the Art Center.

Natalie’s work, which is also historical fiction, is set in Athens from 1967 to 1974. In her book Natalie examines the way a family deals with the right-wing military dictatorship that seized power in Greece during those years. “It’s all about the way politics can shape the life of a family and their reactions to the regime,” explains Natalie, whose own father came to the United States from Athens in 1966.

Although Natalie’s novel is not set in northern Michigan, she finds being in Glen Arbor a welcome change of scenery from Ann Arbor. She explains, “in Ann Arbor it’s really easy to get immersed in research — I could spend all day in the library looking up little details.” She likes to be surrounded by the beauty of this area, and also to get away from the temptation of looking up things like “what kind of refrigerator the family would have used in their house during the time period of the novel.”

Aside from the opportunity to work and spend time in the peace and beauty of our area, the couple also looks forward to being in our midst again. “For me, the most important thing is the sense of community, where everyone’s so casual and you can stop by people’s houses and have a bonfire in the backyard,” says Natalie. Last summer, “everyone I met was so genuine, and wanted to ask us questions and find out what we were doing. We felt welcome right away, and that’s why we’re coming back.”

Jeremiah Chamberlin and Natalie Bakopoulos will read excerpts from their novels in progress at the Art Center in Glen Arbor on Tuesday, August 21. The presentation, which is free, starts at 7:30 p.m.

Posted by editor at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

Knitting yarns in Cedar

Codi Yeager
Sun contributor

One stereotype has long dominating the knitting world: an ancient, needle wielding grandmother with white hair and inch-thick glasses looking out at society in outright defiance of all the realities connected to true knitters and their yarn habit. Yet one step inside Inish Knits in Cedar reveals that the vibrant, knitting subculture of today is a far cry from the solitude of a drab rocking chair. And now that women don’t necessarily need to make socks and mittens for their families, knitting groups are much more than neighbors conversing while performing a necessary task. In fact, it is no longer a common task, but a common love that brings together the members of a knitting circle. For the women who meet at Inish Knits, knitting seems to have ceased being a ‘group’ activity and has instead become a sisterhood.

“We’re friends, not just knitters,” says Deb Herman, a regular member of the group that meets every Wednesday night. The others, spread about in clusters throughout the store and seated on various couches, stools and chairs, nod in agreement as they work on socks and hats. A few knitters compare sock patterns, and more call out their opinions. “Socks seem to be the new rage,” says Deb as she shows me the ones dangling from her needles. “You can take them with you, and they’re very easy to knit while you talk.”

Norvilla Bennett knitted her first pair of socks last summer, when she decided to take a break from mittens. “I had been knitting mittens for my five nieces and nephews for Christmas for about 20 years. Then I stopped. I joined the knitting group because I wanted to make mittens again,” she explains. Socks and hats were the next step, but she says she couldn’t have done it without the help of the group. “They really challenged me and were very supportive. I love watching and learning from them.”

Melissa Kelenske, the present owner of Inish Knits, has only been knitting since 2001, yet is one of the most advanced knitters in the group. “Without the group, without other people pushing me, I never would have become a better knitter,” she attests.

Daryl Webster, another group member, agrees that knitting with others makes her a better knitter simply because she sees different projects that she likes. “I would see a sweater that someone else was making, try it on, and say, well, I want to make that for myself.” Yet improved knitting skills aren’t the only benefit of the knitting group. “It gives you a real sense of community,” says Daryl. “There has been a kind of revolution. Before, knitting was solitary; it was something you did at home. Knitting together and sharing the experience is relatively new.”

Perhaps this is due to the fact that women in past decades have been slowly becoming more independent. “A lot of the time we don’t allow ourselves to get together as women and indulge ourselves. At first, I didn’t think it was okay to take the time for something like a knitting group, but now it’s my place to be on Wednesday night,” says Norvilla.

“It’s our night out,” agrees Deb. The ‘girls night out’ type of atmosphere is certainly present, evidenced by the constant chatter and almost constant laughter. Any subject under the sun is fair game, though mostly the talk pertains to knitting. That in itself opens the door to a plethora of topics. For example, is it safe to knit something for a baby that has yet to be born, or is that just plain bad luck? The consensus was that, if you want to be a grandmother, there’s no problem with knitting some baby booties or a hat, but if a want-to-be-mother is knitting clothes for a much desired baby, she’s playing with fate. Knitting and weaving seminars are another conversation, as well as felting stories that are strongly reminiscent of fish tales, (“The bags are this big before you wash them!” Norvilla says as she spread her arms in a giant arc.) Felting, by the way, is a process in which projects knitted with 100 percent wool are washed, shaped and dried until they become felt. The projects are intentionally knitted large so that when they shrink they reach the desired proportions. Melissa mentions that she is unable to do felting in her new washer, much to the dismay of the other knitters. After all, when knitting is your life, what use is an appliance that doesn’t cooperate with yarn?

And knitting is Melissa’s life. She learned the trade in the summer of 2001, before knitting became popular again, from a friend with whom she worked. “She was making a sweater, and I was just amazed,” remembers Melissa, “she gave me my first pair of needles and they’re still my favorites.” Melissa attended Hope College and majored in Creative Writing, and in the fall of 2006 she purchased Inish Knits from Fiona McPherson Grant. As the third owner, the store was already established as a yarn shop when Melissa bought it. “It was nice to purchase a business. All of the fixtures and furniture were already in place,” she attests. However, it still took a lot of work to achieve the Inish Knits that is present today. “I basically just had to put my touch on things. We painted every wall in the entire shop, got a new inventory and basically put a facelift on everything.” For her work, the rewards are satisfying. “I like helping someone who is learning to knit, or someone who has a problem that they’re having trouble tackling. I like seeing that light bulb moment for someone … when the world makes sense,” she says.

Selecting yarns for the upcoming seasons is another facet of her job that Melissa enjoys. “I choose primarily natural fibers, mostly wool, but I have cotton, Alpaca, silk a good mix of local products. I’m always searching for yarns that are spun and dyed in the United States,” she says. Melissa will try out organic wool this fall, but otherwise she has a “few secrets” in store for the future.

For now the Wednesday night knitting group will continue as it has since beginning with the first owner of Inish Knits, and will remain Melissa’s favorite part of her work. “It is such a bright spot in everyone’s week,” she says. “It’s so nice to get together and be together. I never would have met these women otherwise.”

Social workers, office managers, nurses … women from all walks of life are welcome in the community formed by the knitting group. Yet there is one thing they all have in common: they’re knitters. “Everyone here, we’re knitters. It has become so closely identified with myself, so closely related to my personality,” says Melissa, “I love interacting with people on a daily basis who love this fiber world as much as I do.”

Norvilla perhaps puts it best when she says, “I was asked what I did for fun and relaxation. Without even thinking I said, ‘I knit’. It’s just been fun.”

Posted by editor at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)

Jan Krist and Jim Bizer, Los Gatos and Aoife Clancy headline Manitou Festival

From staff reports

The Manitou Music Festival will present two gifted Michigan songwriters, Jan Krist and Jim Bizer, at its concert on Thursday, August 16 at 8 p.m. on the graduation green at The Leelanau School north of Glen Arbor. Detroit-born Jan Krist is a well-established veteran of the acoustic music scene. Jan’s musical gifts have been recognized by Billboard Magazine, Entertainment Weekly Magazine, Dirty Linen, Image Journal and others. With 13 nominations and four Detroit Metro Music Awards under her belt, Krist has proven herself to be a Detroit area favorite. She can also claim the honor of being a finalist at the Kerrville song writing competition, in Kerrville, Texas, an annual event which helped to launch the careers of Lyle Lovett and Nancy Griffith.

Los Gatos return to the Manitou Music Festival on August 18

Krist takes her ordinary, plain Jane demeanor and all the elements we’ve learned to take for granted (six strings and common time) and lets us know, this is not your ordinary woman with a guitar, even if it is.

Joining Jan Krist is award-winning songwriter and dynamic performer, Jim Bizer.

Combining a vast musical knowledge with thoughtful and humorous lyrical ideas, Jim concocts songs that are both beautiful and startling. Against a musical kaleidoscope of jazz, blues, country, reggae and god-knows-what-else, he sings about faith, rivers, insanity and a few things you’ve probably never heard before in a song. He leads his audience to many places; you never quite know what will come out of his mouth, or his guitar, next.

Starting his professional career at age 14, Jim has performed literally thousands of times, mostly around the Midwest and his native Detroit. He’s been a “cover” musician, a session player and a composer for radio and television, but his first love is playing his guitar and singing his songs for all who listen. With a comfortable rapport and an intimate delivery, he is equally at home in the house concert or on the festival stage.

Jim is a masterful performer and a superb guitarist, but it is his songwriting that has recently earned accolades: His song “We Are All Connected,” a moving 9/11 testament, won the grand prize in the Great American Song Contest and led to an appearance at the Mountain Stage New Song Festival in West Virginia. Jim has been a finalist (three times!) in the New Folk songwriting competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and made his Kerrville main stage debut in June 2005.

On Saturday, August 18 at 7:30 p.m. the Manitou Music Festival will welcome back the Los Gatos jazz ensemble to the Lake Street Studio Stage in Glen Arbor. The brainchild of drummer and multi-percussionist Pete Siers, Los Gatos began as a Latin Jazz Ensemble in the fall of 1992. The concept of a small group combined with traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms has positioned Los Gatos as consistent crowd pleasers. In fact the band has been performing every Thursday night at Ann Arbor’s Firefly Club since 2001, all the while amassing a large following. In addition to leader Pete Siers, the group also includes vibes player Gary Kocher, bassist Kurt Krahnke, pianist Brian Di Blassio, and percussionist Al Di Blassio. They are inspired by the music of Cal Tjader, the late San Francisco vibes player who ignited the 50s mambo craze.

Pete Siers was born in Saginaw and began studying piano at age six, but quickly moved focus to drums and percussion. Pete earned a degree in Music Education from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, where he studied under the direction of Dr. Bruce Early and Rupert Kettle. As a member of the Aquinas College Jazz Ensemble, Pete was honored with several awards for outstanding soloist and outstanding rhythm section player. In 1988, Pete moved to Ann Arbor to work with acclaimed pianist Eddie Russ. Pete is an original member of the award winning Paul Keller Orchestra, which plays original, obscure and classic big band material from all periods of jazz history.

Los Gatos have release two CDs: Cats Got Your Tongue! and Vol II Insight. These recordings are enjoying airplay across the country as well as regular jazz programming on WDET and WEMU in Southern Michigan.

The Manitou Music Festival will also bring a little bit of Ireland to Glen Arbor with a performance by the gifted singer, Aoife Clancy on Wednesday, August 22 at 8 p.m. at the Lake Street Studio Stage. Opening for Aoife Clancy will be local singer and musician Jenny Thomas. Aoife Clancy(pronounced ‘Eefa’) brings a refreshing new voice to folk music, one that ranges from traditional Irish songs to ballads and contemporary folk. Aoife comes from the small town of Carrick-on-Suir, in Co Tipperary, Ireland, where her musical career began at an early age. Her father Bobby Clancy of the legendary Clancy Brothers, placed a guitar in her hands at age 10, and by age 14 was playing with her father in nearby pubs.

She later moved to Dublin, where she studied drama at the Gaiety School of Acting. After a season at the Gaiety, Aoife was invited to do a tour of Australia. There she performed at festivals and concerts sharing the stage with some of Ireland’s greatest performers, including Christy Moore and the Furey Brothers. Her performances also include a Caribbean cruises with the Clancy Brothers, the Milwaukee Irish Festival and a seven-week tour of the United States with the renowned Paddy Noonan Show.

In 1995 Aoife was asked to join the acclaimed group “Cherish the Ladies,” which is one of the most sought-after Irish American groups in history. For the past four years Aoife has toured extensively doing no less than two hundred dates a year throughout the United States and Europe. She has been a featured soloist with orchestras such as the Boston Pops and Cincinnati Pops and while performing with Cherish the Ladies, collaborated with the Boston Pops on their Grammy nominated Celtic album.

Now with seven recordings under her belt in the last decade, Aoife has clearly established herself as one of the Divas of Irish and contemporary Folk Music. As one reviewer remarked, “she has a breadth of styles that make her concerts fascinating. Her singing would melt packed ice with its warmth and richness” — Mike Jackson, Canberra Times.

Currently, Aoife is touring with her own band in support of her two Rego solo releases and her latest Appleseed release “Silvery Moon”. When she comes to a town near you, be sure not to miss this totally enchanting performer.

Tickets for all concerts are $12 in advance and $15 at the door. Tickets can be purchased at the Glen Arbor Art Association and Lake Street Studio in Glen Arbor, Cedar City Market in Cedar and Oryana Food Cooperative in Traverse City.

Posted by editor at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

First Running Bear Run Huge Success

From staff reports

Given the large attendance at the first Running Bear Run on July 31, it appears the event will quickly become an annual tradition for vacationing families and local residents. Over 380 people participated in the 5K run/walk run sponsored by the Glen Arbor Women’s Club.

Marianne Sherman, a participant in the 5k race from Dallas, agreed the race was a big success. “Stupendous race! Participation was great and the weather was perfect.” Caroline Nugent, age 12 from Okemos exclaimed, “It was really fun! I ran with my grandpa and three brothers.”

The “Running Bear” mascot was busy cheering both the serious runners and the not-always-serious walkers and was in high demand to have its picture taken with the children. The wild Cherry Republic bear was also spotted in the woods along the race route peeking at the runners.

The Women’s Club would like to congratulate all the people who participated in the event. The Best Overall Male time was 16:29 minutes by Ron Zywicki and the Best Overall Female time was 19:35 by Andrea Blake. The two overall winners and the first and second place winners in each age/gender category received gift items from Cherry Republic.

A number of runners and walkers competed for the “Most Entertaining Running Attire“ category. The winners were Diane Lundwall for her “Flamingo Fancy” costume and a group called “The Runaway Wedding” (pun on run.) The group consisted of our own Glen Arbor merchants, Becky and Cookie Thatcher of Becky Thatcher Designs and Bay Lavender Trading Co. Becky was the Mother-of-the-bride and Cookie was a Bridesmaid.

The Bride and Groom were Morgan and Greg Purcell and the other Bridesmaids were Brooke Matson, Alisa Siebrasse, Jen Kraus and Maisie Ogata. They received gift certificates from Barb’s Bakery.

Cookie said, “I ran fast to get to work on time!!” Becky said, “She almost made it”. Becky also said, “I enjoyed all the cheers from the bystanders, it spurred me on!”

Following the awards ceremony, a raffle drawing was held to award 33 prizes donated by community sponsors. Prizes included weekends at The Homestead, dining gift certificates and local merchandize. “The response of local merchants to this event was overwhelming“, said Linda Gretzema, Woman’s Club President. “Their generous donations played a major role in making this such a fun community event.” Proceeds from the race will be used to provide college scholarships and fund other community projects.

The Women’s Club would like to especially thank Cherry Republic for use of its wonderful facility to stage the event, for its financial support, and for the many prizes it donated. Special thanks also to The Homestead and Leelanau Vacation Rentals for their financial support and prize donations. The following merchants also provided generous donations for the drawing: Art’s Tavern, Anderson’s IGA, Barb‘s Bakery, Bay Lavender Trading Co., Becky Thatcher, Bench Warmers Sports Bar and Restaurant, Black Swan, Brownwood Farms, Cottage Book Shop, Dickinson Gallery, Dune Wear, Glen Arbor Athletic Club, Glen Craft Marina, Good Harbor Grill, La Becasse, Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company, The Glen Lake Manor, Peace Pole Makers USA, Petoskey Pete‘s, The Pine Cone, Riverfront Pizza, Ruth Conklin Gallery, Ski Walking Fitness Poles, Sleeping Bear Sweets, Thyme Out, Tiny Treasures, Trattoria Funistrada, Wildflowers, and Windows Le Bear.

“The number of participants at this first race significantly exceeded our expectations,” added Linda Gretzema. “We look forward to everyone returning next year and bringing a friend!”

Posted by editor at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

Turning back the clock: A history of the Brammer Mill

By Edna Brammer
Sun contributor

Mr. Fisher built the millpond in the 1800s. He dammed up the Crystal River north of Glen Arbor. The millpond was made by damming the water up but also letting the remaining water continue on to Glen Arbor and then come back to the bridge. The river ran under the bridge and the floom and around Mr. Brammer’s house, past the mill where it continued to flow down to Lake Michigan. He also built a sawmill on the millpond across from the mill in 1859.

To get water to the gristmill, he built a floom where gates opened to let water into the floom. I don’t remember exact measurements — but I think about six feet high and 10 feet wide. It was made of wood planks. The floom started at the millpond, ran under the bridge, over the river, over land to under the mill and back into the Crystal River. The water flowed through the floom to turn the big water wheels to grind the wheat. When the water wheels under the mill were turned on inside the mill, the grain was ground by the force of the water going through the water wheels. This also ran the conveyor belt and sieve. Mr. Frank Brammer bought the mill in Chicago and a man came to show him how to put the roller mill together.

In 1896 he and his family moved onto the mill property. It was a gristmill. The grain was ground by rubbing two big stones together. In 1904 Mr. Brammer decided to put in a roller mill that ground flour. The elevators had little cups on a conveyor belt in an eight-inch box. This conveyor belt either took the grain up or brought the flour back down. The building had to be higher for the elevators to carry grain to the sieve where it was sifted. It took the ground grain from the first floor to the second floor to be put through the sieve. The sieve was around five feet wide and six feet tall and round in shape. The grain was put into the sifter and shook and shook until the grain came out flou