Glen Arbor Sun

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September 13, 2007

Zoom, Zoom!

Check out the third annual Tour de Leelanau as it peddles by you on Saturday, September 15. The race will travel through most of the county. Learn where by visiting www.tourdeleelanau.com.

Photo courtesy of Iceman Productions

Look for our coverage of holiday shopping, winter sports including the Empire & Glen Arbor Winterfests and Michigan's early presidential primary election in our winter issues of the Glen Arbor Sun. Thanks for reading!

Posted by editor at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)

Exquisite tastes draw a big crowd to Epicurean Classic

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

You’ve heard this before: northern Michigan is on the map. You know some of the reasons why. Pristine beaches, azure waters, rolling hills, unpretentious locals, bike races and a great local film festival.

Add world-class cuisine to the list. In mid-September thousands of foodies will converge on the Hagerty Center in Traverse City for the fourth annual Epicurean Classic and enjoy local wines from both the Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas, fine cheeses, cigars, tender game meat, succulent desserts and appearances by nationally known chefs and cookbook authors.

Photos by Andy McFarlane, AbsoluteMichigan

Local co-founders Mark Dressler and Matt Sutherland, both of whom work in publishing, “realized with our connections in the industry, being on a first-name basis with people, we could draw in top talent,” says Sutherland. And top talent they’ve drawn. Of all the delectable dishes featured the past three years, Sutherland remembers most a whole quail drizzled with 40-year-old balsamic vinegar, courtesy of Mario Batali, a food star, restaurant owner and TV personality. The truffles from Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in Empire are also etched in his memory. And the ox tail marinated in spices from the Gods that I remember from last year’s Classic wasn’t too shabby either.

The greatest complement Sutherland has received? “Marcel Biro, the personal chef of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, told me this is the best-run food event he’s ever attended.”

You’ll also find plenty of local Leelanau County fair at the Epicurean Classic, which opens on Thursday, Sept. 13 and reaches its climax with the Grand Reception at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 15. Timothy Young of Food for Thought (“Canning Secrets”) and Chris and Heather Sack of the Great Lakes Tea & Spice Company (“Tea 101”) will both teach classes on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Local chef, and occasional Glen Arbor SunM recipe contributor Nancy Krcek Allen will encourage attendees to “Ferment On It For a While” at 10 a.m. On Friday at 2:30 p.m., learn about “Grilling Wild Fowl” with North chef Greg Murphy. And before you satisfy your palette at Saturday night’s tasting Reception, check out “Entertaining the Fruit: The Art of Chutneys, Salsas and Compotes” with Cherry Republic’s Jason Homa, and “French Food for All” with La Becasse’s Guillaume Hazael-Massieux.

By all means, wash down those tender morsels with a little local wine. This year, the wineries of the Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsulas and Andy McFarlane, the man behind AbsoluteMichigan and Leelanau.com, are teaming up with the Michigan Land Use Institute’s Taste the Local Difference to present a northern Michigan Wine and Food Pavilion at the Epicurean Classic. Friday and Saturday afternoons will offer themed tastings featuring roses and light reds, sweeter table wines, crisp, aromatic whites, full, complex whites, dessert wines and bold reds. The wines will be presented by the winemakers and paired with locally produced cheeses, meats, fresh fruits and baked goods. Regional wines will also be served at the opening and closing receptions.

Check out the full schedule, information and prices for this grand event, online, at www.epicureanclassic.com. Mmm … Cheers!

Posted by editor at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)

Celebrating “Empire anchor” Mike Vanderberg with Dunegrass originals

From staff reports

A benefit for the family of Mike Vanderberg and a celebration of his life will take place at two locations in Empire on his birthday, Sunday, September 30, with music from noon until 10 p.m. at Johnson’s Park and an early dinner at the Town Hall beginning at 2 p.m. The main dish will be supplied; in the spirit of a community potluck, please bring a side dish to pass; donations for food and entertainment are encouraged; items (including memorabilia from past Dunegrass Festivals) will be auctioned and raffled off. Local musicians and artists — including Third Coast, Cabin Fever, Wrangler, Song of the Lakes, the Jelly Roll Blues Band, the Corvairs and the Beach Bards — many of whom performed at early Dunegrass Festivals in the mid-‘90s, will entertain the crowd all day-long. Vanderberg, who passed away on August 11, founded the popular annual Dunegrass Festival and was the instigator behind numerous aspects of Empire life.

The following is local Emily Lanier’s favorite memory of Mike:

I want to share this important story, for it’s about an angel who recently found his way home. I had been working at the gas station in Empire, this “one-flashing-stoplight-town,” for a few months during the off-season, and though it was a boring gig, I enjoyed being the new girl in town because I got a chance to meet many of the town’s locals.

The reason we moved here and escaped from the concrete jungle was because we loved the area so much as well as the small society around us. It was so eclectic, and everyone worked side by side despite their social differences; this place seemed to be about humanity at its purest form: every type of colorful character, all in this beautiful place in the dunes.

Of course, being the new kid, I got stuck on the night shift, so things were extremely lonely during the long, dark winter months ... and I learned what everyone in the small town smoked, drank or drove before even learning their names. It got to the point where I got excited when I met a customer, any customer, which meant a brief intermission from the solitude that most of my shifts consisted of.

One particularly gloomy night, I was propped up behind the counter listening to my burned CDs and drinking coffee, trying to pass the time, when Mike Vanderberg, one of the locals, came in for his usual pick-me-up. I liked Mike. He was a kind, middle-aged man who seemed to be a big part of the local color. He didn’t really seem to know who I was, but he was always kind, and I liked listening to him talk about whatever he was up to that day. He especially enjoyed making little creations around town, ice sculptures mostly, but he was always up to something for fun, for the enjoyment of others.

As I rang him up, he randomly asked me, “Hey ... do you remember when you were still in school, and for Valentine’s Day you had to get those boxes of valentines and give them to the kids in your class?” I chuckled, remembering those days, as he continued, “I think as adults we should all still have to do that now.” Mike always came up with these random thoughts. I don’t know if it was the long, depressing winter getting to me, but I flashed back to how much I hated having to do that, and told him why.

“Well Mike, there were always two reasons that this had the potential to suck. And I speak from experience … either you were the one who got the valentine from the class dork, or you were the class dork, and I always fell into both those categories.” We laughed, and he went on his merry way. This conversation came and went in my mind, and I returned to my music and my coffee, and tried to pass the time away, “thinking spring.”

A few weeks later, the day before Valentine’s Day, one of the local kids was hanging out in the store picking out candy and chatting with me about which of his favorite horror and action movies I had seen (he was just as bored in the middle of winter as the rest of us), when in Mike came. He walked up to us in one of the aisles, and asked me “Hey, do you work tomorrow?” Seeing no relevance as to why he was even asking, I answered with a smile, “Nope! I got the day off.” Mike immediately pulled this pale blue piece of folded construction paper out of his coat, handed it to me and skipped away quickly behind the aisle where he pretended to be shy, peeking out from the shelving. I was so confused. All I could do was laugh as I looked down … and what I saw was cool. This man in his mid-fifties had remembered our conversation from weeks before about the valentine cards, and had made me a valentine out of construction paper and a glue stick. Half of a heart was glued to the front of it with a band-aid over it made out of crafts, and it said “I’m Half FAST without you” … and on the inside, “PLEASE Be Mine! Signed, The Class Dork”

I started crying. I don’t know why, but no one has ever done anything like that for me. It was so awesome, so random, and it made not just my day, but my entire winter. Mike beamed with happiness because he knew he had done something good. Though I was only the new gas station clerk in town, he put effort into doing something that made me feel like the most special person in the world, even if just for a moment. And the best was how he acted like the class dork, hiding behind a rack of juju bee’s while I realized what he’d given me. What a heartwarming way for him to say, “welcome to the neighborhood, kid … you’re one of us now.” I went home that night with a ray of sunshine, and that valentine was placed on the fridge, where it stayed until about a month ago, making me smile every time I looked at it.

Since the long winter shifts at the gas station, we have come to learn a lot more about Mike Vanderberg and his family. They have a large family, many blood-related but many just family by association, because that’s the kind of people they are. They live in a house right in the middle of Empire, a town that seems it would lack something without them there. No parade, it seems, has ever rolled down Main Street without at least one colorful and fun float built by the Vanderbergs and friends. The Dunegrass Festival, which only took place in Empire because of Mike and his family, was a major part of his life.

Every single person in Empire has a story like mine — a valentine given just to them, a smile that was sent their way from Mike just when they needed it most. He seemed to live for his kids and wife, and for making people happy. He had the heart of a child, and the spirit of an angel. He became a very special part of my life, and I looked forward to my run-ins with him. I even got to introduce him to a friend at Empire’s Asparagus Festival (where, of course, Mike and friends were busy making asparagus heads out of cardboard and green tissue paper for them to wave around or wear in the parade).

After learning of Mike’s passing I spent the next evening with some mutual friends, drinking and toasting to his life, laughing and crying together about how he touched the lives of us all. I came home, drunk and exhausted from the emotions, and on my counter I found the valentine. There it was, smiling at me the way Mike always smiled.

Now you drive through quiet Empire going north on M-22, and off to the left you see the field, only weeks ago filled with happy people, music and tents, and now just covered in flowers. How ironic — or how fitting — that his life ended in the very field where one of his life’s passions took place every year.

I am told that every year on September 30, Mike’s birthday, he would jump in Lake Michigan. And so this year, we’ll all jump in with him.

Posted by editor at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

Making jelly from Wild Fox Grapes

By Judith Kalter
Sun contributor

The best way to learn to cook is in your grandmother’s kitchen. My grandmother, Mary Ellen Senter Harrison Hoegraver Noe, always encouraged her six grandchildren to help out by punching down the yeasty fragrant bread dough before she fried it up in a big cast iron skillet or let us sit atop the kitchen table and watch her at work.

As children we always knew where the food on our table came from; the garden out back, the chicken coop for eggs and Sunday dinner and sometimes the rabbit hutch for special occasions. One Easter she made the mistake of serving rabbit. When we protested, she adamantly claimed that this chicken just had a lot of breast meat and tiny little drumstick legs. We ate up!

Unfortunately for most children and many adults today, where the food on their plate comes from is a complete mystery. Yet here in Leelanau County, residents have the luxury to choose their food right from the farmers who grow or raise it; at roadside stands or organic food markets. Many locals grow their own gardens complete with herbs to further enhance the flavor of fresh tomatoes and zucchini. I also enjoy gathering food from the wild to add to my pantry selections and satisfy some primitive yearning.

When I relocated to Leelanau County, I tried to recreate some of the wonders of the time spent “Up North.” My grandmother was raised in St. Ignace in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She would often return in the late summer to help my great-grandmother can goods to insure that the bounty of summer would provide during the lean days of winter that were sure to follow.

Fall seemed the perfect time to relive a long-treasured memory; making jelly from the abundant wild grapes that grew in my great-grandmother’s yard in St. Ignace. The intense aroma of the burgundy juice boiling away on her massive wood stove stays with me still.

The land and the food it provided was such a part of my parents’ and grandparents’ lives. One way for me to keep my connection to them alive is through the land surrounding my home. Between the deer and the shade of my home in the woods there is little space for a garden, but there are acres of parkland available in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, the local branch of the National Park Service, to forage for wild edible foods. The hunting for and gathering of these seasonal delights is a connection to my past that is a pleasure to nurture.

Recently Mr. Darcy, my Soft Coated Wheaton Terrier, and I walked the Empire Bluff Trail in search of Wild Fox Grapes. We were rewarded by finding garlands of the purplish black, bloom frosted clusters right next to the pathway. On a recent vineyard tour, I had noticed that the grape clusters were all strategically placed between wires in a row, convenient for harvesting, about three feet off the ground. Not only were these grapes within reach, but the area was clear of Poison Ivy. Although most of the clusters were well beyond our reach on tentacles climbing high into the treetops, I was able to pick my limit of one gallon of the fruit with little help but much diversion from my feisty four-footed friend and the passersby he inevitably attracts.

Many of the hikers questioned what I planned to do with the sour-tasting fruit. The grapes are less tart as they ripen on the vine, but it is best to pick them before or right after the first frost or the juice becomes difficult to gel. Whenever I gather food from the wild I am mindful to leave most for the animals and birds, who are totally dependent on nature’s food source for survival while I enjoy the found foods as accents to what I can buy at markets and roadside stands.

Wild Fox Grapes; even their name is not ordinary and sounds adventurous. Leelanau vintner, Larry Mawby of Suttons Bay told me that the name comes from their intense fruity flavor and aroma, which was called “foxy” hundreds of years ago. He stated that these Wild Fox Grapes were “vines either planted by early settler or descended from them. They are partially Vitis labrusca. This species has given us the staple of grape jelly, the Concord Grape.”

The gathering of the grapes on a sunny Fall day surrounded by their red and yellow leaves is a delight that far exceeds the tedious chore of painstakingly removing the grapes from their stems. I follow the tradition of removing the grapes one at a time from the stem and having the purple hands to prove it. After cleaning the grapes, they are simmered in water until the skins pop, releasing a marvelous aroma that fills the house. For me the most difficult part of the jelly-making process is pouring the hot grape liquid into an old muslin pillowcase reserved only for this use. Once the juice is securely tied into the pillowcase, I hang it from a broomstick, balanced over my turkey-roasting pan in the bottom of the utility room sink.

The next morning the fun resumes. Using my grandmother’s method, I measure out only grape juice, sugar and a little lemon juice — no processed fruit pectin. I bring this mixture to a boil in a heavy kettle, reduce the flame and simmer it until it reaches the jelly stage. This is the point when the hot liquid on a metal spoon will drip onto a sheet in two or three thick drops as opposed to one thin stream. A candy thermometer helps determine this since it is critical for the jelly to “gel” to the desired consistency when cool. The jelly stage is reached at 220 degrees Fahrenheit or 8 degrees above the boiling point.

I carefully pour the scathing hot jelly into jars that have already been sterilized and placed upside down on a clean linen towel. By this time the wonderful aroma from the fruit has permeated the entire house and anyone nearby has assembled in the kitchen to “help” clean out the still hot kettle. Pouring a thin layer of hot melted paraffin on top is the final step.

For days I will enjoy seeing these jars on the kitchen counter before finally moving them to the pantry. In winter I will remember the days spent gathering the fruit and making the Wild Fox Grape Jelly. Foods not manufactured on a factory assembly line hold a special allure for people today so I will either generously share the jars as gifts or more judiciously as a dollop atop my Thumbprint Cookies. Either way it will offer me the opportunity to retell the stories of my Grandmother’s kitchen.

Wild Fox Grape Jelly

Proportions:
1 Cup grape juice (see below)
¾ Cup sugar
1 Tb. lemon juice

Combine these ingredients in a large kettle. Bring mixture to a full rolling boil then turn down heat to maintain a full simmer. Cook until it reaches jelly stage 220 degrees Fahrenheit or when two or three drops at the edge of a spoon slides off in a sheet. Pour the grape jelly into previously sterilized glass jelly jars and seal immediately with melted paraffin.

This amount makes about two glasses.

Grape Juice From Fresh Grapes

Wash off the grapes and drain in a large colander. Pick off the grapes from the stems. Be sure to include several still under ripe ones. These will help the jelly to jell. If you are lucky enough to get a quart of grapes ad the same amount of water and place with two small green apples that have been quartered but not peeled in a large heavy kettle. Hopefully while gathering the grapes you also came cross an apple tree. These apple will help the juice to jell.

Bring the mixture to a full boil then simmer for 20-30 minutes or until the skins pp. Give the mixture a hearty stir and pour into a jelly bag (I use an old cotton pillow case). Hang the bag overnight so the juice can slowly drip into a large bowl. The Musk, pulp left in the bag can be used to make Grape butter and can also be the beginning of Balsamic Vinegar.

Daily quantity permitted per person from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Apples one bushel
Asparagus one gallon
Blackberries one gallon
Black walnuts one gallon
Chokeberries one gallon
Elderberries one gallon
Serviceberries one gallon
Mushrooms (edible any species)one gallon
Pears one bushel
Plumbs one gallon
Raspberries one gallon
Rhubarb one gallon
Rose hips one gallon
Sand cherries one gallon
Peaches one gallon
Strawberries one gallon
Grapes one gallon

Thumbprint Cookies

Oven 350 degrees
Cream together: ½ C real butter
¼ C brown sugar
Add: 1 egg yolk (keep the egg white to use later)
½ tsp. Vanilla
Stir in: 1C flour
Pinch salt
Chopped nuts
Wild Fox Grape Jelly

Chill the dough for 30 minutes then roll into one-inch balls. Dip the balls into the slightly beaten egg white and roll in the finely chopped nuts. Using your thumb, make an indentation into the center of each cookie and then fill with one teaspoon of Wild Fox Grape Jelly. Bake 8 min. or until golden brown.

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

My grandmother’s recipes: of food and family

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

I look around the long table. Our mothers — the three sisters — are presiding over numerous pots and pans, the many dishes required to feed our coterie. They sit down to eat, then just as soon as something runs out, get up to fetch things from the kitchen or pass serving bowls around the table. Of course, in our own homes we are perfectly capable of looking after ourselves, but here we are “the kids,” and it is reassuring to be provided for in this way.

Photo by Ryan Romeike

I’ve been noticing how we assume the roles prescribed by birth order and long practiced habit; we are daughters and sons, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers. On this rare Saturday, the great matriarch of our clan, our 88-year-old grandmother, has come north for the weekend. Although I grew up with photographs and stories of her visits to Afghanistan and China and the Outer Hebrides, she doesn’t travel quite so much anymore. This is an occasion to celebrate.

Although, like most families, we are a noisy lot, the tone of our interactions with “Nonny,” as I’ve always called our grandmother, acquires a different attentiveness in this context; it’s as if in the presence of our ancestor we recognize the truly awesome fact that without her, we wouldn’t even be here. That is, we try to behave ourselves.

I grapple with this, of course. As the eldest grandchild, I’ve always had a sense of filial reverence and duty. It seems an exceptionally generous and profound act to have children and to foster a family that over years and decades continues to cooperate, grow and gather despite our different dispositions and lifestyles.

How do I acknowledge my sense of this fact? How do I share my own life with my grandmother, who comes from a different time and whose generation had very different challenges and sensibilities? I want her to know me and I also don’t want her to worry. I want her to be proud, and perhaps most of all, I want her to be confident that we are each trying to carry on some aspect of the lineage to which we belong.

I think my brother Peter feels something along these same lines. He tells Nonny that he’d really like to have her recipe for Jalapeno Potato Soup — the one she would always have on the stove waiting for us when we’d go to her house for holidays. She’s in a much smaller place now, and I know she misses those days of decorating the house and playing host to all of us. The art and rugs and china that furnished those days has since found its way into the homes of her offspring and on this night, as she looks around the room, serves as a reminder of another time, now passed. She is visibly in awe of how much a life can change over time. I ask her if seeing the antique fog light in the entryway to my aunt and uncle’s new home gives her a sense of familiarity and she says, no, it’s confusing. That used to be in the living room of her lake house and now she is living in senior housing and doesn’t have space for so many of her memories, the special objects she collected over a lifetime.

Back when her appetite was better, and my granddaddy was still alive, Nonny would cook wonderful and elaborate meals, often with the imprint of her southern upbringing. Her famous soup bears the mark of her years in Texas whereas I wonder if the fruit trifle she used to make recalls her girlhood in Georgia. I tell her I want the chilled Zucchini Soup she used to make for excursions on the pontoon boat and the Concord Grape Pie that appeared at Thanksgiving. If we can all learn to make these things, her presence will be felt in the routines of our daily lives.

We carry on, eating with gusto. Conversation shifts toward the usual banter about politics, and embellished anecdotes from our daily lives. The clatter of our voices is ever amplified by wine and good food.

Nonny rises without notice and walks over to the upright piano. I don’t think I’ve heard it played in years but it gets a regular tuning. She’s a skilled pianist who plays primarily by ear and the image of her at the keys is one that recalls for me a childhood of music and sing-alongs in the company of my relatives. Nonny is working up a spirited version of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” which she’s played more than once at recent funerals of friends. This is followed by other familiar songs, by request: “My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Down By The Riverside.” All of us would have had music lessons of one sort or another during our youth; several among our group are avid musicians, and yet it has been a long time since the whole family was belting out tunes with such verve. I look around me to take it all in: everyone is smiling and happy and there is a common hum, a beautiful tone lacing through all of it.

Nonny is positively regal at the piano, working the pedals and playing along with both hands at the rate of our improvised singing (it turns out we don’t know most of the words). This used to be one of the things she most enjoyed doing and there was always sheet music out on her grand piano at the house on Low Road. In the intervening years, arthritis attacked her hands and it has become painful to play with the physicality and frequency of prior years.

I haven’t said enough about how important food is to the kind of family we are. We don’t watch sports together or have a hunting camp but we come together in this ritual, one we enact without an afterthought most of the time. Our meal of grilled chicken and garden vegetables is drawing to an end. The cobbler has disappeared and with it the vanilla ice cream. The wine bottles are empty. We shift back in our chairs, sated, lacking nothing.

Posted by editor at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

Cooperative living in a college town

By Corin Blust
Sun contributor

Last fall, I moved into a broken-down yellow house on Kingsley Street in Ann Arbor along with 11 other people. Sound familiar to a reality show you’ve seen on television? The only difference was that we were not regular tenants.

Our goal was to fix up the house and make it the newest and best housing cooperative in our college town. This fall, a year after taking on this goal, I believe we might finally be on our way to success.

When we each walked into the Inter Cooperative Council — the organization run by the members of all the cooperative houses in Ann Arbor — and signed our individual contracts to live in the house, which we called Zeno, we had no idea what to expect. What we found in late August of 2006 when we moved in was that the previous occupants had not been particularly kind to the house.

There were piles of cheap, broken furniture everywhere; holes in the walls (including a particularly noticeable one that allowed small rodents 24-hour access to our pantry); unidentifiable stains on the carpets that caused even strong believers in bare feet to find shoes; we kept waking up to discover the power going out in the middle of the night; there were only two functioning bathrooms for 12 of us, and the plumbing would eventually cause a major flood in the basement.

However, there were a lot of good things about the house too. It had parking. It was in a great location and had those impossibly cute antique radiators in the rooms. And we each got our own bedroom, an extreme rarity in a cooperative situation.

The best thing, though, is that there is no landlord in a cooperative house. The house was ours to treat as we liked. We could paint the bathroom walls Day-Glo orange and the hallways silver, install shelves everywhere, hang pictures on the walls using nails, and plant whatever we wanted in the yard. It was up to us to make it homey, and it would stay that way until future coopers wanted to make it even better.

Even before we moved our personal things in, we worked for countless hours to clear out everything and make the house livable. We went to discount stores, thrift shops and garage sales and bought pots and pans and dishes and microwaves and radios and silverware and new carpets and shower curtains and paint and toilets and doorknobs and cleaning supplies and tried not to lose our minds in the chaos that Zeno had become. The end of the madness was in sight, and we would receive a great place to live in exchange for the hard work we put in.

We were proud of what we were doing, especially considering that we were all full-time students at the University of Michigan and fixing up the house was an extremely fulfilling challenge.

Why would we want to live in a coop, anyway? There are few ways of living with a large group of people that are as efficient or comfortable. We can sign leases that coincide with the school year, so people like me who want to return to Leelanau County in the summer can go home for those precious four months and come back to the same room in the house in the fall and know what to expect.

Part of the rent we pay each month goes toward purchasing bulk quantities of food, usually at the farmer’s market in Kerrytown, that we use to cook meals for the entire house Sunday through Thursday. The sense of community that is built by sitting down to a delicious meal with good people five nights a week is priceless, especially when you don’t have to cook or clean up.

Who cooks and cleans up? We each do five hours of work a week on maintaining some part of the house, whether it’s cleaning a bathroom, keeping the kitchen stocked with food, collecting rent checks and keeping the budget low, cooking or mowing the lawn.

As a result of our determination last year, this Fall I am pleased to announce that the bathrooms are generally clean, the refrigerators have tasty leftovers in them, and life is pretty good. There is little or no discussion about why something was not cleaned or put away because we made it clear who should be doing what. If they don’t do it, they have a house full of annoyed people to contend with. It’s the best-organized chaos one could think up, and having chores on a system helps the new coopers feel comfortable getting into the rhythm of the house.

Looking to the future, I would love to bring cooperative living to Leelanau County. It seems like a great option for people like me who want to live in the community but do not want to commit to a year-long lease, deal with a cranky landlord, or buy a lot of their own furniture, dishes and pots and pans. Plus, I can see a coop house blossoming into a great community asset. Here, at Zeno, we host monthly potlucks and invite people over for dinner all the time, and we encourage people to do anything to the house they think would make it better, from building a bonfire pit in the backyard to painting crazy murals on the walls. Cooperative living is a unique way to share space with a community, and I think it needs to come to our area.

Corin Blust, a Maple City native, is a student at the University of Michigan. If you have any thoughts or questions about cooperative living, please email her at corin.blust (at) gmail.com.

Posted by editor at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Haunted Hayride returns to Empire

The Empire Eagles will hold their Haunted Hayride at 3805 E Empire Highway (M-72 near Gilbert Road) on two upcoming weekends: October 19 & 20 and 26 & 27.

The goblins and ghosts arrive at 7:30 p.m. and charge $10 per victim. Be afraid. Be very afraid!!!

Photo courtesy of Laura Sielaff

The Glen Arbor Sun staff will take a break and catch up on sleep after publishing 8 issues since Memorial Day weekend.

We'll print two more editions before next summer: a Holiday issue on November 7 and a Winter Sports issue on January 13.

Enjoy your hibernation!

Posted by editor at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

Kineebigag, Snakes

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.

That was a difficult conversation
The one that Niinooko had with the snake.
“Waatebgaagiizis.” Snake kept sayin’
Days getting shorter.

Trees saying goodbye to the summer.
The patch of sunshine
on this north slope is now so small
That this snake
Is forced to converse
With Indian women
And small Indian boys
Who are more than willing
To share the brief warmth
Of autumn spiraling
Into winter’s sleep.
And Kinebig asked Niinoko
Which one is going to survive
Here
Absorbing
The dwindling resource.
And the old lady
Told the snake
It’s OK
We’re both
Going to make it.
And for a little while
I thought she was talking to me.

Posted by editor at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)