Glen Arbor Sun

January 17, 2008

Shopping Sonnet and American haiku:

Loving to shop, and buying American

By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor

With more than a little guilt, I admit I love to shop. Since my mother introduced me to shopping discount at Robert Hall’s in Muskegon back in the sixties, I have enjoyed it. We are hunter-gatherers, right? That impulse is in all of us. I’m doing the gathering, right, and some hunting, albeit for adornment, but who’s quibbling. Besides this ancient impulse, contemporary research indicates we all enjoy some manner of creative expression. Non-artists find creative expression in four major ways: gardening, home decorating, food and, you guessed it, fashion and personal adornment. By extension then, isn’t shopping a part of creative expression? Well, it is a “making” of sorts. Putting together the right outfit for the right occasion is like writing a good poem. Yes, I am part of the great American epic of shopping.

Recently my young friend, Gretchen, said my love of shopping surprised her. Gretchen explained she associated most shopping and particularly shopping around various holidays, with a kind of ditzy, un-thinking consumerism. I had to think about my glib “hunter/gatherer” attitude. Am I now a ditzy unthinking consumer writer using my hunter-gather-creative-endeavor rationale to cover manic shopping I can’t in all honesty justify? How had I missed this?

I consider my shopping history. In my Bohemian twenties, I was a starving student, a familiar of thrift shops and second hand stores — which I still haunt though not for the same reasons. In my thirties, as my income stabilized, I gave over to spending, not foolishly, but with more freedom than I had in my twenties. During that time, I must admit to more than one occasion of manic, ditsy consumerism. (Yes, what does one do with three Gucci knock-off handbags?) But now, firmly gripped by middle age, I am aware of shopping no less avidly, but with a more poetic approach, apt I hope for a writer. I tend to buy elegant and functional, classy and long-term. With a hint of splash now and then. My shopping used to be free verse, now it’s a sonnet.

Stay with me on this. It’s the metaphor part.

When you write a formal poem like a sonnet, it has a strict structure. It’s not free verse; it’s contained. It has a specific number of lines, rhythm and rhyme, and it’s got substantive meaning. Now I know this is a stretch but if you look at shopping in a certain way, it can be a metaphor for the sonnet. Shopping too is contained and controlled by basic elements: budget, need, and desire — like the formal elements you’d find in a poem. A good sonnet is balanced — it stays with the form. A good shopping event feels the same. If budget is in control, I don’t buy anything. Boring. Too much form. If need is in control, I buy only what is necessary and feel pretty drab about it. If desire takes over, I get a lot of creative satisfaction but I’ve lost control of the budget — the form of the sonnet — and have usually purchased something that will hang in the closet breeding dust mites. It seems pretty obvious that balance is what it’s all about. Honor thy budget (I am the sale queen), buy what you need, put some color in it when you can. Though I must admit to the occasional lush indulgence of an impulse buy, I’ve controlled budget-busting sprees—no more epic credit card bills — with the sonnet of those three elements. Simple, huh?

Not anymore.

We are in a new world. This is not news though we tend to put our heads in the sand about it. And this is where friend Gretchen’s remarks gain purchase — pun intended. As our consciousness of world economies and environmental issues rises, so simple a thing as how we shop becomes a major consideration of how we live as Americans. Shopping for clothing, gifts, food and luxury items now has an immense impact on the economies of the world, this country and our local vendors.

Are we buying our way into self-destruction?

I recently read an article on buying American — or at least buying in the northern hemisphere. OR, (and this may be politically incorrect) not buying “Made in China/Thailand/Indonesia/India/etc” for all the obvious reasons: sometimes unfair labor practices, effects on American workers and economy, unregulated manufacturing practices (just look at the toy industry), and perhaps most of all, the effect on the environment — few controls for chemicals in factories, little pesticide/herbicide limits where they make fabrics or grow food — not to mention the pollutants released and resources destroyed getting the goods here. (American farmers have more limits on their use of pesticide and herbicide than most international growers. Ask for country of origin for your fresh produce and buy local if you can.) These circumstances add yet another element to the sonnet-shopping. What happens is that the epic shopping which became the sonnet spree is reduced to (and the irony of this is not lost on me) a haiku moment — a few lines terse with power.

Here’s an example.

It’s time for my annual trip to buy underwear. It occurs to me to review the underwear I’ve already got. What are the countries of origin for the panties of my past? I rifle through the drawer, using reading glasses to peer at the tiny labels. Wow, my underwear has many countries of origin! China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Vietnam (no surprises there) but also Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica and — get this, an exotic — Portugal. I am amazed at how international my underwear is — it could represent the United Nations right there in one drawer. I have never before noticed my global taste in lace.

It brings the problem of buying American uncomfortably close to home.

But I try. I like to buy my underwear at Macy’s — yes, I know — that American behemoth of a department store. I browse through shelves and racks of satin and frill, checking labels. I find 10 different lines of underwear in all designs and sizes but not one “Made in USA” brand. I can’t quite believe it. I ask the woman at the counter if she knows which panties are Made in USA. She looks startled. She has never been asked this question. We walk among bras and shapewear and slips. She doesn’t find any Made in USA underwear either. She calls her manager. The manager doesn’t know but calls someone else to find out. After a 10-minute wait, the news comes back. No American underwear in this Macy’s. I walk out of the store in shopping shock, empty-handed, wondering where the poetry went. Where can I find clothing (underwear included) that I like but still buy and support American workers, vendors and simultaneously reduce environmental burdens?

I end up at the Cottonseed in Glen Arbor where I confess my concerns to Ann Obershulte, the manager of the store. She doesn’t yet sell underwear but she’s working on it. But when I ask about American brands, she smiles and says, “Oh here,” as if it was simple, and introduces me to Blue Canoe, Earth Creations, BKg & Company, and several others. All Made in USA. She’s made it a mission to find attractive products made in this country.

But she also complicates the issue. She explains that she researches clothing to find products made close to home, but she also looks for manufacturers who use fair trade practices — in many countries. This may include cottage industries and organic materials, or materials made close to the site of assembly where the local economies are supported. So she carries European lines and a couple of Indonesian lines where her research has confirmed that these smaller companies are operating under quality practices. She also carries a few products that are made in China.

So, now I’m left with the more complex elements of fair trade and far shipping coupled with mass vs. small production. How many additional hydrocarbons go into the atmosphere if I buy fair-trade Lithuanian? Even if the company has fair trade practices and supports women in cottage industries, what went in to the water/air to get the products here? And if all the fair trade, organically produced elements are in place, and the products are beautiful and well-made? The price goes up. I buy one Lithuanian piece and one American piece, an American haiku of a shopping spree and far less than if I bought based on price and desire. I feel fine about it. I’m especially comforted by Ann’s dedication to conscious retailing.

I am a person who likes to shop. I buy goods. But I am also a poet and so economy, whether with words or shopping, is a practice I get. Poems often start with questions. In this case, what does it mean to buy “goods?” Good materials, good production practices, good labor practices, safe factories, healthy products, fair wages, safe environmental practices, nonpolluting manufacturing and shipping? I realize all these things now play in to what I buy. I want to do the right thing as much as I want to find the right words. How do I shop with wisdom and practicality? How do I balance need and desire? How do I shop American without breaking my budget? How much more am I willing to pay for a product made here? Twenty percent? Twenty-five? And what if my circumstances changed? What if I didn’t land squarely in that now-vanishing middle-income range? What would I do if could afford the $10 T-shirt made in China, but not the $20 one made in the USA. If I’m clothing a family here in this country, I’m paying attention to those realities. If I buy a new purse made in India, and don’t buy one of Leelanau Trading Company’s lovely currier bags, what is the difference? The currier bag will last a decade, is classic in design, and if anything goes wrong, I can turn to the vender who is a member of my community. I can’t do that with the Indian purse. How much more am I willing to pay for that? But it also means I commit for the long haul — a piece to keep for a long time. And what about gifts? If I gift a small painting by local artist Mary Sharry instead of a huge basket of fruit from Australia and New Zealand, on how many levels do I save? If I give a guest pick-up to Sweeter Song farm as a gift to a friend who comes here once a year, does that person remember to buy local when she goes home? Does it matter?

It all matters. It matters how we think about what and where we spend our money. It matters where it goes and who it goes to. I’m not a spendthrift — despite what my husband might say. I’m also not a fear monger. I don’t want to say that our economy is falling apart because we buy from China — but I know I need to grapple more thoughtfully with today’s shopping poem. I need to address the basic elements again—only this time they are not only budget, need and desire — they are who made it, what is it made from, under what circumstances was it made, where did the materials come from and how did the product get here? How long will it last? What are the quality issues verses the “cheap” issues? I have to address the larger picture — this is an epic poem of complicated sound and sense — or I am going to pay a high price and suffer a greater loss still.

So here are the formal elements I’m putting myself under for this new era of shopping.

1. Check labels and Buy USA if at all possible and as close to home as I can when it’s not. If what I want was made far away, do I need it?

2. Buy local/regional products whenever I can. Buy or make home-made.

3. For gifts, buy from local artists and artisans who make conscious, long-lasting environmentally sound work. Buy true beauty.

4. Decide how much more I will pay for “home-country made” and let my favorite venders know so they may research those companies.

5. Ask venders what lines they carry and if they know those companies’ labor policies or trade practices.

6. Educate myself about companies that have fair trade policies or sound environmental production and let venders know that I am interested.

7. Strive to balance all the elements of “good” in gift-giving, food shopping, adornment.

8. Make the shopping sonnet and the American haiku work with the epic poem of world balance.

9. Buy less, then once in a great while, give in to desire. But not too often.

10. Don’t go back to Macy’s.

Anne-Marie Oomen has written Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields, both Michigan Notable Books, and Un-coded Woman, a collection of narrative poems. She is currently writing a collection of essays Finding (MY) America. She is chair of Creative Writing at Interlochen Arts Academy.

Posted by editor at 01:51 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2007

A Christmas caught between culturas

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor

I felt a prickling of guilt as I sawed into the trunk of the knee-high tree and attached it to my dog’s harness. She barely noticed it on the walk home except when she looked back and saw its drag marks in the snow and scattered pine needles. “What a pitiful tree,” I told the dog. She just wagged her big black tail, knocking off more needles.

My parents refused to get me a bigger Christmas tree since they had decided we would go to Mexico this year. But I wasn’t yet ready to exchange my Christmas for a Navidad.

I had bragged to my friends that I would get to celebrate American Christmas early, but before we left on the trip my parents and I simply opened our presents while standing in the kitchen. It was no more exciting than opening the daily mail. The only present I received was a cheep MP3 player that I had picked out with my Dad, since the trip to Mexico was considered my “big present.” Nevertheless, I made a sincere attempt to be optimistic about my predicament.

I imagined a piñata strung up in my Grandma’s downstairs patio. I remembered the cool feeling of the tile on bare feet and how nice the air would feel where it was warm. But then I realized there would be no pictures of Santa, no tree, no cookies, no cozy Christmas morning watching the snowfall outside. Instead, we would be subjected to an hour-long mass of Jesus’ name echoing off every surface of the cathedral.

It seemed that if the Christmas ritual wasn’t celebrated in the exact form that I had come to know ever year, it wasn’t Christmas. I concluded that my thirteenth Christmas would be substituted for a cheaper Mexican alternative.

As we walked through O’Hare Airport, my love of travel collided with my disappointment. “I don’t want to go to Mexico,” I told myself. “I do not want to go to Mexico for Christmas. Any other time would be fine. Not Christmas.” My parents looked at me with stern expressions. I looked up at the familiar hallway of flags above me and realized I happened to be under the Mexican flag — its green and red banners buttressing an eagle with a serpent clutched in its mouth. I imagined a Santa hat in the eagle’s beak rather than the snake.

Being inclined to motion sickness, I also dreaded the drive to come through the mountains of rural Mexico, even though I enjoyed gazing at the scenery and what looked like pages and pages of National Geographic photos flowing by like highlight clips of my childhood. I loved the enormous green mountains and volcanoes, ramshackle farms, horses tied to fences next to the road, and endless rows of Agave plants in the winter. But my favorite part was always the small towns, so cultural and contradictory: a corvette parked next to an ancient statue; driving through streets made for horses, ancient dark women with braided hair sitting cross-legged and begging for money as a child walks by talking on a cell phone.

Upon our arrival, a puddle of light spilled over the uneven sidewalk and cracked street. Its source was the open door of my great aunt’s candy store and the doors to my Grandma’s house. As usual, my abuelita was squinting into the street for us, accompanied by several other family members yakking away. Her entire face lit up and she came quickly to us, her arms held high above her.

My Abuela hugged me tightly, with the strength of a person ten times her size. “I missed you,” she whispered in my ear and clasped my elbows so that she could look up at me. Her eyes lit up with tears and enthusiasm, and she squeezed my hands, “Niña preciosa,” she whistled through her teeth with the utmost conviction and reluctantly let me slide out of her grip so that she could greet my mother. I wondered to myself how such a tiny person could engulf people so well.

My first view inside my Grandma’s house was the traditional nativity scene: a paper mache cave (every Mexican child knows that Jesus was born in a cave not a barn) with a little porcelain Jesus sitting in the hay and the wise men gathered around him and Mary. Next to this stood a fake, midget Christmas tree. Old memories of past Christmases filled me and I stopped to breathe in the warm, inviting air, which still smelled slightly of dinner. The Mexican air implored me to dance, to laugh and to speak loudly in Spanish. Life flowed constantly in Mexico, not halting for a word too loud or an emotion over felt, but to my tired body, stiffly resisting culture, it seemed like breaking china, or more aptly put, a Mariachi band horribly out of tune.

After everyone had gone I sat on the last rung of the iron staircase and watched my abuelita make me hot chocolate; the real kind made with cacao that comes in big, sugary chunks. I watched her use the wooden instrument to stir it on the stove. The process both fascinated and appalled me to see the primitive means of making a simple cup of chocolate. Once she finished she handed me the foaming mug and smiled at me, once again teary-eyed. Our eyes met, and the emotion in hers seemed too honest for me. I broke the moment with a word, “Gracias.” She hugged me and I realized that I had grown quite a bit taller than her. “Dios Mio you’re so big!” she said and I gritted my teeth.

On our walks through the streets, the Christmas decorations left me culture-shocked and confused. Jesus was everywhere and there were no signs of Santa. Red, white and green flags appeared, hung from first floor balconies that formed a thick canopy of Mexican flags that nearly blocked out the sun. Stores and homes opened up life-size nativity scenes, and my little Mexican town slowly became Bethlehem. And since when was Christmas so HOT!

The insides of Mexican houses are also a style of their own. Besides being generally more open and airy than American abodes, their floors are covered by flat tiles that sound like a tomb or a chapel when walked on with flip-flops. The furniture is typically fancier but spaced farther apart in a way that seems to generate coolness. Every room has a crucifix, and the frames of the paintings on the walls are painted gold. The entire setup is made for optimum coolness and simplicity.

My abuelita’s room, where my father and I chose to rest, is very fresh and open and includes a balcony on which she keeps a healthy garden that overlooks the street. The whitish-purple tile is always cool on bare feet, and her bed is like a large and lonely ship, floating in memories and moored to this world by a modern television. On windy nights the white ‘70s fabric curtains twist and dance, stretching so far they almost touch the bed. And the stoic crucifix watches all activity. My Grandma’s room always disconcerted me because it seemed like death was near. Perhaps it was because my Grandma had been the only one to inhabit it for some time. This was her lonely room, the place she went when she was alone. For someone in my family, being alone is a serious illness. Imagining her lying alone in her bed, flipping through channels made me want to cry.

I spent Christmas Eve in that room, curled up in an old wicker rocking chair in the moonlight. It seemed eternal. I could not sleep, my head throbbed and my nose ran constantly from an awful cold I had picked up. Suddenly, interrupting my misery and snot, a shy voice of a younger cousin announced that my mother was calling my name. I realized that the shouts coming from downstairs had turned to one solitary voice, “Mija! Vente!”

I followed my cousin down the stairs and joined my family at the door to the street. They all huddled together, silently for once, and looked outside. My mom took me by the shoulders and pushed me to the front of the crowd. A procession of white garbed people was marching through the street with candles and singing Mexican Christmas carols with joyful solemnity. Ahead of them was a girl dressed as the Virgin Mary, riding a donkey and holding a baby doll, and man dressed as Joseph beside her. A small breeze blew through the lime trees and into my face, clearing my sinuses for a moment, and I enjoyed the sweetness on the faces of the singers who stopped at our house to engage us. Not to mention the smiles on the faces of every one of my relatives.

I forgot what made Santa better than baby Jesus as I listened to little white-robed angels sing, “Gaspar, Melchor y Baltazar son los reyes magos…”

Posted by editor at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

Snow Angels

By Mary Sharry
Sun contributor

If Clyde didn’t hurry, he and Pearl would be late for the Christmas Eve candlelight service. Pearl waited at the foot of the stairs for him. From the top of the steps light from the lamp on their bedroom dresser streamed through the doorway. She called up to him, “Clyde, hurry on or we’ll be late.”
He mumbled something and she heard the rattle and pull of the dresser drawer, then a quick slam of the drawer. In an anxious voice Clyde hollered back down to her, “I can’t find my tie clasp. Where is it?”

“Well, I put it right on top of the dresser along with your tie. Hurry, for heaven’s sake.”

Pearl turned and looked toward the front door. She could see through the white nylon curtain that was stretched taut on rods at the top and bottom of the door. Through the shimmering cloth she saw snow falling beneath the glow of the street light.

If only Clyde would hurry. Christmas Eve candlelight service meant a great deal to Pearl. She loved the solemnity and quiet joy that filled the church, and the faces aglow as candles were lit one by one. She already had on her green wool coat and galoshes. Her black purse was slung over her arm. In it she had tucked in a few extra dollar bills in case Clyde forgot the tithing envelope. She always kept a roll of mint Life Savers handy, too. She might pop a mint into Clyde’s mouth if she thought he was going to tell his old story about when he was a boy on the farm and how he and his brother were chased by the bull. Why he had to keep telling her that same old story was something she could not understand. He never told it to anyone else.

At last Clyde was ready. He patted his lapel pocket where he had placed his offering envelope, put on his overcoat, and followed Pearl out the door and down the front steps to their old Buick parked in the carport.

They slid onto the cold seats. Clyde turned the starter and the car coughed to a start. For a moment they sat in the darkness and listened as the engine warmed. Then Clyde turned on the headlights, revved the engine a bit, At last, they were on their way. The new fallen snow created slickness on the pavement and the tires spun a little as they headed down the road.

“Now don’t drive too fast,” Pearl reminded. “We want to arrive safely rather than not at all.” She hummed a little bit of Joy to the World. Clyde turned the radio on and Pearl pursed her lips. She glanced at his speedometer. The needle pointed to 40. “Clyde, you don’t have to drive so fast.”

“I’m only going 35.”

“You’re going 40.”

The car was on the highway headed toward Traverse City, ten miles to the south. Now the snow fell heavily and quickly and buried their car tracks. Pearl didn’t want to let Clyde know she was afraid that they were not going to arrive in time for the start of the service. She didn’t like to ride with him when he thought he was late for something.

Clyde pushed on the accelerator and Pearl felt the surge of the engine. A pit formed in her stomach. The radio played Silent Night and Pearl hummed softly to herself. Clyde continued the steady pressure on the gas pedal. A deer darted in front of them. Clyde’s foot hit the brake. The back end of the car came up to where the front had been and they faced the direction from where they came and then they faced where they were headed, and then they spun completely around and slid sideways off the road. They came to an abrupt stop in a snow bank.

It all happened so fast. They sat in the front seat, amazed, unable to grasp any words or thoughts to say them. After a pause of dark silence, Clyde stepped on the gas pedal. The tires spun, but the vehicle didn’t go anywhere. Clyde put the transmission into reverse and the tires gave an icy whir. He threw the gear forward and then into reverse as he tried to rock the car out of the drift, but the old Buick just settled deeper and more comfortably into the snow.

Clyde opened the door and stepped knee-deep through the accumulating whiteness. Pearl’s voice scolded, “Just where do you think you’re going now?” He shut the door on her voice and walked to the front of the car. His hands were thrust deep into his overcoat pockets. He trudged to the rear of the car and tried to kick away the snow around the back tires. Maybe they could push themselves out.

“Pearl,” he called. Whether she heard him or not, she did not want to look at him. She kept her eyes straight ahead and stared deeply into the night. “Pearl, come out here.” Pearl didn’t budge. She fixed her gaze into the darkness. She thought she made out two headlights. They certainly were headlights, and they came from the direction Clyde and Pearl had come and were lighting the way toward the direction where they should go. She pulled the door handle, grabbed her purse, and stepped into the deep snow. She had to pull the hem of her coat high so she could move.

An enormous mass of whiteness swirled in the light that came toward them. Like an apparition in the night, ethereal puffs of vapor billowed their way. Once Pearl had seen a ballet and what she saw now reminded her of the deep blue lit stage and the dancers in white tulle costumes beneath the spotlights.

Pearl knew salvation when she saw it and the savior pulled to a stop right where they had slid off the road. This redeemer had an enormous humped backside that reminded her of an oversized beetle. It belched a heavy mixture of deliverance and repugnance.

Pearl looked up at the ghostly image and read the bold letters on its side: CEDAR DISPOSAL. The anointed one descended from the cab and stood right before Pearl. She beheld a huge grin on his face which was framed by dark curls of oily looking hair. In one hand he carried the end of a large chain the rest of which dragged behind him like a serpent lost in the snow. His white breath mingled with the vapor clouds of his headlights.

“It’s too bad. Looks like you’ve had a little accident.”

Clyde spoke from across the trunk of their car. “Why a deer ran out in front of us and when I braked, well, I’ll tell you. We spun. I couldn’t keep this thing on the road. We’re on our way to church. Candlelight, you know.”

The driver of the truck stepped around to the other side of their car and looked at the place where Clyde had tried to kick away some snow. Clyde walked over to Pearl and stood alongside her. The driver hollered over to them. “Here, I’ll get you out. You folks just stand over there.” He motioned to the far side of the road. He got down on his hands and knees and fastened the chain under their bumper. He pulled himself back up to his feet and assured them, “You’ll be on your way in no time.”

Pearl watched as he ascended into his truck cab. She watched what seemed to be a miracle as their car moved effortlessly out of the snowdrift. She thought about how they could be in church right now, if Clyde hadn’t driven so fast. She wouldn’t be here on the road along with a garbage truck on Christmas Eve. She imagined the poinsettias beside the altar and the tall white candles. The choir would have sung the processional hymn all the way to the chancel. She could almost hear Olivia’s strong operatic warble, and smell the heady fragrance of Dora-Mae’s perfume. She never liked the warble or the perfume, but she would rather be there than here in the snow with the smell of garbage. She was grateful, though, to be out of the snow bank, and so was Clyde.

Now their car was back on the highway, pointed in the direction toward the church. The driver climbed down from his cab and unhitched the tow chain.

Clyde asked, “This is unusual, isn’t it, for you to be out on Christmas Eve? You’re not out collecting garbage at this hour are you?

“Actually, I’m on my way to my brother’s to help him tow his car from a ditch. This truck serves more than one purpose,” said the driver, and he started to get back into the truck.

“Wait,” called Clyde. “Wait. I want to give you something.”

“Oh, that’s okay. This one’s on the house.”

“No sir.” Clyde reached inside his coat to his lapel pocket and pulled out the tithing envelope. He took the two $10 bills and fairly pushed them into the driver’s hand. “Please take this. We wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t. Please”

“Well, if you insist. Thank you very much. My daughter will be happy to find these in her Christmas stocking tomorrow morning.”

Clyde opened the door of the Buick for Pearl. She got in, and he closed her door and walked around to his side of the car. They drove on toward the city. The headlights from the garbage truck that followed made haloes around their heads.

Posted by editor at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2007

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)

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)

August 23, 2007

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)

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

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)

July 12, 2007

Toward Inter-dependence: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in a Difficult World

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

On the fourth of July we were 20 friends gathered around a long wooden table for a meal of moussaka, rice and greens from the garden. It was a time for collective reflection, not for blowing things up. We didn’t miss the fireworks even slightly. Harriet Barlow, the great social justice activist and one of the minds behind such projects as The Tomales Bay Project which advocates for protecting the Commons, brought out a copy of the Declaration of Independence to be read after dinner. Was it high school when I last looked at this document? I needed a refresher.

Alexis De Veaux, an African American poet and writer stood to read, her voice rich and clear. A voice capable of bringing those words into the present. A magnum of wine was passed, and another, and then Baklava was served on every plate.

Amidst the bunting and barbecues one could almost forget that it was on this day in 1776 that the 13 American colonies unanimously declared their independence from Britain. This is a fraught history, the bulk of which I’ll not go into here, however it bears considering what the reasons for this occasion were, and how they are in dialogue with the present era.

The King of England, failing to be a force of good, was notified in no uncertain terms that, as the signers saw it, people are justified in rebelling against a government that violates their rights and impedes their ability to exercise self-determination. And so it begins: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another …”

Forgive me if this seems remedial, but I was startled at how worthwhile it was to revisit this founding document. In the introduction and preamble, the drafters expose their rationale for declaring independence from the Crown, and were, as we remember them, thoughtful and judicious. They believed that in the effort to seek redress for their grievances and concerns, including the wish for a true and functional democracy, they had explored all of the other options available to them. Finally it had come to the point where more assertive actions were needed.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men (sic), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The settlers had in mind a revolution, and the “repeated injuries and usurpations” of Americans' rights and liberties are detailed, and King George III is indicted for, among other things, the following:

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”

Does any of this sound familiar? Further on, the list of violations continues:

“He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.”

The list is long and the infractions are serious. Concluding the list of reasons for a revolution, are these words:

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

You can imagine that in certain company — and the company swells by the day — such a reading would result in plenty of head nodding, “uh-huhs,” and sighs of recognition and agreement. If you haven’t lately, consider re-reading this founding document. It is by no means without flaw or error, chief among them the contradiction in the introduction which states that “all men are created equal” while we know that several of the signers kept African slaves. Likewise, in the body of the text, Native Americans are referred to as “merciless savages.” It is a complex and in certain respects, troubled document, but it is also critical in the formation of this country as we know it. Perhaps in reading it we can remember some of our ancestral urges toward independence.

******

Have you heard how Northern Vermont has lately produced a secessionist movement? They call themselves the 2nd Republic. No kidding. Without pronouncing on whether or not this is an effective strategy for political change, I did notice while I was there that people have an independent streak that is most notably expressed in terms of preserving land and solidifying local economies, especially with respect to renewable fuels and food. These are things worth emulating, even whilst embedded in a federal structure that is overwhelming, cumbersome and often lacking in mindfulness toward sustainability, true political participation or inter-dependence.

******

It seemed like a grave and serious occasion to be gathered on July the Fourth. On the one hand, we have this opportunity to remember our history of rebellion against tyranny and illegitimate authority (while, unfortunately, at the same time our fore-bearers brought oppression upon this country’s first inhabitants). On the other, Independence Day does not give much attention to this these days. I’m not one for bombast and flag waving, and even less so when the flag is being plunged into the heart of another nation whose own independence is thus in peril. Hence, some of us thought a Fire of July would suit the mood.

******

Circles are comprised of sensual swerving, curves, should be inclusive, contain many, and often invite good conversation. Fire is elemental, and being hot, we remove layers, imagine what can be burned, is burning, the flames eating toward some form of purification. In terms of psycho-geography and the above, one would do well to construct seating around a fire ring in such a way that those approaching feel welcomed, eager to participate as equals in a forum. Makers of fires should construct entrances through which to enter the circle, and to one side, heap kindling and wood. Turn off the house lights. Stay out until it is truly dark, then later still. Watch the stars flicker.

******

Some of those assembled at our fire read poems, and everyone shared somber thoughts. It was a rare coterie, it being rare that any group of people will plunge into such unabashed acts of sincerity. Conversation turned from history to severe storms and recent cases of catastrophic weather — tremors, as we all saw it, portending an increasingly uncertain weather future. We’d been talking about the scale of human suffering in a world where conquest continues, where war is easy, fast, lethal and beyond our comprehension. We each had our own questions about what we can do, and what can be done. We all wonder how to comprehend what it means that today three young enlistees are dead from a roadside bomb? That a family has gone up in flames when the rocket missed its target? That million-year-old ice is melting. That dozens, hundreds, thousands yet to be counted, are having their lives cut short every week — for whom? For what? We read the papers, and we catch fragments of what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza; we turn the information over in our heads — or don’t. How can I feel the meaning of this stuff? The mind boggles, the heart numbs, the suffering of so many people and landscapes is relentless.

******

Reading “Patriots for the American Land,” an essay about the Tongass National Forest by Richard Nelson, I find some solace in his words on how we can manifest our desire to truly belong and be helpful in a difficult world by caring for it: “This is the place that nurtures and sustains me; the place on which — and for which — I stand; the place where my engagement with democracy is rooted; the place where I have found an unbeckoned and unexpected sense of patriotism.” I know many people — though I wish I knew more — who express this sentiment in the work that roots them in Leelanau County. If we could each find our place, dig in, and do the work of giving care and fostering life, then the horrors of the world would have a better match, a force for good that might tip the balance.

Concluding his essay, Nelson says, “Working in service to the land is a powerful source of hope — the kind of hope that comes by doing something rather than standing by in the face of loss. By this I mean working to protect both the natural environment and the human traditions that infuse every place with power and meaning. There is real joy in this work . . . ”

Posted by editor at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2007

It Can Change Your Heart

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

“I never notice flowers,” says Ted. He’s a composer, a musician, and I’m a little baffled by this. “Don’t all artists pay attention to such things.”

I had cut what I could from the droughty garden — the last of the white peonies, some margarita daisies, flowering mint, violets. I hold the black clay vase up to his face, “that’s lemon balm — rub the leaves — can you smell it?” Ted brightens, “I should have more flowers in my life.”

***

Five of us take canoes onto Eagle Lake after dinner. For the first time all day the wind has dropped and the paddling is easy, the beginners are starting to get it. We ramble down toward the neighboring lake, under a wooden bridge, out into the open where we stop, all of us, and listen to the water lapping against the boats.

Tina, a poet from Brooklyn, wonders why she doesn’t find a way to be near water more often. Every morning lately she has been sitting at the end of the dock, watching what happens there: the successions of insects, water lilies opening, loons. She has loaned me a book of poems by Jack Gilbert and I take a chair in the sun on one far end of the old porch. I open to a poem called ‘Burning (Andante Non Troppo)’: “The grand Italian churches are / covered with detail which is visible at the pace / people walk by. The great modern buildings are / blank because there is no time to see from the car. / A thousand years ago when they built the gardens / of Kyoto, the stones were set in the streams askew. / Whoever went quickly would fall in. When we slow, / the garden can choose what we notice. Can change / our heart.”

***

It’s been cool since Wednesday but there is the promise of summer. Especially after several rainy days, things are growing, opening. In the garden peas climb the woven scaffold and will blossom. We have been eating kale, mustards and lettuces every night despite the voles in the garden.

The lake is getting noisier. Already at nine in the morning, a jet ski breaks the silence. Loons are particular about their habitat and move north as humans move in. This lake still hosts at least several of these fascinating birds but their distress call — a quavering tremolo as if from the other side of life — makes me wonder how long they will put up with us.

***

Allen is grating sweet potato for a casserole over the stainless steel island. While setting the table, Laurie finds two beach nut hulls that someone brought back from a hike and takes them to him. “Look, this is what I meant when I told you about beech nuts,” she says. “Well, where’s the nut?” asks Allen, “I can’t do anything with these.” Laurie is quiet, the brown, bristled shapes opening like lotuses in her hand.

***

It’s Sunday morning and we linger over breakfast. My oatmeal grows cold as I lean in to hear Valerie talk about what she’s been noticing in cities — people laid off or pushed out by property taxes until the whole place empties and then the developers retake the avenues, give them new names, put up condominiums. She saw it happen in Baltimore and now in Harlem. I tell her about Detroit where 2 million people once lived and worked and listened to music. Now it’s a city of 900,000 and there are not enough funds to keep the city running properly. Houses are being abandoned, foreclosed, burned down for insurance money. It portends a gutting of communities on a scale that is heretofore unseen. People are losing each other, and where they are from is vanishing. How can we have relationships to a place and bonds that move us to defend them when we keep on moving? Valerie is philosophical though. She knows what it means to have one’s homelands trespassed, stolen, renamed and reinvented.

Much of Valerie’s art tells the story of how this has happened on the African continent. She says, “Even in places where there is a lot of concrete, I see trees and native vegetation.” She says this in all seriousness, and not because she is a denier. A long-lived artist, she is a seer. “This moment is just a moment in time.” She tells us about returning to a little house in the Caribbean and needing to cut her way to the door with her machete after being gone for only a few weeks. She’s trying to soothe us — the younger ones at the table — because she has heard us despairing at the rate at which our culture is bent on subduing the natural. How our culture is responsible for so much displacement.

Not far from where we are sitting is a massive boulder, a glacial erratic. It was deposited here ten to twenty thousand years ago when the ice came down from nearby Blue Mountain. It persists in the humus beside the old stables, which lean crooked and cobwebby, with their old shingles, weathered boards. We’d be kidding ourselves to imagine that what we create will last for very long.

***

Tina says she has never seen a sky so dark, a sky with so many stars. Philipp guides my hand to the focus knob on the telescope, and adjusting it, I can see Venus and its moons. Even in the chill, despite the mosquitoes, we stand a long time looking, and none of us say anything for a while.

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

June 14, 2007

Travels in the present

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

I took a road trip recently, driving out of Cedar on a hot and humid afternoon, the sort of day that had me wondering why we’d be going anywhere other than the beach. I was traveling with two Irish friends, which is important to this story because often the world looks different when you begin to see it from someone else’s eyes. We packed the car with as many water bottles as we could fill, plugged in the iPod, and set off on our journey.

Ever since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to travel. As my mother tells it, it was not uncommon for me to be found at the fork in the road, attempting to hitchhike out of our little community. I was eight. We lived on 40 acres at the end of a long driveway off Hejhal Road about nine miles from the little town of East Jordan. Neighbors knew that I had an appetite for going other places and I’d be brought along on grocery shopping trips, or even sometimes to their places of work, which did go a small distance in satisfying my wanderlust.

So I’ve always been curious about the world out there. For the last half of my life I’ve been a frequent traveler with experiences accumulated from several dozen countries, and almost every state in the union. My companions are similarly inclined, both of them sharing my own deep desire to know other places and perspectives, and to tell stories about these encounters. Muireann is a documentary filmmaker who often works in the global south and Ramor has just published his first book, the title of which conveys his own unique perspective vis a vis home and the world: Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile.

Even before we merged onto I-75 in Grayling, we were wilted. As we headed south toward Detroit, we began to speak almost wistful of the Treasure Island we had left behind. With some anxiety, we noted that the lake was at our back as also the good air, and quietude. The previous night we came home late from a cookout and stood in the yard looking at the stars knowing it would be some time before we encountered a proper night sky again.

I think we’d all been looking forward to settling into the rhythm of the road, reflecting on life and it’s questions with the advantage of a little bit of distance. Of course, the journey was meant to underscore a poetic element in my friendship with Muireann and Ramor as well; we’ve shared other odysseys over the past decade or so and because it is no small undertaking to all find ourselves in one place, at the same time, the notion of hitting the road together had the element of being some kind of pilgrimage.

This was the hope and the dream, as it has been the seed of many other road trips in the past. It is an antidote to our provincialism, and I’ve always considered it a sort of “rite of passage,” or at least a necessary experience in the process of growing up.

With all of this in mind, you can see what I am finding it hard to come to grips with what it really means to travel by car these days. Our trip was organized in part around a series of readings that Ramor was doing for the launch of his book. I was on my way to a workshop on nature writing in northern Vermont and had thought it a nice idea to combine our missions. We imagined a sort of Kerouac-ian adventure. In any case, this was a chance for my international guests to see what American looks like beyond the big cities and beyond Leelanau County. We had looked forward to our travels with visions of ourselves gliding down scenic roads, hair blowing in the wind, the conversation meandering into the highways and byways of memory and imagination.

In the late 1960s, Journalist Charles Kuralt did a regular segment for The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite called ‘On the Road’ in which he profiled the Americans he met while traveling around the country in a mobile home. In his book about the experience Kuralt wrote “The interstate highway system is a wonderful thing. It makes it possible to go from coast to coast without seeing anything or meeting anybody. If the United States interests you, stay off the interstates.” I realize that this makes me either a very slow learner, or else an indomitable optimist. Mostly I’m just chagrinned to realize that I keep taking off on these endeavors only to discover that it is indeed true, there really is nothing to be gained from being in a car at 75 miles per hour.

A tad more than a decade before Kuralt made this statement, President Eisenhower had signed the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act of 1956. The goal was to connect major population centers for purposes of national defense. Roads were needed to facilitate troop deployment and the movement of military supplies in the event of an emergency. The other thing this accomplished was urban sprawl.

In the 1962 memoir, Travels with Charley, author John Steinbeck remarked on the condition of the country he had traveled up and down, from the east to west: “Everywhere frantic growth, a carcinomatous growth. Bulldozers rolled up green forests and heaped the resulting trash for burning. The torn white lumber from concrete forms was piled beside gray walls. I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”

Currently there are over 46,000 miles of interstate highways in the United States. This is easy to take for granted, and yet only a century ago, 93 percent of the country’s roads were unimproved dirt. At that time people used rails or horse-drawn modes of transportation; the first gasoline powered automobile was invented in Germany by Karl Benz in 1885. In 1908, Henry Ford presented his Model T to the public, with the goal of providing personal transport for “the great multitude,” and thereby initiating the Automobile Era. We’ve been driving ever since.

We are filling our tank up at over $3 per gallon and besides the expense, I don’t see how we can keep this up. I’m already feeling crushed, and I mean, to the bottom of my heart, at what this urge to go far fast, is doing to the American landscape.

Sometime during our second day, Muireann remarked “so this is what the war is all about,” sweeping her hand in front of her, indicating the breadth of I-75 as we zoomed toward Cincinnati at 80 miles her hour. A semi passed at that moment, the BP logo obscuring for just a moment, the Jeep factory on our right with it’s display of recreational vehicles painted top to bottom with the stars and stripes. We pressed on, past an oil depot and refinery, past Pilot Travel Centers and malls, past the usual Americana which lately means fast food joints, gas station, and chain motels; the ubiquitous sprawl of our sprawling urge to be able to consume at any given moment without hesitation or impediment.

There is no other way to say this: America is getting downright ugly. Furthermore, each place bears such a resemblance to the next in terms of natural features (they are typically flattened and paved over), architecture (vinyl, massive) and cuisine (if you can call it that). The speed with which we are losing open space is not new news to most of us, but it continues to alarm me. Our road trip was that microcosm of time — just five days — that reminded me that all is not well with the world and Leelanau, with its own flair for ill-considered development, is also a rare refuge.

The trip was not without its good moments, which did seem to coincide with encounters with less damaged landscapes: our drive through upper New York and chance to drink a beer beside Seneca Lake; the curving, green byways of Vermont and their absence of billboards, which allows the eyes to alight on mountain ridges and wild rivers instead of liquor ads.

What I am left thinking about, however, is the auto-centric manner in which this beautiful land of ours is being conquered and divided. I am thinking about how much more fun it is to go places on trains, as I have in Europe. I’m thinking that as a nation at war, we all need to do some serious soul searching with respect to our petroleum use and dependence.

My friends appreciated the lesson in what America looks like to a lot of people — those who commute each day, those who inhabit the burgeoning suburbs and exurbs. But I think we all had our hearts broken, again, by the scale and significance of the asphalted terrain. By the unrelenting lights at night, illuminating car dealerships and parking lots.

I’m looking forward to returning to Leelanau later this summer. In the meanwhile I’m relieved to be installed in a little village in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont where I can go anywhere I need to go on foot. It seems a reasonable pace at which to see and consider the world.

Posted by editor at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)

Living in Two Worlds

By Steve Goldman
Sun contributor

“Dad? How much longer?”

For what seems like the millionth time, I try to patiently answer the question. “We’re in Cadillac, we’ve got another hour and a half,” or “we’re at M-37, so we’ve got another hour” have become stock answers over the years as I attempt to reassure my kids that the length of the drive won’t kill them.

Surprisingly, though, that question is being asked less and less often in the past couple of years. For, as my kids even have to admit, Up North has become our second home.

When I was their age, my parents brought our family up to Traverse City several times. The first view of the Bay as we approached the city always appeared like magic before me: vivid blues and greens that I never saw anywhere else, the clean, sharp breezes that seemed magical in their ability to cleanse the spirit and the land. My family always seemed more relaxed on vacation in TC, as if a spell had lifted the burdens of our daily routines from our shoulders.

As I got older, though, the trips became fewer and fewer, and several years passed until I got the opportunity again to come Up North. Now in my residency after medical school, I was given the opportunity to help teach at a weekend course at The Homestead. Leelanau County was new to me, since my family trips Up North didn’t extend too far west of Traverse City. As my girlfriend of many years (now my wonderful wife and mother to our two girls) and I explored the area, it was like falling in love all over again. Not just with each other, but with the beauty and peacefulness that surrounded us. Over the next several years we would return for a weekend or two each summer.

Time flew by, and we became parents. Still, Up North gently tugged at us, beckoning us to return again and again. We began to bring our children to visit areas that we had grown to love. They started to ask when they could go Up North to play on the beach or swim in the pool. We explored beaches and woods, and watched beautiful sunsets. Their rock collections grew larger, although, to this day, they mysteriously haven’t found any Petoskey stones to add to their small quarries.

Up North was becoming our refuge. When times were tough, the magic blanket of Up North never failed to renew our faith in ourselves and each other. Finally, we decided to look for property. It was late summer of 2001, and we decided to purchase a small piece of property in our favorite Up North place, Glen Arbor. We secured a loan, and filled out the papers. We were going to finally do it!

Then, the world came crashing down. It was Sept. 11, 2001, and we needed to get our papers mailed. The world was insane that day, and we needed to choose, quickly, before the deal fell through. Like so many others on that day, we chose to live our dream, to look toward the future.

We mailed the papers.

A few months later, we took our children to the lot and showed them our surprise: we would build our own place Up North. I’ll never forget the look of surprise and glee on their faces, or the feeling in my heart as we stood together on the lot where we would build the place of our dreams.

Now, as we commute back and forth from downstate to our place of refuge, I realize that we have chosen to live in two worlds. Hectic schedules, work and school melt away into peaceful times. Traffic jams become figments of our imaginations as we drive down country roads. Old friends beckon us downstate while new friends are made Up North. And music … wonderful folk music that has no home downstate draws us to taverns and decks in warmer weather.

And thankfulness for a place of refuge. We are blessed with two homes, two wonderful communities while halfway around the world tsunamis destroy entire worlds. The irony of our good fortune always reminds me to say how blessed and lucky we are to have our places to live and dream.

Eventually, we will move into our Up North house permanently. We continue to drive back and forth between our two worlds, yet I see that our attachment to Up North grows stronger each year while our desires to cope with the stresses of our other world lessens. Up North has taken hold of our hearts and souls, beckoning us to join her, to allow her to wrap us in the magic I have known since I was my childrens’ ages.

“Dad? How much longer?” now has a new meaning.

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

May 24, 2007

A world that’s not beneath our notice

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

Being a writer, I spend a good deal of time in the rooms of my head, the dark corridors of contemplation. The obvious hazard, although there are many others, is that such a lifestyle often takes me away from the vigor of the body and the sense of my feet being on the ground, both literally and figuratively.

The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam once said that Dante must have worn out hundreds of pairs of shoes in order to write ‘The Divine Comedy’. And the French philosopher Hélène Cixous wondered “what kind of poet doesn’t wear out their shoes, writes with their head.” She has said that the true poet is a traveler.

For this and other reasons, I make a point of leaving my desk from time to time, wandering out to look at what is happening.

Just minutes into a good walk, the wind on one cheek, the sun on all sides, I begin to unlink from the engine of my busy life, leaving leave behind my lists, looming deadlines and editors, the need to be “doing.” Most of the time, once outside I don’t even have to make an effort, I simply enjoy the elements and my presence in the moment.

In the middle of the night I am stunned by a sky so vast and lit with lights I cannot name, during the afternoon the marsh marigolds in the ditch near where the horses graze are prettiest, and all May the orchards coming into blossom are the sort of encounters which will, if I am paying attention, remind me to look out, to get down low, to fill my lungs. Concerns about the vagaries of household maintenance, the gravity of the global politics or the vagaries of daily existence are subverted to awe.

I live above a conifer swamp fed by perennial springs. The water wanders, anarchic, into and out of sight, filtering through till plains, hummocks and steep moraines. Our home, this land, is green and fertile because of it. In early spring when the snow is gone, the grass still matted, I walk my dog Lucy in the lowlands, circling the edge of a marsh, ducking among white cedars, hemlock and cattail. When the Leelanau Conservancy did a baseline documentation of the property in advance of our establishing a conservation easement, I learned that there are at least 63 different native and invasive species of vegetation rooted in this place — possibly more, depending on the season.

An anthropocentric world view — a tendency for most of us — would have that our human interests are always greater than the needs or preferences of anything else on earth. It requires some shifting in order to live in deference to dirt; to begin to organize one’s habits in order to acknowledge air and water’s rightful place in the precise, magical equation which ensures livable conditions on this planet.

Last week it began to rain while I planted morning glory seeds and since yesterday there are little sprouts peeking out of the sandy loam on the east side of the house. Soon I’ll set strings for them to climb, and the joy of waking to their bright blue faces will be as good a start to any day as I can think of. The poet Mary Oliver has written that “attention is the beginning of devotion,” and I am spellbound when I kneel before what grows and blooms.

Buddhists have a wonderful notion that in the west we call “right relationship.” The sense is that an ethical life is composed of, among other qualities, a mindfulness toward how we relate to each other, as well as to the environment that sustains us. Eastern wisdom places considerable emphasis on the fact that we share the planet with rocks, lichens and the peat coming into being where a tree once stood. Additionally, Buddhism’s first precept is to “revere all life, avoid doing harm,” and it is clear that this means bowing to the rightful place of non-sentient, as well as sentient beings of all kinds.

The idea of “Right Relationship” proposes that we work to be kind and generous and compassionate toward the ones we love, and all humanity. It also offers the mindset that to be truly at peace and fully liberated in this worldly existence, we must take just as seriously our relationships to the natural world.

How do we practice this ethic? We can start where we are. I can start right here. Such thinking dignifies the particulars of place, the contours of what is local and ripples outward, in ever widening circles of affection. It means not neglecting but loving our home, our turf. But it also asks more of us than pride of place. I think it must be something about both engaging our senses — seeing and smelling and tasting what we’ve long taken for granted — and possibly, it is overcoming a prevalent sensibility that elevates ourselves above all else.

Imagining a world organized around values which support a more egalitarian existence precipitates acts which support, rather than undermine all of the large and small systems which make life possible, fulfilling and decent. It does suggest that we have to open our hearts as well as our minds to the buzzing and silent, small and large beings that surround our hurried lives. There is no doubt that a tenderness is exposed in such a process, and yet would we consider not taking this risk?

I began this detour with a thought of going out walking and taking notice of the quiet growing, the silent moving and the green wildness all around us. I have been trying to say that maybe if we love something, we will take notice and in seeing and hearing and smelling our nearest patch of green, we will become allies to milkweed and dune grass; a true defender of aquifers. Yes, our sensitivities would appear to need piquing. But even over the course of a short walk, our mind marvels to discover the larger intelligence of that spring coming out of the hill; the profundity of the ecosystem, the watershed, our community of existence. The head swoons and the heart follows. They take turns leading.

Edward Abbey wrote that “what most humans really desire is really something quite different from industrial gimmickry — liberty, spontaneity, nakedness, mystery, wildness, wilderness.” That’s certainly how I see it. Acknowledging that not only do we want “right relationship,” but indeed, there is a relationship, and this is the most profound place to begin satisfying some of these desires.

Posted by editor at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)

2007 Empire Asparagus Festival Poetry Contest winners

Adult category

Tom Ulrich

Spare Gus

My grandfather grew asparagus.
Not in raised beds, or rows,
But in a chaos of well-rotted manure
And a ragged forest of spears.

He called it by name, with affection.
When I was younger I thought “Spare Gus”
Was the nickname for an old friend of his
Who came around the same time every year.

As I grew, he showed me how to work the beds,
Just him and me, pulling weeds, spreading manure,
And best of all, harvesting the green spears,
His rough hands tenderly snapping each one.

The beds he planted outlasted him
By a good twenty years — my grandmother
Now harvesting the dwindling spears
And still making his favorite recipes.

Two years ago, I took a couple of asparagus crowns
Out to the cemetery and put them in a furrow
Over his grave — Mixed in a little manure,
And watered them with my tears.

Now it’s a cool May morning, and I find myself
Back at his grave. “Hey Grandpa,” I say,
As I bend down and snap off a thick green spear,
“Look who’s here.”

Youth category

Libby Benjamin

Asparagus

Cold, wet, green stalks
Bound like slaves
With a purple rubber band

Sprayed with ice water
From up above
Drowning in a grocery store cooler

Thrown carelessly in a bag
Twisted shut
The stalks are suffocating

Plunged into a pan of oil
It bubbles, spits, scalds them
Salted
Peppered
Enjoyed?

Posted by editor at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2006

Before We Hibernate: Leaves, Wood, Food

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor

Each fall my mood takes a plunge when things start dying off around me. At the end of the growing year, there is a thread of despair as I remember my own mortality and the end that comes in the cycle all living things. Low pressure or the stirring of a storm often reflects my own interior climate.

Photo by Ryan Romeike

I maintain a regular correspondence with a friend who lives 15 miles east of me. Most days, the same clouds or the same blue skies over my home in Cedar are as likely those he sees on the East Bay. Despite this, our letters always seem to begin with meteorological details. I write: “Today the swamp is pulsing moisture through the air and everything is slick with overnight rain.” He writes “Small stalactites of ice hang from the tomato plants on the porch. The basil's looking a bit disconcerted with the cold. I'm thinking its not going so well for the porch garden.” These fleeting observations are perhaps like stage directions, a way to set the scene.

When I write, “the maples are losing to the wind but one near my window has hung onto all its purple leaves,” perhaps I am also commenting to my friend that I too am determined to preserve my good humor a little longer.

In the midst, fall is noteworthy for its extremes. By mid-October I enjoy the wind buffeting the house, rattling the stovepipe, making music all night in the branches. To my poet friend I praise those breaks in the weather which provide another chance at outdoor chores before the snow.

This is the season of fortifying the woodpile, cleaning chimneys. Gutters are mucked out, downspouts straightened as we brace for heavy rains. The really good homeowner has already packed away the lawn furniture and tipped the picnic table to prevent rust or rot. Flowerpots have been moved or emptied. Driving around the county I admire those who in addition to what must be done, have put out pumpkins or a potted asters.

After a couple of hard frosts, I’m hanging on to what still grows. My calendula and nasturtiums persist so that even now I have fresh flowers on the windowsill. But the beds still need tidying if the crocus and tulips are to find their way come spring. Reluctantly I pull up the tangle of wilting leaves and unopened buds, take it all to the compost heap.

Arranging firewood for the heating season is always a last minute affair at my house. Of course, the sensible thing to do is split wood while it can cure in the sun; at this point we risk running into damp pieces before fair weather returns. But we are young and we live with this risk, knowing that if we must, we’ll go for wood in knee-deep snow.

Lately, we drive the truck back into the woods on the weekend, unload the saw, bar oil and red can of chainsaw mix. I step into my Carhartts, put on work gloves. The puppy couldn’t be happier than when we point her to a decomposing stump where she digs a dark hole into the earth, spraying rich soil in every direction.

On one of the adjacent parcels someone is firing a .22 amidst the hum of lingering birds and squawking squirrels. Every step into the spongy layer of leaves on the way to the leaning ash or the downed maple sends up the tannic odor of rotting leaves. We find the best path from firewood to truck bed and start cutting, start hauling.

Certain work reminds me that indeed, so much depends on this body. I use all of my weight to thrust the wheelbarrow over the hummocks, swiftly through the standing trees. I bend and lift with my knees, use all my strength to heave the largest rounds of wood onto the tailgate; I get up to shift the growing pile to the back of the truck bed. Much of what we gather won’t be cut to length or split until we are home again. I pause, leaning against a large beech, calculating what is needed yet to get through until May.

The other day a large diesel truck roared up to where we were working. I braced, thinking it was some grouch come to chew us out for trespassing. It turns out it was an old classmate I hadn’t run into in over a decade. Mike was in his full bow hunting gear and hoping we could give permission for him to access the land to chase a wounded deer, should it come to that. We caught up a little — he has two kids now, works for his dad in the construction business — and then each returned to our most pressing work: getting fuel and getting food.

If summer calls us to plant and tend, and play in the beauty of that hard-earned season, then fall summons us to gather, even to horde. We still play — take the canoe out for one more paddle, or go hiking across the unfrozen dunes when the sun appears — but not once have I spent a fall in Leelanau without rushing a little to get the essentials in order.

Those of us who retain some measure of personal responsibility for our survival have been occupied with gathering what we need for winter since the tomato glut in August. We pickle, can, freeze and ferment, stocking the larder with the fruits of — if not our own — then our neighbors’ labors. Squash are shelved beside onions, garlic, shallots and other storage crops. Hunters and fishermen have an added food group to smoke or cure or fill the freezer with. In the fall we are not so different from other animals in our scramble before we hibernate.

When the light falls gray and cold across the yard, I put the kettle on for coffee, certain that our tired bodies will not resist sleep tonight. The longest burning, best fuel we can find is ironwood and we take armloads to the basement for those exceptionally cold nights in February. A couple of pieces in the Morso before bed means you can count on good coals in the morning, sparing a trip to the woodpile in pajamas.

We talk about what to make for dinner — roasted sweet potatoes with walnuts, maybe fresh bread, some Red Russian Kale, which is best after a frost when the leaves are tender and sweet, salad with gorgonzola. We go on like this while, shifting the last cord of wood from the damp ground to long stacks. We move as we are made to move, and then we stop to look out across the brown weeds and the bare trees at the settling swamp.

Posted by editor at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2006

Autumn’s Irony

By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor

Finally, with our house sort of finished, we turn to landscaping. Landscaping in our woods is simple because the chance of a lawn is nil unless one is willing to cut trees and we have vowed—no more tree cutting. Instead, we tuck the house so far into the dappled arms of forest that even the heartiest veggies will grow nothing but tendrils—it is that shady. In the one or two spots that actually get light a few hours a day, I finally build raised beds and set shade tolerant perennials—hosta, astilbe, ferns—which adapt with ease.

I also invite the woods back in, coaxing leeks, Dutchman’s Britches, Trillium, and wild columbine as close to the house as they will grow in disturbed soil. I plant myrtle on the south side and let wild raspberry brambles reshape a northern jungle. In summer, it feels as though something wild and hungry will climb from the leaf shadows, peer into our windows or squeeze under the doors. But I have come to love the way living in the woods encourages me to look at the shade of the world. I love the metaphor of looking more closely at these shadows, and have come to feel the comfort of release that early dark brings, even on the longest days. Over time, I too have become shade-tolerant.

But none of these insights eases my hunger for color.

One September day at the post office in Empire, I find an abandoned Dutch bulb catalogue. The colors on the cover look alive. I ask if I may have it, and Ginny interrupts her letter filing to holler over the counter, “Oh sure. Folks just leave their extra catalogues. Help yourself.” Then, glancing at what I am holding, she grins.

I pour over clusters of tulips, exotic daffodils, and those bravest hearts of all, the delicate crocuses. I decide to order economy tulips and daffodils for naturalizing because I know as a first-time experimenter with bulbs, I might make mistakes and these seem forgiving. I also fall in love with color names—another weakness being words—and when I order, I choose some simply for that pleasure: tulips named Scarlet Dynasty, Queen of the Night, Lavender Rembrants, Rose Angeliques, Touched Greenlands, Autumn Apricots. That’s not even mentioning crocuses. When I am done, the accumulative order for bulbs is for over 400.

They come UPS with instructions to keep them in the dark until the soil is cool but I open every bag and roll the bulbs in my hands. Here is dream and hope in its raw form, shaped like the turrets of exotic India. Through autumn, I plant in the long light of late afternoons. The light grows as the leaves fall. As I dig and press bulbs into soil, I am aware of ironies. We place these plain seed-things into the subterranean—essentially burying them. All through the process, planting clusters of dafs, lining up tulips and—where they will surprise me—dozens of crocuses. I know this irony. I am closing something alive off from an essential light that comes to my woods only with the autumnal equinox. I am putting the bulbs into darkness, just as I do my own being.

When I am done, no one but the dog knows where everything is planted, no one can tell what blooming anticipation is buried six scattered inches beneath the fallen.

Now, I settle toward my woodsy winter, its quiet and work. But I dream almost daily of what is happening in the dark earth. I imagine that cream sphere splitting open, sending out its white roots. Soon all the leaves will be empty, trees bare, and the blazingly cold and brilliantly monochromatic landscape of winter will surround me. In the spring, the leaves will come and make our woods dark again, as though we above the earth were moving underground, but the bulbs planted underground in fall will send up color, raising the spirit, and will make the world bright for having come from that earthy darkness.

Posted by editor at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)

Solomon’s Wisdom: An allegory for a modern topic

By “Uncle Peter”
Sun contributor

I had been on my way to Savannah when I stopped for a tire repair in a spot about seven miles east of the County seat, a mite of a place, hardly a town at all, just an intersection where the dirt farm road crossed the highway. A hearing was being held in the little General Store, there being no court house in this smidgen of a town.

We were five: widow Maisie Heartland, farmer John Husker, Mrs. Owing, the Judge and myself.

As your observer, I write mostly in mid-American English as I am not apt in colloquialisms though occasionally they are unavoidable and I will try my best.

When you lightly tap a wine glass with the back edge of a knife, it sounds a soft, clear note. Southerners speak with a soft lilt, as pure and clear as that wine glass.

There is a soft Southern logic that contrasts as clearly as that note with the sometimes harsh New England nonsense of the North.

To Judge Solomon, it was an open and shut case. The town council had met but two days prior, surreptitiously it seemed to him, yet within the law. Just three, constituting a quorum of the majority of the five-man council. In the sweltering humidity of central Georgia, widow Heartland had managed to pass an ordinance that made no sense at all. And the Judge was set to put matters right, albeit after due process.

Maisie Heartland, bereft of her husband Bo, after fifteen years of marriage and still barren, had allowed her cats to multiply beyond reason. While they certainly had kept the rodents under control, they had also provided Maisie with companionship and solace. Neighbor John had stepped in and sharecropped the Heartland’s 400 acres, helping now and then when Maisie needed work done she herself was unable to do. She had looked after his horse and dogs when he had to travel to Valdosta on business. Theirs had been a practical, farm friendship.

As the hearing moved along the facts had become clear. Widow Heartland's cats had become an infernal nuisance. Husker had strangled one, shot another. Maisie had been hurt, angry. She had accosted him. As any follower of Garrison Keillor knows, cats can be important, especially in a rural life. They can warm ones shoulders, ones very soul.

Husker’s attitude, simply looking at the matter as a reasonable way to deal with the problem, infuriated her. His act was unconscionable. Tough, occasionally intense, hardened by life in rural Georgia, she had become furious and killed his dog when it had taken one of her chickens. John, a placid man, didn’t think that was right. He had brought it up at the town council meeting and allowed as how dogs were important and valuable farm animals and, in their county, protected by law.

Moreover, cats, while useful enough were after all, just cats. No special protection was accorded cats under local law. Further, they reproduced themselves in great plenty, which is at the very root of this matter.

The three council members had consisted of Maisie Heartland, John Husker and Mrs. Owing. Mrs. Owing had been a teacher. She had taught arithmetic, reading and writing to all six grades in her one room school. Her mind was logical, orderly and run by a set of rules, no less rigid than the mathematical algorithms she taught.

Even though you and I are from other parts of the country, it is not difficult for us to understand the two conflicting points of view. And I was just as curious as you would have been to know how this local melodrama would play out.

Then the unexpected had happened: Mrs. Heartland had introduced a new ordinance.

Mrs. Heartland’s ordinance had said that in the future in accord with local law, all cats were to become dogs. Simply stated, the ordinance would read: “All cats are dogs.”

“Thet’s crazy!” John had opined. “Don’t make no sense ’tall.” And Owing had chimed in. “Y’all can’t just change a word like that! Words have meaning,” she said. “Dogs and cats are different.”

Maisie, however, had not been dissuaded. She had pointed out that as far back as anyone knew, marriage had always been between a man and a woman. That was the very meaning of marriage. That was what marriage was.

But, Maisie had said, a law could, in principle, be passed to make anything the law said, something else, if it wanted to. In Massachusetts, she had heard, they had passed a law saying that a marriage could be between two men!

“Thet’s not marriage!” John had shouted. “Thet’s...” but before he had finished,

Maisie had interrupted. “Besides, this ordinance don’t hurt dogs no way. They have the same special rights they allus had.” And “Now John, you know pufectly well if it’s the law in Massachusetts, its gonna get t’be the law evywhar.” And, to cap her argument “Besides, you know very well they’s betta edjicated up thar. They’s got a mess o’ colliges up theya. They’s iva liggers”

Astonished, Owing had spoken. “That’s insane! Such a change would impact both cats and dogs. In different ways perhaps but both are affected. Words have meaning. A law could say a ‘3’ is the same as a ‘4’. You could add three and four and get six! That’s crazy!

But Maisie had persisted “Now look, I realize this is silly, but the simple fact is that if we wait for the County or the State or the United States Government to give equal protection to cats and dogs, it ain’t nevah gonna happen. So this is a practical answer. An answer to a local problem by local folks.”

Yet as preposterous as it had seemed, Mrs. Owing had been unable to refute Maisie’s logic. She had been moved, too, by strong feelings, that Maisie had somehow been wronged, and she had wanted to support Maisie, so against her own better judgment she had voted for the ordinance. John had vote against. But with a two-thirds majority, Maisie’s ordinance had carried the day.

A two-day lapse had ensued, giving all a chance to think the thing through. And Judge Solomon Harrell had been requested to step in and hold the present hearing.

He had heard all the foregoing arguments, reprised by the same folks who had passed that law. Now, the Judge had to decide.

Words do have meaning, he reasoned. If a law could change meaning, then a law could say a ‘3’ is the same as a ‘4’! You could add three and four and get six! Imagine what that would do to town taxes!! The implications were mind-boggling.

If meaning can be destroyed by a simple change in the law, then all meaning would be shattered as easily as if that wine glass had been crushed in one’s hand. There is a terrible danger buried in that idea, hidden from view. He heard that glass-clear bell- note; a soft, Southern logic. With knowing insight, confident that a higher court would review his finding, his decision was crafted.

He leaned back, spat a practiced plug of tobacco into his battered spittoon. Brown liquid spattered up, gleaming on the stained floor of the country store where the hearing was being held while he pondered and we waited.

At last he spoke. “It is the opinion of this court that:

“1. Being as how you, Maisie, in an unwarranted act and in violation of county law, did destroy your neighbor’s dog, you are hereby assessed a fine of $10.00.

“2. The jurisdiction of this court provides no authority to overturn the ordinance subsequently and legally passed by our town council two days ago. Henceforth in this town, all cats are dogs. This hearing is now closed.”

And with a rap of his gavel, so it was, attesting to the wisdom of Solomon, duly signed and recorded.

Posted by editor at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

A Fall Tour of Leelanau

By Ray Nargis
Sun contributor

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

Almost a quarter century ago — in the fall of 1977 — I drove from my home in Kalamazoo to see the Leelanau Peninsula for the first time. I was looking for a place to live where the air and water would remind me of my hometown, Ludington — without the harness of the past which precludes most of us from settling in the place where we were born.

I knifed up the east side of the peninsula on my way to Sutton’s Bay under a sheltering mix of high clouds recently blown in from Canada and milky October sunlight. I distinctly remember commenting to my companion — a cat named Smoky — that this was the kind of place where we could live.

One year after America's bicentennial the ubiquitous sprawl of mini-marts and fudge shops, which now predominate so much of the landscape from Burdickville to Northport, had not festered into a full-blown attack on the ascetics of Leelanau County. The fall colors were only a few days short of peaking, and the glinting sun off Grand Traverse Bay — at that moment rising above Power Island — was awe-inspiring.

In all the subsequent years I have driven that same route I still cannot twist along the bay without dropping a tire off the side of the road because my attention has wandered to the water and the view.

On that day I stopped In Sutton’s Bay for breakfast and was thrilled to see Jim Harrison, a writer whose work I had recently discovered in the form of a rat-eared copy of his collection of poetry called Plain Song, holding court with the waitress. The subjects of his monologue that morning were the twin virtues of menudo and merlot as hangover cures.

I recall thinking what a wonderful place that was; where writers could be met daily for quips and stories; where the famous and near-famous were available to be observed and befriended. I did not know it at the time, but I was not to see Jim Harrison again for 17 years.

I left Sutton's Bay and drove north through Peshawbetown. The Grand Traverse Band was still years from its official recognition and economic upturn. The blight and poverty of the few tarpaper shacks and mobile homes was palpable and depressing.

I stopped in a yard of rusted cars and assorted junk where a small man and his deaf son were smoking fish in a hollowed-out refrigerator. We talked about the whitefish I was buying and the beautiful day, but I'll never forget the sidelong glances and deferential language he used in our conversation. It was as if he held me in the utmost contempt but was shielding it with the thinnest veil of civility. I drove away wondering what his life was like and glad that I really didn't know.

After a stop at Woody's Bar in Northport for coffee and directions, I rounded Cat’s Head Bay and stopped at the lighthouse on the peninsula’s northern-most point. Despite a stiff wind which had blown up from the West the temperature was almost balmy for October, and I recall thinking that perhaps it didn’t get that cold in Northern Michigan. I walked down the beach a ways and then took the first of what would become many thousands of skinny dips in the isinglass, blue waters of Lake Michigan. I remember having to walk out two or three hundred feet, as the water was shallow and a bit icy, and picking my way over the large stones at the point’s end. Finally I was at neck level, and I recall thinking that if I could just keep swimming north I could escape my whole life and end up in the Upper Peninsula or Canada.

There are days when I still recall standing at the very end of the Leelanau Peninsula, so many years ago, on that fall afternoon wondering about how my life would be in the North. Perhaps everyone has a moment when they stand at some pivotal point of no return. For me it was neck-deep in the water, under an isogonic October sun, looking out towards Beaver Island at the northern-most geographic point I had ever been in my life.

My itinerant ride down the west side of Leelanau that day has remained ensconced in my memory all these years. The rolling hills leading south out of Northport gave way to a photo session at fish town in Leland. Then I made my way to Glen Haven for yet another swim. The trees enshrouding the coastline there were brilliantly vibrant-yellow-red combinations with the musk scent of decay. I stood alone in front of the old cannery and imagined what the scene would have looked like one hundred years earlier.

I stopped to buy pumpkins just north of Empire that day before taking M-72 back to Traverse City. The huge balls lay odoriferous in the wet, mud field and I recall thinking of my grandmother who had just recently died. I don't think I said a prayer; although I might have, but I remember wishing she were with me. In her youth she had lived for a while in Empire and told me stories of going to school on a boat stuck in the ice near there. I think now that, in recalling her that day, she was inviting me to return to the home I'd never seen.

One of the original Beach Bards poets, Ray Nargis now lives in Ely, Minnesota

Posted by editor at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2006

The goddess of dogs

By Mary Sharry
Sun contributor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grandpa apologized to the other old man for my behavior. Hot, my hair matted against my wet cheeks, I screamed, “But he tried to kill the dog. He tried to kill Toby.”

Grandpa said, “You get home.”

My shoulders heaved with sobs, my feet pounded into the pavement and then across the lawns. What the two men said to each other, I don’t know; but when Grandpa