| Arts
& Humanities
Beauty abounds at Lake Superior Theatre
As we returned from an all too quick trip to Isle Royale recently, the boathouse (site of Lake Superior Theatre productions) came into view and I marveled at the vista we share each night with our audiences.
The beauty of the harbor combines with the magic of LST and we are reminded how lucky we are to live here. It is no wonder the Marquette area has received the honor of being selected one of the nation’s “Most Livable Communities” and of course, this year, a “Distinctive Destination Community.”
Our area has been fortunate to be the recipient of countless other honors, and those of us who live here know why. We deserve to be a Top Winter Family Getaway, a Best Place for Hunters and Anglers, one of the Five Best Places to Live and Ride from Bike Magazine and a Top Summer Vacation Destination.
All through our too short summer, we are guests in an incredible outdoor wonderland.
Vacationers who come to the theatre each night have spent their days exploring the shore, hiking Sugarloaf, biking the Noquemanon trail, camping in the woods, exploring the rivers and lakes by kayak or canoe, wiggling their toes in the sand or searching for a special rock and telling wonderful stories which provide a way to share history with new generations.
As we learned from an article by “Grandparents Teach, Too,” the family lessons of kindness, sharing, perseverance, courage and triumph over difficulty are passed on so they will not be lost.
Such was the LST season beginning, Lake Stories. We cherished the laughter and tears and shared stories. We are grateful to B.G. Bradley and his cast for the time and talent that brought us Lake Stories, and for those who shared their own stories.
Tom Feldhusen of Republic shared how his dad used to send invitations to his annual Surprise Birthday Party...and how the family would sit on the lake telling old stories and making up new ones. We loved hearing how “dad always took time out for an afternoon snooze, and one year when the water was really low on the lake, he said he was afraid when he got up from his nap there would not be any water left in the lake.” And, as he told how the family continues the tradition of the surprise party to celebrate his dad’s life, we thought it a great idea for all of us.
How wonderful that the memories of this man continue to live on in the hearts and minds of those who continue to celebrate his life. As local author Ben Mukkala tells us about memories: “Take them out, savor them frequently. Don’t let them fade away. Remember, you can live your life any way you want—but you can only live it once. If you do it right, it’ll be happy, and enjoyable over and over and over again.” Great advice.
And, my advice is: one of the best things to do on a Yooper summer night is watch great theatre in beautiful surroundings at LST. If you missed Little Women with its unbelievably talented, energetic cast, be sure to get tickets for Last 5 Years.
With the incredible cast of Jeff Spencer and Denise Clark who perform with great style and energy, this is an appealing musical, although not for young viewers.
A fresh and contemporary musical from Tony-award winning composer Jason Robert Brown, Last 5 Years chronicles a young couple’s romance twice. Her story starts at the end of their relationship; his begins the day they met. Jamie is a novelist on his way up and Cathy is a musical actress who still is trying to get beyond some disastrous auditions. During their five years of marriage, his career really takes off and hers barely takes off. Funny and uplifting, the show captures some heartbreaking and universally felt romantic moments.
Next at LST is Twelfth Night, one of the best Shakespeare comedies. The plot is delightfully absurd, the acting is brilliant and the cast is amazing. Arrive a little early and take part in the surprise B.G. Bradley has in store. Also featured in the show is the Coaster II: a seventy-six-year-old sailboat, now on the list of National Historic Schooners.
Niko Economides of Marquette purchased the boat for $75,000 in 2007. Through restoration, he and his son, Thanos, started a charter cruise business called Superior Odyssey.
Most weeks, they sail every day, taking passengers for a cruise along Marquette’s lakeshore and sharing the history behind this 1933 boat. As impressive as it is to see the schooner in action, it has a history that’s even more remarkable. From traveling around South America’s Cape Horn to racing from San Francisco to Hawaii, she was even used during wartime to spot subs off the coast of Long Island. Today, she is sailing on the waters of Lake Superior, providing visitors with a view of Marquette and letting them help hoist the sails.
Coaster II is going to be part of Twelfth Night. With the play beginning outdoors, audiences will share in a great adventure, rather than being “taught” Shakespeare. Enjoy a great performance and wonderful staging full of laughter—a brilliantly presented production that is understandable, enjoyable and appropriately presented on the shores of Lake Superior.
Between the two weeks of Twelfth Night—on August 9 and 10—LST plays host to Adam Whittington. He has had a passion for music from a very young age and enjoys all types of music, but is focusing on pop and acoustic. His songs will have you tapping your foot to catchy melodies. He believes music can change and influence lives for the better, and watching this young man, we suspect he is eventually going to be part of the past we present and celebrate.
Our special season addition this year is our fifth and final production of the season: Robert Engelhart’s opera The Lion, the Slave and the Rodent. If you’ve never been to an opera, don’t miss this opportunity. This new comic chamber opera is in English, one act and is based on two Aesop fables—the story of an escaped slave who pulls a thorn from the paw of a lion and is later spared by that same lion when they are forced to fight in the arena; and the story of a lion who decides not to eat a mouse that wakes him from a nap and is later rescued from a hunter’s net by that same mouse.
Told entirely through song, the opera contains jokes and humor that can be enjoyed by kids and adults. There are numerous references to popular musicals, including West Side Story and The Wizard of Oz. A wonderful reminder that “even the weak and small may be of help to those much mightier than themselves.”
Celebrating summer and families, Child and Family Services presented its first ever Family Fun Carnival in June on the waterfront. LST will end its season with a special collaboration with CFS. This event on August 22 will be a second act of sorts to the presentation last year of Orphan Train. The cast has been selected and is brainstorming a title.
The show will start with the Orphan Train and evolve into foster care that persists yet today. The story focuses on a girl who is faced with the challenge of switching homes three times in seven years as she works on getting an education that will facilitate her ultimate goal of attending college. This special presentation by the MACC Youth Theatre in conjunction with CFS is a dramatic presentation of the history of foster care inspired by local events and written by a local playwright. It also will celebrate how, together as a community, we strengthen families.
Families are signing up at the Marquette Arts and Culture Center for Drama and Dreams Playscape. The camp will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. August 16 through 19. Enrollment reservations are recommended as space is limited. Due to the success of last year’s camp, a waiting list is anticipated. A touching letter received last year, said, in part: “The way Monica, Rob and staff worked with the children was amazing. It was as if they were magicians. Every child was made to feel exceptional at what they did, their talents and who they were. The staff helped the children discover their true selves, their creativity and how to use it. The camp was very well organized. Each day ran smooth and never skipped a beat. The performance was all you needed to witness to see the wonderful job that was done with all the children.”
Children with special needs are particularly encouraged to enroll in this one-week theatre camp, where they will work on socialization and communication skills as they learn about theatre, costume and set design, stage make-up, facial expression, voice projection, team building and leadership. Students will sing, tell stories, read poetry and develop a live performance for family and friends on August 19. Friday will feature an optional final session and award celebration. The cost is $40 and each child will receive a T-shirt for the final performance that he or she can keep. Instructors will be Rob Shirlin and Monica Nordeen who received kudos from parents last year. The camp has been funded this year by a mini-grant from the CUPPAD Regional Commission and support from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts), which will enable LST to offer needs-based scholarships. For details and to enroll, contact the Marquette Arts and Culture Center at 228-0472 or art@mqtcty.org
Volunteers are welcomed, as are groups that would like to learn more about Playscape and its opportunities.
What we love most about a Yooper summer are the festivals that celebrate everything from birds to boats, fish to fun, music to marvelous sunrises and sunsets, and anything and everything in between. Our Marquette festivals also are a way of embracing our rich cultural heritage. Embrace your past this year by attending a performance or two in the unique, historic boathouse that provides a home for LST, and enjoy the quality, creative, award-winning shows. You will shed a tear or two and find your heart touched as you enjoy being entertained. Join us at LST as we continue to make our waterfront a far more animated and economically vital destination for all of us.
See you at the boathouse.
—Peggy Frazier
A Marquette photographer’s Scotland and beyond
I’ve seen the places in Amy Howko’s photographs. For a year, we lived in the same three-hundred-and-seventy-year-old cottage with the Isle of May’s lighthouse marking the North Sea horizon out the window of every room. We watched the same half-dozen bright little fishing boats putter out in the morning from our village’s harbor to the crab and lobster creels.
Day after day after day, we walked the same coast path from our cottage to a solitary, ruined cottage of windowless and roofless stone walls standing in the rising thistle and grass and ceaseless wind. We’ve stood in the same glens and before the same H ighland lochs as clouds closed and opened again to let down streams of sunlight. And in these places, the daughter we’ve watched find a thousand pebbles and wildflowers and seashells is the same barefoot child.
I’ve seen what Amy Howko has seen.
But then, I haven’t. When I look again at the photographs in her debut show, “Year of Shadow and Light: On and Beyond the Scottish Coast,” I understand no person ever sees what another sees. I understand what each of us sees always is a specific creation of how each of us sees. This is the power of all compelling photography—to remind the viewer the world one human being perceives is not merely objective, that the world another occupies is as individual and characterized by specific personality as herself.
When that world is your wife’s, attempting to comment on its character is a dubious endeavor. But as a writer, what I take from her photographs is what any artist takes from another whose work he admires—instruction. Her photographs teach me to see.
In “The Changing Day: North Sea,” the day out beyond the rocks and sky-reflecting tide pools seems, in fact, two days. It’s a photograph that immediately calls to mind one of the photographer’s earliest—in fact, childhood—subjects, Lake Superior, with its dark rocks and rapidly, often radically changing atmospheres. The day to the left is fair, the water placid and atmosphere virtually cloudless; the day on the right is brooding, the sea darkening under a ceili ng of dark cloud. Out near the horizon, at the edge of visible, the tiniest of boats moves across the near perfect divide and toward the heavy weather.
This interplay between the fair and the brooding, a perpetual weaving and unweaving of darkness and light (literal and existential), is perhaps the defining characteristic of Amy’s photography in this show. In her “Isle of May Through the Ruined Cottage” Numbers 1 and 2, we look in, through, and back out of the cottage through portals that once held windows, to the sea and isle which remain a timeless vision. In the foreground, this year’s grass grows insistently taller than the horizontal strands of barbed wire fence and even sprouts from the top of the mottled stone wall.
A foreground of wind-worn sandstone opens to form another portal onto the sea in the sensual “Glimpse.” In this photograph and in its companion piece, “North Sea from Fife Cave,” there seems to be a bright day out there on the waves beyond the dark rock, a day we can see and imagine, and just maybe reach through these openings in the stone.
In these harsh, northern coasts and incongruent elements, I can’t help but see evidence of Amy Howko’s Marquette upbringing. Not only does her North Sea seem to share some of the same weathered vernacular as Lake Superior, beside which she was born and raised, the very seawall bending around the harbor of the fishing village of Crail recalls Marquette’s breakwalls. And the Scottish Isle of May, breaching with its lighthouse silhouette on the horizon, could be a closer Granite Island, which Amy still watches every summer from Sunset Point on the north side of Presque Isle.
I have the advantage of familiarity with my wife’s geographical influences as I consider this new work, of course. But because she’s returned to the Oasis Gallery in her hometown for this debut, her Marquette audience will have the same advantage. They’ll be able to consider how memories of this place contributed to her vision of that, to look at her Scottish coast and see it for the unique place it is, and to see it through a personality shaped by the place just outside the gallery doors.
As with any good debut show, there is evidence here, too, of artistic influence—of those who have taught this artist to see. The vast sweep contrasting with and containing richness of particular detail in her photographs of the Highlands reminds me some of the iconic Ansel Adams (after whom Amy named a black cat we adopted in our early days together). Even more so, the unsettling but captivatingly beautiful “Crail Cemetery,” with its draping foliage and angular stone, reminds me of the ways in which the organic and voluptuous entwine with the hard and austere in the photos of her most important influence, Sally Mann.
But this also is the work of a photographer coming fully into her own . . .
—Jonathan Johnson
Editor’s Note: Amy Howko’s “Year of Shadow and Light: On and Beyond the Scottish Coast” is at the Oasis Gallery, located at 130 West Washington Street in Marquette, from August 4 through 26. Artist’s reception is from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on August 6.
Conservator helps hometown art museum
The stillness of an art museum is matched by the serenity of the works displayed on its walls as visitors gaze upon them each day.
At the DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University, the works of art range from international to homegrown. The pieces are sometimes brilliant in colors, and other times, they showcase that life is indeed often painted in shades of gray.
One thing each and every one of these pieces of art has in common is its wonderful condition and preservation.
That, surprisingly, has much to do with the invaluable hard work of a volunteer.
Emily Prehoda doesn’t get paid for the work she does, although in many places she would likely be able to make a career out of her painting conservator abilities.
“Having Emily here has been a really rare opportunity for the museum to work with a professionally-trained painting conservator who is living in Marquette,” said Melissa Matuscak, the director and curator of the DeVos Museum. “The U.P. just doesn’t have many people trained in the chemistry and latest techniques for cleaning and restoring paintings.”
Prehoda, who grew up in Marquette, received a bachelor’s degree in the history of art from Michigan State University in East Lansing before getting her master’s degree in art conservation, specializing in paintings conservation, from Queen’s University in Kingston (Ontario). To show just how rare it is that a painting conservator might end up in Marquette, it is noteworthy that there are only four recognized master’s degree programs in art conservation in North America, including Queen’s University. The others are the University of Delaware, New York University and Buffalo College.
“It’s helpful to think of professional art conservation as a three legged stool, which requires an equal knowledge of art history, studio art and chemistry,” said Prehoda, who started volunteering at DeVos in September 2009. “To identify and understand how a work of art was created we must have a knowledge of artist’s practices throughout history; to know how to effectively treat a painting we must understand the chemistry of the materials used in the painting and how they are degrading. Professional conservators are held by ethical guidelines regarding documentation and treatment procedures, and strive to maintain the original integrity of an object as completely as possible.”
Art conservators have long helped to keep the world’s most previous pieces of art from deteriorating and to preserve them for generations.
“Without art conservators, the Declaration of Independence would have likely already deteriorated, the Mona Lisa would probably be falling apart and Egyptian sarcophagi would be crumbling,” Prehoda said. “Through my undergraduate education in the history of art, and subsequent graduate education in art conservation, I have learned that works of art and historical artifacts can often tell the stories of bygone people and eras much more immediately and accurately than written history texts. Thus it is important that such artworks and artifacts be preserved.”
Her in-depth education and abilities have been used to help restore and preserve local works that were starting to fall into various stages of deterioration . . .
For more information about art conservation, visit the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works at www.conservation-us.org
—Sam Eggleston
Busking barn becomes popular destination
As the sixth annual Porcupine Mountains Music Festival draws near, the festival’s ‘Busking Barn’ once again promises to be an enigmatic and popular stop on the festival grounds. The festival, presented by the Friends of the Porkies, will take place August 27 through 29 at the Ski Chalet Area of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in Ontonagon County.
The “busking” stage concept, where both amateurs and professionals play for tips, has come full circle since its inception—when a few brave souls performed, seated in a single chair in the parking lot. The success of the busking stage is largely due to the hard work, enthusiasm and vision of Dale Venema, who took over as busking stage coordinator in 2007.
Venema, of Ontonagon, an instantly likeable and interesting personality, loves to tell a good story with a twinkle in his eye. He works with a team of mules and made the news recently working with his mule team on a stimulus project won by the National Forest Service—hauling loads of heavy steel beams up a steep trail to the old site of the Windsor Mine in Ontonagon County. Venema also loves to pick up his guitar and sing...the best resume festival organizers could hope for.
The potential of busking at the festival sparked Venema’s imagination, and, during his first year as coordinator, he was determined to improve upon the status quo...setting up a wall tent and moving a flatbed trailer inside to be used as a stage. The improvements were met with approval from performers and audience members alike, yet Venema wasn’t satisfied.
The following year, Venema found himself commercial salmon fishing in Alaska and was unable to return to the festival; however, he returned in 2009 and was back with an entirely new vision for the busking stage. Eyeing a wooden structure on the festival grounds, it hit him like a lightning bolt...and with the approval of park officials, the “Busking Barn” was born.
Now that he had a permanent venue, Venema readied the building and enlisted a friend, Brad Yonker, who has a guitar shop in the lower level of the Nonsuch Gallery in Ontonagon. Yonker provided the busking barn with beautiful instrument and music stands he hand built using Lake Superior driftwood and other unique-shaped wood. Yonker also plays guitar and had jammed with Venema on many occasions, but seldom strays from his woodshop. An ongoing joke at their woodshop jam sessions was Venema encouraging Yonker to get on the busking stage, “That’s going to be a great song for the busking stage this year when you do your set.” Yonker held firm, insisting he was not getting on any stage; however, the busking barn is a magical place.
At last year’s festival, as Venema readied the busking barn for its first official day, Yonker was there delivering his music stands. Nobody was around. Venema asked him whether he had a guitar along, and he did.
“Pull it out, you have to hear how great the acoustics are in here,” Venema said.
The all-wood structure with a wooden interior wall is like playing in a wooden box. Yonker started picking a little on the stage while his wife Edna and Venema stood in different locations to see how it sounded. Soon, Venema grabbed his guitar and accompanied him on a Merle Haggard tune. More people drifted in during the song and the pair quickly slid into another tune. That was how Yonker, who insisted for two years he would never play on stage, officially became a legend as the first performer to grace the stage of the busking barn—a magical place indeed.
Off in its own little corner of the festival grounds, the busking barn sits in a small clearing filled with grasses, wildflowers and butterflies. Venema runs a loose ship that encourages spontaneity, yet things run smoothly. People drift in and out throughout the day, sometimes one or two people sitting quietly at one of the picnic tables listening to a solo songwriter’s performance...and later to fifty people with standing-room-only, enjoying a wide variety of performers playing harmonicas, slide guitars, fiddles, banjos, concertinas, bones and percussion. Things are simple in the busking barn—no electricity or amps.
The busking barn occasionally has performers who have never been on stage before. Venema said his only criteria to be a performer is having the nerve enough to get up in front of people and play. Performers wishing to play in the barn must contact Venema and are scheduled on a first-come-first-served basis. “This is the first year that I haven’t had to be out there recruiting” Venema said. “People have been contacting me to sign up and this year’s schedule is full, but there is always room to join in the scheduled open jam sessions.”
Several new and upcoming acts also have been showcased in the barn. More than one act has gone on to play the larger “plugged in” stages at the festival. The band “Greenstone” was unknown to the festival music committee before wowing them on the busking stage.
In 2009, Venema was presented with the Friends of the Porkies volunteer of the year award for his efforts to make the busking barn a festival destination.
The busking barn kicks open its doors at 1:00 p.m. on August 27, with a performance by harmonica player Bob Lubbers. Other performers scheduled for the busking barn include the Lost Creek String Band, Gitche Gaelic and West of East, along with numerous others.
Visit www.porkiesfestival.org for details.
—Cheryl Olson
Celebrating the arts in Calumet
Calumet has been a center for the arts in the Keweenaw for years. The Calumet Theatre, the Calumet Players, the long-established Copper Country Associated Artist Gallery and the Vertin Gallery are part of the reason. Individual artists have had studios in the village, and live music has been played in bars and restaurants. Recently, Calumet, and artists working in it, have been trying some new things.
For the last three years, First Fridays in Calumet has brought art and music to the town on the first Friday of each month. One of the First Friday sites is the Calumet Art Center. Established in June 2009, the center occupies the former Community Church on Fifth Street. The church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has many interesting architectural features, including large, intricate stained-glass windows.
The church was dedicated in 1874, and was one of the first built in Calumet. Its history includes many cooperative efforts between Congregational and Presbyterian congregations. And in March 1971 Congregational and Presbyterian churches merged to form the Community Church of Calumet. By 2009, membership had declined and keeping the church going was difficult. After some other possibilities were explored, the building became the property of the newly-formed Calumet Art Center. This allowed the church’s pipe organ, a 12 Rank Estey-Verlinden, which might have been sold, to stay in the community.
On June 18, the art center celebrated its first year of operation with an annual meeting and a silent art auction. The first year was busy, and this year the pace has increased. Summer classes in clay sculpture, clay bead making, weaving, sewing, water colors, scarf painting and poetry were scheduled at the center this year. Music lessons—including piano, organ, voice and violin—are taught at the center. A “Music For Tots” class was offered in the spring. A six-week Arts Immersion Camp for students was run this summer. In the spring, two graduates of Calumet High School held senior recitals at the center.
Ed Gray, owner of the Ed Gray Gallery on Fifth Street, is executive director of the Calumet Art Center. A potter who uses ground Lake Superior rocks to color pots, he taught the clay bead and slab building clay sculpture classes at the center. Gray’s gallery is full of art, including paintings, pottery and many fish decoys/sculptures . . .
—Lee Arten
Stitch-stitch-stitch
Plying needle and thread to express her interaction with the Keweenaw is an accurate description of Karen Secor.
Selected as this year’s featured artist Karen Secor will show her fiber and fine art embroidery at the fiftieth annual Fine Art Fair and Exhibit in Eagle Harbor (Michigan). Sponsored by the Copper Country Associated Artists (CCAA), the annual show featuring both recent work by CCAA members and more than fifty-five invited artists will be held on August 14 and 15.
To Secor, art is in the heart and mind. It is being aware of your world. It is, and she quotes Sue Bender from her book Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish: “In the silence of ‘not doing,’ we begin to know what we feel.”
She explains: “Sitting with a cup of hot tea while contemplating this quote, I realize how the changing colors of the seasons, and the ever beautiful colors and dramatic moods of Lake Superior and the Keweenaw inspire my art.” It is having something to express...and finding a medium through which to express that something.
When she was about four or five years old, she started sewing and loved drawing, sewing and painting all through elementary and high school. She had a classic art education at UCLA and California State College, Los Angeles, where she received her BA in Art: color, design, drawing, oils, printmaking, jewelry, weaving and wood carving. After graduating, she taught art and crafts to blind and vision impaired adults and children.
“I continued my own art in quilting, appliqué, cloth doll-making, embroidery, calligraphy, water color, oils and felting, but always coming back to hand sewing and embroidery,” she said. “In my mind I see color, line and shape in fabrics and threads. Fabric, thread and needle are my paints and brushes.”
“This quote from Edward Lucie Smith is my answer to ‘Why embroider? Or make other artwork?’—Embroiderers’ primary aim is to give delight by using skill combined with imagination to create things that will be immediately recognized as being beautiful.”
Secor, a CCAA member, will display her work in the undercroft of St Peter’s By The Sea and demonstrate her use of the forms, shapes and intrinsic colors in nature on both Saturday and Sunday.
The quality and diversity of the creative work of the exhibiting artists is well known and annually attracts hundreds of collectors and buyers. Of special interest are the many demonstrations of the technical and philosophic aspects of the work on display.
The fair has become a major event. The weekend includes food and beverage services provided by the Keweenaw Lions Club and all Keweenaw County Historical sites will be open. Show hours are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday with plenty of parking. A handicap accessible restroom is available.
Copper Country Associated Artists maintains a studio and gallery at 112 Fifth Street in Calumet, which offers workshops and a gallery of members work. For details, call 337-1252 or visit www.ccaartists.org
—Linden Dahlstrom
Visit old Negaunee, Isle Royale in books, by Tyler Tichelaar
The City Built at the Shiny Mountain: Negaunee, Michigan 1844 to 1930
by Robert D. Dobson
Robert Dobson’s new book on Negaunee history is the result of many painstaking hours spent reading every issue of the Negaunee Iron Herald from 1873-1929 (more than 2,500 issues).
While reading, Dobson took notes of interesting tidbits, gossip and major changes to the town, its businesses, mining, as well as occasional mentions in surrounding towns such as Marquette and Ishpeming, and references to events of national significance. He then turned his notes into snippets of events from every year of Negaunee’s history up to 1930, filling in the 1844-1873 pre-Iron Herald years with some additional research to provide a history of the town.
This book is not a straightforward history of Negaunee; it reads more like a glimpse into the life of a town, its residents, businesses, events and what the newspaper found important to comment on. Anyone who has Negaunee roots will find it entertaining, and many will find mention of family members in the book, or historical curiosities they will not find elsewhere. Dobson includes numerous photographs and some maps, as well as a list of mining terms.
Topics of specific interest include: the Jackson Mine stump; the forge before the Civil War; the thirteen graves left in the old cemetery; the Pioneer blast furnace; children and typhoid, diphtheria, and smallpox; social groups; sports; automobiles; moving films; street cars; aeroplanes; gas lights and municipal electricity; and the comings and goings of many, many people of different nationalities as they settled in and sometimes moved away from Negaunee.
Following are a few interesting excerpts from the book:
1883: “Heretofore, every city and town had its own time,” said the paper as it announced that all railroads are going to “Standard Time” with the country divided into 5 belts of one hour each. A traveler will be on the same time during any movement in one belt. Regarding the cleaning up of the water of Teal Lake, a road is planned on the west end so that horses will not have to cross to properties to the north on the ice, and arrangements are also being made with the slaughter house. In December, Rep. Breitung introduced a bill to make Mackinaw Island into a National Park. A study of the winter weather for the past 12 years shows that odd years bring the cold winters and even years more mild weather, based on the average mean temperatures . . .
Naked in the Stream: Isle Royale Stories
by Vic Foerster
Vic Foerster loves Isle Royale. He has been journeying there for thirty years. He seems to know the island inside and out. Many people might romanticize Isle Royale, and I’ll admit while reading this book many of the passages lulled me into a state of relaxation as I imagined hiking the trails and admiring the wildlife.
But Foerster presents Isle Royale as it is, with its peace, its irritations and even its dangers, but in the end, one feels the benefits outweigh all else.
I read Naked in the Stream slowly during a hectic few weeks. Many times, it only took me a minute to feel everyday stress fade away as I found myself on peaceful Isle Royale, where, as Foerster explains, there’s no sound of motors, no task list of things to do, although he notes that many visitors come intent on doing a lot.
The serenity of Isle Royale has its cost. Foerster has an entire chapter dedicated to female mosquitoes, the “true rulers of Isle Royale.” He also devotes sections to moose and wolves.
For readers wanting excitement, the pages abound in stories of ferry crossings to Isle Royale in bad weather where one fears the boat will not make it. The section “An Offshore Wind” is one of the most dramatic rescue stories I’ve ever read about a father and his sons in a canoe on the lake, unable to get back to the shore. I was unable to put the book down as the incredible rescue attempt was made.
Beyond the weather and wildlife, Foerster’s many visits to Isle Royale have made him curious about the other visitors. He describes his time spent with some Texans who on a lark just decided to visit the farthest north place they could go; their lives may have been different from Foerster’s, but Isle Royale had its effect on them. And then there were the Howells—the pseudonyms Foerster gives a couple who comes to Isle Royale with an elaborate yacht—not quite roughing it, but they still appreciate the island wilderness . . .
—Tyler Tichelaar
Editor’s Note: Foerster has book signings from noon to 2:00 p.m. on August 8 at Falling Rock in Munising, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. on August 10 at Einerlei in Chassell, and from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. on August 14 at Snowbound Books in Marquette.
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