Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

Kurtti House.

It’s a long haul from Duluth to the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan. My blue Pacifica is loaded with copies of Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh and Sukulaiaset: The Kindred. As always, I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll sell every copy of my books I’m bringing with.  That, of course, has never happened. Still, as a semi-famous self-published author of historical novels about the Finns headed towards the heart of Finnishness in America, I’m eternally hopeful.

The Pacifica’s tires slap blacktop as I wind my way from Duluth to Ashland. It’s a cold wintery day, below zero. I stop to fill up the car at a Holiday statio and as I stand in the brisk air, listening to the gurgle of fuel entering the gas tank, I look around and smile.

I wrote about Ashland once, in Esther’s Race, as the place where Esther DuMont’s grandmother lived. Esther’s dad, Dr. DuMont, worked at the hospital here. Didn’t sell many copies of that book. Still, it’s a good place to set a yarn…

The snow pack increases near the Michigan line. My neck of the woods, north of Duluth on the banks of the Cloquet River, is a virtual winter desert: the ground is nearly devoid of snow. Entering the South Shore’s snow belt, I see trailers of snowmobiles being pulled by pickups and SUVs, their owners heading east in search of snow. I enter Michigan, turn north at Bruce Crossing, but see no wildlife; no deer or grouse or rabbits or any wild critter as the tires of the Pacifica hum.

“I’m watching you back into my neighbor’s driveway,” my host for the weekend, Jim Kurtti, says when I call him from my cell phone. “It’s the big red house next door.”

Jim, who is both the editor of the Finnish American Reporter and the director of the Finnish American Heritage Center housed at Finlandia University in Hancock, Michigan greets me at the front door. I haul my suitcase into the parlor of an immaculate Victorian, the hardwood floors gleaming beneath antique light fixtures aglow against the dusk.

“You guys have a lot more snow than we do,” I say, offering my hand to Jim.

“Always.”

He shows me to a lovely bedroom on the second floor, the space that’ll be my home for the next two nights.

This place could easily be a B&B.

Jim’s wife Debbie returns home from work with a pizza from a local eatery. Jim and I are already settled in, drinking sweet Italian wine, and talking writing, books, politics, Keweenaw history, and religion when Debbie arrives. A neighbor lady joins us as we scarf very good pizza at the kitchen table. Afterwards, Jim and I take sauna and the talk continues. It’s the second time we’ve saunaed together, having met in the sauna bath at Sampo Beach north of Duluth some years back when Jim was in town to profile a group of local Finns who were reading Suomalaist for their Finnish American book club.

Saturday. By the time I wake up, shower, shave, and dress, the Kurttis are gone, already at Heikinpaiva, the winter festival at Finlandia University that I am participating in. I’m scheduled to be at North Wind Books, the campus bookstore, from 10-4, with a break at 2 to give a talk at the Finnish American Institute. On my way into town, I grab breakfast at McDonald’s. I arrive at the bookstore on time. Alana, the store manager, greets me with a smile. “Did you bring more copies of Sukulaiset with you? These two are the only copies I have.”

“I did. I’ll bring some in.”

For the next four hours, I chat with Alana and the student/clerk working the store. I meet customers and sell books to strangers. I am pleasantly surprised when Dave and Peggy Radovich, formerly of Hermantown and friends, make good on their Facebook promise to visit me. “I thought you were Croatian,” I say to Dave as Peggy buys a copy of Suomalaiset. “A quarter. Three-quarters Finn.” Dave is originally from the UP and the retired educator has returned to his roots. Except the former principal was asked by Bessemer to fill a superintendency, which means he is, I guess, unretired.

To stretch my legs, I go outside and watch the Heikinpaiva parade working its way past the Heritage Center.

Finnish American Heritage Center, Hancock.

Two o’clock comes quickly. The crowd at the lecture is a bit thin. I’d hoped for a full house but that’s not what transpires. Still, as I read passages from my books, talk a bit about my writing process and the impetus behind a non-Finn’s fascination with Finnish history, and answer questions, I’m engaged with my slender audience. Alana sells some books, I sign some books, and then it’s back to the bookstore for another hour of sitting and selling. I meet a German immigrant woman who’s interested in my take on the relationship between Mannerheim and Hitler. She buys a copy of Sukulaiset. Alana has me bring in a few more copies of my books. I sign them for the store.

“I’ll just email you an invoice,” I say as I head out the door, our business conducted casually, as if by handshake. “Thanks for having me.”

Monument to a giant.

I stop outside the bookstore to admire an obelisk erected in memory of a local legend, a giant Finn who once lived in the Keweenaw. With time to kill (Jim and Deb are tied up with festival duties and I don’t know anyone else in town)

I decide to visit Calumet, a few miles north of Hancock. One of my former law clerks, Heidi Murtonen, is from Calumet. That fact and the rumors I’ve heard about a gorgeous old theater, still active and in use, located in the little town

prompt me to put the Pacifica in gear and climb the hill behind Finlandia. I end up in Calumet where I drive up and down the snowy, quaint downtown marveling at what the town must have been like in its heyday.

Fire hall, Calumet

I take the long way back to the Kurttis’ and find myself only a block from their palatial home and smack dab in the ruins of an old copper mine. I stop the car and stand in the omnipresent lake effect snow that is waltzing down from the leaden sky to

snap photos of a life long passed.

I mull over getting something to eat. On a whim, I decide to attend the Heikinpaiva dance scheduled for the

Heritage Center that evening. I drive back into Hancock, snow drifting over the lighted valley as I cross the lift bridge between Houghton and Hancock, park the Pacifica, and eye a well-lighted eatery across the street.

Italian sounds good.

I climb the steps to the social hall of the Finnish American Heritage Center, a deconsecrated Catholic church renovated to a new purpose, and find out that the dance includes a meal and libations, all for the very reasonable fee of ten bucks.

I buy a ticket, hang up my coat, and enter the hall. I find Jim and Debbie and soon I’m immersed in the sounds of Finnish folk music and watching adults and children dance across the luminously polished hardwood floor.

I snap a few pictures of the dancers and post them on line. My wife texts me and asks me where I am. I tell her I’m at a dance at the Heritage Center.

“Just don’t be dancing with any Finnish girls,” she writes. “There’s a French girl waiting for you at home!”

I promise to behave. I eat heartily of the Finnish foods and desserts that cover the buffet table. I sip a local beer and meet new friends. Tired after a day of selling and talking and observing, I say my goodnights and drive back to the Kurttis’ home.

Sunday morning, I take a hot shower and pack. The Kurttis are already at church. I write a short note of thanks, load my car, and head on back down the road, happy to have spent a few days immersed in another place, another culture.

Peace.

Mark

The dance.

Theater, Calumet.

It’s 4:58 am on Friday morning. I’m sitting in my writing studio, a three-season porch that, given it’s -17ºF outside, requires me to wear wool socks and a thick bathrobe as I type this piece. The porch I‘m working in wasn’t designed for writing in the dead of winter. But here I am, just like I am virtually every morning, trying to craft truth from memories, thoughts, inklings, and visions that dance inside my sixty year old head. It’s a curious thing, this compulsion, this obsession to write. Folks I meet at libraries, or bookstores, or at writers’ conferences often ask “why”, “Why, Judge Munger, do you write?” That’s a good question. I’ll try to answer it.

I was born an incurable romantic. As a small child, I loved creating imaginary scenes of drama and daring-ado. I once built a blanket fort in Grandma Munger’s parlor. Inside my makeshift tent, I was a wounded soldier of the Great War being cared for by a beautiful nurse. So the first building block of my writerly obsession is simply this: I have a vivid imagination.

As a child, my mother read to me every night. Experts say that, to be a writer, you must be a reader. My mother’s love of books was gifted to me. I became a voracious reader, and, in due course, a writer. By first grade, I was hard at it. Somewhere in one of my scrapbooks my first attempt at writing, “The Piretas and the Two Man” (sic), an illustrated thriller involving cannibals and ships and pirates, is preserved. My spelling hasn’t improved. I keep an unabridged dictionary close at hand whenever I write. Spellcheck is a poor substitute for Webster’s when you are as phonetically challenged as I am.

At age ten, I discovered my Grandma Marie’s notebooks. Her journals were filled with her handwritten verse. I took to crafting poetry by scrawling couplets on the empty pages of those journals. The fact that my long-dead grandmother preserved her emotions by writing poetry, and was able to live on through her words after she died, made an impression on me.

Teachers encouraged me. Miss Infelise, my 8^th grade English teacher, challenged me to “write over summer vacation”. I did more than merely write a sentence or two. I still have the picture book, “Emery Whipple Goes to Sea”, that was my response to a teacher’s challenge. I recently read that story to my great nephew Ryan. He liked “Emery” but, like many adult fans, thought the book a bit long.

High school found me working as an editor on the Denfeld Criterion under the watchful eye of Miss Goldie Cohen. Miss Cohen taught me to be succinct. Despite an occasional dustup with Miss Cohen over an article that was too racy or too personal or too heaped in controversy for a high school newspaper, Goldie encouraged me to keep at it, to write what I thought was true.

Most of you know that my vocation in life has been as lawyer and judge. There was a period of time where, because of school and starting a family and beginning my career, I didn’t write. But my wife René knew that, deep down, I’d always wanted to try my hand at fiction. When I faced a lengthy leave from work due to back surgery, René suggested that I begin working on a novel. René’s encouragement caused the writer in me to reemerge. My insatiable need to tell a story, a story, as Hemingway once said, that is true, burst to the surface when I began writing the The Legacy, a historical novel and thriller that received positive reviews and became a regional bestseller. Over the decades since my wife’s fortuitous suggestion, my desire to tell stories has urged my fingers to the keyboard of nearly every morning of nearly every intervening day.

Nine books later, I know this: as a writer, I simply must write. I cannot not write. I am, at my core, a teller of stories and those stories, regardless of fame, or readership, or monetary reward, must be shared.

An edited version of this essay first appeared in the Duluth News Tribune.

Afternoon sun over a marsh. 01/01/2015.

We lost our dog Daisy a week ago. She was nearly fourteen and had to be put down. Cancer had invaded her mouth and shoulder. That’s the extent of what we knew after the vet took some x-rays and did some blood tests. Then there was what we suspected: Daisy was likely full of the dreaded disease. To spare her further pain and humiliation, and to preserve her dignity, we put Daisy down. Never an easy decision. But something that needed doing. Today, New Year’s Day 2015, the first New Year’s Day in over a decade that Daisy isn’t with us, I dress for winter, let Jimi Hendrix, our miniature Dachshund out the door, call for Kramer, Daisy’s one-time garage mate and aging chocolate Labrador, and release Kena, our energetic black Lab from her plastic crate. The dogs and I follow our ice covered driveway from the house to the nearest woodland trail, a path I cut years ago, and begin a winter walk in celebration of the new year.

The woods are empty. We flush no grouse, chase no deer from their beds, and encounter no chickadees on our quiet walk through meager snow. It’s utterly quiet. Even the icy surface of Fish Lake, unseen behind a mile of aspen, pine, balsam, and scrub to the south of our land, lacks the usual hubbub of snowmobilers and ice fisherman racing across its frozen surface on their noisy machines. Jimi, always on the hunt for squirrels and rabbits (prey that Daisy was always keen to track as well) scurries hither and yon but never raises his voice, never catches the scent of a varmint to excite his pea-sized brain. Kramer is content, in his old age and on infirm hips, to waddle behind me. Kena bounds ahead,nose to the ground snuffling for partridge but finds nothing of interest. She is abundantly gleeful, obviously happy to be out of her plastic crate and on the move even if there are no birds to flush.

It’s mild. Not really warm, not really cold. It’s an afternoon walk, one of life’s simple pleasures enhanced not by wildlife or the thrill of skis against new snow or eagles soaring overhead, but by sun and still air and quiet and solitude. At the junction of the trail I’m on and the black waters of the Cloquet River, at the intersection where I will turn towards home, I stop and watch water on its inexorable path towards the sea. Most times, when I come upon this scene, there are white and black Whistlers, Canadian ducks who overwinter on the Cloquet, bobbing in the slow moving current. There are no ducks on the water today and none take flight against the cloudless winter sky.

Kena.

I make a detour to check on our neighbors’ cabins. These are not the palatial mansions one sees in magazines celebrating “lake living” and the joys of Minnesota but one-room shacks hugging the banks of the river. The structures are old, in various states of disrepair, rarely used, susceptible to flooding, and targets for kids with bad intentions. Every now and again, when I am out and about on one of my strolls, I’ll swing by the cabins just to ensure that no mischief is at hand. Nothing is amiss and I cross a short passage of trees, where I have yet to cut a trail, before emerging on our hayfield. Across the silent field, a pasture that once nurtured some long dead farmer’s cows, our home, as white as the surrounding snow, looms against the azure sky of late afternoon. Orange reflects from the westward facing windows of the house, the image of the sun setting behind me replicated by glass.  The four of us walk towards the house. There is no wind, no sound, save the snuffle of dog noses and the crunch of boots against snow, as we make our way towards warmth.

Kramer.

The dogs and I do nothing exceptional, and encounter nothing remarkable during our short walk. But I am refreshed. A new year has begun. I am looking forward to seeing what it brings.

Peace.

Mark

New Year’s Day, 2015.

Jimi Hendrix and Daisy, Winter 2013.

Rescue dogs. I have a natural disinclination to taking on other people’s problems when it comes to pets. My wife says I’m a canine snob, that the only dog I’ll ever respect, love, and care for is a purebred Labrador. Though I’ll admit to a bias towards AKC Labs, I think history has proven my wife wrong. Take for example, my connection to Daisy, a dog that wandered into the hearts of the Munger clan over a decade ago. I loved Daisy despite her mysteriously clouded bloodlines. I say loved because this week my wife and I, our four of sons, had to make that difficult decision that eventually confronts all pet owners: Should we go the heroic route or let our beloved companion drift away in peace? So Daisy is no more, at least in this realm. Whether dogs have their own version of heaven, complete with endless fire hydrants, meaty bones, cool streams to wade, and abundant red squirrels and bunnies to chase, I can’t say. But I hope that’s the case. Daisy was the sort of dog, despite her pedigree, who deserves such respite.

She came to us as an eight month-old pup, already spayed, house-broken, and able to sit on command.Matt, my eldest son, was working in an adult group home, taking care of young folks who needed assistance with the activities of daily living. One of the residents received Daisy as a gift but, due to a prohibition against having pets in the group home, Daisy needed a place to live. Matt was attending UWS at the time, spending week nights and some weekends sleeping at work but occasionally making it back home for a night or two of video gaming and bonding with his three younger brothers. He showed up one evening, Daisy in tow, and suggested we could take care of her “on approval”. We fell in love with her smile, her thunderous tail wag, and the fact that she loved to “talk” to you when she wanted to be fed or let outside to do her business. She looked every inch a black Labrador. She took to swimming in the Cloquet River in all seasons, including winter, without fear; a sure sign she had a Lab’s thick-headed genes embedded in her DNA. But soon, Daisy began to display other quirks that led me to believe she was not a purebred, not an AKC genetically pure specimen of Lab-dom. For example, when snow fell, she preferred sleeping in a drift to being inside the house or the garage. She had no affinity for grouse or ducks but she had a huge appetite for chasing rabbits and squirrels. Daisy often teamed up with my wife’s Dachshund, Jimi, whose high-pitched wail I originally thought meant he was caught in a bear trap or had been mortally wounded, to hunt bunnies. Turns out, Jimi’s cry was an alert that he was on the trail of a furry critter. It was that cry that would move Daisy to action. Out of a dead sleep, she’d tear off the covered front porch of our farmhouse to answer Jimi’s call.

Daisy loved belly scratches and horseplay but she didn’t retrieve a lick and had no interest in feathered prey of any kind. She did, however, torment our youngest son, Jack, by once eating his pet bunny, Doc. Doc was grazing in our backyard confined by a plastic fence. Matt improvidently let Daisy out of her kennel when he came home from work. Jack and I arrived home to find bunny pieces, including Doc’s severed head, strewn around the lawn. It was not Daisy’s finest hour. But, given the nature of dogs, it wasn’t her fault.

I spent many an hour walking, skiing, or snowshoeing trails on our land with Daisy, Jimi, Kramer (another rescue dog), and, more recently, our Lab pup, Kena. Jimi would drop his little nose to the ground, sniff for the faintest trace of bunny or squirrel, and once he latched onto a critter’s scent, scurry off in hot pursuit, his tell-tale call alerting the world to his quest. Daisy would join the hunt by taking a different tact, one that would cut off the prey’s escape. Smart dog, that one. Many a day I found remnants of bunnies deposited on our front porch, Daisy’s version of notifying the master of the house that she was “on the job.”

The UPS guy regularly stops by our place to deliver books. Daisy and Kramer were always there to greet the driver. Daisy’s fur on her neck and spine would raise in confrontation when the delivery van pulled up to the house. She’d bark until the driver showed her a dog biscuit. Then she’d lower her guard, take the treat, and wag her tail. She never bit anyone despite her sometimes defensive posturing but she always let folks know whose house this was.

A story to illustrate Daisy’s fortitude (sisu). A few summers back, before arthritis slowed her down, before cancer started to manifest, I was sitting in my rocking chair on our home’s covered front porch with Ben Guck. We were talking baseball between sips of cold beer. Dusk was beginning to slide across the pasture. Daisy and Kramer were fast asleep on the front lawn. All of a sudden, Kramer, a gangly chocolate Lab with hip issues, rose from slumber and started trotting towards trees defining the far edge of our hayfield. The thin-withered dog loped into the forest, only to re-emerge at a dead run, a pair of brush wolves (coyotes) hot on his trail. Earlier in the evening, Ben and I ‘d been listening to the yips of coyote pups from a nearby den before Kramer was spurned to action. It was pretty clear that the parents of those pups were not happy with Kramer’s inquisitive nature. The adult coyotes were gaining on the old dog as he labored uphill. Then I saw Daisy. She was creeping towards the field, her body crouched low like a lioness on the stalk. She was concealed from the wolves by high grass, her hackles up and her eyes glued to the scene unfolding below her.

“Watch this,” I said to Ben, tipping my beer bottle towards the impending skirmish. “Daisy is about to welcome the wolves.”

When the coyotes were within a stride of Kramer, Daisy launched herself from concealment like an ebony missile. Like cartoon characters in a Loony Tunes short, the wolves put on their brakes and tumbled to the ground before regaining their footing and heading for the trees. Daisy didn’t stop her pursuit at the treeline. I was worried that she might not come back, that the wolves would turn on her in the forest. But the coyotes knew who they were dealing with. After a few tense moments, Daisy emerged triumphant from the woods and rejoined Kramer on the front lawn.

Daisy’s health has been failing. Over the past year, her black fur turned brown and patchy. Normally a gal who loved a good swim in the river, Daisy refused to clamber down the riverbank and join me in the Cloquet. Other signs of decline manifested. At nearly thirteen years old, I guessed cancer. I was hoping Daisy could make it through another winter. But watching her suffer became unbearable. I called the vet. I made an appointment. Rene’ agreed to sit with Daisy during the exam.

RIP, Daisy. You were a good girl.

Carrying her frail, failing body to my blue Pacifica for Daisy’s last car ride wasn’t easy. She always trusted me to do the right thing. I hope I did.

With love,

Mark.

Gerry waiting to buy Laman’s River at Fitger’s.

Some of you have heard the story. But for those who haven’t, I think it merits retelling here, in the last issue of the New World Finn.

Back in 2000, I ”discovered” the story of Olli Kinkkonen, a Finnish dockworker whose mysterious death was postulated to be a despondent suicide by the Duluth police but considered to be an unsolved murder by the Finnish immigrant population of my hometown. As someone who grew up surrounded by Finns, I saw enormous possibility in the story of Kinkkonen’s death. Originally, I’d intended to write a fictionalized account, a faux biography if you will, of the man and his times. Growing up in northeastern Minnesota, rubbing elbows with my Finnish pals, and with familial roots of my own on Minnesota’s Iron Range, I’d always been interested in immigrant history and Finnish immigrant history in particular. What prompted those crazy Finns to farm this godforsaken land? I’d grown up calling the descendents of the Finnish immigrants who built their sturdy log saunas, barns, and homes “Finnish rock farmers”; a pejorative grounded in the mounds of stones one finds on every forty acre Finnish farmstead in my neck of the woods. But as I explored the circumstances surrounding Olli Kinkkonen’s demise, I came to realize that, in exploring the man’s death, I was uncovering a bigger story, a story in which the unfortunate dockworker would play, in the end, only a minor role.

Understand: even after I decided to focus on fictional characters, relegating Olli to a peripheral stage in the grander story I envisioned, I went to work researching and writing the history of the Finns in North America with trepidation. I knew from my interactions with Finnish friends and their parents and grandparents that Finnish Americans are, by and large, circumspect of outsiders trying to define their history. I also knew that there was a retired Finnish American member of the Duluth Police Department researching Kinkkonen’s story with an eye towards writing a book. Both my ethnicity and time appeared to be against my creating a fictional re-telling of Olli Kinkkonen’s life that would be commercially viable. And yet, I couldn’t resist. I plunged ahead.

Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh emerged four years later. By the time my novel about Olli’s death, Finnish immigration, the Great War, the Cloquet Fire, and the Influenza outbreak of 1918 was published, I was exhausted and fearful: fearful that Finnish American and Finnish Canadian readers would pillory me at the dock of public scrutiny. Against this backdrop of paranoia, I set out to give interviews and explain Olli’s story to the world. It was as a guest on the Duke Skorich Radio Show on KUWS that I had my first encounter with the subject of this essay.

Duke’s show was an hour-long talkfest broadcast from a cramped little studio on the University of Wisconsin-Superior campus. Duke, his co-host, Patty McNulty, and the show’s producer, the late Mike Simonson, welcomed me and made me feel at home. Adding to my comfort level was the fact that the show’s format that day didn’t allow for listener calls. And yet, near the end of the hour, a listener did call in, wanting to quiz me about the research behind Suomalaiset. My immediate reaction was, “Oh, oh, a pissed off Finn is calling to tell me what I got wrong. Duke handed me the caller’s name and telephone number but spared me any on-air embarrassment. I said I’d call after the show. It was a lie. I never intended to return the call. But for some reason, on the drive home, I felt compelled to find a pay phone and dial the number Duke had written down. My decision to face the music that day was the best decision I’ve ever made as a writer. The man on the other end of that fateful conversation was Gerry Henkel. Turns out, Gerry was so intrigued by a non-Finn’s interest in Kinkkonen’s tragic story that he wanted a copy of Suomalaiset to review for the New World Finn, a newspaper he edited. I sent a review copy, Gerry read the book and became the most vocal proponent of my writing I’ve ever been blessed to know. He was better than his word: Not only was Suomalaiset given a glowing review in this newspaper, Gerry added a full-page author interview to accompany the review. He also put me in touch with the paper’s publisher, Ivy Nevala, who added Suomalaiset to the newspaper’s stock of literature available for purchase through the New World Finn.

Had I not returned that telephone call, Suomalaiset would likely have sold a few hundred copies. Instead, the novel became my best selling book and has been read, critiqued, and enjoyed by folks from Vancouver to Helsinki. But there’s more.

Gerry introduced me to members of the Finnish American, Finnish Canadian, and Finnish communities at ethnic festivals from Thunder Bay, to Duluth, to Marquette, and beyond. He was my proverbial “foot in the door” in terms of gaining respectability and authority as a non-Finn writing about the Finns. His connections took me to Turku where I gave a presentation at the Institute of Migration. We’ve become good friends, and, truth be told, he’s been a promoter of all my work, including books like Laman’s River, a murder mystery that has nothing to do with the Finns. And then there is this: When I was at a loss as to where to head next with my very eclectic and diverse fiction writing, Gerry suggested that a sequel lurked within the pages of Suomalaiset. Smitten with the character Elin Gustafson, a newspaper reporter and modern woman who is a central figure in Suomalaiset, Gerry convinced me that Elin had more to say. And so, Sukulaiset: The Kindred, my latest historical novel, was born.

Here’s the level of Gerry’s unselfishness, his drive to help others succeed in telling the story of the Finns. Just prior to a recent book launch of Sukulaiset at the Fitger’s Theater in Duluth, Gerry asked if his friend, internationally known musician, actress, and personality, Ulla Souko, could read passages from Sukulaiset during our conversation in front of the audience. Gerry also suggested that I ask Finnish American singer/songwriter, Diane Jarvi to provide music for the event. Those two women made October 9, 2014 the most memorable evening of any I’ve spent as an author.

After this issue is “put to bed”, the New World Finn will sleep for eternity. I’ll miss writing book reviews for this quirky little paper. I’ll miss reaching into my rural mailbox to withdraw each crisp, new copy of this unique publication. I’ll miss reading intelligent, probing, enlightening articles, essays, stories, poems, and reviews. But I am left with this: I’ll always cherish my friendship with Gerry Henkel, the man who started it all for me amongst the Finns.

Kiitos, ystävä.

Mark

Table read at Peace Church. 12/2/2014.

The Pinacle: Peace Church, Saturday, December 6, 2014

It’s a fair winter morning as I shuffle my feet against melting snow, the burden of a box of books heavy, my frayed bathrobe snugged tight against cool air. I’m loading my blue Pacifica for another book selling event. I’m headed to the Get it Local arts and crafts fair at Peace Church on Duluth’s east hillside. That little fair has been good to me over the years. With minimal table fees, easy access, a short work day, I usually sell a few of my books to strangers, repeat customers, and acquaintances. As I load the back of the SUV with folding tables, table cloths, books, and accessories, I’m optimistic that the day will go well.

Given my age and my expanding belly, I avoid the temptation to stop at McDonald’s for an Egg White Delight on the way in. The car loaded, my shower completed, my attire suitably “dressed down” for a casual day of book selling at a craft show, I scarf Yoplait (strawberry/banana) followed by a coffee chaser. I fill a stainless steel travel mug with more coffee, leave a note for my seventeen-year-old son, and head out the door. The sky is blue and fringed with soft, uneventfully white clouds. Our resident bald eagle soars across the meager snow of the field leading from our house to the banks of the Cloquet River. He or she doesn’t glance at the Pacifica as it pulls away from the stark white home perched above the slowly churning black water. The eagle isn’t interested in art. He or she is art and is interested in finding a meal. I see no deer or other wildlife on the drive in as I listen to a tribute CD of songs written by Jackson Browne. The album features artists as diverse as Springsteen and Lovett and Colvin and Souther. I try to harmonize to the tunes and realize, yet again, that choosing writing over music was a good avocational decision. I may never break even, much less get rich, penning fiction but it’s unlikely I will injure anyone writing imaginary stories. I can’t make the same promise about my harmony.

“Hi, Wendy,” I say as I approach the promoter and organizer of the event. “Could I buy two extra feet from you? I brought two four foot tables and I don’t think six feet will be enough space.”

Wendy Grethen walks over to where my table space is, the six foot limit of my booth marked with blue tape on the vinyl floor of the congregational church’s social hall, and nods. “That’s doable.
“What do I owe you?”

“Another ten bucks.”

I fill out a check I brought with for the transaction and hand it to Wendy before setting up my book display. I’m happy Wendy is flexible. I erred in only renting a “mini” space given that I have nearly all my titles available for purchase.

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking ordering only a six foot space.

Kids from a local elementary school arrive with supervising adults to warm soup for lunch. The proceeds from their sales will go towards environmental education efforts. As pots of pheasant and wild rice and tomato basil soup simmer, the food’s fragrance blends with the odor of fresh baked bread from Amazing Grace. In less than fifteen minutes, my table is set up. I move the Pacifica from the church parking lot and wait for customers. The crowd doesn’t disappoint.

I’ve been doing the arts and crafts circuit for over fourteen years. I know that each show, each season, each event has its own rhythm, its own cadence. The health of the economy drives whether or not people show up and whether or not they browse or purchase. I noted a few weeks’ back at the Festival of Trees, one of the larger holiday craft shows in the area, that folks were, after years of reluctance, opening their wallets. Today, as I read passages of Moberg’s The Emigrants between customers, I experience first-hand the resurgence of the American economy. Folks not only stop to talk; they buy books. After five hours of flurry, I run out of titles: Black Water, Esther’s Race, and Ordinary Lives all disappear. The big sellers, of course, are the Finn books: Suomalaiset and Sukulaiset.

The Square, I think as I swipe credit cards through the tiny plastic cube affixed to my iPhone, is a wonderful device.

The Square allows me to accept credit cards and have the funds electronically posted to my Cloquet River Press checking account without incurring fees from my bank. Before the Square, I was relegated to using an old fashioned mechanical credit card swiper, collecting the carbon copies of the transactions, and tediously entering all the data onto a website at home. No longer. The Square spares me time; a commodity, an asset, that’s limited for a guy with myriad interests and a grandson living next door.

Grandsons. When I get home, he’s there, at the house with his grandma, my wife, ready to greet me. We watch Stewart Little and Polar Express together. I carry our Christmas tree in from the covered front porch of the farmhouse and, with grandma’s help, secure it in a metal tree stand. We don’t decorate the Douglas fir but allow it the night to unfurl its branches and get accustomed to the house. I fill the metal pan of the tree stand with water. Grandma changes Adrien for bed and spends time reading next to him as the little guy settles in for the night. There’s no question that a day selling books and the a spent with a grandchild is about as good as it gets.

Adrien James Munger and Mr. Claus

The Depths: Redbery Books, Cable, Wisconsin, Sunday, December 7, 2014

The Rivers Restaurant.

Maybe the date should have been a clue. Pearl Harbor Day. The day of infamy. Whatever. When I saw the announcement promoting a gathering of local authors at Redbery Books in Cable, Wisconsin, I was intrigued.

I’ve never been to the store, I thought as I considered the posting on the electronic calendar of Lake Superior Writers. It can’t hurt to try to expand my readership.

I sent an inquiry to Bev, the bookstore’s manager, indicating I was interested in participating. I received a acceptance email and an attachment advising me of my responsibilities as a participlant. Given that the bookstore is attached to a restaurant/bar, The Rivers Eatery, which, through my prior experience in doing readings and signings at independent bookstores located in tourist villages (a term that fits Cable given it’s notoriety as a cross-country skiing mecca and fishing destination), seemed to be a positive, an additional draw to the event, I was excited to join other local authors at Redbery.

I’d left the Pacifica loaded with books and supplies and, after watching Stewart Little II with my wife and my grandson, after turning the little guy over to his parents, and after filling my belly with oatmeal and orange juice, I climb into the cockpit of the book selling express and head south, towards the home of the Birkie. The day is overcast but warm. There’s no trace of snow in the sky as the Pacifica turns from US 53 onto county roads taking me east, into the lake country of northwestern Wisconsin. Rounding a bend, the pavement dry, the oak and pine forest hugging the shoulders of the constantly turning highway, I hit the brakes and stop on a dime.

That’s a lot of turkeys.

A gaggle of wild toms and jennies flutters across the asphalt, the big birds a scurry of feathers and indignation. Little do I realize that scene will be the highlight of an otherwise disappointing day.

I have high hopes when I arrive at the bookstore. Redbery is located in a refurbished dry goods store. As I walk through the door, I’m impressed. The shop is bright and airy, Banks of clean windows allow the meager light of the overcast day to bathe the store. A freshly painted tin ceiling and a restored plank floor complete the room. Hundreds of hardcover and paperback books are displayed on orderly shelves. Bev greets me and shows me to the restaurant/bar where other authors are already setting up their displays. I find my spot and glance around the cavernous, empty restaurant There are a half-dozen or so authors getting ready for customers. Some participants display one title. Others, like me, have multiple books on hand to sell. But as I take in the space we occupy, it dawns on me:

The restaurant isn’t open.

Redbery Bookstores, Cable, WI.

Indeed. The additional draw of an open eatery filled with patrons is not going to be part of my experience in Cable. Neither are customers. Of any sort. In two hours, I talk with one potential customer and he’s really only here to assist another author with loading that author’s car when the event is over. I sell no books and, truth be told, witness, I think, a total of three books sell in the time spent at the rear of the bookstore. Anytime you spend an afternoon surrounded by more authors than potential customers is a bad sign. At 3:00, I leave a check for my table rental at the bookstore counter and, without a word of farewell, load the Pacifica for the long ride home.

I don’t blame the bookstore for the lack of sales. Folks will buy what interests them. There’s very little one can do to change a customer’s interest or taste. And I understand the extreme pressures being exerted upon independent bookstores by the Internet, eBooks, and the Evil One: Amazon. Still, it’s pretty tough to sell even William Kent Krueger in a bookstore devoid of customers.

To make matters worse, the turkeys aren’t out and about to entertain me as I head home.

Peace.

Mark

A prairie pothole, Ashley, ND.

The sky was overcast and the air cool as my three sons, Matt, Chris, and Jack walked a natural grass field bordering a small lake near Ashley, North Dakota. Reid Amborn, a friend of Matt’s and a fellow IT nerd, walked with the Munger clan as well. I was on the far western edge of the line of five hunters and two dogs searching the tall prairie grass, hoping to pop a rooster pheasant or two out of concealment. It happened sparingly on this, my eighth or ninth trip (I’m turning 60 this week and forget such details) to hunt pheasants in North Dakota. In two hours of walking, we jump three or four shootable roosters and hit one. I missed an easy shot and cursed my ineptitude. The big, brilliant bird glided merrily across the water of an adjacent pothole, cackling in delight as the steel shot of my round fell into the green water. Chris correctly gauged the speed and ascent of a male pheasant and brought the bird to earth. Kena, Jack’s year-old black Labador, and Lexie, Matt’s matronly seven year old red Labrador, found the downed bird but didn’t do what their labels boast they should do. Instead of retrieving the bird, they stood over it imperiously but refused to pick up the dead rooster and return it to the shooter. Chris tucked the dead bird in the pouch of his hunting vest and we moved on.

Kena and Lexie waiting for someone to hit a bird.

My old man, Harry, turns 87 years old this week. His birthday is a day before mine. I will be turning, as the young folk like to say pejoratively, “the big Six-Oh”. Dad lives in Florida now. He finally got a Florida driver’s license after selling the familial home in the Piedmont Heights neighborhood of Duluth. He’s lived in Florida for the majority of each year for the past five years or so, but, until he sold the house, he resisted becoming a resident of the Sunshine State. Now he can vote for former Republican-turned-Democrat, Charlie Crist for governor. That, despite the loss of the house, brings a smile to the old Democrat’s face.

Grandpa Harry at the hunting house.

This trip was conceived by Harry and his hunting buddy, Bruce Meyer, several decades ago. When the men were in their late 60’s, they started making annual treks to South Dakota to hunt ducks and pheasants. They grew weary of the scarcity of land to hunt, the constant rejection at the hands of local ranchers who wanted to charge $50-$100 per day, per hunter, to hunt what are supposedly wild birds owned by the people of the State of South Dakota. So the two old men migrated a bit north, renting a motel room at the Ma and Pa motel in Ashley, North Dakota, the tiny county seat of McIntosh County. Later, they befriended local farmers and rented trailers or cabins or old farmhouses as lodging. By the time my old man got around to asking Matt and I to join the trip, these connections with farmers were near an end: The same monetary demons that had made hunting in South Dakota so expensive had crept north. We began renting houses in the town of Ashley for the trip and searching for public or non-posted farm land to hunt rather than arrange to hunt on specific farms. It’s not the best arrangement for filling a hunting vest with dead birds but it serves our purposes. We work hard, walking the land, looking for opportunities to hunt, and enjoy an environment uniquely different from the rolling hills, lakes, swamps, and forested closure of our native Minnesota. Even last year, when the bird count was dismal in southern North Dakota due to the brutal winter of 2012-2013, the five of us (with Harry scouting out new spots from the car while we worked the land) had a good, if not productive, hunt. This year, prior to heading out, we toyed with the idea of hunting public land in nearby South Dakota. The conservation lands (plots where farmer and ranchers leave natural cover for wildlife production and allow public hunting in return for a government subsidy) in the Ashley area, and throughout all of North Dakota, are rapidly disappearing as more and more prairie is converted back to agricultural production. But, in the end, we chose to hunt what we knew.

The crew at rest after lunch and a tough morning hunt.

Over four days, we walked tree lines, sloughs, shoreline, and native grasslands in search of gorgeously hued roosters. One morning, a morning where Chris and I both downed birds, we saw more than twenty female (hen) pheasants (can’t shoot ’em) but only three males. That was pretty much the story of our four days in Ashley. That and chasing the occasional corn fed, very fat and very robust white tail bucks and does out of their hiding places, the sound of a two hundred pound deer getting up from rushes three feet away enough to cause your heart to race. And seeing raft upon raft of floating ducks on prairie ponds. And watching a big, bushy tailed coyote, its coat splendid and thick against the noonday sun as it eyed us from atop a hill, the land barren of trees; the sun hot and summer-like. And the flights of white trumpeter swans and Canada geese and sandhill cranes and mallards and bluebills headed south towards the Platte, dotting the blue sky.

Jack stretching out the kinks.

There were, as with all family hunting and fishing excursions (Reid now being, after two years of hunting with us, an honorary Munger) a couple of tense moments, a few words exchanged that we regretted, apologized for, and then moved on from. But really, given the fact all of us were dog tired and frustrated with the lack of roosters to shoot, the discord was minimal. There were no hasty words said that festered. As on any Munger outing, we debated and teased and challenged each other, with much commentary directed at Chris, whose evenings were cluttered with texts and emails back to Minnesota to a certain lady lawyer who is the main focus of his life.

Pheasants down.

Travel arrangements this year were a bit more complex what with Harry living in Florida. His Tahoe is in storage back in Duluth because he and his significant other, Pauline, rely upon her van for transportation when living in Florida. There’s no need for two folks over 80 to have separate cars in one place. A few years back,  I convinced Dad that it was a better plan to fly back and forth between his two places of residence instead of trying to drive the 30 hour jaunt. That meant leaving the Tahoe in Duluth. To make this trip, Dad flew from Port Charolette to Fargo where Chris and I picked him up. The plane was on time. Harry was in good spirits and I had his shotgun and gear in tow, ready for his use.

Matt, Jack, and Reid drove separately in Matt’s Suburban, taking a more southerly route from Duluth through Fergus Falls and then on to Ashley. In all significant ways, this is now Matt’s trip: he rented the house we stayed at, he planned the menu, he shopped for the food, and he functioned as our camp cook. Chris is our bird cleaner, a job that hasn’t been too taxing the past two years. Reid makes the lunches we pack into the field and lends a hand doing dishes and cleaning the house. Jack and I shared most of the dish washing and kitchen clean up, my youngest son showing new-found maturity in never grousing or objecting to the tasks assigned.

A Waterfowl production area. Steel shot only.

There were few occasions on this trip for us to be energized by clouds of pheasants rising into the climbing or setting sun. We tried to hunt smarter, to be more contemplative in our journeys across the land in search of birds. But there were few opportunities this year to shoot roosters. Time and time again, Lexie stopped dead in the grass, her nose twitching, or, in Kena’s case, the young Lab bounded through the waist high sedge and thistle, ears flapping in the warm breeze, nose vertical to the scent of a bird, only to kick up a dusky colored hen. Off limits. But still exciting, if somewhat disappointing. Our luck changed in the last hour of the last day. Chris’s plan was to move slowly through a waterfowl production area we were hunting at the cusp of sunset, the end of shooting time, pushing birds against a road and a fence line. After a long walk with nothing to show for our efforts, we ascended the last hill of the trip. Birds erupted everywhere. Jack and Matt, both birdless to that point, each knocked a cackling North Dakota rooster to the ground. Reid did the same. Chris shot and missed. My gun remained silent. And yet, it was a magnificent end to a fine, fine trip.

The boys after a fruitless walk on a hot day.

Peace.

Mark

Final Edition. Radio Superior. Countless radio documentaries, including a series on the impact of HIV/AIDS on rural Wisconsinites that garnered him an Edward R. Morrow Award in 1997 and a National Public Broadcasting Director’s Award for his coverage of the 1992 benzene spill in Douglas County, Wisconsin. A booming voice reminiscent of William Conrad (radio persona and star of the television detective series “Cannon”). A loving husband. A good son and brother. A loyal friend. A tough task master. A great teacher. One hell of a radio journalist.

These are the bits and pieces of Mike Simonson’s life that doubtlessly were emphasized at his memorial service last Saturday at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in West Duluth. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, though I did make the wake the evening before. I wasn’t a close personal friend of Mike’s, having been two years ahead of him at Denfeld (a classmate of Mike’s older brother Mark), but my interactions with Mike, from those glory days until his all-too-sudden passing, were always positive. In junior high and high school, Mike was Mark’s little brother; a round bundle of energy in contrast to his older sibling’s more deliberate and sedate style who knew more about baseball than any Denfeld alum except Fred Friedman. Mike could recall statistics concerning players from the near and distant past with ease. He also, as I recall, may have had a hand in plotting the greatest caper conceived and perpetrated by Denfeld Hunters: the raising of a Volkswagen Bug onto the roof of Central High School as a Maroon and Gold Day prank. I wasn’t there to witness Mike’s participation in the scheme: My wife, Rene’ Privette Munger, a classmate of Mike’s, swears she witnessed the planning and plotting behind the incident. Behind the serious journalist, then, lurked the heart of a guy who enjoyed life, his family, his friends, and a good laugh.

As a Denfeld alum, I followed Mike’s career in radio from his early days in AM newsrooms around the Twin Ports, through his apprenticeship far from home, to his triumphant return as the first Northern Reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio (and News Director of KUWS) and marveled at his dedication to task. I too learned my craft at the knees of such great teachers as Jean Endrizzi, Judy Infelise Bonovetz, and Goldie Cohen (who was also the adviser to the school newspaper, The Criterion) over my years at Lincoln Junior High and Denfeld, the schools where Mike cut his journalistic teeth. But unlike Mike, my early fascination with reportage turned sour after a single year at UMD: I ended up ditching my love of writing to become a trial attorney; giving up my avocation for a vocation. Mike, on the other hand, knew what he wanted to do for his life’s work and stayed the course, garnering, as set forth above, more accolades and awards than any other Twin Ports reporter in history.

Others have said it better than I can. When Mike was on a story, whether supervising his young student reporters at KUWS, interviewing a subject himself, or sitting in as a panelist on “Final Edition”, a program dedicated to highlighting the news of the week through the eyes of local journalists and reporters, he was determined to get to the truth. He didn’t countenance the slight of hand responses and sound bites that we so often hear on the air and read in print as “answers” from public officials and politicians. He did not suffer fools lightly. His dogged dedication to the craft of truth-telling made him a throw-back to the golden age of radio journalism. His career mimicked, in this regard, the timeless characters portrayed on the nostalgic radio drama he created and shared with other Northland radio greats, Lou Martin, Ray Paulson, and Jack McKenna.

I had the pleasure of appearing on Mike’s news program a number of times to talk about my books. Mike was also present in the studio as a producer when I appeared on Duke Skorich’s show and on Henry Banks’s “People of Color”. The coverage he gave my books was invaluable to my success as a regional author. During these broadcasts, there were plenty of jokes and smiles to be had despite the serious nature of the work.

I always wondered about Mike’s health but I was not a close enough friend or acquaintance to pose questions about his life choices. Five years or so ago, I remember climbing the stairs with Mike in the Holden Fine Arts building as he led me towards the KUWS studio for an interview. I noted the physical struggle Mike had with a simple set of stairs and the experience concerned me so much that, when I got home that night, I mentioned Mike’s difficulty in negotiating the stairs to my wife. That he was, despite the obvious discomfort of the effort, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, was, we concluded a positive. In the end, it apparently wasn’t enough.

Here’s how far reaching Mike’s influence really was. A month ago, while out promoting my new novel, I found myself in Park Rapids, Minnesota where I bumped into a friend, Heidi Holtan, program manager of KAXE radio. Heidi invited me into the city armory where she and a crew were making ready for the Great Northern Radio Show, KAXE’s equivalent of “A Prairie Home Companion.” Inside the vaulted room, Heidi introduced me to Hibbing writer and blogger, Aaron Brown. I’d corresponded with Aaron about his book, Overburden, but never met him. Within minutes, the two of us were talking about his teacher and my fellow Denfeld alum, Mike Simonson. The impact Mike’s hard nosed instruction and consistent mentoring had on Aaron cannot be understated: Brown held Mike Simonson up as the exemplar of a journalist.

A few days after Mike’s passing, I read the Duluth News Tribune’s endorsement of Stewart Mills for the 8th District (Minnesota) Congressional seat. Something about the endorsement didn’t ring true. There, on the printed page, was a disclaimer of sorts, a small box that (paraphrasing) indicated the endorsement was made by “newspaper management” rather than by the paper’s editorial board. So, in essence, rather than having the two candidates appear, as all other candidates were requested to do, in front of the local editors of the paper, folks living, working, and writing in the district at issue, the Fargo, North Dakota owners of the paper made the endorsement, as we lawyers would say, suis sponte, on their own. That’s the sort of journalistic slight-of-hand that would have driven Mike Simonson to don his fedora, grab his pencil and note pad, and head for the door. He would not have let the paper hide behind their disclaimer. He would have gotten the story and made sure everyone within earshot knew the truth. That’s the man, the reporter, the legend that Duluth-Superior will sorely miss.

God bless you, Mike, from your students, your listeners, your family, and the folks who loved your work.

Peace.

Mark

Bayfield Apple Festival, 2014.

My wife’s Nissan floats on asphalt. A machine gun sky spits rain on the windshield as we drive east on Highway 13. We stop to use the restrooms at the convenience store in Port Wing. I can’t resist buying a slab of smoked salmon sitting in the freezer case. Back on the road, we share a bag of Cracker Jack. I sip lukewarm coffee from a steel travel mug and negotiate curves in the road.

“There’s the new Red Cliff Clinic I was reading about,” I remark as we pass the brand new health care facility that had been recently profiled in the Duluth News Tribune.

We slow for the town of Red Cliff, the heart of Ojibwe country on the South Shore, and pass a new casino hugging the lake.

“I don’t remember seeing that…”

“It’s been there a few years. You must have seen it before,” Rene’ replies.

I calculate the span of time since I was last in Bayfield. I haven’t been in the small tourist town, a quintessential Maine fishing village transplanted into the interior of the country, since I stopped selling books at the Bayfield Apple Festival four years ago. As we stop at the bottom of the hill leading into town to make the turn towards the school, where we’ll pay to park on an abandoned tennis court five blocks to the west of the Rittenhouse Inn, the brief moment of nostalgia and lament caused by not participating as a vendor is replaced by the realization that, for the most part, the time I spent trying to sell books to strangers was an exercise in diminishing returns. First, the economy tanked, meaning less sales because folks stopped spending their discretionary income because, well, they didn’t have any discretionary income. Then there was the weather. Increasingly, rain and snow and fog and cold ruined at least one, if not two, days of the three-day festival. And finally, the organizers of the event grew greedy. Booth prices for the rental of a 10’x10′ piece of asphalt went through the roof. Even with three days’ of pristine skies and huge crowds, I could never make enough money to justify paying the soaring rates for space at the festival. And so, along with the Blueberry and Harvest Moon Festivals in Ely, the Fall Fest in Duluth’s Chester Park, and Land of the Loon in Virginia, I stopped doing outdoor events. I put away my EZ-Up tent, anchors, and tarp, and walked away from such art and craft festivals forever.

Selling paper in the rain. How stupid.

I keep my thoughts to myself as Rene’ and I step into the milling crowd. She heads towards a clothing and gift store. I wander off to the funky used bookstore that once invited me to do a book signing during the middle of Apple Festival. After finding a used copy of Pigs in the novel section, and a few new copies of my other books for sale in the regional authors section of the bustling little store, I head back up the hill to find my wife. That’s when I noticed a new bookstore, Apostle Islands Booksellers, right on Rittenhouse. Given the steady decline and closure of independent bookstores across the country, the victim of Amazon’s convenience and instant gratification, I am surprised to find a well-stocked, packed-the-rafters-with patrons retail bookseller in a town of less than 500 people. And yet, there it is. I open the door and come in out of the cold, greeted by odors of fresh ink, coffee, and a mixture of colognes, perfumes, and humanity. I consider approaching the clerk manning the till and handing her one of my Cloquet River Press business cards.

No, we’re here as tourists.

As I mill about the store, I learn through the grapevine that internet service to the entire village is down, that all purchases in every store must be either by cash or check, the sort of old fashioned commerce that Amazon’s website would not recognize or understand.

Outside, I search for my wife. I can’t find her. So I meander through the thick crowd towards ManyPenny, where my booth stood for nearly a decade. I stand in the hesitant rain and stare at a sweatshirt vendor’s space, his tent occupying terrain that was once the annual, temporary home, of Cloquet River Press. As I lament the fact that cheap, imported clothing has replaced my words, I note the absence of music.

Pat and Donna aren’t here.

I befriended Ely singer/songwriter Pat Surface and his wife Donna the first year I was a vendor at Apple Fest. Every year I participated in the event I had the pleasure of listening to Pat’s wonderful tenor accompanied by his guitar and other musicians playing fiddle, mandolin, and bass. The silence is upsetting in that it signifies a finality of sorts. But it’s comforting to know that my choice, to pull away from the festival, mirrors another’s thinking: There’s satisfaction in knowing that I’m not the only one who threw in the towel.

Rene’ at Gruenke’s.

I circle back and find Rene’. Of course, like any good lady shopper, she’s carrying a bag full of purchases. We decide on Gruenke’s, a funky old inn, tavern, and restaurant, for lunch. The internet remains inaccessible. It’s a good thing my wife tucked a check into her purse since my cash supply is limited and the ATMs strategically placed throughout the town have been rendered useless by the web’s failure.

The author contemplating whitefish and fries.

Gruenke’s bar.

Gruenke’s empties out despite the throng of hungry tourists searching for a good meal. Judith, the owner, closes the place for an hour to give her staff time to catch its collective breath and recharge for the dinner rush. We step outside to a cool but dry day, the sky puffy with rain but seemingly hesitant to spoil the festival. We watch members of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe compete in the Apple Dance. Partners hold an apple between their chins and follow the instructions of the caller. Native drums and singing fills the air. Two teenaged girls are declared the winners, having kept their apple in place throughout the ordeal.

The Apple Dance.

Back on Rittenhouse, I listen to the Blue Canvas Orchestra play covers and original tunes with enthusiasm. A bride-to-be and one of her girfriends dance in front of the crowd, their courage likely fueled by beer and hard cider.

The bride dancing.

Rene’ shops a bit more and then, just before we leave, I fall victim to my obsessive nature.

“Let’s stop by the bookstore on our way out,” I suggest. “I’d like to leave my card, just in case they have a slot open for a signing when I’m coming through, when I have to go to Hancock later in the winter.”

My wife doesn’t complain. We enter the store. I chat with the owner. She says she knows my work and would love to have me come for an event at the store. I leave her my card. Whatever unsettled business I have with Bayfield dissipates as we exit the little bookstore. We head back up the hill intent on buying a bag of fresh apples to lug back to the car.

Peace.

Mark

Apostle Islands Booksellers