Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

CRP Booth @ 2012 Living Green Expo

Ah, the life of a semi-famous novelist from Duluth. It’s Friday afternoon. I’ve just concluded four days of presiding over a complex and hard fought civil trial in my courtroom. I loaded the new Pacifica (not to be confused with the old Pacifica which is now living a new life in Williston, ND) with boxes of books, a few supplies, and my wife’s glass mosaic art (concrete benches and wrought iron tables) Thursday night and drove the packed van to work so I could bug out as soon as the trial ended for the day. So here I am, putting on more miles, intent upon trying to catch the public’s eye (and reach their collective hearts) with my latest book, Laman’s River, by spending the weekend selling my words in a booth at the Living Green Expo on the State Fairgrounds in St. Paul. Tires hum. The sky grays but the rain holds off as I encounter a line of stalled vehicles just north of the I-694 split. I make an executive decision and take the nearest exit ramp, intent upon finding an alternative route to the fairgrounds. Of course, even though the new Pacifica is equipped with GPS, I manage to get lost. Not to worry. We men are always steady in our belief of our innate directional abilities. I’m no exception to this rule. I weave and wind the van through Rosedale, eventually pulling into the site of the event. I spend an hour and a half setting up my booth. As I finish, the sky cries. By the time the Pacifica is heading down the steep grade of Montreal Avenue, rain is coming down in sheets of cool silver. Cars and trucks actually pull over and stop due to the lack of visibility. Not the author guy. I keep my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road as I push south towards the Schostags’ home in Lakeville.

Saturday morning. I had a fitful night of sleep (mostly because of the three beers I drank with my wife’s brother-in-law, Al Schostag). I am half-rested and bleary eyed. I tromp upstairs. I stand naked in the shower, feeling the water’s warmth ease kinks in my neck and back, wondering why I insist on doing this author thing at an age when I should be looking into condos in Taos. In the quiet of the steamy bathroom, I dress for the day. I’ve decided to go with the hat. My eldest son and his wife, Lisa, bought me a straw Panama to wear at bookselling events. I have never worn it. Today, I decide, I will.

CRP Booth @ the 2012 Living Green Expo

The Expo

Traffic is steady. By noon, I have sold enough books so that my native pessimism (a light touch of dread, if you will) is disarmed.

If this keeps up, it’ll be a hell of a weekend.

Of course, I got carried away. I’ve learned, over twelve years of playing the part of a regional fiction writer, that nothing comes easy. My work, while beloved by a small cadre of fans, has a heck of a time getting recognition from the press and critics when it’s not published by a big New York house and isn’t represented by an agent. Essentially, I live hand to mouth with each sale. That’s the deal I’ve made with the literary devil: I get to write what I want to write and put it out into the big wide world but there’s very little chance it will ever amount to much in the big stream of commerce that is America’s marketplace. I got excited when the first few books flew off the table. But it didn’t last. Though there are folks at the Expo, the rain is pouring down and few are buying. So I content myself with people watching and reading A Team of Rivals.

Another fitful night on the Schostags’ couch; this time, not caused by beer in the bladder but by horrific storms that pass over Lakeville after dark. Had it been high summer, with heat and humidity present, the winds that whipped through the Cities would likely have included a funnel cloud or two. But because it’s still spring, the storm simply pummels the house with rain. Wave after wave of rainwater pelts the sturdy house, beating a steady rhythm of storm throughout much of the night.

Sunday morning. Al makes a great breakfast, I say my goodbyes, and I’m off for a second day of selling. Again, patrons weave their way in and out of my booth but few copies of Mr. Environment get sold. Oh, I have plenty of talkers, environmental types who recognize my Uncle Willard’s face and name and want to applaud me for writing his life story. But few of them buy books. By the close of the show, my back sore from couch surfing and hauling my wife’s art, I’m happy to be back in the car, listening to American roots music on The Current, as I head north, towards home.

Peace.

Mark

Northern Crayfish

I’ve been pretty busy at work. Some of you gleaned this from the fact my name’s been mentioned of late in the local newspaper. In my “real” job, the one that pays the bills, that happens sometimes: I get cases assigned to me that someone at the newspaper thinks are “newsworthy”. But as I move into my 14th year as a judge, I’m feeling the weight of what I do for a living a bit more than I used to. I’ve heard that’s a natural progression. Maybe. But I find myself less and less willing, at the end of a hard day, to tend to things that need doing around the house. It’s driving Rene’, my long-suffering wife of thirty-three years, crazy.

So the other day, I ripped off my suit jacket, slacks, dress shirt, and tie (how I hate wearing a tie!) and slipped on my battered old paint-stained bluejeans and an old T-shirt. It was  sunny and warm outside and the leavings of winter (you know: old dog turds, bits of paper, scraps of wood, gravel from the road; that sort of stuff) needed to be raked into piles. So I walked out to our tool shed, pulled out a rake, and took a swipe at some physical labor. You know what? It felt good. Oh, I paid for it last night when my left shoulder, the one that’s been acting up since Jack and I got T-boned by a young lady on a bright Sunday morning (we were on our way to church: she, unfortunately, was still drunk from Saturday night) throbbed in bed. But being outside, with a rake in my hands, the sun shining bright, and birds flitting over the greening grass of our lawn, well, it was something I needed to do more than something that needed doing. When I was done with the raking, I walked over to stairs that slope down the riverbank to the Cloquet River. Kramer, our frail chocolate Labrador, stood behind me, scanning the flowage, unable, due to age and bad hips, to join me as I sat on a wooden tread of the stairs and watched black water move. Beneath the river’s undulating surface, in about two feet of water, I spotted a crayfish walking, not scuttling, slowly across the pebbled bed of the Cloquet. He or she or it (I’m uncertain as to the sexual nomenclature of crustaceans) didn’t do anything fancy during the fifteen minutes I watched quietly from the stairway. I saw no great episode of life and death. No bass zipped into my field of view to snatch up the shellfish for a quick dinner. No otter plunged to the shallows to pluck the crayfish and motor off. It was just me, and Kramer, and the little crayfish absorbing the sun and taking a breath.

Movement up river broke my meditation. I caught sight of a male wood duck, all alone, no mate in sight, drifting with the slow current. The duck stopped a dozen yards from the dog and me, his colors dazzling in the late afternoon sun, his peeping voice at odds with his ducky bill.

Male Wood Duck

It didn’t take long for the beautifully feathered bird to figure out I was there, gawking at him. He fluttered his short wings and scooted away, hell bent on finding his wife. Once the duck was out of sight, I rose slowly from the stairs, patted Kramer on the head, and ambled towards the house. I filled bird feeders with feed, put away the rake, and then decided, because my attempts to get Jack, our youngest, involved in my chores had failed, to pull out the trampoline and set it up. The rig was a gift to our third son, Chris, who’s now twenty-four, for making the honor roll when he was at Hermantown Middle School. The tramp has served all of our boys, their friends, and assorted nieces and nephews well over the past thirteen summers and is still in good shape. Oh, there’ve been a few broken bones (cousin Alex broke a wrist, I think) and some odd bruises and bumps, but mostly the kids have had a ball jumping and flipping for hours on end. During the hottest days of summer, one of Jack’s favorite things to do is to set up the lawn sprinkler under the tramp and jump through cold well water beneath the glaring sun. Anyway, it took a good hour or so to get the trampoline set up. That was the last of my chores, at least the ones on my list (as opposed to Rene’s list), which meant I had time to sit on a rocking chair on our covered front porch and read the newspaper.

Eastern Bluebird

My work finished, paper in hand, I settled into the rocking chair intent upon focusing on the day’s news. But nature wasn’t quite done with me. My favorite bird, the male eastern bluebird, decided to make an appearance. About ten years ago, we started putting up bluebird houses. And the bluebirds decided, after some discussion in bluebirdeese, I am sure, that they liked what we’d done. So now, every year, pairs (at least two, sometimes three) of eastern bluebirds come back and nest in the little wooden birdhouses on posts next to our vegetable garden. And every year, little bluebirds are hatched, raised, and fledged at the edge of pasture on our place. I watched as the male bird, his bright blue backside most visible during flight, landed on the very tip top of a spruce near Rene’s dormant flower garden. The bird didn’t seem to mind my company. He too seemed content to pause, to take a moment, and breathe.

Peace.

Mark

Waiting for the Doors to Open

Saturday. I’m up at 5:00am and in the shower. By  5:45am, I’m on the road to the Bloomington Writers’ Festival. I’m nervous: I’m not only selling books at the festival; I’m also reading from Laman’s River for Bloomington cable access television and I’m a featured presenter at the conference. I’m about to embark on some serious multi-tasking and I don’t know if I’m up to it. I’m not behind the wheel of my 2008 Pacifica, my vehicle of choice. I’m driving Rene’s 2005 Toyota Matrix to take advantage of better gas mileage. It’s a down and back trip: I won’t be staying the night in the Cities. I can’t afford it.This writerly kick I am on has long ago eaten up the budget for motels. And there’s a George Clooney movie Rene’ wants me to watch with her  tonight. What the hell is it about George Clooney anyway? I mean, is he really that sexy to women of a certain age? I just don’t get it.

Anyway, after eating a rubber egg, cheese, and sausage muffin purloined from the shelves of a gas station in Cloquet and downing two cups of strong coffee and a bottle of orange juice, I finally, just south of Forest Lake, drive out of the perpetual fog that has been squatting on northern Minnesota for the past week. Ever since winter decided to vamoose, the Northland has been socked in with rain and fog. It’s a pleasure to finally be able to see the highway in front of me as I drive out of the foggy envelope. Don’t mistake what I’m saying here: There is no sun to speak of. Only more gray. But gray with perspective instead of claustrophobic closeness. When I pull in to the parking lot of the Bloomington Theater and Arts Center, where the conference is being held, I’m a few minutes ahead of schedule. The doors are manned by a smallish man, a volunteer, who has us wait until nine before allowing the milling crowd of weary eyed would be John Grishoms and J.K. Rowlings inside.

2012 Bloomington Writers' Festival

After the doors open, I pull my foldable two-wheeled dolly stacked with plastic bins and boxes into the building, register with another volunteer at the main table, and find my spot. I’m an old pro at setting up my books: Table cloth first, then the plastic placards holding images of each book and details about them, followed by neatly stacked copies of the books I have in print, finished off by two plastic business card holders full of my business cards. In less than twenty minutes, I’m ready to start selling. Of course, the public isn’t allowed in for another half hour, so I take full advantage of the down time and wander off to the room where I’ll be presenting my program. I spend a few minutes talking to a guy setting up the digital projector that I’ll be using in conjunction with my son Jack’s netbook. After talking to the guy, I’m confident that this experiment, which has me extremely nervous, will work out OK: I’m going to try to show aspiring historical novelists how I use the Internet to conduct research for my work. I’m doing it in real time, right there during my one hour lecture. Understand, I am not a tech nerd. I can adequately function in front of a keyboard for simple tasks like using the Internet, doing word processing, and the like. But I am not a computer guru. This is only my second attempt at using a computer during a lecture. The last time I tried it, it was a disaster. I am hoping history doesn’t, as some say, repeat itself.

Mark's Table at the Writers' Festival

There’s a slow but steady crowd at the conference. Many of the folks milling about are more interested in what you have to say as a presenter than what you’ve written as an author. I always sell enough books here to pay for gas but that’s usually about it. Today is no exception. Copies of my new mystery, Laman’s River, prove popular as do copies of Suomalaiset, my historical novel about Finns in NE Minnesota. I collect my complimentary box lunch and eat it at my table after doing my ten minute reading from the new book for cable access. The reading seemed to go well, with only a few minor stumbles as I tried to “set the mood” of the story so folks will want to buy the book. I even had a couple of fans in attendance.

Old friends from Moorhead, the Floms, surprise me, stopping by in the early afternoon with their daughter, Sarah, and her toddler son, Will. We catch up on our kids, I get to hold Will for a few snapshots, and then they’re gone. Another friend, John Helland stops by to chat as well. That’s one of the main benefits of these outings: Getting away from behind the keyboard and monitor and talking to folks who like and support your work. I keep checking my iPhone for the time. Eventually, I leave the table and pad off to the Rehearsal Hall where I am to give my lecture. The room is full, nearly thirty folks have paid money to hear me blather. Even though I teach college courses at UWS each semester, those courses are linked to my vocation as a judge. Today, I am speaking about my avocation, my hobby.

What gives me the right to talk to these folks? I’ve never won the Pulitzer. Hell, I’ve never even won a Northeast Minnesota Book Award, much less a Minnesota Book Award. Just who the hell do I think I am?

I feel a bit like a fraud as I stumble around the Internet while a roomful of strangers gawk at me. But I make it through the hour without a heart attack. I guess that’s something. I take a few questions and then return to my table to pack up my books and hit the road. A couple of the attendees from the class stop by to chat and buy books. They try to tell me that the hour was worthwhile. I listen, but my own take on my performance is less laudatory. Still, I smile and say “thank you” like Mom taught me.

Goose Creek Wayside Rest

Goose Creek

On the road, I eat a bad meal at the McDonald’s in Forest Lake. By the Goose Creek wayside rest, I need to hit the john. I pull off, do my business, and then, because the sun is finally out and the warm air finally feels like spring, I decide to check out the creek itself. I’m not disappointed. I stand in a tangle of gnarled oaks along the creek bank and look out at tired hay stubble waiting to awaken after a false winter. Invigorated, I get back into the Matrix and head north on I-35.

Sunset on Pike Lake

By the time I make Pike Lake, just outside Duluth, the sun is setting. The colors of the sky beg for me to stop and consider them. I park at the state owned boat launch on the lake. I watch the orange globe of the sun disappear behind the trees of Pike Lake’s western shoreline.I put the Matrix in gear, knowing that “The Descendents” and Mr. Clooney are waiting for me at home.

Sunday. Rene’ and I take separate cars to church. After an exhausting “there and back” trip to the Cities the day before, I am slated to have brunch at the Zinema2 theater complex in downtown Duluth. The director of a film I reviewed for the New World Finn newspaper (the film is Under the Red Star), Kelly Saxberg, her husband, Ron Harpelle, and a few other folks from Duluth’s Sister Cities program are gathering to talk about the film in advance of its Duluth debut. Brenda Denton, a local attorney, knowing my interest in all things Finnish, emailed me and invited me to brunch. So here I am, walking across Superior Street after spending an hour with God and family at Grace Lutheran Church, putting on my authorial hat once again.

The fact that I thoroughly enjoyed the film (giving it 4 out of 5 stars) likely helped garner the invite: I doubt Brenda would have asked me to come by so that Kelly and Ron (the co-producers of the movie) could throw hash browns at me across the table! ( I’ll post my review of the film in a day or so now that it’s been printed in NWF.) I sit down at the breakfast table next to Kelly and give her a copy of Suomalaiset with the hope that, one day, she’ll want to make a feature film out of Olli Kinkkonen’s story. I know, I know. It’s a pipe dream, a long shot, a one-in-a-million grasping at straws. But who knows? Stranger things happen in this world, right? We have a lively conversation about Kelly’s films, about the Finnish immigrant experience, and then, we head down to the theater. It’s apparent that the room assigned to the film is too small for the crowd: The event is moved to the larger of the complexes two movie theaters. And still, the larger space isn’t sufficient to hold all the folks who wander in. Ten minutes into the film and there are still people opening the doors, trying to find a seat. But it’s standing room only, a good sign for the movie’s long term impact and success.  After the credits, as attendees ask the director questions about the film and her work, I dash out to the Pacifica to retrieve a copy of Laman’s River.  One of the folks I had brunch with, Naomi Sundog Yaeger-Bischoff, the editor of the Budgeteer, is interested in my writing. I can’t pass up the chance to make another connection.

Better not pass up an opportunity for a review.

That’s thing about being a semi-famous novelist: You are always looking for an edge, some way of promoting your work so that folks will read what you have written. I retrieve the book, hand it to Naomi, and bid my new friends adieu. I still have a bathroom to paint and a garage to sweep before sitting down to dinner with Rene’ and Jack. And then, tomorrow, Monday morning, I’ll be up and ready to go to work. At my real job.

Peace.

Mark

The Chernaks, the Mungers, and the Larsons.

We’re blessed with friends. That’s the one thing that I can say with certainty about my wife Rene’ and I. It’s been that way for a long while now, being blessed by friends. Many of our closest friends are folks we met in high school, at Duluth Denfeld. A few, like Jan and Bruce Larson, I met years before. In Jan’s case, it started at Piedmont Elementary in Duluth when we met in kindergarten. With Bruce, it started when a curious Baptist kid (that would be Bruce) started bugging his parents about where babies come from. Now, being that the Baptist church is fairly conservative, but wanting Bruce to know more than what he’d learn in hushed huddles during Boy Scouts, Bruce’s folks sent him to a sex education class run by Episcopalians. That’s where we met. When Rene’ and I started dating in 1976, she was welcomed into a crazy group of close and loving friends. She’s been one of us now for over thirty years.

Of course, the old friends aren’t our only friends. There are Fredenberg friends (folks we’ve met and grown to love out here where we live), family, work friends, and a whole host of other connections and friendships made over a lifetime. Some mine. Some Rene’s. But all important and sustaining. Still, the time we spend with folks like the Larsons and their relatives, the Chernaks, is a window to the past as we joke and laugh and, as we also reflect on our parents’ ages, a glance into the future. This past weekend, shortened as it was by Rene’ dealing with a flu bug (we couldn’t get up to the Larson cabin on Thomas Lake near Two Harbors until Saturday morning), was one of those get-togethers that sustains us in a world of sometimes seemingly unending uncertainty.

We were lucky. When we drove from our place on the Cloquet River to Thomas Lake early Saturday morning, it was snowing: Big, fat, fluffy early winter snow was coming down despite the fact that it was the third day of March. Let’s face it: This winter has been abysmal, a total bust. We’ve had little snow, temperatures that have been too warm, and gray sky after gray sky since November. Hell, our winter has been more like a Kansas winter than one spent in northern Minnesota. So to see snow piling up so late in the season, was, in a word, wondrous. When we arrived at the Larson cabin (which, when I was a Boy Scout and Jan’s dad, the legendary Arnie Erickson was my scoutmaster, was the “Erickson cabin”), the Larsons and the Chernaks were seated comfortably around a fire roaring in the cabin’s stone fireplace, sipping coffee and talking in low tones. Rene’ joined the crew while I hauled in our stuff and some groceries. We’ve been making this annual ski gathering for a decade or better and the ladies in the equation pretty much have it down pat as to who brings what. Bruce makes sure that there’s firewood aplenty, that the sauna is ready to go, that no water pipes have burst, and that the weekend will come off without a hitch. Me? I pretty much just show up.

The pleasantries exhausted, we knuckled down to some hard core political and philosophical discussions, beginning with my diatribe about Russ Limbaugh’s insensitive remarks about the young law student who testified before Congress, and moving on to the state of the economy in Ely, Minnesota, where Charlie and Sue Chernak hale from. By noon, Bruce had heard enough: it was time to hit the state ski trail a few miles from Thomas Lake.

Rene and Sue on the Mother Bear Trail.

Shit, I thought as I plodded along behind Bruce on my skis, I’m more out of shape than I thought.

Bruce and I generally take turns breaking trail. That’s the way it’s always been. And usually, we’re about even in our pace, with the women chatting and taking a more leisurely amble behind us. But this year, I could tell that the extra ten pounds I’d added over the Christmas holidays hadn’t come off: I struggled to keep up with Bruce as we glided silently through the snowy canopy of the forest. Charlie wasn’t with us in the trees: He was content to man the fire back at the cabin and stroke Bella, the Chernaks’ kind and gentle Golden Retriever as he sipped another cup of coffee, leaving the skiing to the rest of us.

I better get myself in shape if I want to be skiing with my grandchild.

It was a serious discussion, the one I had with myself, and one I will take to heart when I get back to that dust-covered treadmill in our bedroom in our house on the Cloquet River.

We were denied, Bruce and I were, our usual course, which is to split off from the women and take the esker trail to the right, a more difficult route. The groomer hadn’t gone up the esker and so, with some prodding from a gasping writer, Bruce agreed to take the easier spur to the left. We pushed on. The only wildlife we saw, or more correctly I saw, was a ruffed grouse which exploded from its hiding place under a spruce as Bruce and I passed by. Bruce never saw, never heard the bird: Likely the reason the Larson freezer is without grouse for table fare.

Bruce and Mark.

Bruce and I took a longer route but, inexplicably, we ended up at the junction with the main trail just as the girls arrived. From there, the five of us skied together on the last leg of the Mother Bear Trail back to the car.

We all knew what awaited us back at the cabin: An afternoon and evening of snacks and cold beer and a hot sauna followed by a nap and Sue’s homemade beef stew and more beer and a board game or two pitting the women against  the men. As usual, the men prevailed and Bruce and Charlie and I raised our arms in our fifty-something version of “The Wave” and sang Queen’s “We Are the Champions” as only old men can.

Thanks, friends, for another great memory.

Peace.

Mark

(Photos by Bruce Larson)

The Blogster at Red Lodge, Montana.

What I learned after skiing five straight days last week with my fourteen year old son  and my wife in Montana.

First, as I get older, I don’t get better on skis. But as 14 year old’s get older, they do get better. Go figure!

Second, Montana beer is great beer. And it’s better than great after that first day of fighting moguls on black diamond runs from the top of Red Lodge Mountain to the chalet. Trust me. 57 year old legs and thighs fairly burn after the first three or four turns at 9,000 feet but after two Glacier Ales at the local pizza parlor (Pizano’s:  great pizza and fantastic staff), you forget the pain. Honest.

Mark and his second Glacier Ale of the night!

Third, my 2008 Pacifica (which I just bought with 61,000 miles on it to replace my 2005 Pacifica with 160,000 miles) has the same flaw that the 2005 version of the van had: It hates altitude to the point where it blows its coolant cap and dumps anti-freeze all over the parking lot. You’d think a vehicle that, when new, commanded a $40,000 price tag (not what I paid, trust me!) could handle altitudes commonly found in the American West. Here’s a tip for you Pacifica owners: Carry an extra cap and a gallon of anti-freeze with you anytime you go above 4,000 feet. You won’t regret it.

Fourth, when your wife suggests that she’s just fine gliding down the greens and blues at a ski hill, leave it at that. I followed this line of logic on this year’s sojourn to mountains and guess what? The arguments were nil!

Fifth, 15 inches of mountain snow is still 15 inches of snow. Add to that, the steepness of the bowls at Bridger Bowl and you have the makings of more muscle pain and agony between your thighs and calves. Again, don’t bother asking the 14 year old whether his thighs are on fire after a day of black diamonds and bumps: He’s oblivious, immortal, as only 14 year old boys can are.

Jack Bridger Munger at Bridger Bowl in the middle of a snow storm.

Sixth, hot tubs were likely invented by skiers. Old skiers. And they work.

Seventh, when you refill the coolant tank in your 2008 Pacifica after the cap has gone kaput, do it when the engine is COLD! That’s what the little fill level line is for. Not following instructions leads to two things: No heat in the car and a very serious rise in the heat gauge until you’re smart enough to shut the car off, let the engine cool down, and then fill the coolant tank to the proper level.

The eighth lesson I learned while skiing happened at Moonlight Basin, the newer, cheaper, less-well-known sister hill to Big Sky. Never, never keep skiing on a black diamond run after you’ve lost a ski, especially if you’re surrounded by trees. The result? You take a nice header avoiding a pine and smack your shin with the trailing ski. Metal edges are made out of metal for a reason.

Lone Tree Lift, Moonlight Basin.

Skiing in the mountains is as close as I’m ever going to get to sky diving. But I’m OK with that, and that’s the ninth thing I learned while out in The Treasure State: Be happy with who and what you are and don’t worry about things you haven’t done or may never get to do. The guy who organizes the annual Ski Hut excursion from Duluth to Bozeman, Montana, Wes Neustel, taught me that. Wes is still downhill skiing, in the mountains, at 92 years old. I don’t think he’s all that into hang gliding or sky diving. That Wes is steady and true on his skis, even into his tenth decade of life, seems like a great life lesson to me.

And finally, I learned that, even if the wallet is a bit thin on cash and things aren’t going exactly how you thought they should, a week with your wife and your son, skiing the Big Skies, is a good break from real life. Thanks, Rene’ and Jack for putting up with a tired, cranky old judge skiing on borrowed skis…

The Blogster at Bridger Bowl.

Peace.

Mark