Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

My booth at Living Green

Rene’, Jack and I drive I-35 in my Pacifica loaded with books and the trappings of book selling. It’s Friday night after work and we’re headed to the Twin Cities to stay with the Schostags, Rene’s sister and brother-in-law and their two kids. Free lodging. Good company. Maybe a meal or two: The elegant life of a semi-famous novelist. The weather is clear and cool. We stop for a bite to eat at a little ma and pa in Barnum. It’s nearly nine-thirty at night when we pull into the Schostags.

Saturday morning. 5:00am comes early. I’m a bit behind the eight ball because I haven’t set up my booth in the Education Building at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St. Paul. It’s been a long two weeks at my “real” job: Back-to-back jury trials. First a complex civil case and now an ugly intrafamilial criminal matter involving allegations between brothers. I’m wore out; done in. But I get up from the couch I’m sleeping on and wander upstairs to take a shower. Restorative hot water cascades over my tired bones. A quick stop at McDonald’s for an egg McMuffin, coffee, and a small O.J. and I’m on the road to St. Paul. It’s nearly an hour drive from Lakeville, where we’re staying, to the fairgrounds. But there’s no traffic. The sun is rising. Life is good.

The event I’m headed to, the Living Green Expo, is a big deal: Minnesota’s largest environmental fair. There are hundreds of booths, both commercial vendors who promote their “green” products and services; and conservation organizations, like Defenders of Wildlife and the Audubon Society. I find my building, park my car, and hustle inside. There’s no one around. The cold, cavernous space is crammed with booths and exhibits. I find my spot, B-25 (sounds like a bingo call), grab an empty, low slung wooden dolly, and unload the Pacifica in one trip. The first order of business is putting up my Cloquet River Press sign and the posters of three of my books; Mr. Environment (the reason I am here), Pigs, and Suomalaiset. I climb a metal step stool I brought with, ball of twine and knife in hand, and go to work. After an hour of hustle, the booth is up and ready for business.

Traffic is slow but steady. I chat with my neighbors on either side between customers. To my right, there are two ladies who own a construction/design company specializing in green buildings. They buy one copy of every book I have for sale. To my left, there are a husband and wife couple selling prefabricated wall and roof panels. They buy three or four books from me as well. I’m lucky. Both sets of neighbors share my politics and my view of the world. Of course, this is an environmental expo: I didn’t expect Dick Cheney to show up here.

I grab some wood-fired pizza for lunch, pizza made from scratch just outside the doors to the Education building by a vendor with a portable pizza oven. The food is excellent: better than many pizzas I’ve had in pizzarias. During slack times, I read a novel my son Chris bought me for Christmas, Wake Up, Sir! (a review should be up tomorrow on this site) and talk to my neighbors. As I struggle to hand sell my books to the folks walking by, I come to a stark realization:

All the folks who stop and tell me what a great guy my Uncle Willard was, all the environmental types that urged me to write his story, not a single one of them has bought a copy of his biography.

It’s the gospel truth: I have probably ten people who stop, look at the book, and claim to be FOW (Friends of Willard) who either knew him, knew of him, or worked with him on environmental matters. Not a one of them opens their wallet and buys a book. Not a one!

Still, I entice enough non-FOWs into my clutches so that I sell a few copies of this and that, and, by the end of the day, my back sore from standing on concrete, my knees and hips aching, it’s been worthwhile.

Saturday night my brother-in-law Allen grills burgers and dogs the old fashioned way: over charcoal. The adults and my niece Claire settle in to watch Winter’s Bone, one of then ten nominees for “Best Picture” this year. My eyes are heavy as the spooky, well-crafted indie flick fades to black, and the Schostags head up to bed, leaving the two couches to Rene’ and I.

Sunday morning. The sky is gray and threatening.

I wonder if rain will make attendance better or worse?

I haven’t a clue. This is only my second year doing this expo. Last year all the vendors were in one building on the fairgrounds, in the grandstand. This year, we’re scattered between four smaller buildings with outdoor activities spread throughout the venue. I heard some vendors in my building (not my immediate neighbors) grousing about the new set-up. I really don’t have a dog in this fight: My sales are modest but acceptable. About what I did last year in the grandstand, give or take. I’m not getting rich, selling books to the Greens. But then, I didn’t expect to.

The day starts slowly but by the time Rene’, her sister Colleen, and Jack and his cousin Alex show up, I’ve made my goal in terms of sales. I’ve finished the novel I was reading, made a few new friends, had some return customers stroke my ego, and stayed warm and dry in the exhibition hall despite the rain pouring down outside. My question is answered: The rain neither helped nor hurt. The traffic was about as I had expected.

Quarter to four. I remove signage and pull cartons and bins out from under my table. By four o’clock, my display and stock are packed away. I haul heavy boxes and plastic bins out to the Pacifica on the adjacent street. In my mind, I calculate sales: Mr. Environment was the best seller of the show by a book or two.

It’s gonna take a long time to empty that storage building, I think as I drive my sister-in-law and her son to their car through drizzle. 2,000 books, one at a time is gonna take a long, long time.

Peace.

Mark

Photo by Amanda Hansmeyer

Monday night. I have plenty of time to exit my chambers at the courthouse, take the stairs to the third floor, wander out to my Pacifica in the parking ramp, grab my “author” clothes from hangers suspended in the cargo space of the van, and return to the privacy of my chambers to change.

3 minutes. They’re only giving me 3 minutes and I’m the freakin’ winner.

I’ve been practicing. For tonight and my three minutes of fame. You see, on a whim, and over the course of one Saturday morning about a month or so ago, I sat at this very keyboard, fired up my iMac, and wrote a short story entry to the Lake Superior Writer’s 2011 Open Genre Writing Contest. Poets, essayists, and short fiction writers were all welcome to submit a piece to LSW in hopes of winning recognition, a bit of cash, or both. So I wrote “Threshold”, a short story in response to Amanda Hansmeyer’s photograph (see above), which all the applicants used as a prompt.

Now, over the years, I’ve submitted many short stories and essays to literary magazines and journals and writing contests. The closest I ever came to winning the brass ring (a national level prize) was back in 2000, when my essay, “Leaving Mayo” was a finalist in the Faulkner-Pirate’s Alley writing contest in New Orleans. But that’s as close as I got to winning anything until recently, when my essay “Katherine Lake” was selected by 1,000 Friends of Minnesota, and my postcard story, “Missing” was named a winner by the Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop. Granted, neither of those were as prestigious as winning the Faulkner but any recognition in the lonely pursuit of writing is a good thing, in my humble view of the world.

Sometimes knocking your forehead against the wall (metaphorically only; I need my brain cells) and submitting your work to a contest only to receive yet another rejection is the last thing a writer needs. With every word that’s typed, every plot that gets twisted, every comma that gets placed, I have doubt: doubt that what I write, what I create means anything, is anything. So, over time, I’ve lost my enthusiasm for submitting. That’s changed a bit with my recent modest success. And when I saw Amanda’s photograph in the Duluth News Tribune and LSW’s call for entries, well, I just had to give it a shot. And darn it if I didn’t win, which meant I was going to read from “Threshold”. For three minutes. To what likely would be a small audience of LSW Board members at the annual LSW meeting at Teatro Zuccone, the trendy little theater attached to the Zinema and Zeitgeist Arts Cafe in Old Downtown Duluth.

I sit at a small wooden table in the basement of the DeWitt Seitz Building, in the Amazing Grace, eating a sandwich, slurping corn chowder, and marveling at the energy of the young women working in the place. They remind me of days gone by, of when I was  a college kid chasing my wife to be. Every now and then, I pretend to read from an essay in The Sun, one of my favorite literary magazines (and a publication which has rejected my work). For a while, bitter loser that I am, I stopped subscribing to The Sun after receiving yet another rejection from it. But I’ve grown some as a writer: I don’t take it personally anymore. Much. I write that I am pretending to read the Sun because my eyes can’t seem to stop following the women of Amazing Grace. There’s a short, well configured young lass with slashed auburn hair and an intriguing array of tattoos displayed against her dark skin. There’s a tall, angular red head whose eyes sparkle and mouth purses. There’s a lanky blond working at her MacBook, papers strewn all over the table top, obviously cramming for a college exam.

Youth. Wondrous, beautiful youth.

I shove trash into the garbage can, recycle a glass juice bottle, and stack my plates and utensils before leaving the funky old bakery. I don’t turn any heads: None of the young women notice the old man leaving. I’m just another semi-famous local author on his way to his 3 minutes of fame.

“I think I’m supposed to read tonight,” I say, standing in front of Kyle, a poised young social worker-poetess who often appears in front of me when I am working my “real” gig as a judge.

I can tell that, because we’re both out of our element (no black robe, no big oak bench as a buffer) I’ve caught the young lady off-guard.

“Excuse me?”

“Mark…Judge Munger.”

“Oh, I didn’t recognize you. Yes, as the first prize winner, you’re actually going to read first, before the poets.”

We talk a bit more.  I understand my role in the evening’s course of events: Short LSW meeting. An introduction from Kyle. Accept the check. Read for three minutes. Sit down. Go pick up Jack from Boy Scouts.

That last item, of course, no one else at the theater knows about. I’m doing double duty tonight, as I have for thirty-one years: I’m not only the writer guy; I’m Dad.

Patty, an old friend from law school, someone I haven’t seen in three decades, shows up to hear me read. We exchange pleasantries. She sits next to me in the front row of the darkly lighted theater. The place begins to fill up. Soon, every seat in the house is taken. There are a couple dozen folks of all ages, shapes, and sizes standing in the spooky recesses of the entry way.

Standing room only.

Then it’s my turn. I take the stage to join the young woman.We follow our prearranged ritual: Kyle introduces me,  hands me an envelope containing my check and reclaims her seat. I take a deep breath.

“It’s dangerous to give a lawyer a microphone and tell him he’s only got three minutes to talk,” I say.

Laughter. I read. I don’t screw up (much). I sit down. I am amazed by the talented poets, young and old, who follow me.

It’s a remarkable night.

Peace.

Mark

Thanks to LSW for making the night one to remember. You can read the entire story, “Threshold” filed under the tab “Other Writings” on the dashboard of this blog site. If you live in the Lake Superior Basin and want to become part of a vibrant writing community for support, socialization, or just to hang out with cool folks, contact LSW for a membership application at http://lakesuperiorwriters.wordpress.com/membership/. You can see more of Amanda’s remarkable photography at http://amandahansmeyer.photoshelter.com/.

Oh oh. The situation all authors of historical fiction dread: Someone points out you got it wrong. Dead wrong, in this case, as I will explain.

In my well received and widely read novel of Finnish immigrants to NE Minnesota, Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh, I start the book with a short novella about Finnish immigrants traveling aboard an unnamed vessel which turns out to be…(drum roll, please)… the Titanic. Why is the pre-story part of the story? Simple: I thought I’d learned something about Finns and the Titanic which was so interesting and compelling that I wanted to include it in the book. When it became clear that the story of Finns on the Titanic wouldn’t really fit with the main plot of the novel, the Titanic piece  became a separate but related prequel so to speak. The story of Juha Stranden and his survival forms a suitable beginning, in my humble view, for the larger drama. So what’s the problem, you ask?

Well, part of the Titanic story as it relates to the Finns on board that ill fated ship involves the drowning of an entire Finnish family, the Panulas.  It also includes the remarkable tale of forensic geneticists at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario who link the remains of an infant boy retrieved from the sea a week after the ocean liner’s sinking to Eino Panula, the youngest of the five boys who died. That revelation, which was announced as fact in the late 1990s, is no longer valid history.

Though the remarkable work of putting Eino Panula’s name to the unknown body entombed at the foot of the Titanic memorial in Nova Scotia is compelling, recent investigation by the same laboratory at Lakehead University confirms that the body entombed in Halifax is not Eino Panula’s  but that of an English child, Sidney Goodwin.

It’s very easy to say you got this wrong, but nevertheless, that is how science works, and you do change your ideas and you do change your theories,” said Ryan Parr, the case’s lead researcher at Lakehead University.

(The Telegraph, 02 August 2007)

Did this author “miss the boat”? (Sorry.) Not really. I began the research for Suomalaiset in 2001. The book was published in 2004. At the time of publication, and indeed, for three years thereafter, the consensus was that “Our Babe” (the inscription on the unknown child’s coffin) was Eino Panula. And I, of course, was happy that such was the case since I’d used that bit of trivia to launch my most successful novel. But hey: I don’t want to be linked by factual inaccuracies (even in a fictional novel) to the likes of James Fry or Greg Mortenson. Not gonna happen. So when I came across the article about Sidney Goodwin in Yahoo News, I had to come clean.

So now what should I do? Here’s what I suggest, loyal readers of Munger books: You tell me.

There’s a poll on the right hand side of this blog that asks the question “What Should Mark do about the new information regarding “Our Babe”, Sidney Goodwin?”. You have four choices. Pick one. The poll will be open for a month. No promises as to what I’ll do after you all vote. But it should be interesting to find out how you think I should handle this discovery.

Peace.

Mark

Ponder (pon’ der) v.i. 1. to consider something deeply and thoroughly; meditate…

In hindsight, maybe the title of this piece should be “the ponderer” (n., one who ponders)

It’s 6:00pm. Wedndesday evening. My belly is full of Vietnamese food from A Taste of Saigon. I’m alone, killing time before I drive over to UWS to teach environmental law to young men and women, mostly seniors on the verge of graduation and stepping out into an economy to look for their first “real” job. Things don’t look good for the kids at this point, what with the economy in slow gear as it climbs a hill created by graft, corruption, and greed. Not their fault. Not my fault either. But it is what it is and only the strong survive. That’s America, right? From kids’ Little League and softball to the majors; America is all about competition. Welcome to the Big Leagues is what my students will get come commencement. I hope they can at least hit for average.

I head over the Lift Bridge, Duluth’s iconic landmark of steel spanning the ship canal. I may or may not stop at the Park Point Community Center, park the car, and walk down to the beach. I did that the last time I was pondering.

Might be bad karma to do it again.

I listen to rubber whine over the steel mesh deck of the old bridge as I cross from city to point. A big laker rides low on Lake Superior, her belly full of coal or grain or limestone. The boat has just passed under the raised span of the bridge and is chugging north, towards the locks at Sault Ste. Marie. It’s too early in the year for pleasure boats to be out and about. I drive by powerboats and sailboats in Tranquilty Cove and Lakehead Boat Basin. The boats sit in wooden cradles awaiting the application of copper bottom paint to their hulls and whatever mechanical adjustments the long winter requires. I stop at the stop sign by the vacant Bayside Market and ruminate (something akin to pondering) what I would do with the building if I had money and time. I have neither but, what the hell. A guy’s gotta dream, right? With visions of a great little convenience store-coffee shop-bookstore-bakery-law office-art gallery in my head, my Pacifica pulls away from the silent building. I mosey down Minnesota Avenue (the only real road on Park Point, a spit of sand that juts out into Lake Superior). “The Point” (as we Duluthians affectionately call it) ends in sand and red pine forest and poison ivy near the only natural break in the dunes: The Superior Entry. I say mosey because the speed of my car, as is so often the case, is in tune to the music on my CD changer. No Springsteen or Pearl Jam spins tonight. It’s Duluth’s own Low, the band’s new CD, “C’mon”, and the lush, slow sounds of orchestral rock done right that plays behind my pondering. I drive slow, at a crawl, in tune with the tunes so to speak. And because there is no traffic, no pissed off Pointers rushing to get home after work, no one cares.

I pass the community center without stopping.

My last visit to The Point, I stopped at the community center and walked down to the beach to watch waves stirred up by gale force winds. I picked sand out of my scalp  for a week after that bit of pondering.

I pass the little Episcopal church, the Catholic chapel, the nursing home, and the rowing club before coming to the parking lot near the end of Park Point. The lot isn’t the true end of Minnesota Avenue: you can drive a bit further, into Sky Harbor Airport, but I have no reason to go there. So I turn into the cul-de-sac (the program I am using hates this word, with or without the hyphens) near the boat landing, find a spot (I have absolute freedom of choice as it seems no one else is out pondering today), park the Pacifica, turn off the ignition, and listen to Low.

What does this place sound like?

I turn off the music. A nearby sandbar is crammed with herring gulls: Their high pitched calls (likely love songs of the birded kind) pierce the still, spring air. The ice is completely gone from the harbor. Nothing moves on the water. Across the bay, on the Wisconsin side, I hear locomotives pulling rolling stock over tracks and the occasional train whistle.

This exercise, my searching for a place to ponder between the hustle and bustle of the courtroom and the vigor of a university class, doesn’t come easily to me.

Hell, I’m up at 4:30am typing this piece because I’m not the sort of person to sit idle, to simply think.

But I am learning. After fifty-six years of living, I am learning that a man needs to do more than simply act. He needs to think. He needs to ponder.

I think no great thoughts while I listen to the gulls. I endure no epiphanies or moments of inspiration from the heavens during my few minutes of contemplation on the shore of the river that separates two northern towns. I simply ponder. And that seems to be enough.

Peace.

Mark

I finished my court docket just before noon. Even though it was a crappy day (wind, cold, snow on the way only a day after the temp hit seventy degrees) I needed a walk. To clear my head. To feel the fresh breeze. I was in one of those moods that only putting your feet on the ground and moving forward can cure.

I’d heard about a new CD released this week by Duluth’s quintessential slow rock group, Low. I saw the band once, years ago, before they became like me (the writer): semi-famous. My kid’s gave me that label in Winnipeg when the A-Channel up there interviewed me and put my mug on Canadian television after the publication of my first book. In hindsight, “semi-famous” isn’t the right adjective for Low. “Mostly famous” is likely a better fit.

Anyway, my original intent was to walk to the Last Place on Earth in downtown Duluth and buy the new Low CD. I’m the kind of guy who shops at a very limited range of stores: places with music; places with words; places with shovels; and places with electronics. That’s about it. I rely on my good wife Rene’ for toothpaste, underwear, the occasional Christmas gift tie, food, and shoes. Everything else, in my view, is extraneous and not worth wasting my precious time on.

Of course, any meander on a city street usually includes a diversion or two. My walk today had one: A stop and a period of reflection at the Clayton Jackson McGhie memorial at the corner of 1st Street and 2nd Avenue East. I hadn’t planned on walking east on First Street but something prompted me to do just that and once I headed east, it became clear that the memorial (dedicated to three young black men wrongfully accused of the rape of a white woman and lynched from a light pole by a mob of Duluth working men) was not going to allow me to walk past history. So I stopped. Not for hours: just for a few minutes. As long as it took to read the quotations from Rumi, Dr. King, and the others inscribed into stone. As long as it took to read the description of that terrible event. As long as it took to pay my respects, silently stare at the busts of the three victims, and wonder whether we’ve learned anything at all in the two hundred plus years of our country’s existence. I didn’t cry. I didn’t pray. I simply stopped, read, and pondered. And only then was I able to walk on.

As I picked out the Low CD (and the latest by guitarist Charlie Parr) at the Fetus, the bronze likenesses of the three black men overwhelmed my thoughts. I’m certain that the clerk at the music shop wondered why an old guy with graying hair and scratched glasses was buying music meant for her generation. But I doubt she understood that my blank stare was due to a hauntingly real vision of me (or someone like me) standing in a crowd of angry white men, screaming for the blood of three innocent black circus workers.

I was there that day. So were you, is what I was thinking as I paid the young lady and left the store with my music. The walk back to the courthouse was slow: I labored against the wind carrying my city’s guilt as if it was my own.

As I approached the Priley Fountain, the water shut off and drained, members of the “Tea Party Express”, maybe fifty or so, stood in front of Duluth’s memorial to the Civil War, beneath a gigantic, fluttering American flag. One of the Tea Party leaders was screaming something over a bullhorn to loud applause. I didn’t hang around to hear what was being said: I doubted whether more than a handful of the self-proclaimed “patriots” standing in the civic center had ever visited the Clayton Jackson McGhie memorial or knew what had happened in Duluth on June 15th, 1920. As I passed them, I looked into the faces of the protesters: There were no folks of color in attendance. I left the rally without comment. I followed my old man’s advice “Never to get into a pissing contest with a skunk” and I wandered back to my office.

I’m typing this piece during the remainder of my lunch hour. I’m listening to the gorgeously arranged song, “Nothing but Heart” from the Low CD, “C’mon”. The music is playing on my computer. Low is on loud enough to drown out the protesters outside my window. With the song as background, I piece together what I’ve learned this lunch hour and I come to this:

Despite the wind, the gray sky, the cold, our city’s past, ignorance, and anger, there is beauty in the world. Take a walk. Go out and find it.

Peace

Mark