Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

(Posted May 21, 2010)

Year after year, I submit my work to various writing contests: Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, Minnesota Book Awards, Northeast Minnesota Book Awards to name a few. Year after year I think, with each particular book I’ve completed: “This is the year. The story is moving. The plot, quick paced. The characters, engaging. I should gain some recognition for this book.”

In the case of my latest completed project, Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story, I was certain that the folks at the Northeast Book Awards at UMD would recognize the work, effort, and solid writing behind a detailed biography of one of Minnesota’s quintessential politicians. They didn’t. Yet again, my work, for whatever reason, was found to be lacking. Couple this disappointment with slow book sales and a bloated negative balance sheet for Cloquet River Press, and this day seems intractable.

It also seems virtually impossible for a regional writer like myself to sustain his or her muse, to keep writing words that seem, at least to the author, to matter. Could I write a formula mystery and win awards and recognition? Doubtful. Mundane, easy to write, and even easier to read, genre fiction doesn’t interest me. I write to learn, to teach, and yes, to entertain. If I have a failing, it’s that I want to learn as much, working on each book, as I hope the reader does when he or she sits down to enjoy my work.

I know, I know. History is filled with examples of artists and writers whose works were ignored by the critics, whose legacy was posthumous glory. But, damn it, what the hell good does that do your ego, being recognized when you’re dead? I want to be read widely, to have the world beyond my little corner of Minnesota read what I’ve written, while I’m still around. So far, that hasn’t happened. Maybe it never will. Maybe I’m destined to be a self-published, regional author. Maybe that’s a fact I need to accept. But what then of forging ahead, of writing another novel that only a few thousand folks may read?

This morning, as my spirit curdled in sour disappointment, I came across the following quote from writing teacher William Zinsser. Look for a review of Zinsser’s book, Writing About Your Life, at the “Mark’s Reviews” tab on this website’s dashboard sometime soon (whenever I finish the book!). Zinsser’s wisdom bucked me up:

Separate yourself from cynics and peddlers of despair. Don’t let anyone tell you it won’t work.

William Zinsser

And that’s just what I intend to do.

Peace.

Mark

(Posted May 9, 2010)

When I was at the Living Green Expo, the sister of one of the victims of the plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone, stopped by and bought a copy of Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story. The question she asked, “Have you been to the memorial?” caught me unawares. A lump formed in my throat.

No, I thought, I haven’t. Though I’ve driven by the sign on Highway 53 a hundred or more times, I haven’t stopped in to pay my respects.

A near blizzard raged on Friday. Saturday morning, the pasture outside my writing room is a field of late season white. Where do bluebirds go when it snows? I ask myself as I drive north to Kaleva Hall in Virginia for the first ever Range Writer’s Symposium.

I don’t expect much given that this is the first year of the event and I haven’t seen a lot of publicity generated by the organizers to draw folks to the old Finnish temperance hall to buy books and hear a cadre of self-published and locally published scribes talk writing and publishing. But that’s OK. The principals of Books on Chestnut, a neat used book store in downtown Virginia are putting it on, along with the Ladies of Kaleva, and I owe those women something. So I make the drive to Virginia and hope for the best.

The event goes well. I draw a nice group of folks who listen to me read from Suomalaiset (what better place to read a Finnish story than a place called Kaleva Hall?), sell a few books, eat some open-faced sandwiches, chew the fat with legendary News Tribune columnist, Jim Heffernan, his wife, and a number of other authors and patrons, and then, it’s time to leave. I load the trusty Pacifica, call my wife to tell her I’m on the road, and head south on U.S. 53 with plenty of gas and no reason to lollygag.

But the conversation with Will McLaughlin’s sister haunts me. As I’ve written before, Senator Wellstone wasn’t a close personal friend. But I knew him. Knew he and his wife Sheila through various political connections, including my Uncle Willard, who was a mentor to Paul and saw in the young Senator a more polished, more articulate version of the ideals and beliefs my uncle stood for during sixty years of political activism. These thoughts churn away as I drive out of Eveleth. I know the sign is there. I know what I have to do.

There is no one at the memorial when I pull in and park my van. The sun is high in the sky. The snow, except for small clumps of frozen white lodged beneath towering evergreens, has melted. White pines. Red pines. Tamaracs. These are the sentinels that keep watch over the place of Paul Wellstone’s death.

I read the beautiful Littlewolf poem that marks the entrance to the memorial and then I walk a few steps through the forest to reach the overlook. A wooden platform, with two informational plaques about the six passengers and two crew who perished in the crash projects into the muskeg in the direction of the doomed plane’s final resting place. The swamp is utterly quiet. The occasional knock of a woodpecker on a hollow tree trunk is the only sound one hears while thinking, contemplating, the loss embodied in this place.

I retrace my footsteps and follow the “Legacy Circle”, a crude path cut through forest with informational stations and benches for reflection denoting each important point of the Wellstones’ careers. “Careers” is the operative word. The placards depict not only the life of the Senator: They give meaning and understanding to the work of his wife Sheila, who was tireless in her pursuit of redress and protection for victims of domestic violence; as well as the teaching career of Wellstone daughter Marcia, a well-beloved educator.

I finish my benediction at the memorial itself, a smaller circular path which remembers each of the fallen (except the crew) by way of stone monoliths etched with the names of the perished; Paul and Sheila Wellstone (together on one stone, giving credence to their 39 years of marriage); Marcia; Will McLaughlin; Tom Lapic; and Mary McEvoy (the last three were all staffers of the Wellstone campaign). The air remains warm. Tears well in my eyes as I place pebbles on the memorials, each stone precarious, each rock a delicate symbol of life’s fragility for all of us, even the great and the powerful.

As I step from forest canopy into sunlight, I take one last look back towards the scene of the crash and wipe lingering tears from my eyes.

Good people died here, I say to God. Why?

I hear no answer, no rumbling mighty voice echoes across the vast northeastern Minnesota swamp as I open the Pacifica, slide behind the wheel, close the door, turn the key, and head west, taking the long way home.

Rest in peace, my friends. Rest in peace.

Mark

(Posted April 25, 2010)

Yesterday, Rene’ was set to have a wedding shower for our Goddaughter, Jenny Salveson. With fourteen estrogen charged (or depleted, depending upon age) women about to descend on my house, I made an executive decision. I decided to go bowling.

Getting my twenty-two year old up in time to clear out before the gaggle of girls arrived was a problem. So was picking up twelve-year-old Jack from a sleep-over birthday party and having him in any semblance of conscious awareness after staying up until 4:40 in the morning (about the time his older brother shuffled in the door and collapsed in his own bed the night before). But with those two boys and my oldest son Matt in tow (his wife, our daughter-in-law, drove down from Hibbing to help Rene’ with the rituals), we headed for town in my Pacifica. Second son Dylan met us at Skyline Lanes for the great showdown.

Let me just say this. All my sons inherited their mother’s double jointed wrists. Any time they try to throw a bowling ball down the alley, the results are as unpredictable as a Florida election recount. All afternoon, bowling balls careened into gutters, found an occasional strike, slid precariously along the edge of oblivion, dared to claim spares, and generally avoided hitting pins. I have no similar physical excuse for my poor showing. I can only plead ineptitude. If you took the three highest scores from 14 games of bowling thrown by the five of us, the highest three game pin count barely broke 400. Pretty dismal.

But there were a ton of laughs. Some good bonding. And we avoided being drawn into parlor games and gossip. What better way to spend a cold and drizzly Saturday afternoon?

Peace.

Mark

(Posted April 18, 2010)

I’ve been around for over five decades now. I’ve seen my share of family, friends, and loved ones pass on. There’s a sadness to this old Earth sometimes, a sadness that faith, even the faith of the strongest believers, cannot seem to dent. And then, there are days like today when all there is, for a brief, fleeting snippet of time, is perfection.

My wife had to leave early to pick up her mom and sister to go to a funeral in the Twin Cities. My mother-in-law, who is nearly eighty-five, lost her last sibling this past month and the memorial service was being held in one of the Minneapolis suburbs. Merc, the aforementioned mother of my wife, doesn’t drive. Never has. Never learned how. So for her to pay her last respects to her brother, she needed a lift. Diane, the oldest of my wife’s sisters, came along for the ride. I bid my wife a safe trip sometime around seven-thirty this morning. Even when I had to jump start my Pacifica in my PJs so Rene’ could leave (the lights were left on), that minor distraction didn’t dampen the feeling that today was going to be special.

Jack and I made it to our church, a white steepled country style building run by Episcopalians, of which we are two. He behaved in Sunday School. I said my prayers upstairs during the service. We both took communion. Then it was off to Best Buy to see if our DVD recorder/VHS player was repairable. The thing is only two years old but of course, it’s out of warranty.

“It’ll cost you $150 at the very least, plus parts,” the service guy, a kid really, told me after he took a look at the thing. The message was clear: Help the economy; buy a new unit; toss the old one in the nearest creek. Of course, I don’t toss anything into creeks. I recycle electronics like the good little environmentalist that I am. Still, I really would have rather fixed the old one than bought new. And the worst of it? The only place that had a combination unit in my price range was the evil empire. Wal-Mart. Shit. But even a visit into the bowels of Satanic consumerism couldn’t deter the feeling that, damn it, this was going to be a great day.

When we got home, Jack and I caught some lunch, a bit of the Twins game on television, a nap (OK, that was just me napping, Jack kept watching the game), and I found out that the new DVD works just fine. Then the glory of the afternoon, the sun hanging high in the cloudless sky, a light warm breeze blowing across our field, took over. Jack and I hopped on our mountain bikes and rode up to our friends the McVeans on Island Lake, a good ten mile round trip, my first of the year on a bike. Even the sore butt didn’t diminish the beauty of the ride.

Back home, we played some catch. I hit flies and grounders under the late afternoon sun to my twelve year old boy, and he took some batting practice, proving he can still put the bat on the ball. Then it was time to heat up some tater tot hotdish Rene’ had left for us and, our tummies full, the sun starting to decline, read the Sunday paper on the covered front porch of our home on the banks of the Cloquet River.

It was, despite the battery, despite the guy at Best Buy, despite Wal-Mart, despite the sore cheeks, a great day in northern Minnesota.

Amen.

Mark

MS Noordam

(Posted March 6, 2010)

Now that was a vacation! My wife, Rene’ and I spent the last ten days on the Holland America Lines’ cruise ship, MS Noordam, along with six other couples, visiting Martinique, St. Martin, St. Thomas, Barbados, and St. Lucia. The sun was well-received by my old bones, bones in need of brightness and warmth as winter wanes and spring teases. There were many laughs, a few strained moments, some ogling of women in scanty bikinis (including a few who were topless as well on St. Martin) and the like, but above all, it was the sun that made the trip. There is simply nothing like feeling the healing and restorative powers of Earth’s heat source on your bare skin in winter. Nothing.

Being the obsessive-compulsive type of guy that I am, I vowed to stay off computers located in the Noordam’s library during the voyage. Ten days without looking at emails. Tens away from updating this website. Ten days of utter bliss and relaxation untroubled by the world of publishing and marketing. I made good on this promise. Good thing, too, because when I read the email from Amazon.com advising me that my best work to date, Esther’s Race, wasn’t in the running for consideration as a breakthrough novel, I was disappointed. Reading that email on board the Noordam would have destroyed the trip. Thankfully, God gave me the strength to resist peeking at my Yahoo account until I was home.

There was one unexpected aspect to the trip. As we were waiting to disembark from the ship in Fort Lauderdale, I stood on the veranda adjacent to our stateroom and watched a fuel tender refill the diesel tanks of the Noordam for the next voyage. As I watched technicians pump fuel, others from our group joined me on their balconies (the ship had opened up the verandas to allow us to walk between rooms), I spotted what I thought was a large brown blob of trash floating in the water. Then the blob flipped its tail. It was a manatee, the first I’d ever seen. The docile mammal continued to slowly dive and surface as it made its way from bow to the stern. Fourteen Minnesotans stood in awe as our environmentally threatened visitor said goodbye to us as we made ready to come home.

Check out the new book reviews I’ve posted under the tab, “Mark’s Reviews”; books that I read while enjoying the bright white light of the Caribbean.

Peace.

Mark

(Posted February 20, 2010)

My ears are still ringing. Last night, in the tradition of the Munger boys, I brought my youngest son Jack, my third son, Chris, and his girlfriend, Sarah, to a concert. Not just any concert, mind you, but the triumphant return to Duluth of the alternative Chicago-based rock band Wilco. As in Jeff Tweedy, iconoclastic singer-songwriter and front man of the band. As in Nels Cline, the man who makes guitars sing. There are, of course, four other lads who stand with and behind Tweedy and Cline to form Wilco’s impressive wall of sound at live concerts. They are not forgotten. But last night, it was clearly Tweedy and Cline’s show. They were so loud, Jack’s twelve-year-old ears needed ear plugs, which Sarah and Chris went in search of and found between the first act, Califone, and the main doings. Problem solved. Jack took a nap. Dad was in awe.

There is a long line of tradition behind Wilco and the music I love. Tweedy and the band was tagged, along with British folk singer, Billy Bragg, by Nora Guthrie, daughter of seminal plains poet, Woody Guthrie, to take a gander at lyrics Woody had written in the later days of his life, when he was struggling with Huntington’s Chorea (a fatal neurological disease) with an eye to creating a new catalog of Woody Guthrie music. Wilco and Bragg stepped in and, the result, two albums under the title “Mermaid Avenue”, is a remarkable achievement of collaboration. In fact, one of the tunes Tweedy penned to Guthrie lyrics, “California Stars”, is a personal favorite; a good a mesh of tune and words as any Springsteen, Young, Chapin-Carpenter, or Dylan song. Before the concert, I kiddingly told my buddy, musician-attorney Mark Rubin, that I was going to stand up in the balcony of the DECC Auditorium and scream out, “California Stars!” in hopes Wilco played the thing. Didn’t have to. It was on their play list and when they started the ballad, tears welled in my eyes. No shit. Tears!

The link between the past, Woody the bare-bones troubadour fighting Fascism with his acoustic guitar, and the present, Wilco, the tightly orchestrated powerhouse of a band playing to boisterous college kids (and a few old freaks like me), is so clear, so defined in that song. Any wonder that Bob Dylan (whose home of Hibbing, MN was referenced by Tweedy mid-concert as he described the band’s drive from Saskatoon, their last gig, to Duluth), sought out the dying Guthrie as a young and struggling musician in the early 1960s? Any wonder that The Boss insists on playing Guthrie songs whenever the occasion permits? Guthrie. Dylan. Springsteen. Tweedy. It is a solid and well-bred line of music that I was privileged to enjoy last night.

My only disappointment? That Wilco didn’t learn “Running Back to Saskatoon” by the old Canadian band Guess Who on their way back to the States and play the tune for the crazed mob at the DECC. Imagine Nels Cline’s inventive fingers working out the lead guitar licks to that old pearl. Of course, that little slight of hand might have been this old man’s demise.

Peace.

Mark

(Posted February 15, 2010)

Whew. Well, that was about the hardest first draft of a novel I’ve ever encountered. Not as hard as re-creating the life of a real person, mind you. The work I put into my first (and perhaps, only) biography, Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story was tedious, arduous, and painstakingly slow. Four and a half to five years worth of researching, collating, writing, and editing went into that labor of love. I think it turned out, for my first major non-fiction work, to be a pretty darn good testament of my uncle’s amazing life and career. But the sad thing is it’s not selling. Try I as I might to garner attention for the tome, it’s just not moving.

Too big? Perhaps. Too political? Guilty as charged; though one would have to ask how you write a book about a quintessential Minnesota Liberal and make the book non-political. Or A-political. Or whatever. It’s a disappointment to have boxes of what I consider to be a fine piece of Minnesota history locked up in a storage unit in Hermantown when every student in high school and college in this state should be learning about how one man, with a high school education, nearly single handily crafted Minnesota’s environmental legacy.

Nuff said. On to brighter topics.

I just polished off the first very rough draft of Laman’s River, my fifth novel. A story set in NE Minnesota and along the Smith River in Montana, Laman’s River chronicles the story of a band of polygamist Mormons whose leader, Obadiah Nielsen, prophesies that it is his followers’ spiritual obligation to cleanse Native Americans of their historically (in Mormon terms) sinful blood. How is this to be accomplished, you might ask? Through intermarriage; through the concept of “bleaching” Lamanite (the Book of Mormon name for Native American) bloodlines; i.e., making the complexions of the Indians whiter and whiter through generations of intermarriage with Caucasians.

Weird concept, eh? Think “Big Love” meets “CSI, Minnesota”. With some old friends to help chase down the crazy religious zealots (Herb Whitefeather, a Lakota and an agent with the FBI; and Cook County Sheriff Debra Slater) reprising roles from The Legacy, the new book promises to be a fast and furious read. Hopefully, it will also educate my readers and cause them to consider the roots and heritage of their own spiritual lineage. Introspection is never a bad thing.

Now to the fun part: months of editing and figuring out how to sell more copies of Mr. Environment to raise money so I can print the new book! It’s a hand-to-mouth existence, this self-publishing gig. You gotta be willing to throw the dice and see what number turns up.

Oh well, let ’em roll!

Peace.

Mark

PS You can read a sample chapter of the new book by clicking on the “Work in Progress” tab on the dashboard. Let me know what you think.

MM

(Posted January 30, 2010)

The First People call it the wolf moon. It happens when a full moon is at its closest point to Earth; 31,000 miles closer to us than the moon’s average path of travel in its ellipse. I’m sitting here wearing my pajamas and bathrobe in my little cedar paneled writing studio, windows on two of the three sides of the room overlooking the wide open Cloquet River, watching the moon dip behind a line of aspen, maple, and birch across our pasture; the trees, gray dusted with white hoarfrost, mark the beginning of wilderness, the end of settlement. The orange-yellow face of the moon slides behind the forest; only the blazing apex of its curve extends above the whitened trees. In a matter of seconds, all that is left of the wolf moon is a defuse orange glow leaking through frozen limbs and fingers. The sky is an eerie silver blue fading to white as it melts into snow covered ground. The sun is trying it’s best to climb in the east through a brittle below-zero sky. Fog settles over the river as open water steams and flows south; to the St. Louis, to the greatest of lakes, to other great lakes, to the St. Lawrence before meeting the Atlantic where the sun is already shining.

Peace.

Mark

(Posted January 21, 2010)

NOWW (Northwestern Ontario Writer’s Workshop) board member Lyle Nicol and his lovely wife Vicki were awfully nice to me when I visited Thunder Bay, Ontario last year to lead a workshop on self-publishing at the wonderful Waverly Library, one of several public libraries in the Thunder Bay public library system. Lyle won a copy of my newest book, Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story in a game of trivia that was part of the workshop. Vicki devoured the book, despite its obvious Minnesota political bent, and the two journeyed from Thunder Bay (my favorite Canadian town) to Duluth last May for the launch of the book at the Duluth Labor Temple. I appreciate Lyle and Vicki making the long trip down the North Shore and for supplying the pictures for this post.

Thanks guys. I love Canadians!

Peace.

Mark

(Posted January 11, 1010)

Time. For the writer, painter, sculptor, crafter, poet, musician, whatever; for those of us who fight with our muse during the dark and forlorn days and nights of winter; there is never enough of it. It’s not that the creative soul believes it should be spared, that somehow, it should be immortal. No, it’s not that, at least, that’s what we who create music, words, poems, folk songs, art, and architecture tell ourselves in our deepest moments of doubt, when the muse, her golden hair and ruby lips beckoning from the far reaches of our psyches taunts us, teases us, to try for greatness. Of course, that’s exactly what we’re trying for. Immortality, or at least, a brief extension of our mortality, is the goal, isn’t it? In short, aren’t we seeking remembrance; not our remembrance of those who’ve gone before, but the remembrance of us by others? Isn’t that why we sit at our desk typing words on a screen or stand in a cold and forbidding warehouse splashing paint on bare canvas?

Oh, there are those purists who will rail, “No, no, Mark. That’s not it at all. I write/paint/sculpt to create beauty. To bring form to the rhythms of my soul.” Perhaps. But be honest, ye fellow artisans. Is not, at least some small part of you, crying out, demanding to be noticed by your fellow man for your artistic endeavors? Is not, some small kernel of your being seeking deification of your effort?And because we who create cannot not create, our minds are constantly churning, constantly inventing, constantly envisioning the next project. And the next. And the next, as if, though our brains understand that we are finite, our souls and our hearts plunge on in art, as if we are infinite beings, with plenty of time. Time for all our dreams and aspirations to come to fruition in new books, collections of poems, paintings, and the like.

Time. Ah yes. We live by it. We create by it. And ultimately, we are stilled by it.

Peace.

Mark