Asters on the Keweenaw

I've been totally worthless with this blog for a while. In the months gone by, my daughter Miranda and son-in-law Art, both of whom have made a number of appearances here, had their first child, who is Marsha's and my first grandchild, Aster Davis, born March 15, 2009. She's a sweetheart. We haven't seen her for a couple months now, but we're soon heading north for a summer in Copper Harbor, where we'll see her every day. For Miranda and all, I offer this shot of a bunch of asters on Keweenaw Point late last summer as a way to get myself started again. I told Mir a couple molnths back that I had a number of nice shots of asters, and now I'll be taking lots more, no doubt. I'll work on putting up a photo of the single new Aster soon.

EXCERPTS from "The Skunk Island Ferry"

This post contains two excerpts from Part 1 of my new comic novel, which is about a teenager growing up on the Great Lakes and working on a ferryboat. The novel is written is an unusual form, as though I am describing what you would see playing on a screen if this were a movie. Set in 1970, the story is about the Halverson family. Gene and Sylvia Halverson have bought a ferry boat and are ferrying passengers to a fictional island in north Lake Michigan I have christened North Skunk Island. His two sons, Will and Hutch (they're 18 and 16), are working as deckhands on the ferry. Because Gene doesn't have a captain's license, he has hired a captain, who has the rather common nickname "Cap." Lots will happen in the summer to come, but I hope these excerpts will give you a taste of what you can look forward to.

Ben Kilpela

+++++++++++++++++++

The scene opens with a shot in the wheelhouse of the Skunk Island Queen. There is still some fog, but it is less dense. Cap keeps looking down into the radar funnel to check the scene. Gene is steering. The Queen sounds as though she is running slower now. Cap suddenly says, “It's just so damn straight, sticking straight out.” He kept his eyes out the windows, looking into the brighter fog of midday.

Gene looks at him and says, “The pier?”

Cap says, “It sticks straight out. The radar has trouble picking it up.”

Gene says, his voice tight, “It hasn’t been a problem before.”

Cap puts his face to the funnel. “I can't see it. Can’t see a thing.”

Gene, “How far out are we?”

Cap, “Half mile.”

Gene takes the throttles and gently eases them back a bit more. The engines slow and he says, “We better slow down some more.”

Cap says, “Does Hutch see the bottom?”

The scene cuts to a shot of Hutch up on the bow again, hunched over the rail, looking straight down into the water. The fog, though thinner, still drifts in strands across the bow.

Up in the wheelhouse, Gene says, “He hasn’t given me any signal.” They both look at Hutch leaning over the rail. Then Hutch abruptly stands straight and turns around.

He puts one finger to his eye and put his hands out palm down. Gene says, “That’s the signal. He sees the bottom.”

Cap says out the window to Hutch, mouthing the words distinctly, “How deep?”
Hutch shrugs, but then puts up all ten fingers, then five more, and he follows that with a shrug to show that he’s not all that certain. Gene says, “Pretty shallow. We must be in closer than we think.”

Cap says, “Well, that's about right. Maybe we ought to turn back north or cut all way off.”

Gene says, “No, I think it's right ahead of us.” Gene leans over to the radar while keeping a hand on the wheel. Cap moves back, and then Gene takes took a brief look into the radar funnel. “Yeah, it’s straight ahead, Cap.”

Cap says, “We got to be careful. We're pretty close and I don’t have it.”

The scene cuts up to Hutch again, and we look down over the bow with him. There, dim and dark beneath the surface is the rippled sand at the bottom of Lake Michigan, passing slowly underneath the Queen. Hutch’s eyes are wide and intense.

Back in the wheelhouse, Gene says, “There's nothing along here, no reefs or anything, right? No sandbars. Right? Just that one directly north of the dock. Right?”

Cap turns away and paces around the wheelhouse once. “I'm not real sure. Dammit.” He looks at Gene as though he were accusing him: “We should've come out here with the boat when it was clear and did some radar practice. Dammit. What was I thinking? Boy, am I an idiot. A greenhorn mistake. I been out in this stuff a thousand times, could find my way around the Islands like I was blindfolded. But that was because I practiced when the weather was clear. I'm telling you, I know better.”

Gene says, “Too late now. But –”

Cap puts on his commanding voice. “We're heading north. We got to.” He reaches to take the wheel from Gene.

Gene grips the wheel slightly more tightly and looks squarely into Cap’s eyes. He speaks with forced calm, “Cap, you’ve got to stop this nonsense. You're getting all confused. Maybe you're just tired.” There was a moment of silence. Cap averts his eyes. Then Gene adds, softly, “I’ll tell you what you gotta do, you gotta stop staying out so late.”

Cap backs away and thunders, “Don't tell me what I’ve have to do and don't have to do.”

Gene says evenly, “You're putting everyone on this boat in danger.”

Cap’s eyes widen and his face begins to flush as he searches for word. Then he thunders again, “Danger?! I'm on top of everything. Everything that happened today, it's –“

Gene interrupts him, but tries to maintain an even keel while looking out into the fog: “Don't start getting yourself all worked up. We'll talk about it later, we're lost in a fog right now.”

Cap paces back and forth across the wheelhouse: “If I want to talk about it now, we pull back the damn throttles and talk about it now.”

Looking out the windows still, Gene rolls his eyes and says boldly, calmly, “Oh, cut the crap. But let me say this: it's more than just not getting enough sleep, Cap. You’re drinking way too much. You keep coming down to the boat in the morning smelling like a goddamn barroom. How late you getting home every night?” There is a slight pause before Gene plunges in: “Were you drunk this morning?”

Cap’s voice lowers into a sharp growl: “I don't have to put up with this crap.” He turns to leaves the wheelhouse, putting his hand on the doorknob, obviously in preparation for a wildcat strike.

Gene coolly takes the throttles and pulls them back. The engines fall quiet and the Queen slows further, now adrift a short distance from North Skunk Island, which is still covered in moderately heavy fog.

The scene cuts to a shot of Hutch looking back at the wheelhouse. He sees Cap standing at the port side door facing Gene, not the lake. Hutch turns and looks down into the water. We see the sandy bottom, rippled. It appears shallower. Hutch looks up and back again. From his view, he sees Gene barking at Cap.

The scene cuts to the wheelhouse, where Gene says sharply, “O perfect. Now you're going to storm out of here and leave us lost in the thickest damn soup we've ever seen.”

Cap scowls: “I’ve seen lots worse than this, Halverson – and I ain't even got any trouble with this stuff. I’m just getting my bearings on a new run. It’s what captains do. Every place is different. Hell, every radar is different. And I wasn't goddamn drunk, dammit. You go around making accusations like that and I'm packing my bags and hitting the trail.”

Gene looks out at Hutch, who quickly looks off into the distance. Hutch is uncertain what is happening. Up in the wheelhouse, Cap continues, “What would you do? Eh? You think you know everything. You don't know crap.”

Gene lets go of the wheel and turns to him, as the Queen drifts in the fog: “All I know is that you can't seem to get the elementary facts straight, all morning long. We're just about to come on that dock, and I think the radar picture is pretty good. But you want us turning north off into some damn place where you think it’s going to be safe. We know there’s a sandbar that way, though. You forget that? You got mixed up about ships that are just a couple miles away and coming straight at us. You think the one on the left is the one on the right… or… or whatever it was. You’re completely confused and you almost turn us right into the side of a ship.”

Cap mumbles, “I would have got it straight.”

Gene says, “The booze is affecting your judgment. Or the lack of sleep. But I think –”

Angrily, Cap says, “All right. All right. That's it. I ain't gonna put up with this. I don't need this. I’m almost retired. Hell, I am retired. I don’t need this kind of aggravation. I was doing you a favor coming to work up here.”

Gene is not moved. He speaks slowly, “You could do me a bigger favor by coming to work rested – and sober.”

Cap’s face flushes red. “You could do me a favor by keeping the mouth of that bitch of yours shut. She's on me every time I set foot in the house. I am goddamn sick of having to defend myself all the time.”

Gene hangs his head. “What's that got to do with what we're talking about, which is that you're coming to work half in the bag? My wife has nothing –”

Cap: “I would never come to work drunk, never!”

Gene: “Then at least liquored up. I can smell it, Cap.”

Cap says stoutly, “I am fully capable of performing my duties, and if you have doubts about me, maybe the time has come, much sooner than I thought, to get on my horse and get on out of town before the shooting starts.”

There is a pause. The Queen sits still in the calm waters near the island. Hutch keeps watching the bottom and now and again turning to look back at the wheelhouse.
Gene relents, “Can we talk about this later? We're standing here, for the third time today, wondering what to do in the fog. Can't we get this boat to the dock without you throwing a fit and going off for a long pout? Can't we? We're just drifting along as if we got all the time in the world. But goddammit, I want to get this boat in safely.”

Cap says, “I want to get my passengers on shore. Get the job done, every day, day in, day out. I’ve never shirked on my duty? I’ve never been in a condition that I couldn’t perform my duties to the fullest. You started this bullshit.”

Gene sighs.

Cap’s face suddenly brightens and he points out the windows. “Hey, Hutch says he's got something. What is it? He says it's the dock, right over there.”

From the wheelhouse, we see Hutch down on the bow motioning with one arm and pointing with the other. We see it a moment later, Peltier’s long wooden pier at North Skunk Island, looming as a very pale shape in the dense fog, no more than a hundred yards away.

+++++++

Now the scene cuts to a shot of Hutch, Will, and the three other boys walking in the dark over a low ridge of sand in the dark. We can barely see that the ridge is covered in dune grass. The boys walk down a short, sandy path cut through the grass. They come through a line of tangled dune bushes and emerge on a narrow beach leading down to Grand Traverse Bay. The dark surface of the water glitters under the stars. Far off, at a great distance, perhaps 20 miles, a few lights twinkle on the coast on the far side of the massive bay. A large group of people is gathered close to shore around a small fire made of burning driftwood.

A boy greets Hutch, “Hey, man. Glad you got here.”

Hutch nods and says, “Yeah.”

Boy 1 says, “This is a perfect night. Man, are there people here. Some I haven’t seen before. Chicks!”

Hutch looks around the crowd of teenagers, looking like faux-hippies mostly. They’re wearing rowdy, tattered dress, the usual stuff, beads and fringes and jeans. He looks over the girls, who are dressed in jeans or shorts, with T-shirts or thin halter tops. Most of them have straight, blonde or light brown hair.

Will strolls up to Hutch. He has a can of beer in his hand already. Holding up his can of Pabst, Will says, “They got a lot of booze down here, man. We shouldn’t have worried.”

We look off to the side of the crowd, and there is a rickety, sagging picnic table with lots of beer and other bottles and boxes on it.

Will takes a long pull from his can of beer, a Stroh’s. Hutch looks at him mild surprise, at the way he’s handling the beer, drinking it so quickly, so at ease with the booze.

Will says, “I gotta get started.”

Hutch chuckles: “Yeah?”

Will says, “Get yourself a beer, man.”

Hutch says, “I will.”

Will wanders away. There are some shouts, joyful outbursts. Someone starts to dance on the beach because the radio station from Traverse City is playing Three Dog Night belting out “Momma Told Me Not to Come” in the tinny sound speakers of the radio.

People start singing to the song with loud cheers and shouts – and then loud laughter at their own antics. Others start dancing along.

That ain’t the way to have fun, son...
That ain’t the way to have fun.
No! No!

Hutch watches the girls move their hips. He just watches, smiling faintly, mesmerized, but trying to keep some kind of cool look on his face.

A boy holds up the radio and says, “Anyone got anything better than this?”

A girl says, “That’s it – all we got.” She takes the large transistor radio from him and fiddles with the dial to get better reception. Another song begins.

It’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” There are groans and laughs. A boy dances foolishly to the lilting song. The girl smiles and keeps it on the station.

But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red,
Crying’s not for me, oh...
I’m never gonna stop the rain by complaining,
Because I’m free… Nothing’s worrying me.

The crowd cheers briefly at the boy doing his silly dance. The dancer slows. There are shouts for the girl to turn the station. There are more laughs, and then some of the girls try to join the boy’s silly dance to the silly tune.

Hutch stops watching all that and looks around, lost for a moment, unsure what to do. Then he sees that girl again, and his heart jumps into a pounding rhythm. He has to catch his breath. Her dark blonde hair is loose and long. She is barefoot now, dressed still in those bell bottom jeans, but now a silky green blouse that is tasteful and demur. He actually puts his hand on his chest and turns away. He looks out over the darkened surface of the water. Lights dozens of miles away across Grand Traverse Bay glimmer in a line on the far coast. Bright stars twinkle overhead. He turns back and sees that she’s over by the picnic table, and Hutch watches her amid the hubbub, as she looks over what she wants to drink. She picks up a can, but he can’t see what it is. She wanders toward the dancers, smiling, at her ease, moving her hips a bit to the bouncy beat of the B.J. Thomas song. Hutch is enthralled, as we see.

Hutch says, with a nervous swallow, to a boy standing nearby, “Hey, Randy, who is that chick?” He points her out to Randy.

Randy says, “You know... I can’t remember her name.”

Hutch says with a laugh, “Lotta good you are.”

Randy shrugs, smiles, and says, “Hey, man.”

The silly and famous raindrops song has ended, but still moving to imagined music, the girl is wandering through the crowd and getting closer to Hutch. Then she notices him and looks him right in his eyes. She turns and walks straight toward him with her arms out and a gentle swing of her hips. We see that it’s a can of Coke in her hand.

With a bright lovely smile, the girl says, “It’s you.” She cocks her head to the side.

Hutch tries to look completely at his ease – and succeeds. He hooks a thumb in his pocket and says, “It’s me?”

With an alluringly smile, the girl looks him over as she keeps on swaying slightly to the song that has come on the radio. She says, “You don’t know me?”

Hutch hesitates, obviously thinking about the best – no, the perfect thing to say.

Then he says, trying with all his might to be witty, “Well, if you want to get technical, I don’t.” He resists looking embarrassed.

The girl says, “But you remember me?”

Hutch is suppressing every emotion, trying to be coy and witty and teasing: “Yeah, well, I think I do.”

The girl is at her ease, playing the game: “If you were to be non-technical, what would your answer be?”

Hutch lets out a nervous laugh. Then he says, “I haven't seen you up here yet.” This doesn’t sound quite right. He looks down abruptly and rubs his toe in the sand. He sees her bare feet, her toes half immersed in sand, her toenails painted a shade of red.

The girl says, “I come up a lot, but I haven’t been this year. We just got into town a few days ago. Well, not a lot, but quite a bit.”

Now having something to talk about relaxes Hutch a little: “Who’s we?”

The girl says, “My family. We live out on Neegan Lake. You’re one of the new guys in town, on the new boat, right? Don’t even bother denying it, because I know who you are.”

Hutch says, still trying to be Oh so cool, “You seem pretty up on things despite being here only a few days.”

The girl smiles and sways her head to the dim music: “That’s me.”

It’s just dark enough where they stand for Hutch to look her over intensely for a moment, before he says, “So who are you? Who... I mean, Hi, I'm Hutch.”

The girl says, “Hutch? That is a very fascinating name. I've got to hear the story behind that one.”

Hutch doesn’t take the bait for now, “And yours?”

The girl takes a sip of her Coke and says, “Lois. Lois... Fricker – I know, I know, it's a really weird name. Everybody has to laugh at it, so go ahead and laugh. I don’t mind.” Hutch had appeared about to chuckle, but when she says this, he finds a way to control himself. Lois says, “It's got a story, too.” She seems proud of the name.

Keeping his head about him, Hutch says, “It's not weird, just different.”

Lois says, “Thanks, but I know otherwise. It’s hideous. It sounds like... well, you know what it sounds like. But it’s me, Fricker, Fricker, Fricker, and I’m not what it sounds like. So, come on, tell me the story of ‘Hutch,’ Hutch”

Hutch says, “You mean the name? It isn't much, really. I guess it's kind of funny. When I was a baby my Mom says I wouldn't go to sleep very well, so she tried all kinds of ways to get me to sleep, and for some reason she pulled out the drawer to a hutch in the dining room. You know? A hutch? Where you keep the good dishes.”

Lois says, “Yeah.”

Hutch says, “You get it?”

Lois smiles very coolly, “I think I got it, Hutch. A hutch.”

Hutch is thinking up witty things to say, “You interested in this kind of thing?”
Lois gives him a look with hooded eyes, “Most definitely.” She cocks her hips slightly and takes another sip from the can of soda.

Hutch draws a breath and laughs: “Anyway, it was a big wide drawer, I guess. It's gone now. She put me in there and I went to sleep better than any place else. So I guess for a few weeks she had me sleeping in a hutch. Or something like that. Get it? Someone said I was the ‘baby in the hutch,’ and that got shortened to Hutch, and they started calling me Hutch and it stuck. Been that way ever since.”

Lois says, “That is such a cool story. You still sleep in a hutch?”

Hutch has to think fast to respond to this surprise turn: “Nope, but I wouldn't mind trying if I could find one big enough. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe I’d still like it.” Hutch looks pleased with his wit.

Lois says, “Where you from, Hutch?”

Hutch: “Erie... Pennsylvania.”

Lois: “Really. I heard something like that. That doesn’t happen often.”

Hutch: “What?”

Lois: “That a rumor is about right.”

Hutch laughs: “I suppose.”

Lois says, without a hint of embarrassment, “I was just going for a walk down the beach, Hutch. You want to join me?”

Hutch marvels at her and says, “Yeah. I think so.”

Lois: “You think so?”

Hutch laughs again, this time nervously: “Yeah, it’d be cool.”

Lois: “O.K., then.”

As they turn to go, the dancing suddenly gets a little crazy as Tommy James and the Shondells wail “Mony Mony.” A boy spins out of control, stumbles away from the group and into the surf, where he falls in very shallow water.

Here she comes now, say, Mony Mony.
Shoot 'em down, turn around, come on, Mony.
Hey, she give me love and I feel all right now.
You gotta toss and turn in the middle of the night,
And I feel all right.
I say Yeah (Yeah) Yeah (Yeah)…

There are hoots and shouts, whistles and some laughter. The dancing gets wilder, and more kids join in. The scene cuts to Will laughing a little too heartily, almost foolishly. A girl near him moves away a step or two. Will winds up on his knees in the sand pointing at the boy who fell in the shallows, who looks none too happy as he rises to his feet, his clothes dripping with wet sand.

Hutch says, “Things are getting a little crazy.”

Lois says, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

The scene cuts to a short time later as Hutch and Lois walk down the narrowing beach in the darkness away from the fire. There are a couple of other sets of black shapes, couples walking up or down the flat, narrow strand. A breeze tosses strands of Lois’s hair.

As they stroll slowly on in the darkness, close to the barely moving waters of the bay, Hutch says, “Do you know my brother, Will, the one with the blonde hair... bit of a dorky guy?”

Lois says, “I met him.”

Hutch says, “Really! When?”

Lois: “Downtown. He told me about you, actually, and I figured out who you were when you were talking with him. I saw you down on the dock when the Queen came in the first night I was in town.”

Hutch pauses to absorb this. She is watching him as he is watching her: “Where are you from?”

Lois says, “Grand Rapids. Michigan. It’s a big city down south of here. My family comes up to our cabin on Neegan Lake every summer. We spend at least a month here every year.”

Hutch: “That’s cool.”

Lois: “You know the lake?”

Hutch, “Yeah. I know where it is. I’ve heard about it. But I haven’t been out there yet.”

Lois: “It’s not far from town. We've been coming up here since I was a little girl. My Dad bought our place on Neegan Lake and we’ve been coming every summer since. We just got into town on Wednesday. I heard there was supposed to be a big party tonight.”

Hutch: “Seems like it's a regular thing.”

Lois: “Pretty much – when summer starts really cooking.”
Hutch looks back at the party now in the distance behind them, back up the beach, Hutch asks slowly, “You come to these things often?”

Lois is cautious, trying to sense what would be best to say: “Yeah. I guess... Not really. I gotta admit that it isn’t that big a deal. I enjoy it all right every once in a while.”

Hutch slows down and notices that she has nothing in her hand, “You want something more to drink.”

Lois stops and says, “How about you? You don't look like you’ve had anything yet. Your brother, though, he's already had a couple cans of Blue Ribbon firmly in his grasp.”

Hutch turns to head back: “You noticed. But Stroh’s seems to be his thing. Strange as it seems, it looks like he's going to be down here often.”
Lois: “Why strange? He not a real party hound?”

Hutch: “I didn't think so, until this month. Almost until this night. But it looks like he’s really digging it. Never would’ve thought.”

Lois says, “He isn’t the kind?”

Hutch chuckles knowingly: “Not at all.”

The scene cuts to a shot of Will, back near the fire, dancing about, nearly alone, running in and out of the shallow water. He finds the can of beer he left standing in the sand, but as he goes to pick it up, he kicks it over. He laughs and slumps to his knees. A girl nearby turns to look at him kneeling in the sand. She smirks at him behind his back, showing that she thinks him ridiculous. He shakes the can and then tips it up to drink the dregs. A bit of sand sticks to his lip.

You Have to Learn to Appreciate the Smell of an Empty Can of Tennis Balls

Miranda's in-laws, the Davises, have a piece of property down on the waterfront just a couple lots away from our Copper Harbor house. Miranda and Art sometimes bring their dogs Capone and Gus down there for a swim and a run in the summertime. It's easy for us to take a short walk down Brockway Avenue to join them while they give the dogs some exercise on those days when they can't find time for a long walk in the woods. This is a shot of Mir some time in August with her dog Capone already in the SUV after the visit to the shore at the Davis' harbor property. Capone loves tennis balls, to chase when thrown by a human and to chew and to push around and chase on his own. I regularly bring him my old tennis balls from downstate, since I am a longtime and avid tennis player of some skill. Capone even likes the smell of a tennis-ball can. Mir is beginning to show a lot from her pregnancy, by the way, as she told me in a recent phone call. When this shot was taken, I don't believe Marsh and I yet knew that we were soon to be grandparents.

A Front Rolls South

I was golfing at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge one night in July when a storm started brewing -- or so it seemed. I hustled home in the car and then ran inside the house to get my camera to take a quick look at the storm up on the nose of Brockway Mouintain, just above town. I was hoping for some interesting weather to be coming in. The boys decided to come along, and then Marsha decided to come too. We hustled up the Mountain Drive and then watched the fronts and wind-shift lines rolled past and over Copper Harbor for 15 minutes or so before it started to get too dark and too cold. Here's one shot I took of the family that evening. Funny, but no storm broke loose. We had a little spitting rain and a little wind, but nothing serious or heavy. It was a storm with some scary teeth, but no bark and no bite. I can't say why. This shows you once again how cool the early to middle summer was up north. We shall soon be getting to some photos that actually look like they were taken in the summertime.

A Looming Ship

A captain always has to be on his toes, even these days. The traffic on Lake Superior is nothing like it was in the days of my youth, back some 35 years ago. The number of big ships on the Great Lakes is down about 90% since the 1970s, and even fewer of the 10% remaining afloat and working are sailing the Big Lake. So we see hundreds fewer ships out on the lake when we are crossing over to Isle Royale on the Isle Royale Queen IV, our family's passenger ferry, than when I was a teenager working on the Queen II out of Copper Harbor. But there are still foggy days on the Big Lake, and there were many more such days this summer than there have been in the previous 10 to 15 summers because of the cooler spring and early summer in 2008. Here's a shot of a freighter appearing in the fog just a half mile from the Queen IV one day when I was captain and ferrying a large load of people across to the national park. My position was about 10 miles northwest of Copper Harbor. I had to "turn down" on the ship as we say. That means I had to alter my course to port to keep out of the ship's way. I stayed a healthy distance away, and finally when I was fully behind the ship and got within a half mile, the ship began to appear in the fog. Within another 5 minutes the Queen IV had emerged completely fom the fog bank that hugged the Kerweenaw coast on that day, but the frieghter kept on going east into the denser fog off Keweenaw Point.

Sharing Motions

They quickly stand, almost bursting from their seats. They begin cheering. Their cheers become loud -- and then louder. They smile. Their big grins form wrinkles at the corners of their mouths and eyes. Many applaud. Some wave their hands. Some pump a fist in the air. Some wave small flags. I see one woman looks at a certain man standing beside her. They exchange even broader smiles. Their eyes are bright, intent, charged. Another man near me raises his hand high with the palm facing a friend standing beside him. The friend, with hardly a glance, notices that the friend standing beside him (it appears that he is a friend) is holding his hand up and his palm out to him. This man stops applauding and cheering for a moment and raises his own hand in the same manner, palm out. This man then pushes his open palm up and into his friend’s palm. The high-five. They smile more widely yet, so filled with delight that they are almost laughing. Thousands are standing and cheering and applauding now. Some whistle. Some whoop. Dozens of people exchange high-fives. Altogether, the thousands of mixed, loud noises makes up a stirring, thrilling, pulsating roar of elation.

The thousands who make the sounds take them all together. They relish the excitement of the sounds they are making together, so deep, so loud, so widely encompassing. These actions and many others like them -- why bother describing each, if I could describe them all? Almost any ordinary American would recognize and comprehend just about every gesture and every sound made. They are repeated and repeated again at certain times in ceremonies, or performances, or presentations, like this one, whatever we might call this “event.” Thousands of people repeating these motions and making similar sounds, cheering and hooting and hollering and listening to the cumulative, collective roar. They share the motion and the sound. The sharing of it has some meaning. That’s the issue I have been pondering. What is the meaning, not of the presentation, but of the sharing of it?

The cheering at that basketball game is akin, it seems to me, to something called “shared rhythmic motion,” a term I learned as I searched last spring online for writings about a documentary that flabbergasted me, State of Mind. This documentary film centers on two children in North Korea, 10- and 12-year-old girls who are merely two of the tens of thousands (!) of adults and children who danced in one of North Korea’s so-called Mass Games that the defiantly, brutally communist government has been putting on, on an irregular schedule, for the past couple decades. The Mass Games are huge, rigidly and expertly coordinated spectacles of exuberantly hectic dance and gymnastics. The dancers put on their performances, after months of outdoor practice in city squares, in huge outdoor stadiums or large indoor arenas. Each performance involves thousands of dancers, who form great rectangular blocks of equally spaced people who move in astonishingly tight synchronization. Performances in each edition of the Mass Games go on for several days.

The scenes of the specific edition of the Mass Games shown in State of Mind were astounding -– riveting, haunting, thought-provoking. A quick study of a couple articles on ritualized dance led me to scholars who have been studying such matters for a long time. The most famous book on the subject, I learned, is entitled Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History, by a scholar named William McNeill. McNeill's personal experiences led him to study and define the concept of “shared rhythmic motion.” As a draftee in 1941 while undergoing basic training in Texas, McNeill came to enjoy the hours spent in close-order drill. In thinking about the pleasure he took in drilling, he wrote a speculative history about human society’s practice of keeping together in time in a ritualized manner, which to him means “moving our muscles rhythmically and giving voice to consolidate group solidarity altering human feelings." Though language is another (and the most important) socially shared system of signs, McNeill believes that the use of fully grammatical language added to but did not displace the social import of shared rhythmic motion.

Ever since I made these various discoveries I have been pondering shared rhythmic motion in my life and my immediate social settings. Sports is one venue where I have witnessed and taken part in shared motion. Cheering for teams appears rather similar in some ways to the North Korean Mass Games. Why do so many Americans cheer in sports (and in certain defined, generally approved ways) not to mention spend our money, a lot of money for many people, to watch skillful athletes take part in sports and cheer their achievements? Why do I and so many others care at all about teams and athletes in the sports I find most attractive? Besides my wife Marsha, who can make no sense of the craze for sports, my boys, Logan and Drew, are noticeably puzzled. For somehow they have never gained much interest in sports at all. (I am as puzzled with them as they are with me on such matters.) Scholars of shared motion seem to think that we create some kind of community, in a broad sense, through corporate dance and many other kinds of shared motions. In my view, cheering for sports teams seems to be some sort of dance like the other shared motions McNeill discusses.

Someone has written that “Even in a culture where recorded performance has become central, people crave the live event, largely for that group joy.” It is puzzling that there should be group joy in watching at a stadium or on a television -- or even in reading about others who shared the group joy in my absence (as I do when I read with delight about the games that "my” teams win). Still, how deeply can the shared motions of sports instill community (whatever that abstraction might be taken to mean). At the most, for example, only half of the people in the U.S. watch the Super Bowl. Thus, only half of the citizenry derive some kind of needed community from watching people cheer the Super Bowl. (Only 10% of the citizenry, it is stunning to realize, as massive as that is [30 million people!], watch the most popular television program, American Idol, which has some of its own shared motions and vocalizations). That is a bewilderingly large number. Yet it is only 50%, which means that some 160 million people in the American citizenry do not share in the motions of cheering or watching the cheering for sports teams and players. What does that mean? The whole subject seems too vast to figure out, as much as its existence insist upon us that it has meaning. We are probably forced to make no more than guesses.

As to the photo: it’s a shot taken at the end of a 2007 MSU basketball game in which MSU defeated the #1 ranked team in the nation at the time, Wisconsin, after which the citizenry of mid-Michigan flooded the basketball floor and celebrated. There was plenty of shared rhythmic motion at the game and in its aftermath. I shared in a lot of it.

Silent Evening

There was a bit more fog this summer than in summers past. The weather was a bit cooler and cloudier, as I have written, in the first half of the summer, which left Lake Superior much cooler. That, in turn, led to more fog as the days began to warm up in mid-July. There was one day in mid-July that had one of the foggiest summer nights of the past 10 years or so. The visibility was down to about 50 feet. You could see cars until they were within a few feet of you. Here is a shot of my youngest son Drew, still 12, standing on the Isle Royale Queen IV dock and next to the Queen herself on that night. We toured the town, and I took a number of photos of various scenes of Copper Harbor in fog. We wound up my daughter Miranda's place, in the muffled silence that descends over areas covered in fog. I loved the whole scene. Drew seemed a little blase about the occurence, but he put up with my excitement well enough and kept following me around. The fog lifted about 10 PM, which surprised me. I find it quite mysterious how fog comes and goes and how hard it is to predict those comings and goings, as hard as I try to make predictions. Jesus might have been advised to speak of the Spirit as being like fog, for the wind is much easier to predict than fog, though Jesus probably knew little fog, except on the Sea of Galilee, perhaps. I am not conversant with weather in Israel either now or then. My Dad asked for a shot of the finale of the 2008 Fireworks show, and I will get to that soon.

The Night Sky on Just One Night a Year in Copper Harbor

I realize it has been a long time since I posted on this blog, but I guess I needed a break. So I took one, and now I'm going to try to catch up. Hence, the following dozen posts or so will concern the summertime. I am now back at Michigan State, where I work in the non-summer seasons. It's actually still summer down here in the deep south. Up in Copper Harbor, there have been indications of fall's coming, including much cooler weather. But, for now, I return to summer to catch you and me up on what went on.

I've always wanted to set up my camera and tripod for some shots of the Fourth of July fireworks show in Copper Harbor. It's a great show, and one of the best and best known in the Upper Peninsula. The Copper Harbor Fire Department has been going BIG TIME with the fireworks show of late, with ever more of the bigger cannisters being shot into the sky over the central harbor, directly across from the Queen IV dock. Here's a shot from the Queen dock on that night. The show took everyone's breath away. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

I must admit, though, that I am not an especially big fan of fireworks shows. I don't know why. That might be something to write an excogitation about. In fact, I have been tinkering with a post for some time about "shared rhythmic motion" that might have some bearing on this topic. I'll try to get it finished soon. Fireworks just don't do all that much for me. I do like this photo, nonetheless. That's Porters Island across the harbor from our business (and my parents' home). The boys of the CHFD fan out along the beach facing town on the west end of the state-owned island.

I Am Not Lost Yet

I'm always dragging my poor children off into some nook in the wild, and poor, trusting Logan is often the child who will follow me farthest into the woods on my adventurous treks. A few days ago, I took Drew and Logan and their cousin Anthony out to the Estivant Pines Sanctuary south of Copper Harbor for the afternoon. After touring the pines, we set off for the Leaning Giant, the massive pine that fell about 20 years ago along the Montreal River. The unmaintained trail to the Giant is considerably rougher this year because of logging south of the sanctuary and the rain, which has made the swamp between the main sanctuary and the Giant much muckier and much more difficult to cross. The trail was especially difficult to find at times out in the middle of the swamp. I dragged Log across it, and then went back back for Drew and Anthony, who sensinbly refused to follow. So I had to go back across the swamp yet another time and guide Logan back. Here's a shot from the return trip across the big swamp just north of the Montreal River and just south of the Estivant Pines. Oh, by the way, I took this shot of Logan on the trail. A little hard to see it, don't you think?

A 1000-Foot Ship Passes the Harbor

The unusual weather continues. Well, it might not be so unusual. It might be that the spectacularly beautiful summer weather we have had over the past decade has been much more unusual than all the wind, rain, fog, and cool temps that we have had this spring and early summer in the north country. We even had a delay for gale warnings on last Sunday, the first such delay that I recall in the month of July ever in the period that the Kilpela family has owned and operated the run out of Copper Harbor to Isle Royale (since 1971). I was scheduled as the captain for the trip Sunday, and the captain-brothers decided to delay departure 6 hours. The winds settled down quite a bit over that time, but we still had a rough crossing -- much less than it could have been, but rough nonetheless. I went out to look at conditions by eye on the morning of that day, after the winds started to ease slightly. This shot was taken on the shore outside Copper Harbor 3 hours before we departed in the afternoon. That's the 1000-foot ship, the Stewart J. Cort, out on the lake passing by CH about 2 miles off the coast. I could see that the waves were decreasing a bit because the Cort was not taking as much water over his decks as I expected. I knew we would have better conditions for the crossing later in the day, and it all worked out well in the end. What weather, though. It's been hurting business, especially in CH, in addition to the fuel-price problems. We've had to cancel many Sunset Cruises so far. Businesses are all just hanging on, waiting for things to turn around.

Sundown on Sawmill Cove

I know, I know, I've been saying that the weather has been rather iffy in the north country this early summer in 2008. But there have been many nice days as well -- and even a few warm ones. Conditions have been getting better and better. Here's a shot of me, Captain Ben, and my wife Marsha on the Isle Royale Queen IV dock one lovely night less than a week ago. We were watching a beautiful sunset long after the Queen IV had returned from Isle Royale (the boat is in the background). The sun sets close to 10:00 this time of year up in these parts. Hey, what's that gut showing on me? Looks like I've got to cut back on the pork chops, as my Dad likes to say. You get so many gorgeous sunsets up here that you can start to take them for granted. And they can be very localized as well. A couple nights later, there was a truly spectacular sunset visible only up on the golf course at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, a mile south of town. I didn't have my camera for the event, since I was golfing with my son Drew, but it was a stunner that was only taking place up there because just a few low clouds were drifting through the Brockway Valley near the course and were lighted up shocking shades of pink and orange by the setting sun. Such sunsets have happened to me many times before when I've been golfing late.

A Nice Set of Falls

I was up at Manganese Falls about a half mile south of Copper Harbor on a recent morning. I road my bike up the side of the ridge. The blackflies were not too bad, though I did have a bug jacket with hood on when I was in the woods, just to be sure. The falls are running with more water, which comes from Lake Manganese a half mile farther south, than they have in recent early summers, which have been rather dry rather quickly in June each year. As you can see in the photo, the trees growng in the canyon walls are getting bigger and bigger and now starting to block the view of these falls from the overlook alongside the road to Lake Manganese, the road that passes Copper Harbor's old bear dump, which has been closed for about 25 years now. Funny that people keep talking about the old dump all summer long so many years later. I'll have to get a shot of it from the old days and the present for this blog some time soon.

On Bounty's Rock

The boys and I took a bike ride out to the end of US-41, 2 miles east of Copper Harbor, and stopped on the way back at Fort Wilkins State Park, where one of their favorite places in or around town is located. They call it Bounty's Rock, upon which Logan sits in the photo. The reason for the name I haven't learned yet or forgotten (I'll ask them tonight). The Rock is a ridge of bedrock across from the Copper Harbor Lighthouse, which you can see in the photo. The boys are plotting and planning a new movie to be fiolmed on Bounty's Rock. It will include scenes of the entrance of a copper mine on this rock. How Logan will accomplish that I cannot guess. But he's resourceful, indeed. Logan recently posted a new film on YouTube, the address of which I'll chase down at some point. He's quite the filmmaker. It is fascinating that my children have adopted special places in and around the harbor that are different from mine. This ridge of rock meant little to me as a youth, but my boys see as a place of great importance and meaning.

Waves from Far Away Keep Rolling Ashore

The weather has been very sketchy up in the north country since I got up north for the summer. It's been one of the coolest Junes I remember. We have one fairly decent summer day, but most of the days have been decidedly fall like. There have been a number of rough crossings to Isle Royale on the Queen IV as well, which is quite unusual for June. Here's a shot from a couple nights ago, taken down the coast from Copper Harbor about three miles. The wind was hard out of the southeast, which the north shore of the Keweenaw is well protected from. But the wind was so strong and steady all day long that the waves were curling around Keweenaw Point and traveling some 10 miles to this spot along the coast and pounding in with vigor. The Queen IV, headed for home from the crossing, would pass by about 5 miles off the coast about 15 minutes after I took this shot. And the rain began falling heavily just another 15 minutes after that. I was on my bike and had to ride three miles home in a hard rain. I had no rain gear, but I didn't mind the ride too much. The family is due any day now, my wife and boys. They have had very hot weather downstate. How will they take the sudden change. Conditions are often so different in the north country.

Here Comes the U.P. in All Its Glory

Another Copper Harbor period of this blog begins. The summer has come, and it is time for me to go north to help run the Isle Royale Queen IV out of Copper Harbor. It turned suddenly hot and humid in southern Michigan on the morning of my departure north, and I quickly got the heck out of Okemos without the family and headed for the Upper Peninsula and my second home. On the way north on I-75, a vast mass of storms passed over the Lower Peninsula. It poured. I mean poured. And then when I reached the Straits of Mackinaw, the temperature dropped by about 20 degrees, the wind started coming sharply out of the east, and the weather turned plain raw. Welcome to the U.P.! Just like last year, I was greeted with some raw early spring weather in early summer. Well, here's two shots taken during the crossing of the Makinaw Bridge as I approached the Upper Peninsula. The first shot was taken near the center of the Bridge looking north at the north tower, which was lost in the fog and rain. The second shot is of the north tower emerging from the fog. I'll be posting, of course, some more shots from my arrival in Copper Harbor soon. The weather turned very warm, even humid, even up here in CH, for a couple of days. The blackflies came out in droves, especially with a humid south wind. But then on Sunday, June 8, the the wind turned east, off the cold surface waters of Lake Superior, and the temps dropped 20 degrees again. Only in the 50s today. You just never know what's going to happen up in these parts.