On the Cusp of March Madness in Michigan

My nephew Sam Eberhard (son of Susie Q. Kilpela) starts on the Hancock Bulldogs varisity basketball team. During our visit to Copper Harbor a week ago, I insisted that all the family take the 45-mile jaunt to Hancock to see Sam play one of his final high school games. Here's a shot of Sam handling the ball on a drive from outside the three-point line. Hancock lost this game in overtime against Ontonogan, which appears to be a very fine team. But as the winter blues begin to set in, thousands of Copper Country folk also begin feeling that unbidden yet irresistable surge of enthusiasm for their kids and relations striving and refusing to yield in basketball and hockey tournaments all around the district. It's a great time for basketball down here in Okemos, too, where we have a fine high school team again this year (Class A state runners-up last year) under the always capable, steady, and exemplary coaching of Dan Stolz. Good fortune to all! Enjoy it, Sam! For you shall sooner than you think be an old athlete of only past glories like me.

The Couple and the Light

I just couldn't resist putting up a shot, in honor of the last photo of Art and Miranda Davis standing ON Copper Harbor (with the CH Lighthouse in the distance), of Art and Miranda standing beside the CH Lighthouse on their wedding day, September 2006. The visit to the lighthouse on their day was allowed as a very special gift to a couple who partially grew up and started their life together in Copper Harbor. Quite a different day, eh? It was quite cool, but the sunshine still felt like summer on Miranda's shoulders. The temperature just a few hours later dropped to 32 degrees. Still, we all had a grand time at the reception outside the CH Community Building.

A Frozen Harbor

Let's start off this blog with a photo from just a few days ago. This is Miranda and Art Davis of Copper Harbor, who live in the oldest structure still in use in the village, a small log cabin built in the 1880s. Miranda is my daughter, graduate of Okemos High School and Michigan State, where I work nine months of each year. She's working for our family business (for which I also work in summer), the Isle Royale Queen IV, and is substitute teaching in the Calumet-Laurium-Keweenaw School District from time to time. Those are their two active dogs, Gus, the short-haired pointer, and Capone, the husky-shepherd mix. (Miranda has no explanation for Capone's name other than it sounded cool.) Art and Miranda, both of whom grew up during the summers of their youth in Copper Harbor, were married just last September, 2006, an event that has become famed in CH, for it was one of the great parties of all-time in our tiny town. They are standing on the waters of Copper Harbor itself, frozen up, at last, after the warm early winter. They stand about 150 yards off the east tip of Porters Island, and, yes, that is the famous and beautiful Copper Harbor Lighthouse and Light in the distance behind them, about a half mile away. A bunch of Kilpela family members took a wonderful walk around Porters on the ice on Sunday, February 18. My wife Marsha, Miranda's brothers Logan and Drew, and I all made a weekend trip to CH to visit the newlyweds and the rest of the family over Okemos's Presidents Day break. I don't think I will often be this timely with my photos, but I'll try on occasion. Hope you like the first shot. I'll probably try to post about once a month. I'm hoping Miranda will post some shots of CH, too.