Post # 20

Quote for the day: "Torch Lake has driven writers to exhaustion when trying to describe its beauty." Glen Ruggles. Michigan History Magazine, January/February 1979.

Reviews

Voices from the Rust Belt

Edited by Anne Trubek

This is not the usual book on the Rust Belt which is commonly defined as the post-industrial Midwest centered on Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and parts of New York, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Rather than an economic overview of how and why manufacturing jobs and industries supplying the jobs fled the Midwest like crooks fleeing the scene of a crime, it is a deeply felt, eye-opening testament on what it means to live and survive in the worst pockets of rust.

The book is comprised of 25 personal essays by residents who live amid the corrosion and toxic remains of once great manufacturing cities. Of the 25 essays six are written by residents of Flint or Detroit. But all the pieces capture the emotional impact of living within the Rust Belt and the hard facts, and often the absurdities of residing in Flint, Cleveland, Buffalo, Youngstown, and other once-thriving Midwest industrial cities. The experiences recorded here share many commonalities, including feelings of abandonment, betrayal, anger, white flight, disgust with government inaction, and racism. In many cases, the people who remain do so because they don’t have the money to move, or stayed because they refused to give up on the town they grew up in.  In either case, they are among the forgotten or purposely overlooked by those in power. Or, are until gross mismanagement poisons an entire city and then attempts to cover it up.

That said, each of the individual contributors has different and personal stories to tell. Like the African American Detroiter who was a kid in the late 60s and 70s who thought his white friends were being kidnapped because they disappeared from the neighborhood so fast. Only later did he learn how realtors as early as the 1950s inflamed racism and encouraged white flight by papering neighborhoods warning whites to leave before the price of their homes dropped. A 40-year-old welfare intern tells of the frustration and powerlessness to help those in need. An award-winning Flint sports reporter tells of the murder of his friend because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and how easy it is for trouble to find you after dark. A young Flint woman explains why “I blame this city for my fear of feeling vulnerable.”

A Cleveland resident describes the last assault on urban poor. He notes artists are moving to his town because rent is cheap. But following the artists come coffee shops, diners, laundry-mats, and God forbid – art galleries.  “The first sign of the coming apocalypse is the art walk: the Typhoid Marys of Gentrification.” The last piece in the book is by a Flint resident who recounts what should be one of those special times of day between parent and child – the daily bath. Yeah, well not in Flint.

This important book gives a voice to the voiceless, to the political and corporate abused, used, and abandoned. 

Voices from the Rust Belt, edited by Anne Trubek. Picador, 2018, $16 paperback.

Power Play: My Life Inside the Red Wings Locker Room

by Cynthia Lambert

  

Cynthia Lambert scores a hat-trick with this autobiographical account of her 14-year career as a beat reporter covering the Red Wings for the Detroit News.  It is a fascinating and often humorous story of her experiences in and out of the locker room in the 1980s as one of the first female sports reporters covering a male professional sports team. The book also serves as an informal tutorial on what it takes to be a good reporter and portrays the daily grind of covering a sports team throughout the course of a season. Lastly, the book is filled with both touching and laugh-out-loud humorous stories about individual Wings players that any Hockey Town fan will treasure.

In 1984 she was studying journalism at Wayne State and was determined to become an accredited sports journalist. To do so, one had to be officially working for a professional news outlet. She finally landed a job as an unpaid contributor to a free, weekly newspaper called the Northeast Detroiter. It got her a Media Game Pass from the Wings and the 22-years-old college student headed to Port Huron to cover a Wings preseason game. Lambert’s account of her first time in a Wings locker room and the first time the players found a woman reporter in their locker room is priceless. Even thirty years later reporters who witnessed the event were still laughing about it.

With a degree in journalism she got a job in the Detroit News sports department and within a short time was named the beat reporter for the Wings.  Except for one glaring incident Lambert was treated with utmost respect and great kindness by the team’s players and management. The author presents a host of memorable vignettes of Red Wing players from the 80s and 90s and there is a wonderful retelling of her brief encounters with her hockey god – Gordie Howe – over the course of a season. The story perfectly captures the essence of both Mr. Hockey and the author.

The author was once asked how different or challenging (I’m paraphrasing) it was to be a woman sports reporter rather than a man. Cynthia replied she really couldn’t say because she had never been a man. Power Play is a great read any time, but in May and June, the book seems to possess the healing qualities of a salve that Wings fans can use to ease the pain of missing the playoffs.  

Power Play: My Life Inside the Red Wings Locker Room by Cynthia Lambert. Balboa Press, 2017, $15.99.

Copper Country Chronicler: The Best of J. W. Nara

by Deborah K. Frontiera

Frontiera’s book offers a rare window into the people, work, history, and culture of the Keweenaw Copper country from the 1890s to the 1930s through the photographs of the region’s first professional photographer.  J. W. Nara was a Finnish immigrant who came to Calumet early in the 1890s and opened a photographic studio.  In a career spanning almost half a century, Nara’s striking photographs recorded the life, work, culture, towns, and people of the Calumet/Houghton area. The formal studio portraits range from a trio of Chinese gentlemen clad in three-piece suits who ran the local oriental laundry to a young lady in traditional Finnish dress, a wrestler in a pair of trunks, and what is inarguably a very proud dog nobly posing atop of a small round side table.

But it’s outside the studio that Nara went about capturing and preserving Keweenaw’s copper boom era. Nara’s photos include typical company homes in Calumet, farmhouses, a barber shop, churches, offices, school houses, street scenes in summer and winter, a train depot, labor strife, the areas people at work and play, and even a circus coming to town. The last chapter in the book covers the tragic 1913 strike which led to the Italian Hall tragedy in which 74 people, mostly children, died at a Christmas Eve party. The hall was on the second floor and reached by a narrow staircase. When someone yelled fire the crowd panicked and ran for the staircase where children and adults tumbled down the stairs as more came behind them adding to the mass of humanity crammed like sardines in a can. Those caught beneath the growing pile of Christmas celebrants trying to flee a nonexistent fire slowly died of suffocation or being trampled to death. Nara’s photos of the rows of holiday attired children’s bodies laid out for parents to identify, even one hundred years after the fact, is heartbreaking. Each chapter is preceded by a short essay by the author who introduces the subject of the photographs.

J. W. Nara took hundreds of photographs during his career and only a few of them had his name imprinted on the photograph. This book is an effort by Nara’ grandson and the author to gather what they consider to be the best of his work and credit Nara as the photographer of many of the early photos that were not imprinted with his name. It is estimated that 90% of the unaccredited photos from that era were taken by Nara. This very attractive book is a fascinating glimpse into Michigan’s early copper mining era and an invaluable record of Keweenaw area history.

Copper Country Chronicler: The Best of J. W. Nara. by Deborah Frontiers. Shining Brightly Press, 2009, $27.95

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Post #19

Quote for the day: "And so we saw Traverse City, Michigan. The less said about it the better." From Governor Milliken's grandfather's diary. The 1873 entry records his first day in the city.

Reviews 

Black and White Ball

by Loren D. Estleman

Since 1980, when the first Amos Walker mystery appeared in print, I have been an unabashed fan of Loren D. Estleman. Therefore, I’m not sure what I’ve started here will turn out to be a review of the latest Amos Walker mystery or a piece that pays homage to the author’s forty years of remaining at the top of his art form. He’s an acknowledged master of the hard-boiled, private-eye genre and has four Shamus Awards to prove it. He has also been nominated for the National Book Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery, and he’s won a saddle bag full of Spur Awards for the year’s best western.

From his first appearance in Motor City Blue, private-eye Amos Walker has been and remains an anachronism. He’s an old-fashioned gumshoe that feels more akin to Sam Spade, or Chandler’s Philip Marlowe than any contemporary fictional private detective. Walker has never had a cell phone, used or owned a computer. He leases a seedy office in a building sporting gargoyles and rarely has more than a few bucks in his checking account. He’s put more hard miles on his body than a 10-year-old Detroit taxi that’s never missed a Michigan pothole. And I challenge you to name any current fictional PI who says, “Malarkey!” Lastly, Walker has a sardonic, world-weary view that perfectly matches the town he inhabits and the work he does. Walker solves cases by hard work, a closely observant eye for details, a keen mind, dumb luck, by taking his lumps, and a near ruthless devotion to doing the right thing.

Readers who’ve followed Estleman and Amos Walker from the early 1980s until today have also been treated to ironic, biting, and often funny observations of the evolution or de-evolution of Detroit and its rich suburbs. For this reviewer, much of the enjoyment of reading Estleman’s crime fiction is the barrage of quips, unique observations, similes, and memorable metaphors that often litter every page. Such as: “The luminous dial on my watch said the sun was up, but the sky lay on the ground like a fat lady with a broken ankle.” Or this telling description of Grand River Avenue, “a fairly dirty stretch of urban landscape with all the architectural innovation of an aircraft hanger…”

Finally getting to the current tale, it features two of Estleman’s series characters who cross paths and appear in the same book for the first time. Peter Maklin is a for-hire professional killer. The hitman hires Walker as a bodyguard to protect his second wife, who is in the process of divorcing Maklin. It appears she’s been threatened with death unless Maklin coughs up $100,000. The monkey wrench in what becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse played against a snowbound Detroit, is that the person bent on wiping out the second wife is Maklin’s son from his first marriage.  The dialogue crackles with electricity, the action seldom allows the reader to catch a breath, and the plot is in the hands of a master. Which means the book is grandly entertaining and Estleman delivers a twist in the final pages that will leave the reader gobsmacked.

Black and White Ball by Loren D. Estleman. Forge Books, 2018, $25.99

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park Pocket Guide – 2018

by Sandy Richardson

If you’re planning a trip to Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park this compact handbook is an excellent resource for planning your trip and a handy guide for once you’re there. And if you are not planning a trip to Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State – Why Not? It’s the jewel of Michigan’s State Park system and has been voted the second best state park in the nation. It encompasses 59,820 acres or 94 square miles, contains the largest stand of old growth forest on Lake Superior, 100 waterfalls, scenery you’ll remember and treasure for a lifetime, vistas to take your breath away, and a you-pick-your-level of comfort and adventure in both exploring the park and its overnight accommodations. You might not be lucky enough to spot one but you will be sharing this remarkable hunk of glorious territory with bears, the occasional moose, deer, bobcat, cougar, timber wolves, bald eagles, coyote, pine martins, and river otters.

It’s the park’s size, plus the variety and level of immersion in a wilderness experience a visitor can choose from that makes Richardson’s guide so helpful when planning a trip. Overnight choices range from a lodge that includes every comfort of home plus a view of Lake Superior, to both rustic and full-service RV campgrounds, twenty-two Spartan frontier cabins and yurts set in the wilderness, and for the hardiest visitor, 63 backcountry camping sites that come with a fire ring and either a bear pole or box. Dispersed camping anywhere in the park is no longer permitted. This guide covers the fees, regulations, and amenities for all overnight accommodations, in addition to the distance from a trailhead to backcountry cabins and yurts.

The author lists the absolute necessities that should be stowed in even a day hikers pack and warns that a day hike can unexpectedly turn into an overnight stay. She also cautions it’s easy for park visitors on the 90 miles of wilderness trails to underestimate both their endurance and the amount of water they need to carry. The book introduces and briefly describes all major trails noting the difficulty, length, and special features. Many of the trails in the park have unbridged stream crossings and rises of elevation of 600 - 800 feet in less than a mile. All of which accounts for the 1-mile-per-hour rate of backpackers and day-hikers blistering pace of 2-miles-per-hour.

For the less athletic, there are full descriptions of the park’s scenic jewels that can be driven to or require just a short walk. And to give a real feel for the beauty to be found here, the author has splashed the book with scores of color photographs. I especially liked the author’s description of the park in each season of the year and the attractions of visiting the park in fall, winter, and spring. This little book is chock-full of vital information for fully enjoying, on any level, one of the top two or three attractions in the state. Excellent maps are found in the back of the book and surprising tips and facts crowd every page from the days in winter when you can ride bikes with fat tires down the ski sloops, to where you can buy an ice cream cone. And all that comes in a book small enough to stick in a pair of cargo shorts.

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park Pocket Guide -2018, 2^nd edition by Sandy Richardson. Cuyahoga Press, 2018, $24.95, pb.

Valley Cats: The Adventures of Boonie and River
Valley Cats: Earth, Wind and Sky
Valley Cats: Fun, Games and New Friends

by Gretchen Preston, Illustrated by Karen Neumann

These three children’s books are set in and around the author’s home in a pleasant valley near the U.P. town of Marquette and not far from Lake Superior. As the titles suggest, the three books follow the growing friendship of two cats, Boonie and River, and the adventures they have with their many animal friends. The beauty and adventure to be found in the U.P. is brought to life by the author and is also captured in Neumann’s detailed illustrations. These hardback books are physically beautiful and very professionally produced, printed, and bound. They set a high benchmark for self-published books.

Since the three books are written at a fifth-grade reading level, I asked fifth-grader Molly O -- a voracious reader who consumes books faster than I could eat a handful of M & Ms -- to read just the first book in the series and tell me how or if she liked it. She finished the first book in a day and flew through the other two almost as quickly, and then wrote a critique. The following is a review of the trilogy by Molly O, our twelve-year-old guest reviewer.

“The Valley Cats series, written by Gretchen Preston, is a great choice for children of all ages. It shows the point of view of all the animals and is full of adventure. The books take place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at a real spot. The animals in the story are even based off of real animals. The books are very action packed and have many twists and turns that you never see coming. Go along with the Valley Cats on their next adventure and I am sure that you will love it.”

Molly loved them – enough said.

Valley Cats: The Adventures of Boonie and River, by Gretchen Preston, Illustrated by Karin Neumann.  Preston Hill Press 2014, $19.95. The above book can be purchased from Amazon by clicking the mouse on the cover.
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Valley Cats: Earth, Wind and Sky and More Valley Cats: Fun, Games and New Friends both can be purchased from www.prestonhillpress.com. All books are $19.95.

                                                                                      

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