Post # 25

Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Quote for the day. "Those who sail the Lakes are men of iron -- men of iron nerve, iron will, and iron faith." William Ratigan, Great Shipwrecks and Survivors. 1977.


Reviews 


Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America
by Michael McCarthy


On the morning of July 24, 1915, 2,500 men, women, and children dressed in their finery hurried aboard the SS Eastland, berthed on the Chicago River at South Water Street, for a short voyage to Michigan City, Indiana where the Western Electric Company of Chicago would hold its annual employee picnic. The last passengers had just boarded the huge passenger liner, which was still tied to the pier when the great ship first tipped one way, recovered and rolled in the opposite direction. Then it tipped yet again, its shorelines snapped and in the blink of an eye, the Eastland capsized. It would prove to be the worst maritime disaster in Great Lakes history with 844 fatalities including the deaths of 22 entire families. Ashes Under Water is the masterfully told story of the disaster, the ship's troubled history, and the epic court battle in which the ship's owners tried to pin the blame for the tragedy on the Eastland's engineer, who was represented by Clarence Darrow, and several federal inspectors.

The Eastland was built in 1903 by a Port Huron shipbuilder for a South Haven, Michigan shipping company. The newly formed company hoped to entice fares from the town's growing number of tourists from Chicago and to ship fruit from the area's bountiful orchards to the huge market lying just across the lake. But South Haven presented a navigation problem the ship had to overcome. Just offshore of South Haven's port was a sandbar that wouldn't allow the passage of large ships with deep drafts. As the author deftly explains the solution was water as ballast which could be pumped in or out of huge holding tanks. Pump out the ballast and the ship passes over the sandbar and then the tanks are filled. With the ballast restored the ship rides properly through the seas. The water could also be pumped to side tanks to counter passengers or cargo causing the ship to list.

But pumping ballast in or out could get tricky and on two occasions the ship unexpectedly listed 25-degrees with screaming passengers and chairs sliding across the ship's deck. When the South Haven company went broke the Eastland was purchased by a Cleveland company to transport pleasure seekers from that city to Cedar Point sixty miles to the west. The ship got such a poor reputation for safety the company ran ads and posted rewards for anyone who could prove it unsafe. Once again the ship failed to make money and was sold to a St. Joseph, Michigan company hoping to attract more Chicagoans to their resort town known as, "The Coney Island of the West." Less than a year after purchasing the Eastland it turned turtle in Chicago.

The author has written an enthralling, authoritative, and a heart-breaking account of the Eastland's Great Lakes career and paired it with the story of the ship's chief engineer's career. Joseph Erickson was an immigrant who worked tirelessly to become accredited as a chief engineer. On the day of the tragedy he showed himself a hero and as payment, the owners of the company tried to hang the responsibility for the ship's demise around his neck. Great Lake sailors contributed enough money to hire Clarence Darrow as his lawyer.

Michael McCarthy spent years researching this book and it shows on every page. It is an important contribution to Great Lakes and Michigan history, in addition to being an immensely readable and moving story.
Ashes Under Water by Michael McCarthy. Lyons Press, 2018, $25.95



She Stopped for Death
by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

Beaver Falls is a fictional Michigan village located somewhere between Kalkaska and Mancelona and yet a stone's throw from Lake Michigan. The quiet little village has more than its share of eccentrics and topping the list is Emily Sutton, a once-famous poet, who seems nuttier than a bag of pistachios. The poet lives in near total seclusion in an old family home down the street from Dora Weston whose yard sports one of those little libraries on a post where readers can leave a book and take a book.

Living with Dora is her daughter Jenny who has come home to lick her wounds after a painful divorce. Their constant visitor, friend, and next door neighbor is the irascible Zoe Zola, a Little Person, who writes big books on famous literary figures. The threesome often enjoy an evening sitting on Dora's front porch shooting the breeze and catching up on Beaver Falls gossip. One evening as they're discussing village affairs a shadowy figure totters down the street in an ankle length old dress, walks up to the little library, and instead of leaving and taking a book just leaves a sheaf of papers.

When Dora checks the little box she discovers hand-written poems. Dora, Jenny, and Zoe are agog over the apparent re-emergence of a celebrated poet. As an act of friendship, Jenny and Zoe visit Horizon Books in Traverse City and select a sampling of current poets and leave the books on Emily's porch. Emily returns the next night to Dora's porch and tells the trio she appreciated the books and needs help.  Emily's sister who lived with her for years has run off with a man, and a cousin from Traverse City who dropped off her groceries has unexplainably quit. Would someone do her grocery shopping? Zoe reluctantly volunteers and soon begins to suspect Emily and her self-imposed isolation are even stranger than they appear.

The news of Sutton's appearance back in the world takes Beaver Falls by storm and a poetry reading is set up by the village's lone grand dame and a soldout reading is booked for the Traverse City Opera House. Ah, but the train is about to leave the tracks. A gruesome murder leads back to Beaver Falls, the Beaver Falls reading is just plain weird, and Emily Sutton is moving the needle from eccentric to completely unhinged. 

Buzzelli writes with a keen eye for character, sharp wit, clever literary asides, and knows smalltown life in northern Michigan. The pace is leisurely and the plot builds from the quaintly odd to a full-blown novel of terror with a great twist at the end. This is billed as a cozy mystery and I just don't understand the term. What's cozy about a mystery, unless it's where did that darling cat find that ball of soft and fuzzy Alpaca yarn?  A third mystery in the series is due out this fall.

She Stopped for Death by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli. Crooked Lane Books, 2017, $25.99



Secret Detroit: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure
by Karen Dybis


In the introduction to this consistently engaging and wonderfully eccentric book the author defines secret, "as something unusual, surprising, or extraordinary." At first glance, the book includes many famous and well-known sites, places, and attractions like  Comerica Park or the Detroit Public Library, either of which hardly qualifies as secret by any definition. But no matter how well known the site, place, or thing the author more often than not, manages to surprise the reader with something they were previously unaware of. Or in other words, surprise readers with the unusual or extraordinary. 

Then there are the places one never heard about before cracking this book. Like the 2.2 acre Beth Olem Jewish Cemetery, founded in 1860, that is completely surrounded by GM's Poletown Plant. It is open to the public twice a year and visitors must pass through plant security gates. Or, the revelation that one of the last remaining Negro League ballparks in the country can be found in Hamtramck. Attempts are underway to preserve the crumbling structure and turn it into a  community park and a monument to the Negro Leagues.

The author doesn't turn a blind eye to Detroit's history of racism and segregation. I'd heard about the 8-mile Wall that a developer built to separate a black neighborhood from a new, lily-white subdivision. But I didn't know that the Federal Housing Administration and the Home Owners Loan Corp. refused to approve loans to the white-only project unless the developer built the wall. It still stands as a memorial to institutional racism and today is decorated with murals.

Also found in the book is Baker's Keyboard Lounge, the world's oldest continuously operated jazz club. Detroit's famous Elmwood Cemetery where the famous and near famous lie in perpetual rest in a cemetery that received accreditation as an arboretum and offers regular tours of its plantings. Also found in the book is a Mortuary Science Museum, the state's largest used and rare bookstore, a parking garage built in a former theater, Detroit's oldest house, Detroit's Jewish bathhouse dating to the 1930s, and St. Anne Catholic Church, the second oldest Catholic parish in the USA. 

There are 90 sites in this fascinating book. Each write-up is succinct, informative, and quickly gets to the essence of why the site has been included in the book. Open the book to any page and it's like opening a bag of Better Made Potato Chips (also in the book), you just can't stop diving back into the book or bag.
 

Secret Detroit: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure by Karen Dybis. Reedy Press, 2018, $20.95

  


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Post # 24

Sunday, July 15, 2018
Quote for the Day: "Flint may be the most egregious modern-day example of environmental injustice." Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, What the Eyes Don't See. 2018.


Reviews


What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
by Mona Hanna-Attisha

It is assumed that one of the primary responsibilities of local, state, and national government, through their numerous health and regulatory agencies, is to protect and ensure the health and safety of its citizens. This is the story of the total failure at all levels of government to protect the men, women, and children of Flint from lead poisoning via their community drinking water. The story is told by the Flint pediatrician, and her team of friends and colleagues who fought to alert Flint to this catastrophic health issue and make Flint, Genesee County, the State of Michigan, and the national government stop the poisoning of Flint by its own water department and deal with the serious health consequences that will affect thousands of Flint children for years to come.    

I was born and raised in Flint and spent nearly half my adult life living and working there. I followed the news closely of the poisoning, the cause, and its far-reaching implications as they were reported. I thought I knew most of the story.  But Dr. Hanna-Attisha's inside account of the crisis rocked me. At times I had to put the book down because I couldn't read through my tears and more than once I became too outraged and upset to read another word. At its heart, this is a book about how the lives of Flint's adults and especially its children were devalued by the very people empowered and entrusted with their well being. It wasn't just a failure of government it was criminal malfeasance. It was also a case of overt institutional racism. The previous sentence was the conclusion reached by a five-member state panel tasked with "reviewing actions regarding water use and testing in Flint."

Dr. Mona, as she is known by her patients, is as good a writer as she is an activist for the public good. The book reads like an edge-of-your-seat thriller as she chronicles her dawning awareness of  Flint's lead poisoning. She was fully aware of the terrible long-term effects lead poisoning would have on the young but the more she tried to make public health officials aware of the crisis the more they discredited her and lied to the public. The book is absolutely gripping reading and the author does a great job of weaving her family history and home life into the story.

The book is a shoo-in for inclusion in Michigan's Notable Book List and deserves consideration for a Pulitzer Prize. It is the best book I've read this year and the most important. And I fully admit I am biased. Long before I read the book I considered Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha a personal hero and, however doubtful in the current political climate, this proud immigrant from Iraq and U.S. citizen deserves a Presidental Medal of Freedom.  And if you don't believe it can happen in your city you could be dead wrong. Flint was the canary in the coal mine. If it wasn't for Dr. Mona and her team of public health activists no one would have noticed or acted upon the dead canary.

What the Eyes Don't See by Mona Hanna-Attisha. One World, 2018, $28.00





The Wreck
by Landon Beach

At the heart of this entertaining and suspenseful thriller is one of Michigan’s great historical mysteries that has gone unanswered for more than three hundred years. The author has done his research and cleverly woven that mystery and the solving of it as the engine that drives this novel of adventure.

School teacher Nate Martin and his wife Brooke spend their summers in an old beach house on the northern coast of Lake Huron that once belonged to his parents.  Michigan’s Sunrise Coast has traditionally been ignored by the wealthy but as available lakeshore property on the Lake Michigan side of the lower peninsula has become harder to find, the well-to-do discovered Lake Huron and its beautiful beaches. The coast the wealthy once looked down their noses at is presently becoming gentrified. This is the first novel or piece of non-fiction that I’ve read that describes the ever increasing shift from small, aging cottages to million dollar summer homes along northern US-23. The author is very good at capturing the feel, character, and charm of Up North small towns and cottage life on the big water.

On one of Nate’s morning strolls, he finds a peculiar and very out-of-place object on the beach. In trying to discover what the object is, where it could have come from, and if it is of any value he is told to look up Hutch, a Coast Guard retiree and widower, who lives up the coast from Nate and Brooke. The man is a bit of a curmudgeon, a jack of all trades has an interest in maritime history, and is estranged from his only daughter.

Nate’s discovery is of great interest to Hutch. The two men slowly become friends as they work to identify and research the object’s history and the adventure it soon leads them on.  The author does a great job of meticulously establishing a fictional resolution of Michigan’s 300-year-old mystery and describing the adventure that ensues. As news of what Nate might have found spreads it attacks the attention of violent men in search of some quick money. The main characters are fully drawn and several minor plot threads give them added dimension. The well thought out lead up to the climax burns like a slow fuse.

In fact, the build-up to the climax is so well drawn out the slam-bang abrupt ending comes as somewhat of a disappointment. I would have liked to have read a much more detailed account of how the villains arrived at the climactic scene. Instead, they were just there. I would have also liked more character development for the villains. Especially the singularly cold-blooded killer of which there was not even a hint as to his murderous side.

Landon Beach admits to wanting to entertain the reader which he does admirably in this his first novel. As an added bonus the reader is introduced to a very good description of the circumstances and the few basic facts surrounding one of the state’s great mysteries.
The Wreck by Landon Beach. Landon Beach Books, 2018, $11.99


  
Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War
by J.H. Kidd

Since its publication in 1908, this memoir of a cavalryman who served in the 6th Michigan has been considered a Civil War classic. J. H. Kidd dropped out of the University of Michigan as a freshman and with the help of his influential father was conditionally appointed an officer in the 6th Regiment of Michigan Cavalry. The condition? In 15 days he had to recruit and enlist 78 men into his company.  He did it in under 15 days and served throughout the war as a cavalry officer under George Armstrong Custer. As Custer rose from the command of the 6th  Cavalry to command of the only cavalry brigade in any of the Union armies made up of regiments from a single state, Kidd followed him up the chain of command from Lieutenant to Brigadier General.

The memoir was written years after the war and was based on Kidd’s many letters to friends and family during the war. The result is one the most thorough and vivid personal accounts of a cavalryman’s daily life in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield to come out of the war.  Skyhorse Publishing’s welcome reissue of the classic with an introduction by Paul Andrew Hutton will hopefully introduce new readers to the important contributions and the many sacrifices Michigan’s cavalry made in saving the Union. It will also cause readers to re-evaluate General Custer’s prowess as a leader and a soldier.

Kidd, who became a journalist after the war, is a fine writer. The book overflows with memorable passages from thumbnail sketches of the outstanding and memorable men he served with to descriptions of battles and their aftermath. Kidd wrote of his first sighting of Lincoln, “In appearance, he was as unique as his place in history…. .” Of his first glance at Custer, the author recalled his “appearance amazed if it did not for the moment amuse me.”
The regimental surgeon looked like a preacher and swore like a pirate and when he got on a roll the man “could congeal blood in one’s veins.”

When Kidd suffered his first wound in battle an ambulance carried him through the debris of the battlefield and he observed, “everything was suggestive of desolation, nothing of the glory of war.” He follows that with a devastating description of the field hospital and watching the slow, painful, and uncomplaining death of a trooper shot in the bowels who knew his wound was fatal. And like every other man who served under Custer, he thought the world of him.

This book belongs on the shelf of any Michigan Civil War buff. No, I take that back, this enduring classic belongs on the shelf of any Civil War buff.
The Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War by J. H. Kidd. Skyhorse Publishing, 2018, $14.99.









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Post # 23

Sunday, July 1, 2018
Quote for the day. "People in the U.P. really believe they have perfected life."
Roger McCoy, Channel 50 (Detroit) newscaster during a radio interview on WJR January 1, 1993.

Reviews


Bad Optics
by Joseph Heywood

A new novel in the Upper Peninsula series featuring Conservation Officer Grady Service is always cause for celebration. If you are a lover of the U.P. and its culture, great storytelling, one-of-a-kind characters, and have even a slight interest in the work of Conservation Officers and you are not a fan of the Service Grady books it's because you have yet to read one.

This eleventh in the series literally takes off where the 10th in the series ended but the book can be read as a standalone. After a record-setting number of arrests by Grady Service during the last deer season, with the ride-along help of life-long poacher Limpy Allerdyce, Service is called to Lansing and is placed on administrative suspension that grows in length from month to month. At first, Grady believes it is political revenge. But as increased visitors and suspicious activities by untraceable businesses begin to regularly occur in the Mosquito Wilderness Area it looks like the suspension might have been a way to remove Service from interfering with someone claiming mineral rights to part of the area. 

Grady has spent his career guarding the wilderness area and keeping developers at bay. He also knows the Mosquito area holds a secret that could contribute to its own ruin. Suspension or no suspension Grady will not stand by and watch it happen. So along with a few friends, tips from a former female governor, and a collection of wonderfully weird and amusing minor characters Service wades into the political swamp in Lansing and chases around the U.P. in pursuit of who or what is trying to pry the mineral rights from the state.

Heywoods' plots are like bottle rockets that go off in all kinds of unexpected and exciting directions. His dialogue is sharp enough to cut and often very funny.  But it's his wonderful sense of place and rich character development, paired with the author's innate storytelling ability that makes his books such runaway successes. In Heywood's last two books the life-long poacher and backwoods idiot savant Limpy Allerdyce has grown from little more than a walk-on part in Heywood's earlier books to a major character and a  hilarious, cockeyed Dr. Watson to Gardy Service's Sherlock Holmes.  Limpy, the UPs famed deer poacher, had an epiphany (he would neither know what the word meant nor how to pronunciation it) in the previous book and became Grady's unofficial partner in catching other poachers.  He may have stopped killing deer but he regularly murders the English language with both outrageously original Yooperisms and his knack for mispronouncing words.  In Allerdyce's world misdemeanor becomes missingdemanners, felonies become falconies, and when physically challenged while sitting and made fun of for his age and small size he replied, "I play bigger than I sit..."

Joseph Heywood is a storyteller at the top of his craft. For the uninitiated, the eleven books in what the publisher calls "The Woods Cop Mysteries" is a sheer mountain of reading pleasure. If one were to ask Limpy if the latest book in the series is any good, he'd probably say, "Youse betcha, cross my harp."

Bad Optics by Joseph Heywood. Lyons Press, 2018, $27.95



Michigan's C. Harold Wills
by Alan Naldrett & Lynn Lyon Naldrett

C. Harold Wills was a brilliant designer, engineer, and metallurgist who made significant contributions to the nascent Detroit automobile industry yet is probably almost unknown outside of knowledgeable automobile historians and aficionados. There appears to be no definitive biography of the man including this brief book which serves as a useful introduction to the influential car designer and manufacturer.

Wills attended post-high school night classes in metallurgy, mechanical engineering, and chemistry in Detroit in the late 1880s but it appears he was pretty much self-taught, and from childhood on had a talent for drafting. He was the first person Henry Ford hired when the Ford Motor Company was founded. Wills became Ford's right-hand man during the pre- WWI years. He designed and served as the chief engineer of Ford's Model T. Wills developed vanadium a light-weight alloy stronger than steel which was used extensively in the car, invented the transmission, and helped develop the Model T's four-cylinder engine. Wills also helped perfect Ford's assembly line by having a man drag a chassis, by rope, down the line while Wills attached doors and other parts to the car.

Although this is a biography of Wills the authors can't pass up interesting and intriguing automotive historical oddities.  The Dodge Brothers allowed kegs of beer in their plant and workers could partake of the suds while working. This was done so the plant didn't lose workers to bars during their shift. After instituting $5 a day pay Ford created a Sociology Department and posted rules of conduct that set limits for alcohol consumption, cleanliness, and what workers could spend their wages on. Agents called on homes of Ford workers to be sure rules were followed, monitored bank accounts, checked children's school attendance, and decreed any male over 22 who worked for Ford must be married.

After WWI Ford and Wills began drifting apart. Wills wanted to update and improve the Model T while Ford felt it was perfect as is. When Henry and his wife went to Paris, Wills built a new prototype to succeed the Model T. When Ford returned and saw the new model he tore the doors off and took a sledgehammer to the car. Ford also didn't like it that Wills shared his dividend check with fellow employees and didn't live a quiet and sedate lifestyle like the Fords. In 1919 the two parted ways and Wills started his own car company.

When the first Wills Sainte Claire rolled off the assembly line in 1921 the authors easily support their claim that it was a car ahead of its time. They point out it was precision engineered and made wide use of a new alloy that was lighter and stronger than steel which made for a very durable car. It also had a number of innovations including backup lights, four-wheel hydraulic brakes, and a twin overhead cam. To house his workers Wills built the model city of Marysville that had paved streets, street lights, public parks, schools, churches and new homes with running water, indoor plumbing, and electric stoves. For unmarried workers, he built dorms with cafeterias that rivaled the finest colleges dormitories.

This short, quick read features an abundance of photographs and illustrations. It is a welcome introduction to and a fascinating portrait of an important automotive engineer, innovator, and visionary who for too long has been either ignored or forgotten. 

Michigan's C. Harold Wills by Alan Naldrett & Lynn Lyon Naldrett. History Press, 2018 $21.99



100 Things To Do On Mackinac Island Before You Die
By Kath Usitalo

I like everything about this book except the title. There are simply too many bucket list books or alternatively titled "100 Things to Do In (insert place name) Before You Die." I'm betting there is someone out there writing "100 Things To Do When Waiting in the Checkout Lane at Meijers Before You Die." These books imply your life or accomplishments are in part measurable by these books. 

That said, Usitalo’s second "100 Things to Do...." book is both a unique and often surprising guide to a one-of-a-kind place. Mackinac Island is unique in that it seamlessly, artfully, and maybe simply by happenstance combines history, soul-touching natural beauty, a time-machine trip to the past, fudge, crass commercialism, outstanding examples of the 17th and 18th Century architecture, and more fudge.
                             
Usitalo’s descriptions of her select group of 100  Mackinac Island tourist spots, restaurants, historic sites, fun activities, shops, guided tours, adventures, and special events are concise (never more than a page long), enthusiastic, and capture the ambiance of the island and the attraction. Her recommended eateries include dinner-jacket-required dining to relaxed bar and grills where you can eat high off the hog at the island’s only BBQ joint, or partake of the delectable whitefish in any number of ways including the Seabiscuit Café’s Whitefish Reuben with coleslaw and Swiss on marbled rye. You can also drink yourself into a caffeine high at a coffee house or tip back a Michigan craft beer, mixed drink, or even a fudge cocktail at a number of quaint establishments.

The book is full of surprises for even those who visit regularly. There are three places to overnight with your dog and Fido rides free on any ferry. The island is home to one of the oldest (founded in 1884) family-owned grocery stores in the nation. You can square dance weekly at St. Anne’s Catholic Church, or visit a bar that does business in a building that dates back to 1780. The public library welcomes visitors who can peruse newspapers and magazines from an Adirondack chair on a deck overlooking the Straits. There are also kayak tours that last a half hour or include an overnight campout on Round Island. I especially liked the very thorough index and an appendix of suggested itineraries that range from Fun for the Family to Winter on the Island.

This is a handy, compact, and a valuable guide for fully experiencing and enjoying Mackinac Island.
100 Things To Do On Mackinac Island Before You Die by Kath Usitalo. Reedy Press, 2018, $16.


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