As If We Were Prey is a series of short stories set mostly in small-town northern Michigan. Delp follows boys and full-grown men who know how to fight, fish, and hunt, but struggle to use those skills to overcome the emptiness and dysfunction of their day-to-day lives. The book is one of Wayne State University's Made in Michigan Writers Series and was a 2010 ForeWord Book of the Year Award medal-winner in the category of Fiction-Short Stories.

Michael is also including his book The Coast of Nowhere: Meditations on Rivers, Lakes, and Streams. It's a collection of short prose meditations and poetry that embrace the motion and rhythm of moving water.

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The Lake in Winter
by Jerry Dennis

(January, Cathead Point, near the tip of Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula)

It changes every day, every hour. It is a thousand lakes, changing faces with every shift in wind and light - flurried by offshore wind, whitecapped in squalls, colored flannel gray or pearl-white or stormy black beneath the winter clouds, a dozen blues when the sky is blue.

There’s a contemporary Japanese poet who writes a diary on a slab of stone instead of paper, with water instead of ink. He writes a word, and a moment later it evaporates. This, he suggests, is the true record of a life.

We go to the shore in search of elemental things. Probably it is just coincidence that the elemental things we find there - sand, sun, wind, and waves - correspond exactly to the four elements of the ancient Greeks and Hindus: earth, fire, air, and water. More to the point is that we need elemental things to help us restore our primitive senses to working condition. We need periodically to look, listen, scent, taste, and feel our way through the world, if only for the relief of not having to think our way through. Everyone understands that eliminating superfluities can help us discover what is important in our lives.

That’s not an easy task. Time coats us in natural increase, accruing layers as if we were snowballs rolling down a hill. Jobs, families, friends, houses, cars, dogs, our health – just maintaining it all is full-time work. Add the bulging files of information, the gunnysacks of mistakes and the duffels of misjudgments and the barrow-loads of memories, habits, regrets, opinions, prejudices, principles, laws, and codes collected in a lifetime and you can see the problem. We carry as much as we can, and the rest we stack around us until all our routes to the outside are blocked. Even when we find our way out we’re wearing too many layers of tuxedoes and zoot suits and cardigans, Icelandic woolens, parkas, longjohns, thermal socks, etc. We’re strong but we grow weary of lugging that Collyer-brothers’ accumulation everywhere we go. We bend beneath the load, our backs about to break, groaning as we push our heaped-up grocery carts through the streets.

It’s too much. Now and then we need to strip down to the naked flame at our core. Most of what we carry is baggage anyway - just adornment and vanity, ballast and deadweight. It’s the crap the pioneers threw out along the Oregon Trail.

After lunch I walked to the crest of the dune and looked out at the lake. Even from that small elevation, maybe fifty feet, the water’s clarity was startling. From a boat, on a day like this, with the sun overhead, you can lean over the side and see boulders on the bottom thirty feet down. The pale shallows stepped into blue depths. The offshore sandbars were there, a hundred yards apart, each deeper than the one before, with bands of increasingly darker blue between them. Beyond the last bar a steep drop-off into very deep water turned the lake midnight blue.

Lake Michigan. My lake, I often think, because I grew up near it and because many in my family settled along its shores. So much water, in a body so large they say that the Netherlands could fit inside, with enough room left over for several New England states. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes in volume, and third, after Superior and Huron, in surface area. It is the only one of the five to be contained entirely within the United States.

Most of the 1,640 miles of shore is sandy. Some of that shore, especially around the southern end, through Indiana and Illinois, is lined with industry. Around the top of the lake in Wisconsin and Michigan are scattered limestone bluffs and rocky strands. But most of the rest is blond sand beaches that are among the loveliest in North America. Wind, waves, and ice have shoved that sand into the most extensive network of freshwater dunes on the planet. They reach their apogee about thirty miles south of Cathead Point at Sleeping Bear Dunes, the crowning feature of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, but they extend nearly unbroken for 300 miles along the eastern and southern shores of the lake, from northern Michigan nearly to Chicago. A few scattered dunes are found also along the Wisconsin shore and at the top of the lake, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but they lack the dimensions of those that face the prevailing winds.

A friend who lives part of every year in the West once told me that Lake Michigan plays the same role in the Midwest that the mountains do in Montana. That’s true for all five lakes. Like the Rockies, you can see them from miles away, forming a backdrop that is also a felt presence, always there, looming in our lives. They are depositories of geological and historical power that shape the land and the culture to themselves. We orient to them and are drawn to them and take for granted that their presence and the weather they create will affect our travels and alter our daily plans.

The lakes have always been the most prominent shaper of the character or “spirit” of the Great Lakes region. The stronger the spirit of a place, the farther it resonates beyond its borders. Alaska, Texas, Vermont, and Maine all have it in abundance. So do large geographical regions such as Appalachia, the Canadian Maritimes, and the Cajun country of Louisiana. A mythological portrait of a place needs to be only approximately accurate to give outsiders an idea of what it is like, or enough of an idea, at least, to inspire them to take some interest in it. That might explain in part why people who have never visited the Everglades or the Arctic Wildlife Refuge are willing to write letters to congressmen and donate money to protect them.

The Great Lakes have not had that advantage. Their mythology is not clearly defined. It was once very clear, a living mythology, inhabited by people, wolf, moose, and bear, but the stories that passed around campfires for thousands of years were drowned out by European invaders wielding their own stories of Jesuit martyrs, French voyageurs, Paul Bunyans of the logging camps, mariners of the inland seas, and up-by-the-bootstraps giants of industry. Most of those stories have now, in turn, lost their power and have not been replaced. Enduring mythologies tend to accrue to dominate features of a landscape. Louisiana has swamps; New England, hardscrabble hills; Montana, big sky. But the Great Lakes are too varied. No representative image fits. The water and dunes and rocks and cities on the shore are lost in a haze of homogeneity. Surely that is why those who have never stood beside the big lakes find it so difficult to imagine them.

Excerpted from The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes, by Jerry Dennis. Used with permission of the author and The University of Michigan Press. Visit Jerry’s website at www.jerrydennis.net. Here's a cool trailer for the book that Jerry's son videographer Aaron Dennis made that you will enjoy as well!

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Cranberries by argusmaniac

Red Beauties in Lake Magazine's 2006 Holiday Issue is an engaging look at cranberry farming in Michigan. Although Michigan only has a small number of cranberry farms in the northeast, Upper Peninsula, and the southwestern corner of the state along Lake Michigan totaling about 250 acres - compared to more than 18,000 acres in nation-leading Wisconsin - the state does have all the requirements to grow a cranberry industry. The feature also provides a look at what's involved in cranberry farming, and I have to say I learned a thing or two!

For more about the official fruit of Thanksgiving, you can go to the Cranberry Institute, which features tons of information about the purported health benefits of cranberries. Although it's probably not what you'll put on your table next Thursday, Locavorious has a tasty Michigan Cranberries in Cranberry Apple Pork Loin Roast along with some information about Michigan cranberry farms. You can get a nice recipe for cranberry pie from Michigan-based Kitchen Chick. Michigan's leading producer is  Centennial Cranberry Farm way up on Whitefish Point (near Paradise, MI), and their site is loaded with cranberry information & recipes. In closing, here's a simple recipe that you can make with 100% Michigan ingredients. We'll  try out in the Absolute Michigan kitchen next week and report back!

Baked Cranberry Acorn Squash

4 small acorn squash
1 cup chopped apple
1 cup fresh cranberries, chopped
1/4 cup Michigan maple syrup
2 Tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

Cut squash in half lengthwise; remove seeds. Place cut side down in a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Bake in 350 degree oven for 35 minutes. Turn cut side up. Combine remaining ingredients; fill squash with fruit mixture. Continue baking for 25 minutes or till squash is tender. Makes 8 servings.

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Detroit Gargoyles by The Whistling Monkey
part of a set of detroit Gargoyles

Among all the impish offspring of the Stone God, wizards and witches, that made Detroit feared by the early settlers, none were more dreaded than the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf), or Demon of the Strait, for it appeared only when there was to be trouble. In that it delighted. It was a shambling, red-faced creature, with a cold, glittering eye and teeth protruding from a grinning mouth. Cadillac, founder of Detroit, having struck at it, presently lost his seigniory and his fortunes. It was seen scampering along the shore on the night before the attack on Bloody Run, when the brook that afterward bore this name turned red with the blood of soldiers. People saw it in the smoky streets when the city was burned in 1805, and on the morning of Hull's surrender it was found grinning in the fog. It rubbed its bony knuckles expectantly when David Fisher paddled across the strait to see his love, Soulange Gaudet, in the only boat he could find--a wheel-barrow, namely--but was sobered when David made a safe landing.

It chuckled when the youthful bloods set off on Christmas day to race the frozen strait for the hand of buffer Beauvais's daughter Claire, but when her lover's horse, a wiry Indian nag, came pacing in it fled before their happiness. It was twice seen on the roof of the stable where that sour-faced, evil-eyed old mumbler, Jean Beaugrand, kept his horse, Sans Souci--a beast that, spite of its hundred years or more, could and did leap every wall in Detroit, even the twelve-foot stockade of the fort, to steal corn and watermelons, and that had been seen in the same barn, sitting at a table, playing seven-up with his master, and drinking a liquor that looked like melted brass. The dwarf whispered at the sleeping ear of the old chief who slew Friar Constantine, chaplain of the fort, in anger at the teachings that had parted a white lover from his daughter and led her to drown herself--a killing that the red man afterward confessed, because he could no longer endure the tolling of a mass bell in his ears and the friar's voice in the wind.

The Nain Rouge it was who claimed half of the old mill, on Presque Isle, that the sick and irritable Josette swore that she would leave to the devil when her brother Jean pestered her to make her will in his favor, giving him complete ownership. On the night of her death the mill was wrecked by a thunder-bolt, and a red-faced imp was often seen among the ruins, trying to patch the machinery so as to grind the devil's grist. It directed the dance of black cats in the mill at Pont Rouge, after the widow's curse had fallen on Louis Robert, her brother-in-law. This man, succeeding her husband as director of the property, had developed such miserly traits that she and her children were literally starved to death, but her dying curse threw such ill luck on the place and set afloat such evil report about it that he took himself away. The Nain Rouge may have been the Lutin that took Jacques L'Esperance's ponies from the stable at Grosse Pointe, and, leaving no tracks in sand or snow, rode them through the air all night, restoring them at dawn quivering with fatigue, covered with foam, bloody with the lash of a thorn-bush. It stopped that exercise on the night that Jacques hurled a font of holy water at it, but to keep it away the people of Grosse Pointe still mark their houses with the sign of a cross.

It was lurking in the wood on the day that Captain Dalzell went against Pontiac, only to perish in an ambush, to the secret relief of his superior, Major Gladwyn, for the major hoped to win the betrothed of Dalzell; but when the girl heard that her lover had been killed at Bloody Run, and his head had been carried on a pike, she sank to the ground never to rise again in health, and in a few days she had followed the victims of the massacre. There was a suspicion that the Nain Rouge had power to change his shape for one not less offensive. The brothers Tremblay had no luck in fishing through the straits and lakes until one of them agreed to share his catch with St. Patrick, the saint's half to be sold at the church-door for the benefit of the poor and for buying masses to relieve souls in purgatory. His brother doubted if this benefit would last, and feared that they might be lured into the water and turned into fish, for had not St. Patrick eaten pork chops on a Friday, after dipping them into holy water and turning them into trout? But his good brother kept on and prospered and the bad one kept on grumbling. Now, at Grosse Isle was a strange thing called the rolling muff, that all were afraid of, since to meet it was a warning of trouble; but, like the feu follet, it could be driven off by holding a cross toward it or by asking it on what day of the month came Christmas. The worse of the Tremblays encountered this creature and it filled him with dismay. When he returned his neighbors observed an odor--not of sanctity--on his garments, and their view of the matter was that he had met a skunk. The graceless man felt convinced, however, that he had received a devil's baptism from the Nain Rouge, and St. Patrick had no stancher allies than both the Tremblays, after that.

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Elmore Leonard, The Dickens of Detroit

Detroit author Elmore Leonard is celebrating his eighty-sixth birthday today (October 11, 2011). Leonard was born in New Orleans in 1925. He has made the Detroit area his home since 1934, when his family moved there. The city of Detroit often serves as the main character in his novels. As a result, fans often refer to Elmore Leonard as the ‘Dickens of Detroit.”

Leonard graduated from University of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1943. He then immediately joined the Navy, where he served with the Seabees. After his service, he enrolled at the University of Detroit and graduated in 1950 with a degree in English and Philosophy. Leonard started his writing career as a copywriter at the Campbell-Ewald Advertising Agency. Writing on the side, he was able to publish his first novel, The Bounty Hunters in 1953. In his early career, he focused on writing pulp Westerns, because that was what was selling at the time. Leonard eventually moved on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers. A large number of his books have been turned into movies or television programs.

Critics praise Leonard for his effective use of dialogue and the gritty realism in his books. His unique ear for dialogue and the ability to capture it on the page is rarely matched. Concise and plot driven, his stories are stuffed with colorful characters and tricky, often humorous plot twists. “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it,” serves as Leonard’s writing mantra. He explains his success when advising aspiring writers by stating, “Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.” Stephen King has called him “the great American writer.”

Among Leonard’s best known works are Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Mr. Majestyk, LaBrava, Rum Punch, Freaky Deaky and Killshot. In 2010, his short story “Fire In the Hole’ was the basis for the television series Justified. The Library of Michigan owns all of Leonard’s works in their Michigan Collection. Search ANSWER, the Library’s online catalog to locate works by Elmore Leonard.

Sources for this article include the WMRA Public Radio Blog and you can learn more about Elmore Leonard at his web site.

You can check out a video where Elmore Leonard's shares his tips for writers, but we'll start you off with part 1 of a 4 part feature on Elmore Leonard from Emery King's World Class Detroiters. Here's part 2, part 3 and part 4!

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The Fenton Hotel, a former inn-turned-gourmet restaurant in the small, mid-state town of Fenton in Genesee County, is an establishment that prides itself on hanging onto things from its historic past. All the original tin ceilings still adorn the dining room, and the foyer looks much as it did back in stagecoach days. The second story's glory days still exists in its tile-floor ballroom, the communal men's and women's bathrooms and the dingy corner room once reserved for Emery, the place's late, longtime custodian. But the old brick building retains something far beyond old chairs and ancient porcelain fixtures in its aging halls.

Many people say the Fenton Hotel still hosts Emery, himself, along with an entire cast of ghostly hangers-on. People can hear Emery walking around in his former upstairs digs, his footsteps reverberating in the tin ceiling. Sometimes he thumps on the walls after customers leave, as if to tell the staff to get a move on. But Emery was a gentleman, say staff members at the Fenton. That's how they know it's some other ghost that sometimes gropes the arms or buttocks of unsuspecting waitresses.

And there are other spooks, each specter with his or her unique "signature" activity. The restaurant hostess told Weird Michigan in hushed tones that the incidents are not a thing of the past, either. "Things are still going on," she said ominously as she seated us at one of the green linen-covered tables. We ordered baked brie from the extensive menu and waited for the unseen hotel guests to arrive and float around us. Surrounded by intricate stained glass windows and well-preserved architecture, it was easy to envision patrons of yesteryear enjoying the evening alongside the contemporary crowd.

Built in 1856, the Fenton boasts its own official state historical marker, which explains that the interior is still much the same, although the exterior's old front porch fell victim to a team of runaway horses in 1904. The side of the building that faces the parking lot is embellished with paintings of ghostly inhabitants from another time, which only adds to the feeling of having stepped back into another century.

The bar area on the other side of the foyer is probably the building's hottest ghost spot. A bartender named Brittany told Weird Michigan that she was standing at her work station one evening when one of the wine glasses hanging by its stem from a slotted nook suddenly flew off its perch and sailed across the bar, crashing and breaking. She has also heard someone call her name when no one else was in the room, felt something brush her leg, and on several occasions, customers have told her they saw someone hugging her at a time when she could see or feel no one.

Besides the phantom cuddler, there is the recurring case of the mysterious man at table 32. Every now and then, a man seated there will order a shot of Jack Daniels on the rocks and the bartender will duly pour one, but upon attempting to serve it to the "customer," finds nothing but thin air. Speculation is that one of the house ghosts wants a drink badly enough to show himself and order one, but ultimately lacks the cash to pay for it and the throat to gulp it down.

The dining room is active, too. Two waitresses have spotted a disappearing black cat running across the floor. One staff person told us that last December, one of the ghosts decided to make merry by grabbing the posteriors of several waitresses, who invariably whirled around only to find no visible face to slap. December seems to be one of the restaurant's most active months for hauntings, said one waitress. "It's like they get excited with all the decorations and the parties," she noted. She also said that staff have heard ghostly voices admonishing them that "no personal calls" are allowed, and that sometimes a man's voice comes out of the bar speakers, either singing along with entertainers or making comments to customers.

Weird Michigan was able to take a guided tour of the closed upper level, which generally is not allowed since it is used for storage and many of the old rooms are no longer in good repair. We didn't see anything unusual; even Emery's small, cold room was quiet, although we couldn't help but wonder if the old custodian was upset at our intrusion. But while standing in the darkened hallway, one of us heard a female voice whispering close by that we could not explain. Strangest of all was the fact that after we descended the stairs, we found a small glob of melted candle wax near the viewfinder on our digital camera. There was no candle on our dining room table, and we saw none on the second floor. The wax globule was not there earlier while we were shooting other pictures. Perhaps one of the old hotel guests was examining us at closer range than we realized, using the lighting methods available in 1856! Or maybe someone was trying to tell us not to look at the upper story inhabitants through that viewfinder.

The book Haunted Michigan by Gerald S. Hunter devotes an entire chapter to the multi-spirited Fenton Hotel, and includes tales of various apparitions seen by staff and customers, including the face of a bearded man outside a second story window, a tall man in a black top hat, and a strange figure who actually took payment from several customers.

One other strange incident happened as Weird Michigan enjoyed the bizarre ambience of the Fenton Hotel. A dining room guest said she was in the ladies' room, sitting in the third stall, when she felt someone touch her hair and lift up a few strands. She thought that was odd, so we asked the waitress about it and her eyes grew wide.

"Back when the hotel was open," she said, "the cheaper rooms on the third floor were rented by working girls in the town. Rumor is that one of them got pregnant by a hotel patron, and she hung herself in the hotel. Other people have seen her in that third stall."

According to a hotel brochure, several séances have been performed on the premises, but the ghosts seem determined to stay. Perhaps for them, the Fenton Hotel is like the Eagles song hit song Hotel California… "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

You can order Weird Michigan online from Barnes & Noble and at fine bookstores everywhere. Check out a whole lot more Michigan oddities from ghosts and goblins to people and places that are just a little bit - or a lot - strange!

Linda Godfrey grew up in Milton, Wisconsin, spending the majority of her time doing the same things she does now; reading, writing, making art and reading comics. She continues to create commercial art (represented by Tom Stocki at artfactoryltd.com) and fine art, and often illustrates her own books, specializing in cut paper collage and forensic drawings of strange creatures from witness descriptions. She lives in rural Elkhorn with her husband, Steven, with whom she has two grown sons who are remarkably tolerant of their mother's weird career.

Artwork for this article by Andy McFarlane, who enjoys Photoshop probably a bit too much.

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at Mackinac :: a composite from -3 and -43 by Emery Co Photo

Sea Monster of the Straits

The authorities tried hard to convince the public what they saw were only giant catfish, but even the oldest, orneriest cats would be hard-pressed to attain a length of forty-five feet! The owner of a resort along the Cheboygan lakefront reported seeing something of just that size, and two of them, frolicking in the Mackinac Straits on Lake Huron in front of his property, about 600 feet from shore, according to an article in the June 25, 1976 Grand Rapids Press. The day after the resort owner called authorities about it, Cheboygan County Sheriff Stanley McKervey stopped by to have a look for himself. To his surprise, he also was able to observe one of the creatures. "I went down to the beach, and sure enough, I'm looking at something 20, maybe 30 feet long, swimming just below the surface," he said in the article. "I was amazed. I didn't know what it was, but it sure wasn't a publicity stunt."

The sheriff continued watching the creature through binoculars. It only rose about an inch above water level, he said, but any disturbance on shore would cause it to dive deeper again. And that's exactly what happened when the sheriff ordered a couple of deputies to surveil the thing in a canoe. It was gone long before the pair got there. Unfortunately, rough water conditions set in the next few days and no one could go out for another look. It wasn't observed again, and other experts theorized that perhaps it was a giant eel or carp. But neither of those sound like what the sheriff and the resort owner saw!

Lake Leelanau Monster

The story of an early 20th Century sea monster sighting was sent to The Shadowlands Web site by a reader whose great-grandfather was the witness. The boy was fishing for perch one day in 1910 in the shallows of Lake Leelanau in Leelanau County. The lake had been dammed in the late 1800's to provide water power for the local mill and to enable logging. The dam also flooded much surrounding area, turning it into swamps and bogs punctuated by dead, standing trees.

On that particular day, the young great-grandfather, William Gauthier, rowed out to a new fishing spot near the town of Lake Leelanau. Looking for good perch habitat, he paddled up close to a tree that he estimated to stand about five feet tall above the water, with a six-inch trunk. He was in about seven feet of water, and after deciding this would be a good place to stop and cast a line, began tying the boat to the tree.

That's when young William discovered the tree had eyes. They were staring him dead in the face at about four feet above water level. The boy and serpent exchanged a long gaze, then the creature went, "Bloop" into the water. Gauthier said later that the creature's head passed one end of the boat while the tail was still at the other end, though it was undulating very quickly through the water. The writer noted that Gauthier always admitted to having been thoroughly frightened by his encounter, and that the event caused him to stay off that lake for many years.

The writer added that his great-grandfather came from a prominent area family and was very well-educated, and that he knew others who would admit privately but not publicly that they, too, had seen the creature. No sightings have been reported in recent times, but who knows how many people have believed they were passing by a rotting old cedar when in fact they had just grazed the Leelanau lake monster?

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It has been a year since one Kalamazoo couple moved into their 7-year old home in August, 2010, and the "fun" that started the first month has never stopped.

• Five separate times they heard someone walk up to their porch, tromp around, open and close the screen door then walk back down. They have looked on as the footstep sounds were in action but saw no one.
• An old woman stands over them in their bed; she doesn't go away until the move toward her
• The man heard someone run across the living room as he lay on the sofa; he asked the spirit why and a woman's voice answered "because I was embarrassed."
• The sound of loud footsteps upstairs can be heard by the couple when downstairs
• The voice of a little girl told the male to stop whistling!
• Voices whisper unintelligible sentences while the woman is reading
• The door to the garage opens by itself
• The woman's jewelry transports around the house (called an apport)

The couple has not sought help as far as I know but this is one of the more active locations I've heard of. Perhaps the ghosts will get fed up with this summer's heat wave and move someplace cooler. My advice to that couple: leave some nice K-zoo cemetery brochures out and circle a few nice crypts.

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The perfect piece for 4th of July - have a great weekend!

Thomas Moran, owner of Moran Ironworks in Onaway, expresses his patriotism in a big way and not just on the 4th of July. His giant sheet metal head of George Washington can be seen on M-68 just outside that town year round, as can his Liberty Bell in Onaway and bald eagle in Alpena.

A self-taught artist and son of a lumberjack, Moran learned to fabricate metal in high school shop class, and kept it up as a hobby. He began creating the massive sculptures to spice up Onaway's Independence Day parade, and now his works are sprinkled around Michigan. A giant gun, water pump and the World's Largest Chain Saw decorate the parking lot of Da Yooper Store in Ishpeming, while Cheboygan boasts an oversized cantilever hook, fresh water aquarium, globe and ax.

Moran's work is not to be taken lightly; his head of Washington weighs 6,000 pounds. The curly metal strands of Washington's metal wig weight 2,000 pounds alone. Fans of roadside art all hope Moran keeps creating these well-crafted eye-poppers. Moran says his inspiration is just something inside of him.

See it all at Moran Iron Works!

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Every year on Memorial Day, Americans honor our fallen war veterans and also our deceased loved ones by decorating cemeteries and grave sites. But some Michigan cemeteries come already decorated -- with mysterious headstones that glow by themselves!

One of the best known graveyards with unexplained night lights is Forest Hill Cemetery just east of Evart on Six Mile Road. People have reported seeing strangely glowing objects there since the late 1800s. The cemetery lies near a place where Italian railroad workers once camped. According to local legend, a father and son from that camp both drowned in the nearby Muskegon River. The father's job had been to light kerosene lanterns at nightfall, and after his death other workers claimed they saw lanterns that appeared lit at a distance but darkened when approached. They whispered that the lights were carried by the ghost of the father searching for his dead son. As the cemetery grew nearby, however, eventually the tombstones took on the glow of the phantom lanterns.

The tombstones also worked - and still work -- the same way as the lanterns. Half a dozen or so tombstones appear to glow from within when viewed from outside the cemetery, but fade when the viewer moves in for a closer look. Jim Crees, editor of the Evart Review, wrote in a July 1, 1988 article that local investigators spent three weeks studying everything from the angle of passing automobile headlights to possible reflections of city lights. Phosphorescent headstone materials were also ruled out. Crees declared the mystery unsolved.

Harrison Cemetery at Schoolcraft also boasts glowing headstones. Strangely, they behave just like the Evart stones and lose their illumination at a distance of about 500 feet. Is this a type of spirit manifestation or some little known effect of Michigan air, soil or landscape that is somehow transferred to the headstones? Whatever the cause, Michigan's glowing tombstones provide a year-round memorial to the unknown.

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Fly Fishing by Murtasma

Field & Stream Magazine's FlyTalk picked the 12 Best States for flyfishing in the U.S.A., and Michigan hooked their #1 spot. Kirk Deeter writes that he based his picks on a variety of factors including all-around (multi-species) opportunities, angler-friendly environment and a cultural affinity to fly fishing.

1. Michigan. Another sentimental pick, for sure. But the first brown trout in America was planted here. Trout Unlimited started here. You're never more than a few miles or so from a fly-fishable body of water. There's bass, pike, panfish, steelhead, salmon... and the carp fishing can rival some of the best "flats" action in America, no joke.

The Michigan DNR's fishing pages includes information about licenses, weekly fishing reports and maps of inland lakes and natural rivers.

If you go to /Fish on Absolute Michigan, you can get all kinds of articles on Michigan fish & fishing, including features about the history of fishing in our state from Hemingway to the planting of salmon in the Great Lakes - even a 1950s travel reel on Michigan trout fishing! There's also features on invasive species like the Asian Carp that threaten Michigan's $7 billion  fishing industry.

PS: Because it's Michigan Wine Month, here's a shout out to one of the coolest dining experiences that I know of in Michigan. It's called Dining on the Fly. It takes place several times each summer in northern Michigan and  features a day on the river followed by a streamside dinner paired with wines from Bowers Harbor Vineyards!

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From the UP to the mitten's thumb, residents of the Wolverine State have honed the practice of April Fool's Day jokes into high art. Here are a few of my favorites.

The Sturgis Sega Signs

In 2003, the US was at war with Iraq and everyone's mind was on terrorist attacks and weapons of mass destruction. That year in Sturgis, St. Joseph County, a group of young men decided to play an April Fool's Day joke on their town and posted a bunch of signs that repeated a crazy-bad translation of a phrase from a Japanese Sega video game: All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time. The phrase had become an Internet joke several years earlier, but most of the good citizens of Sturgis did not know that. The signs caused more than a little consternation in the town until their source was figured out.

Elkton's Blue Alien

In 1958, people around Elkton reported that a short blue man that just had to be an alien was lurking around area roads. What they didn't know was that three young men just home from military tours of duty had decided to capitalize on the nation-wide flying saucer craze and spoof their townsfolk that spring.

The trio made a costume out of a football helmet fitted with flashing lights and some long johns, boots and gloves all sprayed with blue paint.

One of the men, Jerry Sprague, was deemed best fit for the costume. On at least eight occasions, his friends drove him out in the country concealed in the trunk of a car, then let him out to trot along the ditches as amazed motorists drove by. People called the sheriff to describe the creature as anywhere from two to ten feet tall. One said it ran faster than a human and another said it was perched atop a telephone pole. The three finally confessed their prank to the local authorities who thought it was hilarious and let them go. Life Magazine wrote about the Elkton Alien in their May 1958 issue and the blue helmet was proudly in the Elkton barber shop for many years.

Why a blue alien? It was designed after a popular song released that year by Betty Johnson called "Little Blue Man."

The Legend of the Dogman

In 1987, Traverse City DJ Steve Cook decided to create a legend as an April Fool's Day joke for his listeners. He mashed up some old logging camp tales of an upright, doglike creature with a couple of recent news items and some totally invented features such as the claim the creature returned in the seventh year of every decade. He then recorded it as a spoken poem with a music track and played it as "The Legend." People began calling the station saying the creature was no joke; they had seen it too. Twenty five years later -- thanks to many eyewitnesses -- the unknown upright canine known as the Dogman, Manwolf, Beast of Bray Road or Werewolf is a nation-wide phenomenon and the subject of several books by yours truly (Linda S. Godfrey).

In more recent years, Cook enacted a second hoax with a doctored Super 8 film of a blurry, charging quadruped he called The Gable Film that went viral on the Internet before Cook admitted on the Monsterquest TV show that it was a fake. That show, the series' finale, aired March 24, 2010 - a week before April 1.

Author Linda Godfrey's most recent book is The Michigan Dogman; Werewolves and Other Unknown Canines Across the USA.

YouTube has several versions of the Little Blue Man - this one is the most fun!

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ABSOLUTE MICHIGAN: What prompted you to do this?

LOREEN NIEWENHUIS: I've always felt connected to Lake Michigan.   It has always been the place where I relax, walk, and recenter myself.   When I turned 45, I wanted to take on something large, something that would challenge me on many levels.   So, I pulled out my maps of Lake Michigan and plotted a 1000-mile route around it.

ABSOLUTE MICHIGAN: What was your favorite stretch of Michigan beach?

LOREEN NIEWENHUIS: I fell in love with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Leelanau Peninsula all over again.   The natural beauty is amazing, the towns are very connected to the lake along this stretch, and there are several excellent independent bookstores along the way.

You can read what Loreen has to say about the Sleeping Bear Dunes Lakeshore on her blog, and here's a brief excerpt from the book.

Bobcat, dead deer, and cougars, OH MY!

North of Portage Lake, it soon gets rather remote and the shoreline becomes rugged with high, wooded dunes flanking me to my right, with the expanse of calm lake to my left. There are miles without any signs of civilization, and I pass curious tracks along a small stream that look like a bobcat made them. Not a mile from the stream, a severed foreleg of a deer rests, bloody, on the shore.

A bobcat couldn't take down a full-sized deer. To forestall the obvious conclusion that something even larger had killed it, I think up a "Clumsy Deer Scenario" where the deer trips, conks its head on a rock, and is eaten by the bobcat.

Oh, clumsy, clumsy deer!

Then I think about all the times that I have stumbled on the trek so far, over icy rocks, through roots grabbing at my feet, over piles of driftwood. I begin to feel little ravenous cat eyes on me, waiting for me to blunder, stumble, and conk my head. At home, I have a 15-pound housecat who has some rather feral moments, so I am sure I can fend off a bobcat – as long as I have my walking stick and my wits about me.

To allay my fears, though, I yell, "Venison is DELICIOUS!"

There are wild cats bigger than bobcats in Michigan: cougars. And I don't mean the Demi Moore type. These big carnivores – over 100 pounds – have been seen all over the state. Cougars are genetically programmed to jump on the back of their prey and clamp their jaws on the neck, working their incisors between the vertebrae to sever the spinal cord so their prey will stop struggling. Then: dinnertime.

My main consolation was that I'd probably not see a cougar come at me. It would be over before I had time to say, "Venison is DELICIOUS!" I hope that my larger pack would protect me, or somehow make me seem less of an option for a cougar dinner.

Or, maybe, the cougar would knock me over, pack and all, but I'd have time to pull out my pepper spray and spray the cat and not myself. And I wished for a big cat that did not think pepper spray would make me taste even more delicious.

Visit Loreen's website A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach for more including photos, excerpts, book signings and ordering information.

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Linda has provided a suitable tale for shipwreck month on Absolute Michigan...

Sticks and Stones by Jeff Gaydash
(Forester Park, Lake Huron)

In the mid-1800s, the Lake Huron port and lumber town of Forester was a far cry from the sleepy, near ghost town it is today. The remains of huge pilings just off the scanty beach now stand as crumbling reminders of the great pier that once bustled with Great Lakes ships and sailors.

One of those sailors unwittingly started the legend that would be Forester's main claim to fame after the lumber ran out and the ships stopped coming.On shore leave one day, the unnamed young man took up with a local girl named Minnie Quay, whose folks, James and Mary Ann Quay, owned the town tavern.

The Quays forbid Minnie to see her beloved, but the order proved tragically unnecessary after his ship became one of many that succumbed to Great Lakes gales. Minnie made one more visit to the forbidden pier after learning that news, and on April 26, 1876, at the age of 16, she threw herself into the water in hope of joining him in the afterlife. She lies in a waterfront cemetery now, next to the bodies of her father, mother and brother.

Legend says that she still wanders the beaches, moaning for her lost sailor, and that some have seen her standing waist deep in the water, beckoning others to join her. The former Quay home and bar still stands, giving Minnie's ghost even more reason to linger.

Here's a song video about Minnie with amazing images!

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The Wall Street Journal says that this week's General Motors (GM) Initial Public Offering could be the largest in history, but is complicated by the $40 billion the automaker owes the US Government, which will be seeking to sell its stock as well:

Earlier Tuesday, GM confirmed it would raise the expected price for shares sold in its IPO to a range of $32 to $33 from the previous $26 to $29. GM also plans to sell up to $4.6 billion of preferred stock, up from $3 billion previously planned. The IPO will be priced Wednesday after the U.S. stock markets close and the shares will start trading Thursday.

...At the new level, the U.S. government would raise around $13 billion, including the overallotment, at the midpoint of the higher price range. That's up from $8.3 billion at the lower price and share number.

You can Read on to make sense of the issues surrounding the IPO. One thing that will doubtless fuel the IPO is the fact that yesterday Motor Trend named the Chevy Volt 2011 Car of the Year. The award is the biggest in the auto industry, and Motor Trend says that the Volt has some of the most advanced engineering ever seen in an American car and writes:

In the 61-year history of the Car of the Year award, there have been few contenders as hyped -- or as controversial -- as the Chevrolet Volt. The Volt started life an Old GM project, then arrived fully formed as a symbol of New GM, carrying all the emotional and political baggage of that profound and painful transition. As a result, a lot of the sound and fury that has surrounded the Volt's launch has tended to obscure a simple truth: This automobile is a game-changer.

You can read much more about their decision and watch this video summarizing the selection:

Photo Credit: 2011 Chevrolet Volt in Production by ibmphoto24

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Most people decorate their lawn for Halloween just one month out of the year. But in 1905, one Detroit man created a year-round stone altar dedicated to Beelzebub in front of his modest home at 308 Stanton Avenue. Herman Menz, an immigrant stonecutter, announced that he was dedicated to his true friend, Satan, and he added carved words declaring that man made the gods -- not the other way around -- on the altar's base. He topped it with a carved half-devil, half-gargoyle that scowled down at passersby in a menacing way.

The good people of Detroit objected strenuously, pitching rocks and garbage at the statue. The newspapers covered the fracas in detail and quoted Menz as saying, "You say you will knock its head off, hey? Well let them hurt my - my image ... I will make the city pay for it." News articles continued to keep the outrage alive with headlines such as "Menz is making more devils."

Menz, a former Episcopalian, said he inherited his "unorthodox opinions" from his father. The statue stayed on his lawn for several years until a Belle Isle amusement park bought it for a bridge decoration.

Linda writes: If anyone knows where it is I would love to know.

From "Strange Michigan; More Wolverine Weirdness," Trails Books, 2008.

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Black cats are everywhere this time of year as Michiganians start festooning their lawns with Halloween decorations. No respectable witch would be seen without her yowling companion. But parts of Michigan were seeing a different kind of black cat – one weighing over 100 pounds and with fangs like ivory daggers – starting around the mid-1950s.

The Gogomain Swamp south of Sault Ste. Marie – also known as the Forest of Doom – was where the ebon-furred creature started clawing its way into the Wolverine State's consciousness. The first report of a phantom-like, black great cat came from nearby Munuscong Bay in 1954.

In 1972, a deer hunter heard the sounds of a large animal kill in the woods near his camp; when he dared to go look three hours later, all the remained was the head and antlers of a ten-point buck. The mystery cat was blamed.

In 1984, citizens of Manchester near Ann Arbor saw a great black feline prowling around their homes, and in 1986, the black cat was believed to have ripped the throat out of a palomino horse in its pasture near Milford. Police saw and confirmed that it was a panther-sized black cat and tried to shoot it twice but missed. The owner of the palomino also got a shot off at a large black cat a year later. In 1990 a Muskegon area family saw the creature several times.

Since biologists claim the big cats native to North America known variously as cougars, panthers or mountain lions, are not likely to be black, the official opinion nationwide is that any loose, large black cat must be a South American jaguar or black Asian/African leopard, probably imported illegally. Some may be escapees of animal shows or preserves, but no one really knows where they come from. Perhaps they originate from the same place as their canine counterpart, the Michigan Dogman. And while a few have suggested that large black felines are actually phantoms from some other realm, the owner of that palomino would probably not agree.

Read the entire story in Weird Michigan, Your Travel Guide to Michigan's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Linda S. Godfrey.

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It isn't often that you can visit a ghost town and a recent dogman sighting spot on the same trip, but just tool on up to Fayette State Park off Hwy US2 on County Road 483 in the UP. The Historic Fayette Townsite is an old logging and iron-smelting town abandoned en masse in the 1890s because -- duh! -- most of the hardwood had been chopped down. Also, its charcoal-fired smelters were outmoded by then. Many more structures are preserved here than in most ghost town sites.

But it was at the Fayette park campgrounds in mid-August of this year that a 40-year old meteorology lab technician, his 33-year old government-worker wife and their three children aged 8-12 received a fright that was no ghost. The father, Tim, had been raised in the UP and brought his family back for a vacation. They first experienced a number of unsettling incidents such as hearing growling and loud twigs snapping around their tent. Tim, his wife and their oldest child sat up at their campfire later than usual to keep watch. Just as they were about to go to bed something tall walked in front of their tent on its hind legs, silhouetted by the fire -- it had a wolf's head on an upright, humanoid body! They sat frozen as it disappeared into the night, and needless to say, did not sleep well that night. It left no evidence behind.

Read many more tales of modern day encounters with unknown canines in Linda Godfrey's new book The Michigan Dogman, Werewolves and Unknown Canines Across the US, due out this fall from unexplainedresearch.com.

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The History of Michigan Wines takes you on a comprehensive journey from early winemaking pioneers to how today's industry is playing a vital role in positioning Michigan as a top agritourism region.   This exciting history book – the first book ever written on Michigan's wine history --   is available yeah, and we wrote it, so we're happy to personalize your 200 copies!

Learn all about Lorri & Sharon and their work at www.michiganvine.com and stay tuned to Absolute Michigan for excerpts from their new book!

Wine Comes to Michigan

Michigan has a vivid and lively wine history, which is first launched in the 1800s by savvy businessmen residing in the Monroe region along the Lake Erie shoreline. Wild grapes are first used to make wine before massive plantings of widely available varietals, such as Concord, Delaware and Norton's Virginia, are undertaken. Quickly, Michigan garners notoriety as a maker of fine wine and is among the top in the nation for wine production.

Railroads and ships carry wine to New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, while Michiganders consume wine in tasting rooms tucked in Michigan's first established communities. The good life of the 19th century vintner continues until the temperance movement heats up and the founding vintners eventually pass away by the start of the 20th century. Grape rot seeps into the vineyards causing the final disrepair.

Meanwhile, grape growers in Michigan's southwestern counties expand vineyards to supply to the Welch's grape juice processing plant in the Lawton region. So, when Prohibition kicks in early for Michigan, these vineyards persevere.

Surprisingly, during Prohibition, alcohol was a booming business along the Detroit River becoming a $215 million industry, second only to the auto industry. After 13 years of discord, Michigan is the first state to repeal Prohibition.

Michigan is positioned well. The demand for wine is high, and the surplus of grapes in southwest Michigan are at an all-time low. New wineries are inspired to open, and two wineries established in nearby Windsor easily relocate across the river. Michigan is quickly ranked third in the nation for wine production and is a leader for decades. Eventually, though, most of the wineries cease operations when the demand for the styles of wine changes and state regulations are a hindrance.

Stay tuned for more of Michigan's wine history and click here to order The History of Michigan Wines.

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Ed. Note: Linda can also make some fantastic illustrations - how about that Ogre of Seney!!

Summer is the best time to brave the U.P.'s 25-miles of monotony called the "Seney Stretch" that connects Seney and Singleton with one ramrod-straight highway, and visit what was once Michigan's hardest rocking logging town. Although the population is now down from 3000 to 300 and the scores of taverns, gambling houses and brothels have been lost over the years to forest fires and better-behaved citizens, it is still fun to see the place where the bloody mayhem would occupy whole streets on Saturday nights in the 1890s. The town had its own Boot Hill cemetery to accommodate the aftermath of each weekend's brawl.

Some of the milder local thugs included a pair that literally shook down unwary train travelers by holding them by their heels until their pockets emptied. Another character was famous for leaving a bad impression – that of his hobnail boots – on the faces of those who argued with him. Most infamous, however, was P.K. (some sources say P.J.) "Snapjaw" Small, who bit the heads off of living reptiles, birds, and even a crow ala Ozzie Osbourne and his bat. "The Ogre of Seney" also scarfed fresh horse manure and would go spittoon-bobbing for the price of a few shots of whiskey. His nose had been bitten off but was reattached with amateurish, Frankenstein stitches, leaving his appearance as frightful as his behavior.

The town's other claim to fame was a 1919 visit by Ernest Hemingway who came to fish. He later wrote about Seney in "The Big Two-Hearted River." In the story, his character sits on the banks of the river and grieves for the many taverns that once lined the shore.

To tread where he-men Snapjaw and Hemingway once trod, just stop where Hwy M77 crosses M28, and head for the Seney's old rail depot-turned-museum, which has been moved a tad from its original trackside spot. The museum is open in the summer from 10-5 (noon-5 on Sunday).

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It's late spring, time to look for odd creatures in even the unlikeliest of places. A resident of Portage, a city that directly borders the southern edge of Kalamazoo wrote me after she and her daughter saw something unusual in an area cemetery and decided they wanted to report it. She did not explain what the two of them were doing in the cemetery after dark, but she inferred the event was recent. I received the e-mail June 4, 2008. She did not name the cemetery but said it was next to the city library, so it may have been the historic 1894 Central Cemetery, which also lies near a park complex.

Whatever the circumstances, she and her daughter both heard rustling from the bushes beyond the fence at the back of the cemetery and saw a creature on the other side of the fence. The beast was very dark in color with a white patch on its chest and a "very stout flat head." What it most resembled, she said, was a panda bear!

The animal seemed upset; it was rocking from side to side and grunting. The woman said she felt it would harm them if they came closer, and she and her daughter quickly left the cemetery.

"I do feel it is some sort of protector," she wrote, "but I hope I never encounter another one."

Excerpted and adapted from "The Michigan Dogman, Werewolves and Other Unknown Canines of the US" by Linda S. Godfrey, Unexplained Research Press, summer 2010. Linda Godfrey is the author of "Weird Michigan" and many other books on strange creatures and offbeat topics.

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It's that time of year when anyone with a patch of green space starts thinking about how to enhance it. How better to do that than by cruising on down to Lennon, the Lawn Ornament Capital of America.

Lennon claims that title based on Jean Krupp's Novelty Store, a retail moniker that barely hints at what you will find there. Rows of naked concrete Davids, gnarly gargoyles, Christ figures and Labrador retrievers stand higgledy-piggledy around the vast outdoor shopping space, while shelves of gewgaws and bathtubs with pre-installed icons fill the indoor area. There is even a life-sized King Neptune ready to grace your cee-ment pond. And gnomes? Gnumerous.

Owner Jean Krupp started the business with handmade birdhouses in the 1950s and built it into the mega-landmark it has become. Last time I visited, the busy octagenarian was still hand-painting statues.

Krupp's is easy to find at the intersection of M-12 and M-13. Look closely as you drive up and you might just catch King Neptune waving at you.

Acres and acres more Weird Wednesday from Absolute Michigan

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...the Green Hornet was one of the first masked costumed crime fighters, making his radio debut on January 31, 1936 - seventeen days before The Phantom started gracing newspaper comic strips and about six years after The Shadow came to radio. His crime fighting efforts were not exactly liked by the police, who viewed him either as a meddling amateur or outright criminal. In future years, popular heroes such as Spider-Man walked a similar path.

The Hornet was the brainchild of Fran Striker and George W. Trendle, the team that had brought us The Lone Ranger exactly three years before the Hornet, with both shows originating on Detroit's WXYZ radio station. The similarities went one step further, in that the Hornet was the secret identity of newspaper publisher Britt Reid, who was the Lone Ranger's nephew Dan Reid's son.

Reid was helped by his trusted butler and sidekick Kato. In the original storyline, Kato was a Filipino of Japanese descent, but as the 1930's brought conflict with Japan, his character was altered and said to be Korean. This was especially critical when two movie serials were released in 1940 as America was weighing entry into World War II.

The crime fighter's prime means of locomotion was a powerful sedan called the Black Beauty. When the show began, the producers used the engine sound of the so-called "world's quietest car", the Pierce Arrow, for the Beauty. Kato was the car's chauffeur in addition to his other duties.

The radio show lasted until 1952, eventually being syndicated on The Mutual Network and the NBC Blue Network, which became ABC. Al Hodge originally voiced the Reid/Hornet character and Raymond Hayashi was Kato.

You can listen to a number of the original Green Hornet radio programs from at the Internet Archive and get more about Wikipedia's entry on The Green Hornet. Although this fight scene from the Green Hornet TV show has no real Michigan tie-in, it does have Bruce Lee!

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If only those pesky Kentuckians hadn't put up a 60-foot crucifix in Bardstown, the 55-foot cross at Indian River's Cross in the Woods Shrine could still say it was the world's biggest. Either way, its size is still awe-inspiring. The redwood cross was erected in 1954 and the cast metal Christ figure was added four years later after being shipped from Oslo, Norway. It is traditional for pilgrims to climb the 28 steps to the cross (one for each step Jesus is supposed to have climbed to stand before Pontius Pilate) on their knees.

And it's all there in black and white - the 500+ collection of dolls and mannequins dressed to represent the garb of over 217 religious orders of priests, sisters, brothers and diocesan clergy is housed in the basement of the shrine's gift shop. It includes dioramas of nuns in the classroom and the all-nun orchestra.

There are also stations of the cross, a modern chapel, and a bronze statue of "The Lily of the Mohawks," a Native American convert to Christianity in the 1600s who was known for leaving hand-made wooden crosses in forests.

Visit the official web site for The Cross in the Woods.

Photos © 2010 Linda S. Godfrey

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I herein give you a Statement of facts in regard to the accident referred to in my letter. Said accident occurred on the day of the 2nd battle of Bull Run, while on my way with the mail, from Washington, to our troops near Centerville.

I was trying with all my might to reach Berry's Brigade before the battle commenced, and in order to do so, I took advantage of every near cut that I possibly could, by leaping fences and ditches instead of going a long way round.

When I had accomplished about half the distance between Washington and Centerville, I saw a chance to cut off a mile or more, by leaving the road and taking a short cut, which I thought best to take advantage of, but after having gone a considerable distance from the road, I found myself confronted by a very wide ditch, which I attempted to cross; but instead of leaping across it my mule reared and fell headlong into it, and I was thrown with such force against the side of the ditch, that I was stunned and unable to escape further injury from the frantic efforts of the mule to extricate himself from such an unpleasant position.

There was some water, and deep mud at the bottom of said ditch, and where the mule tried to get up, his feet stuck fast in the mud, and he would fall back and try again. Finally he succeeded in getting out, but how long I remained there I never knew, but the first sound that struck my ear was the booming of cannon, and the first thought that flashed across my brain was “The mail! The mail!”

Read on at CMU.

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What better way for Finnish (or other) Michiganders to celebrate St. Urho's day on March 16 than to make a solemn pilgrimage to the giant grasshopper of Kaleva? The welded metal sculpture created by students of Lutheran Brethren High School is celebrating its 10th birthday this year, and represents the mythical banishment of grasshoppers from Finland in order to save the grape crop.*

The big hopper can be found in Kaleva's Centennial Park, alongside a Finnish totem pole. While in Kaleva, don't miss the Bottle House built by famed Finn bottler John Makinen in 1941. It stands one block north of Kaleva's downtown on Wuoski Avenue. Makinen died before he could move into the habitable folk art structure, but his family enjoyed living bottoms up for four decades. The Kaleva Historical Society gives tours on summer Saturdays.

Click the grasshopper to see it bigger and also head over to Michigan in Pictures to check out the Michigan Snowhenge!

*If grashoppers should come to your town, seeking your wine grapes, saintuhro.com suggests uttering the phrase: "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen" (roughly translated: "Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to Hell!").

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January in Michigan is a good time to think ahead to the pleasures of spring and summer that await us, such as outdoor concerts or camping out in lawn chairs to catch a parade. Either of those activities – at least in the western part of the state – stands a good chance of including a large group of men of all ages strangely dressed in hula skirts, clown shoes, or ladies' lingerie. Those men, also known as the Scottville Clown Band, will be playing some mean tunes on traditional marching band instruments. And in concert, they also bust some humorous dance moves to “The Stripper” or “The Chicken Dance.”

The nice thing about becoming known as a male “ladies band” in the 1930s is that, with all members supplying their own costumes, their uniform budget has remained at zero ever since. This allows them to give financial support to budding student musicians statewide.

The motley crew of amateur entertainers has been pleasing Michigander crowds since 1903 and is so popular that it needs about 250 members in order to send 40 or 50 to every event that invites them. The group travels a total of 10,000 miles per year and has published its own book, “The Big Noise from Scottville.”

Visit the Scottville Clown Band website and check them out in action in this video:

Condensed from “Weird Michigan; Your Travel Guide to Michigan's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets” by Linda S. Godfrey, Barnes & Noble, 2006.

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perch by Jon DeBoer

Time's 'Assignment Detroit' project roots for city, CEO says in the Detroit News talks with Time Inc. Chairwoman and CEO Ann Moore who says:

Every American has a stake in the health of Detroit," Moore said. "Detroit holds lessons for all of us."

Assignment Detroit -- which has recently spawned a profile on Mayor Dave Bing in Sports Illustrated, Detroit public schools in Time and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy in Essence -- aims to bring more positive national exposure to the city.

"We're taking a stake in Detroit," Moore said, acknowledging that journalistic ethics traditionally prohibit blurring the lines between journalism and advocacy.

"It's official. We're rooting for you."

Read on and check out Assignment Detroit from TIME, where recent features include Marketing 101: Fear of 'Detroit'?, Pistons and Red Wings: Could One of These Teams Be On The Move? and Hero or Villain? A Look at Detroit's History.

While you're at it, let us know what you think about an old media stalwart like TIME actively working on the behalf of its subject.

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For more information on the author and to get information on purchasing the book as well as a schedule of appearances visit his website.

The Michigan Notable Books program annually selects 20 of the most notable books published in the year. The selections are reflective of Michigan's diverse ethnic, historical, literary, and cultural experience. You can click to view more Notable Books featured on Absolute Michigan and learn more about the program at www.michigan.gov/notablebooks.

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Grand Marais Harbour by ETCphoto

We're looking at Michigan Notable Books this month on Absolute Michigan, so how about a notable Michigan author? The Detroit Free Press has a feature on Jim Harrison by freelance writer Christopher Walton that looks at how his love for northern Michigan has perhaps helped to drive his recent burst of productivity. At 72, one of Michigan's most famous writers finds himself more productive than ever and has recently released a collection of three novellas titled The Farmer's Daughter.

Harrison and Linda, his wife of 50 years, have spent their winters in Patagonia for the past 20 years. Their primary residence is Livingston, Mont., where they moved in 2001 after selling their home in Leelanau County.

"The only reason we moved to Montana was to be near our two daughters and grandkids," says Harrison. In 2004, Harrison sold the U.P. cabin he had owned for 25 years.

"I miss the U.P. terribly," Harrison says. "It became a retreat for me from the real world. ... It was like, after a disgusting two weeks of movie meetings, and then a day later you're at the Dunes Saloon in Grand Marais after taking a 4-hour walk with your dogs and never seeing anybody, because I'd say 99% of my hiking, I never saw another human being. Which is the way I liked it.

"I know I've written about Michigan a lot lately, and I wonder if the origin isn't homesickness. Which is a very deep feeling, what the Portuguese call saudade. It's that longing for a place."

There's also a list of Harrison's work since 2000 that shows what a prolific writer he has been over the last 10 years. It includes "The Great Leader," his novel slated for 2010 or 2011 exploring the intersection of money, sex and religion.

I found an interesting and extended interview with Jim Harrison on YouTube that was filmed in Northern Michigan. Here's part 1.

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