N.B.Coop News

Breaking, broken…Good, bad…Old, new…Global, national, local…Facts, figures, fantasies…Letters, notes, opinions…All the news fit / unfit to post, print, scatter… Norbert Blei – publisher & editor | Monsieur K. – managing editor

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julian hagen & the nature of door

August 3, 2012 / / 2 Comments

JULIAN HAGEN

&
The Nature of Door
by
Norbert Blei

Editor’s Note: Six years ago my small press, Cross+Roads Press, was approached by the Door County Land Trust to help put together a book of nature writing for them (essays and poems) reflecting the natural wonder and beauty of this landscape we inhabit and seek to secure. I gladly took on the project even though this was not ‘officially’ a Cross+Roads Press book reflecting my original intent (to publish a ‘first’ chapbook of poems, essays, fiction, etc. by a serious writer in need of attention) but, instead a ‘cause’ if you will …a potentially important ‘local’ book-idea that needed a publisher and editor.

Writer and Land Trust member Karen Yancey joined me in soliciting and editing the manuscripts that eventually became: THE NATURE OF DOOR, Door County Writers and Artists on Preservation of Place.

This remains among my favorite books on Door County, truly one of the most beautiful, inside and out: from the stunning cover photography of local (and world class) photographer, Dan Anderson; the quiet but profound pen and ink drawings throughout the book, taken from the sketchbooks of our most illustrious artist, Charles (Chick) Peterson; and the gifted poets and writers who put their sense of place and preservation in their own beautiful words.

Among them, singer, songwriter, musician, Julian Hagen, a Door County original who lives and breathes and writes and laughs and sings (a born storyteller as well) on Washington Island, a little piece of separate Door County earth, just north of the peninsula.

Around that time of year when the northern lights appear, I always think of him—and his signature song.

Part of ‘the nature of Door’ as I see it, includes the nature of the people as well. Here’s Julian—in song and words. —Norbert Blei

Island Wild

by Julian Hagen

“Northern Lights” was written in 1973 in the barn while milking cows before going to school. I was a junior in high school. I smile thinking back because a milking machine works in 2/4 time and the song is written in 3/4 time. Music was so important on the Island both for entertainment as well as a way to interact.

Many Island nights were spent sitting around a campfire or in a living room playing and singing. It was a magical time. I just decided one day to try and write a song and did. “Northern Lights” was my 2nd composition.

Ah, the words. I was wise beyond my years. My youthful outlook was not cluttered with all of the “stuff” that gets in the way as we age. I’m not sure about the idea behind the song — Living it up while we can, celebrating friends, life and nature. I just remember being aware of how blessed I was. In the first verse, I refer to the northern 1 lights. I remember getting my sister out of bed at 1 in the morning to go for a motorcycle ride while the lights were dancing in the sky. I had a 1964 Honda Dream with a single carb, and we would ride along with the headlights off.

A number of my songs are inspired by island life and experiences. Sadly my “wild” is different than the “wild” of the Island and the county of today. Back then, we lived predominately off and with the land, were intricately linked to our neighbors. We could walk across the Island and not be considered “trespassers.” My idea of “wild” also involves a way of life. Changes on the island happened quite subtly. It was like being next to someone growing older. You may not notice the changes, but for those who are more aware or come back after an I extended period of time, the change can’t be missed. We certainly can’t go back. The same for the Island. Once damaged or gone, whether open places to roam, species, silence, dark skies, fresh air, or I fresh water, it is so hard to repair and perhaps impossible to regain.

photographs by suzanne rose

July 6, 2012 / / 11 Comments

PHOTOGRAPHS
Suzanne Rose

by
Norbert Blei

Every piece of writing is a journey to the interior, this piece I am presently writing as well, a search for words to find direction: what I already know…what I saw…what I see presently…what there is to tell about the work of Suzanne Rose, by way of revelation.

Time, at this particular moment, is not on my side (or anyone’s), photographers especially, who must catch it, hold it in an instant.

Click.

I’ve just returned from the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay—an even longer journey than usual from my northern end of the peninsula given the intense heat, traffic…these lazy, crazy days of summer. A scorching afternoon. I’m dead-tired. But I promised to take in the show of Suzanne Rose’s photographs before it ends, July 17, and I’m running out of time, leaving for elsewhere, soon.

Readers take note: July 17: “Capturing The Four Seasons of Door County.” See it. Believe it. Love it. You won’t experience anything here quite like it again.

Not “outer” Door, the iconic barns, bays, fields, sunsets… But “inner” Door.” A plain purity of image. What we don’t see. An artistic vision based on an Eastern sense of mindfulness. Suzanne Rose has the knowledge and instinct to see what’s really there, expose it through her photographs.

Photographs? These are meditations. It’s difficult to take your eyes off one and move to another, they fix you so in place.

A show like this should put to rest that never-ending question: “Is photography art?

Go—see for yourself.

Sixty photographs you wished you owned–one or all of them. Black-and-white—stark (or subtle) contrast. A sure sign of a serious photographer’s commitment to art: to reveal the real thing—“inside.”

This is the kind of exhibit you wish were on permanent display because to see these photographs once is to never quite let go. They keep calling you back for greater concentration, confirmation. The images lodge inside of you. They have that power, so perfect and alive in the moment: a flower you will not forget, a fog that will never lift; the way the rain falls—and stays forever in your heart.


There is so much here; one cannot tell it all. Let the photos speak for themselves. Who needs words in the midst of image which speaks a language of its own?

So I enter the Miller Gallery on a miserably hot afternoon in July…It’s empty but for me and the receptionist—who ignores me. Good. The way I like it. I don’t want people talking and gawking all around me. I’m just looking, though given this show: really looking. Please leave me alone with all this stuff.

The first photo that catches my eye is “Self-Portrait.” Self-portraits always fascinate. What I like about this shadow image of hers: it could be me. Upon reflection (which all good art generates), it is me!

Then “Sunlit Fen” grabs hold of my eyes. I can’t turn, look away, move on to the next image. I am there. I am in it, the wetlands…fen-deep in water and woods. “Fen,” resonates …natural…uninhabited. Quagmire, mud, marshy…peaceful with an edge. The way things are when we just let them be. Beautiful word, “fen.” Such a feel for place—caught forever.

The oppressive July heat begins to lift, drift away. Air conditioning, no doubt. But the comfort I feel is before me, right there in black and white. The seasons beckon. (Forget summer for now). Let the cooling begin…I break ranks, the usual line of viewing, and move all over the place…whatever calls my attention. I want rain, I want fog, and today, above all, I want winter. This artist brings all this and more. July melts away.

“Falling Music” brings on the rhythm and sound of summer rain. So refreshing. I feel and hear it falling. This image holds me a long time for reasons known and unknown. My own love of Eastern philosophy and poetry—a Bashō, sensibility, which I now see the artist and I both share. Her own deep bow to the depth of that spirit so alive and breathing in her work. This photograph, I see, is accompanied by a perfect haiku:

the sound
of the raindrops—
also grown older

–Santoka

“Show, don’t tell.”

Bring on the rest of the seasons. But for now, this moment, bring on winter.

I want snow, I want cold. I want the silence of emptiness. I want the white path–Bashō’s NARROW PATH TO THE DEEP NORTH.

If Bashō had carried a camera, these would be the photographs of his journey.


one last lesson

July 2, 2012 / / 4 Comments

Photo by Ian Frazier

ONE LAST LESSON

by Verlyn Klinkenborg

In early May, my neighbor and I moved my three horses across the gravel road to her summer pasture. Last year, it took a while before her animals — a thorough­bred and a mule — herded up with mine, but eventually they settled down into a single unit. This year, they did something unexpected. They ejected Remedy, my old quarter horse, from the herd. My neighbor put salve on his bites. And, when I went to check on him the next morn­ing, I found him standing alone in the shallow creek, as if his feet were hot. His head was to the fence, and his tail to all the rest of the world.

I bought Remedy in Colorado when he was 19. Now he’s 34. He has ruled all the horses as long as I’ve owned him, wherever we’ve been, but not anymore. I walked him out of the creek and back to my place and put him in a paddock out of sight of the horses across the road. He was limping slightly, but now that limp has hardened into a deep and permanent hitch in his gait. He gets around as though he’s used to the damage, but his orbit in the pad­dock has grown smaller and smaller. His eyes are bright. His coat gleams. His ears seem to have lengthened as he’s aged, but they still twitch with attention.

Remedy has always been the youngest old horse I know, but 34 is terribly old for a horse. A friend — a wise equestrian — told me that Remedy would let me know when he’s ready to go. I’ve seen that moment in dogs and humans and known it for what it was, but never in a horse. I’m afraid that I won’t recognize it, that somehow I’ll let him down in dying. He’s been a powerful figure in my life, the remedy to a disabling fear that stole upon me unex­pected one day. He has one more thing to teach me, and I hope I learn it well.

[from THE NEW YORK TIMES, June 26, 2012]

Editor’s Note:

I have reprinted this author’s short but perfect personal essays before, which often appear (“The Rural Life”) only on the editorial page of The New York Times. There are many fine collections of his work as well. If you liked “One Last Lesson” I guarantee you will like everything else he has written. In October of this year, I will be teaching a one-week workshop at The Clearing (http://theclearing.org/current/classes_summer_description.php?id=79) focused entirely on the subject of Rural Writing. Verlyn Klinkenborg is precisely the kind of writer, the kind of writing we will be looking at, learning from. — Norbert Blei

bridget’s bouquet

June 30, 2012 / / 4 Comments

Photo by Norbert Blei

BRIDGET’S BOUQUET

June 30 (circa 1980)

I have no time for the flowers along the road. The goatsbeard, already in downy fullness to match the moon last night. The orange and yellow hawkweed dotting the roads and fields in perfect free­style flows of color. And the white daisies, singularly, the most beautiful petaled flower. These my daughter secretly gathers for me in a small bouquet for my desk. Through the white daisy we both speak summer, though the act is one of silence. I will enter the coop, usually in the early shadows of morning, flick on the desk light, and there, in a white vase near the typewriter, a small bouquet of daisies. And that will set the day—a child’s gesture of unexamined love.

from DOOR STEPS, a Journal of Days and Seasons in Door County, Norbert Blei, Ellis Press, 1983. (Available in Door County at the Pioneer Store, Ellison Bay; Al Johnson’s, Sister Bay; Main Street Market, Egg harbor.)

the grand view

June 25, 2012 / / 6 Comments

Photo by Norbert Blei

Editor’s Note: It’s impossible for anyone driving toward the northern tip of the Door Peninsula, not to be momentarily swept away by the view from the top of the Ellison Bay hill.

The Grand View (the million dollar view), call it what you will. Prime real estate for sure. There was always a fear that someday this would be lost to development. And what a tragic loss that would be. Given man’s insatiable greed, what, if anything, could be done about it?

On Saturday, June 23, 2012, I was invited by the Door County Land Trust to speak, in celebration, of the fact that this, now, would never happen.

This “grand view” had been secured forever, thanks to common sense—or call it ‘spirit’. Thanks to so many locals, outsiders, groups, government agencies, who did the really hard work, spread the word, found the money, attended all the meetings, aroused the interests of those in power who could make the connections, make things happen, especially the Door County Land Trust, a guiding light in this county for certain.

Given the nature of who I am and what I do…mine was a small, a very meager part. Put some words together. Tell the story. Inform. Say thanks. Trust others will listen, take heart. Remember what matters. — Norbert Blei

The Grand View

By
Norbert Blei

It is customary, upon receiving a gift, to say “thank you.”

So today, this moment, for this “Grand View” before us, we say “Thank You” to all who worked long and hard to bestow this gift upon us—individuals, various businesses and groups…the historical society, the state, the county, the town board—people like Frank Forkert, Bob Davis, John Lowry, Beth Coleman, Stefie Burke… And above all, the Door County Land Trust–its members, it’s entire board who put in so much time and effort to see that this “Grand View” was secured “Forever” for all of us: Tim Stone, Terrie Cooper, Dave Callsen, Dan Burke, among them. THANK YOU all.

John Muir, who read Mother Nature like an open book…who saw and hiked and knew the wonders of the state of Wisconsin referred to the presence of something like this view behind me as “The Grand Show”:

“This grand show is eternal,” he wrote. “It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is forever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming. On seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

Poet Robert Frost wrote about America’s land inheritance calling it: “The Gift Outright”. “The land was ours before we were the land’s,” he wrote… “Such as we were, we gave ourselves outright…to the land vaguely realizing westward…”

But what do we do about man’s continual pursuit of land both necessary to our country’s development yet troublesome, given the nature of man’s greed in our time? The majority of Western man is now urban and soon the whole world, over half of us, will be living in towns and cities.

What’s to become of us in the absence of land, landscape, this “Grand View?”
Imagine this very setting cluttered with condos, shops, gated communities. What would we have gained—lost?

I am reminded of a local, sometimes shifty realtor (who friends and clients said upon his death: “Had to screwed into the ground.”)…who used to advertise in the local paper: “Land—The only thing they ain’t making any more of.”

What is it about man’s chronic need to profit from nature’s gifts? When Nature’s only purpose is being and surviving?

So we express our appreciation again for this gift. What else can we say but, “THANK YOU” as we gather here today to celebrate the Nature of History and the History of Nature—past, present, future. And that we honor the place of History in our lives.

When I come upon this “Grand View” almost every day (over 40 years now) I can’t help but think what a sense of earth, sky, air, water, horizon, wilderness caught the eyes of our first settlers…what our Native Americans embraced, made of this in their daily lives through silence, dreams, art, healing ceremonies, chants that mirrored the very sounds of nature.

The Winnebagos put some of this into their own words:

Holy Earth Mother, the trees
and all nature are
witnesses of your thoughts and
deeds.

Spirit speaks in image. You cannot take in “the Grand View” without it silently taking you into it. Define “IT” however you like. Its presence cannot be denied.

John Muir believed that every natural object is a conductor of divinity. There is a divine presence in everything. Go for a walk. Say that Winnebago prayer of reverence for the earth. Should an animal, plant, rock, or ‘grand view” draw your attention, stop and silently offer thanks for the joy and beauty you feel.

Does “pure nature” have any other purpose but to serve us? What to do?
To save our endangered landscape…
To find an ecological balance of sorts…
To come to terms with man’s appetite for land values and the real value of land being nothing more than what it is. Open. Wild. Free.

Another great American preservationist (who once passed through Wisconsin, late in life, on his way to Minnesota)…Henry David Thoreau, concluded that wilderness for the sake of wilderness was a good thing to have around. In the 1850’s he proposed that every town in Massachusetts save a 500-acre piece of woods which would be forever wild. But it never happened. He was never listened to.

“This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and animals…” wrote our great American writer, Walt Whitman.

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders…Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit,” wrote another great American writer, defender of the desert Southwest, Ed Abbey.

More history: Behind me, across this very same “Grand View,” just over my shoulder, on that far cliff sits a very unique school, a place called The Clearing, founded by Jens Jensen, a landscape architect, in 1935 at the age of 75. His gift—of nature, of education, of solace and self-renewal to all of us.

One wonders what Jensen must have seen and felt when he approached this “Grand View” over 75 years ago?

Sixty-three years ago, in a book called THE CLEARING, he wrote: “In the little village of which I am a part are many different minds, so different, in fact, that one often wonders if the little village can continue holding them together. In the woodlands surrounding this little village are many different types of trees…On the shore below the village’s ancient cliffs the rocks and the sea test the supremacy of each other’s strength. In some places the rocks have given way, in other places they have held on for centuries. In spite of all these differences, the picture as a whole is one of a peaceful little village snuggled by the bay, with woodland cliffs forming a protective arm. Nature fits differences of ideas, of forms, of habits, and of strength into one harmonious whole, making a beautiful pattern of multiple shades and hues, all complementing each other and adding to the infinite variety of Life’s ideas through one redeeming fact, Life’s weight and balance. All are linked in one great balance, and that balance is love.”

Trust the land.
Trust the Land Trust and all those individuals, town boards, organizations who seek to preserve the many gifts nature has bestowed upon us—for our own good.

Trust the historical and natural presence of this “Grand View” which we honor ‘forever’ today, the 46th anniversary of ‘Olde Ellison Bay Days”…our continuing history in the making.

Trust what you know in your heart to be both and an obligation and a gift, the great and grander view of all the natural wonder and beauty this county alone possesses—a promise kept…to be passed on to all who will come after us.

may notebook

May 17, 2012 / / 6 Comments

Photo by Norbert Blei

MAY NOTEBOOK

by
Norbert Blei

REMEMBER: Lilacs…dandelions…daffodils…mayflowers (baskets left on the door by local children)…the many shades of green…green slowly, slowly green, slowing rising up into old trees trunks, branches branching out, opening spreading dabs of green color into across the woods, up and down the roadside…the gray world of bark and braches first suffused, transformed, bursting now in fresh GREEN across the clear blue sky…lawn greening, lawn growing (the annual May dilemma: to mow the lawn or let the wildflowers run riot?)…the ants return to the house…the bats return to the evening skies…the newspapers are filled with desperate cries of HELP! HELP WANTED…Shops and restaurants sprucing up for the first onslaught of tourists: Memorial Day. The county OPEN FOR BUSINESS once again.

The weather in May often looks and feels like November in Door. Especially early May, the branches of the trees still bare, the temperatures at night falling below freezing. Overcast skies and sharp winds. 70 degrees one day. The same evening the heat goes on in the house and you find yourself reaching again for the comfort of old sweaters, afghans, so reminiscent of autumn.

A back-and-forth time. A day of unseasonable warmth followed by three days of unseasonable cold. Followed by a string of warm days that bring back the Mayflies to the streets of Sister bay…batting the pesky little insects away from your face, eyes, nose, mouth in a mad dash from one’s car to the front door of Al Johnson’s restaurant for morning coffee, conversation, and the daily newspaper.

May is a threatening month. Threat of severe thunderstorms and tornado watches. Threat of frost. Threat of the first summer guests–arriving two months too soon. Threat of seesawing temperature all month long. Wear cotton. Wear flannel. Wear wool. The month will wear you out with promises.

A time for taking down storm windows, putting up screens, opening windows and shutting windows and opening them again. Perhaps a night or two of opening the bedroom windows wide to a warm May night…lying awake to a May moon…to night air smelling of woods and greenery to come…a light show of stars…and cool summer breezes after a surprisingly warm day.

May—mostly uncertain. A month trying to get hold of itself in time. Trying to rid itself of the last vestiges of winter, be it cold temperatures, frost, wind, dismal skies; trying to move forward in warmth and the greening of the woods and fields.

A time of turning over the garden. Fertilizing the soil. Preparing the earth for planting. Buying tomato plants–but not setting them out yet, not yet, not yet, if one respects the fickleness of frost in these parts. Tomatoes, NOT TO BE PLANTED (especially `up north’ in the county) until after Memorial Day–goes the local, native wisdom. Making rows, however, for onion sets and planting them. Digging trenches for potatoes. And planting them.

Weeping willows throw their fresh yellow-green tresses to the wind, waving this-way-and-that-way, glowing…alluring…so like a woman in long, long beautiful hair…utter seduction…I pause, let it all take a sweeping hold of me till the music comes, the lyrics…a voice, voices…”Willow weep for me, Willow weep for me…” Tonight I will sift through a shelf of old LP’s…I will look for Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James…or certainly Sinatra…put a record on the turntable…”Willow weep for me, Willow weep for me, Bend your branches down among the ground, And cover me…Listen to my plea…Hear me willow and weep for me…”

Watching stalks of rhubarb take fire, explode each day in an extravaganza of jungle-green leaf. Cutting thick stalks of strawberry rhubarb by mid to late May. Ah, welcome back rhubarb custard pie: a first real taste of spring.

May—the intoxicating month of nature’s perfume…Lilac-drenching time. Bushes of blossoms invading the back yard, the wild roadside—lilac bushes gone wild, untouched, just THERE every May, in your face. Inhale, DEEP. Hold it! Ahhhhhhh… Here around the house, my entire grounds steeped in another scent as well, clouds of Lily of the Valley. Certainly “invasive”. I’ve never done anything but let them grow, take over. They’ve become my ‘lawn’. They exert pride of ownership, in spring, in my domain. Let them be. Let me be drugged all May on the breath of Lily Valley (inhale… hold… exhale…inhale…all hours of the day and night–especially night, coming home in the dark…seduced, attacked, surrounded so unexpectedly by such a captivating scent. For so precious a short time—once a year. Tarry. Momentary. A sweet reminder: brevity/beauty—life is blossom short.

Bats and birds continue winging their way to old familiar places. Thrashers, rose breasted grosbeaks, gold finches, warblers, waxwings and hawks. And around dusk, the first sound of the whip poor will /whip poor will back in place.

Porcupines appear—too close for comfort….on the driveway, in the garage, rummaging near the house. The ugliest, dumbest, most useless creature. I recall a neighbor once taking a baseball bat to one: “That’s the only thing they understand.” Or a rifle. I stand before and stare down the spring intruder trapped in my garage, wishing it would go away. Disappear into the woods. I want no part or guilt in its destruction. Yet know what a threat it poses: how it might gnaw away the center post of the garage, target my dog’s inquiring muzzle with quills, claim territory too close to mine. A gun might be the only answer, instead (cowardly? in deference to the pure wonder of Ma Nature ?) I take a broom to it, sweeping the prickly creature back into the woods.
(“Avaunt and quit my sight!”)

Memorial Day May marks THE season. The first holiday weekend of the year when tourists descend upon the peninsula to `do Door’ in their fashion: back to nature/back to serious shopping’ invigorated by the change of pace, the vision, the renewed sense of `being here’ the natural beauty of the peninsula never fails to provide–though at what cost, still to be determined, given the inevitable diminishment of the original gift of earth, water, and air by the unthoughtful, uncaring, unforgiven. (“Build more…EVERYTHING—and we will come!’)

Not the “merry month” but the wild month of May.

What we have been waiting for most is the signal color of green. Green, green, green. It ain’t easy waitin’ for green. First sighting along the roadsides in April…but green getting a truer hold of itself in May. Plants beginning to define themselves by certain shades of green, patterns of growth, shapes of leaf, and, most miraculous in May, flowering buds.

This is the month when cherry and apple orchards explode in white blossoms. When tufts of trillium re-emerge from their hiding places in the woods, around birch and maple, trumpeting the forest floor with large white flowers, three-petaled, that bow and fold and fade to pink and lavender in the weeks to follow.

The month when tiny forget-me-nots light up the earth in luminous blue patches that linger in the memory of the whitest winters past or forthcoming.

The month, when nearing its end, trees finally unfurl themselves in the blue skies with canopies of full leaves and emerald light, the branches of maple, beech, pine, oak, birch intermingled in the woods, diffusing light upon the forest floor among flowering plants and the remnants of last fall’s leaves…the roadsides, the far woods, the horizon thick with variations on the theme of green.

Welcome color, welcome green, welcome the breath of blossom scent, welcome May. Words of welcome back on the lips, in the heart of the man of May who, despite erratic temperatures, warm sweaters, cold rain, sees the earth turning, turning, turning in his eyes…inevitably turning green, in his favor, once again. Though not for long.


Photo by Norbert Blei

fred alley | 1962 – 2001

May 1, 2012 / / 7 Comments

Yesterday my friend Tim Stone reminded me that today is the anniversary of Fred Alley’s death. Eleven years now, and I can still see his always smiling face, remember many of the conversations we had over coffee and lunch at The White Gull or Al Johnson’s, talking writing, poetry, books, theater, film, acting, travel. Discussing “Guys on Ice” which he was working on at the time for the American Folklore Theater, which defined him like nothing or no one else–the spirit, the very breath of that talented group, where his spirit continues to reside to this day.

He was all about life, all about people, all about words, all about performance, ‘be-ing’—how all of this came together in the soul of one person who surrendered self for the goodness and grace of art.

God, how we miss him. How the county itself has been diminished by his loss. The word “irreplaceable” is too often used to describe the absence of a host of people, places, and things these days that don’t quite add up to the loss of one person, one place, one time, one particular talent to put words, action, passion upon a stage and let it live, speak, sing, come together in celebration of who we are or might become. Fred could work that magic.

I remember, upon learning of his tragic, early death, driving one morning, to the place along the roadside where he was found, where he had had fallen, where his heart finally gave out so unexpectedly while jogging—which would remain a place, a site, etched forever in my memory with countless others. Which, after forty-three years of living here, would remain on my list of Door County final resting places, if you will, of friends, neighbors, acquaintances whom I periodically recall, visit, immediately recognize by merely passing by somewhere in the county, remembering a name, a face, a conversation: that’s where________car turned over…hit a tree, crossed the road, hit an oncoming vehicle; that’s where_______lost a daughter or a son; that bay, that lake, that mesmerizing body of water, so beautiful and blue this summer day, so wondrous in white all winter—that’s where_______drowned; where_____crossed Portes de Morts in a small boat, his body never recovered; where______fell though the ice one winter. That’s the barn where_______took his own life. That’s the big bluff where______ stumbled and fell.

I remember driving the quiet back road where Fred had fallen not far from his house, a bright, sunny morning, just like today. I remember driving very slowly, looking for some sign…the weeds padded down …something. And there, a small pile of stones. I remember continuing a short distance, then pulling over, leaving the engine running, slamming the door shut (an unwelcome sound, breaking the silence I was entering, the reverence I was already feeling) as I stepped slowly along the road’s edge, into the weeds and grass, approaching the now hallowed ground of a fallen friend.

I said something like a prayer in conversation with him.

I remembered.

It’s been said of James Joyce that his characters never remained dead, I remember just now.– norbert blei

Sadness

It was everywhere, in the streets and houses,
on farms and now in the air itself.
It had come from history and we were history
so it had come from us.
I told my artist friends who courted it
not to suffer
on purpose, not to fall in love
with sadness
because it would be naturally theirs
without assistance,
I had sad stories of my own,
but they made me quiet
the way my parents’ failures once did,
nobody’s business
but our own, and, besides, what was left to say
these days
when the unspeakable was out there being spoken,
exhausting all sympathy?
Yet, feeling it, how difficult to keep
the face’s curtains
closed — she left, he left, they died —
the heart rising
into the mouth and eyes, everything so basic,
so unhistorical
at such times. And then, too, the woes
of others would get in,
but mostly I was inured and out
to make a decent buck
or in pursuit of some slippery pleasure
that was sadness disguised.
I found it, it found me, oh
my artist friends
give it up, just mix your paints,
stroke,
the strokes unmistakably will be yours.

–Stephen Dunn

earth day, good day, wisconsin: gaylord nelson, john muir, & winnebago indians

April 22, 2012 / / 5 Comments

EARTH DAY,
Good Day, Wisconsin:
Gaylord Nelson, John Muir, & Winnebago Indians

by
Norbert Blei

EDITORS  NOTE: While Wisconsin politics these days leaves much to be desired, we can look back with pride to a time when our politicians were “in it” for more than themselves. This is the 42nd Anniversary of Earth Day here in Wisconsin—and the country, thanks to one of our own, Gaylord Nelson, the Father of Earth Day who was born in Clear Lake, Wisconsin in 1916 and died in 2005. He was elected governor of Wisconsin in 1958, and served one term before successfully running for Senate in 1962. He served three consecutive terms as a senator from 1963 to 1981. He was passionate environmental issues. In 1963 he traveled on the Conservation Tour with President John F. Kennedy and was the principal founder of Earth Day, the first observation of which was held in 1970.

After his1980 defeat for re-election, he became counselor for The Wilderness Society in January 1981 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in September 1995 in recognition of his environmental work.

Nelson viewed the stabilization of the nation’s population as an important aspect of environmentalism. He also rejected the suggestion that economic development should take precedence over environmental protection: The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around, he believed.

Holy Earth Mother, the trees
and all nature are
witnesses of your thoughts and
deeds

–Winnnebago Indians

John Muir said: “Every natural object is a conductor of divinity.” Muir believed in a divine presence that is expressed in everything. Go for a walk, silently repeating this Winnebago prayer of reverence for the earth and its creator. When an animal, plant, rock or a beautiful scene draws your attention, stop, and silently offer thanks for the joy and beauty you feel.

[from: LISTENING TO NATURE by Joseph Cornell, Dawn Publications]

april notebook

April 18, 2012 / / 5 Comments

April Notebook

by
Norbert Blei

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve been keeping a notebook of months in Door County for at least the last 20 years. Perceptions. Descriptions. Reflections. Thoughts. Impressions, many of them, as I walk down my road daily, my mind here, there, everywhere…anxious to end the walk, get back at my desk. Begin the day by recording the very thing found on this page…what I might have just observed…whatever was on my mind. All in a matter of minutes. Never that well thought out or expressed. Often just the passion and flash of a Sumi brush stroke to catch the moment. Never a daily entry. There are some months, entire years, I miss, I forget, I have not the time or interest to record anything. Someday maybe I’ll edit, shape-up the entries, do a small book of these, I tell myself. But I have at least a half dozen other small books to attend to, at least another half dozen of big ones. While good old Father Time passes…marches on, slips by, stands still, evaporates, and of course waits for no man. In the meantime…occasionally I assemble some of these, fix them up a little (un-Sumi parts of them) and put the words out there, whenever the month speaks to me. –Norbert Blei

THE MONTH BEGINS WITH WARM WEATHER… followed by the first fierce wind heard in a long time. I’ve missed the sound of wind this winter. Wind shrill enough to sing through the highest branches of maple and birch trees, strum through the lowest barbed wire fences. Wind strong enough to break the backs of old trees, uproot those that never found the proper footing. Wind to whistle through the slightest openings in old farm buildings and unshut windows. Wind to set off a chorus of wind-chimes that have hung in dumb silence far too long–from clunking iron sounds to a medley of liquid harmonies…the trilling of water, the presence of the Orient. Buddha yawns in the woods, awakens the first blossoms.

WHITE GULLS AND BLACK RAVENS… juncos, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, robins…a strong wind blowing out of the northwest, the temperature at 30 degrees in the morning, rising to 40 by mid-afternoon, the snow melted except along the northside of ditches, buildings, trees in a broken landscape, the sun in and out of a bright and cloudy day, the ice growing porous on the lake, crocuses in bloom…time, time, time, about to spring forward.

APRIL SNOW…fool’s snow. Here today, gone tomorrow, regardless of how oppressive and wintry the day seems. Gone but not forgotten. Gone but not gone yet. Winter boots and snow shovels and cars sliding around turns. Winter has a long memory. Overcast skies, overcast mood. A never ending dirge into April’s song…covered in white, the green practicing, practicing, practicing, beneath.

ICE OUT…one of the true signs of spring in these northern parts. The bays, customarily locked in snow and ice from December through April at least…the whole landscape extending itself, in a way, more approachable (taking occupancy in fish shanties all winter) larger along the inner shorelines–from Sister Bay, across Green Bay, to Menominee on foot (snowshoes, skis) on snowmobile, by sleigh for the oldtimers–to those further reaches one dreams about in summer in the wash and wake of blue water carrying us to other shores in boats, lifting our bare bodies in swimming motions, stealing our eyes toward horizons of sunsets. Something we can almost feel now in spring’s approach one morning, land-locked, ice-locked…then that night a wind…and next morning, the ice breaking up, moving out. Moving out in great floes. Leaving, in its white wake, its disappearing act of ice into liquid sky…the miracle of water. The April song of bays turned blue overnight…

THE MOON IS TOO FULL TONIGHT…too bright. Too beckoning at this midnight hour. On with coat, boots, cap, gloves. Go see what it wants.

LIGHTENING IN THE EAST SKY …but no thunder, after the rain, just before dark. A light show only the heavens can offer…

THE COLD NEVER ENDS IN SPRING… the temperatures hovering near the freezing mark. All night the bedroom feels like winter and a cold wind blows. I run my hand beyond the short sleeve shirts in the dark closet and reach deep in the winter section for a favorite long sleeve flannel shirt,. Grab a woolen sweater too just in case. I rescue my sheepskin jacket from the coat hook on the porch, pull on a knitted cap, call the dog, and head out, down the road. It’s April 29th in Door County. The wind bites, the sky is ten different shades of gray. Flowers fold their color and bow to earth. Tomorrow they predict snow.

NOT YET SPRING… but on the very edge of things. Too many days still too cold. Too many unpredictable storms of sleet and April snow. Nature not yet fine-tuned to those inner and outer harmonies of warmth and light from on high seducing root and bud and earth. Each day walks the line in April. Does the old balancing act. Snow and thunder.

AFTER THE FIRST SPRING RAIN… the earth begins to breathe again, smells alive under the dry-boned, gnarly, wrinkled, liver-spotted old woman’s hand–last autumn’s decay.

SUNLIGHT THIS MORNING SPARKLING FROM THE BRANCHES, TOPS OF TREES AND ALL ALONG THE TELEPHONE WIRES LEADING DOWN TO THE FROZEN LAKE AT THE END OF THE ROAD… after the ice storm last night.

THREE WARM SONGS AFTER THE APRIL WINTER STORM: The rhythm of ice falling from the trees in the woods as the day warms and the branches drip wet; ice from trees bowing over the road, shattering before my steps like broken crystal chandeliers, shards of glass; birds in the bright glinting trees, drinking from the tiny branches and buds sheathed in melting ice.

AFTER THE LAST OF THE LAST SPRING SNOWSTORMS…the pathway to the old coop buried in the woods closed in upon itself…tress, branches, rocks, fences…everything huddled in a nearness and immediacy of snow, of white, of silence and softness that both transfixed and captured the intruder–held him inside.

THE COMFORT OF WOOLEN MITTENS…remain with me well into April all astir: birds returning, squirrels mating, daylight lengthening, maple sap running, crocuses still poking their heads. I am naked without mittens outdoors. April mornings still hover around freezing. The earth crackles in a frozen crust beneath my steps. I am on the road again, reading my morning book: checking the news of the sky, woods, fields, lake. In some unseen way I touch all around me in the warmth of these mittened hands. I make a fist. Open and close, open and close. My hands beat like a warm heart. I open my hand wide, extend all my fingers, feeling the wool touch the tips of my fingers. My whole being comes alive. Just enough of a nip in the air to still love the season almost past. Though the bitter cold is gone for now, will not return for months…though a man should rejoice in the advent of spring, the putting away of winter clothes, I can’t let go of freezing temps, steely skies, the sharp slap of the wind across my face … turtlenecks, sweaters, boots…these warm wooly hands, still holding on to winter.

DAYS OF RAIN AND SUN…the snow, a disappearing act, hardly a ghost of itself…the landscape opening wide… Welcome back, earth.

Photo by Norbert Blei

door county advocate

March 23, 2012 / / 7 Comments

door county advocate

HAPPY 150th

DOOR COUNTY ADVOCATE

by
Norbert Blei

Since I have had a long, hard, bitter, up-and-down, occasionally humorous 40-plus-year history with our local newspaper of little news (fondly referred to as the Door County Aggravate–where I continue to be banned from its pages), it would appear bloody unlikely that I would throw that rag a bone, rose or a bouquet at this point in time.

But at precisely this point in time, their 150th Anniversary, I would indeed like to throw them a big bouquet and urge readers. especially summer visitors, property owners, lovers of Door and local history, to get their hands on the Wednesday, March 21, 2012 edition of the Advocate, which is chock full of good stuff, including a most memorable anniversary insert, featuring a wonderful cover painting by Door County artist, Tim Nyberg…the entire issue, a keeper for sure, something to tuck away with one’s Door County shelf of books, magazines, photographs, old postcards, memorabilia galore.

You will never see another issue like it. I say this in all honesty and with a touch of sadness because this ONE issue is so reminiscent of what we’ve been missing since the superb editor/publisher, class-act and person, Chan Harris, turned the paper over to publishers who had/have not a clue what good local journalism means, what’s more, don’t care, turning local news into the fewest words possible, the shortest meaningless articles, puff-piece editorials by the powers-that-be that never had balls enough to stand for anything except the status quo…thin pages of transparency, nothingness to the Nth degree—nothing but the continual pursuit of advertisers, most of whom left this no-news sheet a long time ago.

That being said, special thanks to associate editor, Warren Bluhm, whom I suspect had his hands all over this anniversary issue, since he’s one of the few not-so-old remaining guards who knows and understands at least a little about Door County, its people, its history. Good to read him–and Chan’s old byline as well.

As a newspaper boy by foot, by bike…news-hawk, writer/journalist who came up (given a hand, a blessing, the push a city writer needed to survive by newspaper work and gradually move into short stories, novels, reviews, poetry)…I was beyond lucky to experience the rich Chicago’s newswriting world of the City News Bureau, the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, etc….the friendships of Mike Royko, Sydney J. Harris, Studs Terkel, John Fink, Herman Kogan…and others.

And how can I not end with, ever forget the old street cry from corner newsstands all over the hustling, bustling city of Sandburg’s “big shoulders”, a stack of papers bundled under one arm, the other arm, one paper in hand, raised and waving in alert, the voice rising above cars, buses, horns, sirens, conversations: “Paper! Paper! Read All About it: The Advocate’s 150th Anniversary! Get Your Paper, Now!” —Norbert Blei


P.S. For the purposes of total transparency, I would add that in the 150th Anniversary supplement is a section entitled “150 Who Shaped Door County”, which includes a few kind words about the writer who has been mostly unkind to a local newspaper that never quite lived up to its responsibilities or his expectations.

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N.B. Coop MP3 Release

The Quiet Time: Door County in Winter. Readings from Norb Blei’s DOOR STEPS (The Days, The Seasons) Original music for guitar by Jim Spector.

Norbert Blei

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