This re-commitment to blogging is harder than I thought. I’m doing what I do when I’m writing, put it off by surfing the internet, reading my dad’s forum (www.burtondickerson.com), checking my checking account in case anyone stuck money in there, writing emails (though not so much anymore). I just burned a half hour reading the list of conference presentations for this year’s AWP conference. Looks like lots of interesting stuff: Bob R, will be there, Ander, Nicole, Elena P, who is a new visitor at GV, other old friends from Iowa. It’s in Chicago and I keep thinking it’s way too close to Grand Rapids NOT to go and the dept might fork over train fair at least (I could apply for the teaching grant, but I’m feeling lazy), but Amtrak between Grand Rapids and Chicago is really screwing up lately. A few weeks ago, stuck on the tracks over night, did not get into GR until the next morning, and again a night or two ago, got in 5 hours late, which must have been about 2am. I’m sure my niece would let me crash at her place and a friend might share her badge with me, but I feel funny about stealing my way in. A colleague and I at work joked (just joking mind you) about forging (forging?) our badges, finding a Kinkos and stealing some of those plastic badge holder thingies you wear around your neck. Could save me 175 bucks.
Or, I could get off my ass and still apply for a 500 dollar teaching grant and just go and have some fun.
My computer at home is infected with all kind of bugs and worms and things, and may be dying, and it seems to keep even the Spybot from working the way it should. The desk top disappears and you have to do weird things to switch from one thing to the next and we shut down improperly every night and I wish I had money.
Snowing today. Not too bad, worse south of us. But cold as hell. I no longer live in a tree house, but in a funny, ugly on the outside, cute on the inside, Florida style, I think they call them, flat-roofed house on Lake Michigan Dr, close to both GR and GVSU campus. Because I have a yard now, it’s easy to let the dog in and out and not walk the poor thing like I used to. Now we are both getting fat and lazy.
More on Living The Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis. I learned a few things that I wanted to share and might touch on in my own book. It may take more than one blog to do it in, and may trigger a memory. He was five years old when his family moved back to the Leelanau Peninsula. They lived in a hill top house with a view of the big lake, so the guy knew this place. In one bit he talks about how he became interested in sand and the plant life and waves. The smallest waves on the Lakes are called capillary waves, wrinkles on the surface of the water. They act like tiny sails, he says, to catch the wind and make larger waves. Gusts blow over the land, plummet into the water, then gather force. White caps “march” across the bay and pump up and down (I hope he doesn’t mind if I borrow a few things word for word without using quote marks: I think he’s speaking specifically of the waves he might have seen from another bay, somewhere on the north shore of Lake Michigan, with a view North Manitou, somewhere near Pyramid Point: I need a map; can it be much different at the mouth of Grand Traverse Bay? Maybe). Breakers “purl and gallop” down the shore (I like that: “purl and gallop.”) Lower swells sluggish by cold seemed to rise from the bottom, he says, and “crawl” to shore, finally collapsing on the sand “like exhausted swimmers.”
Yes, I don’t see why that can’t be true for Grand Traverse Bay as well, because I’ve seen this galloping and purling and I’ve seen the sluggish but heavy ones that just crash in. Later in the book he talked about how the Lakes were different than the ocean and why it can be more of a problem for ships to navigate. Out in the middle of Lake Michigan he once encountered very big waves, “not rollers, but steep, short-period wind waves.” Freshwater, he says, is less dense than salt water, so lake waves rise quicker and run faster and can more or less wreak havoc with all the choppiness and getting tossed around. I think Lindy and Rose experienced this a bit when they went across the bay to Northport with a friend up north in a speed boat. It got pretty darn bumpy and windy and there’s the realization that you’re way the hell out there. The bay’s pretty big. Maybe Lindy can explain that one better. Anyway, on the ocean, you’re rising and dipping over much larger, often smoother swells, easier to navigate actually.
Hajo Knuttel, a freelance ship’s captain, was the guy he traveled with on the ship called the Malabar: a tall masted schooner a hundred feet long with two 60 foot masts. It was big. This was this guy’s first time on the lakes. He was an ocean person, but was surprised by how blue the water was and called them “Pretty big ponds”
Okay, now I’m re-writing this Dennis’ book, which I don’t mean to do. Just wanted to write about my favorite parts, the parts where I learned some things, but it may take time. Here’s one more thing that’s cool and then I’ll say more on another day: Lake effect snow. This, I had no idea about: There are only a very few places in the world where lake effect snow happens (and this is relevant since one of those places is about 8 miles away from us down Lake Michigan Dr in Benton Harbor! Same for Bethy in Traverse City) Here’s what he says: A body of water has to be located at a latitude cold enough to produce snow, not so cold the water would freeze over and large enough to warm the air. It also requires a mass of land to supply cold air upwind from the water. Such conditions are only present on the Great Lakes, The east shore of the Hudson Bay and the west coast of Japanese Islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. The amount of snow varies with “fetch” the distance the wind travels over open water: the south shore of Lake Superior gets it bad as well as places like Buffalo and Rochester, which get buried at times. Interesting, interesting, interesting. I had no idea. I just thought that was cool.
Speaking of waves and lakes, and deep water. I remember being scared to death of boats, anything that took me out over my head: maybe I was 4 to 8ish or more years old. I remember being in a row boat with my dad, and it looked like we were ten or more feet above the floor of the lake, all covered in mossy stones. Even though it’s kind of magnified by the water, it still looked deep as hell to me and scared me to death. I also did not like the distance from shore, so far away we might never get back. The deepness must have been a weird sort of fear of heights. It was so far down, or seemed to be. I remember I would not, for years, ride in the Manker’s speed boat. I also remember my dad pulling up the car, facing a boat launch. All I remember was a road that disappeared under the water: Maybe it was in Norwood, a place where people on the lane launched their boats, I think. Dad pulled right up to the shore, where the road went under and I was afraid he’d drive all the way in, or the car would, of its own power, go all the way in. (why would I not trust that he would certainly not drive the car all the way in?). I would sit in the backseat panicked and probably whining. I had a weird fear of the water, or deep water, or getting stuck in the water, but I always went into the water, went swimming, dove for rocks, played around on little rafts and boats. It was the bigger boats and the deeper water I was afraid of. When I finally did get the courage to go out on Manker’s boat: it somehow stalled or had engine problems a million miles from shore, and I cried, scared shitless. I think Mr. Manker ingored me, and the boys, Marty and Mike teased me. Of course, the boat was just “idling,” I did not know what that meant. I was afraid of Mel’s sand dune rides too. I was afraid of everything, but especially being out “over my head” I must have gotten over it eventually, but for a long time I did not like canoeing or rowing too far from shore. And I think I can count on one hand the times I’ve been on a big boat anywhere: Never on the bay, twice to go the Mackinaw Island, and once or twice on Lake Bellaire in my cousin’s smaller, but quite fancy speed boat. The one that pulled Brandy on water skiis when he died. I also ferried across the English Channel at night. A 3 hour trip, but I didn’t see anything. I must have slept. That and we took a car ferry on the outer banks of North Carolina: That was pretty wavy and scary, to get to the tail end of outer banks. I forget what that part’s called. I need a map again
So, its neat to see the shore, the lakes.
from this Jerry Dennis’ perspective on the Malibar.
