Midwest Guest

Midwest road-trip reads and other useful road tools

For me, there's nothing better than a good road trip, and part of the fun involves planning your route to make sure you don't miss some of the must-sees while you're on the road.

Here are a few great reads and planning tools to check out before your next Midwestern road tripping adventure!

I enjoy Amy Rea's A closer look at flyover land blog, which explores every corner of Minnesota. Her newly published Backroads & Byways of Minnesota looks like a great addition to any Midwest road trips library. Each chapter highlights a different route in the state, offering practical tips, information, and tons of suggestions about what to do along the way. You can also get the book as a Kindle edition.

What Amy does for Minnesota, Matt Forster does for Michigan in his new guidebook Backroads & Byways of Michigan. Matt's book, like Amy's, is also available as a Kindle edition. You can check in with Matt at his Facebook page for the guidebook.

We recently drove the length of the Lincoln Highway through Ohio. Travelers started road tripping along this east-west highway, the first transcontinental highway in the United States, when it opened to traffic in 1913. The highway stretched from San Francisco to New York City, although subsequent realignments and expressways that eventually superseded the old road make it a challenge to follow the historic route in spots. The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate by Michael Wallis is an invaluable guide to some of the most interesting and quirky stops along the historic route.

We want to drive the Indiana leg of the Lincoln Highway soon, so I definitely want to check out The Lincoln Highway Across Indiana by Jan Shupert-Arick and the Indiana Lincoln Highway Association.

Tim and I both love northern Minnesota and enjoyed traveling its legendary Highway 61. I bought Tales of the Road: Highway 61 by Cathy Wurzer, which is a companion piece to a public television documentary, in anticipation of a trip we'd planned to take a couple of years ago. Highway 61 began carrying travelers through the state and along its beautiful North Shore in the 1920s, and Wurzer's book covers a lot of the road's history and stories behind some of the cool roadside architecture that still exists from the highway's early days. Sadly, we had to cancel the trip, but when we do get back to Minnesota, Wurzer's book will make the trip with us.

You can slip the Historic Michigan Travel Guide by the Historical Society of Michigan into a jacket or camera bag pocket. It is chock-full of information about 300 of Michigan's museums, historic sites and other history-related destinations. The listings include information like availability of parking, hours, fees, and accessibility along with each attraction's highlights. We've got an older edition of this book, but the newest edition also includes GPS-ready addresses in the listings.

Love lighthouses and waterfalls?  Check out A Traveler's Guide to 116 Michigan Lighthouses and A guide to 199 Michigan Waterfalls by Laurie Penrose, Bill Penrose and Ruth Penrose. These two guidebooks include maps and photos to help you find your way to some of my favorite Great Lakes State sights.

Best of the Midwest: Rediscovering America's Heartland by Dan Kaercher of Midwest Living Magazine is a few years old, but it's still a great guide to the heritage, scenery, attractions and people of 12-state region the magazine considers to be in the Midwest (for the record, those states are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin).

Want a real taste of the region? Check out Taste of the Midwest: 12 States, 101 Recipes, 150 Meals, 8,207 Miles and Millions of Memories, in which Dan Kaercher eats his way through the Midwest and shares the stories and recipes for some of our most quintessential Midwest eats.

I wouldn't dream of leaving home without a good map. I've worn out a number of my trusty Michigan Atlas & Gazetteer books by the Delorme Mapping Company over the years, and I think we're working on about our third copy of the Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer at this point. Delorme produces map books for each state that include detailed maps and reference lists that include parks, historic sites, wineries, hiking trails, or other things specific to each state.

Books aside, we also find our GPS invaluable in our travels. We have an older unit similar to Garmin's GPSMAP 62sc Handheld Navigator loaded with Garmin City Navigator maps.

This unit works great when we're out of the car geocaching. On our last outing with it in Ohio and West Virginia, it consistently led us to within a few feet of the caches we sought.

We use it in the car with a holder mounted to the windshield with a powerful suction cup, but we find that the screen is a little small and doesn't always include enough information on it when we're trying to navigate through a larger city on an expressway.

So, we're shopping for a GPS with a larger screen, lifetime maps and traffic information specifically designed for use in the car. We like our Garmin handheld, so we're looking at possibilities like Garmin's nüvi 2460LMT, or maybe even a TomTom VIA 1505TM or Magellan RoadMate 5045-LM.

Do you have any GPS suggestions for us or suggestions for other great road-trip reads?

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Multimedia pioneer Lowell Thomas began life's journey in Ohio

I remember seeing a couple Lowell Thomas books on my mother's shelves when I was quite young, but I never knew much about the pioneering broadcaster and world traveler until my recent visit to the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio.

I vaguely knew Thomas as a globe-trotting journalist, but the museum's gallery dedicated to him gave me a new appreciation for his career as a multimedia pioneer. Considering Thomas' life-long fascination with emerging media and experimenting with it, I'm thinking he would be all over today's "new media", just as he was ubiquitous across multiple media platforms throughout his long career.

Lowell Thomas was born on April 6, 1892 in nearby Woodington, Ohio. The museum moved Thomas' birthplace, a two-story Victorian house, to its campus during the late 1980s. Visitors can tour it during summer weekends, although we were there too early in the year to do so.

The museum's Lowell Thomas gallery has plenty of photos and mementos from Thomas' travels, and visitors can watch video footage of Thomas in a pocket-sized theater.

The Thomas family moved from Ohio when Lowell was 8 years old, heading to Victor, Colorado, where his father was a doctor in the gold mining community. The Victor Lowell Thomas Museum celebrates Thomas's life and time there.

Lowell started working for the Victor Daily Record as a newsboy at the age of 10, becoming an editor for the paper by the age of 19.

Thomas earned degrees from five universities, including the University of Northern Indiana at Valparaiso and Princeton.

Thomas continued working as an editor with dailies in Chicago and several other cities, but wanderlust soon kicked in and he began traveling the world in earnest by the late 1910s, filming and writing about his experiences in a nationally syndicated newspaper column.

Thomas set out for Europe in 1917 with his new bride, Frances, and cameraman Harry Chase to report on World War I. He tired of harsh conditions and drab film footage he got at the Western Front, so his wife worked with the Red Cross in Italy while Thomas and his cameraman went to the Middle East.

It was there that he met T.E. Lawrence, a young British Army officer who wore Arab robes as he helped lead Arab forces during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule. The colorful Lawrence captured Thomas' imagination, and the broadcaster's arguably romanticized accounts of the exploits of "Lawrence of Arabia" made Lawrence a star and made Thomas millions of dollars.

Thomas created what was, for the time, highly original multimedia presentations where he narrated his travels from a podium in sync with photo slides and film clips. Lawrence's story intrigued 1920s audiences, and Thomas' presentations played to as many as four million people throughout the world.

Thomas' 1924 book about the subject, With Lawrence of Arabia, became the first of over 50 books Thomas authored during his lifetime.

Thomas began doing daily radio newscasts for NBC in 1930. His authoritative and impartial manner was a distinct departure from other popular radio newscasters of the time. Thomas decided to end each of his newscasts with a light-hearted story, a format that nearly every newscast since that time adopted.

Movie audiences became familiar with Thomas' voice from the many short newsreels he narrated that ran in theaters to accompany feature films during the 1930s.

Over the years at NBC, and later at CBS, he became the first newscaster to report from a ship, an airplane, a submarine, and a coal mine. In 1939, he simulcast his radio broadcasts on television, becoming the first to have a televised nightly newscast.

Thomas appreciated the flexibility radio offered to broadcast from wherever he might be in the world, and he continued his nightly radio broadcasts until he was 85 years old in 1976.

He produced and starred in television series during the 1950s and 1970s and became a Cinerama (3-D movie) producer. Check out the Internet Movie Database site for a listing of Thomas' work in movies and television.

Thomas became rich working as an independent contractor with his own sponsors, buying his own time on networks, and retaining ownership of his material.

Thomas' first wife, Frances, died in 1975, and the widowed Thomas married Marianna Munn of Darke County in 1977.

In 1980, Thomas visited Ohio for the last time, to speak to the local Business and Professional Women's Club.

He died in 1981 at his New York home at the age of 89. His widow Marianna returned to live in Dayton, Ohio, until her death at the age of 82 in 2010.

Many of Thomas' books are out-of-print, but you can still readily find his first book, With Lawrence of Arabia, online.

Want to learn more about Lawrence of Arabia? Check out Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Greenville

Michigan Civil War vets spark life-long interest in history for Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Young Bruce Catton, who sat mesmerized by the tales of old Civil War veterans in the small northern Michigan town of Benzonia, Michigan, grew up to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of many popular histories of the War Between the States.

We often visit Benzonia, and once found a particularly tricky geocache in the park where young Bruce played Civil War games with his buddies near the turn of the twentieth century.

I knew about the Benzonia/Catton connection, and with the approach of the Civil War sesquicentennial, I thought it was a good time to share the story.

Congregationalists settle Benzonia, establish school

In 1858, Reverend Charles E. Bailey and four families from a Congregational church in Oberlin, Ohio, arrived in northern Michigan's wilderness to establish a Christian community with a college modeled after Oberlin.

The school began as Grand Traverse College offering classes at someone's home, and later in a two-story frame building in Benzonia.

The school offered college preparatory classes and teacher training, accepting students of both genders and of all races and ethnic origin.

The school started with 13 students in 1860. That number grew to 150 students by 1875, with many graduates becoming teachers in western Michigan's lumbering towns.

In 1891, Grand Traverse College became Benzonia College.

Lumbering declined as the forests disappeared during the late 1800s, farming in the area was generally difficult, and the population declined.

Benzonia College struggled, lacking students or money, and it became a college prep school called Benzonia Academy in 1900.

The Catton family in Benzonia

Bruce Catton was born in Petoskey, Michigan. His family came to Benzonia when his father taught at the school and, in 1906, became principal of the 40-student academy.

In 1909, Benzonia Academy's main campus building burned down, and school officials replaced it with a wooden-frame and brick-veneer building called Mills Cottage. It became the girls' dormitory, central dining hall, and home to Principal Catton's family.

Young Bruce Catton had fond memories of old men with long grey beards and wearing blue uniforms with brass buttons that took center stage each Decoration Day (aka Memorial Day) during his childhood. Catton loved the stories they spun about their Civil War days, and history became alive for him as he listened to their tales.

Catton graduated from Benzonia Academy and attended Oberlin College in 1916. His father remained principal of the academy until 1917.

Benzonia Academy closed after graduating one last class of 10 students in 1918.

Catton leaves Benzonia, finds his voice

Catton left Oberlin College to join the Navy during World War I. He worked as a newspaper reporter at the Cleveland News, the Boston Herald-American, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer before moving to Washington D.C. in the mid-1920s to work for a news syndication service. He worked for the Federal government through World War II as a director of information.

Catton wrote his first book, The War Lords of Washington, in 1948, leaving his bureaucratic job for his new career as an author.

Catton turned to the subject that sparked his imagination as a young boy, writing Mr. Lincoln's Army in 1951. It was the first of his 13 Civil War books.

Catton's next book, A Stillness at Appomattox, explored the final campaign of the war in Virginia. It was his first real commercial success, earning him the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for history.

His lyrical writing and love for telling stories of the privates, rather than the generals or simply regurgitating dry facts and figures, made Catton's histories popular beyond professional historians and academicians.

The rest of the story

Catton helped establish American Heritage magazine in 1954. He became the magazine's senior editor in 1959, remaining there until his 1978 death at his summer home in Frankfort, Michigan. His gravesite is in the Benzonia Township Cemetery.

Catton wrote about his childhood in Benzonia during the 1970s in Waiting for the Morning Train.

Mills Cottage became the Mills Community House and Benzonia Public Library in 1925. It earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

If you're looking for a Wi-Fi connection as you travel in the area, you can sit on the building's spacious front porch and access the library's connection, even when the building isn't open according its website.

For the curious, the geocache we found in the park next to the building where young Bruce played Civil War is no longer there, although it remains one of our more memorable finds. It was a two-stage cache where you solved a math puzzled based on information from an historical marker about the academy. The solution led you to a micro cache hidden on the underside of a piece of tree bark about 3/4 by 1-1/2 inches in size and tacked back on the tree with a small hook.

Looking for other Midwest locations with a Civil War connection? Check out my story, Brake for Civil War history in Indiana, about a marker at the site of a Civil War training camp.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Thompsonville

Midwest travel links for March

Check out some of these great Midwest-related stories I read online during this past month:

• Baseball's First Opening Day-Catch this story at Cleveland Area History about the first major league baseball game. Cleveland Ohio's Forest City team and Indiana's Fort Wayne Kekiongas became the first baseball teams to play in a major league game on March 17, 1871, with the Cleveland team falling 2-0 to the Kekiongas at Fort Wayne.

  
  
  Toledo Mud Hens' ball field in Toledo, Ohio
  

• Civic Iconography Done Right: Chicago's City Flag-Aaron writes about Chicago's brilliant use of their flag as an iconic symbol to strengthen the city's visual identity at the Urbanophile blog.  You'll find this readily recognizable civic symbol everywhere in Chicago--flying in front of city and commercial buildings and displayed as a logo on everything from city police cars to tattoos on a local bartender's arm.

• Millennium & Grant Park-I loved reading this story at the designslinger blog about how Chicago's Millennium Park evolved out of an effort to clean up the lake front after Chicago's devastating fire in 1871 and how the original Frederick Law Olmsted plan for a grand park became even grander as famed architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett expanded on Olmsted's ideas and incorporated elements of the City Beautiful Movement into its design.

• Gambling? No.-Stop by The Night Train to wish Amy well as she plans her wedding at the beautiful Casino building on Detroit's Belle Isle. Amy tells us that Frederick Law Olmsted, a champion of the City Beautiful Movement, planned most of Belle Isle, although the city rejected his plan for a sheltered promenade. His son later suggested that the casino building include some of the features of the promenade originally suggested by his father.





• Raise a Glass on 313: National Vernors Day-Kath writes about this day dedicated to Detroit's own "deliciously different" soft drink at Great Lakes Gazette. Detroit area ex-pats often go to great lengths to satisfy their craving for Vernors if they can't find it where they live, and I used to carefully pack and ship 12-packs of the pop (yes, it's "pop", not "soda") to my cousin in California until she finally found a local source for Vernors. Ask any Detroiter--if it's not Vernors, it's not real ginger ale.

• The Oldest Ford Plant Still in Operation-I recently saw a presentation a local history conference by a group seeking to preserve portions of the historic Ford plant in Highland Park, Michigan, which pioneered modern mass production with the first continuously moving assembly line in 1913. Ford closed down operations at the Highland Park plant years ago, but check out this story at the Nokohaha blog about a 1924-vintage Ford factory in St. Paul, Minnesota, that now holds the distinction of being the oldest Ford plant still operating.

• Bridges of Madison County (and beyond)-I enjoyed Linda's story about visiting Iowa's famed Bridges of Madison County at Travels with Children. She also includes a few other useful links for finding covered bridges in the Midwest.

  
  
  Pointing the way to covered bridges in Ashtabula, Ohio
  

• Monkey Business in Rockford, Illinois-I always wanted a sock monkey as a kid (in fact, I still do!), but maybe I just need to visit Nelson the world's largest sock monkey in Rockford. Julie writes about her visit with Nelson at the Midway Village Museum and other Rockford attractions at Road Trips for Families.

• Musings on Museums-Amy writes about visiting one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood homes in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, at A Closer Look at Flyover Land. She found the museum there a little disappointing, but advises that fans of Laura's books will find the Ingalls family dugout home site well worth the stop.

• Keeping the Union (and Ohio's Civil War History) Alive-It was all in the family for Kyle Yoho as he grew up the only child of parents who shared their love of historical re-enactments with him. The 21-year-old still travels the country as a member of one of Ohio's most active Civil War re-enactment groups and shares his thoughts with Discovering Ohio's Ashley about why young people continue to enjoy the hobby as we move into celebrations of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Helen Steiner Rice: Ohio's "Ambassador of Sunshine"

I remember seeing gift books and greeting cards in card shops bearing the name of Helen Steiner Rice, and I remember seeing a few photos of her as an elderly lady who invariably wore a fancy hat.

I was surprised, though, to see her name on an Ohio historical marker in a Lorain, Ohio, park during our most recent trip along Lake Erie on Ohio's north coast.

Helen Elaine Steiner was born at Lorain on May 19, 1900.

Helen taught religion classes at her local Methodist Church, originally thinking she might like to be a preacher. She liked to write, and had some of her earliest poems published in her school newspapers.

Helen planned to attend Ohio Wesleyan College for a liberal arts degree, study at Ohio State to earn a law degree, and expressed a desire to become a Congresswoman, inspired, no doubt, by the election of Jeannette Rankin of Montana as the first female member of Congress in 1916.

Her father, a railroad worker for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, died during the influenza epidemic of 1918, and Helen gave up her college plans to work at the Lorain Electric Light & Power Company making decorative silk lampshades to support her family after her high school graduation that same year.

Company officials spotted promise in Helen and trained her as a bookkeeper, but her real talent was in marketing and speaking. She eventually became the company's advertising sales manager, which was a rare career for women in the 1920s.

Helen also was the electric company's spokeswoman and chair of Ohio's Women's Public Information Committee of the Electric Light Association. She became a nationally known speaker by age 25 and also used her speaking engagements to advocate improved working conditions and workplace rights for women.

In 1927, Helen started her own speakers bureau called Steiner Service.

Helen spoke at a bankers' convention in June of 1928 where she met Franklin Rice, vice president of Dayton Savings and Trust. She married him on January 30, 1929, and moved into Franklin's grand 14-room house in Dayton.

The stock market crash in October of 1929 cost Franklin his job, as well as his investments.

In 1931, Helen accepted a job with the Gibson Art Company of Cincinnati as a trouble shooter suggesting ways for the company to increase sales in its greeting card division.

Franklin refused to sell his home in Dayton, Ohio, so Helen lived in Cincinnati during the week, commuting back to Dayton on weekends.

Franklin became increasingly depressed about their financial difficulties and committed suicide on October 14, 1932.

Helen worked and lived in Cincinnati after Franklin's death, becoming one of America's leading greeting card writers by 1940.

Helen wrote "When I Must Leave You" when her mother died in 1945. The poem became a popular sympathy card for Gibson, and the company began publishing more of Helen's signed inspirational verses on greeting cards.

The popularity of Helen's inspirational verse soared after 1960 after a reading of one of her poems on the Lawrence Welk Show.

She authored ten books during her lifetime, usually sending her royalties to churches she attended in Lorain and Cincinnati.

Helen retired from full-time work at Gibson in 1971. Her health deteriorated during the 1970s, and she died on April 23, 1981. Her grave is in the Steiner family plot at Elmwood Cemetery in Lorain.

Helen wrote an estimated several million poems during her lifetime. Her poetry continues to sell well, and the foundation she established before her death donates money to a variety of charities helping those in need and the elderly primarily in the Lorain and Cincinnati area.

In 2002, Ohio installed the marker we saw in Lakeview Park commemorating the life of the woman many called the "Poet Laureate of Inspirational Verse" or the "Ambassador of Sunshine".

So, next time I see Helen's name on a sentimental greeting card, book mark, or gift book, I'll have a greater appreciation of her work and life as a tough-minded pioneering businesswoman who liked to wear fancy hats!

Want to learn more? Check out Helen Steiner Rice: Ambassador of Sunshine by Ronald Pollitt and Virginia Wiltse or A Portrait of Helen Steiner Rice by Mary Hilarie Tavenner. Some of the most recent releases of Helen's collected poetry and devotionals include A Celebration of God's Love, A Collection of Joy, A Celebration of Love.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Amherst

Things To Do
Elyria

Mystery, murder and other mayhem in Michigan

I've never been much of a reader of mysteries, although I often enjoy reading a decent true crime book. These days, however, I find myself reading a lot of both fictional mysteries and true crime books written by Michigan authors and/or set in the Great Lakes State.

So, whether you like escaping from the slush and cold by reading a chiller, or you're looking for a few good reads to pack into your beach bag in anticipation of summer, here are a few suggestions for books about Michigan mysteries, murder and other mayhem.

Taking a new look at cold cases always fascinates me, and I found Mardi Link's account of an officially unsolved northern Michigan crime dating to 1968, when an idyllic summer vacation home turned into a horrific murder scene where six members of the Robison family lost their lives, fascinating. Fans of the "Mad Men" television show should also enjoy reading about some real-life 1960s advertising types populating this story.

I saw Link at a book signing where I picked up her next true crime book about another northern Michigan case where she explores the long-held secrets about a nun's death in the tiny northern Michigan town of Isadore-a crime that the locals still only reluctantly, if at all, discuss.

Lest you think tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech, where one or two disturbed or disgruntled people take the lives of students as they set about their school day, are unique to our contemporary culture, Arnie Bernstein's book about America's first school bombing that took place in a mid-Michigan town on a spring day in 1927 will be a revelation. Readers learn how the bombing happened, but the reasons for the crime spree that resulted in the deaths nearly 40 people (including the bomber himself) remain shrouded in mystery.

I remember reading newspaper accounts about the deaths of two Detroit-area deer hunters who disappeared during a hunting trip in 1985, as well as the trial that exposed the secrets surrounding their deaths 18 years later. Tom Henderson's book, Darker than Night, is a compelling account of the crime and trial that even earned a 5-star review at Amazon from the prosecutor in the trial. Chapters are extremely short, which I found an effective device to keep me moving through the book as I'd always think I would read just one more chapter...and keep thinking that until I finished the book hours later. I look forward to reading Henderson's other true-crime books.

Richard Carson's book about the death of a 17-year-old girl from Michigan's Thumb area in 1974 is in my "to-read" pile. This case remained unsolved until a rookie detective began investigating it with the assistance of a psychic in 1982. I'm looking forward to reading about the crime, the subsequent trial, and the trial's aftermath.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Bryan Gruley gave me the ultimate trifecta of reasons to read his first mystery novel when I saw that he set it in northern Michigan with a protagonist who played hockey and wrote for a weekly newspaper. I buzzed through Gruley's first book about Gus Carpenter and the northern Michigan town of Starvation Lake, both of which have seen better days, and immediately bought and read the next book in the series. There is a nice Q&A with Gruley at the Traverse City National Writers Series site (you can get to it by clicking on the story link in the "Meet the Writer" column or find it by entering "Bryan Gruley" in the site's search box).

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my friend Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's Emily Kincaid Mysteries, where struggling writer, journalist and amateur sleuth Emily Kincaid teams up with her friend and small-town deputy, Dolly Wakowski, to solve mysterious cases in a small northern Michigan town.

Be sure to check out my Q&A with Elizabeth for some insight into her three published Emily Kincaid books and a sneak peek at Elizabeth's next mystery series.

Meanwhile, I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Elizabeth's fourth Emily Kincaid mystery, Dead Dogs and Englishmen, due out in July, 2011. Readers can meet Elizabeth in person on July 22 at a book launch and signing at Brilliant Books in Sutton's Bay, Michigan.

I also posted some more great Midwest reads late last year at Midwest books make for good reads and great gifts.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Midwest books make for good reads and great gifts

Looking for a few good books to give as gifts or to read this winter? Check out some of our favorite Midwest-related reads.

Tim and I have several favorite mystery series set in Michigan or Ohio.

Check out my question-and-answer session from earlier this week with my friend, and northern Michigan mystery writer, Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli. We've spent a lot of time traveling in northwestern Michigan and readily recognize many of the characters and settings in Elizabeth's entertaining series about struggling mystery writer Emily Kincaid. The fourth book in the Emily Kincaid series comes out next year, but you can catch up with Emily's adventures in the meantime with Dead Dancing Women, Dead Floating Lovers, and Dead Sleeping Shaman.

I originally picked up a couple of Les Roberts mysteries for Tim at a Cleveland bookstore on the way home from a weekend writers' retreat. Roberts, born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and the first producer of "The Hollywood Squares" television game show, eventually moved to Cleveland, Ohio. His Milan Jacovich stories follow the exploits of the old-school private investigator set against a background of familiar Cleveland-area landmarks, starting with Pepper Pike and continuing through his latest Jacovich mystery, King of the Holly Hop. Plus readers also learn the fashion-right definition of the Full Cleveland along the way!

Nevada Barr was a ranger in several National Parks, much like Anna Pigeon, the National Park Ranger protagonist of Barr's mystery series. Barr's first ranger job was with the boat patrol on Michigan's remote Isle Royale National Park, and the park provides the setting for two of Barr's 16 Anna Pigeon books: A Superior Death and Winter Study. Tim read many of Barr's books, including the two set in Michigan, and I read one of her books set in Mississippi when heavy weather on Lake Superior kept us on, of all places, Isle Royale for an extra day. The Isle Royale books are definitely on my reading list!

I've written about a number of notable Midwest bridges here, but I really love bridges of all kinds. Historic Highway Bridges of Michigan by Charles K. Hyde looks at historically significant highway bridges in the state ranging from well known spans like the Mackinac Bridge to lesser known bridges that have cool histories or architectural details. I even took a few classes from Professor Hyde during my undergrad years at Wayne State University!

Did you know that a surprising number of women served as Great Lakes light keepers? I told the story of one of the longest-serving female light keepers on the Great Lakes when I wrote about Harriet Colfax, who tended the Michigan City lighthouse in northern Indiana from 1861 until 1904. Check out Women and the Lakes: Untold Great Lakes Maritime Tales by Frederick Stonehouse to learn more about Colfax and other female light keepers.

Split Rock Lighthouse, a strikingly beautiful beacon perched high on a 130-foot cliff along Lake Superior on Minnesota's North Shore, celebrated its centennial anniversary last July. I read So Terrible a Storm: A Tale of Fury on Lake Superior by Curt Brown earlier this year. Brown tells the tragic tale of a legendary 1905 storm and explores the sometimes controversial decision to build the Split Rock light in that storm's wake.

We've loved visiting Michigan's Point Betsie Lighthouse along the shore of northern Lake Michigan for years. I've written about it several times, most recently to update the progress of an ongoing renovation at the site. I really like Point Betsie: Lightkeeping and Lifesaving on Northeastern Lake Michigan by Jonathan P. Hawley for its historic photos and use of research from many primary sources.

Artist and author Gwen Frostic was beloved by generations of visitors to her unique studio and nature sanctuary in northwestern Michigan. Many expressed disbelief and sorrow as reports surfaced in late 2009 that owners who purchased her business and building lost it to foreclosure and closed the north woods landmark. Folks rejoiced as new owners revived the business and reopened it this past summer. The Life and Wisdom of Gwen Frostic by Sheryl James is fairly short, as it is an extension of an article James wrote for the Detroit Free Press a few years before Frostic's death in 2001, but it's still fascinating for those who grew up visiting the business and want to learn more about the woman who overcame many odds to create a multi-million dollar business and lasting artistic legacy.

The story of President James A. Garfield (one of eight presidents hailing from Ohio) always fascinated me as a kid. His term as United States president was shockingly short as an assassin killed him mere months after he took office in 1881. He was the last president born in a log cabin, a Civil War hero, an ordained minister, and a U.S. Senator before becoming president. There are many biographies about Garfield, in spite his short tenure as president. I particularly enjoyed reading Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield by Kenneth D. Ackerman.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Q & A with northern Michigan mystery writer Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

There isn't much better on a cold winter evening than curling up with a good mystery, and reading Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's stories about struggling mystery writer Emily Kincaid and her adventures in small-town northern Michigan is a special treat for me.

Elizabeth teaches creative writing at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan, when she's not writing novels or figuring out what to do with the bad guys in her fictional worlds.

The Emily Kincaid series includes Dead Dancing Women, Dead Floating Lovers, and Dead Sleeping Shaman, as well as Dead Dogs and Englishmen (slated for release in spring of 2011).

Elizabeth, who I met at a metro Detroit writers' group meeting, took some time out from writing her most recent novel to answer a few questions for me.

• Q. How did Emily Kincaid introduce herself to you and become the lead character of your northern Michigan mystery series?

  A. I think Emily Kincaid split off from my psyche. She's a mystery writer, lives in my house, uses my writing studio, has a dog a lot like my old dog, keeps getting into trouble. Only she's a lot younger, a lot smarter, a lot dumber, a lot more put-upon. Oh, and she doesn't weigh much. Yeah--just like me.

• Q. How did the northern Michigan setting inspire or drive these stories?

  A. Northern Michigan is a place out of time--at least where I live. The people are real--without the hang-up of proving how much money they have, who they know, which schools they attended--nothing but reality, real lives in progress, up here. The towns I write about are much as I write them. The people care about each other and sometimes hurt each other. Deward, the abandoned mining town in Dead Sleeping Shaman, is real and haunted and a part of a colorful past. Leetsville is no more, but could have been--if it had survived the end of logging days the way other towns survived. So, I breathed life into Leetsville. Traverse City is the antithesis of my other places--it is alive and growing and wealthy, and culturally and artistically viable. I have it all up here--and along with that some evil people who I like disposing of.

  
  
  

• Q. How did crows become harbingers of danger in your books?

  A. Actually the crows aren't harbingers of anything but more crow smarts. They've been my muse since moving up here, and one time they saved my life. They look out for me and gossip about me and hang around my house. Since taking on the rehabilitation of the crows I have been told amazing stories by people in up close and personal encounters with the birds. Amazing creatures. For me they've become a harbinger of more and more ideas for mysteries.

• Q. It's been interesting to see the growth of Emily's character, and her relationships with other characters, as the series progressed. I admit that her relationship with her ex-husband in the second book made me want to shake a bit of sense into her, though. How can we expect to see these characters progress in the next book in the series?

  A. A lot of people got mad at Emily when she went back to her cheating ex-husband, Jackson, temporarily. The thing is, I'm tired of fairy tales in women's novels. Sorry, but women can do dumb things when they're scared or too lonely. They return to men who are bad for them--as Emily did when her finances were scaring her. But the thing is, they can learn from their mistakes, as Emily did--she wasn't going to leave northern Michigan. She wasn't going back with Jackson. She was actually getting what she wanted and would find a way to make it work. She got stronger through her temporary insanity.

• Q. When is the fourth book in the Emily Kincaid series coming out?

  A. The next book in the Emily Kincaid series will be out in May, 2011. Dead Dogs and Englishmen is about facing someone so evil you doubt your own sanity. And here, too, Emily is forced into a situation she wished she weren't in, but needs the money she makes to pay her bills. Another lesson learned by Emily, who comes out of it wiser and even rather proud of what she did and who she is.

  
  
  

• Q. Do you have any plans for Emily beyond these four books?

  A. I have two more books in the Emily Kincaid series in the works but at the moment I'm taking a break. Emily and Dolly want to get away from me for awhile and I need to see less of them for a year or so. The thing is, people up here keep coming to me with stories. I just got a phone call from a man who ran into this great story . . . so . . .

• Q. What's next for you?

  A. At the moment I'm working on a novel very unlike the DEAD series. It is much darker, much more threatening, and takes place in Detroit, among the homeless. My protagonist is a woman--Roberta Brimley, a social worker who joins the homeless (the faceless, unseen people) when she is threatened by a madman who murdered her husband, a philosopher, and has come after her, first stalking and torturing her, to find something her dead husband had hidden. I'm always excited by new work and can't keep it out of my mind. I'm on chapter 23--pushing forward but already looking to the end, when I get to do away with the bad guy in as gruesome a manner as I can come up with. Sins must be paid for, after all.

Thanks, Elizabeth, and I'll be sure to look for your next novels!

Meanwhile, are you curious about Emily, love a good mystery, and love discovering great regional authors? Be sure to check out Dead Dancing Women, Dead Floating Lovers, and Dead Sleeping Shaman.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Gwen Frostic Prints reopens for retail business in its long-time northern Michigan home

The comforting clatter of printing presses was music to my ears as I recently walked into the rambling stone building Gwen Frostic called home for many years in northern Michigan.

Familiar sights and sounds welcomed me back to Gwen's home as the business rumbled back to life after weathering a sudden foreclosure last October and an uncertain future before reopening its retail business just weeks ago under new ownership.

New owners Kim and Greg Forshee enjoyed a close association with the business over the years. Kim worked several years for Gwen Frostic Prints as an outside sales and marketing director, while the couple's Frankfort, Michigan, manufacturing company DAMB Mold Base provided many parts for Frostic's lumbering old Heidelberg presses that pumped out so many cards, stationery, placemats, and other products featuring Gwen Frostic's engaging nature images over the years.

The couple plan to preserve Frostic's artistic legacy and love of northern Michigan nature as they slowly restore the aging building and carefully add features and products that respect the Michigan icon's history and the close attachment many long-time fans feel for Frostic and her work, according to a recent article in the Traverse City Record-Eagle newspaper.

The Forshees told the newspaper that their plans include slowly repairing and restoring the property, expanding product lines that respectfully reflect Frostic's love of nature, and developing a museum centering on Frostic's career and life.

The scene at Gwen Frostic Prints seemed comfortingly familiar to me as I walked past the fieldstone walls and trickling fountain at the building's entrance, browsed the rustic racks filled with paper products featuring Frostic's elegant images, and paused for a few moments (as I always like to do when I visit) by the railing overlooking the press room as more of the paper products that were always the foundation of the business and perennial customer favorites rolled out of the machines.

Spots like the Gwen's quiet library with large windows overlooking the river and nature sanctuary behind the building and the short nature trails behind the parking lot always provided a bit of serenity, even on the busiest summer days, so it was nice to see that that serenity appeared largely unchanged even as the business weathered a rough winter.

I always believed the business would reopen as Frostic's legacy and importance as a draw for tourists in the region were just too important to lose.

As I reported here in May, as many as 1,000 people might stop by the store on a busy summer day. The business employed 15 to 20 people, and officials at the Benzie County Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Business Bureau reported that they answered more questions about Gwen Frostic's than any other attraction in the area. Even the bank forced to foreclose on the business and its former owners readily acknowledged the importance of the long-time business to the local economy and hoped to find a way to keep it open.

The Forshees credit their bank and former Frostic employees for helping them quickly reopen the business earlier this spring in time to welcome Frostic fans back for the busy summer season.

A steady stream of visitors shopped at the store as we visited the store in early July of this year. The occasional van carrying a tour group pulled into the lot, and I heard many individual customers and long-time Frostic fans tell workers they were so glad to see the business reopened.

The woman who waited on me and bundled up my purchases, one of the former Frostic employees rehired by the Forshees, seemed enthused about things when she told me the business was "getting there" as word spread about the reopening.

The product selection remains a bit thin in some areas as the business scurries to make up for the lost production time over the winter. I was unable to purchase the Gwen's signature green-and-white wrapping paper this visit, and received my purchases wrapped in plain brown paper instead of Frostic paper. I was able to buy a few of the small-size 2011 wall calendars, but the only large-size calendars they had in stock were for 2010. I also didn't see any of the plastic mugs with Frostic paper inserts for sale during my visit, but they did have some ceramic coffee mugs, and I bought one as a gift.

Some of the most immediate changes at Frostic's include a few new product lines like woven throw blankets and jewelry, like the little sterling silver pendant featuring one of my favorite Frostic designs (the "happy raccoon") that I couldn't resist buying for myself.

I felt a new sense of hope for Gwen Frostic's during this visit and thank the Forshees for their effort to insure a bright future for a place I've enjoyed and loved visiting for years.

Check out my earlier story, Gwen Frostic Prints weathers winter closing and reopens this spring, for more information about Gwen Frostic and the business.

 

You can also read The Life and Wisdom of Gwen Frostic by Sheryl James to learn more about this talented, but often enigmatic, woman. The book is fairly short, being an extension of an article James originally wrote for the Detroit Free Press, and predates Gwen's death by a couple of years, but it's still a fascinating read for those who grew up visiting the store and anyone interested in learning about the woman who overcame many odds to create a multi-million dollar business and artistic legacy.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankfort

Shooting photographs for your blog

I'm flattered when readers tell me that they enjoy my photos here at Midwest Guest, but I'm not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination.

I've had to take my own photos for stories many times over the years, and I'd like to pass a few things along to folks who worry that they don't have the time or talent to produce acceptable images for their own blogs.

Taking photos and working with them in a photo editing program can take a little time, but learning how to do so gives you more creative control over your content and how you chose to showcase your own words.

I spent several years writing columns for a chain of local weekly newspapers where the editor generally assigned the one photographer at the newspaper to news stories, sporting events, and big feature subjects.

Columnists usually relied on photos provided by those seeking publicity for events or ran their columns without photos. Neither option appealed to me.

I began taking many of the photos for my columns to provide the needed graphic elements to break up the print blocks and make it more appealing for readers.

I often took photos like this one of April McCrumb, who owns Catching Fireflies in Berkley, Michigan, to illustrate my newspaper columns

I owned a Sony digital camera-one of those little Mavicas that recorded your photos onto a 3.5" floppy disc. Those little cameras were still pretty revolutionary in the late 1990s, but they were slow and resultant images turned out grainy and unacceptably pixilated if you tried to increase the image's size very much. They worked all right for newspaper photos, where newsprint's rough often resulted in muddy images anyway, but only if the photographer was aware of the camera's limitations and compensated for them.

The newspaper eventually bought a digital camera for reporters to use, although one of them was shocked to learn it was a newer version of the same camera I had when she told me that my camera took much better photos than the newspaper's camera!

My photos are often acceptable to use as the small versions I use here at the blog, even if they may not be sharp enough or interesting enough to look good blown up or reproduced on glossy paper--and they allow me to advance my story lines with corresponding images.

 

How do you get started learning about photography?

 

• Take a photowalk. Check out my recent post about an informal Detroit-area photowalk I recently attended, or see the Worldwide Photowalk site to find a photowalk in your local area.

  
  
  Image taken at a recent Detroit Photowalk at Cranbrook Gardens in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

   

• Check Flickr to find photography groups that may hold shows, classes or other events in your local area. Here in the Detroit area, we have Flickr groups like Photowalks Detroit, which hosts local photowalks, and Exposure.Detroit, which hosts free photo exhibitions and other events around town.

   

• Read a few books geared to beginning photographers if you're new to taking photos. Tim has a short list of suggested reading for beginning photographers at The Wandering Photographer.

 

I'd add Confessions of a Compact Camera Shooter: Get Professional Quality Photos with Your Compact Camera by Rick Sammon to Tim's list of suggested reading.

Although Sammon's book talks specifically about using compact cameras and Photoshop Elements (while I often shoot with an older version of a point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot when I'm not using my big digital SLR, and I use Lightroom for photo editing), I still found plenty of useful information in this book.

Sammon encourages readers to experiment and to always carry a camera, sharing my feeling that a pocketable camera can be a viable alternative when going somewhere where lugging a big SLR would be cumbersome or get in the way of enjoying whatever you're out to do.

Sammon's side-by-side comparison shots of scenes taken with SLRs and compact cameras nicely illustrate what works best with the little cameras, what doesn't work well, and how to work with the small cameras' limitations.

 

And here are a few other tips I've picked up over the years:

 

• Always look for signs to photograph when you're out shooting. I learned to do so long ago after reading that such photos could serve as nice title slides for a show of your images. I also use sign photos to help me identify photos as I organize them after returning home or to advance a story as I'm putting it online. I also often use photos of historical markers or other informational signs in lieu of written notes when I'm out shooting.

 





• Working with a hand-held camera in low-light? Taking a deep breath just before you shoot the photo, and holding it during the shot, can help steady the camera by eliminating a bit of the shake caused by the movement of your own breathing.

   

  
  
  

• Don't have a photo? Sometimes you just have to get creative, like I did when I took this shot of toy ice resurfacing machines on my front porch to illustrate my story about a college hockey tournament.

 

• Always remember that one of the beauties of digital photography is that you can take as many shots as you want and simply erase the ones you don't like.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved