Midwest Guest

Bishop Baraga: the Snowshoe Priest

Gripping a seven-foot cross in one hand, and a pair of 26-foot-long snowshoes in the other, the four-ton copper statue of Bishop Baraga looked a little incongruous standing in a park on the sunny September day we last visited him.

Standing tall atop a small steel pouf of cloud supported by five wooden arches, the statue adopts what may seem to be a modestly devout posture with its bowed head when viewed from a distance. A closer look, though, reveals some of the steely resolve that probably sustained the priest as he traveled the frozen Upper Peninsula in the coldest part of winter.

Father Baraga, born in 1797 in Slovenia, originally studied law and graduated from law school in 1821. He opted to enter the priesthood, however, and began his missionary work in America after arriving in the western Great Lakes region in 1830.

Baraga worked primarily among Native Americans with the intent of spreading the Catholic faith, establishing five missions in the region—represented by the five arches supporting the statue.

Father Baraga established the last of those missions at the village of L’Anse, and the site of an earlier Jesuit mission during the 1600s.

The priest became the first bishop of the Upper Peninsula in 1853.

Bishop Baraga reportedly enjoyed a life of upper-class comfort in Europe, which makes later stories of long treks through the snowy UP to complete his circuit of far-flung churches to minister to native peoples and small communities of copper miners even more amazing. He continued his long snowshoe treks into his sixties, writing about traveling over 700 miles through some snowy winters.

Bishop Baraga gained a reputation as a kind and compassionate man who loved the native people and supported their desire to retain their culture and tried to help protect them from relocation efforts.

Bishop Baraga learned the native languages and the prolific author developed a written language for them so he could write grammar, dictionaries and prayer books for native readers. As a child, he studied in a variety of languages that included French, German, Latin and Greek—none of those languages his native Slovenian, which may explain his multilingual fluency.

His health deteriorated over the last decade of his life as he went deaf and suffered several strokes. One source says the statue’s stern expression is due to the fact that the Bishop had already suffered a stroke and couldn’t smile by the time of the statue’s creation.

Bishop Baraga died at Marquette, Michigan in 1868.

Bishop Baraga namesakes in the Upper Peninsula include a village, county and a state park.

The Bishop Baraga Association raised money to build the Shrine in the 1960s on donated land and continues to collect donations to help operate and maintain the shrine, which attracts an average of 100,000 visitors each year.

The outdoor shrine, on US-41 and a mile west of the turn to downtown L’Anse, is always open to visitors.

Check the Web for hours at the small shop on site selling religious books, gift and snacks—reopened since our last visit.

Benches around the park and a view of Keweenaw Bay from a high bluff make it a great place to spend a little quiet time.

The two-acre park setting of the Shrine of the Snowshoe Priest was deserted and peaceful during our visit, leaving us free to walk around the statue and snap some great photos against the clear, blue sky.

© Dominique King 2009

Photo Friday

 

Opa!

 

That word often signals the arrival of your order of flaming cheese at the local Coney, but here in the Detroit area, it signals the arrival of the largest ongoing festival celebrating Greek art, song, dance and culture in our metropolitan area.

We’ve trekked up to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in suburban Troy each year for the annual Opa! Fest after I initially discovered the event by spotting a roadside sign. This year’s Opa! Fest takes place June 26-28.

Great Greek food, prepared by an army of elderly Greek ladies and their assistants, is on the menu—but only if you arrive early enough in the day before the food runs low! The bakery stand is so popular with folks stocking up on homemade pastries and crusty bread to take home that it’s best to make your purchases early, take them home and come back to the festival later in the day to enjoy the entertainment.

 

 

Make time to check out the beautiful church and unique religious art at St. Nicholas, which is open for visitors wanting to spend a little quiet time during the hectic festival.

Kids’ dance groups usually start off each day’s program. The youngest dancers go first, and they often stick around to watch as the progressively older and more skilled dancers follow them onstage.

 

 

Opa! Fest usually schedules plenty of local talent to entertain the crowds, but organizers occasionally book a bigger name act.

Imagine being able to say you saw a Tony-award nominee perform at the festival in the St. Nicholas parking lot! Two years ago, we saw Constantine Maroulis, the sixth-place finalist from the fourth season of American Idol and current star of the Broadway smash Rock of Ages on the Opa! Fest stage.

 

 

Find out more about this year's event by reading my recent article about Opa! Fest at The Urbane Life.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009

Photo Friday

Horses definitely seem to rule in Mesopotamia Ohio, where the Amish make up more than 60 percent of the population.

I wrote about this charming small town in northern Ohio a few days ago, but here are a few more photos from our recent visit there.

Automobiles and buggies commonly share the road in this region of Ohio, and it’s possible to gas up your car at Mesopotamia’s 1940s-vintage gas stations on a day other than Sunday. But the town does reserve special spaces for their hard-working equine residents.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009

Mesopotamia: Land between two Ohio rivers

A spot of land between the Cuyahoga and Grand Rivers in Ohio takes its name from the ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is present-day Iraq.

We recently visited Mesopotamia in Ohio, a village about 50 miles east of Cleveland and more than 6,000 miles from Iraq. The town seemed deserted on this quiet Sunday with its largely Amish population occupied with observing their Sabbath.

Mespo, a nickname bestowed upon the town by some locals, covers 36 square miles with a population of 2600, which is about 60 percent Amish. 

I’ve visited Mesopotamia several times, but I’ve always been reluctant to take photos out of respect for the reported Amish aversion to being the subject of photographs showing recognizable faces.

However, when we found ourselves in a deserted Mesopotamia, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a few photos of the charming town itself.

The 1840-vintage End of the Commons General Store anchors the quiet village, taking its name from the long grassy commons centering the town. You can buy a handful of “penny” candy or browse through the store’s stock of bulk foods and Amish-theme souvenirs during store hours Monday through Saturday.

A small ice house attached to the back of the village’s general store explains the history of ice-making in the area. Many area Amish residents still use block ice throughout the year to prevent their food from spoiling, and some still procure their own block ice by cutting large chunks of it from area ponds and rivers during the winter.

Mesopotamia’s history as a settlement stretches back to 1799, with the first clearing of land there. By 1800, the first cabin stood at the site. In 1903, Mesopotamia saw its first Amish settlers as the Yost Byler family moved to the area. Other Amish settlers followed, drawn by the availability of affordable land suitable for dairy farming, maple syrup production, barn building and cheese making according to an historic marker in the village.

By 1974, the Mesopotamia Village District earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

Village visitors can also admire Sir Pierpont of Mesopotamia, a large wooden horse named for the settlement’s founding father Pierpont Edwards. In 1798, Edwards of Connecticut paid $2,500 for 25 square miles of wilderness that eventually became Mesopotamia Township.

The equine Sir Pierpont and his wooden buggy stand 14 feet tall. Artist Chris McConnell’s creation contains 2300 board feet of lumber, 30 pounds of screws and bears billing as the World’s Largest Horse and Buggy.

We bid the prancing Sir Pierpont adieu as a gentle rain began to fall and we left town, sharing the road with a real-life Amish horse and buggy as we headed west towards big-city Cleveland.

© Dominique King 2009

Touro and Trinity in Newport

Rhode Island’s history as an early refuge for those seeking religious freedom resulted in some of the state’s towns developing a bit differently from the tradition New England model of a community centered by one church that served the religious needs of most, if not all, of the area’s residents.

Newport is a good example of a city where many different congregations established churches that enveloped the city’s core in a comforting web of faith represented by numerous houses of worship scattered throughout the downtown area.

We visited the homes of two of Newport’s oldest and most notable congregations while staying in the city earlier this year.

Newport seemed to us an unlikely home for the oldest synagogue in the United States, but it really does stand to reason that Rhode Island’s reputation as a haven of religious tolerance would attract a congregation that established Touro Synagogue.

Touro Synagogue, dedicated in 1763, owes its respectful melding of majestic Georgian architecture and the traditions of Sephardic Jews to the design of well-known Newport architect Peter Harrison and the guidance of Isaac Touro, the congregation’s spiritual leader at the time.

Paying the small fee to take the synagogue tour was definitely worthwhile, although we were surprised to find we seemed to be the only non-Jewish folks in our tour group. Tour guides take small groups of 10 or 12 people into the synagogue for a tour, a short talk about the site’s history and to answer questions.

When our tour guide pointed out an elaborate chandelier as a feature that created a good bit of controversy for the 1760s era congregation, we were the only ones in our group who couldn’t correctly guess why. Our tour guide explained that the fixture in question featured images of human heads, viewed as a form of idolatry by strict members of the faith. The chandelier, a gift from the people of Newport, was a meant as a welcoming gesture. Touro’s congregation eventually accepted the kind gesture represented by the gift, and it remains a prominent feature in the synagogue today.

The chandelier was one of a group of metal artifacts undergoing a restoration in 2005-2006. Check out a detailed report of that project with some great before and after photos here.

Our guide also said that architect Harrison, unfamiliar with Jewish faith and traditions, expressed initial reluctance about designing Touro Synagogue. He eventually agreed to accept the commission to design the building, now a National Historic Site and one of the elite group of sites named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The historic 1726 Trinity Episcopal Church, a National Historic Landmark modeled after Boston’s famous Old North Church, is a short walk from Touro Synagogue.

Trinity regularly welcomes visitors to tour the church. Box pews, beautiful stained glass windows (many of them picturing famous parishioners and benefactors from Trinity’s history), a massive pipe organ in the church balcony, and the sole center-aisle, triple-deck, freestanding pulpit left in America today, make it an unusual and interesting sanctuary.

A small graveyard surrounding the church featuring some headstones dating back to the early years of the church’s history also make for some interesting browsing. It is fun to imagine the lives of the people behind the names and the sometimes funky graphic images carved into the stones.

The day we visited, we listened in on a lecture given to a small class of local college students visiting the church with their professor.

Visiting both Trinity Episcopal Church and Touro Synagogue offered an intriguing look at just two of the historic congregations that contributed to Newport, Rhode Island’s vibrant and diverse religious community.

© Dominique King 2008