8.01.2025 - Weekly Digest
Dispatch from The North. Thanks in advance for consuming all the salt in these posts. It lets up a little at the end. Promise.
7.29.2025
The first whites who get credit for settling this area were a couple, call them George and Martha Dutchvolken, and they built a log cabin about the size of the studio apartment I lived in during Covid. They didn't have great insulation but they did have a pretty nifty Franklin stove. They also didn't have an app for getting groceries delivered and from what one sees in the replica cabin by the lighthouse the only food they had on hand was a ceramic pie. Martha did so much looming and warping and wefting by hand I hope she was able to convince herself that she enjoyed it. All I can think when I look through their window like a peeping tom at their situation was that they must have been miserable and suffered each in their own way from a considerable dose of snow madness for at least half the year. They had a single book and George read one page from it each night by the light of a candle, reading slowly even though they both knew the whole thing by heart, and his trips out into the woods to trade with the locals or rustle up some game got longer over time until one time in spring she realized he'd probably been gone for over a week and also that she didn't care.
7.30.2025
The Kirkbride Plan was a sprawling initiative to create a self-contained paradise on the west side of Traverse City. It was like a regular paradise except most of its citizens were mental patients. They had their own hog farms and everything. The asylum opened in 1885 and closed about a hundred years later. The serious looking psychiatricists who learned how to dress from Freud got up to some pretty interesting stuff there, techniquewise. A list of 'procedures' they engaged in includes: lobotomy/leucotomy; narcosynthesis; neurolepsis; seclusion; hydrotherapy; restraint (example photos in original post). A few of my ancestors spent some time up there, and I'd like to know what epigenetic effects got handed down from, say, carbon monoxide induced paralysis to me and my sister and our cousins. Why even though I don't believe in ghosts, strictly speaking, when I walk through the hallways converted into restaurants and knicknack stores I don't want to stick around for long even though the rare book shop, owned and run by the nerdiest bibliophile in town, a guy who refurbishes old typewriters for fun, is one of my favorite loitering spots. After they closed the hospital there wasn't much of a plan. It was a good thing if you're against barbaric surgical practices such as cutting into the brain tissue of the antisocial, but it's not like a whole host of services sprang up to take on the load. The public mental health network here is notoriously ineffective and had itself a tidy little corruption scandal a few years ago. And there was a forested area everyone calls 'The Pines' adjacent to the asylum grounds that served as a de facto homeless camp for years, which wasn't without its problems (tent fires, overdoses), but it was cleared out and not all those folks have somewhere to go. The day before I drove up a guy with Severe Derangement Syndrome managed to stab his way through eleven shoppers at the local Walmart before he was tackled. And being back in the U.S. my first thought was: at least it wasn't an automatic weapon. Then I thought, how did he get that far, and then: who pays attention to someone screaming at Walmart?
A lot has been written about the T.C. State Hospital but this was on hand:
7.31.2025
Bobby MaGee Lopez's piece is still missing from the tunnel mural. You don't remember what I'm talking about so here's the original post:
JAckles
This happened last summer and no one of authority bothered to let him know. That fell to me when I was asking about the panel in question. Anyway the space is still empty. I went to the Brutalist city government building to check out the original paintings. Sorry for the hasty photos but there was some kind of informal bureaucratic conference happening in the lobby where they hang and I felt like a loiterer. Anyway here's a sample. If Bobby has any more insight to offer I'll share it here for sure.
Otherwise TC is great for art if you're into landscapes and photos of lighthouses. I had a neighbor with a studio on the ground floor of his house who would get cranked on gin all day and paint still lifes of the bottles. There was this one piece at the local thrift store where they have all this random crap in consignment booths. It was painted by a guy with no hands, a local legend, apparently. I didn't buy it. I did pay way too much to frame a county road map to my local framer, who was on the Downtown Development Authority and told me he'd been on committees with no budget that accomplished more than they ever did. I didn't ask if he was pro-traffic or anti-traffic because it's not really a question you need to ask around here. I also had a map of Michigan counties, the state flag, and a good old fashioned road map on my walls, along with the iconic territorial map from the 1700s you see around, from when they hadn't figured out how to navigate around the Lower Peninsula and just imagined it was sliced off at a straight line across the northwestern tip. Also a topographical map which is hilarious because of how flat it is around here. Except the Porcupines, someone is saying. Yes yes except for the Porkies.
8.01.2025
Before I get to things I actually like about this area (and there are plenty when I'm in a good mood), one more quick story about some of the social and political dynamics up here. The peninsula where my dad has lived for twenty years is on the verge of some unwelcome change, thanks to a consortium of local vineyards getting together to sue the township for the unthinkable hubris of trying to enforce zoning laws. A federal judge found for the vineyards and there's something like a $30 million penalty to be paid. Meanwhile there's a proposal on the agenda for the next township meeting (oughta be a Youtube-worthy donnybrook and I'm sorry to miss it) which entails shutting down all publicly funded services and selling off local landmarks to private developers to raise funds to pay the judgment. If that goes through you may get your chance to Airbnb the Hesler Log House. Complimentary pie.
Anyway this is all unsettled and I'm starting to see the potential for a focused project in it. Possibly an essay, a 'creative nonfiction' piece where I pretend to not be biased about the situation and give up the ruse after the first few paragraphs. We'll see where things go.
Okay now for some positivity. The easiest way for me to celebrate the Grand Traverse region is by sharing some of the many photos I've taken while biking and walking around the last few days. Let the serenity fly.
- Dad's firepit, with crucifix-style birdfeeder
When I was in treatment for PTSD my therapist assigned me the task of visualizing a place where I feel calm as a remedy for panic. This is that place, and I'm happy to report a feeling of calmness.
- Sunset over the Bay
It's a sunset over the West Bay. I walked down here almost every night when I lived in town, even in the winter. Saw the auroras here once. Rarely a disappointment.
- Bench Near Some Crick, TART Trail, Leelanau Peninsula
I used to ride here on my lunch breaks working for a small law firm. As tranquil as it looks.
- Trail Along the Boardman River, Hannah Park
Part of what I now think of as my Sleep Walk. In the middle of town but perfectly secluded for a stretch.
- Cass Street Tunnel
The rest of the tunnel, enhanced by Bobby's work. One of the few reliable and safe routes from downtown to the waterfront. If you're cool with spiders, that is.
Alright enough of me from Michigan for now. Off to Chicago tomorrow. No shortage of stories and recollections to share from there either, to be sure. Happy August in America.