On Sundays, Christopher and I drink at Bell’s Brewery—officially called Kalamazoo Brewing Company—because we like the people and the atmosphere, and because Christopher loves the ales. I like the beer okay, although to be honest, I’m a more of a wine drinker, and if I had my druthers, we’d alternate, go half the time to Kraftbrau, the brewery across the street, because they have dry red wine as well as lagers and pilsners. While I don’t know Larry Bell, owner of Bell’s, I feel warmly towards Steve Bertel, co-owner of Kraftbrau because he created my Q Brew beer, which he released for my Q Road book release party. Neither bar allows smoking inside: At Bell’s people go out on the patio and into the extensive beer garden to smoke. At Kraftbrau people smoke on the deck overlooking the tracks. Both breweries are located on opposite sides of what we’ve been told is the sharpest railroad curve in North America.

There’s a country western song (“I’m Going to Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home”) about a woman who is going to redocrate their house like a bar, so’s her man will be comfortable there. Well, the bar at Bell’s happens to be finished with many of the same materials as our house. I installed a slate floor in Christopher’s office like the floor at Bell’s. And the floor-level stage is tongue and groove red oak like what we installed in my office and our bedroom. Bell’s has a slate mosaic of Michigan’s peninsulas on the middle of the floor, and last year Christopher and I created a ceramic mosaic of our great lake state behind our woodburning stove.

Of course Larry Bell has cooler, more valuable, stuff than we do, some of it made by local artists. My favorites might be the big stained glass windows through which evening light filters—one of these features a river in which some bottles of beer are cooling, and the beer bottles are real bottles sticking out of the glass. He’s also got an original Dr. Suess drawing from The Lorax as well as a mounted Lorax head from the man’s estate.

Kraftbrau, across the street, also has great atmosphere—it’s an old trackside warehouse building, with the original wood floor still intact, and machinery and pulleys up in the high ceilings. And if you’re ever at Kraftbrau at ten o’clock at night, you experience a freight train with a hundred or more cars passing slowly, its metal wheels screeching on curved rails. Neither brewery has a television, but Bell’s has a fish tank. Mark “the Fish Man” (that’s how he introduced himself to me) feeds the fish, which include a foot-long native gar-pike that has been there since the bar opened ten years ago. There’s a fossil catfish, and an Oscar, which somebody donated to the tank. In his own business, Mark the fish man grows corals and travels around the country talking to folks about fish. His sister Val, “Val the fish gal,” has the job of cleaning the Bell’s fish tank.

Twelve years ago, Christopher started going to Bell’s on Sundays with Big Bob, our next-door neighbor. That was long before the tiled floors, inlaid checkerboard tables and the wood block bar. Those early days were of tiny, stinky bathrooms, factory ceilings and excess: Christopher and Bob could drink a dozen rich black porters between them. (Closing time was 7:00 back then, and Christopher used to go to sleep very early on Sunday nights.) That was before Bob and his family moved away to Kentucky, before his wife had cancer and survived, and long before Bob left his wife for another woman he met on the internet. I can’t pretend to replace Bob, with my inclination to drink either one or two small beers. To be honest, even drinking that much makes me weirdly hungry, and I have to complement the beer with the salted nuts—behind the bar are peanuts ($1.50), cashews ($2.50). Also available are malted milk balls made with the same malt used in the beer. Kraftbrau across the street has 25-cent popcorn. When we go to Bell’s on Sunday, Christopher sometimes takes his big new-old Mamiya RB67 studio camera (the size of a wriggling toddler, Chris says) or his more modest Rolleiflex. He’s got a darkroom now, next to his office (some may remember it as the old guest room or the exercise room), so he develops his own photos. Since he has lately been capturing the Bell’s people on film, I figured I’d introduce them to you in writing, alongside photos all taken at Bell’s.

Gary comes in on Sundays, usually after he’s been at the shooting range, spreads out his targets in front of him on the bar and considers them. He’s a Master shooter as determined by his scores in his target game (he averages 96-1/2 percent). If he gets to averaging 97%, then he’ll be a High Master, of which there are only four in Michigan. He shoots most every day, usually with cops, either at the Kalamazoo Rod and Gun Club or the Southwest Michigan Gun Club. He makes his living operating one of the two drawbridges between St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, where there’s been recent racial unrest. Just think: Gary and the other bridge operator could cut off one city from the other.

At one point Gary says in summary, “It’s not a good idea to shoot at your neighbors,” which seems wise beyond the point he’s making about gun safety. I’m embarrassed to print some of the more outrageous stuff Gary says, though it’s all in the spirit of lively conversation. Gary grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and spent his early years in logging camps. When the state told his parents the kids had to go to school, they settled in Hulbert, Michigan. He’d like to return to the U.P. more often to visit, but he doesn’t want to live there. Why not? I ask, and he says, “Up in the U.P. it’s wall to wall stupid people smoking cigarettes and licking food stamps until their lips swell.” Or maybe it’s “tree to tree stupid people smoking,” he says. While we’re sitting there talking, Gary points out a young guy with dreadlocks working in the kitchen, says that’s Curtis, a former world-class shotgun shooter. (Curtis is new to the Sunday shift.) As a kid Curtis competed internationally, but apparently isn’t interested in shooting any more

Bruce is the beer gardener, in that he takes care of the Bell’s beer garden. I like the garden in theory, but I prefer Sunday afternoon drinking to be an indoor affair, best accomplished in a cool, dark place, preferably one that smells slightly of mold. (Personally, I usually smell of donkeys when I arrive, because I usually come directly from working with the donkeys.) Everyone else, though, Christopher included, is lured outside into the garden by sunshine and fresh air, and when Christopher insists, I’ll roll my eyes and pour my beer into a plastic cup from the stack by the door and follow him. I keep meaning to ask Bruce about the super-gloss finish they put on the bricks outside—it’s disconcerting, makes me think it’s just rained every time I go out there. The patio is especially handy for the cooks, as they can grill burgers and mushrooms and pork chops out there on a gas grill without heating up the kitchen.

This Sunday, I arrive a half hour late, and when I don’t see Christopher in the bar (though his car is in the parking lot), I know he is in the beer garden. I trudge out onto the shiny patio and don’t see him, and then I go around the corner and look all the way back to the wooden band shell type of thing and see people sitting at two picnic tables, looking like they’re posing for the Last Supper. On the way out there, I stop and pick some ripe strawberries--thank you, Bruce! The wooden shell is a marvelous structure, trapezoidal, with its posts at odd angles, made by a local woodworker without much hardware, according to ancient principles of construction, implementing wooden joints and dowels.

Everybody is sitting except M., who is pacing. She doesn’t want her picture taken, doesn’t want her name used. She’d rather keep a low profile for reasons she’d rather not discuss. She’ll talk at great length about her backyard garden, however, in which she has 24 tomato plants and lots of perennial herbs and flowers. She’s a little gal with muscular arms. The reason she is pacing instead of sitting is that she over-exerted herself gardening and her sciatic nerve is paining her. She’s definitely not going to the doctor—she’s still paying off big medical bills that she incurred when she was working for a caterer without health insurance—she has since been laid off that job. M. was the one who told me not to use the middle stall in the women’s restroom a while back because a guy had drilled a peephole from the men’s room into the women’s.

Gino, in the hat, has nine children and a few dozen hats and will make a pizza at the drop of any of those hats. The children are from two wives; the hats are from all over. As for the pizzas, Gino keeps a sourdough going for the crust. Nowadays he makes a living driving a FedEx truck, but he once was planning to open a Pizza shop. He is wearing a T-shirt that says “Gino’s Primo Pizza Therapy Clinic.” For a while, Gino lived in Gobles and had a barnyard full of animals (donkeys, ponies, chickens, etc.), but now he exists placidly in the North Douglas neighborhood where he has a big tree house. The tree house is big enough to live in, but he resists the temptation to live in it.

Lynda says she has chickens now, in Portage. How’s that? I ask. She tells me that chickens are not considered livestock in most places, so anyone can have a few. If they start crowing, however, you can be cited for noise pollution. Lynda, like Christopher, is from the Boston area. She was thinking of returning there recently, when she was hating her job working security at the airport, but then Larry Bell hired her to work at the new plant in Comstock. She’s famous at Bell’s for coming to the Eccentric Day 2000 party wearing a mini-dress made of paperclips. The dress hangs on the wall, along with the stained glass, old skewed maps, historical beer advertisements, and wooden masks.

Eccentric Day takes place on a Friday in December each year, the day that the Eccentric Ale is ready to drink. Eccentric ale is a rich, spicy brew. At one time, Eccentric Day festivities were open to all—it was a big free-for-all dress-up party, at which Bell’s sold the ale and provided free food and a festive atmosphere. Now the party has become sort of famous, and there has been trouble with the fire codes, and so you have to get tickets to attend. The official name of this bar is “The Eccentric Café,” though few call it that.

We see less of Lynda in the summer, because when the weekend weather is nice on she’s often out riding her Suzuki Intruder 1400 (bigger than Christopher’s BMW R1100R), and when we do see her, she is usually wearing white or black leather. Lynda has several alter egos, each of which is worthy of an essay all its own, but she’d prefer I’d not mention them. We’ll just say they require disguises.

Dan also works for Bell’s, is one of only a few employees remaining at the downtown plant now that most everybody else has moved out to Comstock. Dan calls himself Dr. Dan, and his job is to brew specialty ales for Bell’s—they make a few fruit ales (Raspberry, Apple, Cherry), some barley wines, and a big variety of stouts, including the ten stouts of November in 2002 and the perennial heavy favorite: Expedition Stout. Dan and I discuss whether I should go back and take that Steelcase desk I saw in the metal pile at the shredder on King’s Highway. It’s beside the big metal box marked, “Metal Recycling,” and the drawers slide smoothly and everything. On the way to the bar, I stopped to toss in some used fencing my mom wanted me to get rid of, and I ended up rifling through the bin. I got a dozen tomato cages, and a red metal box meant to house a Coleman lantern—Dan suggests that maybe somebody can wear the metal box on his head for the next Eccentric Day. Last year, Dan dressed as a Mariachi singer. His sombrero with dangling balls is still upstairs, he says.

My Dad Rick often stops in on Sundays. In case you’re wondering, he’s been taking photos for the Gazette for over fifty years now, which means he’s been working there longer than just about anyone. His photography is going the opposite direction of Christopher’s. While Chris is acquiring old cameras and developing his own black and white film, Dad is going digital. The Gazette took away his film camera and gave him a digital one but didn’t give him enough computer power to handle a lot of photos. He gets a bit stressed during the weeks proceeding the biannual “Parade of Homes” feature put together by the advertising department. Speaking of new homes, Steve and Shawn tell us they are in the process of purchasing a new house. They show us a booklet of digital photos (made by the realtor) of a showplace home on five acres in Cooper Township. They can’t resist getting in over their heads with the mortgage, because the place is halfway between where each of them grew up, and with the low interest rates they can actually afford it. And the super weird thing is that this house is right next to the house our current next door neighbors are building. Go figure.

Peter has also recently bought a house, his in the Edison neighborhood. When he doesn’t come in on Sundays, it’s often because he’s busy with People’s Food Co-op activities. He’s the president of the board of directors of the health food co-operative on Burdick Street, where you should all shop for your tofu, catnip, and bulk falafel mix. In his working life, he owns a design company and makes restaurant menus and Bell’s beer labels, and he designed my Q Brew label for Kraftbrau. I don’t see him much nowadays unless I need a favor, like a few weeks ago when I had to use his laser printer to print out the first draft of my new novel. I wish he’d ask me a favor, like especially if he needed some ground cover or something, because I just cut out a lot of Euonymous Coloratus. Peter says the porch and street life in his new neighborhood is very lively--a lot different from his old neighborhood near Kalamazoo College.

My sister Sheila and her husband Matt are not here this week, but they stop in now and again to spread news of Matt’s band, the BackRoads Band. (I keep forgetting to ask him if he can play that Wino song.) There are some regulars who haven’t shown up lately, not since I’ve been trying to write about them: Kevin, who works at WMU, Gina, who just got her MFA and who, at last sighting, was still deciding whether to go on to get her PhD—I think her writing group meets weekly at Bell’s this summer. I miss chatting with Dave, a guy who travels around the country to beer festivals—he has tasted nearly every beer ever brewed and he’s seen practically every movie ever made.

One of the best things about drinking on Sundays is that you don’t have to listen to live music. Not to say I don’t like music, but bars in this town play music WAY TOO LOUD, so loud you can’t hear your pals talk. Anyway, I no more go to the bar for music than I go to the bar for sunshine. I go to the bar for conversation, and I hate paying a cover charge. As a general principle, I hate change, and so it took me a long time to recover from losing Marnie as our bartender (she now works at Aries Singapore restaurant on Michigan Ave.), but now that I’ve finally grown accustomed to Dana, it turns out she’s leaving--this summer she’ll go to Europe, and in the fall she’ll be in AmeriCorps. Dana is twenty-one, has just graduated from college, and she has a look on her face that suggests the world is opening up larger before her—not opening scary like a gaping maw but brilliant like the land of Oz. “I want to do everything once,” she says. “Every time somebody suggests something crazy--like skydiving--I want to do it.” She was gone a few weeks because she was playing the only female role in a local production of Escanaba in da Moonlight (the Jeff Daniels play). “I might end up in Hollywood,” she says. “Who knows?”

Christopher, Lynda and Dan try to remember the succession of Sunday bartenders over the years. Kenyon was the bartender when Chris used to go with Big Bob. Then there was quiet Maria who had the ring of elephants tattooed around her biceps. Then Ron the lawyer who married that girl half his age—it didn’t work out. Was Marnie the next? Voila!—Christopher has finished the crossword puzzle somebody handed him fifteen minutes ago. Never leave a crossword puzzle near Christopher unless you want it completed. It occurs to me that the garden is not so bad—there are places secluded enough that a person could lie down and sleep for a while, should he or she need to. Is that catnip or some kind of mint over there? There’s a guy named John sitting with us. I’ve seen him a lot of times, but this is the first time I’ve talked with him. He’s a tree trimmer by profession, but he says he’s writing a book of true stories. He says he’s in no hurry to finish it--he’ll finish it when he finishes, he says.

Bell’s beers are becoming popular way beyond Kalamazoo. I’ve seen the Bell’s Oberon (summer wheat beer) on tap a hundred fifty miles west in Chicago and two hundred miles north in Traverse City—the stuff used to be called Solsun before the lawsuit brought by a Mexican brewery which apparently already had a beer by that name. Kraftbrau, across the street, pretty much just sells its beer locally. Just for the record, the Kalamazoo Brewing Company is the oldest official micro-brewery east of the Rocky Mountains, and it is the biggest and oldest brewery of any kind in Michigan, now that Stroh’s is gone. Cheers!

All photos were taken at Bell’s by Christopher Magson.
Bell’s: http://www.bellsbeer.com
Kraftbrau: http://www.kraftbraubrewery.com

News & Notes April – July 2003

BABIES: Lizzie Wyatt Cook gave birth to her and Kenny’s third child, the handsome boy Wyatt Millard Cook. The baby Max Irving Blake has sprung energetically from the womb of Jamie Blake, with some help from Ron Blake. On May 13, Oren Baruch Avrahami was born bright and beautiful at Massachusetts General Hospital to Keren Hamel and Tsachi Avrahami. (Mazel Tov!) Rachael Perry will be in that same boat soon, and she has moved into her new house. She writes: “Boxes are emptying, belly is getting fuller. The dog suspects something is amiss, and tends to be a little more protective around me these days. Can he smell a difference? Meanwhile, the joys of pregnancy are almost more than I can bear: super SMELL, super TASTE, super FEELING (both inside and out). Each meal is now the best meal I've ever had. Strangers don't yet touch my stomach randomly because they can't figure out if I've just got an un-proportioned pouch in front or if there's something of bigger note going on.”

Speaking of changing abodes, I just received a post card from Alicia Conroy announcing “Alicia Conroy joins Christopher Schmid in “The Bungalow”, a timeless tale of love, mulching, and storage solutions.” My brother Tom has put a new line to the city water, losing only one tomato plant in the process, and he got sod laid in time for his 4th of July party, which, as usual, was spectacular, and this year resulted in no police actions. Susanna’s farm menagerie has increased by one baby goose who showed up in her yard and leapt into her arms. Unfortunately, several of her best roosters have been met violent ends. And self and Darling Christopher are overrun by beautiful stray cats—please please please say you’ll take one. They are breaking our hearts. And far-flung athlete Laleli L. Lopez writes from Kona, Hawaii, where she has just finished the Kona Triathalon. Congratulations, Laleli!

On the subject of Garlic Mustard, Colette Volkema Denooyer writes from Big Rapids: For several years now people have thought I am the crazy weed lady, wearing gardening glove and carrying a white kitchen sized garbage back with me on every walk through the woods. I remember the days when I walked the woods for calm and respite. Last year I became so obsessed that this year I knew I had to get some control over my life! Now I walk "out" as far as I am going to go without pulling, but along the way I case out which area I will return to and clear on the way back. I get to enjoy at least the first half of every walk. This year I've discovered all the zillions of little baby plants growing around the tall stalks I pull (how do you cut them? Weed whacker? And doesn't that leave the root to spawn more?). I grub them out of the ground, but everywhere I look there are more. Four years ago I hired help to the tune of $800 to clear our woods (I didn't know it was $800 until I got the bill which is the reason I have not done it again!). That did hold them off for a few years - but this year - the multiplication is frightening. I so fear that the trillium will be gone within another year or two. After reading your article I took up the crusade again (having almost abandoned it in despair - feeling so alone). Underneath a large leafy infestation of fifty plants or so I found three precious trillium...

From A. Urban in New York: My biology quad at college was filled entirely with garlic mustard, and I had to observe it and keep notes on it for an entire year. Except for that yearlong report, I didn't think anyone on earth would ever have as much to say about this wretched plant.

Carla Vissers writes from Holland, Michigan: I bought myself a guinea pig. His name is Woody. I have him here next to the computer and he likes to sit on my shoulder for a little while in the morning while I write. His nose looks like a miniature moose nose! (That's not why I got him—I didn't notice it 'til I got him home). Leah thinks I'm already suffering from empty nest syndrome due to Ethan going away to college. Maybe that's because I told everyone I was going to name the guinea pig Ethan and keep him in the basement. Duke is smitten, of course, but so far Woody hasn't completely warmed up to him. In fact, earlier this evening when I was sitting outside, Duke's attempt to be friendly caused Woody to pee all over my sweatshirt, straight through to my skin. I needed a shower anyway.

More Animal News from Tom Bailey: Our new puppy, Whitcomb Hill [named after our road in South Strafford Vermont] is about 10 mths old, and trying very very hard indeed not to be a galoot. But he seldom succeeds. He is always panting with joy, always nudging, always underfoot or underhand, always eager to give the squirrels a run up a tree, glad to terrorize cats, turkeys, deer, the birds at the feeder. He runs about a mile and half a day with Katherine through our property, and walks that same loop with me every morning, and nothing tires him out. Nothing. Nor does any amount of physical exhaustion seem to improve his manners. About the only bad habit he might have that he doesn't have is that he doesn't fart. Yet. Whitcomb simply goes crazy about twice day, and begins to run around the vast yard as fast as he can go, circles, loops, long straight lines with abrupt turnings back, leapings over things both imagined and real, many spills which are comic but we hope not perilous: he just gets to going so fast that his hind end slides out from under his feet, and he tumbles, ass over appetite, for a few yards, gets up, looking extremely puzzled, and starts the romp all over, tongue way out the side of his mouth. This can go on for five or six minutes, but always ends the same way: he plunges into the muddiest part of the pond, gets black with foul-smelling goo, and wants to shake it all over us. He is banned from human presence until he dries, and, again, is puzzled how anything that could feel so good to him, and smell fine too, probably, could upset his mistress so much. As I say, he wants to please, and fails. And consequently finds the universe a truly perplexing place. We hope, when he's a grown dog, things won't be so hard for him. He is one half Golden, one quarter Yellow Lab, and one quarter Standard Poodle.

Michael Griffith writes from Ohio: At long last, I've finished my novella, BIBLIOPHILIA, which metastasized from a planned 60 pages to a baggy, beastly 160. I'm poking through one last time to make sure my poor characters have been made to suffer every last measure of comic humiliation; I'm holding them upside down and shaking them for crumbs. Come May, the book should come out, and I'll get the walloping deserve. Revenge of the Egyptian exchange student and the postmenopausal librarian and the bald hair scientist and the masturbating hubcap salesman and the poor schlump who gets locked in a crap-filled monkey cage. They'll get me back at last.

From Margie Coles in Seattle: Well, I'm getting married to the fellow I traipsed across Spain with last fall. He has just moved all of his stuff into my house, or rather, he has just moved all of his stuff that isn't in storage. I feel faint at the thought of trying to pack the remaining football field of 'stuff' into this humble abode. The basement is full, the garage is full, and my car is now parked on the street. Just to make life more interesting, we decided to do a demolition and remodel on our bedroom, including knocking out 96-year-old lathe and plaster walls, removing a bizarre (asbestos laden) false ceiling, and updating ancient (scary) wiring. "They don't build 'em like they used to," has been the refrain of the day. It has been an amazing archeological exploration. …The wedding is planned for August on Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands that are between Washington and BC in the Puget Sound. We will actually be getting married as a part of an interfaith retreat. As you may or may not know, I like religions—all of them. I've been involved in interfaith activities/programs for a while, and there's wonderful stuff happening in the Northwest. The retreat leaders (a rabbi, retired Baptist minister, and Islam minister) are friends and will be the wedding 'officials', but other friends—a Zen Buddhist and a Hindu monk—will play a part too. Should be wonderful, barring anyone (say, an out-of-town relative) actually tries to figure this all out. In interfaith, you need to rely on your heart and forget the (apparent) contradictions. My sister is managing to get my mom up to Seattle with her caregiver. My mom can't remember much any more, so lives in the moment and says things like, " I just like everyone to get along, even if they are different from each other." Perhaps it takes a touch of dementia to see the simple truth of things. As for my Jewish relatives and born-again Christian evangelical sisters, I figure they already think I'm nuts—so what the heck. Gotta go...time to help out as the electrical assistant...

Joanie Bowers writes from Scots: We are pleased to announce that the organization Tillers International has moved in across the street from us, onto land originally owned by Preston Parrish, Jr., when we moved here 28 years ago. We are glad to have the neighbors. We now have six draft horses and about a dozen or so oxen, as well as turkeys, chickens and guinea hens that make sure we don't have the luxury of sleeping in the morning. If you need any rhubarb or roots, let us know we have a new row going and the old one is still producing.

From Anne Sjostrom in Australia: To keep sane, I've been taking a wilderness bushwalking class through the local community college this semester. The class seems fairly evenly divided between those of us who prefer leisurely walks with time to rest by a stream and the gung-ho, push ahead at all costs backpackers who won't take the time to let one take off boots at stream crossings. Needless to say, the teacher has planned the trips so that we have to keep a steady pace if we're to reach the destinations on time. I haven't been committed to an asylum so the class must be working. Next semester I think I'll take up belly dancing instead. This week I've been out in the field camping with a colleague, her husband and 2 young daughters doing survey work on an endangered daisy that we're studying. Being around young children has reminded me that being auntie is much easier than having to be a mother! I've managed to pick off about 15 teeny tiny ticks--mostly around my groin--what a horrible place to have ticks of any size.

From Angie in Kalamazoo: Speaking of things reproducing, I have a baby platy swimming around in my fish tank. This makes me nervous since, at one point, I had a bunch of platys that were so good at having babies that I ended up with way too many fish. I gave away as many as I possibly could, but still had too many. Things hit a low point when I was house sitting for some friends and I noticed that they had adult platys in their 55 gallon fish tank. I took over a big Ziploc bag full of babies and put them in my friend's tank before they got home. When my friends got back from their trip I told them that their fish must have had babies. I don't think they believed me because after that whenever we got together they would make remarks about me sneaking baby fish into their fish tank! Eventually, I worked a deal with the local fish store and got 39 cents store credit towards new fish for every baby over 1/4 of an inch long that I brought in. Have you ever tried to measure baby fish? Or even count them for that matter?

Gina Betcher writes: The bad news is (my Boxer) Bea Bea has taken to lunging at me. I'm going to talk to her vet, see what gives, and go from there. She used to do this, when I thought the domestic upheaval (me and my ex separating) was the cause. Now there's no excuse, just surefire defiance on her part. And animals generally have been lashing out at me. Seriously, my aunt's cat took a chunk out of me. I've been working in my recently deceased uncle's garden, helping out my aunt. My uncle was a gardener and I suppose the cat heard the rake, and the paper bags filled with leaves being dragged along the ground, and probably thought it was my uncle working. To make too long of a story short: the cat was meowing and rubbing against the window screen. And for some reason I went to it, to pet it. It stretched, standing on its hind legs, and rubbed against my legs. It did this for a while, then suddenly bit my hand deep and deliberate. It wanted to take as big a chunk as it could, to leave a permanent mark. So, animals hate me.

Writing News: Watch out for the new paperback Q Road, ISBN 0-7432-0366-6 with a whole new cover. I will be visiting a few towns to promote it—send me an email if you want to know the dates I’ll be in: Leelanau, Petoskey, Mackinac City, Mackinac Island, Ann Arbor, Madison, Milwaukee, Dixon IL, Elgin IL. The paperback has a completely different cover, with a red barn and a chicken on it. Also, I’ll be in Ludington conducting a two-day fiction workshop for the Ludington Writers Group. If you want some info on that, check out their website: http://www.ludingtonwriters.com or send a note to them 310 N. Ferry St., Ludington, MI 49431

Send news and notes to Bonnie Jo at bonniecamp@gmail.com or PO Box 52, Comstock MI 49041.