I titled this old photooo “pulp log fort” and when I searched for “fort”, there it was, out of 30K photos. There’s something to be said for the old film camera form factor…

Our beach is on the Upper St. Mary’s River, a few miles west of Sault Ste. Siberia. It doesn’t really look much like a river at that point. We have a long, wide sand beach on a bay with a lot of water and you “can’t see the other side”. I remember when I was a 20-something, it seemed like I was constantly explaining the great lakes to people who had never seen them. Noooo, you cannot see the other side. Having seen the Pacific Ocean a few times, I now “get” that Gitchee Gumee is not the same but still…

When I was a kid, there were active pulp mills upstream from our beach and pulp logs would often get loose and float onto the beach. That provided all kinds of entertainment in the form of building materials, including the logs that we used to make this loverly fort. This was a small fort. I remember my older cuzzints (and me, later) building huge log forts that towered over me. Pulp logs were involved in building many structures on the beach, including “totem poles” and loverly cocktail tables.

That’s yer fav-o-rite blahgger there in the front on the blue-striped towel (loooooved that towel and part of it may still exist as a cleaning rag (and maaan did I hate that short short haircut!)). Pooh is on the right front. Jay behind me. Aaaaannnnd… the other blonde. A visitor to be sure. Was her name Jenny? Yes, I think it was. Her parents were great friends with mine and they rented the Yellow Cabin that then belonged to the Stevens but now belongs to Our Northern Correspondent.

Jenny and I were friends but she could be annoying. She was younger than me but was promoted into my grade for being “super-smart” and boy oh boy, did she know it. I know that we mostly had fun playing together but I will never forget the time she insisted that the proper pronunciation of Fort Michilimackinac was Fort Michimilimack. Alas, the parents sided with Jenny when we interrupted their cocktail hour to ask for a ruling. Yeee heee heee ha ha haaaaa Jenny is right! Isn’t she smart? (And cute.) Yeee heee heee, pour me another. KW seethed for quite some time after that and gave her parents HELL later that night. (Er, just so you know, KW googled the spelling of Michilimackinac just now. Just to make sure she had it right… … …) (Errr… Upon reflection… The blonde kid could also have been Becky Springer. But Jenny makes a better story…)

Not to end on a sour note but Michigan school update: Buena Vista schools will be funded through the end of the year and the students will not have to endure hastily thrown-together summer “skills camps”. But Albion Schools voted to close their high school after this year. After 140 years, they will educate only K-8 and bus high school students to Marshall, 10-15 miles away. This does not seem like a good thing to me but I am also wondering if a for-profit charter school might try to step in to pick up the “slack”. This is purely conjecture on my part of course. If you are a Michigan voter, please please please please, at least try to educate yourself about our governor’s policies on education (and other issues). He will likely be running again and I do not want him to win another 4-year term. You can disagree with me if you want but please try to understand the issues. If our current model for funding schools is not working, it needs to be changed — without hurting the CHILDREN! And for-profit charter schools are NOT the answer but I don’t have the chops to write about that tonight.

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