You have to see it to believe it. Which is what this news item from NBCoop today is all about.

Many of us (residents and tourists alike) traveling south down Highway 42. see it all too often and are sick of the sight. What’s been pushed, ‘billboard-ed” in our face. What we’re forced to look at, when we know what once was there: another, potential, million-dollar view of the county. Now, alas, gone the way of condo craziness, developer’s desire: “Me first! Screw you! And Door County.”

It’s an old story. This is my 40th anniversary of living in the county and in all those years I’ve been watching it slowly picked apart. Gobbled up. “Disappeared.” Of course there’s no stopping it–except for certain individuals and organizations like the Door County Land Trust, with hearts and heads in the right place. Everything gets worse, as some sage once said. It does. Yes it does.

I addressed this issue before, almost two years ago, January, 2008. The view of Sister Bay I was defending (proposing… pleading for preservation) has by now been erased — replaced by the in-your-face reality in the accompanying photo — the continued “March of the Condos” across the Door landscape.

AFTER

Merrily We Roll Along. Well, maybe not so merrily in these economic times. And while many of them remain empty, I don’t see any of these selfish structures removed, the view restored ‘for the greater good.”

I could go into a long essay, a rabble-rousing rant—but what’s the use? I’ve devoted a considerable amount of my Door County writing to the issue. Even had some fun at it, and modicum of minor celebrity. But what’s the use? The condos keep marching toward the shoreline, the McMansions continue to secure, eat-up the rural interior (and wave banners “Don’t Tread on Me”). And a few of us are pleased with our view and four-car garage; some of us are pissed-off, remembering the way we were; and most of us don’t have time or care to think about it too much. It’s hard enough to pay the bills, find work.

I don’t know what Sister Bay was thinking when they allowed this to happen to the old Liberty Park Lodge and that beautiful shoreline. I don’t know the hieroglyphics of zoning or the skullduggery of local politics. But this seems to me a huge mistake. Another sad commentary on greed over the common good, the common view. CAUTION: There’s another foundation to the right of the present obstruction, which should pretty much shut the door in the face of everybody but the condo people..

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

I’ve written only 483 of them.

Here’s the picture:

BEFORE...

N.B. Coop News original article and more: Breaking, broken…Good, bad…Old, new…Global, national, local…Facts, figures, fantasies…Letters, notes, opinions…All the news fit / unfit to post, print, scatter… N.B. publisher & editor | Monsieur K. – managing editor

Norbert Blei

Lilacs, dandelions… daffodils… mayflowers – a paper basket of them left on the door by local children every May Day. Wild asparagus, morel mushrooms, the many shades of green… roadside ditches getting some of their color back… the lawn growing into itself again, DO NOT DISTURB. Let it be. Let wild grasses and wildflowers grow. Ants finding their familiar pathways into the kitchen. Bats, back on target, on time, sweeping the darkness above old familiar houses, barns, and outbuildings. The local paper filled with HELP WANTED ads. Shops sprucing up for the first onslaught of tourists – Memorial Day. The county – back in business again.

Ah, inhale deep, deeper. Bury me here, deep beneath this patch of Lily of the Valley – that shade loving flower where nothing else will grow. My kind of flora.

The daily growth of rhubarb in the garden, almost tropical in color and dimension for this cold climate.

The first tour bus pulls up to “the restaurant with goats on the roof,” And the goats, sure-footedly begin posing for another long season of photo ops and the same old questions from the gawkers below: “How do they get up there?” “What do they do in winter?” “How come they don’t fall off?”

The weather here in May sometimes feels like November. Especially early May, the branches of the trees still bare, temperatures at night falling below freezing. Overcast skies and sharp wind. One day, the 70’s. The next evening the heat goes on and you find yourself reaching for Afghans, sweatshirts, the comfort of old, woolen sweaters. Autumn redux.

A back-and-forth time. A day of warmth followed by three days of cold. Followed by a string of warm days that bring back the Mayflies hovering in clouds over the streets of Sister Bay, waiting for your arrival. Batting the persistent pests away from face, eyes, nose, mouth as you enter the helter-skelter of their domain and try making a mad dash to any door that will let you in— Al’s, the Post Office, as far away from the bay as possible.

The season of threats and seductions… severe thunder showers and tornado watches “tornado touchdowns in adjacent counties” temperatures seesawing each day from cold to warm, sometimes reaching the 80’s. A time for taking down storm windows, putting up screens, opening windows and doors. A time of throwing bedroom windows high to a warm May night, lying awake, receptive to whatever the darkness holds for you – night air smelling of woods and lilacs, a sky speckled with stars, waves of cool breeze cast over a stifling day.

Mostly it’s a month of uncertainty. A month trying to get hold of itself. Ridding itself of the last vestiges of winter, be it cold temperatures, frost, fog, wind, dismal gray skies, inching forward with a little warmth, a little more hope. This too shall pass: bare branches, fields tangled in autumn’s dead grasses. There, barely a hint of green.

A time of turning over the garden. Fertilizing the soil. Preparing to plant. Buying tomato plants – but not setting them out yet – the fickleness of frost in these parts. Tomatoes not to be planted with any assurance till after Memorial day. Making row upon row for onion sets. Getting down on hands and knees, working the soil, slightly drunk in the scent and the juicy promise of large onions to come. Digging long trenches under the watchful eyes of red potatoes. Covering them carefully with a prayerful pat. May their tribe increase.

Watching the red rhubarb turn fire, explode in an extravaganza of leaf. Cutting thick stalks of strawberry rhubarb the same month. Rhubarb custard pie. Rhubarb torte. Rhubarb this, rhubarb that, rhubarb everything. All good.

Thrashers, rose breasted grosbeaks, gold finches, warblers, waxwings return, hawks circling the sky. At dusk, the first sound of the whippoorwill. I open the bedroom window that night, listen to their nocturnal telegraphy “1 2 3 4 5 6″ counting myself to sleep…

The first porcupine appear along the driveway, strolls into the open garage looking for something to feast on. The ugliest, dumbest, most useless creature on earth. I recall a neighbor taking a shovel to them. A 2×4. A rifle. I stand and stare-down the spring intruder trapped in my garage, wishing it would go away, go back where it came from. Disappear into the woods. Go visit my neighbor with the gun. I don’t have the heart for violence. I want no guilt in its demise. I consider again the threat this creature imposes: how it can gnaw away at the center-post of my garage, chew up the wooden handles of tools, target my dog’s inquiring muzzle with quills. Instead, I fall-back on old, less violent solutions. I raise my voice, take a broom to it, sweep the ugly creature back into the woods. Look forward to that time of year when porcupines disappear.

Not the ‘merry month of May,’ but the wild month of May.

The month when cherry and apple orchards explode in white blossoms. When tufts of trillium re-emerge in the woods around birch and maple, trumpeting the forest floor with large white flowers, three-petals that bow and fold and fade to pink and lavender in the weeks to follow.

The month when tiny forget-me-nots light up in the earth in luminous luscious blue patches that cannot be forgotten in the whitest of white winters past or forthcoming.

The month, when nearing its end, trees finally unfurl their branches to the blue skies with canopies of full leaves and emerald light, maple, beech, pine, oak, birch branches mingled in the woods, diffusing light upon the forest floor over flowering plants, the remnants of last autumn’s leaves… the roadsides, the far woods, the horizon thick with variations on the theme of green.

This is the month of Memorial Day, the last Monday of the month, the remembrance of things past, the sacrifice of others so seasons like this can be cherished and continued. Blow the bugle. Raise the flag. Remember the home of the brave. The lost. White crosses and weathered tombstones. Give thanks. Honor the silence. Pause, then strike up the band. Get on with the daily chores. The business of living. The beginning of ‘THE season’. The first holiday weekend of the year when tourists, remembering to remember, descend in hordes to getaways like this, delighting in `back to nature’/back to shopping treks, reaping the change of scenery, change of pace. A renewed sense of life. The natural beauty this particular peninsula provides in quiet splendor. Good earth. Clear water. Fresh air. Take a deep breath, Take another.

“Welcome back, May” on the lips in the hearts on the minds of everyone, bowing gently to seasons of transition, earth transforming itself before one’s very eyes, turning another day-in-the-life-of-spring to our favor once again.

Find more of Norb Blei’s latest publications at Blei’s Door County Times and his Poetry Dispatches at www.poetrydispatch.wordpress.com.

Norbert Blei

LOST & FOUND:

We have all seen and discovered poems before we ever read them or found the words to write them ourselves. For as long as I remember I have ‘rescued’ (found?) poems in my surroundings. Especially poems in the city: the writ of grit; words on walls; words scratched on homemade window signs; words twisted into colorful tubes lighting up the night skies, morphing into a mix of watercolor puddles at your feet in the glowing, wet streets; cryptic words and images chalked on concrete sidewalks by children, the truly legitimate artists of the world – ah, but for the moment.

For as long as I remember, I have  communed with art and artists on every level. Brought things out-into-the-open within myself, outside myself. If ‘going-to-church’ had any meaning and effect upon me as a child, it was the glitter of gold and silver chalices; the sheen of sacred vestments, vigil candles flickering in ruby light; stained glass windows romancing the morning and evening light; the blue of the statuesque Blessed Virgin and blood-red robe of Christ, the Sacred Heart arm and hand outstretched to the multitudes; statues draped in purple during Lent. And the greatest graphic novel in the world which arrested a child’s wandering eyes when candles, chants, bells and  incense lifted you toward being/not being there… that life everlasting medieval mural showing the way (for Mexican muralists and New York graffiti artists to come)… the journey,  depicted along both walls of church, santuario, and cathedral: The Stations of the Cross. Lost and found. THIS way–>

Among my closest artist-friends in my lifetime, I have always seen ‘the writer’ (the poet), “the word” in the paint. Even when some never saw it, some refused to consider it. Or, in the case of my friend, Door County artist Emmett Johns, we seemed mutually aware of what we held in hand, which I longed to capture (for his sake, my sake and others) in a book: I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE PICTURE, 1996, limited edition, 500 copies, Cross+Roads Press, #6. (Sold Out). The idea  coming together after my seeing/reading stacks of his sketchbooks one winter, delighting in their richness of line, their sense of story, self-analysis, perception… everything down-on-paper as you see it, in the artist’s own words and images.

I experienced somewhat the same discovery recently going through books about Andrew Wyeth’s life and works. (See previous Norbert Blei’s Poetry Dispatch: Wyeth & Peterson).

I saw the simple poetry of Wyeth’s own words whenever he spoke about what he saw, felt. How it all came together in painting. His life as art. His art as life.

+++

Toll Rope

Inside the church at Wylie’s Corner, Maine,

I liked going up in the belfry.

The dry quality of that church steeple,

the dried flowers… and the sea anchor

wrapped in black crepe

from the seamen’s funerals…

totally New England.

Mill in Winter

I’m intrigued by the first moments

of  a snowstorm. There’s danger in it.

You never  know how it’s going to turn out.

I love the bleakness of winter and snow,

get a thrill out of the chill. God, I’ve frozen

my ass off painting snow scenes!

I’m taken by the bleakness-

not the melancholy feeling of snow.

My winter scenes… they’re not romantic.

No!

They capture  that marvelous, lonely bleakness-

the quiet, the chill reality of winter.

Overflow

Look at the feeling of the lips,

the feeling of the sleeping eye,

the light that goes over the body.

Anyone who’s watched a female

form at night in that kind of light

knows that this has a strong female smell to it.

This picture-and most of the Helga pictures-

are too real for some people. You have to feel

deeply to do this kind of thing. You can’t

conjure it up, There’s a penetrating and throbbing

sexual feeling in all of the Helga pictures. I felt

the country, the house, Germany, and the dreamy,

moist, rich female smell-the whole thing.

Wholesome…fresh…really American.

Open House

…a house on a back road in Maine

where horses were rented out to ride.

I took the nurse who was taking care of me,

after I had my hip operation… she loved to ride.

…a foggy day… the house was gray, with all these

horses – one even stuck inside the house,

sticking his head out the window. The owner had a

daughter who kept horses, and he told me,

“She’s got a few boards missing in the attic.”

Love  in the Afternoon

I was looking out the window in the Mill…

I go to that window and open it in the morning,

close it in the evening.

I wanted again that tawny feeling of winter

and grasses matted… I was taken by the feeling

of almost falling out of that window.

I didn’t want a frame around it.

I didn’t want a feeling of the inside of the room…

I wanted the feeling of pushing this windowpane out

and letting in the air and that you’re just there

for a second.

Untitled

I

love

white

things.

Oh,

I

love

white.

SOURCES:

Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography
introduction by Thomas Hoving, Konecky & Konecky (1995)

Andrew Wyeth Museum Of Fine Arts Boston
introduction by David McCord; Selection by Frederick A. Sweet, New York Graphic Society (1970)

CAUTION: It may seem an easy thing to do. But it’s not something you can play around with like: “I think today I’ll write a sonnet” then consider yourself Shakespeare. Rather… it’s a voice that may (or may not) call you when you are ready to listen-and record. One way or another, life itself propels you in this direction. Which is always the way of authentic writing. When it’s bullshit, it’s bullshit. When it’s true, it’s true.

The late John Berryman, author of an American classic, THE DREAM SONGS, is one of these poets who introduces the character of Henry in his work. A likable guy. So much so that the reader begins to feel comfortable in the possibility that Berryman and Henry are one or share the same sensibility which the recorded moment requires – sad, sensitive, self-indulgent, self-disparaging, confessional roustabouts with something unsettling to say about life, art, the American dream:

Books drugs razor whisky shirts

Henry lies ready for his Eastern tour,

swollen ankles, one hand,

air reservations. Friends at the end of the hurts,

a winter mind resigned: literature

must spread, you understand,

–from “Dream Song 169″ of THE DREAM SONGS, Farra, Strauss, Giroux

Henry = Berryman? Some resemblance, perhaps. Though Berryman himself states: “The poem, then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white-American in early middle age sometimes in black face, who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second; he has a friend, never named, who addresses him as Mr. Bones and variants thereof. Requiescat in pace.”

Paul Zimmer, (FAMILY REUNION: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, THE ZIMMER POEMS, etc. University of Pittsburg Press) is an immensely entertaining yet serious poet with his own special take on an alter ego who looks at the real world through the small-town eyes of a character named Zimmer. The titles alone pull you immediately into his world: “Zimmer and the Ghost”, “Zimmer Remembering Wanda”, “Zimmer Imagines Heaven”, “Zimmer’s Last Gig”, “Zimmer Is Icumen In”…

ZIMMER’S HEAD THUDDING AGAINST THE  BLACKBOARD

At the blackboard I had missed

Five number problems in a row,

And was about to foul a sixth,

When the old, exasperated nun

Began to pound my head against

My six mistakes. When I cried,

She threw me back into my seat,

Where I hid my head and swore

That very day I’d be a poet,

And curse her yellow teeth with this.

Click to read more of this entry in Norbert Blei’s latest Poetry Dispatch #269 as he covers 6 more poets including Charles Bukowski.

Uncle Stephan was a soccer player, a soft ball player, an archer, a photographer, a singer, and a speed skater. He was married to Aunt Edith who always complained about her health. Uncle Stephan had a thin mustache and wore flashy shirts and pants the boy’s father called race track clothes. The blue Buick convertible, the family suspected, was bought on the black market after the war when new cars were almost impossible to buy. Uncle Stephan, who worked for his family’s business, which he hated, was a neighborhood butcher who provided for the family during the war when food was scarce. Packages of meat wrapped in pink butcher paper and tied in coarse string would miraculously appear once a week behind their kitchen doors.

Click to read the rest of Skating Backwards, the latest of Norbert Blei’s NOTES from the UNDERGROUND (No. 167 | January 27, 2009)

It no longer meets even the minimum standards of floor covering, garbage wrap, or paper to line a bird cage. And, yes, there’s another sacrificial lamb in the editor’s chair, this time a woman. All things being unequal, Corp. Gannett no doubt figured they could save a bunch in salary by hiring a woman of limited journalistic experience to ‘edit’ three papers, (summarize information) from god knows what location. Well, it never seemed to matter with the Gannett Aggravate where the editor resided anyway, since no real news was their kind of news, minutia they could stick between the ads. Yes, another new ‘editor”… let’s see, how many has that been in the past 10 years? Can you name them? Can you recall what each contributed to making the Aggravate any better? Have the ex-editors all been kicked either up the ladder or out the door? (How about an Aggravate ‘Who/Where Are They Now?’ story.)

Enough. My regrets that I did not have the time to do the interview with Joe Knaapen that I intended upon his departure from our local paper. But — I will, if he’s still open to it.

In any event, his piece below is a solid reminder of just how good he was in the Aggravate, how much he is missed… not to mention how rarely he received the plaudits he, any conscientious journalist deserves, whether you agree with him or not, like him or not. Journalism is not a popularity contest. A good journalist never asks to be loved. Only to be read and understood. Locally, he/she’s our county watchdog. And nobody’s doing that for us now. Joe’s mission was always clear: to cover the local news, tell us what we need to know. Get as close to the truth, as accurately as possible.

We owe this man our thanks for keeping the faith of local news If you don’t think his absence from the Aggravate isn’t a huge loss to us all… take a look at what passes for responsible reporting in the born again and again Aggravate. Try and find the news.

Click to read… Inauguration Night, Jan. 20, 2009 by Joe Knaapen as featured in Nornb Blei’s Door County Times.

This New Year’s Day poem by Eric Chaet is a ‘commission’ of sorts, a call to a friend, neighbor, poet, thinker, whose work I have both encouraged and shared with many readers for more than a few years. Now that the lights and music of the holiday season are fading… the New Year’s hats and horns put away… I thought Eric might be the right writer at the right moment (Day 1, 2009) to set the course for the oncoming journey.

Eric writes what I consider an ‘essay-narrative-poem of political/philosophical dimensions.’ Not everyone’s cup of tea perhaps, but not something everyone can bring off with Eric’s grasp of language and idea. Poems of this expansive nature seem to start small… and roll, gain momentum like a snowball.

The only ‘suggestion’ I made to him was: “Not too long.”

Eric knocked off the poem in record time—and fired back: “Thanks for the assignment—hope this ain’t too long…”

“Thanks. Wonderful,” I replied. “Yeah, a little loooooong. Let me live with it awhile.”

Eric answered: “Shorter than Crossing Brooklyn Ferry or Song of Myself, tho.”

I smiled to myself and dubbed him, ‘Wisconsin’s Whitman.’

— norbert blei

HAPPY NEW YEAR, AMERICA
by Eric Chaet

America, it’s wonderful that the illusions are being dispelled,
yes, it’s bad that people will starve and freeze to death,
and die for lack of medical attention
and at the hands of their fellow desperados—
I’ve been grieving about that for years in advance—
and it’s bad, too, that disillusion doesn’t lead immediately to enlightenment,
to sanity, justice, compassion, harmonious development,
that not everyone sees the light simultaneously
or even at all,
that some will go on screwing things up
from high office or low position, your neighbor, or you
tearing up the Earth from short-term selfishness, wasting everything,
egotism, compulsive greeds and lusts, radical insecurity posing as tough,
setting young men to killing other young men—and women, too—
congratulations, you get involved in committing mayhem now, too—
but it’s wonderful that the illusions are being dispelled,
that we’re not digging our graves deeper and deeper
while singing “Whistle While You Work,”
that more and more people are forced and others becoming willing
to face the flaws in the program, to stop feeding cancer,
maybe even to stop praising the Founding Fathers for five minutes
and start founding something themselves, appropriate to the situation,
without sacrificing the advances the rebels made
when they opposed the tyrants of their time,
the British investors and their world-wide imperialist Company
backed by war-ships and hireling troops
many of whom were shooting their fellow young men
because they saw no decent opportunities at home,
their old way of life torn out from under them
for more efficient raising of sheep on what had been common lands
for the new steam-engine driven textile mills.

Happy New Year, America! Happy New Millennium!
Happy Future Forever, America, and not just America—
Happy New Year, all humanity—
young men and young women, and infants and elders,
and ancestors and those yet to be born—
mandarins, sophists, tyrants, drones, insiders, and soldiers,
the pious, the addicted, the despairing hiding out of the way,
those capable of thinking for themselves
and those in a position to take some time to think
who still remember how, or who finally discover how to think,
and those just doing what is immediately necessary
digging their way out of the collapse
and finding new sources
of heat, food, air, water, companionship—
fixing the plumbing and roof—
people on every continent, in cities and hinterlands,
farmers, builders, mechanics,
artists and scientists—
clear-headed, with integrity, or imitators competing for attention or loot—
politicians and middle and upper management,
gamblers with or without understanding of probability and history,
animals living in what’s left of the wilds,
on the margins or underground,
or way South or North, or under the surface of waters,
husbandmen and their cattle, too,
housewives and women determined to make it
among skyscrapers and warring militias,
rabid ideologies, tepid hypocrisies, traditions,
gravity, friction, and brilliant ideas and inventions,
sprockets and chains, furnaces, electric lights,
genius books, songs, concertos, improvisations, analyses,
and holes into which the dollar-wise and soul-foolish
suppose you should adapt yourself,
every profession, every sort of worker,
and those between jobs, with or without purpose,
police and drug-dealers, too—guards and also prisoners,
those living where they were born and those far from their birth places,
those tangled up in laws and courts—
Norman conqueror common law
and statutes enacted by heroes, fools, and weasels,
my apologies to the weasels—
and those wearing robes and collecting fees for filing and arguing against motions—
those who cling to the legal order, and those who rebel against it!

Happy New Year, Happy Future—
and may the transformation to sanity, justice, and lovingkindness
be less and less convoluted and postponed.

May each and everyone who reads this–including me—
participate and contribute—wisely, not just trying to keep up—
not over-estimating or under-estimating his or her own or others’ capacities,
and may everyone develop and deploy new capacities,
learning from others, also innovating beyond what others have known and done,
and may suffering therefore be minimized.

May everyone experience joys
such as a child who has recently learned to stand and walk
experiences, upon climbing up and standing on a small stool.

Find more of Norb Blei’s Poetry Dispatches at www.poetrydispatch.wordpress.com and his latest publications at Blei’s Door County Times.

I have given much thought as to the proper ‘disposal’ of these works – a library of over 3,000 volumes. And this (for now) seems the best plan. Makes the most sense. And, no, I am not getting rid of everything. But I am getting rid of duplicate copies, of subjects, authors, areas of interest which, for whatever reason, no longer interest me. Certain writers whom I have read, re-read, possibly taught in my writing workshops… and feel now I won’t be visiting again in this lifetime. There are so many other ‘unread writers’ to devote my prime-time reading to.

So, I’m getting rid of all the works I have of…oh, let’s say Fredrick Exley, for example. Don DeLillo, another. Poets too, Short story writers. Essayists. Philosophers. Theology writers. I’m also ‘dwindling’ my shelves of particular areas if interest: Latin American writing; Eastern European writing; Irish literature; English literature; Russian literature; Art books; Feminist writing; German literature (Heinrich Bolls, for example); French, Italian, Asian, Scandinavian, Greek, etc..

Many of these works are already out of here and over there, available. Hopefully more (if this works) will be coming.
The plan is simply this: Steve and Marge Grutzmacher of Passtimes Books in Sister Bay, Wisconsin (the oldest independent bookstore in Door County, going on 30+ years) have graciously given me space to showcase Blei’s Used Books at very reasonable prices.

A certain percentage of each book sale will go to Passtimes Books (in support of the independent books store and all the Grutzmachers have done through the years to keep writers and books alive in Door County). The rest will go toward Cross+Roads Press (Ellison Bay) and its ongoing mission to publish ‘first books ‘ of new writers and occasional works by veteran writers too long out of print.. Cross+Roads Press, now in its 12th year, has just published its 31st book. (See www.norbertblei.com).

Passtimes Books is located at 10653 N. Bay Shore Drive in downtown Sister Bay. Phone 920.854.2127 and/or 888.741.6645 FAX: 920.854-9616, e-mail: books@dcwis.com.

Please stop in, check all the new books (“Local Authors,” as well). Look further back in the store (north wall) for BLEI’S USED BOOKS. Pick something up for yourself, a friend. TELL OTHERS ABOUT THIS. Help support the cause of BOOKS – an endangered intellectual pursuit in this day and age. (Call and order something as well.)

But I’m in the hunt here for other things. Nowadays, given the preciousness of open land, given the huge appetite some nourish for development – and then, overdevelopment. Given the constant chipping away of the rural landscape, month after month, year after year… the cropping up of yet another/more McMansions (NO TRESPASSING), bearing down upon my humble shack.

Given all that, I have come to see the blaze-oranged hunter as the guardian of open land and all that once-was. When there is no free pasture and woods left to hunt—you have opted for Sanitized Suburbia, Gated Community, Paved Driveways, All Light – All Night Sodium Vapor Yard Lamps, and DON’T TREAD ON MY McMANSION LAND. (Deer included–stay away from my four-car garage)

Good nature writing brings all this back to mind. It’s just one of the things which can male a local newspaper sing. Something the Advocate lost when they lost Roy Lukes – where he belongs: in a legitimate local newspaper. One of the things I go searching for when I get my hands on any local newspaper, from anywhere in Wisconsin.

Thanks to my partner, my good woman here in Door County, who once lived in Barron County, we receive her local newspaper once a week: The Chronotype out of Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Among its many enjoyable sections, one of the first things I turn to when the paper arrives, is the “Outdoors” page. And on that page, two items command my immediate attention: “Journal” and “Almanac Notes”, neither of them signed. I don’t have a clue who writes these two pieces every week, but I love reading them. Given the responsibilities of a local paper to its readers—I would say something like either of these two columns should be required reading – and writing–everywhere in rural America. (Even the New York Times prints a thoughtful nature essay on its editorial page at least once a month.) 

This article is the latest in the Blei at Large & Company section of Norbert Blei’s Door County Times…

It’s been a while since I last checked in with the greatest Caregiver for Creatures on the Continent–certainly the greatest that County Door has ever known but as some wise-guy once said: the more things change, the more they remain the same. Some of the old dog characters like Nimrod may be gone, but there are always others looking to hang out in her place: Dufus, Pearl the bloodhound, Itchy, Snuff, Helen the basset hound. A population of 150 to 300 creatures on any given day. Farm animals included.

The good news: Rory is still in place, (All Creatures Home for Animals, Box 155, Baileys Harbor, WI 54202) still dedicated to her special animal-calling life, still laughing, still a little crazy at times, trying to keep her whole kingdom of fallen-down houses, broken trucks, and sick, hurt, aging, abandoned and lonesome animals together. The place has become a kind of Olds Folks Home for old animals. A kind of hospice for others. The Old Ones garner her special attention. She turns no one away. And continues to spend her last cent to make any sick creature’s life as comfortable as possible to the very end, “Some people think it’s out of control. But I can do it. It’s more of a healing thing.”

To engage her in conversation is an experience in multi-voice channeling: you and her; you, her and the dogs; the dogs and the dogs, and the cats, horses, sheep, goats, cow, pigs, donkeys…with the thread of conversation between the two humans frequently lost to a growing conversational chatter of creature sounds, and Rory periodically calling out, “Time-out, guys,” in the gentlest of tones. And the miracle of miracles: everything becomes still again. You can almost hear a dog’s thinking.

“A lot of people who do this work walk out if it eventually,” she admits. But if you know Rory, here’s a creature with a human heart so big, hands so strong, determination so boundless… her life has definitely “gone to the dogs.” In the most positive, giving, spiritual way of living imaginable.

On the bad news front: It’s still money and physical assistance she needs to keep her special Ark afloat. Since my last visit, her old house is gone-gone beyond repair–totally uninhabitable. And rumors that she’s moved into the barn with the animals a few years ago for her own shelter, are true. Friends helped her secure a tiny, insulated room there (9′x18′) with a small oil heater for winter. “I am warm for the first time,” she tells you. She loves where she lives, “I can hear the pigs snoring, the babies being born.” So what if she has no hot water! And is in need of a new house probably more than a newcomer to Door building his/her third vacation home.

There’s a lot of negative energy out there, she admits. People who don’t understand her. People kind of snooty… people who might complain they don’t want to live near an animal shelter. People with unexplainable (and unfounded) fears-like “dogs running in packs.” Which just ain’t true. Not her peaceable creatures. But for the most part, she assures you, her neighbors are very supportive.

Well, it’s Christmas time in Doordom again, folks. And instead of buying a little more of what you probably don’t need, keep this good woman and her cause in mind. Here are Rory’s Christmas wishes. Be thoughtful and generous. It’s time to help all creatures, great and small, who make all our lives so miraculous. Help a real Caretaker who cares, keep the peaceable Kingdom alive and well:

1. Donations:

All Creatures Home for Animals
c/o Rory Walter
Box 155
Baileys Harbor, WI 54202

2. Food drop off:

Place food items in the barrels located at all of the major grocery stores.

3. And some real specialty items:

Skilled labor. More housing. Repairs galore. A pole building. A dependable truck. Drop her a note, give her a call.

“Every moment is so full,” she says. “It a wonderful life here. I’m deeply happy here.”

And that’s about all she wants for Christmas …”Except if Denzel Washington should be driving by and his car breaks down…”