The Smelt Parade That Wasn’t

/ mariezhuikov / 3 Comments
Duluth Smelt Parade

A party of one: the 2014 Duluth Smelt Parade.

An annual Smelt Parade is held in Duluth to welcome the spring run of this tasty silvery little fish. Although the runs are much smaller than they used to be (which is a good thing because smelt are non-native) the fish still serves as a unique celebration of abundance and a cultural reminder that spring is on its way. For the past two years, the parade has been spearheaded by a local puppet troupe. Citizens make costumes and participate in the procession along the shores of Lake Superior, complete with a brass band.

I’ve never attended the parade, so today I committed to going. Wouldn’t you know it, this year the wind, rain and 35-degree-temperatures made it “the parade that wasn’t.” I was hoping to get a lot of fun images to share, but all I got was this single photo of a “parade of one” that happened outside a local arts café where the rag-tag group of parade-goers gathered indoors instead of walking along the shores of Lake Superior.

Oh well. Better luck next year. If you’d like to learn more about smelt, Minnesota Sea Grant offers a great fact sheet.

Updated Look

/ mariezhuikov / 1 Comment

Yes, you are still in the right place. I decided to update the look of my blog. Hope you like it! The name of this theme is “Hemmingway Rewritten.” It seemed appropriate for a writerly type like me. I can change the header image, so don’t be shocked if you come back sometime and it looks different. The current image is one I took in Sheboygan, Mich., at sunrise.

The view out my window right now, though, is one of snow falling on gray water. People are shaking their heads at this winter that won’t quit. I hope things are warm and sunny wherever you are. Thanks for visiting.

This Blog: A Retrospective

/ mariezhuikov / 4 Comments

Image

I’ve been writing this blog for well over a year now, and it feels time for a retrospective. I didn’t want to do it in January because every other blogger was doing that, and I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. Besides, with the spring thaw, it finally feels like a new season and a safe time to look back.

I started this blog in late January 2013 to keep my creativity alive through a record-cold winter and as a way to escape the mental and physical cage such cold presents. But I also began it because I wanted a more personal outlet for my writing – one where I was freer to express myself and describe some of the weird things that happen. My day job (of science writing) and my night job (of novel writing) don’t always allow for that.

I did not start this blog to make friends (although that is a nice side-effect) or to inspire legions. If that were the case, I’d have more than 76 followers and 3,000 views. Actually, I do have a rather devoted following among my Facebook friends, which is where I get most of my feedback and conversations about the stories. For that I am grateful and appreciative. It’s always nice to know someone is paying attention! Between Facebook and my blog followers, each story has the potential to reach 240 people.

Although most of my readers are from the U.S., I’m amazed by the foreigners who find this blog. Word Press (my blog hosting platform) offers a statistics page where bloggers can see the countries of origin that have visited their site and which stories are popular. Every few weeks my son puts up with reports like, “Someone from Serbia visited my blog today.” He just rolls his eyes. But the tally is impressive: Portugal, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Australia, the Philippines, India, Lithuania, Ireland, etc.

The most popular posts have been:

Living for the Dead, where I wrote about former friend Matt Link after going to a presentation about him. I think its popularity is because his father and stepmother shared the story on Facebook, and they have a large following.

Cold as a Cage, was my first entry, which I shared widely by email and Facebook to publicize the start of my blog.

Minnesota Nice Meets Hollywood, which was based on a church sermon that I shared with my fellow-church-goers through Facebook.

Why I’m Giving up Bottled Water, is popular perhaps because many others are considering doing the same thing, and they found my story through web searches.

and

Old Wood: A Love Story, Part 1 and Part 2, which told the story of some local folks who were on the television series Ax Men last year. Every time the show aired, people did a slew of web searches for their names, and my blog popped up.

I intend to continue Marie’s Meanderings for the time being. It’s fun and it doesn’t take much time. I hope you are enjoying it, too. Please feel free to comment. Since I am so famous and important now (smirk), it might take me a day or two to reply, but I am paying attention.

Thank you.

Marie

Adventures in Diner Decor

/ mariezhuikov / Leave a comment

OldManPrayingI embarked on a lunchtime adventure today at work. I forgot to bring food from home, so I decided to visit a nearby bar in Superior, Wis., owned by a friend of a friend. I discovered the bar didn’t serve food. Since I wanted to be able to think and continue working during the afternoon, I opted against a liquid alcohol lunch. I visited a diner a few doors down.

I love diners. They each have distinctive personalities and they’re always very “human”—reflecting the local culture. This one was no different. Mickey Mouse memorabilia provided the main décor theme, with a few other classics thrown in, including the “old man praying with bible and bread” picture (I think it’s called “Grace” or “Daily Bread,” or something like that). An interesting combination, I must say. I remember the old man artwork from my youth. I suspect one set of my grandparents displayed it in their home. I would never have thought to hang him next to Mickey Mouse.

MMouse

A respectable number of people filled the booths. They were older and had the look of locals – casual dress, boots, and warm winter jackets. They looked like people who had been coming to this diner for a long time; people who could go elsewhere – to a franchise eatery or a fast-food restaurant, but they chose this place because it’s familiar and it’s in their neighborhood. They rested in their seats like birds home from a long migration.

The waitress looked like she’d seen better days. She was skinny with graying hair, a hangdog look, and walked with her hands stuck stiffly into her fleece jacket pockets, elbows locked. The food was good, though, as it usually is in such establishments. This diner served breakfast all day, so I got my favorite two eggs over-easy with sausages and hash browns. Hold the toast. What I liked most is that the hash browns were fluffy – not bogged down with grease. It proved to me once and for all that local diners do not survive on their décor alone.

 

 

Why I am a Zumba Failure

/ mariezhuikov / 5 Comments

Zumba

For my birthday last week, I went to a free Zumba class and dinner with some girlfriends. A new Zumba studio had opened downtown and they wanted to check it out. I had taken a six-week beginners’ class a few years ago through a community education program, so I was game, even though I had some misgivings.

The instructor of the community education class was a belly dancer, and all her Zumba instruction seemed to devolve into belly dancing, with the requisite swaying of hips and jiggling of key feminine body parts.

Introverted me doesn’t feel all that comfortable swaying anything in front of anyone. I figured that was just the way she taught Zumba because of her background. I hoped this new class would be different.

We entered the studio, which was filled with women, blinking lights, and pounding music. It didn’t take long for me to discover that the community education class music and movements had been slow-motion compared to a regular Zumba class. There was also the requisite jiggling of the “girls” and gyrating of the hips.

Now, I have no problem gyrating my hips when required during certain intimate acts performed between two consenting adults, but that’s different than doing it in a room full of people. And it also goes against my genetic make-up. My hips are German, English, Irish, Scottish and some rumored Native American. When is the last time you saw an ethnic Irish dancer gyrate their hips? Try never. How about a German folk dancer? I daresay NO. Those hips remain straight and true with nary a come-hither twitch.

It might be different if I had some Latin, Italian, Spanish or other hot-blooded ethnicity inside me. But I don’t. And it shows. Even from the back row of the Zumba studio.

I also realized I’m too used to endurance sports where the goal is to move as gracefully and efficiently as possible — sports like swimming, x-c skiing, bicycling, and yoga. With Zumba, it seems the whole point is to be as inefficient as possible. There’s lots of jumping and prancing and pointless arm waving.

I’m sorry, Zumba. I suppose with enough time and motivation, I could adapt to you. The music is fun, after all. But I don’t want to. There are too many other forms of fitness better suited to my inhibited hips.

Creativity and Spring Potholes

/ mariezhuikov / 2 Comments

Pothole

My mind has been scrambled lately. It’s hard to pick one topic to write about. I think it’s a side effect of spring – the cold has loosened its grip, the snow is melting and running all over the heck everywhere and it’s affecting my brain. Spring fever? Perhaps.

I am inspired to work on my own writing projects, but other creative commitments need attention. I am organizing a writing contest for the first time. The entry deadline just passed, and we had a respectable amount of pieces submitted – over 75. Now to figure out the judging. How do you judge what’s “good” creativity? I developed a form to help the volunteers quantify their opinions. It will be interesting to see if it works or not. Part of me thinks it’s wrong to assign numbers to any kind of creative endeavor, but we shall see.

I also attended the debut of a friend’s poem that was made into a video as part of a local collaboration between poets and filmmakers. Seeing two creative cultures come together to make something new was overwhelming. I’d been part of a similar collaboration between poets and printmakers, but video is so much more ‘in your face’ and impactful. The results were moving, funny, frightening and heart-warming all at the same time. No wonder I can’t think straight.

Then I need to market creative work I’ve done in the past. I’m gearing up for the summer release of my new novel, “Plover Landing,” and the reprint of its prequel, “Eye of the Wolf.” My publisher does some marketing and distribution, but the bulk of it is up to us authors. Having basically no marketing budget requires creative thinking. I’m in the midst of distributing copies to a few people for their review blurbs and planning my book launch party. Making these efforts jibe with the spirit and story in the novel is fun, but it’s a task that takes away from new writing.

And I want to write. The words are starting to ooze out my pores like muddy water through the cracks of a pothole. I fear that if I don’t allow myself at least one day for this soon, something bad will happen. What does it feel like when a creative pothole overflows?

Writing this blog has relieved some of the pressure, but it’s not enough. I suppose this is a good problem to have, but distressing, nonetheless.

Minnesota Nice Meets Hollywood (and it isn’t pretty)

/ mariezhuikov / 5 Comments

HollywoodSign

The minister at my church gave a sermon on “Minnesota Nice” last Sunday. When he read the Wikipedia definition of it, my mouth almost dropped open. (If I wasn’t Minnesotan, my mouth would have dropped ALL the way open.) He was describing a great deal of my personality:

Minnesota nice is the stereotypical behavior of people born and raised in Minnesota to be courteous, reserved, and mild-mannered. The cultural characteristics of Minnesota nice include a polite friendliness, an aversion to confrontation, a tendency toward understatement, a disinclination to make a fuss or stand out, emotional restraint, and self-deprecation. It can also refer to traffic behavior, such as slowing down to allow another driver to enter a lane in front of the other person. . . . Some traits typical of this stereotype are also generally applied to neighboring Wisconsinites and Canadians. Similar attributes are also ascribed to Scandinavians, with whom Minnesotans share much cultural heritage.

I never knew Minnesota nice had its own Wikipedia entry. I’ve read books and watched the movie (“How to Talk Minnesotan”), but I’d never seen the personality type spelled out so clearly before. The minister went on to explain what Scandinavian traditions could have inspired this behavior and how they are rooted in “the good of the group” mentality. In general, people were supposed to work together and not call attention to themselves for the betterment of everyone.

Although not Scandinavian, I am a fifth-generation Minnesotan. The Minnesota nice philosophy has had plenty of time to seep up into my ancestors and me from the soil. It’s been absorbed into my family from neighbors and community. I’ve found I have to work to overcome it in a greater society that values individualism and charisma. Self-deprecation, after all, makes it difficult to find a job, sell a product or attract a mate (unless that mate is also into Minnesota nice and recognizes it for what it is). I’ve also found I measure people from the perspective of Minnesota nice. I mistrust anyone who is too confident or self-promoting. I suspect they do it to cover up insecurities, but it also goes against the code of Minnesota nice.

I and another co-worker once took a news producer from Hollywood on an overnight trip up the North Shore of Lake Superior to the famed Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to film a spot for “Good Morning America.” That man could talk, and self-promote.

By the next day, when we were driving back to civilization, he could tell he was out of place. He complained that I and my coworker (also a Minnesotan) didn’t talk enough. “Maybe we don’t have anything to say,” was the reply. He didn’t know how to deal with that. We weren’t trying to be mean — we had been worn out by talking over the course of his tour and didn’t know how to relate to his foreign personality type. He gave up after that and we rode along in blissful silence — blissful for us, awkward for him.

Back to the sermon. The point of it was that Minnesota nice isn’t enough. It’s too constricting and confining – allows for too little self-love. There’s got to be a happy medium between self-sacrifice for the good of the group and self-love that promotes a fulfilling life. I’d like to think that I’ve learned this during my life, sometimes the hard way. Although it goes against my nature, I can brag when I have to, and I’ve learned how to appreciate certain traits and aspects of my personality. But I doubt I’ll ever feel comfortable around people like Mr. Hollywood.

I am Finally Killing a Mockingbird

/ mariezhuikov / Leave a comment

MockingbirdI may be one of the only semi-literate people who have not read “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I can’t even use the excuse that it’s because I live at the end of the world in Duluth, because the book was promoted as a community read a few years ago.

I’m in the process of rectifying this oversight. I like to listen to books on CD from the local library during my commute to work, and “To Kill a Mockingbird” is my most recent choice. Before reading the description on the back cover of the CD case, I knew vaguely that the novel was about a white southern lawyer who defends a black man; that it was written by the no-speech-giving and friend-to-Truman-Capote Harper Lee; that it was turned into a movie starring Gregory Peck; and that Bruce Willis and Demi Moore named one of their daughters after a character in it.

What finally attracted me to listen to the CD is that the story is told through the eyes of a child, and a precociously literate girl child at that. I am a sucker for unusual narrators. I’ve listened to about half of it by now, and I am coming to understand its classic appeal. Although the beginning is rather murky — you don’t really know why you’re reading (listening to) it because it doesn’t spoon feed the themes like authors do for readers now — if you give it a chance, you’ll notice it addresses all sorts of social issues.

Instead of being praised for her skills and sent on to a higher grade, the precociously literate girl (Scout) is made to feel bad that she can read by her insecure teacher. There’s sexual role modeling: Scout is under pressure to act more like a “lady” even though she’s only in early elementary school. There’s discrimination in the form of gender and color. A creepy neighborhood house and family stands testament to the damage that being overly religious can cause. And I haven’t even gotten to the trial part of the book yet.

If I were to dare to criticize the story (and I dare, for I am about as ladylike as Scout), I would say that sometimes the words used by Scout are too advanced for her age, even given that she’s literate. But the tone is spot-on as are the topics. The story also unintentionally provides a scathing commentary on the status of our communities today, where neighbors barely know each other or their histories.

It’s a great story. Go kill a mockingbird if you haven’t already.

I’m Somebody Now!

/ mariezhuikov / 3 Comments

Web ImageI just finished creating my author web site. I’m so excited – I feel like Steve Martin’s character Navin in the movie “The Jerk,” when he finds his name in the phone book for the first time:

Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!

Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.

Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 – Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

I have my own web site! I’m somebody! Whether or not things start happening because of it depends, I guess, on my efforts to make it visible (hence this blog posting, heh heh).

I’ve been my own Realtor, divorce lawyer, tax preparer, and now web designer. Of these, I am most proud of the web designer title. Creating the site was my New Year’s resolution, and it took this long for me to decide what to say and to work through all the technical difficulties associated with it.

But it’s up, it’s out in the world, even better than the phone book! If you’d like to know more about me and my writing, please take a look at http://www.marieZwrites.com. You can even pre-order my new eco-mystic romance novel, “Plover Landing,” due out this summer.

Living for the Dead

/ mariezhuikov / 7 Comments
Matthew Link

It’s easy to spot Matt among the groomsmen in this photo.

So I’m going to write about another dead person. I’m not trying to be morose or anything – it’s just that the events honoring these two men happened back-to-back. The previous event honored journalist Larry Oakes and was the subject of my last blog. Last night’s event was in memory of Matthew Link, a friend who died twenty-five years ago.

Matt’s father and stepmother gave a presentation at the Duluth Pack Store as part of its Tuesday night Outdoor Adventure series. They spoke about their trip to New Zealand – both the sights it provided and the closure it gave them regarding Matt’s death. He died in a kayak accident while participating in an outdoor pursuits school there.

Matt was my then-husband’s best friend. Four months before he died, he was best man in our wedding, and we ended up naming our son after him. A modern-day Viking, Matt was big, blond, and strong. He was always ready for adventure, sociable, and he was a good friend to my husband. Matt grew up at a nature center his parents directed in Minnesota, so he was no stranger to the outdoors, and he sought that type of life as a future profession.

The phone call in the winter of 1989 telling us that Matt died was surreal. It was one of those events that mark your life; there was the time when Matt was alive and the time when he was not. The world would never be the same for his friends and family. Many of us have struggled to find a way through life without his commanding physical presence. Making things more difficult was the postcard we received from Matt a week after he died. He must have mailed it from New Zealand just before his fateful kayaking trip.

Matthew Link

Matt and his girlfriend Beth discuss the confusing intricacies of my marriage certificate.

His father and stepmother couldn’t afford to go to New Zealand at the time, which is what made their current trip all the more meaningful and necessary. Instead, Matt’s ashes were flown back and his family, including his biological mother, hosted several ceremonies for him. I recall a bonfire and Ojibway pipe ceremony on Park Point in Duluth, and a church service. After the service, we trudged through the cold snow to free his ashes into the St. Louis River, one of his favorite kayaking waterways.

Matt’s funeral was the first one I attended where I was emotionally invested in the person who died. The service befitted him, which made it all the harder not to bawl. After a point, I just gave up trying to hide the tears. And when they played one of Matt’s favorite songs, “It’s a Wonderful World,” by the gravelly voiced Louis Armstrong, I just totally lost it. To this day, that song is my trigger – tears for every occasion. So if you’re ever in an airport when a Wonderful World comes over the Muzak system and you notice a woman sobbing as you walk by, that’s probably me!

On their trip, Matt’s dad/stepmother visited the school he was attending and met some of the people who knew him. They got to see his dorm room and Matt’s father even had the guts to visit the site where he died. His father explained that the hole that Matt left is too large for total closure but that he did find partial closure through their journey.

His parents, including his mother who lives in Alaska now, strive to live lives worthy of Matt’s spirit and I guess that’s something we can all do to honor departed loved ones. Assuming your departed was as cool as Matt: would they be happy with how you are living now? Are you living up to your best potential? It’s something to think about. If living for yourself isn’t working, consider living for them.