Posts: 69

1. 

   Life During Stormtime

   19.Aug.08, 19:01 IST
   
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   Yesterday was supposed to be my son's first day of kindergarten -- a banner day in any parent's lifetime (even if their child already has three years of Montessori under his belt). But Cole's other mother -- Nature -- had different plans. Tropical Storm Fay has delayed his entree into public schol by two days so far. It's so Florida, I have to laugh.
   
   Of course, he and the 599,999 other South Florida kids affected are delighted -- while their parents, many of whom still have to work, struggle to find child care. At least most households have not lost their power. I'm sure an inordinate number of Dade and Broward youths have been sucking in an ungodly amount of MTV and the Disney channel. Thank goddess for the Olympics, which gave us something new to watch together as a family last night, curled together on the bed, eating popcorn -- until the rain knocked out our satellite receiver, doh!

   
   

   Ever since I watched one of the first gusts of Wilma topple the majestic avocado tree in our backyard, I've loathed hurricanes. The tree was the soul of our backyard, which is in turn the jewel of our house. Its bountiful fruit, as sweet and buttery as chocolate, were the envy of our neighborhood, with whom we always shared. We built our pool around its base, in an elegant kidney shape; I even picked out coping tiles to match the luscious, dark green of its leaves and peels (which, come to think of it, is a similar shade to the background of my MOLI profile). When it fell, my heart broke.
   
   

   The tree landed in the power lines, miraculously not taking them down. We were able to free it, pull it back up, retie it, and bury its roots. It survived. It yielded no crop in '06, a small one in '07, and this year, it has been full of fruit again.
   
   

   Yesterday my husband tied it to a ponytail and palm: trees helping trees. Fay has been long and strong, but not nearly as fierce as Wilma. Wilma turned our island into Venice, with storm surge creating a river mere feet from our front door, and tore down scores of trees. A picture of an apartment building a mile away, across from the public school that someday -- tomorrow? -- Cole will attend, with curtains and shades fulttering from its punched-out windows, was the cover of The Miami Herald the day after Wilma. It has taken three hurricane-free years for our neighborhood to begin to look something like it did before that storm-filled year -- although there are still holes in the sky where trees once stood, and for-sale signs in a neighborhood where property values had been shooting upward.
   
   

   Yesterday I ventured to Collins Avenue, next to the ocean. When I tried to leave the Walgreen's, an outburst had turned the street into a wind tunnel. Sheets of rain were blowing sideways. I was stuck. Eventually, I ventured out and pushed my way through the horizontal water. The wind whipped the car door from my hands and it was all I could do to pull it shut. The old man in the car in front of me gave up on his door, letting it fly open as he ducked into the store, undoubtedly to pick up some necessary prescription, like heart medicine.
   
   

   Palm fronds littered the streets on the drive home, and a street sign lay fallen. Even the young man carrying a surfboard took shelter behind a building. (In a Herald photograph, a cop explains to one man why he can't wakeboard in the street.)
   
   

   The pool is full of leaves and roiling as if Michael Phelps were cutting a swath through it. Out front, the bougainvillea and palms against our front fence are a dangerous wind-whipped gauntlet for anyone venturing down the sidewalk. Me, I'd walk down the middle of the street. But the tree stands tall and amazingly, we don't seem to have even lost that many avocados.
   
   If you want a glimpse of Fay in Miami, our friends at Shake-A-Leg have baycams at their website. It's been a comparatively mild storm. And honestly, having just returned from vacation, Cole and I needed the extra days to get prepped for school. But we're ready now. Can the wind please stop?
   
   

2. 

   Bottom Up in the UP

   14.Aug.08, 19:11 IST
   
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   We (the media elite) generally think of culture with a big C: the high arts, or else, the mass arts. Ballet or Britney. The folk arts seem quaint, antiquated, parochial. Yet in fact, the artistic drive thrives in small, local institutions, where the heavy lifting of cultural creation and curation is part of the fabric of daily life -- far from spotlights and flashbulbs.
   
   I'm talking about places like the Ontonagon County Historical Society and the Ontonagon Theater of Performing Arts, that build the cultural fabric from the bottom up. These two institutions, one decades old, one founded a few years ago, promulgate and preserve the intellectual, imaginative life in a part of the world generally defined by physical culture: hunting, fishing, skiing, boating, snowmobiling, ATVing -- or working in the mill, the shipyard, the forests. In the past month I've been in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I've written about Calumet and the Porkies, but I've tended to neglect the town that has always been the center of my summer sojourns, Ontonagon.
   
   Ontonagon, aka Harbor Town, is a boom and bust town if there ever was one. Located at the egress of the Ontonagon River, it has been a portal between the county's interior and Lake Superior -- and, thereby, the world -- since the 1800s. Vast swathes of timber used to float here; at the end of the 19th century, they caught on fire and the entire town burned down, except for the brick lighthouse on the river's west side. That lighthouse is still there today; the historical society offers daily tours. Progress has been so halting in this part of the world that the past is palpably present, not just in the form of relics (a century-old windup foghorn), but in the family names: Many of the old lighthouse keepers' descendants are still Ontonagon citizens.
   
   The historical society also runs a museum in downtown Ontonagon that is chock a block with artifacts of a frontier life that's still very much in sway. Needless to say, mostly retirees and teenagers volunteer their time to keep this effort afloat. Bruce Johanson, my husband's old music teacher, was our avuncular tour guide for the lighthouse. (Two weeks before, his daughter Linda, also a school teacher, took us horseback riding). These are the unheralded stars of small-town cultural institutions, as important in their own right as Brad and Angelina.
   
   Yet another teacher -- god bless the educators! -- spearheaded the effort to put a theater in the town's old brick library building a decade ago. Dana Brookins and her Harbortown Players put on several plays a year; tonight, their version of Gypsy opens. I admit full nepotism here: my dog Otis's father is one of the cast members, and Dana is one of my husband's oldest friends. The Ontonagon Theater of Performing Arts also hosts visiting artists -- shining a beacon of its own.
   
   No discussion of Ontonagon cultural institutions would be complete without a mention of Stubb's, the bar/museum that has been a repository for yellowing mining photos, taxidermied animals, beer cans, traps, liquor-advertising paraphenalia, and Packers memorabilia since the '30s. It's like a Hard Rock Cafe, with guns and bears instead of guitars and costumes. My parents took me here for afternoon Cokes when I was a wee lass. Now, every summer, we hold our annual Canada vs. U.S. foosball tournament here. Since America won again this year, the trophy now stands amid the overflow of bric-a-brac behind the bar, making my life almost complete.
   
   
   

3. 

   Happy Birthday BUST

   12.Aug.08, 18:07 IST
   
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   Fifteen years ago, three smart ladies in NYC decided they didn't see any magazines that spoke to hip urbanites like themselves. The glossies were too, well, glossy -- not to mention governed by a beauty myth that seemed so 1980s. Sassy was aimed at younger women, Ms. at older. Debbie Stoller, Marcelle Karp, and Laurie Henzel craved a publication that spoke to women the way the music of Liz Phair and Missy Elliot did. So in the spirit of those DIY early '90s days, they decided to start one themselves.
   
   The fact that BUST is still alive and well is in part a miracle, but it's also a testament to the incredible savvy and tenacity of its founders. I know: I was starting my own publication, a multiculti multisexy journal called Resister, around the same time. And despite the collegial help and advice of the BUST ladies back then, Resister only lasted two issues. I didn't have the stomach for figuring out how to get circulated as alternative distributors went belly up, for getting money from advertisers, for not being able to pay contributors, for celebrity wrangling.
   
   All of which is to say BUST, I salute you! Along with Bitch -- another publication that has amazingly stayed the course since those heady days -- BUST captures the interests and insights of that group of proactive women who earned various names: third-wave feminists, postfeminists, do-me feminists, whatever. The magazine's title is a pun on the fact this is a publication intended for the female half of that demographic that was all the rage, the baby bust. BUST focuses on artists and activists who are expanding the definitions of gender roles and of feminism, women like Kim Gordon, Bjork, Amy Poehler, Chloe Sevigny, Tina Fey, etc. Karp and Stoller's book The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order was one of the first bibles of this generation. Stoller's later knitting tomes may not have lit the same feminist fires, but they did help spawn the whole crafting movement.
   
   Tonight Stoller and Henzel celebrate their anniversay with a killer shindig at Spiegelworld in New York (Karp was bought out of the company many years ago). Funny lady Amy Sedaris will host, JD Samson DJs. Peformers include Morningwood, Leslie Hall, Murray Hill, and Free Blood. It's sold out -- that's how cool and smart BUST still is, 15 years later.
   
   

4. 

   Paris Outsmarts McCain

   07.Aug.08, 18:21 IST
   
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   I confess: I've been a Paris hater. Not that I've spent a lot of time pondering twiggy blond heiresses, but when I've had to, I've been unimpressed. Ms. Hilton has always personified the whole celebrity for celebrity's sake illness of our society: She's famous for being famous, for her ability to turn Page 6 antics into careers in television and music. Not my thing.
   
   But I have to give Paris Hilton major props for her hilarious response to John McCain's inane attack ad on Barack Obama, in which the aging senator impugns his colleage and opponent by comparing him, in photographic flashes, to Hilton and Britney Spears. The ad's (weak) point is that the Illinois senator is a celebrity, not a leader -- and therefore just another talentless bimbo. Then the McCain ad spins off into kneejerk attacks on the Democratic candidate's energy and tax policies. God, what an airhead!
   
   Hilton's response, made by the Funny or Die website, mocks McCain as "the oldest celebrity." Hilton makes letter-perfect funny of her own bimbosity, then offers a smartly nuanced energy policy of her own, before asking if it's okay if she, if elected, paints the White House pink. From Hilton's swimsuit to the juxtaposition of youth culture and old politics, the video lampoons the inanity of a campaign that so easily loses its focus on the real issues.
   
   Even before Hilton responded, the McCain ad struck me as a sexist smear. You want to denigrate someone's intelligence? Compare them to a couple of blond bitches. The ad, called "Celeb," misses the point of Obama's importance: He's a celebrity because of his intellect and accomplishments (and, okay, his good looks and towering charisma); most pundits agree that his fame indicates the possible end of the age of the vapid. The ad also disturbs me because it starts with images of crowds at the Washington monument, which seems to me to be a reference to Martin Luther King Jr. -- and an oblique appeal to viewers' racism.
   
   Even though I've never liked Paris, or Britney, I've always taken care not to bash them because I know hatred of them is often fueled by misogyny. (Besides, at this point, self-hating Brooke Hogan is the pop tart to hate.) My favorite part of the Hilton video may be when she says she's thinking of having Rihanna as a running mate. You go girls!
   
   

   See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

5. 

   Of Monks and Miners

   05.Aug.08, 18:40 IST
   
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   In 1900 Calumet, Michigan, was a thriving copper township of more than 25,000 with money to burn. An opera house was erected downtown; lit by a mammoth copper chandelier, the Calumet Theatre drew such talent as Sarah Bernhardt to this nether region of the U.S.: the Keweenaw, the upmost peninsula of the Upper Peninsula.
   
   Tragically, the bourgeoisie didn't treat its proletarian so well. In one incident during the resultant labor unrest, 74 people -- including 59 kids -- were trampled to death at a Christmas party in the Italian Hall, a tragedy immortalized in a Woody Guthrie song. The copper boom went bust. Nowadays, Calumet has a population of about 900.
   
   But what a population it is. I admit I'm a sucker for little towns with historic industries, antique shops, confectioneries, and funky restaurants. A couple months ago, I wrote about that pearl of a Florida oyster town called Apalachicola. I hit the motherlode of mining towns in Calumet (sorry for my bad puns).
   
   The past is ever-present in the settlement that was originally known as Red Jacket. The imposing red stone buildings of a century ago still line the main streets. The town has a smart preservationist streak. The theater has been maintained and renovated, and today still hosts plays, concerts, movies, etc. The Vertin department store is now the Vertin Gallery, a haven for the area's many artists. The Michigan House is a great pub/restaurant, with its old northwoods mural and its Red Jacket microbrewery (I like the Pick Axe Blonde just for the name and label). Calumet is chockablock with antique stores and a to-die-for used bookstore (where you can also buy antiques).
   
   Perhaps best of all are the lodging opportunities. The Laurium Manor was built 100 years ago by a mining magnate. Now its 45 rooms house both a museum and a B&B. We stayed here several years ago, enjoying breakfast on the big porch on the second floor.
   
   One of the craziest, coolest places I've ever stayed in my life is several miles from Calumet. Follow the Eight Mile Road from Ahmeek and you wind up at the Sand Hills Lighthouse. Lighthouses are cultish magnets of romance and desolation, and Sand Hills is the perfect site of a gothic novel. The innkeepers, Bill Frabotta and Merry Mary, are an odd couple who have decked the rooms out like Hollywood movie sets, in lush velvets and antiques. Sand Hills alone is reason enough to come to the Keweenaw, even if the peninsula weren't a quiet, unique wilderness oasis -- and a registered national historic region.
   
   My husband and I always finish our Keweenaw tours at Copper Harbor, the little town at the top of the world that is almost as perfect as Calumet (there's just one too many tacky tourist shops). There we dine finely at the Harbor Haus, watching for the ferry to return from Isle Royale -- only to be greeted by the dancing waitresses of this Germanic eatery.
   
   The drive from Calumet to Copper Harbor is beyond scenic, whether you take the western road that winds along Lake Superior or Brockway Mountain Drive. Make sure to stop at the Jampot, perhaps the most unilkely spot of all in the Keweenaw. A group of monks make the preserves here, along with sinful truffles, in a divine spot between a waterfall and Gitche Gumee. My gay brothers insist their gaydar goes off whenever they're here, which is why they go each year; a local friend also tells tales of the friars' wild orgies. Isn't that just what you expect from monks? Eyeing the opulent gold minaret of their lakeside Holy Transfiguration Skete -- will someday this be a B&B too? -- I can only applaud the brothers for knowing how to live.
   
   

6. 

   Northern Lights

   31.Jul.08, 18:37 IST
   
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   Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, a crook of land that sticks out into Lake Superior like God's finger as painted by Michelangelo, was once a thriving mining and lumber region. Silver and copper made cities like Calumet boom towns, sites of fancy theaters, grand homes, and beautiful churches. Immigrants, mostly from Finland, but also from Italy, Scandinavia, etc., came to work and build, mixing with the native Anishinabe populations and the descendants of French and American fur traders.
   
   But the last copper mine, White Pine, closed more than a decade ago (my husband worked there). Some say even the big trees are running out. The Keweenaw has tens of thousands fewer people than it did 100 years ago. There are abandoned houses and actual ghost towns scattered throughout the woods and backroads here -- alongside old mining shafts, defunct railroad beds, and apple orchards gone wild.
   
   But natural beauty, the Keweenaw has by the buckets. While most of the old growth has been deforested, there are stands of towering virgin timber in places like the Porcupine Mountains State Park and Estivant Pines Sanctuary, and thick woods of birch, hemlock, maple, and poplar have grown up where loggers once trod. The glacier-formed ridges and valleys yield vista after vista. Cliffs drop precipitously into the multihued water of Lake Superior in some places, while elsewhere the land rolls into the water as gentle white beaches decorated by driftwood sculptures. Rivers crash over red and green rocks in abundant waterfalls, and inland lakes are fishing paradises. And then there's Superior herself: the world's biggest lake, vast as an ocean, mirror-still and gin-clear one day, storm-tossed and deadly the next (remember the Edmund Fitzgerald?).
   
   For years, Michigan's Upper Peninsula has been a summer cottage getaway for downstaters from the lower peninsula (aka trolls, because they live beneath the Mackinac Bridge), Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. I've been coming up for 40 years, since my family first moved to Beloit, Wisconsin. Now I make the trek from Miami every year, and I know people who come from Alaska, Montreal, Palm Springs, and San Francisco. It's that kind of place.
   
   With other industries depleted, the UP in general, and Keweenaw in particular, needs to find its place as a tourist destination beyond the cottage crowd -- though it needs to do so in a way that won't, once again, destroy its natural resources.
   
   And there's no reason that the Keweenaw can't become an ecotourist and trekker destination. Spots like the Porkies already draw a tuned-in backpacking crowd. The park has dozens of trails that offer camping alongside streams and Superior. It has begun adding yurts to the log cabins that have been there for years. I have to admit: I stayed in one of those cabins for the first time in my life last weekend, and while it wasn't glamping, it was an almost perfect nature experience.
   
   The Section 17 cabin is across the stream from the Little Carp River Trail and reachable only by a simple plank bridge. It's a mere 1.4 miles from the trailhead, so easily hiked into, even with a five-year-old who refuses to carry his own pack. It's stocked with a wood stove, mattresses, cooking utensils, and, when we arrived, the complete ingredients for s'mores (left there by a previous camper).
   
   It was a beautiful day. I laid on the bridge and read Jim Harrison's Returning to Earth, a wonderfully written novel set in the UP, while my husband hooked brook trout and my son caught polywogs. We cooked brats over a campfire and, of course, enjoyed the s'mores. Even the bugs weren't bad, and that night, I did something I never do while lying on the ground in a tent: I actually slept.
   
   Of course, if you prefer to rough it more, you can pitch a tent just about anywhere in the Porkies. If you prefer not to rough it so much, the Union Bay Campground has full hookups for RVs alongside the lake. There is also a four-bedroom wooden cabin for rent by the week. If you want a hotel with bar and restaurant, the AmericInn in Silver City has lovely water views. There are numerous lakefront cabins and motels along the shore here, between the Porkies and Ontonagon; Scott's Superior Inn in particular has some gorgeous log homes for rent.
   
   The Porkies area offers numerous other pleasures. The Presque Isle River drops into Superior in a series of waterfalls that are hikable. Just outside the park, between Silver City and White Pine, the Big Iron River tumbles over rocks into pools. Cole and Bud jumped about 15 feet into one. We've always known this previously secret spot as Greenwoods Falls, but now it's marked with a sign calling it Bonanza.
   
   A group of locals, called the Friends of the Porkies, are helping increase the region's visibility. They sponsor an artist-in-residence program and an annual music festival, which is August 22-24 this year.
   
   There aren't a ton of dining options, but both the Foothills in Silver City and Syl's in Ontonagon have great breakfasts and decent lunches. Paul's at AmericInn offers fish and prime rib buffets. Shopping wise, make sure to stop at my friend Jackie's store, the Great Lakes Trading Company in Silver City, to check out pottery, jewelry, and other crafts by local artisans.
   
   On Tuesday, I'll write about the other end of the Keweenaw, and the picturesque towns of Calumet and Copper Harbor. The best overall guide to the UP is by the Hunts and available in print and online.
   

7. 

   Bajofondo's Nuevo Tango

   29.Jul.08, 16:56 IST
   
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   Tango is fucked-up dance music. Especially if you’re used to the obvious 4/4 of rock 'n' roll, its beats are subtle and syncopated – more stepped around than on. My husband and I took tango lessons in a South Beach bar a few years ago, and they were hard. The rhythms are felt, not pronounced, and the steps complicated. You have to count, but to be good, you have to count subconsciously, so that the moves flow rather than stutter. This is why tango is so fraught and taut: It’s serious, sometimes nerve-wracking movement. The jitterbug it ain’t.
   
   Techno is dance music for fucked-up people. Its beats are mind-numbingly obvious, its movements freeform yet robotic. Techno is all about the symphonic voyage of a track – it’s music for tripping as much as stepping.
   
   Tango and techno would seem to be worlds apart, but in fact, a number of artists have managed to merge the two to compelling effect. The New York-based group of multinationals who call themselves Brazilian Girls find common club ground in multiple beats, including dub, trance, tango, and techno. More to the point, a few years ago Gotan Project and Bajofondo Tango Club both released albums that launched a new wave of tango, one that mixed Buenos Aires’s historic music with modern-day Balearic beats.
   
   After a several-year wait, Bajofondo released Mar Dulce, its second album, July 14. As the Argentinean-Uruguayan group expands its rhythmic repertoire, it has dropped the last two parts of its name. But tango remains the inspiration and heartbeat on such tracks as "Pa Bailar" (which features Mexican alt goddess Julieta Venegas on one of the album versions).
   
   Bajo’s main man is acclaimed producer Gustavo Santaolalla, the music genius who has helmed CDs for groups including Molotov, Juanes, and the Kronos Quartet. He is probably best known for his Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning soundtracks for films, including Babel, Amores Perros, Brokeback Mountain, and The Motorcycle Diaries. But tango is this Argentinean’s passion. His filmic tribute to it, Café de los Maestros, is scheduled to be released later this year. It could do for tango what Buena Vista Social Club did for Cuban son.
   
   Because of his immense industry cred, not to mention how damn good Bajofondo’s music is, Santaolalla was able to land an impressive posse of guest vocalists on Mar Dulce. Elvis Costello shows off his increasing immersion in Latin music on the torch song “Fairly Right,” Soda Stereo’s Gustavo Cerati spans the Argentinean decades on “El Mareo,” and Nelly Furtado croons “Boldozas Majados.”
   
   Fusion tango bridges not just genres but generations; I think my ballroom-dancing mom would love Dulce, but it’s also cool enough for South Beach. It’s the ultimate party music: smart, sophisticated, yet not at all above having a good time on the dancefloor. In fact, heightening the art of cutting the rug is what it’s all about.
   
   

8. 

   Ballad of Scott Storch

   28.Jul.08, 15:30 IST
   
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   Two years ago, Scott Storch played me two tracks he was working on at the Hit Factory Criteria studio in Miami, where, true to the venue’s name, the wunderkind producer had set up shop and was churning out blockbuster after blockbuster: "Lean Back," "Baby Boy," "Candy Shop," "Run It." The first track, featuring singer Mya, showed off Storch’s complicated pop genius: It was sinuous and sexy and soulful, driven by the sort of hypnotic, overamped Middle Eastern filigree that was becoming Storch’s trademark.
   
   The second song was by Brooke Hogan, the emergent reality TV bimbo who Storch had signed as the first artist of his Storch Music label. Loud, propulsive, and instantly forgettable, this song showed off Storch’s mega ambition. The former protégé of Dr. Dre clearly hoped to do for this blond wrestler’s daughter what his work on Christina Aguilera’s Stripped album had helped do for that white girl: Give her both hip-hop cred and chart gold.
   
   Back then, as I was profiling Storch for a Miami Herald article, the Miami Beach multimillionaire was flying high and flashing ice. What neither of us knew at the time was that the tsunami of hits he had been riding for two years had peaked: Scott hasn’t had a top 10 hit since then, not with that killer Mya hook, not with Hogan's pop pandering. He has recently found himself in a heap of trouble, getting dragged into family court for two custody cases and falling two years behind in his property taxes.
   
   The story of Storch’s Icarus fall from the pop stratosphere is compelling enough that two major news outlets recently asked me to write about it; the article I reported for AP came out last Friday. Scott wasn’t talking this time. In fact, he seems to be in semi-hiding, not showing for court dates, no longer at Hit Factory, not talking to his two sons – though I did get a couple of reports of him recently sighted at South Beach clubs. He can leave a waitress a $20 tip, apparently, but can’t pay child support.
   
   I found Storch both repellent and endearing when I met him in ‘06. The fame game has definitely gone to his head, bigtime. But behind the aviator sunglasses and pop-tart arm candy is this geeky music-head, a talented keyboardist who was an early force in the Roots. “He always knew what he wanted to be,” Vanessa Bellido, mother of Storch’s 15-year-old son Steven, told me for the AP story. “He would play the piano unbelievably. He was determined at 15. He was like, I’m going to make it, I’m going to make it.”
   
   I’ve watched many talented artists struggle their whole lives for recognition and survival. But when I’ve come in contact with those, like Storch, or Kurt Cobain, who seem to have won it all, I’m not sure which group is the winners, and which the losers.

9. 

   UP in Michigan

   22.Jul.08, 17:10 IST
   
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   The first bear usually shows up around 8 p.m. He has a white V on his black chest, so the locals call him Victor. He got into a bad fight a couple weeks ago: walks with a limp, has a bunch of patches of fur missing. I’m told he weighs about 250 pounds, and I believe it. He’s usually trying to get a head start on the other bear, who weighs over 300 pounds and who, judging by his own exposed swaths of skin, was on the other, winning side of the battle. I don’t know this bear’s name; people just call him big. When the second bear sees Victor, he charges. My husband says this is a fake charge, meant to scare. If the big bear were charging me, I would run. (July 23 update: The big bear is a mama. I'm told she has two cubs, and she definitely has dangling nipples. No wonder she's defensive, and hungry.)
   
   The funny thing is, once you’ve seen these bears walk through your backyard every day for a few days, you stop being scared. After all, they’re only black bears: herbivores, not people killers. I mean, I’m not going to be like Jim, the guy who lives behind us, who walks up to the bears and hands them scraps. Jim leaves food out every night. He even has rigged up various treats for the bears – I don’t know if they’re honey pots or salt licks or what – so that the bears stand up on their hind legs and lick from a post, and sit on his couch, and generally make themselves at home around his fire pit. Then they make their way down the street, to the other guy who feeds them. Or they cross the street and rummage through the restaurant’s dumpster down the hill.
   
   We’re walking down the road back to the house from Lake Superior, and the big bear walks out of the bushes 25 feet ahead. He looks at us, mostly at our Yorkshire Terrier; he seems far more scared of little Otis than Otis seems of him. Then he walks on by.
   
   The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a place unto itself. Tucked between three Great Lakes, it has the same land mass as the lower peninsula of the state but only three percent of Michigan’s population. The UP has a lot in common with other north-woods locales, like Alaska, Maine, Canada. But generally unknown, unsung, and not much loved, it’s about as hick as you can get. The county where I’ve laid my hat for a month, Ontonagon, has been losing population. It’s a great place to get away from it all, as long as you don’t get caught up in the local dramas of domestic violence, pillheads, neglected children, etc.
   
   I’ve been coming here for 40 years now, almost every summer. There may be nothing that makes me feel more at peace with myself than walking down the sandy Superior shore, looking for agates and curious pieces of driftwood. I can walk for a mile without passing a soul. The sun sets over the endless horizon of water – as big as a sea, you know – around 9:30 this time of year. So every summer day is like two days, paradise doubled.
   
   The tourists have never really discovered the UP, perhaps because the bearable (ha, ha) season here – between snowstorms and black-fly invasions – is so short. The ursine residents have made our little back street in Silver City a bit of an attraction for what sightseers there are; a couple cars drive by every night, peering into the woods for dark shapes.
   
   We’re staying in a cute, comfortable mobile home: wood paneling, soft carpets, those old metal glasses that make everything taste so cold and delicious, canister vacuum, cribbage board – you get the picture. Nestled at the foothills of the Porcupine Mountains, Gabe’s Getaway is a short walk to the beach and a great deal.
   
   At any rate, I finally have the answer to a variation on that old riddle: Does a bear shit in our yard? Every day.
   

10. 

    Ladies Who Listen

    17.Jul.08, 17:09 IST
    
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    You’ve been at that dinner party. Maybe it was a family gathering, maybe a business schmooze. The conversation turned to music, and suddenly all the guys in the room started talking about their favorite records with the sort of picayune intensity with which they’d been discussing baseball stats minutes before. “That’s the Wooly Wombats track on which Dude Ranchero from the Squats played foot organ with his elbow,” some dude in an ironic Starsky and Hutch T-shirt enthuses. You get excited too: “I have that on the Que Smells Seventies Smiles compilation as well as the original Boner Records 45!”
    
    I admit: I love this kind of talk. I’m a sucker for rock trivia and, ever the tomboy, I like to hold forth with the guys (that’s kind of why I became a rock critic). If the women convene to the kitchen, I’ll stay in the living room and dig through the host’s CD collection. I’m geeked that way.
    
    Still, many years ago, the way that some men use arcane knowledge to claim authority/ownership over music fandom began to irritate me. Ever since I traded 45s with my best girlfriends in 4th grade, it’s been apparent to me that female consumerism is a driving engine of pop history (even if I didn’t use those big words back then). Where would Bessie Smith, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, and Britney Spears have been without the little girls understanding?
    
    Yet at dinner parties and in the trade magazines, distaff voices tend to get shut out of the dialogue about music. That’s why I co-edited Rock She Wrote. It’s also why, in the early ‘90s, I started the All Girls Listening Party, inventing (I believe) what we now call a music club.
    
    The music club is similar to a book club. We meet once a month to drink, nosh, gossip, and discuss. But rather than all converging on one central cultural document (i.e., reading the same book), we each bring our own song to share. The only rule about this song is that it not be too long, so it doesn’t hog up the evening. It can be an old favorite, a new discovery, something you recorded or have something to do with, or a track you know nothing about, except that you like it. Each member gives a little explanatory intro of why she brought this song, then plays it. At the end of the night, we make a CD compiling the evening’s selections – now we have a group mixtape we can listen to whenever.
    
    The idea of the music club is to share our musical interests and create a critical conversation in a non-competitive, non-judgmental environment. My Miami group – which I now call Ladies Who Listen, because we’re no longer girls (and we don’t lunch) – is nicely eclectic, so we get to expose each other to diverse musical backgrounds. Last month, Geane brought Brazilian singer Mart’nalia, Laura brought Mexico’s Ximena Sarinana, Lolo (whose indie record store Sweat is often our meeting spot) played disco queens Hercules & Love Affair, and I rocked out to MGMT. (Thanks for the turn-on, Wendy.)
    
    You can start your own music club. Check out the MOLI profile I set up for ours to get an idea of how it works: www.moli.com/ladieswholisten. It doesn’t have to just be for women. We debate constantly about opening ours to men – and then never do it. So instead, one of our husbands has started his own music club. His is international, and works as an e-mailed playlist. Variations on the theme are encouraged.
    
    Books are great; the women in my book club are my favorite in Miami (and some are also in the music club). But if music is the universal language, then we need to find ways to talk about it that are inclusive, not exclusive. Welcome to the club.