The Bay View Literary Magazine—A Milestone Worth Celebrating
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y View Literary M he Ba agazin T Celebrating 20 Years e Summer 2019 Volume 14 Your financial donation supports the Bay View Association Rock Dragon Breath Photograph by Adrian Boyer EDITORS’ NOTE In 1893, Bay View founder John M. Hall inaugurated the Bay View Magazine, published until 1922. It contained assignments for the Reading Circles and essays of Hall’s own about the readings and Bay View. In celebration of Bay View’s 125 years, and in keeping with the Chautauqua tradition, a new version of a magazine was established in 2000, this time containing the writings of Bay View members and friends, under the direction of Marjorie Andress Bayes and the late Marilyn Black Lambert. In 2010 Scott Drinkall joined the editorial team, followed by Sue Collins in 2018 and Evelyn Schloff in 2019. Our mission is to provide a platform for Bay View members and friends to share their expressions through a variety of forms including poetry, essays, memoirs, short stories, and artwork inspired by the Little Traverse Bay Area and beyond. The magazine is published annually and includes a diverse range of subjects and styles. This year marks the 20th edition of The Bay View Literary Magazine—a milestone worth celebrating. To submit your writing for the 2020 edition, please see The Back Page. Scott Drinkall Sue Collins Marjorie Andress Bayes Evelyn Schloff 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Mary Agria Summer's Dance 3 Jack Giguere Trees by the Memorial Garden 7 William (Bill) Ostler Assorted Poems and Artwork 8 Debbie Hindle and Racketty Packetty House 11 Fred Marderness Marsha Ostler A Surprise Guest 17 David Larousse The Night of the Bad Ziti 18 Hannah Rees Anger 20 Mark Drinkall Holding On: Like This 21 Beverly Brandt A Tribute to a Tiger Cat 23 Rebecca Hale Bay Medicine 29 Susan Lyman Hayfield 32 Evelyn Schloff A Rainy Lullaby 34 Julia Poole Tour of Duty 36 Macy McLeod Remember 39 Mary Jane Doerr J. Will Callahan 49 Gerald Faulkner I Didn't Ask 52 Boo Kiesler Letting Go of Summer 54 The Back Page 2 SUMMER’S DANCE By Mary Agria She began to spin on tiptoe as children do. For the sheer joy of it. Her bare feet made no sound on the damp earth. Alone at sunset in her grandmother’s garden, the girl spun and spun. The gauzy skirt of her nightdress billowed out like hollyhock petals in bloom along the white picket fence behind the family cottage. It was the height of summer in Northern Michigan. The waters of Little Traverse Bay thirty miles south of the Mackinac Bridge were calm and glassy, tinged with bands of purple and teal. The girl’s name was Maggie. Maggie Aron. She was eight. “Hollyhock . our sandy soil is perfect for growing them.” That very morning her grandmother had laid a fallen blossom in Maggie’s outstretched palms. “Years back, we used the flowers for dolls. Look—here’s the head, the doll’s wide circle skirt.” Brow knit, Maggie tried to make the circlet of petals dip and twirl. “A funny name,” she said. Hol-ly-hock. Hol-ly-hock. Waltz time. A word just right for twirling. Like the sound of new patent leather Mary Janes clattering on the wood floor of the cottage. It was getting dark before young Maggie had a chance to experiment on her own. Hair still damp from bath time, Maggie crept out into the quiet of the garden, chanting the magical word over and over under her breath. Hol-ly-hock. Spin, spin, whirl. She began slowly at first, then faster. Her long chestnut brown hair flared outward. The dying rays of the sun set each silken strand ablaze with red and gold. Heedless of seasons or calendars, little Maggie Aron spun on and on, turning in rhythm with the revolving earth and the moon rising over Little Traverse Bay. Arms stretched out and head thrown back, she surrendered to a steady circling that left her at once breathless and dizzy, giddy with youth and its endless promise. The high gable of the cottage seemed to be whirling with her, its intricately cut wooden gingerbread melting like icicles from a wintery roof. 3 After a while, Maggie fancied herself floating lightly above the yellow border of evening primrose. Their petals curled inward, anticipating sleep. The pungent scent of lavender stung her nostrils. A childhood paradise. All hers, hers alone. Except she wasn’t, hadn’t been for some time. That fact didn’t register until finally, her balance faltering, Maggie took a couple of wobbly steps, another, then collapsed with a squeal of pent-up energy and laughter on the damp ground of the garden. And there he was. Watching her. Flustered, Maggie half-sat up. Her world appeared to be spinning wildly out of control in the gathering darkness. A gangly, suntanned boy in cut-offs, t-shirt and sneakers was standing behind her grandmother’s white picket fence. His hands were braced on the gate installed mid- fence to access both garden and cottage from the alley. A baseball glove was slung over one of the pickets. “Hey, there!” He sounded out of breath. The ballfields were a good half-mile up the hill above the lakeshore. “You hurt yourself?” Suddenly embarrassed, Maggie picked herself up as best she could. She busied herself with brushing the stalks and stems, the fine dusting of pollen that clung to her nightgown. “You okay?” the boy repeated. “Whatcha doin’?” He had to go and spoil it, Maggie scowled. “None of your beeswax.” Silence stretched between them. Then she saw him shrug. “Well, g’night, then,” he called out to her retreating back. An ordinary night, the culmination of a childhood day. It ended with an exchange over the back fence between a boy and a girl, a scene no more or less remarkable than the dozens and hundreds, nay thousands of children frolicking in the endless twilight of a Northern Michigan summer. 4 Care-less. Children at play, blissfully oblivious. And yet the memory of that solitary summer’s dance in the garden would stay with Maggie Aron into adulthood, for six decades and beyond. It would resurface even as she drew her last halting breaths. Young Maggie found herself looking for the boy after that, scanning the knots of kids in the morning day camp, at crafts, at the waterfront. More often than not, she took the long way back to the cottage so she could pass the ballfield. She felt foolish doing it. The two never spoke again. Years later, as a teenager, she often spotted him on the lifeguard stand at the beach. Surrounded always, Maggie thought with disgust, by giggling blond girls with their braces and just revealing enough bikinis. He was even taller then, tanned and with the lean muscles of an athlete. His smile, although not aimed at her, was troubling, made her look away. “Jake” the girls called out, flashing tubes of suntan lotion in his direction. “Jake Faland, do my back.” Jake would just shrug. Supremely above it all. Everything in its season. Childhood innocence ended in resort country with the impersonal sound of a time clock recording the minutes and hours spent behind the scenes in the kitchen of a local inn or restaurant. Washing dishes. Busing tables. Quickly it became time to go to college. Get a real job. Settle down. Buy a house. Raise a family. Maggie did all of these. Time and age creep up soon enough on both the wary and unsuspecting, child and adult, plant and gardener alike. And with each memory come the aches and pains accumulated from a life well and truly lived. “Art-right-us,” Maggie’s grandmother called it. The eight-year-old Maggie Aron didn’t understand the joke. Whatever art-right-us was, it didn’t sound fun. Who would want to stay stuck in one spot when everything around her was gloriously growing and changing, spinning off wildly into the unknown? Excerpt from Range of Motion. Copyright 2019: Mary A. Agria 5 Since her breakthrough novel Time in a Garden became a bestseller in 2006 all over Northern Michigan, author Mary Agria has gone on to publish five other novels: Garden of Eve, From the Tender Stem, In Transit, Vox Humana, and Community of Scholars. Her column on gardening and spirituality appears monthly in the Petoskey News-Review and took first prize for features in the Michigan Garden Club competition in 2017. In collaboration with her husband, professional photographer Dr. John Agria, she published a children’s botany book, Second Leaves; a collection of her best newspaper columns, Through the Gardener’s Year; and a pictorial history, Bay View: Images of America (Arcadia Press). In 2016 she was named one of two featured Michigan women authors of the year by the Charlevoix Zonta club. She is currently on tour with her new novel Range of Motion, the story of a woman’s spiritual and emotional journey and cottage life along the shores of Little Traverse Bay. “Summer’s Dance” is an excerpt from that novel. 6 TREES BY THE MEMORIAL GARDEN By Jack Giguere Jack Giguere’s work was on the cover of the Bay View program book in 2002 and 2003. It can also be seen in five of Bay View’s public buildings: in the Library reading room a large oil painting of the Bay View woods hangs over the fireplace. In the Green Room of Hall Auditorium you can see his pencil drawing in honor of Chris Ludwa.