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| Keep believing |
A couple of books to help understand how things got this way. The scholarly version, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. A less heavy but somewhat truncated version on the same topic, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. I mean talk about immigration. Here where we're camped, indigenous peoples lived happily some 10,000 years ago. They lived along the lake; they caught, ate, and dried fish to sustain themselves for the long cold winter. They hunted deer and bear, caught beaver, and raised corn. The first white men arrived (No laws at the time concerning illegal immigration) in the years after Columbus. The far North was then the haven of sturdy, adventurous men. They broke ground searching first for fur, then for land. Wars over goods ensued between the French, the English, and eventually this affiliated with the American Revolution. When our ancestors ousted the English, defeated the French, and laid claim to our "Manifest Destiny", the original inhabitants had few resources to resist the onslaught on the Anglos. By the time "my people" arrived from Yugoslavia in 1907, the fate of Indians in America was sealed. And who could blame us. My grandfather was sixteen when he arrived on Ellis Island. He had a sixth grade education, five dollars in his pocket, and he didn't speak English. His given name was Rode Rudan. The officials on Ellis recorded his official U.S. name as Roy Ruden. He made his way to Pittsburgh to find one of his older sisters, who as a married woman, came over a year or two earlier. Her husband got "Roy" a job in the coal mines where he worked for pennies for two years. Family legend says he got a girl in the "family" way when he was eighteen. I don't know the truth of the story, but Roy caught the first train out of town. He ended up in Helper, Utah where he married my grandmother whose husband had either died or left. She had two children, and together she and Roy had eight more. Roy developed black lung so he made his way to Libby, Montana by way of Provo, Utah. He changed careers and became a logger. I entered the scene as the first child of my fifteen year old mother in 1951. I consider the success i've enjoyed in America a mix of providence, luck, and hard work. I currently live at the pinnacle of the American Dream. I'm clearly among the winners. I suspect my family history is much like many others, and i believe this: a legal pathway should be obvious and easy; there should be no walls, and everyone who has the ability to dream should be allowed an equal chance to succeed. It's this belief that fuels my motto: Life is good, especially today.
Our second pastie (We haven't tried the home made one we bought at the market). The Lehto pastie was simply delicious.
The roadside stand just outside St. Ignace has been in business steadily since 1947.
The dough was as flaky as philo dough, buttery and soft. The filling, a mixture of beef, potatoes, onion, and rutabaga had a blended texture as if it had been squeezed through a food mill.
We crossed the Mackinac Bridge under a high wind warning. Twenty miles per hour maximum speed.
The bridge alone is daunting. The high winds made it more so.
We were happy to join the locals (Mosquitoes, ticks, and poison ivy).
Selfie of the day: Lit up by the light house.
The first white men in this area were fur trappers.
The original inhabitants survived on fish, game, and corn.
Charles de Langlade, a legendary Odawa warrior whose father was French and whose mother was Odawa, spent most of his life fighting for some cause or another. Truly, life is a battle for survival, much as it is today. Could it be that "Survival of the fittest is the only real rule?"
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