I haven't taken an honest-to-God vacation in five years, ever since I went to visit my friend Karen in Santa Barbara for spring break back when I was teaching in Akron. A week of doing little but going to the beach and just hanging out, apart from a visit to Hearst's folly of San Simeon up the Pacific coast, was just what a needed, and I forgot how heavenly it could be. Fortunately, circumstances intervened this year to get me out of town during the Ann Arbor Art Fair, that annual plague that attracts a host of suckers from around the country to pay out the nose for what looks to my prejudiced eyes like overpriced crap. The streets are closed off and clogged with pedestrians flaunting the mobility, if not the charm, of tortoises, and I had already decided to try something drastic this year to avoid the Art Fair blues. Three years of this has taken much of the shine off people-watching. I had some vague idea of visiting another part of Michigan, as the only time I'd ever really broken the Detroit-Ann Arbor cordon except for a day trip to Lansing was my train trip to Chicago, and then I never got out in-state.

 I mentioned the plan to my friend and Planned Parenthood volunteer coordinator Jessica, as I usually while away this time of year helping to man their booth at some point in the non-profit section of the Fair, in which we're usually placed as entertainingly close to the "Right To Life" people (or whatever they call themselves these days) as possible. She countered byh inviting me to come along with her and her friends to the Hiawatha Music Festival in Marquette on the shores of Lake Superior, the unofficial capital of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This was well beyond what I was thinking (Petoskey, maybe) and so I immediately agreed, despite the first impression (later confirmed) that Hiawatha was basically "hippie camp." So I drove up with her and our friend Ricardo a week ago.

 We camped out in Marquette Tourist Park, about ten or fifteen minutes' walk away from the lake. Ricardo and I shared an absent friend's tent, and from then on we basically just milled around, doing whatever. The music itself didn't particularly interest me that much, apart from the klezmer stylings of Yid Vicious, but that wasn't important as I spent just about every waking hour swimming. The park was on the shores of the Dead River, which until a few years ago had been dammed up to form a lake right on the park's edges. One day it spectacularly flooded, somehow bypassing the dam and washing around the side to continue on its regular course to the lake. This minor cataclysm left behind a wasteland of a valley, which by my visit had become quite beautiful, with a dozen different shades of shrubs and grasses, best seen at sunset, and plenty of deep stretches of water. God, it was good to swim again, and in a place where I could simply swim (roll around, do underwater handstands, etc.)  as opposed to the regimented laps demanded by Ann Arbor area pools. I found my present "happy place" at a stretch of river below the bridge, past the park, where the bottom was deep and sandy, as opposed to the shallower and rockier bits more accessible from the campsite. The lake itself was frequently too cold for any effective wallowing, apart from the soft beaches at Little Presque Isle and the puicturesque cliffs at Black Rocks on Grande Presque Isle, where the water was so clear and the bottom so rocky that it could have been a picture from some Caribbean resort brochure, had the water not been so fucking cold. I wasn't quite up to diving off the cliffs, ubt got plenty of time in the water regardless, and will hopefully regard the chill in Ann Arbor pools with a lolt less trepidation in future. We also stopped at the (much warmer) Lake Michigan on our way back to Ann Arbor, so that's two Great Lakes I got to swim on this trip.

 Sunday morning, I took advantage of my characteristically (and usually unwanted) early rising to walk into town (took about an hour) while everyone else was asleep. Marquette really is a nice little city, with an attractive downtown area set on hills rolling right down to Lake Superior, with the famous Ore Dock front and center. The latter took iron ore off the trains that came in from the interior and chucked them into the cargo holds of waiting freighters (like the ill-starred Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975), and still stands as one of the city's most prominent landmarks. I got a fantastic vantage point of Marquette Bay and the lake beyond from the hillside monument to the town's namesake, the famous Father Jacques, S.J. We'd eaten at the Vierling brewery downtown our first day, where I got to sample one of the local staples, the storied whitefish, eaten in grilled form on an open-faced sandwich (along with some delicious "Russian blue cheese" dressing that tastes a lot lke the apricot gorgonzola spread we make at the cafe). The people I met were friendly and not at all Ann Arbor-like, especially at the "Coffee Cup," where I stopped for a croissant, and the weather was nice and crisp. Particularly fun was checking out the outside of the old courthouse, where Otto Preminger's 1959 classic Anatomy of a Murder was filmed (featuring a hilarious reference to women's underwear, a fiery Ben Gazzara performance, and inspiring Tim Monger's Great Lakes Myth Society song "Marquette County, 1959"). Otherwise, it was basically drinking and huddling around the campfire listening to Mike Waite, John Churchville and others play guitar, and worrying about very little.

 After my trip, I now understand the intense Michigan loyalty that seems to drive many creative types I know, especially local musicians. Seeing the rest of the state as opposed to the often depressing environs of Detroit and the anything-but-progressive haughtiness of Ann Arbor gave me a new perspective on things--the Upper Peninsula's gorgeous, but much of the northern part of the Lower Peninsula, with its charming roadside flora (including some otherworldly-looking trees that reminded me of old watercolors of southern Australia) appealed as well, and riding the Mackinaw Bridge to GLMS' "Across the Bridge" gave me a sense of their music like few other things could.

It's not so bad here, really.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007): I bought it as soon as I got back and read it that night. The whole thing. It took me about six to seven hours. This is somewhat bizarre as I'm by no means a Harry Potter fanatic. I rather enjoy the stories, but find it hard sometimes to get into Rowling's occasionally leaden, color-by-numbers prose. I've also never understood genuine "fandom"--Doctor Who's been my favorite TV show since before I was ten, but I've never been to a convention and have never felt the desire to go. As with Lord of the Rings, too, I think the movies are actually better (with the exception of the first two; I mean, Chris Columbus? Honestly). Fortunately, I found a lot to enjoy in this one, and thought it ended rather well. The plot isn't tied as tightly to the Hogwarts school schedule as in previous entries, and I think that frees up the characters and story to a positive degree. A fair number of characters die (someone else who'd read it already posted elsewhere that some people died who shouldn't have, and vice versa--draw yor own conclusions), but then this has been fairly common knowledge for some time. Severus Snape fulfils his destiny as one of the most interesting characters in fantasy fiction; I think Rowling's creation, with all its flaws, is redeemed pretty much by Snape's existence--the chapter entitled "The Prince's Tale" is a beaut (certain plot details, too, enable Rowling to use a more cinematic technique than usual, which helps). There were a few genuine disappointments. While most fantasy since Tolkien steals rather obviously from its primary forefather (fair enough, since Tolkien did it himself), the main idea was a little too reminiscent of other horror/fantasy stories and too blatantly telegraphed (to be sure, it crops up in my own stuff a lot, but if I may be vulgar, I'm not getting paid towers of gold to write it). I'd also made a personal prediction about the fate of a very minor character who I'd hoped would play a vital and unexpectedly sinister role towards the end, a prediction thwarted. Missed opportunity, I say. Overall, though, it's finally over, and on a relative high note. Hopefully there will be bucketloads of kids interested in reading when they mightn't have been otherwise (that did happen, right?), and at least it was a worthier reason to look forward to the summer than those lackluster Star Wars prequels.