After it was all said and done. After I’d decided on two pairs of shoes to purchase, and the mother and daughter who were shoe shopping alongside me had decided on three pairs of shoes between the two of them, the sales clerk reordered the chaos on the floor. She checked the labels and sizes to make sure two shoes (a left and a right) of the same size went into a box with the corresponding size, style, and brand. The young sales clerk, maybe twenty years old, was swift and accurate.
After the clerk walked away to meet the mother and daughter at the checkout, my husband said he was surprised that the sales clerk had let the area become so messy.
“Oh, no,” I said. “This is how women shop for shoes.”
He raised his eyebrows and gave that look people give when they want to say, “Wow! That’s just crazy” without saying, “Wow! That’s just crazy.”
He didn’t know women have rules for shoe shopping. He just picks out one pair of shoes at a time, asks for his size, and tries them on. But women circle the store and gather several different types of shoes before approaching the sales clerk.
“I’ve been shopping for shoes for years, with my mother, with friends, and this is how we’ve always done it,” I said.
I explained all this to my husband as I walked around the store in a pair of shoes I was still auditioning. I stopped in front of the shoe mirror to see how they looked from the side. I walked up to my husband and asked, “Do these shoes make my feet look big?”
He laughed. “Of course,” he said.
I laughed because he got the joke.
Women really do have their own set of rules for shoe shopping. We try one pair then another pair. Maybe try them again. We ask for different sizes. We look at more shoes, and try those. And while we do this, the unboxed shoes stay on the floor. Unless we specifically tell the clerk that a pair of shoes are definitely a no go. A good shoe sales clerk knows this. It’s not chaos. We need to be able to see the whole array of shoes in front of us.
I haven’t had so much fun buying shoes in a long time. The mother and daughter and I had a good time visiting with each other while we tried on shoes. We laughed and joked together. The mother and I bought the same shoes. “If I see those shoes out in public, I’ll recognize you,” she said.
Best of all, the sales clerk was a joy. She was knowledgeable about the shoes in the store. She kept all our requests for different styles and sizes straight while she helped all three of us at the same time. She treated us like our quest for the perfect shoe was important. She understood how women shop for shoes.
A happy pollinator on the first flowers we encountered
Two years ago I took my four grandkids to a rose garden. We smelled the roses, walked along Lake Superior, ate ice cream, and tossed rocks in the water. Then we did it again last year. So, of course, we had to do it again this year. It’s a tradition now. When my grandkids are grown up and old, they will say to each other, “Remember when Nana took us to the rose garden every summer, and we’d get ice cream then throw rocks in the lake?” Just like I recall my nana taking us to George Webb, Sherman Park, and Capital Drive, and letting us use her galvanized steel wash tubs as swimming pools on hot days.
Can you find the pollinator in the rose?
We arrived at the rose garden, which also has other flowers. We spotted bees slurping nectar. My oldest grandchild took photos of the bees and roses. I took photos of the bees and roses. My other three grandkids watched the bees and smelled the roses. We all love the flowers and bees. I like to refer to bees as pollinators, like it’s a royal title and the bees belong to a noble class. Watching pollinators feed on flowers gives me hope for the world. If you want to help create hope, plant something pollinators like, and make sure it’s pesticide free.
As we smelled the roses, we took care to look for bees before sniffing. We didn’t want our noses stung, or egads, to inhale a bee. We visited the rose garden a couple of weeks later than we normally do, so we missed the peak bloom. But the roses that had waited for us didn’t disappoint.
My grandkids love the functioning water fountain, a focal point in the garden. I handed out pennies for wishes. They splashed their hands in the water. One of them found a small, round, flat stone painted with the message Make a Wish. I think more than one of them would have liked to climb into the fountain. Kids and water just go together. The summer I was twelve, my siblings and I spent three weeks with our grandma Olive. Every day we begged her to take us to Bluegill Lake so we could swim. The fountain in the rose garden was originally located in a different part of the city, where it supplied fresh water for horses in the days before automobiles. Everything changes.
After spending time with the roses, we headed down the Lakewalk, and enjoyed the views of Lake Superior. Later, on our way back, my youngest grandchild stopped at several of the park benches and assessed the views, commenting on each one. Perhaps, he is a budding travel writer.
On our walk from the gardens to the ice cream shop, we always stop at a large stone stage. Flanked with two stout turrets, it has a castle vibe. My grandkids ran across the stage and through the hidden passageways behind it, then suddenly appeared once again. Their laughter and excited shouts to one another rang through the air. I thought about Shakespeare’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage,” followed by his musings about the “seven ages” of life from infancy to old age. I stood on the stage with my grandkids, yet apart from them, separated by several “ages” of life.
Peaceful pigeons
The cooing sounds of pigeons who nest in the nooks of a stone wall along the railroad tracks captured the attention of my grandkids. One grandchild was impressed by the range of their colors and the variety of their markings. And the other three started a cooing conversation with the pigeons. I have to say, the cooing sounds my grandkids made were impressive, but finally I said, “What if the pigeons hear your coos as a battle cry and attack?” Yes, you got it, I was thinking about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I saw the movie once, years ago, and I’m still miffed Hitchcock killed off Suzanne Pleshette’s character in the movie! She was one of my favorite actors.
If you asked my grandkids what they liked best about our adventure, they would probably say the ice cream. It’s what I would have said when I was their age. The picnic tables at the ice cream shop were new and so was the chocolate mint ice cream used to make my malt. For thirty years I’ve been ordering chocolate mint malts, made with the same minty ice cream filled with thin, flat pieces of dark chocolate. This year the ice cream was a little too minty and the thin, flat pieces of chocolate were replaced by mini chocolate chips. It was good, but not as good as it used to be. Next year I’m going to order a different flavored malt. Maybe I will find a new favorite. The clerk at the shop said they could no longer get the same kind of chocolate mint ice cream. All things change. But don’t ask me to say change is good when it comes to my ice cream. Some wasps hung out with us while we ate our treats. None of us panicked, but neither did we share our ice cream with them.
Our next stop was the lakeshore filled with rocks waiting for my grandkids to toss them back into the water. Now that they are older, they try to skip the rocks across the water instead of just throwing them. I planned to let them stay ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but they were having so much fun with each other. I watched them toss rocks, look for agates and beach glass, and play with driftwood, and suddenly I could see my siblings and myself on the sandy shores of Bluegill Lake seining for minnows, building sand castles, and floating on inner tubes in the water. I marveled at how long ago that was and yet how quickly the years had passed — in the snap of a finger. We stayed for more than a half hour. This was the best part of my day. Because while my grandkids on the beach had no idea how quickly time would slip by, I did.
My sisters and I — three backyard campers all grown up. I wish I had a picture of the three of us camping in the backyard. But we didn’t do anything picture-worthy — like catch a fish. (This photo was taken in October 2015 at a farmers market in Harbor Springs, Michigan. And yes, the white stuff is snow!)
I write for Northern Wilds, a local magazine based in Grand Marais, Minnesota. A couple of months ago, the editor put out a call for the magazine’s contributing writers to submit mini essays about camping traditions. I wrote one about my backyard camping trips, the only kind I ever took as a kid.
My essay was published in the August issue of Northern Wilds. To read my essay in the web format, click here and scroll down. To read it in the magazine format, click here, and click to pages 20-21.
And whichever way you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy the camping essays written by my fellow writers.
On August 10, I posted a picture of a caterpillar that looked like it had been assembled by a young child with a vivid imagination.
One reader said that it looked like a wet Tussock Moth caterpillar. At first, I thought the word wet was part of the caterpillar’s name. Then I realized I’d been hosing dirt off the lower part of my house’s foundation. The caterpillar rested about five feet up, but the mist from the hose gave it a shower, making it look even more fanciful than when it’s dry. A few days later, another reader also identified the caterpillar as a Tussock Moth. (There are about thirty different varieties of Tussock Moths.)
To watch a video about White-Marked Tussock caterpillars and moths, click here. Note: In this video the Tussock caterpillar is crawling on a person’s finger and hand. Because the caterpillars release toxins to discourage being eaten by predators, humans handling the caterpillars could experience itching and burning after touching them. I’d say it’s best not to touch. To learn more about Tussock Moths and see a picture of an adult version, click here.
Tussock caterpillars eat the leaves of a wide variety of trees, bushes, and other plants. They have voracious appetites, sometimes leaving trees bare. Although I’m sure no one wants to see the leaves on their trees disappear, people need to keep in mind that because Tussock Moths are native to their North American habitats, they are part of a balanced ecosystem. So, Mother Nature has an answer for Tussock Moths when they become too numerous — a virus outbreak among the species causes their numbers to drop, and that gives trees a chance to recover. However, some trees will die or be weakened and become more susceptible to other diseases and pests. As part of their ecosystem, Tussock Moths also face predation from native species found in their habitat: some birds, insects, bats, and small animals will eat Tussock Moths in their various stages of development.
While some types of trees can better withstand hungry Tussock caterpillars, other trees, especially conifers, are more susceptible to destruction. If you notice the leaves disappearing off your deciduous or coniferous trees, it might be wise to seek advice from several reliable sources.
On a literary bent, and because I often make connections to things I’ve read . . .
While watching the video on White-Marked Tussock Moths, I learned female White-Marked moths are either wingless or nearly wingless, as are most Tussock Moth species. They will never take flight. The male will find them, mate with them, then fly away to mate with other females. The female will lay her eggs and die shortly after. That’s it. She will never experience flight. Now, I know Mother Nature has specific ways of providing for the continued survival of each species, and I know I’m anthropomorphizing the White-Marked Tussock Moth, but I felt for the female moth who would never fly.
As I watched this video, I immediately thought about Kate Moore’s nonfiction book The Woman They Could Not Silence: The Shocking Story of a Woman Who Dared to Fight Back. In her book, Moore tells the story of Elizabeth Packard who is married to Theophilus Packard, a minister, and the mother of five children. It’s 1860, and after twenty-one years of marriage and being told what to think and say, Elizabeth dares to spread her wings and fly. A deeply devout woman, she begins to question some of her husband’s church’s teachings. She writes essays about her doubts and concerns. Theophilus tells her to stop, but she won’t because she believes she is a separate person from her husband and entitled to her own thoughts and opinions.
Outraged, Theophilus has Elizabeth declared insane and committed to the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois. Shockingly, because Elizabeth is his wife, and because the state of Illinois allowed it, Theophilus is able to have her locked up simply on his say-so. After Elizabeth is placed in the state hospital, she discovers she isn’t the only married woman to have been declared insane by a husband who wanted his wife out of the way. Ironically, if Elizabeth and the other women had been single, it would have taken a jury of six people to agree they should be committed.
Through Elizabeth Packard’s powerful story set in the second half of the 1800s, Kate Moore explores the second-class status of women, the abysmal conditions in state hospitals, and the arrogant doctors and medical staff who professed to be experts in psychology, but who truly did great harm to the people they should have protected. Moore also talks about the people who, along with Elizabeth, worked tirelessly to change attitudes and laws to give women more rights and to reform state hospitals.
I’m just going to say it — Hey, Mother Nature, how about giving the female Tussock Moth wings?
Yesterday I was outside perusing my newly refreshed gardens, which surround the front, side, and back of my house, daydreaming about what types of perennials I could plant to attract more pollinators.
Nature is amazing! Note: the black spot to the lower left of the caterpillar is a stain on my siding.
While thinking about milkweed, wild geraniums, wild columbine, and plants whose names I’ve yet to learn, something on the siding caught my eye. It was a caterpillar — like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Adhering to my policy of not touching insects or critters, for both their safety and mine, I left it alone. But I did run back into my house to grab my camera, which also doubles as my phone. I snapped a few pictures, and submitted one of them to my iNaturalist app. The results were simply stated as “unknown.”
To me the caterpillar looks like something one of my young grandkids would engineer out of odd pieces of Legos or draw and color on a blank sheet of paper, producing something otherworldly and fantastical, but in no way realistic.
So, I am asking if any of my readers knows what type of caterpillar this is and what it turns into.
I’m back with an update on my quest to read all of the Peter McGarr mysteries by Bartholomew Gill. I just finished The Death of an Irish Tradition, Bartholomew Gill’s fourth Peter McGarr mystery. So far, this one is my favorite. (And I really liked the first three.)
What is this book about?
It’s 1979, maybe a year earlier, in Dublin, Ireland. A sixty-five-year-old woman is murdered, starting a concentric ripple that encompasses the Irish Republican Army, one of McGarr’s childhood friends, a priest, a young and gifted pianist, a young drug addict, and a landed gentleman. Over the years, among these people, hate, greed, lust, revenge, snobbery, envy, jealousy, bigotry, and secrecy have combined and simmered like a Dublin coddle left to stew in a hot oven. But unlike the coddle stew, which can be pulled from the heat before burning in its own juices, there is no reprieve from the emotions that consume the characters in Gill’s fourth novel. Peter McGarr and his constabulary must sort through the tangled lives and motives of the characters, hoping to solve one murder and attempting to prevent others. The story culminates at the Dublin Horse Show, a long-standing tradition with ties to the hated British aristocracy and their rule of Ireland, which has left it a divided country.
Why did I like this book?
I love the dialogue. Gill knows when to let his characters speak and when to have them shut up. Sometimes what’s left unsaid resounds like a clap of thunder before a battering storm arrives. I find Gill’s characters interesting. And while his stories are far from rosy, I like to think that all officers everywhere, represented by the likes of McGarr and his constabulary, are doing their best to provide justice. Gill’s mysteries aren’t cozy, but they’re also not graphically violent, which I know is a relative statement depending on one’s view about what is and isn’t too violent. If it helps, I don’t like drawn out visceral violence, but I also don’t like overly cozy mysteries. I’d place Gill’s books in the middle of the visceral-to-cozy scale. (But that’s relative too.)
The murders in Gill’s books don’t always directly involve members of the Irish Republican Army; nevertheless, the IRA’s presence and its role in The Troubles of the 1960s and 70s form an undertow in Gill’s novels, whether in the background or the forefront. The IRA is shrouded in secrecy and so woven into the fabric of Irish life that McGarr approaches each murder as if it could be connected to the IRA and The Troubles in Northern Ireland, which also spills into the Republic of Ireland. It’s mostly an unspoken theme, but when reading McGarr’s books, I’m struck by the deep and lasting damage that imperialism and colonialism inflict on societies.
I think, in part, I’m intrigued by Gill’s novels because I remember the turmoil in which his stories are set. During the 1970s, I was a pre-teen and teenager, and I watched the violence in Northern Ireland play out on the TV news. I read about it in Time and Newsweek, which came to our house in the mail. I remember the bombs and the deaths of children, women, and men, along with the deaths of British Army and Irish Republican Army members. Reporters talked about Irish Catholics, Irish Protestants, self-rule, spies and traitors, and the English who’d lived for generations in Belfast but identified as British instead of Irish. When I was seventeen, I traveled to London and read signs on buses and the Underground, cautioning people not to touch unattended packages and to immediately report them to the conductor. The IRA had been setting off bombs in England. At the time, I thought the violence would never end because each death brought about a retribution.
Reading Gill’s novels has sparked my curiosity, and I want to learn more about the time of The Troubles. While reading The Death of an Irish Tradition, I received Rachael Hanel’s latest newsletter. [Hanel is a wonderful nonfiction author. To read about her and her books, click here.] Hanel recently spent time in Belfast, and she recommended some books covering The Troubles. I want to read at least one of these books before I read the next Peter McGarr mystery:
More thoughts about Gill’s books from a standpoint of craft . . .
Part of my interest in Gill’s mysteries is to see if and how he will develop his characters and their storylines as his series progresses. I hope Gill will present a broader view of his detectives that includes more of their personal lives. I appreciate a writer whose crime-solving characters develop and change throughout a series of books. To me it’s as important as a good plot. It becomes the mystery of a detective’s life set within the mystery of the crime.
You might remember I mentioned there was so much drinking in Gill’s first three books that I worried I’d wake up with a hangover. I questioned how Peter McGarr could even function, let alone solve crimes, considering the amounts of whiskey and beer he drank. In this book, while McGarr hasn’t come close to being a teetotaler, he drinks less. I wonder if Gill came under criticism from readers about his portrayal of the Irish as heavy drinkers.
There are still no female detectives. However, a woman has been hired as an office temp, and unlike the detectives, she knows her way around the new-fangled computers, which are starting to be used by police departments to access databases to help them gather pertinent information to assist in solving crimes. None of the male police officers in the department are interested in learning the new technology, but they all appreciate the new woman’s computer skills and her ability to quickly supply them with useful information.
McGarr’s wife, Noreen, is back, but her role in this story is small, like in the previous books. Noreen has one telling scene that gives readers a hint as to McGarr’s feelings for his petite, intelligent, beautiful, feisty wife. And I want more Noreen in the stories.
[For a Dublin Coddle recipe,click here. This stew has a cameo appearance in the book.]
[If you’re interested in the tangled story of the Irish and the British, I recommend the following novels: Trinity by Leon Uris, published in 1976, and In This Bright Future: A DC Smith Investigation, published in 2021. While these have mostly fictional characters and some fictionalized story lines, there is a lot of history in both of them. I read Trinity, a sweeping epic work that follows the Irish-British conflict during the late 1800s and early 1900s. I read it in the early 1990s, and some of its characters still haunt me. About a year ago, I listened to In This Bright Future. It’s an engaging story that takes the aging DC Smith back to Belfast, compelling him to solve a decades’ old mystery, while reliving his days in the British Army when he was stationed in Belfast and working undercover to infiltrate the Irish Republican Army. By the way, I recommend any of Grainger’s DC Smith mysteries. Also, Exodus and Armageddon by Uris are excellent.]
[I love it when I’m reading one book, and it makes me think of another book. For example, I’m listening to Jeeves and the Wedding Bells: An Homage to P. G. Wodehouse by Sebastian Faulks, which is set in England. At one point a character refers to another character as being judged like a horse at an Irish Horse Show — in other words: scrupulously and critically. I smiled because after reading Gill’s The Death of an Irish Tradition, I understood the reference on a deeper level.]
On the first day of my grandkids’ summer break, I took them to a local coffee shop. I ordered them fancy fizzy soda concoctions and let them each pick out a piece of bakery. I ordered myself a small latte and no bakery. The time with my grandkids — priceless. The cost of the trip to the coffeehouse — more than five happy meals at McDonald’s. I had sticker shock when the clerk gave me the total, but I acted like I spent that much in coffee shops all the time.
I handed the clerk my credit card and refused to think about the cost. Afterall, the soda concoctions were works of performance art served in 16-ounce glasses, mixed with fun flavors like watermelon, pineapple, cherry, coconut, and strawberry and topped with whipped foam. I almost wished I had ordered a fancy fizzy soda. As the clerk handed the first soda to one of my grandkids, she said, “Stir the soda very gently with the straw a few times. If you stir it too fast, it will overflow the glass. Then drink a little bit of the soda, and mix it some more.”
We were five minutes into sipping, noshing, and gabbing when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a slightly built, older man walk into the shop. Dressed from head to toe in dark colors, he carried a small black grip, which he placed on a chair. He picked up a large dinner-plate-sized planter filled with succulents and moved it to a table where a younger man sat eating a bowl of food. This didn’t bother the younger man, who wore headphones and watched his computer screen.
The older man removed his black jacket and slipped on a whitecoat, the type doctors wear. I stopped paying attention to him because the grandkids and I were tasting each other’s sodas. Thankfully, they didn’t ask to try my latte; although, I would have been a good sport about it.
A short while later, the man in the white coat appeared at our table. The name Dr. Twist was stitched above his left pocket. In his hand he held a purple dog made of balloons. He gave the balloon dog to my six-year-old grandson. He twisted up more balloons, making a green crown with an alien’s face, a yellow crown with a funny face, and a brown monkey, which he gave to my other three grandkids. He made a balloon flower for me, which I took home and put in a crystal vase. Besides being good with balloons, Dr. Twist had a great table-side manner, cracking deadpan jokes and making us laugh.
I don’t think Dr. Twist was a planned event at the coffee shop. I got the impression the balloon doctor was a free spirit, showing up on a whim, twisting up fun, then leaving smiles and laughter in his wake.
After we finished our treats, we bussed our table, and balloons in hand, we thanked Dr. Twist again.
It was a windy, blustery Winnie-the-Pooh day, so as we left the coffee shop, I warned the grandkids, “Hang on tight to your balloons or the wind will take them.” We’d made it to the van and were almost inside — when a sudden gust of wind snatched the yellow crown balloon with the funny face from my eight-year-old grandson’s hand.
As one, and without a spoken plan, we secured the rest of the balloons in the van and gave chase. The untethered balloon swirled up and down alongside the building in the wind. A couple of times we came close to catching it, but at the last second, the wind, in a game of keep away, would lift it high into the air. Finally, the wind carried it into the busy street.
Released from the updrafts surrounding the building, the balloon dropped to the pavement. We watched as a semi-truck approached, sure the balloon would burst beneath its large tires. Miraculously, the yellow crown with the funny face survived. The wind gently ushered it onto a quiet side street, where it came to rest against a curb.
When the balloon stopped moving, I ran across the busy street, hoping to grab it. Don’t worry, I exercised plenty of caution. I understood it would not be a good look to be hit by a vehicle while rescuing a balloon. I thought about the online news articles reporting on a dim-witted nana who was run over by a car while trying to catch her grandson’s balloon. I imagined being trolled by online commentators, who would all come to the same consensus: “Yeah, that lady was stupid” and “Darwin’s theory in action.”
So, I waited for traffic to clear, then I ran across the street. In that moment I suffered a pang of vanity, and I wondered just how strange I looked while dashing madly through the crosswalk. But I assured myself that anyone who may have taken notice of me had surely seen stranger things than someone’s nana chasing a balloon. Then, I wondered if anyone was taking a video of me to post on TikTok, perhaps titling it “How Not to Cross the Street.”
The balloon had waited for me on the side street, and as I reached for it, I hoped the wind wouldn’t snatch it away again. But the wind had finished messing with me. I grabbed the yellow crown, and when it was safe, I strode back across the street, all while singing in my head, My superpower is chasing balloons.
I handed the balloon back to my grandson. I thought he’d smile or tell me I was amazing. But he just looked at me — like he was trying to figure something out. I didn’t ask him what he was thinking. But I was thinking.
We all got back into the van.
“Hey,” I asked my grandkids, “Nana didn’t look funny running across the street after a balloon, did she?”
From the third-row seat came the voice of clarity. It was my oldest grandkid who reassured me, “Actually, Nana, you looked really funny.”
We all laughed.
I was glad I hadn’t let the cost of the sodas, and latte, and baked goods upset me. Because in the end, the amount of money I spent on the one-time visit to the coffeehouse wasn’t going to impact my financial security. There are plenty of disasters in life that could possibly do that, and I try not to dwell on those either.
Instead we have a happy memory, which will remain long after the air seeps out of the balloons.
Penguin Books edition, 1982. I love the pocketbook edition. It’s been well loved over the last forty-three years. Sometimes as I read it, bits of the aged cover flaked away, and I imagined all the other hands that held this book.
I’m back with a quick review of the third mystery in the Peter McGarr series by Bartholomew Gill. I said I’d keep you updated about how Gill’s series progresses. [To read my thoughts about Gill’s first two novels, click here.]
McGarr on the Cliffs of Moher debuted forty-seven years ago. I believe it’s out of print because Amazon sells only used copies. I bought well-worn copies of Gill’s first three books from ThriftBooks. In my review of Gill’s first two McGarr mysteries, I said if I liked the third book, I would buy a couple more. Well, when I finished reading The Cliffs of Moher, I bought Gill’s fourth and fifth mysteries, once again from ThriftBooks.
What’s McGarr on the Cliffs of Moher about?
Shortly after traveling from America to visit her parents in Ireland, May Quirk is found dead in a pasture near the Cliffs of Moher. She has been run through the chest with a pitchfork. May was born and raised in Ireland, but shortly after becoming a young woman, she left Ireland for New York City, partly to follow a young man whom she loved and partly to seek opportunity and adventures not available to her in Ireland. In New York her romance with the young man falters, but they remain friendly. May finds success as a well-respected journalist.
CID Peter McGarr has a list of suspects, each with a motivation worthy of murderous intent. Did the man she originally left Ireland with kill her in a jealous rage? He had returned to Ireland about the same time she did. Did the country farmer down the road from her parents kill her? The farmer has been obsessed with May for years, believing God intended them to be together. Did the man who discovered May’s body in the field kill her? He doesn’t seem to have a motive, but he was so drunk on the night of May’s murder he can’t remember passing out next to her body. Did someone in the Irish Republican Army have her killed? If threatened, the IRA is capable of swift and cruel violence. Did May’s current lover, who is married, kill her? He wanted to marry her, but he’s an Irish Catholic with a passel of children, and May seemed uninterested in becoming anyone’s wife.
Why did I like this book?
It’s a page-turner. Once I start reading one of Gill’s books, I don’t want to put it down. The dialogue is snappy, with just the right amount of levity. I like the rivulets of sarcasm permeating McGarr’s conversations with suspects or other people who try to get in the way of his investigation. So far Gill’s books have interesting plots, and I’m kept guessing about whodunit. Finally, McGarr’s books are quick reads with well-written prose that often sparkles, but they don’t require deep thought on my part. And for this reason, while I enjoy them, they don’t rank as high as some other detective series that I have read.
Back to my thoughts about Gill’s books from a standpoint of craft . . .
You might remember I mentioned there was so much drinking in Gill’s first two books that I often felt like I’d wake up with a hangover in the morning. The consumption of alcohol in this book surpasses anything found in the previous two, partly because a lot of scenes are set in pubs in Ireland and New York. I don’t know how some of the characters can drink so much and still walk, talk, and think, let alone commit crimes or try to solve them. I have moved beyond the idea I might be vicariously hungover in the morning to seriously thinking I might need a vicarious twelve-step program after reading the series. I wonder if McGarr can keep up his pace of drinking throughout the series.
I’m still waiting for McGarr to have some sort of crisis of the soul. We don’t learn much about him in this book either. It’s mentioned again that he grew up in poverty, but that doesn’t seem to have affected him in any visible way. But where does all that drinking come from? Is Gill perpetuating a stereotype about the Irish love of whiskey and beer? In Gill’s stories there is a fine — but uncommented upon — line between McGarr and other characters, some of whom seem to be able to drink without getting drunk, and others who cannot hold their liquor. McGarr is one of the characters who can hold his liquor and solve crimes.
I’m waiting to see if female detectives will become part of the Irish constabulary landscape. However, it’s still the 1970s in McGarr’s world, and it’s a male dominated society.
McGarr’s marriage is another curiosity. His wife, Noreen, is twenty-one years younger than him. He married late in life because he considered himself a confirmed bachelor. In this book we learn why he married, but I’ll let you discover the reason for his marriage. It’s tossed in as a single sentence, but the sentence is striking and not easily missed. I always like to discover these little gems in a story for myself, rather than being told. The McGarr marriage could become an interesting side story. There are many ways Gill could play it.
The pages have mellowed into a yellow brown. It’s hard to imagine they were ever white.
So, I bought the next two books because I’m still curious to see if and how Gill develops his characters. In the meantime, his crime mysteries are entertaining reads just as they are.
Today I went to the Monarch Festival hosted by Duluth Monarch Buddies (DMB) because I want to plant pollinator gardens. But I also went because I wrote an article about DMB, and I promised the organization’s president I would come. (To read my article, click here, and turn to page 22.)
What a thrill to see my article front and center on the welcome table!
The Festival was held at the First United Methodist Church, which we locals call “The Coppertop Church” because it has a magnificent copper-topped roof. (If you want to view the locally-famous roof, click here.)
On my way into the Monarch Festival, I passed a table with pamphlets and brochures. And in the center of the table was a copy of Northern Wilds magazine opened to the page with my article. Wow! I was excited and touched. I told the woman seated next to the table, “I wrote this article.” In my right hand, I carried three copies of the magazine to give to DMB board members. One for the president, one for the vice president, and one for the secretary.
Once inside, I reintroduced myself to the president and gave her a copy of the magazine. I’d met her last summer, and I’d spoken to her on the phone this spring. She gave me a wide smile and a big hug. She asked if she could take my picture while I held the magazine open to my article. She made me feel like a celebrity. I already knew she liked the article because I had her read it for accuracy before I sent it off to my editor in April. I wanted the facts about monarchs, pollinators, and DMB to be correct. But seeing the article in print with photos is different than reading it in a word document. She was ecstatic, thanking me and telling me it was wonderful. This made my whole day because I worked hard to make the article interesting and informative.
She introduced me to someone who was filming the event for the local public TV station. She thought he might be interested in interviewing me, but he wasn’t. This wasn’t disappointing in the least because I don’t like talking to TV cameras. (Although, I would’ve done it because I’m trying to be braver about public speaking.)
The Monarch Festival was wonderful. I talked to people who are passionate about helping monarchs and bees. I learned more about planning my own pollinator gardens. I listened to the featured speaker talk about using drones to count milkweed plants in order to monitor pollinator habitats.
On my way out of the Festival, the woman seated by the table in the entry said, “I’m going to read your article later.” Talk about leaving on a high note.
It warmed my heart to know that the people I wrote about enjoyed my article, and I felt proud to represent pollinators who make our world a sustainable place.
Today was sweet because writing is hard. It’s frustrating to hear the words in my head, yet know as I endeavor to put them on paper, it will feel as if I’m searching for them in a mist. Usually, this is how each piece I write begins. But somewhere along the way, as I revise and revise, and if I’m lucky, the words fall into place. And if I’m very lucky, someone loves what I’ve written.
I scored information, seeds, a butterfly sticker, and a card.
My article “Duluth Monarch Buddies: Helping Monarchs One Waystation at a Time” appears in the June issue of Northern Wilds. To read my article, click here, and turn to page 22.
I’m particularly proud of this article because it focuses on pollinators, such as monarchs and bees. With the current threat to our national forests and programs designed to protect our environment, there are ways we as individuals can help make Earth a better place. Plant a pollinator garden, ditch the use of pesticides, plant a tree, learn about the natural world around you, and connect with organizations like Duluth Monarch Buddies to learn how you can be a power of one in the protection of our planet.
Northern Wilds also published my short article “Capt’n J’s Mini Golf: A Treasure Chest of Fun on Barker’s Island.” To read my article, click here, and turn to page 7.
Writing Near the Lake 