Molson Collection of Art Exhibited In Petoskey

by Frank Boles

On January 18, I had the opportunity to attend an exhibit opening at Petoskey’s Crooked Tree Arts Center (CTAC) featuring fifty-two original works of art selected from the Francis and Mary Lois Molson Art Collection, which is currently on loan from the Clarke Historical Library. The Molson Collection is a superb group of original art drawn for publication in children’s books. It features work created by some of the finest contemporary illustrators in the field and is one of the gems of the Clarke.

Cover art from The Frog Princess by Gennadii Spirin

Although the Clarke regularly displays some of these treasures on a rotating basis, rarely is there an opportunity to see so many of these works at one time. However, through April 5 the opportunity will exist in Petoskey. CTAC has installed the art in a marvelous exhibit that I encourage you to visit.

I am particularly pleased that, in conjunction with the show, school children are being encouraged to read some of the books in which the art appears and then visit the gallery to see the original art work. The works are, of course, beautiful and, as Francis Molson has noted, "It’s much different to see the original artwork, than just the prints in books." In commenting on the collection, Francis Molson also said, "Surely it will benefit students." Certainly the art work has proved beneficial to Central Michigan University students when it is used in various classes. But I think it is also important to make the experience created by the art available to children in northern Michigan. A lifetime of reading can begin by experiencing a single work of art found in this collection.

Perhaps the most important, and least predictable, outcome from the exhibit would be a newspaper story published in some future edition of the Petoskey News-Review, or the New York Times, that begins, “I was inspired as a child by an art show I saw in Petoskey.” A critical part of the Library’s mission is to make the legacy of the past available today to inform, inspire, and change the future. One never knows exactly when or how that mission will impact an individual life, but creating or enabling exhibits using Clarke material, like the Molson art on display at the Crooked Tree Arts Center, creates the opportunity for that moment of individual inspiration to occur.

For more information about the exhibit, and the Crooked Tree Arts Center’s hours and other policies please visit the CTAC’s website, https://www.crookedtree.org/.

Birch Bark Book

by Tanya Fox

The Clarke Historical Library has a new acquisition that is very interesting not because of its content but because of its pages. The book is made entirely of birch bark. The souvenir book holds sketches of sites in and around Petoskey, Michigan. Though it is small with just 10 pages, its unusual composition is worth checking out. The title of the birch bark book is Souvenir of Petoskey Michigan and it was published around 1900. Some of the pictures in the pint sized book include the Arlington Hotel and a bird’s eye view of Petoskey. The pages are surprisingly thin. The birch bark grain can be clearly seen. The book’s texture can be felt by the reader. One of the neat things about the Clarke Historical Library is we allow patrons to use our collection with few limitations.

Our current exhibit focuses on Petoskey and the Little Traverse Bay area as tourist destinations at the turn of the 20th century. So, come on in and peruse the birch bark book and our exhibit, as well as many other interesting and informative items in the Clarke. For information on the Clarke Historical Library’s current exhibit click here.

Little Traverse Bay Exhibit Opening

[editor's note: The Clarke Historical Library will be suspending our Saturday hours for the next two weeks (March 3 and 10) because of CMU's spring break. We will be open our regular Monday through Friday hours during this time and we will resume Saturday hours on March 17.]


Little Traverse Bay Exhibit Opening

by Frank Boles

On February 29, Michael Federspiel spoke at the opening of the Library’s new exhibit, A Delightful Destination: Little Traverse Bay at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Mr. Federspiel, who curated the exhibit, discussed the remarkable transformation that occurred at Little Traverse Bay between 1875 and 1925.

In the 1870s, Little Traverse Bay, like much of northern Michigan, was cut-over timber land. The Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, in exchange for hundreds of thousands of acres of land, was rapidly laying track between Grand Rapids and Petoskey. The railroad’s plan was to make money selling the land to settlers who would engage in farming and need the railroad to both bring in supplies and take out harvested crops. However the GR&I quickly realized this business model had a problem; the land was barren. The sandy, rocky, cut-over timberland was of limited agricultural value. The plan wasn’t going to work.

However, the GR&I, as well as thousands of individual entrepreneurs, invented something to replace it – “Up North.” The land may not have been suitable for agriculture, but it was a tourist’s paradise. The air was clean and crisp. The beaches were lovely. And soon the railroad, as well as steamships, began to bring summer visitors by the thousands, who realized that because of “modern” transportation they could reach this paradise from homes in Chicago, Detroit or even St. Louis in a day or less. In 1906, between June 25 and September 30, 13,000 trains arrived in Petosky, averaging 134 per day, 12 per hour or one every five minutes.

To entertain the thousands of people brought by train and by boat, all sorts of entertainments arose. Some were natural; others were artificially created. One of the most popular natural attractions was the “Inland Water Route," a 35 mile chain of lakes and rivers beginning in Oden and ending at the mouth of the Cheboygan River. By 1900 more than thirty boats made daily trips over the Route, taking tourists on site seeing excursions.

In contrast to the natural wonders of the Inland Route, the GR&I Railroad invented “Wa-Ya-Ma-Gug.” A tourist destination constructed in an unpopulated area along the line’s tracks, Wa-Ya-Ma-Gug offered the usual range of activities, dining, games, swimming and the like, but with a Native American theme. Tourists could sleep in a teepee, watch Native American artisans create handicrafts (and of course purchase the same in the inevitable gift shop). Tourists were much more likely, however, to attend the site’s top attraction, the daily “Hiawatha” play, which featured an all-Native American cast re-enacting a version of Longfellow’s epic poem.

All this tourist activity required the construction and maintenance of an amazing infrastructure. By way of example, while in 1900 Detroit had the largest local transportation infrastructure in the state, second place went to Petoskey and the other communities near Little Traverse Bay.

Up North, and the tourism industry associated with it, was invented in Michigan at the beginning of the twentieth century. Michael Federspiel, and the exhibit he created, tells the story of how it was done. We hope you will take the time to visit the exhibit, which will be open in the Clarke Library through Memorial Day, and then will, like so many others of us, travel north for the summer to be shown at the Harbor Springs History Museum.

Changing Exhibits

by Frank Boles

Over the next few days the library staff will be changing exhibits. We will be removing an exhibit documenting the history of CMU and replacing it with a new exhibit opening February 29 documenting tourism in and around Little Traverse Bay between 1875 and 1925.

In the library’s cycle of activity, changing exhibits is a bittersweet moment. All of our exhibits are created by the staff for our exhibit space. Hundreds of hours go into developing an intellectual framework and narrative story, selection of material, preparation of exhibit items, and many other aspects of building and mounting the exhibit. A new exhibit, whatever the topic, brings with it new excitement and new challenges. All the preparation comes together in the last week and makes it possible for us to share a new story.

But at the same time, the “old show” that is being removed had at least as much blood, sweat, and tears put into it as the new exhibit being installed. It too had its moments of triumphs large and small, sudden, unanticipated problems, and in the end a sense of a job well done and a story well documented. As it comes down, and a show comes down much more quickly than it goes up, there is always a touch of sadness that the story told by the old show is being removed and that the hard work of so many people who made the exhibit possible is no longer available to inform, enlighten, and sometimes amuse.

Tuesday morning, knowing that the CMU exhibit would be gone by lunchtime, I took a final walk through the exhibit. I took one last look at the show, remembering what it took to bring the exhibit to life. I particularly recalled the generosity of various individuals who supplemented material found in the library with loaned items and the hard work of the library’s staff. Some might label the stroll a sentimental indulgence, but for me it was a moment to reflect on the talents and generosity of the people who make the exhibits possible and to remember all the hard work it takes to make exhibits happen.

The walk gave me a chance to reflect upon the debt of gratitude I, and everyone who enjoys the exhibits in the Clarke, owe to the people who plan and execute the Clarke Historical Library’s exhibits. They all have my deepest thanks.

Picturing Hemingway's Michigan

By Frank Boles

(to see a podcast of this February 16, 2011 presentation at ITunes U, click here)

Michael Federspiel, author of Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010) spoke at the Library on February 16. Mike offered an interesting, nuanced, and informative presentation that looked at three questions:

• What was Petoskey like at the beginning of the 20th Century?
• How did the Hemingway family compare to the many other “summer people” who came to northern Michigan “for the season?”
• How did northern Michigan influence Ernest Hemingway’s fiction?

Petoskey, in 1873, was little more than a point on a map. Two European families had settled in the area. There were no hotels, no railroad connections, and most importantly no tourists. By the beginning of the 20th Century, the community had radically changed. It was home to 6,000 permanent residents. Another 25,000 or so individuals spent the summer in or near the community. In addition a vast number of “day visitors” came to the town. By one estimate in 1908, 128,000 day visitors came to Petoskey.

A vast infra-structure of trains and ships brought these visitors to the community. In 1906 13,000 trains arrived in Petoskey between June 25 and September 30, averaging an amazing 124 trains per day, or put another way, one train every 5 minutes. To house these many visitors, fourteen hotels offered 2,000 rooms for rent each night.

Petoskey had become a major tourist destination. Among those who came regularly to partake in its attractions were the Hemingways. They had built a cottage on Walloon Lake in 1899. Each year the family traveled from their home in suburban Chicago to spend the summer on the lake. How they spent their time during the summer would resonate with anyone who goes “up north” today. They spent time outdoors.  They regularly swam in the lake. Hunting, and in particular fishing, were regular activities. On rainy days they read books. Every now and again they traveled “to town” for “supplies.”

What is most notable, Mike pointed out, is how typical the family was. Biographers of Ernest Hemingway sometimes strain to find that moment when the young Ernest Hemingway revealed himself to be the great writer he would become. The truth is there was no such moment. The Ernest Hemingway who spent his summers at a cottage on Walloon Lake was a typical child. He was not “Ernest Hemingway, writer of great promise.” He was simply, “the Hemingway’s boy” doing what boys do during the summer.

Yet something about those years “up north” never left Hemingway. Late in his life he wrote a reminiscence about the years he spent as a young writer in Paris, where his fame as a writer first emerged. Eventually published as A Moveable Feast, in it Hemingway wrote:

“I sat in a corner [of a Parisian café] with the afternoon light coming in over my shoulder and wrote in the notebook.  The waiter brought me a café crème and I drank half of it when it cooled and left it on the table when I wrote.  When I stopped writing I did not want to leave the river where I could see in the pool, its surface pushing and swelling against the resistance of the log driven piles of the bridge. The story was about coming back from the war but there was no mention of the war in it.  But in the morning the river would be there and I must make it and the country and all that would happen. ”

The bridge he recalled so vividly was almost certainly in Seney where he began a fishing trip with two friends in August 1919. In many ways the trip to Seney and beyond was an important one for the young Ernest. Hemingway had returned from World War I slowly recovering from physical injuries. After his arrival at his parent’s home in suburban Chicago, he suffered a perhaps even more devastating emotionally loss when the woman he thought would marry him ended their relationship. In the 1920s, while living in Paris, Hemingway would transform his fishing trip to Seney and beyond into the story, “The Big Two Hearted River,” a story of a young man suffering in ways not well defined and seeking solace in nature. Near the end of Hemingway’s life, when reflecting upon what he had done during those years in Paris, that trip to Seney, that bridge, the rivers he fished while in the Upper Peninsula, and the emotions that played across his heart and his mind during that difficult summer, were still vivid in his imagination.

As Mike Federspiel concluded, trying to explain how Hemingway used his Michigan experiences to create world-renowned fiction requires and explanation of genius. It is something those who lack that genius likely cannot do. But it is perhaps enough to recognize that somehow “the Hemingway’s boy” used his inexplicable gifts to reimagine in words of beauty and power much of what had happened and much of what he had felt during his many years in Michigan. The stories that resulted created memorable fiction as well indelible images of summer “up north.”

It was a wonderful evening that the audience greatly enjoyed and from which they greatly profited. The Library was very pleased to have been able to make the event possible.