https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-vt9hs-123fba4

Summers at the Lake is a delightful collection of essays centered around the author’s beloved “Little cabin in the Big Woods” beside Crooked Lake in the Upper Peninsula.

The humorous and meditative essays, that read like prose poetry, track the progression of the seasons. Stott aims to evoke for readers memories of similar incidents and feelings at other lakes and at other times.

Stott, a part-time Yooper, spends extended summers in the solitude of the northern woods where the closest community of Munising is 27 miles away from his cabin.

“I am the old hermit of the woods,” he said in the podcast interview speaking directly from the Munising School Public library, 500 feet from Lake Superior.

In chapter 6 “Day Tripper”, Stott takes us on a trip to Grand Marais which looks like a New England seaside village with a year-round population of 300.

Stott acts as a knowledgeable and funny tour guide as he writes about “Life in a Pickle Barrel” about the history of the Pickle Barrel House. 

Email Stott for a chance to win a signed copy of his new book at jstottuaalberta.ca

Special thanks to the Munising School Public Library.

Sponsored by Doc Chavent, the Lowell Ledger, Modern History Press

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-a4ecz-1221e63

Author Robin Marvel of Hersey, MI is that girl who has survived mental, domestic, and drug abuse; homelessness, and kidnappings throughout her childhood. Being addicted to alcohol and partying at age 15 resulted in a sexual assault, and later she became a teen mother at age 16.

Since May is mental health awareness month, Marvel opened up to talk about her story captured in her book “Healing Childhood Trauma” from a PTSD standpoint of view.

“I didn’t want to repeat the cycle, and I started working on myself,” she said. “I realized I was in control of what happened to me.”

As a motivational speaker, Marvel talks about self-respect and determination. She strives to be a role model for her five daughters. She chose to grow through the trauma she had endured as a child.

“I didn’t have any role models,” she said witnessing how her mother was abused by her father with subsequent kidnappings of her.

“It was always the same,” she said. “He took me to his mother to get supplies and we slept in a car. I grabbed my blanket.”

But facing all these hardships, Marvel found the strength to overcome being a victim of circumstance.

“It doesn’t happen at the flip of a switch,” she said. “I had to work on myself.”

Listen in for a chance to win a signed copy of Marvel’s life-changing book.

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-a4ecz-1221e63

Author Robin Marvel of Hersey, MI is that girl who has survived mental, domestic, and drug abuse; homelessness, and kidnappings throughout her childhood. Being addicted to alcohol and partying at age 15 resulted in a sexual assault, and later she became a teen mother at age 16.

Since May is mental health awareness month, Marvel opened up to talk about her story captured in her book “Healing Childhood Trauma” from a PTSD standpoint of view.

“I didn’t want to repeat the cycle, and I started working on myself,” she said. “I realized I was in control of what happened to me.”

As a motivational speaker, Marvel talks about self-respect and determination. She strives to be a role model for her five daughters. She chose to grow through the trauma she had endured as a child.

“I didn’t have any role models,” she said witnessing how her mother was abused by her father with subsequent kidnappings of her.

“It was always the same,” she said. “He took me to his mother to get supplies and we slept in a car. I grabbed my blanket.”

But facing all these hardships, Marvel found the strength to overcome being a victim of circumstance.

“It doesn’t happen at the flip of a switch,” she said. “I had to work on myself.”

Listen in for a chance to win a signed copy of Marvel’s life-changing book.

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-4jh7r-1209f46

In his UP Colony, Author Phil Bellfy, P.h. D. poses the ultimate question: why has the Upper Peninsula’s vast wealth, nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States, left the area with poverty nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States. “Where did the $1.5 billion earned from copper mining, $1 billion from logging, and nearly $4 billion in iron ore go?”

Struck by the contrast between two cities on different sides of the American Canadian border, Bellfy has published an update to his 1980s MA thesis, UP Colony.

It is the story of resource exploitation in Upper Michigan in one of the oldest US cities Sault Sainte Marie. The book was published on its 350th anniversary in 2018.

“Sault Michigan was clearly a city on the decline, while Sault Ontario shared none of the malaise that infected the Michigan half of these “Sister Cities,” Bellfy writes in the new introduction. 

Bellfy grew up in the Detroit suburb of Livonia and moved to Sault Sainte Marie in the fall of 1970. “We were urban Indians growing up in Detroit, but Chippewa County is most native populated East of Mississippi,” he said. “I was exposed to the native community.”

“I was also struck by the raw beauty of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and perhaps, even more struck by the raw beauty of the landscape across the St. Marys River,” he wrote.

However, just around the time of his arrival, all the major industries shut down, and Sault Michigan was little more than a “resource colony” or “Internal Colony” without any residuals left from the mining industries.

“My own personal history adds a lot to my perception of the situation up here,” Bellfy said.

Listen in for a chance to win a signed copy of UP Colony.