When Life Gives You Lemons

When life gives you lemons,

and you happen to have chickens,

(so needing 32 egg yolks isn't an issue)

what should you do?

 Make homemade lemon curd, of course?

One of the Island's hotels closed for the season and donated all their remaining produce to the school. Our cook pulled out the items he could use, and then the leftovers were put out for staff and parents to take (so noting would go to waste.) Not many people were interested in the big box of lemons, so I snagged enough to make two batches of lemon curd. I also got enough cream cheese to make a cheesecake for Thanksgiving.  One guess what flavor it will be!

Ready for Winter

Chickens don't require huge amounts of work, but there are things you have to do to keep them. One of the most dreaded chicken-chores is cleaning out the chicken coop. Luckily, my coop is small so cleaning it isn't an overwhelming task. 

Today I managed to cross that job off my Fall To Do List. The girls now have a clean coop, complete with new nesting material. As soon as I finished, several of the girls had to pop inside to check out their newly cleaned digs. I can't tell if Princess Poopy Pants is pleased, or if that is a look of disapproval.

If you're wondering why there is a phone taped to the wall in the chicken coop - it is being used as a camera. I can open an app on my phone to check to see if the automatic door has opened or closed. The automatic door makes owning chickens soooooooooooo much easier!

Hopeful

I took my fifth and sixth grade class with me to the poles today. I've never taken my class before, but we've been studying the US Constitution and it seemed like the perfect field trip. And, since it's Mackinac Island, our poling place is an eight minute walk from the school, so why not. Our poll workers were gracious; they explained each step of the voting process to my class and answered every question the kids threw at them, including: 

• What happens if you forget your ID - can you still vote? 
• What if you don't have hands and can't sign the form?
• If you can't read, can you bring a friend to help you?
• How does the voting machine work?
• Has the machine ever broken down? Then what happens?
• How many people will vote (here) today?

I tried to be upbeat and positive, and not let the kids see the almost overwhelming feeling of dread I have in the pit of my stomach, but when I start to get anxious I remind myself that I am hopeful.

Hopeful a majority of my fellow Americans choose wisely.

Love

One of my absolute favorite Mackinac "things" is the sound of freighters traveling through the Round Island Passage. Several passed by while I was teaching today and I couldn't help but smile. So much better than listening to car traffic!

Night-Night

Today Grand Hotel's gardeners were hard at work planting tulip bulbs. They tucked the bulbs into their earthy beds, so come spring we will be treated to displays like this:

I can't even begin to imagine what their bulb budget might be...

Fall Favorites

 Mackinac is beautiful in any season,

but I am quite partial to fall. 

Unbelievable

We have had the most amazing fall in northern Michigan. The weather has been incredible! Today, Allen and I ate dinner outside, without coats, because it was 67 degrees! Later, while I was scrolling on Facebook, I was reminded that eleven years ago on October 22, Mackinac already had snow. We're supposed to get cooler weather later in the week, but for now we are happily soaking up these warm days.

Autumn

A tapestry of terra cotta, gold, and brown;

leaves dance and swirl,

then slowly drift down.

They make a fragrant carpet - 

with earthy scent so deep,

a place where the woodland whispers

secrets nature keeps.

Northern Lights Over Mackinac

Thursday night, much of the northern United States was treated to the northern lights. Despite it being a school night, we're completely nerdy people so there was no way we weren't going out to see them. Thankfully Mother Nature cooperated and gave us a mostly cloud-free sky.

My pictures aren't nearly as impressive as many other folk's are, but they do more accurately reflect what we were able to see with just our eyes: lots of red. At one point it almost looked like the sky was being illuminated by a nearby forest fire - it was that bright.

Things started early. Allen and I were at Point Lookout, with out camp chairs, by 9:30 enjoying the show. It changed minute by minute, varying between red and green, bright and dim, and where in the sky the lights danced. It was absolutely stunning. Surprisingly, we had Point Lookout virtually to ourselves. It seemed like just about everyone else went to Fort Holmes or the airport.

We packed up and biked home at about 10:45, grinning from ear to ear the entire way. 

Capital City Comic Con

Back in February I posted about working on my Princess Leia costume, but I just realized I never posted pictures from the comic con. We had a blast! The Lansing Comic Con isn't huge, but it was a prefect con for us to start with. We had a great time. My favorite moment was getting my picture taken with a little Ghostbuster. She told me Princess Leia was her favorite Star Wars character and that she had been trying to catch up with me to get a picture. He dad was kind enough to snap a picture with my camera as well. I also got to hear Tim Russ, who played Tuvok on Star Trek Voyager, speak and answer questions; which made my nerd heart happy.

I went with my good friend, Keith. He's an incredible maker! He really doesn't appreciate it when I brag about his talents, but he really is incredible (and modest.) The man can make / build pretty much anything - his Boba Fett costume for instance. While he bought the jumpsuit and helmet, he 3D printed, built, and painted the rest of it. He even made all the hard parts of my costume, including my helmet, blaster, etc. 

Now we've got to start planning for next year! The nerd in me is thinking Star Trek, but who knows...

Happiness Is

Not only did I get invited to a cook out at a friend's house today, but Mackinac was treated to a beautiful rainbow. I wasn't able to catch a photo, but for a while it was a double rainbow!

Disapproving

We spent the weekend up in Marquette visiting the kids up at Northern Michigan University. Since we were there, we took the kids on a little shopping trip to Meijer. As we drove out of the parking lot, I got the distinct impression Meijer did not approve of our choices - probably because we tried to stick to a budget! Lol.

Glorious

Fall is, by far, my favorite season on Mackinac. Many days, like today, are practically perfect weather wise.

I'm Loving It

One of folks in my city harvested seeds from her hollyhock flowers and put them on her fence to share with all. I just love this this is the kind of town I live in!

Good Morning

This time of year I'm quite busy. School has started so I am teaching, but I'm also still housekeeping at one of the Island's historic cottages. To keep up with everything, I often stop at the cottage to do laundry before school. While it does mean my day starts very early, it also means I get to enjoy a Mackinac sunrise. I can't think of a better way to start the day! 

Old Faithful Inn

Lots of people are surprised to hear my family likes to vacation away from Mackinac Island. When you live in a vacation destination, that place is just everyday life for you, so of course we want to get away and spend time somewhere else. Part of this summer's Yellowstone and Grand Teton trip involved a stay at the Old Faithful Inn. I hadn't heard of it, but it was close to the the top of my mother-in-law's bucket list.

Much of the 1903 section of the hotel looks like it did when it first opened - including rooms in which guests still have to use lavatories located down the hall. Additions were put on in 1913 and again in 1927 (where we stayed.) A few of us took a tour of the building, which was quite interesting. We learned the architect, Robert Reamer, used local lodgepole pine from the park to build it. 

Many of the light fixtures in the hotel are original. The simple fact the building survived the summer of 1988 fires is a miracle.

Unless you're inside the building, it is hard to get a feel for the sheer scale of the building! It's HUGE!

  

The main lobby is 76 feet tall!

There is even a tree house at the the top of the building's peak. Sadly, the little house had to close after several deadly hotel fires forced the U.S. government to regulate the number of exits in hotels. (Today, two are required for all public areas._ But, on our tour we learned six lucky people get to access that part of the hotel each day. Those six slots literally book up within hours on the first day the hotel begins taking reservations for the next season!

Old Faithful's eruption times were clearly posted all around the hotel. You literally walk out the front door, turn the corner, and the Old Faithful geyser is right there.

Seeing Old Faithful with my own eyes was on my bucket list, and it was incredible. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. 

I'm Happy You're Here

Now that one of my children has been found to be on the Autism Spectrum, it makes me wonder if I am, too. Sometimes I notice things other people don't, and I often "see" faces in inanimate objects. 

Take this locking mechanism in the floor of the house I clean. (I'm a housekeeper at one of Mackinac's historic homes during the summer season.) To me, it looks like a little face looking up at me, smiling; almost like it's happy I'm vacuuming the threshold of his door. Weird, I know. I'm probably the only person whose ever really looked closely at that lock, except for maybe the builder who installed it, but noticing these little things makes me smile.

35 Years

I was lucky enough to spend the weekend with these amazing women. It's hard to believe that have been in my life for 35 years now. We all worked at Fort Mackinac in the late 80s and early 90s.

For years we  always got together once or twice a year, but over the last few, we let life get in the way of our get togethers. And then, our number got smaller. Our dear friend, Chandra, passed away unexpectedly last spring. 

So we have renewed our promise to get together as often as we can.

Not every one of us can make it every time we meet, but we've decided to do the best we can since we never know what tomorrow may bring.

Kelaine, Rachel, Michelle, and Shannon - thank you. Thank you for making our friendship a priority; thank you for sharing your joys and frustrations and listening to mine; thank you for a weekend full of love and laugher; but most of all, thank you for 35 wonderful years of friendship! I can't imagine my life without each and every one of you.

First Day

Today was the first day of school on Mackinac Island. I'm starting this year with eight students - two sixth graders, and six fifth graders. I had all of these students last year as fourth and fifth graders, so hopefully we'll hit the ground running and have an amazing year. 

I still can't believe this is my thirty-second first day of school! It just doesn't seem like I started teaching that long ago. This first day certainly was one for the record books because we had no power!

A squirrel knocked out the electricity for over 2,800 people in Mackinac and Chippewa counties, including ALL of Mackinac Island. Luckily, two full walls in my classroom are windows, so my students and I just rolled with it.

Today's Nerdom

I love Star Trek; like love Star Trek; to the point of being slightly annoying to my family. Knowing that you'll understand why I geeked earlier this week. 

In January of 1995, there was a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode where several characters go back in time to San Francisco on August 30, 2024. So, being the gigantic Trek nerd that I am, I had to watch that episode on August 30, 2024. I mean, how could I not do that???

I've seen the episodes (it's actually a two-part episode)  many times before, but something about watching it today was pretty cool. Then I found this article from the San Francisco Chronicle. (I copied the article and posted it on my blog because it won't always be available on their website.) So incredibly interesting. It may be a 100% nerdy thing to think, but I really do hope humanity can someday build the future Gene Roddenberry dreamed of...

Uncanny Accuracy

This 1995 ‘Star Trek’ episode predicted a 2024 San Francisco crisis with uncanny accuracy

By Peter Hartlaub,Culture CriticAug 28, 2024Originally published at:https://www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf/article/star-trek-predicted-sf-2024-crisis-19722416.php?

In a “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” episode called “Past Tense,” commanding officer Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and chief medical officer Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) are detained by authorities in 2024 San Francisco. Paramount Domestic Television

The date is Aug. 30, 2024, in San Francisco, and city leaders have decided it’s time to show tough love.

Unhoused residents are forced into shelters, setting up “Sanctuary Districts” where they’re told they can find a room and apply for jobs. The city’s wealthiest citizens are driving political decisions, supporting police sweeps that clear tents from city streets. And with fewer visible homeless, officials declare the mission accomplished.

What sounds like rhetoric from a recent mayoral debate, or one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s euphemism-filled plans to tackle poverty, is actually a 29-year-old dystopian plot from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” In early 1995 the series released a two-part episode called “Past Tense,” predicting what San Francisco would look like … this coming weekend. 

They got it eerily, and alarmingly, correct.

“Star Trek” since its inception in 1966 has used time travel to aid its social commentary, whether it’s Captain Kirk and Spock visiting Depression-era New York City to explore the moral dilemmas of love and duty, or a jaunt to 1986 to save two Bay Area whales and spread a message about environmentalism (while showing punks the right and wrong way to act on a Muni bus).

“Past Tense” was written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Ira Steven Behr, operating with a micro budget compared to modern “Trek.” Both parts of the episode were filmed entirely in Hollywood, with a studio back lot built to resemble New York standing in for S.F. But the ideas age incredibly well, as if Wolfe and Behr had time travel powers of their own. 

“Past Tense” begins on space station Deep Space Nine about 350 years from now. Earth is part of the United Federation of Planets, which has built a post-currency society, wiping out poverty and most illness and crime.

A transporter accident — the form of “Star Trek” time travel least expensive to film — sends three crew members back to San Francisco on Aug. 30, 2024. 

Commanding officer Benjamin Sisko and chief medical officer Julian Bashir, played by actors of color (Avery Brooks and Alexander Siddig), are discovered by police, labeled as destitute “dims” and sent to a walled in Sanctuary District. Science officer Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), a space alien who appears as a white woman, is found by a tech entrepreneur who takes her to his high-rise.

In a “Deep Space Nine” episode called “Past Tense,” science officer Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) sits on a 

subway station stairway with tech entrepreneur Chris Brynner (Jim Metzler).

Paramount Domestic Television
San Francisco geographical references are sparse. Sisko declares, “I caught a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge a few blocks back.” Dax enters aBART-like station called “TransFrancisco” thatadvertises a Transbay Tube. 

But the themes are oddly prescient, strongly reflecting the city’s challenges in 2024. Sisko, a student of 21st century history, provides exposition to Bashir, who is increasingly frustrated by the lack of adequate mental health resources and medical care in the Sanctuary District.

Bashir: Why are these people in here? Are they criminals?

Sisko: (They’re) just people without jobs or places to live.

Bashir: So they get put in here?

Sisko: Welcome to the 21st century, Doctor.

There are wild parallels to 2024 and the past decade throughout. 

The forced relocation of unhoused residents in “Past Tense” mirrors the homeless sweeps ahead of the 2016 Super Bowl and 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The containment zones evoke the state of the Tenderloin District during and immediately after the pandemic shutdown.

And the episode’s dialogue echoes many San Francisco politicians of the past 30 years, advocating for more police, working to make unsightly problems less visible to wealthy residents, and then declaring the tenuous results a political victory. 

(In the episode, a police officer references “Buck Bokai,” an Asian professional baseball player who is setting records. Did Wolfe and Behr predict Shohei Ohtani?)

On the ground in past/present San Francisco, Sisko and Bashir quickly discover they’re one day away from the Bell Riots, “one of the watershed events of the 21st century,” where hundreds of innocent Sanctuary District citizens are slaughtered by authorities, exposing the system’s flaws and hypocrisy.

As the plot thickens, the writers’ predictive abilities show their limitations. Computers are chunky and require a stylus to operate. Dax’s wealthy benefactor is too nice and emotionally stable for an Elon Musk comparison. And perhaps most strangely, the poor people who make up the armed resistance wear fedoras, like out-of-work men in a 1920s soup kitchen. 

But as the story strays into bombast and overacting, it still gets many subtleties right.

Bashir rages when he sees an unhoused citizen having a mental health breakdown, pointing out that effective treatments for schizophrenia exist in a fictional 2024. (“They could cure that man now, today, if they gave a damn.”) Wealthy partygoers in “Past Tense” express self-satisfaction that the poor are being cared for compassionately. In reality, they’re not getting anything close to the housing or services they’ve been promised.

Wolfe in a 2020 interview with Vox suggested the episodes weren’t predictive, but reflective of scenes that existed in 1995. Indeed, housing struggles and wealth disparity were issues in San Francisco 30 years ago; it didn’t take supernatural foresight to assume things might get worse. 

“Past Tense” tries clumsily for moments of lightness and comedy. Some woefully stereotypical 1960s hippies are the worst addition. But the screenwriters manage to land the spaceship in the closing moments.

Society’s apathy toward human suffering leads to armed conflict, misunderstandings and hundreds dead. One of the last things Sisko, Bashir and Dax see before transporting back to their present is a San Francisco street strewn with bodies, as Bashir questions how citizens could let things get so bad. 

“Eventually,” Sisko says, “people in this century will remember how to care."

The Lady Jane

Recently the folks who work at City Hall were invited for a cruise on the Lady Jane. Richard and Jane Manoogian, the owners, often invite groups of people out on the boat. Since Allen is the director of the Department of Public Works and had a "plus one," I got to go, too. (Lucky me!)

We spent the evening on the water near the Island, finally anchoring by British Landing so people could swim.

It was a delightful evening, on a gorgeous boat, with wonderful people. Thank you, Jane; it was lovely to get to meet you!

Moving to College: Mackinac Style

This year, both of my children are heading off to college. When you live on Mackinac, you can't just pop out to the driveway to load the car - there is little bit more planning and organization required. Starting the day before. 

The day before Move-in Day, we were up early to load the luggage cart. It had to be ready for a 7:00 am pick up. (We didn't choose that time - that's when the dray was available.)

The driver hooked up the cart and hauled it down to the dock for us. For those of you who are curious, the fee for that was $45.00.

The dray delivered the cart to the dock and the ferry shipped it across to the mainland (no charge) where the cart waited for us until my husband got off work. Since the kids wanted to have their bikes at school they road down to the dock while I rode on a taxi with the few items they forgot to get on the cart.

Once we got to the mainland it was time to Tetris the back of the car. It took some finagling, but everything fit! Luckily my son's roommate was bringing the fridge and microwave, otherwise each kid would have had one of those items on their lap. (The car is a Ford Expedition Max, if you're wondering.) We like to go up to Marquette the night before and get an early start moving in. Campus is much easier to navigate on Move-in Day when you sign up for an 8:00 am move in time!

Once we arrived at Northern, we unloaded into two separate bins and each kid went their own way. K to Maple West and S to Magers Hall.

Mr. Second Year had absolutely no interest in help setting up his room... none.

but K, asked for help, so we spent some time unpacking and helping her get organized for her first year away from home.

Then Allen and I hopped in the car and headed home. Well, we actually stopped at Meijer first to pick up groceries and then we headed home. Home to an empty nest!