Images of Michigan

Michigan is a state that I had never visited in the past. When I travel via bus or train to Chicago, I don't go into Michigan. I go through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois... but no Michigan. If I were to travel via Canada, I would go into Michigan. But I digress. I know. Digression ought to be my middle name.

The cardinal of Illinois flies to Michigan and alights on the apple blossoms... images for our walk from Chicago to Battle Creek, Michigan.

So Michigan... what's to know about Michigan? Well, its state flower is the apple blossom. Hence the apple blossom in the painting that I made for the walk and which appeared in some of the signs that we carried. Its state bird is the robin, but, for the painting, I chose the cardinal because that was the state bird of Illinois, and we were traveling from Illinois to Michigan, and I wanted to combine images from both states. Here are some facts about Michigan. Its capital is Lansing. The state is known for the automobile industry, yet, oddly enough, a place in Michigan that I'd like to visit is Macinac Island, where motor vehicles are banned. Wow. Car free. How awesome is that? The entire island is a national historic landmark. Well, maybe one of these days, I'll go there because, for a walker, there is nothing cooler than a car-free community. Western Michigan is a fruit growing region and, in fact, is referred to as a "fruit belt." Many migrant workers come to work in Michigan. At the churches that hosted us (Saint Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church in Benton Harbor and Immaculate Conception Church in Hartford), the bulletins were written in both Spanish and English. At the Immaculate Conception church, we spent some time having a conversation with the confirmation class. The students in that class ranged in age from thirteen to sixteen. At the North Berrien  Historical Society's museum in Coloma, we saw an exhibit titled "From Forest to Fruit Belt." For more information about the North Berrien Historical Society and its museum, take a look at its website.

Our journey through Michigan took us to some interesting places, which we enjoyed. We ate lunch at the lakeside, in Saint Joseph. I think that the most interesting place name that we visited was Paw Paw. This oddly named village is in the heart of Michigan's wine country so, if you are an aficionado of wine, Paw Paw is for you. It was a very appealing village and the unusual name just added to my fascination with it. And speaking of names and places, we saw the White Rabbit Bed and Breakfast, the Episcopal Church of the Mediator, a farmers market, various art galleries, and more.

I was startled to see people riding motorcycles without benefit of helmets. I was told that the state's helmet law allows for some riders to go without their helmets. They have to be over the age of 21 and carry a certain amount of medical insurance and have motorcycle training. But still... to me, it seems like a bad idea. I made up songs for Michigan's motorcyclists, depending on whether or not they were wearing helmets. They are sung to the tune of "We are singing in the light of God."

For the helmetless riders: Put a helmet on that precious head, put a helmet on that precious head. Put a helmet on that precious head, put a helmet on that precious head. Wear your helmet because we like you. Put a helmet on that precious head. Wear your helmet because we like you. Put a helmet on that precious head.

For the riders wearing helmets: You look handsome in your dashing helmet; it really makes you look debonair. You look handsome in your dashing helmet; it really makes you look debonair. You set fashion trends with that helmet. You should be in a magazine. You set fashion trends with that helmet. You should be in a magazine. (not a coffin)

Even in rural areas, it was apparent that Michigan was part of the rust belt. Everything was green and alive but so many of the buildings were decaying.

Julia gave Ruth and me a ride to our host family Tom and Mary's house. We took the scenic route and got a tour of the Galien River  Park (a county park). We walked down a path to a boardwalk and onto a small bridge, which swayed because it was loaded with a wedding party, busily photographing one another, mainly with cell phones.

The bridge overlooked the Galien River. We saw people in canoes and kayaks enjoying a day on the river.

t

The board walk

Here is Ginger Bear II, enjoying some relaxing time

Farmers market in rural Michigan.

I'm late, I'm late for a very important date!

Some building signs called out for a photograph...

Barbara calls for an end to drone warfare.

I got to borrow these colorful socks. They were soft and comfortable for my sore feet.

Our group, without me, because I was taking their picture.

Father Dan Scheid of Benton Harbor and his amazing shoes.

Father Dan Scheid and Senji.

Father Dan Scheid, Brian Terrell, a gentleman who I think works in St. Augustine's (I seem to have forgotten his name, unfortunately), and Frank Pauc.

Father Dan, Ceylon, and Senji

Immaculate Conception Church.

Also at Immaculate Conception Church

This is a lovely display of flowers in a garden in Michigan.

Industrial Wreckage

a pantoum about day two of the on the ground to ground the drones walk (Chicago to Battle Creek)

I walk past shells of old industrial plants,

In a place that time erased from existence,

So close to the skyscrapers of Chicago

Yet this poisoned place feels like a different world.

In a place that time erased from existence,

Heavy black smoke billows from ancient smokestacks.

In this poisoned place feeling like a strange world.

Rain falls, but the grime cannot be washed away.

Heavy black smoke billows from ancient smokestacks

Making the foul smelling air feel stagnant

Rain falls but the grime cannot be washed away

From the cars, the birds, buildings, and the people.

Sensing the foul smelling air that’s stagnant

In a jungle of pipelines built for oil

Do the cars, the birds, buildings, and the people

Hunger more for black gold than for fresh water?

In a jungle of pipelines built for oil,

I step tentatively on sharp, wet gravel.

That hunger for black gold, not for fresh water,

Has resulted in this broken, used up land.

I step tentatively on sharp, wet gravel

Heading forward but thinking about past stories

Of the people of this broken, used up land,

In a gray place not of their own making.

Bug world and Tales from the road

Diane Lopez Hughes and Maya Evans explore Michigan City.

For two nights, a campsite at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was our home. It was not only home to us and a variety of other campers, it was also home to a large quantity of mosquitoes and other biting insects. The insects discovered Maya Evans and me and called out to their friends and relatives that dinner was served!
Not wishing to become Buggy Dinner (or lunch or breakfast), we tried spraying massive quantities of insect repellent all over any inch of exposed skin on our bodies. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Maya was such a tasty treat that the insects kept taking taste tests, despite the bad tasting insect repellent.

Maya, Alice, and Ruth discover their inner divas.

Ceylon drove to the walk from Memphis, Tennessee.

Ruth waits to get Ceylon's attention. Ruth lives in a Catholic Worker house in Minneapolis.

Jessica lives in Kalamazoo. She had recently spent 26 days in jail after being arrested protesting against tar sands oil and pipelines and the potential for disastrous spills. She climbed a tree and sat in it until the cops removed her.

We ate dinner at a picnic table and we told jokes and stories and relaxed after a long day of walking that took us from Gary to a stopping point somewhere on the road to Michigan City, Indiana. It was a total of sixteen miles. We tried taking selfies with Ceylon's cell phone but we looked ridiculous because we were laughing so hard. We sang silly songs and we ate chocolates. 
It felt good to unwind and to enjoy the natural world...
... except for those darn (smack!) mosquitoes... and... oh... it got so cold! I wrapped myself in a blanket... and would have started whining about the cold weather and the ravenous bugs... but then I noticed that some of my friends from previous walks showed up... Joshua, our regular one-man band (he sings, plays the guitar, and the drums, but he can't seem to do all of that simultaneously) and Barbara, a music teacher from Appleton, Wisconsin, who sang rain songs with me when we were walking through a heavy downpour in Wisconsin two years ago. Jim, a friend of Barbara's, also came to join our merry group.
One of the most wonderful thing about these walks is the friends you meet on the route... and seeing them again is very delightful.
The bathroom facilities were primitive and, therefore, worthy of story telling. Along the way to the bathroom facility, I met people and dogs. I always like seeing people include their dogs in their family vacation. The woods make a good playground for a dog, as well as for kids.
It got dark and we retired to our little tents to continue the hilarity and to eventually sleep. My sister Vivian and I carried on a conversation via text message. My comments got sillier and sillier as I got more and more sleepy.
In the morning, we returned to the road to continue our walk. By this point, I was convinced that my feet were going to fall off and that I would have to learn how to walk on my knees or my hands or my elbows or...
Jim, however, saved the day. He had a big box full of foot care supplies. He told Buddy that we would join the walk in progress. We sat on the side of a narrow road and Jim attended to my feet. The nearest building was a training center for the United Steelworkers. Before long, someone from the United Steelworkers came to talk to us. He wanted to know more about our group because he and some others saw people walking by with picket signs. They thought that we were union people on strike. We told him about the drones and he agreed with us that killing civilians by remote control (or in any other way) is a bad idea.
With my feet bandaged and moisturized, Jim and I were able to rejoin the walk.
We were headed to Michigan City. 
As we were walking, we met a man named Johnny. He was standing outside of a small house and he wanted to tell us something. He wanted to tell us that he did not agree with our message of ground the drones. This Iraq war veteran told us that the drones protect our troops and are, therefore, necessary. Johnny also shared a bit of his personal history. He said that he has post traumatic stress disorder from having served in the U.S. Army in combat missions. He cannot work. He said that he has lost family members to the war. He added that he spent a year in a military mental hospital at Fort Knox, Kentucky. When I asked him if he wanted me to pray for him, he said yes and he told me his full name and his military rank (sergeant). I said that I would pray for him.

Prison zone. The sign says it all.

In the afternoon, we arrived in Michigan City, a rust belt city with, oddly enough, a huge state prison right in the middle of the city. It is surrounded by huge fences and razor wire and all of the other things that make you think prison or Berlin Wall. There were vehicles full of correctional officers everywhere, but we saw no inmates. Maybe the prison officials did not want the inmates to see us and our signs as we walked past the prison, which looked like a captive city behind razor wire.

Prison is a growth industry in the United States...

We returned to Bug World for another delicious meal, hilarity, and a not-so-good night's rest in freezing cold tents. We heard train whistles until late at night. Apparently, someone was having no trouble sleeping because we could hear snoring from somewhere beyond our tent. It reminded me of my time in federal prison when I was placed in a room with a bunch of roommates who asked me, "Do you snore?" I said that I didn't know. They then informed me that I had moved into the SNORING ROOM. They weren't kidding, either, because they produced a cacophany of snores. With earplugs, I was able to sleep.
But I digress. Back to Bug World.
Fortunately, that was our last night at being a Mosquito's Favorite Meal. In the morning, we packed up our property and our tents and put everything into the big white van that served as our support vehicle. We drove past the prison and saw that inmates were outside, walking on the track and playing sports. We started our day's walk in downtown Michigan City, walking past shops that were still closed because it was too early for them to open. We passed colorful spring gardens and we took pictures of the gardens and of one another. 
The weather was gorgeous.
We were going to the beach.
We walked out of the rusted part of the rust belt and onto a neighborhood of vacation homes, where only a few residents stayed for the entire year. Cameras came out and we took pictures of Lake Michigan, the houses, and one another. Maya, Ruth, and I spent a little bit too much time enjoying photography, and we became separated from the rest of the group. As we wandered the side streets, a woman named Peggy offered to help us find out group. She told us that she is a nurse practitioner and that she teaches nursing at a nearby college. We decided that it was OK to get into her car. Peggy was our angel. Before long, we were reunited with our group at a beach, located either in Indiana or in Michigan. Some members of our group went swimming but I decided that, with the ointments and bandages on my feet, I would just walk on the beach and look for seashells. 
There really were almost no seashells. Instead, I found colorful stones. Some of the stones were smooth and others were rough. Some stones looked like paintings and others more like stained glass. I collected a bunch of stones to take home for my stones collection in a jar. The beach was teeming with life: parents and children, and groups of teenagers.
We left the beach and we left Indiana.

Joshua enjoys wading in the water...

A great variety of stones at the public beach on the border of Indiana and Michigan.

Brian and Deb find a scenic place to plan strategy.

We left central daylight time and discovered that an hour had also left us. We were now in the eastern time zone.
We had just walked into Michigan.
It felt exciting to walk into another state...
To be continued...

A Sad Place that No One Cares About

It rained all day on June 4th. The sky was a dull gray, as was the landscape. We walked past the decayed shells of former industrial plants. The heavy industry that had not been abandoned belonged to oil companies, mostly BP. Much of the housing had been abandoned and was boarded up. The air smelled foul. It felt like a sad place that no one cared about.
I have walked in impoverished places but I have never walked in places that felt this devastated. As we left Illinois and entered Indiana, we walked by abandoned, toxic industrial areas that get used up and forgotten. The rain came down steadily and it seems that my camera does not appreciate a good shower so it stopped functioning. As a result, there are very few photographs from this day of walking.
Our lunch break was at a college, and it was sponsored by the Libertarian Party of that part of Indiana. Among our hosts were Buddy Bell's parents. They made sure that we had a good meal, that our wet clothes were put into a dryer, and that we got pairs of fresh socks. Brian Terrell, Maya Evans, and Kathy Kelly spoke about the effects of drones on the civilian populations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. This led to some spirited discussion about U.S. foreign policy and military policy.

Plans for a vacated building...

Signs of times now gone.

Ceylon shelters Maya from the rain.

Ceylon and Maya in their wet, wet world.

After lunch, we returned to the wet world outside, which seemed to be slightly less wet. We walked through Whiting and on roads without shoulders, where we had to walk on sharp wet gravel. It was a challenging walk. It didn't feel too good. After a while of walking in this land of decayed industry, we entered a town called Marktown. At a town park, we met a man named Thomas. He is part of a group called "Save Marktown."
Thomas told us about how people in Marktown feel besieged by Big Oil, especially by BP, which owns a large amount of land. Their land is surrounded by tall fences and large no-trespassing signs with messages threatening dire consequences for violations. According to an April 18, 2013, article in The Chicago Tribune, BP wants to buy Marktown, raze all of the houses and other structures, and turn all of the land into a giant parking lot. Thomas described Marktown as a closely knit and walkable community. He said that people in Marktown felt that the rest of the world has abandoned them. They feel that environmental regulations have not helped them. "There is a lot of environmental degradation in Indiana," Thomas said. Thomas said that the Save Marktown group will try to use historic preservation rules as a way to save their community from what Thomas described the "massive no-good project" (a pipeline, but not the Keystone pipeline, to carry dirty tar sands oil from somewhere in Canada). Please like "Save Marktown" on Facebook. Marktown needs your support.

A library in Gary.

A man tends to a garden.

One of many forgotten and broken down buildings, with an overgrown and neglected lawn.

Baseball stadium and a reminder of the years when the domestic steel industry gave people lifelong employment.

After leaving Marktown, we walked along the highway. After a while, we discovered a police car from the Gary, Indiana, police department driving slowly on the other side of the road. We wondered what the police officer was doing. After a while, I figured out that he was slowing down the traffic by his presence. At the end of the day's walk, we left the highway and so did the police car. We were headed to vehicles to take us back to Chicago to spend another night with the Priests of the Sacred Heart. A few people, including me, went to talk with the police officer. I thanked him for being there to help us out. He smiled broadly and said, "You're welcome."
The next day, we began our walk in Gary, Indiana. All I knew about Gary was the song about Gary from "The Music Man." The musical, however, was set in River City, Iowa, and it features such delightful songs as "76 Trombones," "The Sadder But Wiser Girl," "Goodnight My Someone," and "Marian the Librarian." The main characters are Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian. Harold Hill is a con artist who plans on selling loads of unnecessary musical instruments in River City. He claims to be a graduate of the Gary Conservatory, class of '05 (as in 1905).
The musical is a romantic comedy and, as a comedy, it contains a happy ending with a couple (Harold and Marian) joyfully in love.
In real life, where is the happy ending for Marktown or for Gary, Indiana?
No, I never did find the Gary Conservatory. As we were walking on our third day (June 6th), we found a very economically depressed city. All of the glory that Gary had was in the past. We walked past closed and boarded up businesses, including strip clubs. The buildings were decayed but they looked as if, in the past, they were beautiful and could still be restored, if only there were the money.
Fortunately, the rain of the previous day had stopped.

From left: Elijah, Alice, and Senji.

The people whom we encountered in Gary were friendly and were curious about our cause. One young man, Elijah, picked up a sign and walked with us. He told us that he is from Chicago and has lived in Gary for three months. He works as a taxi driver and has three children under the age of five.
Officers from the Gary police department escorted us through the city. At one point, we were walking down a highway, and the police closed off an entire lane of traffic for us. We walked through downtown Gary and then out of the city and into the Indiana Dunes National Park, where we had our lunch.
At this point, the police left us, having escorted us through Gary.
"Thank you," we told the police officers.
"It was fun," said one of the police officers. 

We continued walking through the forest, stopping to take pictures of flowers and turtles. It felt good to be back in nature. But I couldn't stop thinking about the urban decay of the past few days. When we told those who asked, "What is a drone?" about the drones and their costs, both in terms of money and human lives, they said that we didn't need to spend all of that money on the drones. The money could be well spent right here. Right here, where the decay is. Right here, where the jobs have fled. Right here, where people live in sad places that no one cares about.