Duneland

Left-of-center-people fascinate me. I had the beach all to myself on a gorgeous hot & sunny afternoon, just me and my novel. And then I noticed a man walking toward me, most likley one of the "joggers" I usually saw on the beach, I thought. He was an attractive older man in his early 60's an he stopped to say hello. And then he just kept on talking. Thirty minutes later I knew this man's entire life story. And he revealed to me that he was pentecostal. He spoke to me about god and his visions and how a non-believer became a believer. I politely listened and when he was gone, I went back to my novel.

But this guy, Vince, he came back and found me on the beach the next day as well. He asked me if I had any "insights" during the night. I laughed and told him nothing except a deep desire for Lake Michigan. My dear reader, I drove around Beverly Shores like I usually do, dreaming about living there, when I saw a for sale sign pointing down an empty beach road. I decided to follow it (the proverbial pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow) and there was a house...it was perfect. Built in 1929, one of the original that Frederick Bartlett built when he designed the town of Beverly Shores. It had the original spanish tiled roof, that ochre colored brick that just says "duneland" and an acre of land, quietly settled...I got out of the car and took one of the brochures that listed all of its amenities. I must have stared at that house for a half an hour. And then I started crying. Have you ever wanted something that badly and you knew there was such a slim chance of getting it...even now my eyes are brimming because I can't help thinking that I simply belonged with that house, that original structure of the town that takes up so much space in my heart. This amazing landscape that I swear no one else cares about like I do, and it feels so very far away. I went home and told my parents about it. They paid very little attention to me and my "silly whims," as they put it. And I felt it...another loss of that life I had simply imagined or dreamed up somewhere along the road. Am I a believer? I went back to the question...and simply found that I had another of my own to ask. What exactly is it that I am supposed to believe in?

Global Village

Happy birthday America.

I've been on vacation for a little over 2 weeks and I'm exhausted. I'm starting to wonder when I can go back to school! I'm kidding of course. I'm back in the heartland, the crossroads of America, amongst the trains and the cornfields and the super friendly midwesterners who like to tell me their life stories and medical histories while I'm in line at the grocery store. (seriously)

I've had time to catch up on my reading (not the Economist as Dan would like me to read, but some good fiction and some trashy gossip rags). I've recently started a book by Bill Bryson about his travels in small town America, his search for the quintessential small town, one he would call "Amalgam." His story got me thinking...is there a perfect representation of America out there? While Dan and I were sunning ourselves on the beach at the Dunes National Lakeshore this past holiday weekend, I people watched. There we were, surrounded by languages foreign to our ears, and rarely did I hear English. It was Little Bangalore meets Little Mexico with a dash of Little Africa thrown in for good measure. Children all around me playing in the sand, peeing in the water, throwing bits of food at the sea gulls...a perfect representation of what America would become, or has become already. Are we pushing against a tide that has already swept in?

That night as Dan and I sat on the deck enjoying a wonderful South African red wine, eating American cashews, watching my brother light fireworks that were made in China, I pulled on my jacket that was made in Indonesia, kissed my boyfriend who works for a French company and listened to my father talk about the steel mill in which he has worked for over 30 years who was bought by an Indian company and just merged with a French company. We are no longer the America of post world war two, but the global village of the future.