9am – 5pm
Edgerton High School
200 Elm High Dr.
Edgerton, WI 53534
Free Admission
My official schedule is as follows, and books will be available for purchase:
11:30-Noon Meet and Greet in Gymnasium
12:15-12:45 The Audacity of Goats-Confessions of a Book Club Drop Out. Room 349
1:30-2:00 Meet and Greet in Gymnasium
2:15-2:45 The Audacity of Goats-Confessions of a Book Club Drop Out. Room 349
I will have just left the Island, so come and cheer me up. A raccoon would help.
We went for a very long walk today, and I took these photos. These are the days I dream about all year.
Now I am sitting outside to write because it is so perfectly splendid that it would be a waste to be indoors. The dogs, having had their multiple walks, are content to sit quietly on the grass (Moses) and at my feet (Pete). The sun is streaming from the west and casting a golden light through the leaves that still hang onto the birch and maple trees nearby. All is tranquil and warm, and lovely.
But it is raining. There must be one cloud drifting overhead in the crystalline deep blue sky, and the drops are hitting Moses on the head, making him flick his long ears with irritation. I am happy to sit on the porch with the roof protecting the computer–and me–and to be aware of the sunset while I write.
Meanwhile, in book three, Elisabeth is working on something new, and Fiona is chafing at all the public meetings she has to attend. Peter Landry is being his usual enigmatic self, and that is causing some problems. Many new developments in the works. Stay tuned.
Look carefully to discover dogs.
Greetings from Washington Island:
Life has been moving at a screaming pace, and I have not been keeping up. We (Pete, Moses, and I) are on the Island this week, cloistered for the purposes of writing Book Three in the North of the Tension Line series. I do the writing. They take me for walks and keep me from sitting for twelve hours straight. Meanwhile, the books have been gaining quite a bit of media attention, and if you haven’t heard about it here first, I apologize.
Now that we are here on the Island, there have been a few setbacks, including some extremely nasty chigger bites (I am not used to coming here when the temperatures are above freezing), but I am otherwise making progress. This is the fast part of writing, when everything is fresh, and the ideas are pushing themselves out onto paper (computer). The slow part comes later, when the plot needs to be knit together, and the loose ends keep popping out.
But I interrupt this time of retreat to mention that I do have a new website, www.jfriordan.com. This blog will continue to exist here, but you will also be able to access it from the website.
You will be able to find details about my next public appearances, to read, watch, and listen to media events, to hear interviews and readings from the books, and to buy the books, as well. In a day or two, my half hour television interview will become public, and you will be able to see it there. (As an aside, if you want incentive to stick to your weight loss plans, watch yourself on television. It’s a kind of horrifying reality check.)
The stats here at North of the Tension Line: Reflections on a Life in Exile have been rising steadily, and I am deeply grateful to my readers. Thank you, and I hope you will stay with me as the story continues.
Please take a moment to check out the website, and, if you would be so kind, to pass it on.
Pete and Moses and I stopped off at Rhinelander yesterday for a guest appearance on UpNorth at 4.
Then we drove back down to Sturgeon Bay. We put in 500 miles in one day, and the dogs were both patient and well-mannered. But when we got in last night they both burst into a run as if they’d been released from the gates.
We are staying at a cozy place right on the canal, but we are all raring to go. It’s still dark, and too early, but we’re heading out. Don’t want to miss the ferry.
It’s Island time.
In case you missed it, my column on small town life is posted online in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. If you’d like to talk with me about it, stop by at the Sterling North Book and Film Festival. Raccoons optional.
9am – 5pm
Edgerton High School
200 Elm High Dr.
Edgerton, WI 53534
Free Admission
Sometime around 6:30 tomorrow. Moses may make a surprise appearance, but in any case, he’ll be in the studio.
Never try to upstage kids or dogs.
Gratuitous Dog Picture
My column that will appear in Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
A writer in a national magazine recently theorized that small town voters who are worried about the deterioration of American culture are “insular” and unenlightened, stuck in the past, resistant to progress.
Having grown up in a small town, and also having taught at a high school in the inner city of Milwaukee, I can say that most of my students and their families were also living in their hometown, and the hometown of their families. Does that make them insular? Or does it make them normal?
City life is fine. It is filled with cultural and social and employment opportunities that may not exist elsewhere. You can choose how and whether to connect with other people. But bustle is not for everyone, nor is anonymity.
Some among us choose to live in a different way. But it would be a mistake to believe that small town life is a bucolic and peaceful existence. Living in a small community is not for the faint of heart.
Small towns are a microcosm of the human experience, but with more intensity. You live shoulder to shoulder with your oldest friends, and your fiercest enemies. You daily encounter the person who cheated you; who stood you up; who broke your heart; and with people who know your complete history: every bad decision, every embarrassment, every moment of kindness (if any). In cities, there can be the relief of some anonymity, but not in a small town. Living in a small town is a psychologically raw way to live.
But small town life also requires a deep connection to community that city people may not acquire. It generally means that you go to church because that is what is expected, and what almost everyone does. It means you are surrounded by people who know you. In the city it’s called networking. In a small town, the network is your neighbors, and you are expected to participate. Your neighbors are the ones who gather around you to celebrate births and mourn deaths. They plow your driveway when you have the flu. They raise money to help in a tragedy. They put an arm around your shoulder. They make casseroles. And you, in turn, celebrate, and mourn, and plow, and comfort, and bake. This sharing and mutual support is as old as human beings. And it is good.
We live in a society in which the elites make a continuing push against the values of faith and decency and commonsense. The cultural gatekeepers seem to believe that someone who doesn’t live in your community can decide what’s wrong with you, and what you need. It’s an insult, and a barely veiled one. You are flyover country: insular, irrelevant bumpkins filled with prejudices, unable to participate in the enlightenment of the cities, destined never to be famous. Living in a small town means that you are aware of the scorn heaped upon you by city dwellers who think they are better, and you shrug your shoulders and get on with it.
Maybe resisting progress isn’t all bad. In an age of celebrity and reality television, of Instagram and Twitter, most small town people live out quiet, uncelebrated lives of dignity and depth. They work; they care for their families and their friends; they mow their lawns and mop their floors. They may not be famous or trend-setting. But they have lives worth living.
And that is something worth standing for.
My books are set primarily on Washington Island, located in Lake Michigan about four miles off the tip of Door County Wisconsin. From the first moment I crossed Death’s Door on the ferry, Washington Island took hold of me. I often tell people that I live in exile from the Island, which they tend to assume is a joke. But the truth is that whatever magic the place weaves has utterly ensnared me, and when I am not there I am thinking about being there, imagining being there, and, well, writing about being there.
I suppose I write these books so that I can create for myself a sense of being on the Island, even when I’m not.
The bad news is we’re not going to the Island this week. The good news is we’re ready for when we do go at the end of the month.
Pete’s enthusiasm is difficult to contain.
J.F. Riordan 