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The bride wore blue.

Up north to a wed­ding this week­end. Always fun to attend wed­dings. They beat funer­als, for one thing. There’s cake. And usu­ally wine, and fre­quently champagne.

There was cer­tainly no short­age at this wed­ding, which was held in the north­ern Michi­gan woods. Not all the way off the grid, but edg­ing in that direc­tion — cater­ing, but with porta-potties and an explicit warn­ing from the wed­ding cou­ple not to wear heels, because of the walk in from the road, which was decid­edly unfriendly to del­i­cate footwear. But once back there, it was a lit­tle oasis of love­li­ness, with a blue color scheme. The bride wore a $30 gown she got at Good­will and had altered to her taste; why wear Vera Wang to trail behind you down a dirt path en route to the for­est clear­ing? Any last-minute fit alter­ations just went with the color scheme:

bluewedding

The cou­ple was said to be going for an effect that was “rus­tic, not red­neck.” I’d say they suc­ceeded. All guests were invited to camp on the sur­round­ing acreage, and many took them up on it. We didn’t, and stayed at another guest’s nearby hunt­ing cabin, which had the ben­e­fit of win­dow screens on a night when the mos­qui­tos were feel­ing par­tic­u­larly blood­thirsty. On the other hand, I bet the after­party was a blast.

Leav­ing, it occurred to me the last wed­ding I went to in north­ern Michi­gan was also held right around the sum­mer sol­stice. The sky after 10 p.m., as we were leaving:

nightfall

They prize sum­mer in the north. “Three months of bad sled­ding,” etc.

That was my week­end. How was yours?

On the way we passed the Perma-Log Co., a com­pany about which the name says every­thing. I regret that the web­site doesn’t fea­ture the other perma-items from the company’s acreage on M-33, which included perma-Stonehenge and perma-Easter Island heads. Both of which would be perma-cool in our front yard, I think. (CORRECTION, 9/2: Web­site updated. Check out Easter Island, Michi­gan.) North­ern Michi­gan kitsch doesn’t have quite the same feel as that of, say, south­ern Ohio. Not so many fat ladies bend­ing over or ply­wood sil­hou­ettes of a guy lean­ing against a tree, but there’s noth­ing like a flying-bird wind­mill to let you know you’re not in the city anymore.

Actu­ally, there are lots of ways to tell you’re not in the city, once you get out of it, headed north. The entire econ­omy of north­ern Michi­gan, never robust in the first place, seems to rest on com­pe­ti­tion between hos­pi­tals to land your next heart attack, at least to judge from the bill­boards. In between those bill­boards are other bill­boards adver­tis­ing schools that can get you in a scrub top and work­ing in the wide-open world of health care faster than the next one. Noth­ing really says, “We are a region of the obese and old” more clearly than this. I bet, in places like Port­land and Cal­i­for­nia, you might see the occa­sional ad for sports-medicine and laparo­scopic knee surgery.

But we also sat with one of our film­mak­ing party, who moon­lights as a DJ. One of his gigs is the local women’s roller-derby team, and he shared their favorite requests — 2 Live Crew, and assorted other acts whose lyrics fea­ture max­i­mum degra­da­tion of women. This tick­les me, as it sug­gests rol­ler­girls know more about what fem­i­nism entails than those who have PhDs in gen­der stud­ies. There’s some­thing about pic­tur­ing these jam­mers and block­ers, any one of whom could kill you with her bare hands, throw­ing ‘em up to “Me So Horny” that cracks me up.

Blog­gage? Surrrreee:

We’ve had a local story break­ing in the past few days, with the Fox affil­i­ate lead­ing the way. The cov­er­age — all blus­ter, pos­tur­ing and “as I told you exclusively” — has been excru­ci­at­ing, but not as excru­ci­at­ing as this, which I beg you to watch, because besides being excru­ci­at­ing, it’s also sort of awesome.

The eti­quette of the Crack­Berry, some­thing I admit I strug­gle with myself. Noth­ing like those lit­tle inter­sti­tial spaces in life for mul­ti­task­ing on your smart­phone, I always say. Noth­ing like a lit­tle Wur­dle to fill up a two-minute bath­room break in a meet­ing. When does it cross the line into rude­ness? A ques­tion for our time.

My ques­tion for today is, can I get every­thing done that I have to get done? Only if I sign off now and go pick the dog up from the vet’s board­ing ken­nel. Latuh.

Posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 am
in Media, Same ol' same ol'.

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40 responses to
“The bride wore blue.”

  1. Dorothy said on June 22nd, 2009 at 10:17 am

    We went to a wed­ding too. The daugh­ter of friends of ours — her iden­ti­cal twin was maid of honor. Very lovely event at the church on Kenyon’s cam­pus, then the recep­tion was a few miles away.

    Hope every­one had a good week­end. We saw Earth, Wind & Fire and Chicago at the Schot­ten­stein Cen­ter in Colum­bus last night. Very good show — but a very strange feel­ing over­came me when I had to head out to use the rest room before the show started. I passed up a guy using a WALKER in the hall­ways. Maybe we’re too damned old to go to con­certs now?! We sure had a good laugh over that. We also were spec­u­lat­ing about the wrist wear on one of the mem­bers of Chicago. Could it be a Medic Alert bracelet? my DH won­dered out loud…!

  2. moe99 said on June 22nd, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Saw the movie The Vis­i­tor and thought it was extremely well done. Made me think about it all week­end, truly the work of a good movie.

  3. Dorothy said on June 22nd, 2009 at 10:58 am

    We watched that in Feb­ru­ary, Moe and loved it, too. You’re right — it is an extremely thought-provoking movie.

  4. Sue said on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 am

    We took my FIL up north. He has that asbestos dam­age that will even­tu­ally kill him. He’s not at the hospital-bed-in-the-living-room stage yet, but he’s strug­gling for sure and there’s a sense of urgency to spend time together — we all feel it. The rea­son I men­tion this is because while the guys were out­side work­ing on the porch, I was inside read­ing chap­ters from “The Glory of Their Times” to him, a book rec­om­mended to me right here by… who gets credit here? He really enjoyed it and I thank you… Dex­ter?
    Also watched a stu­pid DVD — Ban­dits. Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thorn­ton, Cate Blanchett — it should have worked, and it seemed to go on for­ever. When all the guys in the room think a heist movie’s stu­pid, it’s stupid.

  5. LA Mary said on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:21 am

    The hos­pi­tal bill­boards here are indeed for knee and ankle issues. Cedars Sinai (where the stars go to die) also has weight loss clin­ics, but doesn’t push the bariatric type of weight loss. Robotic surgery (often for fer­til­ity or urol­ogy issues) is adver­tised, and where I work, we hus­tle the Stroke Cen­ter. We also have a big bariatric pro­gram, which I’m told is the most prof­itable part of the hos­pi­tal. I inter­viewed some­one for a posi­tion there the other day, and heard about the 1 – 800-get-slim com­pany. They adver­tise on buses, bus stop benches, bill­boards. The per­son I inter­viewed told me that while good hos­pi­tal bariatric pro­grams require coun­sel­ing and a period of attempt­ing to lose weight through diet and excer­cise before going for the surgery option, those bus ad pro­grams just con­firm your insur­ance cov­er­age and go for it.

  6. Connie said on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:31 am

    I liked the part where the bear climbed the tree.

    I thought Ban­dits was both stu­pid and hys­ter­i­cally funny. Favorite line? Yeast infection.

    Made a trip up to Hol­land on Sat­ur­day and got all caught up in unex­pected road clos­ings due to flash flood­ing. And on Sun­day had the first per­fect pool day of the season.

  7. Mindy said on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:33 am

    No wed­ding this week­end, just the fun movie Death at a Funeral. Worth get­ting when mad­cap belly laughs are required to lift the spirits.

    The Gulf side of Florida is plas­tered with funeral home bill­boards, espe­cially near Sara­sota with its huge pop­u­la­tion of old­sters. We lived on the Atlantic side for a few years and saw bill­boards for the local hos­pi­tals Jess Par­rish and Wuesthoff. Locals referred to them as Just Per­ished and Worst Off, which mar­ried well with the bill­boards for local funeral homes.

  8. basset said on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Mrs. Bas­set used to work at a small-town hos­pi­tal out­side Nashville… Good­lark Med­ical Cen­ter, the locals called it “Goodluck.”

  9. Julie Robinson said on June 22nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    Loved The Vis­i­tor too, and peed my pants watch­ing Death at a Funeral.

    The DH was in Tampa last week and couldn’t get over the heat. So glad I didn’t go and instead had 90 degrees and 500% humid­ity at home. After he got home we watched Eagle Eye, which is to say he watched it and I stayed in the room and read Annie’s Ghost. But I found myself clos­ing the book and only reopen­ing it dur­ing the chases/explosions.

    If you’re ever in West Palm Beach and have to go to the hos­pi­tal, avoid JFK at all costs. My poor sis­ter had to spend two weeks there for removal of an 8 inch wire that was left­over from her heart surgery.

  10. Rana said on June 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    Oh, my god, the bear! What were they thinking?!

  11. mark said on June 22nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    Crack­berry eti­quette? It’s only a ques­tion for those who have no sense of plain old eti­quette. When you fid­dle with a phone, you make a clear state­ment that your needs are greater than those who are inter­rupted or ignored by the fiddling.

    What I find funny is those who think their impor­tance is enhanced because they are on con­stant stand-by sta­tus for oth­ers. Baby-sitters are expected to answer the phone imme­di­ately. Obama can pretty much tell every­body “I’ll get back to you later”, or (more likely) have some­body else give that mes­sage on his behalf.

  12. Jason T. said on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    Up north to a wed­ding this week­end. Always fun to attend wed­dings. They beat funer­als, for one thing. There’s cake.

    You raise an inter­est­ing ques­tion. Why can’t we have cake at funerals?

    “He looks so nat­ural. Very life-like. Say, is this but­ter­cream icing?”

  13. mark said on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    jason t.

    Go with a post-burial wake. Same fun, but with­out the annoy­ance of coast­ers on the cas­ket or crumbs on the corpse.

  14. Joe Kobiela said on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    Ya’ll can have cake at my funeral!
    In fact I plan on hav­ing a big blow out. First off har­vest any­thing you can use. Sec­ond cre­mate me. Third use half the ashes and spread from a air­plane, take the other half and get hold of the Fort Wayne Rugby Club and use the ashes to make a tee and Kick­off a game off my ashes, fin­ish game and let the party begin.
    Cheers,
    Pilot Joe

  15. Jason T. said on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Mark: You’re right, vac­u­um­ing crumbs off of the corpse tends to upset the bereaved. Maybe we could use some kind of a sneeze-guard?

    Joe: With ice cream? “It’s mint choco­late chip … he … he would have wanted it that way.”

  16. Sue said on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    Pre­ma­ture, Joe.
    But while we’re on the sub­ject of dead pilots (pre­ma­ture, Joe!) have any of you heard of the book about a tod­dler who sup­pos­edly “remem­bered” freak­ish details of the life and death of a WWII fighter pilot? I haven’t been able to get hold of a copy from any of the local libraries yet but I’m curi­ous based on what I’ve read. It’s called “Soul Sur­vivor”, ghost­writ­ten for the par­ents, and the only thing I can think of is that it’s a nasty scam to involve a kid in, assum­ing some­thing really bizarre isn’t going on. And by really bizarre, I mean… spooky and where has that pilot been all these years?

  17. mark said on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    sneeze guard.. That’s funny.

  18. Dorothy said on June 22nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    Well, if it’s a closed cas­ket you could use the top of the cas­ket as a table, thereby elim­i­nat­ing the crumbs to be brushed off the corpse. Just spread out the table cloth on top of the cas­ket and much away! Prob­lem solved.

    This con­ver­sa­tion reminds me of the wake scene in “The Big Chill” and Karen (Jo Beth Williams) say­ing you’d never get a crowd this big at her funeral.

  19. Peter said on June 22nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    I’ve always wanted an open buf­fet at my wake, but I was told that it’s only allowed in Cal­i­for­nia — seems there’s rules about the corpse being a toxic waste and all, so in Illi­nois food has to be served on a dif­fer­ent level, which explains those lousy base­ment lounges. I thought it would have been cool to have a carv­ing sta­tion and I would hold the condi­ment tray.

    And speak­ing of death and hos­pi­tals, in north sub­ur­ban Chicago there was Skokie Val­ley Hos­pi­tal, which the locals called Death Valley.

  20. Scout said on June 22nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    Sue, funny you should ask about that kid. Some­one just sent this to me last week:
    http://www.fox8.com/wjw-reincarnation-txt%2C0%2C1190900.story

  21. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 22nd, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    What does a card­board bear do in the woods? Scat, i guess.

    With the even odder rab­bit inter­lude (it goes by quick) i get the impres­sion he was going for some kind of way weird, way wild story on wildlife, and it got trimmed back to a cutout of its for­mer self, or at least the orig­i­nally envi­sioned story.

    Or, the reporter ate some mush­rooms he found in the woods. I think even Wolf Blitzer would blink twice before toss­ing to the next piece.

  22. Sue said on June 22nd, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Scout, thanks. The video just adds to my skep­ti­cism. Every­thing filmed, includ­ing things that if true might have been bet­ter kept pri­vate (like vis­it­ing where the pilot died!), and a child who is either very artic­u­late or very well-rehearsed.

  23. derwood said on June 22nd, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    You raise an inter­est­ing ques­tion. Why can’t we have cake at funerals?

    My mom’s funeral ended up on her birth­day. Her best friend brought a big birth­day cake back to the house after the funeral. We had cake.

    –daron

  24. Catherine said on June 22nd, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Love the bride’s blue brooches — very Michelle Obama!

    And while I heart my smart­phone, here is a recent sit­u­a­tion that drove me nuts: I’m dri­ving my daugh­ter, a good friend of hers, and the friend’s mom to a museum across town; about a 45 minute drive. On the way back, the mom spends the entire time doing god-knows-what on her iphone. Now, she is tenured fac­ulty at a pres­ti­gious research insti­tu­tion and prob­a­bly there is an astronomy-related emer­gency. But does this com­pletely absolve her of mak­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the dri­ver (me)? Am I being oversensitive?

  25. Scout said on June 22nd, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    Cather­ine, I vote no. I’m sorry, but few peo­ple are that impor­tant. If she was one who was, she wouldn’t have been on the museum trip to begin with.

    I had a friend that inter­rupted every sin­gle con­ver­sa­tion we ever had with repeated breaks to thumb type text mes­sages. She explained that she needed to be on call for her teenaged daugh­ters, which I totally under­stand, except they were just tex­ting non­sense shit back and forth like, “would you rather eat mon­key meat or tree bark?” And I would think, oh for cryin’ out loud, just go bond with your kid instead of wast­ing my time! Note the past tense used in my first sen­tence of this paragraph.

  26. mcegg said on June 22nd, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    Reply to Dorothy at com­ment #18…

    I’ll come, and I’ll bring a date.

  27. Kirk said on June 22nd, 2009 at 4:43 pm

    We went to a baby shower, but the hors d’oeuvres were heavy and there was an open bar.

  28. beb said on June 22nd, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    Get­ting to hos­pi­tals and bill­boards, there’s a hos­pi­tal in the Detroit area adver­tis­ing on the radio that since you would will­ing drive a half hour to get to a good restau­rant, shouldn’t you also be will­ing to drive a half hour to get to a bet­ter hos­pi­tal? My thought is that if I’m hav­ing a heart attack I’d much rather to the hos­pi­tal “around the cor­ner” instead.

  29. Jolene said on June 22nd, 2009 at 8:03 pm

    Where is Tim Goe­glein now? Why, work­ing for Focus on the Fam­ily, of course.

    In this arti­cle, the new head (i.e., James Dobson’s replace­ment) com­ments favor­ably on Pres. Obama’s recent statements/actions on father­hood. He sounds, actu­ally, like about as decent a guy as you could expect for that orga­ni­za­tion. I guess Goeglein’s hir­ing indi­cates that they do, indeed, take the idea of for­give­ness seriously.

  30. Deborah said on June 22nd, 2009 at 8:47 pm

    A friend of mine died in St. Louis a few years back. He was a super cre­ative guy. He had a brain tumor, a slow demise so he planned his entire funeral down to the last detail. It was a blast, included an Elvis imper­son­ator, tons of booze and food. He designed and made the con­tainer for his ashes. There was a life size card­board cut out of him that you could get your photo taken with, sent to you later. It may sound tacky but it was so fit­ting for this guy. Still makes me laugh and cry when I think about it.

    As for wed­dings… my hus­band and I got mar­ried on our land in remote north­ern New Mex­ico in 2000. We had 100 guests, a tent, a fancy caterer from Santa Fe, straw bales wrapped in off-white can­vas for seat­ing, no run­ning water or elec­tric­ity. If I do say so myself, it was beau­ti­ful and peo­ple are still com­ment­ing on it nearly 10 years later. It took a lot of plan­ning (and money) but it was so worth it. And my hus­band and I both wore black (we’re designers).

  31. Jolene said on June 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 pm

    Re tech­nol­ogy and civil­ity, John Kelly, a WaPo colum­nist has started a cam­paign called Rad­i­cal Civil­ity, com­plete with its own logo. Its first focus is on stamp­ing out – politely, of course – the prac­tice of tex­ting in movie theaters.

    The lit-up cell phone screens are, appar­ently, damn distracting.

  32. Kirk said on June 22nd, 2009 at 10:41 pm

    A daily five-minute civil­ity les­son would make schoolkids much bet­ter cit­i­zens than the time they waste every day on dron­ing the pledge to The Flag.

  33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:32 pm

    ‘Scuse, i must have walked in at a cranky moment, but before i duck back out — the Pledge of Alle­giance takes maybe 20 sec­onds if you take it real slow.

    And the point is — we don’t pledge alle­giance to a Crown, or an inbred per­son who inher­ited the ranch from their royal blood­line; we don’t pledge alle­giance to the elected pres­i­dent, which i’m think­ing many would have been grate­ful for the last eight years; we don’t pledge alle­giance to the land, or the blood and soil, or to Der Vater­land or Matyushka; we don’t pledge alle­giance to the Volk or Holy Mother Church or the Great White Dome of the Capitol.

    We pledge alle­giance to the pub­lic com­mon goods, the pub­lic things, the “res pub­lica”, to the Repub­lic for which the dang thing stands: that which we hold in com­mon, a nation of laws, crafted to bring the great­est pos­si­ble lib­erty and jus­tice for all.

    Then, those twenty sec­onds over, you can talk about text mes­sag­ing eti­quette to your heart’s con­tent. Yes, i spent last week teach­ing hun­dreds of kids how to do a proper flag cer­e­mony, includ­ing that tricky tri­an­gu­lar fold thing that gives you a Val­ley Forge tri­corn and not a shape­less squar­ish mass. There’s some­thing about hav­ing a few uni­fy­ing rit­u­als i hate to see dis­carded because it’s so uncool to say any­thing in unison.

    Deb­o­rah, your wed­ding sounds spec­tac­u­lar. Long may you both wave over Abiquiu!

  34. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 22nd, 2009 at 11:48 pm

    Here’s a cheerier bit of blog­gage from up in Nancy’s back­yard — http://​iowa​hawk​.type​pad​.com/​i​o​w​a​h​a​w​k​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​c​a​n​t​-​f​o​r​g​e​t​-​t​h​e​-​m​o​t​o​r​-​c​i​t​y.html

  35. CrazyCatLady said on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:00 am

    We had cake at my mom’s Memo­r­ial pic­nic. She despised funer­als and always said she would never make us go through that. Since she died the night before Christ­mas Eve, we had her memo­r­ial later the next sum­mer. It was a won­der­ful party, with­out the reli­gious bull she hated. It was a blast!!

  36. Dexter said on June 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 am

    SUE: Yeah, I rec­om­mended that book and I think it was Kirk who sec­onded the motion. Try and get the cas­sette tape ver­sion of that book…I ordered it from my local Carnegie lend­ing library and had it from a Cleve­land library in no time.
    Wahoo Sam Crawford’s story of play­ing for his “Wahoo” team is priceless…travel from town to town in a cou­ple of wag­ons, the cook bought round steak and bread and that’s what they ate, along with apples they came across , and other such truck.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    We went to a wed­ding Saturday…the cou­ple is from Ten­nessee, and the bride was mar­ried bare­footed. We’ve known the bride since she was a a baby , and it was nice they got mar­ried, after being together fif­teen years.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    WHOA! That Cleve­land bear story was hilar­i­ous!
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    My bike ride was done on a 1951 JC Hig­gins cruiser bike that I bought 15 years ago in Defi­ance at R Bike Shop ( used to be the West­ern Auto, I think)
    It just seemed right to break out the antique . I man­aged eleven miles on it before dark­ness set in. It has a very high gear (one speed coaster brake ) but when you get mov­ing at about ten miles per hour it becomes effort­less and a lotta fun.

  37. Linda said on June 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 am

    We didn’t have cake at my sister’s funeral, but the usual big honkin’ catered spread that Polish-Americans have for any event. And the desert was key lime pie.

  38. ROgirl said on June 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 am

    The vin­tage brooches are the per­fect touch.

    The bear story and the “rein­car­nated” boy story were both on Fox. I rest my case.

    I went to the vis­i­ta­tion for the hus­band of a friend last week. Dropped dead at the age of 62. He hap­pened to be a seri­ous alco­holic and had some health prob­lems, but still. It was open cas­ket and I didn’t get too close, but I could see him laid out in an alcove at the far end of the room, an Amer­i­can flag folded under his head, spot­lights illu­mi­nat­ing the space, glow­ing a ghastly shade of salmony tan.

  39. Connie said on June 23rd, 2009 at 8:19 am

    Learn­ing how to fold the flag prop­erly will serve them in good stead later on when they become bak­ers. Just this week­end I made filled phyllo good­ies which involves fold­ing like a flag.

  40. Tyler L. said on September 2nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    I just read your blog and thought you might be inter­ested to know, the Perma-Log web­site is now updated with pic­tures of every­thing on the prop­erty, and it is all for sale.

    Tyler
    Perma-log employee

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