Remembering Pamela Espeland

Incomprehensible that Pamela Espeland is no longer with us. 

My encounters with her were few and far between, though over the years I got to know her fairly well. I met her at a book awards ceremony at the Minnesota Humanities Center in St. Paul, where we were seated at the same table. It may have been 2006, she was still with Free Spirit Publishing at the time. That summer we found ourselves attending the same Writers' Union meetings in Linden Hills. On one occasion, the subject under discussion was arts reviewing. Hilary and I had recently been to the Dakota to hear a set in which tenor saxophonist David Murray and two accomplices succeeded in jamming for an hour while avoiding a single musical reference to one another, and I expressed frustration that you could read an entire jazz review without finding out what kind of jazz was going to be performed.

"Well, David Murrray is still a great tenor saxophonist," came a voice from the other side of the room. It was Pamela.

As art-lovers and friends have invariably mentioned in tributes following her sudden death, Pamela and her husband, John Whiting, went to many concerts, readings, gallery openings, and plays in the course of a week. Sometimes three in a single evening. A few years ago we ran into her at Plymouth Congregational Church, where poet Louis Jenkins was reading from his last collection, Where Your House Is Now. The next night, there they were again, at the grand opening of a South Indian fabric studio loft in Northeast Minneapolis.

"How do you know Anita?..." "What drew you to this event?" And so on.

Loaded with accumulated expertise, both local and international, she graciously highlighted the best upcoming events in her weekly MinnPost Artscape column. 

During the pandemic, of course, there wasn't as much going on, no one got out so much, either. Hilary and I watched a variety of performances on-line— jazz, classical, theatrical. On one occasion we tuned in to a live show at Crooners given by jazz singer Kurt Elling that was also available for streaming, and were impressed by the emotional intensity of the performance. Was Elling always this wired up, expressive? Or were we witnessing a rare explosion of energy following the lockdown?

I knew Pamela was a big Elling fan, so I sent her a note. A few days later I got a reply that will give you some idea of her knowledge, enthusiasm, and eagerness to help others enjoy the things she enjoyed. The last few lines are almost unbearably poignant.    

Hi John,

Good to hear from you.

I thought Friday’s show was one of the best I’ve seen from Kurt, and I’ve probably seen him 20-30 times (because he never does the same show twice). That he started with a 20-minute improvised scat-a-thon was astonishing. He let us know he was going to do his show, his way.

We happened to be sitting in front of the sound board, where his manager was hanging out. More than once, I heard his manager sound surprised by what Kurt was up to on stage.

Kurt has been a road warrior for years, performing 300+ shows every year. I’m sure the pandemic and being stuck at home were hard on him. Midway through the pandemic, he and his family moved back to Chicago from New York. Early in the pandemic, he started a “Cocktails with Kurt” weekly livestream that kept him in touch with his audience (and made them aware of his politics, many for the first time). He followed that with a virtual tour - six weeks of concerts in a row - that you could subscribe to and get a T-shirt.

When he returned to Chicago, he immediately started streaming live performances from the Green Mill and also from his porch. Because he has spent a lifetime building relationships with audiences all over the world, people all over the world tuned into his livestreams. For at least one concert, unless I misheard this, he had 130,000 viewers. Thousands were watching Saturday’s livestream. If you were watching on CrowdCast, its counter told only a small part of the story.

His last two studio albums, “The Questions” (2018) and “Secrets Are the Best Stories” (2020), were both swallowed by the pandemic. Even though “Secrets” won a Grammy, I’m not sure how well it did. His next album comes out this fall - funk and dance music with Charlie Hunter.

All of the above is a circuitous route to answering your question. Yes, emotion and inventiveness are typical of his shows. He sings what he wants. He writes his own lyrics to instrumental tracks. He’s an expressive guy who loves what he does and thrives on the connection he makes with his audience. And his voice! I’ve never heard him sing such low notes and jump so many octaves, finally ending with falsetto.

And I’m sure he could not wait to get back on the road. This is true for a lot of the great ones. Fred Hersch has also hit the ground running.

I’m glad you heard him, and glad you felt him. I’ve been to several events over the past few weeks (a surprising number, all things considered) and this was the first one that grabbed me.

All best, and good for us! We’re still here.

P.

 

Semper Itasca

 

I like to call it Minnesota's little Yellowstone, not because of the wildlife—our best sighting on a recent visit was a porcupine waddling across the road—but because of the classic lodge, the stately pines, and the succession of minor sites to visit on your way from the Brower Visitors' Center near the park's east entrance to the Mary Gibbs Visitors' Center at the other end of the lake. You have Preacher's Grove, the Indian Peace Pipe stop, the Wegman Cabin (which makes me think of a sleek greyhound every time we pass by), the campground, the beach, the museum, the canoe and bike rental shop, the U of Minnesota Biological Station (established in 1909), the Indian graveyard, and so on.

Lake Itasca is shaped like a tuning fork, long, thin, and bifurcated; its beauty reveals itself mostly via sidelong glances through the trees, often from the road along the high bank on the northeast side. The west side of the lake is inaccessible except by water or intermittently along two shortish trails—the Dr. Roberts Trail and the Schoolcraft Trail—but they cover only a fraction of its length. And that's good. Because one of the underlying, yet crucial, virtues of Itasca State Park is that all the while you're enjoying its recreational offerings, you remain dimly aware that the greater part of the park is inaccessible to humans, and hasn't been altered much in more than a hundred years.

Hilary and I hiked both the Roberts and the Schoolcraft trails during our recent two-day visit, along with the hilly three-mile Hiking Club loop that includes parts of the Oziwindib and Deer Park Trails, and the BoHall Trail, which took us deep into the relatively undisturbed scientific and natural area. The bird-life was meager but the turning leaves, though sporadic, were all the more dazzling for that, and we took our time. The vivid but often isolated yellows, oranges, and reds were rendered more striking by other trees nearby, including the stately white and red pines, that were still rich shades of green. I think some of the combinations, enhanced by the bright sun and sharp cool air, were among the best I've ever seen.  

But we're not the type to say, "Let's go north to see the changing leaves." The pale purple asters weren't dazzling, but they were nevertheless superb in their own way. The green grasses bending uniformly in a marsh. The grayish green of the arrow-wood bushes.  A blue beech, its leaves dipped in mauve. There's always something to see, or feel, even in the depths of winter. Let's go any time.

The cabin we'd rented was small—Bert's Cabin # 6. I would estimate it to be 12 x 30 feet. But it had everything you might need—kitchen, bathroom, couch, table, bed—all in close proximity. It didn't take more than three steps to walk from one room to the other. The space heater was loud, but the deck out front was ample, and the nearby cabins weren't that close—fifty yards or more away.

We met our nearest neighbors because they stepped out to see the pileated woodpecker that was wandering across the road. (Bizarre behavior.) They'd been coming up for fifteen years with the same and other friends in varying combinations. We liked them immediately.

"But there are only five of you, and four cars in the lot!" I said.

"We're persnickety who we drive up with," one of the women said with a knowing grin that reminded me of a scene from The Adams Family.

We never saw them again, though we spent quite a bit of time sitting out on the deck. After dinner we watched the light fade from the sky. Only three stars appeared in the narrow space open to the sky amid the pines. No traffic noise. It was so calm and quiet all I could hear was my own ears ringing.

On our last night the temperature dropped down to 45 degrees in the night. In the morning, before dawn, we listened to the hoot of the great-horned owl. And then the report of shotguns. One. Three. Eight. Eleven. They came from every side, but always remote, like a feeble neighborhood Fourth of July celebration in the next county.

"I wonder if duck hunting season started this morning," I said. "seems sort of early for that."

"Can you hunt in a state park?" Hilary said.

"I have no idea," I said. "But those shots sound pretty far away."

I thought of the wood ducks we'd flush on the Schoolcraft Trail the previous morning. Not very meaty, and squealing with all their might as they made their escape.

Before we left the park that morning we took a last two-mile hike through the woods on the Roberts Trail. It was overcast, and the colors were muted. At one point we passed a trio of hikers: young girl, middle-ages man with pony tail (Native American?), and elderly woman. "It's a beautiful morning," I said. "There's always something to see on the Roberts Trail," he said cheerfully. (He reminded me of Dave, the short-order cook on Northern Exposure.)

Then the little girl said. "Why are you hiking with ski poles?"

"These's aren't ski poles, they're hiking poles," I said. "They come in handy on muddy terrain, give your upper body a workout, and keep your knees healthy. You should get some."

"I'm NINE," she said, with emphasis.

Then grandma, who was bringing up the rear, said, "I could probably use a set." 

As we left the park we became aware of another event we knew nothing about. A hundred-mile bike race was in progress between Park Rapids and Itasca. First we saw the refreshment station set up in a parking lot near Douglas Lodge. There were a few hand-made signs along the road, hardly legible. As we headed south out of the park we began to see the bikers on the opposite shoulder pedaling north past us in small groups. They were stretched out, with long gaps between the clusters, all the way to Park Rapids. (That explained why several guests staying in nearby cabins had left before dawn.)

In Park Rapids we made our final major discovery. The annual Art Leap festival and driving tour was under way. Nine galleries were open in town, with twenty more spread out across the countryside from Akeley to Menahga.

You gotta love those back-country names.

We had a lot of driving ahead of us as it was, so we grabbed a latte at Bella Café, wandered the Beagle and Wolf Bookstore next door for a few minutes, then headed over to the nearby Nemeth Art Center. Hilary had picked up a festival brochure and noticed that an early Alex Soth series titled "Paris / Minnesota" was on exhibit.  More later about that....

Memoir or Nature Guide? An Author Visit

When I mentioned to the author that I might stop by the following day to pick up a few books, it wasn't the kind of remark that committed either one of us to be around. It turned out to be a wonderful day, sunny, breezy, and cool, and I sent an email, left a message on Carol's voicemail, and Hilary and I headed over to Northeast Minneapolis to try our luck, intending to make the trip worthwhile in any case by taking a stroll along the Mississippi in hope of sighting a warbler or two, and maybe picking up a few things at Holy Land Deli or the food co-op on Central Avenue.

Carol wasn't home. I rang the buzzer several times. We waited. "Maybe she's out in the garage unpacking books," I said. We were returning to the car when I heard the aluminum screen to the side door rattle and there she was, smiling as she descended the concrete steps to the back yard.

"So glad you came," she said. "And hello, Hilary. I feel like I already know you. Come on back to the garage and I'll get you some books. Tessy won't hurt you."

Tessie is a dog. I recognized her immediately, because she figures prominently in the book that Carol and I had been working on intermittently for the last four years—Critters, Creeks, Neighbors, and Woods: a Natural History of Isanti County. Tessie even appears on the back cover, sitting in the driver's seat of Carol's pale green Hyundai Tucson, which she calls the Frog.

 For most of its life, the book didn't have a title. We weren't sure what kind of a book it would turn out to be. And as we sat on plastic lawn chairs inside the cyclone fence, Carol said, "John, I have to ask you, is this book a nature book or a memoir?"

"I would say it's both. That's part of the charm."

I happened upon the job purely by accident. One morning, while scrolling aimlessly through my Facebook feed, one of those "people you make know" bars showed up—almost invariably strangers, though I'm sometimes curious to find out who, among the individuals I've "friended," also has this unlikely individual as a "friend." On that morning someone I actually knew showed up. Didn't I take a class from that woman in grad school, many long years ago? Yes, it was her.

I didn't imagine Carol would remember me. She'd worked with hundreds of students over the years, and  I was in the twilight of my grad school career. I never finished the class--though I still have my unfinished essay on Abbe Raynal's Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of Europeans in the East and West Indies in the basement somewhere. Who knows? It might come in handy someday.

In those days Carol was the head of the James Ford Bell Rare Books Library, on the fourth floor of Wilson Library, and she struck me as a smart, fun-loving woman. I also recalled that during the brief interval that I knew her, she was in the process of self-publishing a book about owls. In those days, that meant "camera-ready" pages and metal plates.

I sent her a message, re-introduced myself,  and asked her what she was up to. She replied that she was retired, now ran a used bookstore, and was trying to complete a nature book about a chunk of somewhat marginal land—woods, creeks, bogs, fields—she had purchased in small increments north of Cambridge. I wrote back that I edited, designed, and produced books for a living.

"Maybe I should hire you," she replied, with the cheery enthusiasm and courage that came to characterize every phase of our project.

Thus began a four-year partnership, conducted almost entirely via email and snail-mail: editing text, extracting photos from Word documents, formatting pages. I'm sure I have more than thirty flash-drives with Carol's handwriting on them. And I now have twelve gigabytes of material in my Carol Urness folder, though the only files worth keeping, perhaps, are the final PDFs and the InDesign files for the text and cover, which include all the graphics.  

It goes without saying that the work was intermittent. We constructed the book, chapter by chapter, and there were extended breaks as Carol dealt with unhappy personal issues. A long-time friend who lived next door and also managed the bookshop died suddenly; another friend lost a struggle with memory issues and had to be moved into a care facility. The pandemic didn't speed things along much, either.

But it was fun. The text was personal and jaunty but also full of particulars about spiders, frogs, mushrooms, and wolves. Working with Carol was like taking a walk in the woods with a skilled naturalist while also getting to know her life story and her friends--Jessie, Mark, and Arnie, to name a few. 

As the parts of the book finally came together, timing became crucial, because Carol had received a grant from the University of Minnesota to help finance it, and the deadline for dispersing the money was approaching. Yet the printer we were using had difficulty handling the logistics of receiving payment from several bureaucratic sources for a single project.

In the same way that an ocean storm leaves a residue of gently lapping waves behind, the project's final issue was the cost of delivery. Carol couldn't believe the quoted price was correct—it was too low!—and she almost demanded to pay more.

I volunteered to stop by and help unload the books. Carol had a few neighbors lined up, but said she would contact me if need be. A few days later she let me know that the delivery driver had unloaded the entire shipment in about two minutes, and all was well.

A week later I sent her a note, curious to find out how things were going, and perhaps missing our frequent exchanges a little. Here is her reply.

John--Thanks. I have been doing pretty well, considering that getting the book somehow knocked me off me feet. I really couldn't believe it, I guess. I just sat down and cried. Took copies to the people in the country yesterday and stopped at Scout and Morgan, a good bookshop in Cambridge. They will take it at 60/40 so I get $15 per copy. They have a stock of 25,000 books so they know what they are doing.

 Scott and Morgan (named for the wife's two rescue dogs) ... and Corner Books [Carol's shop] would be the only places selling it. I think it works. My chief pain is not getting the mailing boxes yet from Office Max. I would really like the people who helped pay for it to get their copies... anyway, all is just fine. If you want to stop by, Wednesday afternoon would work. I know you will like the book.

Thanks. Carol

P.S. Not many unusual birds in the country--swans gathering at Mud Lake... but at least the country looks green now and mushrooms are showing up ...

As we sat chatting in the yard that afternoon, Carol offered to sign a book for me.

"I've got to tell you," I replied, "that at my first book signing, I thought my personalized remarks were uniformly brilliant. Since that time—that was twenty years ago—I have written so many simple-minded, stupid, and embarrassing things in the course of signing books that I've pretty much given it up. I suspect that every copy of the Seven States  travel book that I've personalized says either "Happy trails!" or "Enjoy the trip!"

"I'm so glad you said that," Carol said. "I've experienced that already. 'Dear, dear friend ...' and then I can't think of a single thing to say!" We laughed.

Carol was waiting for the auto repair shop to deliver her Frog so she could visit another friend in memory care. 

"We'd be happy to drop you off at the repair shop," Hilary said, "We're just out enjoying the afternoon."

"Oh, I wouldn't trouble you."

"It's not a big deal."

And so, we all hopped in our car--a generic Toyota with manual transmission that we might have named the Silverfish, if there had been any point to it--and off we went.

_____________

Though it isn’t germane to the story, it might be worth mentioning that when my grandmother died, she had an antique book about American history in her possession that passed  somehow to her son, Jim. His much younger sister Eleanor (my mother) was an enthusiast of books, history, and reading, and though it wasn’t a big deal, she expressed regret to me several times over the years that she hadn’t gotten that book. Jim and Ellie are no longer with us, but a few years ago I told this story to Jim’s daughter, Pat, with whom Hilary and I often share a lively breakfast.

“I have that book!” Pat exclaimed. “But you should have it. You’re the book person in the family.” Au contraire. Pat is a voracious reader, and so is Hilary. They often exchange books at these breakfasts, and when they get going about their book clubs and reading lists, I just sit back and listen.

But Pat insisted. And I was curious to see the by-now-legendary volume. It turned out to be a small, weathered but intact edition, printed in 1782, of The Revolution in America by none other than L’ Abbé Guillaume Thomas Fronçois Raynal, the man whose work I’d been desultorily studying in Carol Urness’s class so many years ago.

Morning Idyll on the North Shore

 

Rocky bay at the mouth of the Temperance River

thunderstorms rolled through in the night,

loud and worrisome, though I didn’t

hear any trees coming down nearby.

Some loud thunderclaps,

the kind that go beyond sound into shock.

Heavy rain, of course.

But at 5 a.m. the stars were blazing:

Cassiopeia, Auriga, and the Pleiades,

melded into a fuzzy ball by the still-humid night air.

 

Now Hilary examines the rocks on the beach

beside her camp chair, one by one.

She shows me a few. I give them back,

expressing interest and admiration.

“You should keep that,” I might say.

“Those are agates. Maybe Thompsonite.”

“This one has a red line through it. What’s that?”

“Could be jasper,” I take a wild guess.

 

A sweet, vegetative smell permeates the air,

like rotting wintergreen or Labrador tea.

Four mergansers are drifting at the mouth of the river.

(Not drifting, fishing.)

And two fat gulls fly by.

 

These shelves of rock look like walruses,

struggling to come ashore across the pebbles,

their children: reds and grays,

butterscotch, an occasional green.

Here’s one that’s etched in green foliage.

"Don’t throw it away. I’m going to keep it.”

 

The blue sky advances, like Oklahoma,

but it isn’t getting any warmer.

Now a skein of muted sunlight dances toward us

from the horizon across the waves.