Charles Martin Cosgriff, M.D.

Believe me, you do not want Marty as your kindly old MD. Even I will admit that. For starters, I doubt I'd be all that kindly. Then there's fact that I don't care for blood, which might just make being a doctor a tad difficult. But perhaps I could be mistaken for one.

I did actually play a doctor in the background of the movie Little Murder, which was filmed in my neighborhood back in 2009. I was in two blink and you miss them scenes but I was in there, lab coat and all. So there's that. I could believably be mistaken for a doctor. In fact I was once mistaken for one. Or, more precisely, the doctor was mistaken for me.

Me Uncle Frank, who lived up in Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, had to have surgery. He told me that as he was coming out of it and still very groggy, a doctor came over to speak to him. He thought that the doctor was me. All the while he was answering the surgeon's questions Uncle Frank said he was thinking things like, "Marty's not a doctor," or "Marty's not here, he's in Detroit," and the like. A funny story, in a cutesy kind of way. I assured him it could not have been have been me, for the reasons he cited plus one other. "What's that?" Uncle Frank demanded to know.

"You survived the surgery," I replied with a laugh. 

You know what? When he told the story the next time he added that reason to his list. 

Right Turns (Not Political)

I do love Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. But there are things about it which take adjustment, such as turn signals. You can trust them.

In Detroit, a great big nope goes out to that. A driver may have a signal engaged but it means diddly squat. Maybe they're turning, maybe not, and there's no sense trying to determine which it is. From what I've seen of other major towns, Indianapolis, Columbus, New York City, Dryden (especially Dryden) you simply cannot believe them. The driver is going to do whatever they please. A turn signal if anything means, I haven't decided yet, but you better not cross me.

Yet in the UP, they cast disparaging looks at you when you don't turn right in front of them when their right signal is clearly flashing as you wait to turn yourself. I had one guy noticeably staring me down when I failed to do that. You should have went, his expression said clearly. You must have seen my flasher.

Well, yeah, I did. But from where I live that lacks meaning. It takes me awhile to believe people are actually going to do what their actions indicate. Sorry, UP.

Doctor Marty

Believe me, you do not want Marty as your kindly old MD. Even I will admit that. For starters, I doubt I'd I'd be all that kindly. Then there's fact that I don't care for blood, which might just make being a doctor a tad difficult. But perhaps I could be mistaken for one.

I did actually play a doctor in the background of the movie Little Murder which was filmed in my neighborhood back in 2009. I was in two blink and you miss them scenes but I was in there, lab coat and all. So there's that. I could believably be mistaken for a doctor. In fact I was once mistaken for a doctor. Or more precisely, the doctor was mistaken for me.

Me Uncle Frank who lived up in Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula had to have surgery. He told me that as he was coming out of surgery and still very groggy, a doctor came over to speak to him. He thought that the doctor was me. All the while he was answering the surgeon's questions Uncle Frank said he was thinking things like, "Marty's not a doctor," or "Marty's not here, he's in Detroit," and the like. A funny story, in a cutesy kind of way. I assured him it could not have been have been me, for the reasons he cited plus one other. "What's that?" he demanded to know.

"You survived the surgery," I replied with a laugh. 

You know what? When he told the story the next time he added that reason to his list.

Time to Move

I love Hessel. The quiet, the isolation; it offers a chance to charge your batteries outside the pressure of the real world. You're simply away from it all and can catch your breath.

But maybe the world is creeping up upon Hessel. Maybe it's time to move on, deeper into the interior of Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. Civilization it seems is catching up to the Les Cheneaux Islands. I had to wait for two cars to pass on Cedar Street before I could pull out of my driveway yesterday. Two cars.

The hustle and bustle were suffocating.

Odd Hessel

I know that it's the very definition of a first world problem. I'm in Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula in late September. It's unseasonably warm; temperatures are in the low 70s with bright sunshine. And especially in light of the recent issues down south in the after effects of Hurricane Helene, I've got it well. So what's the trouble, Marty?

Well, the Sun seems harsh, for lack of a better term. It's lower in the horizon and feels unusually bright. The sky, an expanse of very light blue virtually every day I've been here, is also abnormally striking. It almost looks surreal, as though not blue enough.

So I wonder: is the Sun harder on the eyes this time of year? Does its angle towards the Earth make the sky more uncomfortable? Even in the shadows on the ground I find such a higher definition of brightness and shade that it can be disconcerting, indeed almost other-worldly. Is there an astronomical explanation for this or am I psychologically superimposing ideas upon it?

There's advantages, to be sure. The earlier sunsets and later sunrises make it easier to see the starry night sky, which I love. I saw a couple of shooting stars at around 5 AM yesterday. In summer, it's already dawn by that time. I have to be up at two to see such things in June. 

I still like being here. Yet it never felt this way before, during the day anyway. 

Eerie Hessel

Earlier this month they repaved Cedar Street in front of our house in Hessel, Michigan in the glorious Upper Peninsula. I took a picture a couple hours before dawn the day after the work. This is it:

It's kind of eerie, don't you think? The interesting thing for me is that it reminds me of a recurring dream I had as child. Really. I remember a lone street lamp in the near distance against a black backdrop, with a vehicle parked underneath, not at all unlike the picture. In the dream, there were voices beyond the darkness, and maybe barking dogs, which I could never quite make out. I can almost hear them again looking at this image.

I like the picture, though what inspired me to go outside at around 4 AM to take it I don't know. And I must admit it's weirding me out a little.

Everyone Needs a Getaway

While picking up a few things at a local store in Hessel, a tiny village in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, I engaged the cashier is a little conversation. "I'm up here from Detroit, doing a few things with our cabin," I said at one point.

"Yeah," the cashier, a local, replied, "I have to get down to Harrison and work on our place there."

Harrison is just about smack in the middle of the mitten, or lower peninsula, of Michigan. "It's so quiet and peaceful," the man continued.

Though I didn't pursue it, I couldn't help but think, 'Quiet and peaceful there? You're in the sparsely populated UP. How could it possibly be quieter downstate (downstate is generally frowned upon by us Yoopers, folks from da UP) than Hessel?' 

We all need a getaway, I suppose. I just can't see what he's getting away from in Hessel by going two hours south. No offense, Harrison, because I've been there and you're cool. But escaping Hessel at all...I can't wrap my head around that.

The Big City

After spending this past weekend in Toronto, and after having spent time in New York in my more or less recent personal history, I have to admit that large cities do have their appeal. It's something I would never have conceded, well, not that long ago.

They can be vibrant; there are certainly things happening and things to do. Walkable downtowns, a term I would have scoffed at, again, not that long ago, are enticing and entertaining. They offer stuff to do without the worry of parking, or of getting here to there in good time. I have to imagine you could keep yourself busy as well as fed and amused with a wide variety of opportunities within easy range for many weeks.

There are downsides. Perhaps it's simply because I was there most recently, but Toronto has a lot of people. A. Lot. It felt more crowded than NYC, and New York City is packed. That walkable downtown did have its own share of pedestrian traffic jams and human walls. Too, there were noticeable homeless camps, and homeless in the streets, many clearly with issues. You feel for them, but what can one person do at a given moment?

The relative calm of Detroit is more my style city wise, and even that pales compared to the laid back joy of Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. Yet a part of me wouldn't mind living in a high rise in New York or Toronto for, oh, maybe a year, just to swim in the lifestyle of the big city for a bit.

A Different World

It's sometimes hard to appreciate how different the same place can be. 

I don't notice the change in seasons in and around home all that much. They're so slow and subtle that by the time you realize that the Sun isn't rising until 7:30 in the morning it isn't rising until 7:50. You don't get that it's been setting well before 8 until it's setting at 6:45. Then I visit Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula in late September and the differences from the Fourth of July, the last time I was here, are stark.

Yesterday I was star gazing at 6 AM. No sign of old Sol, not even a hint that he might be prowling about. But the stars were out in force even with a nearly full Moon, if you looked in the right direction. At the same time in July the Sun has obliterated the full Moon by almost a half hour. I've taken my morning walks then as early as 5, in a reasonable amount of dawn color.

Last night I went to the 6:30 Mass in Detour, around 35 minutes east of Hessel, for my Sunday obligation. Yeah, I know, like me Uncle Charles used to tease, I'm really a Seventh Day Adventist. That's funny if you appreciate religious humor. But however that may be, by the time Mass was over and I was making the drive back to Hessel, while it wasn't exactly dark it was surely the evening twilight. And it was dark by the time I was back at the house just after 8. 8 PM in Hessel three months ago? We would still have daylight for nearly two more hours, and twilight until about 11.

It's still great because it's still Hessel. It just doesn't look like it.

Where It's At

This column probably doesn't apply if you aren't from Michigan. But the great debate in our state (that word series is uncomfortably close to alliteration) is, where does Up North begin? 

The Thumb isn't up north. Don't get me wrong: the Thumb is wonderful. It's the number two spot in the state. It has a lot going for it. But it ain't up north. It's too far south, too close to Detroit.

Some say up north begins at Bay City. Well, you start to taste it there, after mile 162 on Interstate 75. Yet you merely taste it, just get a whiff of up north air. 

West Branch? Just a lunch stop along the way.

Grayling? Gaylord? Too touristy. But you can feel the change from downstate as the positive vibes of the north country begin to reach you.

Mackinaw City, right at the top of the Mitt? Oh, oh, oh, so close it's tantalizing. Yet it too, along with Mackinac Island, while great places to visit, simply have too many vacationers, at least during the peak summer months.

But next, finally crossing the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, you are Up North. The rest of the state is just an extension of Detroit. It's that simple.

The Michigan Air Force

The Michigan Air Force has arrived. I can't recall its attacks ever being as relentless as they've been the last few days here in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. They just keep on coming. It's putting something of a mild damper (mild because being in da U.P. overcomes all other of life's troubles) on me Hessel visit.

For the uninitiated, I'm talking about mosquitos. Their assaults against ol' Marty have been quite successful this year. They've driven me from the front porch and the garage, forcing me to read on the living room couch or at the kitchen table rather than in my usual spots. Normally the tiny miscreants don't appear until the late evening but they're flitting about at all hours lately. 

It's become more than a nuisance. My arms and legs are now completely water repellant, me having slapped at the pesky air raiders with a wet brush brush loaded with Thompson's Water Seal countless times while sealing the front porch this week. The clothes I wore while seeing to that chore can't be washed because the slapping of water repellant on them has rendered the shorts and t-shirt impervious to wetness. I removed them from the washer last night completely dry. 

Bug spray isn't stopping them, leading me to wonder if they've mutated into a strain unaffected by the products currently on the market. Yard guard and citronella candles? The skeeters laugh at them. I can hear it. It's a miserable little high pitched, cartoonish guffaw. Kind of snide and dismissive too.

I cannot remember the last time I was so eaten up with mosquito bites. But then, I am in Hessel. They can't drive me out. Work demands will do that quickly enough, and only then because I do have a conscience. Of sorts.

Just as Well

One of life's little pleasures for me is going old school and listening to baseball games on the radio in the garage of our place when in Hessel, in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. There's something about the anticipation of waiting to be told what's happening which adds excitement to hearing my Detroit Tigers in action. In certain ways, it's better than actually seeing the game. It sparks the imagination. Radio is a book for the ear.

Imagine, then, my consternation when the power went out in the third inning of yesterday's game. Zach McKinstry had just aggressively took third on a Riley Greene single. Dan Dickerson, the play by play man describing the actions, had just called McKinstry safe when the radio clicked off. 

Hitting the on button did not turn the thing back on. I checked the power box in the garage and the breakers were on. Trying the house itself, I found the breakers all on in the electric panel in the back bedroom closet. Flipping lights throughout the house with no response told me what I had by then presumed: there was a power outage. I looked up the local power company on my phone (for of course I had no other Internet access with no power), Cloverland Electric for what that's worth, and reported the issue. Their site told me that around 1300 people in my area had no electricity but they were working on it. So, as the afternoon had bright sunshine in a cloudless sky, I settled into a lawn chair under a cedar tree and read a book.

A couple of hours later as I was in the kitchen, the light came on. Racing out to the garage, I turned the radio on just in time to hear Dickerson proclaim, "...and Texas beats Detroit in the the first game of this series, five to nothing."

I guess it wasn't the worst time for the power to go out. It saved me a bit of anguish.

Nine Oh Six

While tooling around yesterday for work and not wasting my day away at all, being very productive, you know, paying Ron's Social Security, the odometer on my new old van hit 906. Well, the last three digits were 906. My new old van is way beyond a mere 906 miles. The full number was 201,906 miles if all you OCD folks among my readers simply must know.

906 is the area code for Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. The significance is that upon seeing that trifecta of digits, I'm pining for da U.P.  I can't wait to get back up there now, perhaps not until June but I'm really hoping for May. Especially now. The switch has been flipped on.