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@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@ Great Lakes Book # Notes ## characters + +Quinceañera A woman plants trees and hemp so that someone of his descendants will be able to build tall ships. her great grandaughter: We meet her as she comes out of a lawyer's office in Milwaukee, the cold spring wind is blowing down the street. The lake is still frozen, icy clouds billow in the wind. The snow on the ground is patchy though. She drives out to his land is walking among the young trees and fields cleared for hemp. Oak trees and pigs, he's a pig farmer. Regenerative ag. His farm is growing trees for an ark his descendants will build. Long view. Re-incarnation view. @@ -12,6 +14,23 @@ then far enough that there is no lineage: the man with his two daughters. the wi + + +The cold is less, but the darkness remains. The light is already faded + +They're on the north shore, they're headed for teh south shore to winter. There's not much snow left, but it's still cold and dark. It's mid september. wonter comes in October. they have to be south before the shores freeze. And the meet up, the fisher gathers seas gypseys exchange food and news. there they will learn something that propels them on a journey to something. in search of something perhaps. There needs to religious undertones here, local gods godesses, the plot needs to be steered as much by greater then human actors as by human. nudges, stears. the dream of the road leather cloth, finding the round leather cloth and the reaction to the finding, you have been given a great gift. we will stop and you will create this ceremony for yourself. the tantamus spirit the daughter finds it and the daughter goes off and creates the ceremony. + +The father lives with his daughters one one boat, his wife and son live ashore in the southern village. midwife and teacher of herbal lore perhaps. I'm kinda making an ideyllic and boringc culture, what happens, what thing would be most threatening to this culture, where would the sotry e? + +Other details: the boats are made of oak. They're sailing fresh waster so they don't have to worry about worms though the do need tar and do go to a tarring camp where everyone pitches in thogether the repair the ships. ships as vesseles of men and gods. viking lore perhaps might help here. + +the man makes portraits of people, darkroom on the ship. + +The woman is his daughter. She's 18, her younger sister is 15. They live with him, their brother lives with their mother on shore. + +There has been a shifting of the plan over the centuries. The oak is gradually cleared in places, as ships are built, but that leaves space fo the medicinal plants, and for birds, the blackburnian warblers that come every summer. + + # Prologue Death was standing in the corner, as he often did. He didn't bother her, he never had. Death was not a stranger, how could death be a stranger when you're 98? Death is patient. Death is rarely in a rush. @@ -124,40 +143,63 @@ He stretched his arms and swayed about the waist. You think those old bears left "Had some fish." -"Fish? What you eaten fish for at a meat camp?" He laughed. 'Couldn't force a fish down my throat when I'm up here. But you do what you want." He turned back toward the companionway. "I'm going to carve up a slice of something and then we'll head in get some blueberries so we can start some mead for the meeting." +"Fish? What you eaten fish for at a meat camp?" He laughed. 'Couldn't force a fish down my throat when I'm up here. But you do what you want." He turned back toward the companionway. "I'm going to carve up a slice of something and then we'll head in get some blueberries so we can start some mead for the ceremonies." + +--- +It was two weeks more before they were ready to head south. Two weeks of skinning, cleaning, and packing the three more boar her father managed to shoot. Then more days stepping on blueberries, crushing the juices into barrels where they would ferment into blueberry wine. She danced with her sister, side by side in barrels, laughing and squashing while the old man played the fiddle at the top of the companionway. Their legs were stained and sticky when they leaped overboard into the icy lake waters, plunging down to the depth where the unsuspecting always drown. That thermal further down that is so abrupt and so cold it makes you inhale sharply, involuntarily drawing water into your lungs before you can stop yourself. The uninitiated are never seen again. The rule on Zepher was that you never went over without full lungs. Breath into the point that you can hold no more and then you can't inhale against your will. You still get damn cold though thought Iza lying in the warmth of the sun on the teak foredeck. -The cold is less, but the darkness remains. The light is already faded +Her sister was ashore, gathering hazelnuts from the grove that grew back above the rocky north shore of the cove where they were anchored. He father was below, working on boat projects, getting their aging ship ready to sail across the lake. She watched her sister walking with the heavy basket, unaware her father had come up on deck behind her. -They're on the north shore, they're headed for teh south shore to winter. There's not much snow left, but it's still cold and dark. It's mid september. wonter comes in October. they have to be south before the shores freeze. And the meet up, the fisher gathers seas gypseys exchange food and news. there they will learn something that propels them on a journey to something. in search of something perhaps. There needs to religious undertones here, local gods godesses, the plot needs to be steered as much by greater then human actors as by human. nudges, stears. the dream of the road leather cloth, finding the round leather cloth and the reaction to the finding, you have been given a great gift. we will stop and you will create this ceremony for yourself. the tantamus spirit the daughter finds it and the daughter goes off and creates the ceremony. +"She's got a few days left if we want them all eh? We should get over there and help her." -The father lives with his daughters one one boat, his wife and son live ashore in the southern village. midwife and teacher of herbal lore perhaps. I'm kinda making an ideyllic and boringc culture, what happens, what thing would be most threatening to this culture, where would the sotry e? +Iza sat up. "Aren't this trees planted?" -Other details: the boats are made of oak. They're sailing fresh waster so they don't have to worry about worms though the do need tar and do go to a tarring camp where everyone pitches in thogether the repair the ships. ships as vesseles of men and gods. viking lore perhaps might help here. +Her father shrugged. "could be, why?" -the man makes portraits of people, darkroom on the ship. +"Wouldn't that make us farmers?" + +"Diggers? You're calling us diggers?" There was an edge in his voice that she did not look. + +"No, I'm not saying we're diggers, but aren't be benefiting from past diggers?" + +Her father came and sat down on the hatch next to her. "Sure, we're benefiting. I have nothing against diggers Iza. Everyone can do what he feels called to do. Just don't try to make me dig." -The woman is his daughter. She's 23, her younger sister is 17. They live with him, their brother lives with their mother on shore. +She laughed. "Who would make us do anything? Who could?" -The bit about diggers. +He smiled. "It might seem hard when we're out here. It might. But it can be done." -The rejection of farming. Why would I be tied to this bit of land, and then destroy it to grow these plants. <tk god> grows her own plants. I can just each those. I can hunt, I can fish. I can go where the rice grows, I can go where the rushes are. I can go where the oaks drop their kernals, I can go where the nuts are. this is the connection between the world between <tk god> and us, to violate this, to try to turn the world to our hands, this is arrogance. this was the unraveling of the last peoples. They did not listen to what the land was telling them, they turned their back on what was offered and they said, no, i can do this better. They were wrong and <tk god> showed them that. +She frowned. "Why don't you like to farm?" + +Why would I be tied to this bit of land, and then destroy it to grow these plants. <tk god> grows her own plants. I can just eat those. I can hunt, I can fish. I can go where the rice grows, I can go where the rushes are. I can go where the oaks drop their kernals, I can go where the hazelnuts are," he spread his farm out around the cove. "This is the connection between the world between <tk god> and us, to violate this, to try to turn the world to our hands, this is arrogance. This was the unraveling of the last peoples. They did not listen to what the land was telling them, they turned their back on what was offered and they said, no, i can do this better. They were wrong and <tk god> showed them that. Do you think that about Ma then? She plants. Is she a digger then? -She does not plant." She saw a light of anger in her father's eyes. "She gathers. It is different. It is what we do. We gather. She stays ashore because she does not like boats. She is a person of the earth, but not a digger. +She does not plant." She saw a light of anger in her father's eyes. "She gathers. It is different. It is what we do. We gather. She stays ashore because she does not like boats. She is a person of the earth, but not a digger." What are you then? I am a person of the fire. -Fire? Why do you live on the water then? +You say that, but here you are, living on the water... how does that happen? -Isn't that obvious? If I go ashore I burn everything up. Water is how I stay balanced. Your mother does not have that problem. +Isn't that obvious?" He smiled. "If I go ashore I burn everything up. Water is how I stay balanced." He glanced over at his other daughter on the shore. "Your mother does not have that problem." What am I? -You are a person of the water. +What do you mean? + +If you are a person of the fire, what am I? + +"Now? You are not a person. You are young. + +"My quinces is less than one moon. Already I bleed. I could have young. I am not young Papa, stop saying that." + +Your quinces is in a moon. Then you have the ceremony." He nodded. "It is not good to talk of these things too much before hand." + +"I just want to know what I am." + +"You will become a person of water." What is Karrin? @@ -208,6 +250,8 @@ Hmm? Yes. I suppose you are right. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He did not mention that water also flows downhill, always toward the sea. He did not know all the ceremoney of the Water People, but he'd seen enough of them to know that she would be a leader among them. He was good at sensing these things. I was his place to find them, the leaders. He had not expected to find them so close to himself though. He wondered though at the old teaching, that love grants clarity. What if there were leaders he did not sea simply because he did not know them well enough to love them and therefore not see what was in them, what if he lacked the clarity he had with his own children and that was why he say it now in her, but not in others who might be just as worthy as her. +THey are going to the annual winter festival, the gathering of the rice, but also to her cumpleanos her age ceremony when she will be adopted into wider tribes, the people of the water and everywhere she will go the people of the water will welcome her. + PFOA leads to fertility problems, increased risk of cancer and developmental delays in children. This has happened in the cities, where degeneracy leads eventually to their collapse and then plagues wipe them out. The people of this age do not go near them. The biggest of them are buried under water. only Milwaukee and chicago remain as a wasteland at the southern most terminus of lakeland. Something calls one of the man's children south, he sails them to the shores of abandoned milwaukee. |