"Weird Michigan" by Linda S. Godfrey

This is a fantastic book, something along the lines of the book and film by Mike Lassiter and Scott Galloway, "Our Vanishing Americana", both of which I reviewed here a few months back. If I thought my state was strange, well, you know the saying, "The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side?" This book may prove that to be true.

All states have their own regional qualities and assortment of quirky artifacts and legends, but Michigan seems to abound in these things. The book is organized into categories such as Local legends, Mysteries, Fabled Places, Phenomena, Beasts, Oddities and even a section entitled "Haunted Michigan."

The book reads well, too. The author has carefully written down the legends and stories in a most readable manner, guaranteed to preserve these local oddities for generations to come, at least on paper and in photos. Just as in "Our Vanishing Americana" you get the feeling that these things will not be with us for that much longer.

If I had to pick my favorite piece from the book it would be "The Glass Tower." It was built by Michael Evans in the town of Matherton, 25 miles northeast of Lansing. Rather than attempt to tell you about it myself, I will use the words of Mr. Evans cousin to describe it. He also has a webpage about it with a few more photos, including one of the Tower as it used to look at night when lit.

"If any of you have seen the book "Weird Michigan", then you've read the story about this tower. My cousin built it in the 70s. He died in 1987. He had been in a Automobile accident and was in a wheelchair when he built it.

According to the book the tower is 20 foot tall and shaped like a bottle. It was built between 1973 and 1983. People gave him bottles and he and the kids picked up bottles along side of the roads. (For a time Michigan had a no return policy for bottles, so many of them littered the highways). It has about 10,000 bottles in it.

He had a lot of help from the local teenagers, and about everybody in this town (population about 250) were related to him in some way so he had a lot of relative help too."

Here is the link to the Tower site; http://www.pbase.com/image/75040405

For me the Tower of Bottles is a very personal sort of thing, as I collect them. I have always loved glass bottles, as a kid I considered them to be art.(Eventually the rest of the world caught up to my thinking.)

This is a fun, quirky book about the funny and quirky people that we all are deep inside. It's just that some people have a way of putting their ideas into action, creating all the unusual things that there are to see around us. And it seems there is an over abundance of these things in Michigan. I just might have to take a drive up North this summer and see them.

Movie Review: In the Valley of Elah with Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon

This movie will leave you thinking about the pre-conceived notions which divide us all.

Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon play the parents of a young man who has just returned from Iraq but is nowhere to be found. His father (played by Jones) makes the trip to his son's base to find out what has happened to his son. As an ex military man he was largely responsible for his son enlisting and going off to war.

When he arrives at the base no one seems willing to go the extra step it will take to find his son. The military says it's a Police matter and the Police say it's a military affair. The only Detective that seems willing to take an interest in the case is played by Charlize Theron. At first skeptical, she is gradually drawn into the case, largely because she is frustrated by the treatment of her fellow, all male Detective Squad.

Following the path of his son the father begins to see the underbelly of the War on Terror. Quick sex, strip clubs and drugs offer the father a rare glimpse behind the New Militarism that has followed in the wake of 9/11. And he begins to realize how different that world is from the one he remembers.

When the sons' cell phone is downloaded and the images from the camera are made clear the suspicion arises that the son may have been involved in drug smuggling. The images of an argument between the son and an Hispanic platoon member lead Jones and Theron to believe that the boy was killed by a Mexican Cartel that has employed soldiers to smuggle Heroin back home. When the body is found hacked up and burned in a field near the base it appears that all loose ends have been tied up. Or have they?

What is in the unopened package that has arrived at the boys home and addressed in his own handwriting?

The lessons learned in this film are timeless. We all want the answers to our questions. Sometimes the answers are not what you expect. And sometimes the answers can really hurt.