Wildwood Press

Michigan’s rugged, isolated, and enchanting Upper Peninsula comes to life in a new book A Tree Grows in Trout Creek by Coralie Cederna Johnson. Johnson, author of the 1995 memoir, The Wishing Years, returns to her growing up years in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s with this new coming of age collection of stories. While the [...]

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A selection from the new book, A Tree Grows in Trout Creek, now in publication: When Dad wasn’t working one of three rotating shifts underground in the Hiawatha Mine, he’d be riding out on M-73 to work on the cottage he was building at Hagerman Lake. There was always some new project to be done, [...]

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When Nellie Bly, a famed and outspoken journalist of the late 1800′s, was told chilling tales of wickedness–barroom brawls, slavery and murder–in Seney, Michigan, she came herself to see if they were true. What she discovered were saloons brimming with booze, gambling and “ladies of the night.”

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A selection from the book The Wishing Years, by Coralie Cederna Johnson, published 1995: Following The Great Depression, when the Oliver Mining Company sold the Dober Mining Location houses, Mom and Dad bought ours, House #13, for $450. My cousin Joanne lived just three doors down the block and even though she was a grown [...]

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Determined to discover a place where they could enjoy the same solitude and spiritual communion with nature they’d known in Finland, it is not surprising a majority of Finnish people, chose the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for their home. Forced out of Finland following the fatal famine of the 1860′s, they came to the U.P. [...]

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Awash in an aura of nostalgia and history, the stately grey and white two-story turn-of-the-century home sitting proudly on the grounds of the Iron County Museum in Caspian, Michigan, seemed to sing out a welcome. Strains of “I Love You Truly” played upon my memory, bringing to mind the hundreds of thousands of weddings and [...]

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In 1949, with the war years well behind us, my mother decided it was time to spruce up the interior of our Upper Peninsula home. My father suggested that knotty pine would be nice, but Mom had other ideas. “These rooms need a little magic,” Mom said. “I’m really tired of all this mauve. What [...]

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When my friend Phyllis retired from a twenty-one year career in Financial Operations at the University of Michigan, she didn’t wonder for a second how she would spend her days. Her dreams of being a full-time grandmother would finally be fulfilled. That she would also have time to redecorate the house and knit to her [...]

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(FOLLOW-UP TO: ETHNOGRAPHY & WOMEN’S READING RITUALS) The purpose of this ethnographic study was to determine the effect of mass-media advertising on women readers’ popular fiction selections. The determination to research this case study was based on interest resulting from readings in a recent Popular Culture graduate class and from my own enjoyable experience as [...]

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WOMEN’S READING AND READING SELECTION HABITS Ethnography is the study and documentation of a specific group or area of a particular culture. It is the study of cultures. Jennifer Pehlke, University of Illinois at Chicago, explains, “Ethnography is basically the study of the everyday rituals and practices of a particular group of people.” Ethnographers observe [...]

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