Kevin
Costner

Okay, now we'll see if this float things works on the right side. It's my prediction that it won't due to...uh, something something. However, I was wrong. It works. There Kevin floats. Kevin was born on January 18, 1955. For years he was my favorite actor. Field of Dreams is one of my top three favorite movies, and Dances with Wolves and Bull Durham are right up there. His most recent work hasn't been of that quality, but that happens. (I blame his divorce. Perhaps his wife was the brains of the pair and picked the better projects. That's just my guess.)

Revenge is one of the lesser known movies that Costner made in the eighties. When someone is your favorite, do you pay extra attention to their work and do some backstory research on their projects? Thought so. So do I. Revenge was based on a novella by Jim Harrison. Now it just so happens that Harrison is a Michigan writer who attended...mmhmmm....Michigan State University.


Jim
Harrison

Okay, now I'm checking to see if we can float both right and left in the same post, and how that looks. Bear with me, please. Oh sweet, it does work! Back to Jim Harrison.

So I find out that Jim Harrison went to Michigan State University, and that he still lives in Michigan. He writes novellas, short stories, essays, and for years wrote the food reviews for Esquire magazine. In his book of essays Just Before Dark he wrote about his home in Michigan, in the Leelanau peninsula. Surprisingly, that was an area of Michigan I had never visited. (It's the little finger in the northern part of the mitten part of the state.) So I put it on my travel list...not to stalk him but just because it sounded like such a beautiful area.


Leelanau
Peninsula

The Leelanau Peninsula turned out to be far more beautiful than had been described. Its south end is the Sleeping Bear Dunes, perched dunes that rise 400' above Lake Michigan. From the top of the dunes you can see two islands: North Manitou and South Manitou. Legend has it that a mama bear and her two cubs were swimming from Wisconsin to Michigan, fleeing some disaster. Mama made it to shore, and waited and waited for her cubs, who did not make it. She became the dune, and the cubs became the islands.

I'm currently reading Off to the Side, Harrison's recently published memoir.