MotorcyclingyogiG

Northern notes, music, photos, and reflections of a summer tour to Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

Heart Territory A Journey in Three Parts The people, places, books, literature, theatre, and memory that work together, like a wind-up Victrola, to create memories. Thanks to Kathleen Heideman who wound up her Victrola and put a big record on it. Ken Baker and I listened to it at Kathleen’s cabin on the Yellow Dog Plains in Marquette, Co...

Visiting Estivant Pines Sanctuary in Copper Harbor, Michigan looking for old-growth trees . . . finding something larger: generations, inheritance, and the ground we're given to stand upon. For a while, we stand together

Think of that seed opening to the sun as history unfolded around it; before Wisconsin had its name, before my ancestors had imagined coming here. We touched that history in the bark, feeling its heft, its weight, its gravity. Much like the love between fathers and sons or mothers and daughters, immigrant journeys, and the battles between sanctuary and sawmill, survival is precarious....

Father and Son Among the Pines for a while they stand together I’m a grandfather now too, but my grandfatherhood will occupy a small portion of time. Some white pine grandfathers have been there a long time, beginning as seedlings nearly five centuries ago. One tree-ring display at the Estivant Sanctuary traces the life of a pine back about 470 years to a see...

Have you ever been hooked by a fishing lure deep in your skin. I mean really hooked, with the sharp barbed points of a casting lure? There are other things that hook us too.

The Things that Hook Us I am hooked by memories there, not the stuff because the stuff is unimpressive. But I go there to renew my memories of my late brother Tim, my parents, and others that have graced the cabin floor.

Halleluijah in a Northern Wisconsin Bar is the minor chord and the major lift; not from booze but the renditions we live with in song and story.

Halleluijah in a Northern Wisconsin Bar Halleluijah in a Northern Wisconsin Bar is the minor chord and the major lift; not from booze but the renditions we live with in song and story.

Speaking as Hospitality

A central premise in my forthcoming book is that speaking is a covenant of hospitality. I maintain the connection between audience and speaker is the key to effective speech. That covenant is held together by readiness. An audience is ready and they show up to hear, but the effective speaker will be more ready and they will invite connection and will prepare the place and the atmosphere. I have come to think of emotional, intellectual, and hospitality quotients as the “quotients of readiness.” These quotients enable the speaker to open up meaningful communication....

Speaking as Hospitality If you want to know how the conditions of hospitality set up a memorable meeting and speech, look no further than my example of Grandma Grace. Hospitaity make syour speech an act of attention and service. You cannot do better. Grandma Grace taught me this.

Speaking as Hospitality: A First Look from Sutra House

It may be odd to hear that effective public speaking is about learning to pay better attention. Attention to the room. Attention to another person's fears. Attention to the conversations taking shape before your first word. This attention led me to write Speaking as Hospitality and Sutra House has released the pre-publication page, and I'm excited to finally share it. Speaking as Hospitality by Gregory A. Ormson | Sūtra House

Speaking as Hospitality Sutra House has released the pre-publication page, and I'm excited to finally share it. Speaking is not about you, it's about your attention to them.

Blue and Broken in the Keweenaw

BLUE AND BROKEN IN THE KEWEENAW Thorburn and I got scolded by a grade school principal in Michigan's Copper Country. But come on, we were, and are writers. Back then, we were hungry and broke too. Russell Thorburn, Upper Michigan’s first Poet Laureate, had been hired to travel through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula schools to lead poetry and writing workshops. Thorburn believed children could write real poems if someone sparked an idea and expected enough of them. I brought my guitar and traveled with him to Michigan’s Copper Country in the far, far Northwest....

Blue and Broken in the Keweenaw Two writers, broke and hungry learn from a small boy about the blues and hardship.

Visiting my granddaughters (and their parents of course). And in this era of my life, I am deeply blessed by the joy of being alive and present in uneventful but important moments . . . watching two children by the water. It's two privileges many do not have; first the experience itself, and second, the ability to see it as one of life's greatest gifts.