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Door County: Traditions
of a Rugged Pioneer Past©
Narrator James Hazard was born in Indiana, but he’s lived in Wisconsin as long
as any of us can remember (& that's getting to be a very, very long
time!)...and none of us ever saw him in Indiana, so we claim him, and know he's here
forever. We thank his former state for the Hoosier accent he picked up
as a kid. Put that together with the Wisconsin vowels that drift down
from Canada, and it makes for some interesting sounds. |
James Hazard has been
a professor of creative writing at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1968. His poetry has drawn a large following
for many decades, almost as much for his remarkable way of speaking the words as for the magical way he writes
them. I know of no one, living or otherwise, who’s ever nodded off
while listening to Jim. His voice and its mannerisms add a lively,
involved texture to Door County: Traditions of a Rugged Pioneer Past© – definitely not the ho-hum narration
found in most documentary videos.
Susan Firer brings to life the women whose voices and
thoughts step out of the past in Traditions, to tell us what it was like for those whose
husbands and sons were seafaring men and for those left behind to
manage during the Civil War. She speaks of what the Door County winter
is like, too, for all those who've wondered. Susan teaches creative
writing, wins awards, and continues to be one of Wisconsin’s most
active and prolific poets. She and Jim were married a long time ago.
They've raised good, sturdy children.
Sheri Gibbs, who wrote, videographed ("filmed"), and
produced the video, is a Wisconsin native. She moved to Door County in
1988 and has continued expressing her care for the Door by spending 5
years restoring the oldest house in Sturgeon Bay's residential historic
district...and welcoming guests to her bed & breakfast, White Pines
Victorian Lodge while working on a novel. Gibbs' focus in life and work
is to do all she can, through her writing, through education and visual
image, to help in the battles against the destruction of the land,
farms, and way of life in Wisconsin.
Roy Lukes has been Door County's most beloved naturalist
for decades. There isn't anything he doesn't know about the plants,
wildlife, forests, and the land that is this county. He writes a
regular column for The Door County Advocate newspaper, and the words he speaks for Traditions, about the logging years, 1850-1872, give us a
shocking account of that greedy era.
Hal and
Marge Gruetzmacher join narration at
various points. We lost Hal a few years ago to a virus he got one
winter that just plain wouldn't let go. It's hard to hear Hal in this
DVD now, quoting DC's early historians, without remembering every
conversation with him in Passtimes Bookstore over the years. He, Marge,
and son Steve have owned the peninsula's one real bookstore (chains
& franchises are neither common, nor popular in the Door) for many
years. There have been many comments about the down-home flavor of
their narration in this video -- Marge makes anyone feel like a gaggle
of school kids gathered around her feet, listening, just like her
students did before she retired in '97.
Kirk
Hanser and Barry J. Waldrep are
grafted, usually, to their guitars -- Kirk, classical (which he
teaches, now in Missouri); and Barry, rock-to-country with his band
Teluride (in Auburn, Alabama). They stretched out into banjo, piano,
synthesizer, and even a sailor's hornpipe to make a soundtrack for Traditions to custom fit the images and voices. Unlike
other videos with intrusive "canned" music, the gifts of these two
musicians are as unique as the visuals they accompany.