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Historic eatery celebrates
anniversaries
Most people have enough trouble trying to plan the
events around a single anniversary celebration. Nancy Ferro, the
owner of the Mt. Shasta restaurant in Michigamme, doesn’t
mind though. In fact, she’s planning four anniversaries at
one time.
“It’s definitely keeping me busy,” laughed Ferro,
who moved to th e
area from Chicago five years ago to reopen the restaurant. Ferro
found success in her venture, open for her fifth year as of April
15.
“I’m so glad I did this,” she said. “It’s
been nothing but a great experience.”
And the experiences just keep growing, and not just for Ferro.
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the filming of the
movie Anatomy of a Murder, which was shot in locations that included
Big Bay, Ishpeming, Marquette and Michigamme. Several scenes from
the movie were filmed right in Mt. Shasta, with several of the
actors staying in the quaint cabins there.
Fans of the movie have flocked to the location over the years,
a phenomenon that hasn’t changed since Ferro took the reins.
She has met people from all over the country who have come just
to fawn over the location and the role it played in the movie,
considered by many to be one of the greatest courtroom dramas
ever filmed. In 1989, the American Bar Association named it one
of the top twelve trial movies.
“I never thought I would own a piece of history like this,”
said Ferro, who is kicking off celebrations early with special
events May 7 and 8—dates filming took place at Mt. Shasta
fifty years ago.
May 7 will find Jim Penderson of the Jimmy Almen trio playing
the Grammy-Award-winning soundtrack to the movie, as made famous
by jazz artist and Anatomy of a Murder actor Duke Ellington. May
8 has Mt. Shasta offering a brook trout fish fry in honor of the
movie and its writer, John D. Voelker, an avid trout fisherman.
During this time, the dinners served at Mt. Shasta—which
is a smoke-free facility—will come with complimentary desert
to help celebrate two more anniversaries. Ferro said 2009 marks
the seventieth year the Mt. Shasta building has been in Michigamme,
after being moved there in 1939 from Ishpeming. Built reminiscent
of old-style log cabins, it was taken apart log by log, which
were numbered and shipped to Michigamme before being reassembled
at its current US-41 location. In addition, the woman who bought
the building and had it transported to Michigamme turns 100 years
old this year. Norma Ball will hit the century mark October 4;
Ferro thought it appropriate to tie in the celebration with the
other anniversaries.
“She’s such a wonderful person,” Ferro said. “She
told me once that it cost her more to move it here from Ishpeming
than it cost her to buy it seventy years ago. Can you imagine
that?”
After the initial celebrations this month, Ferro said Mt. Shasta
will be helping celebrate the June release of the film, which
debuted in Ishpeming in 1959.
On June 26, Penderson will again be playing the soundtrack from
the movie, with brook trout being served as a special dish to
help kick off the celebrations. The following day, the restaurant
will host the Anatomy of a Murder reunion, with thirteen confirmed
guests who were extras in the film. In addition to the reunion,
author Joan G. Hansen will sign copies of her book, Anatomy of
Anatomy: The Making of a Movie, from noon until 3:00 p.m.
Mt. Shasta will be the site of the showing of the movie again
on June 28 and 29. Also on June 29, there will be birthday cake
throughout the day in celebration of Voelker’s birthday,
who was born in 1903 and died in 1991.
The music stylings of the soundtrack will be heard again on June
30 at the restaurant, followed by another book signing by Hansen
the following day. July 3 will find Michigamme celebrating Independence
Day with fireworks, while Mt. Shasta will show Anatomy of a Murder
again and feature a brook trout fish fry. The town’s parade
the following day will feature a float dedicated to the movie
while the restaurant will screen the film and feature live music.
“It’s really so exciting to be a part of it all,”
Ferro said. “I didn’t have any idea how popular this
movie still was until I came here.”
It took eight months to prepare to open the restaurant after it
had been closed under the previous management. Ferro met several
people who talked about the building’s role in the movie,
notably Lorraine Perry, who worked at the lodge for forty-four
years before retiring.
After the restaurant opened and people began to come in and take
photos of the interior and of the pictures of the movie’s
stars that hung on the wall, she started to realize just how popular
Anatomy of a Murder was.
“I couldn’t believe that there were people coming from
all over the country to see the place,” she said. “We’ve
had busloads of people come here, just because it was part of
that movie.”
Ferro said it’s a joy listening to people talk about the
movie when they come in. She said they point at where the actors
had been dancing, or where Duke Ellington played the piano.
“Listening to them makes it so much more exciting for me,”
Ferro said. “They get pumped about it. They love it. It’s
really great listening to people who recognize all the different
scenes from the movie when they come here.”
For details, call 323-6312 or visit www.pwpl.info/anatomy
—Sam Eggleston
Transition town Marquette:
a new resilience
How well prepared is our community to deal with
the realities of climate change, a contracting global economy,
sharply rising energy prices and drastically reduced availability
of gasoline, natural gas and heating oil? The end of the Age of
Cheap Oil is coming upon us rapidly, and our lives are going to
change dramatically, whether we want them to or not.
A transition initiative has begun in Marquette to raise awareness
about peak oil and climate change and encourage the community
to look for answers that will work on a local scale. The transition
movement began in the UK a few short years ago as a community-based
response to these pressing and historically unprecedented problems.
Indeed, the challenges are fundamental and serious. How will Marquette
feed itself, transport people and goods, and heat homes and buildings?
What will our local economy look like? How will we deliver basic
services? What sort of jobs will people have? These can be deeply
disturbing issues to ponder and are best dealt with in a positive,
creative, community-wide approach.
The Transition Marquette initiative was sparked by a seven-month
film series at Peter White Public Library (“Preparing Marquette
for a Future without Oil”) sponsored by the NMU Geography
Department. The purpose of the series, which continues until June
10, is to raise awareness about peak oil and the global economic
crisis and to encourage people to engage these issues on a community
level. The next film, “The Power of Community,” will
be shown at 7:00 p.m. May 27 in the Peter White Public Library
Community Room. Admission is free.
Unlike many environmental groups, the Transition movement doesn’t
seek to assign blame, vilify short-sighted corporate executives
and political leaders or impose any sort of agenda upon people.
Instead, the movement operates from a “Hey, we’re all
in this together” point of view, encouraging each community
to face these global challenges squarely and find its own answers.
The underlying belief within the Transition movement is that a
future with less oil could be very preferable to the world we
live in right now. Key to this approach is the idea of people
re-discovering the many good things about life in their communities
before cheap, plentiful oil existed and finding ways of combining
those elements with the best aspects of our present-day life.
It asks us to unleash the creative genius within our community,
imagine Marquette without oil and take proactive steps toward
that hopeful vision.
If there’s a single thread woven throughout the Transition
movement, it’s that of resilience, a concept familiar to
ecologists, but less so to many other people. Rob Hopkins, founder
of the Transition movement, defines it this way: “Resilience
refers to the ability of a system, from individual people to whole
economies, to hold together and maintain their ability to function
in the face of change and shocks from the outside.” (This
comes from the introduction to his book, The Transition Handbook—From
Oil Dependency to Local Resilience.)
In its simplest form, a Transition initiative is a catalyst for
engaging all the sectors of a community and getting people to
think and act. The process doesn’t involve a group coming
in with answers—rather, it encourages us to ask the right
questions. Where has our resilience gone? Can we imagine Marquette
without oil? What will that look like? What are some of the things
we can do to prepare for it?
The response to this very positive, empowering approach to our
pressing global problems has been remarkable. Through the Transition
movement, a cultural and economic renaissance of creative ideas
and energy is unfolding and blossoming around the world.
People in hundreds of towns like ours are rebuilding local agriculture
and food production, localizing energy production, reshaping health
care systems, rediscovering local building materials for zero-energy
construction projects, rethinking waste management strategies
and much more.
At its core, the Transition movement, as Hopkins said, is “not
about how dreadful our future could be; rather, it is an invitation
to join the hundreds of communities around the world who are taking
the steps toward making a nourishing and abundant future a reality.”
Visit these Transition Town Web sites for more information: transitionus.ning.com/group/transitionmqt
and transitionus.ning.com
—Bradford Veley
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