Bart Johnson's Poignant Michigan Memoir:
Up North - A Better Place & Time
Bart Johnson is what can be readily termed a classic 'Type A' personality -
competitive, task-oriented, and intuitive. Born and raised in Detroit, the
30-year business executive has held positions as national marketing & sales
director and CFO with companies such as GE Capital, Mellon Bank and
Manufacturers Hanover.
A published author of several award-winning business articles, Johnson has
just released a remarkable and poignant memoir entitled Up North - A Better
Place & Time, which chronicles the adventures of his family during their
annual pilgrimages to Northern Michigan.
During the mid 1950s through the mid 1960s, Johnson and family would
abandon their 'inner-city' residence and head north to Glennie, Michigan,
where they learned the basics of wilderness survival and lived the simpler
life of small town rural America.
In addition to his memoir, Johnson's book also includes an eclectic
collection of 85-poems written by eight poets from three generations of his
family, all reflecting upon the profound influence of those years in the
northern woods.
"Everyone has an 'Up North'", explains Johnson. "Or at least everyone
should. A physical place and one that can be found on a map, very much part
of the real world. But over time it transcends reality to become a magical,
almost mystical state of mind. It has to be the right place at the right
time, during those formative years when we are young and impressionable,
while we are enduring that intense period of self-discovery essential to
growth. And then it becomes a life-defining event, and it produces images
that last forever."
Inspired by a vast array of colorful characters that would relate tales &
songs in the vein of 'oral literature', the discovery of kamikaze
hummingbirds, praying mantises, and dragonflies, Bart's odyssey articulates
the profound weight of realization when encountered through acts of simple
discovery.
"I had always reflected about the disproportionate effect those collective
months in Glennie had on my life and on the lives of my brothers and
sisters," relates Bart. " In truth we probably spent at best a full year
there, spread over many summers, but those times shaped our personalities
far more than other places where we spent much more time. So, I had long
intended to explore those times in some form of a memoir."
"Then my Mother asked me (the family businessman) to get her poetry
published, but twenty-four short poems are not easy to publish on their
own, so I thought I would expand to include poetry from others within the
family, most of whom were inspired to poetry by those years in Glennie,
along with the influence of oral literature around the family woodstove.
The idea of using the memoir to set the stage for the poetry made it more
meaningful and less random."
Embedded with a strong core of values throughout each page, what does Bart
feel their significance conveys to the reader?
"The book, first and foremost, is about a large and very close family
growing up together with strong family values. Then it is set in a better
place and time, in a simpler, less complicated world. It features a
fundamental simplicity and purity of life, a life of city kids as hunters
and gatherers’ as subsistence hunters and bounty trappers. It is about our
family, in our special place and special time, but it transcends us to
appeal to anyone and everyone who ever had such a place and time. The book
should play well in these troubled times of 911 and terrorists, as a
retreat to better days "
What does Johnson feel was the most challenging component in pursuing a
work of this nature?
"As to the text, simply recording and organizing random memories and
images, trying hard to capture the magic of days long past, and weaving
them into a story line and flow that is interesting and meaningful. And
simply striving to be lyrical and poetic, even in the prose section, with
images and language that speaks from the heart."
"It was also a challenge to extract and edit poetry from reluctant family
members, and to format and present their work in a unique and inviting way,
and to tie back to the themes developed in the text."
Perhaps the biggest lesson gleaned from his experiences resides in the
Gatsby-esque notion of 'returning to the past'.
"If we were poor during those years we didn't know it, or at least we
didn't care, because we were overwhelmed with the richness of our
experiences there," Johnson writes.
"I personally haven't been back to Glennie in years. I've climbed Mt. Fuji
in Japan, trekked Machu Picchu in Peru, camped in the Amazon jungle and
traveled all over the world, and I believe all of those things have been
shaped by my Glennie experiences."
"But I have not returned to Glennie, simply because I believe we can never
go back and that it is a waste of time to try," states Bart.
"First of all the place I knew no longer exists. It has been replaced by a
different place with different people. The butterfly field across the
street from our old property is now a gold course."
"Plus, we are all different people, too, in different chapters of our
lives. So even if we could conjure up the original Glennie, we could never
relate to it in the same ways."
What does Johnson feel can be done to preserve the qualities that make
these areas of Michigan unique?
"Although I am a career businessman, and have been directly active in
politics a couple of times over the years, this book is completely
apolitical. To state the obvious, there is nothing that can be done now to
restore the Northern Michigan that I write about, in the late '50s and
early '60s."
"The best we can do now is to recognize that there is still a special magic
about Northern Michigan, different from what I feature, but special
nonetheless. And to take responsibility to control development and
preserve the nature and character of the area, so that someone in the
future can write a book like mine, about his or her special place and time."
To date Johnson has sold about 100 books, through e-mail to family and
friends and is just now beginning the commercial rollout of the work.
He will also be featured in The Book Reader, which is distributed to
bookstores and libraries and has just joined the North American Bookdealers
Exchange, which will put the work in showcase trade show exhibits in six
major cities.
Up North - A Better Place & Time can be purchased at:
www.writebrainpublications.info as well as www.amazon.com
