On the eve of Hemingway’s birthday it was perfectly fitting to visit with Michael Federspiel author of “Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan”. Michael was at the Delta Township Library to discuss his new book and tell the guests about the 22 summers the young Hemingway spent in Michigan around the Little Traverse Bay area of northern Michigan.

Michael’s book and the slide show he used to complement his talk contain little known or never seen photos of Ernest and the Hemingway family vacationing at Walloon Lake. Many of the scenes in the photos would later show up in Hemingway’s books and short stories.

One reason that so many photos of the family exist is Hemingway’s mom was an early scrapbooker and compiled albums for each of the five children. Although there are duplicate photos in the albums they each differ in that the Hemingway children’s mother, “Grace”, wrote individualized descriptions of the photos. Ernest’s five volume set of personal scrapbooks reside in the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

In chatting with Michael before the meeting I told him about a new Craig McDonald mystery which has a Hemingway theme. He said, “Hemingway is now in more books (fiction) than he ever wrote”.

If you get a chance to see the presentation by Federspiel it is well worth your time. He walks you through three topic areas that help provide perspective on the adult Hemingway and the influence of “Up North” on the writer. First, he answers the question about why Petoskey and Walloon Lake and what drew the Hemingway family to the area. He then moves into the 22 summers that Ernest spent there and finally looks at how those summers would later influence his writing.

Hemingway may be larger than life but it’s unlikely that there will be any celebration in Petoskey today commemorating the time he spent in the  area. You’ll have to go to Cuba, Oak Park, Illinois or Key West for those festivities. Afterall, as Federspiel said, “Hemingway was a fudgie”.

The Oak Park newspaper today carried an article about a visit to Hemingway’s home in Cuba that was written in 1980 which is as illuminating today as it was then.  The article also has a link to some rare photos of Hemingway in Cuba. Also, be on the watch for information about the annual meeting of the http://www.michiganhemingwaysociety.org/ which will be held in Petoskey October 15-17, 2010. This year’s theme will be “Dining at Hemingway’s Table” and the featured speaker will be Valerie Hemingway, the daughter-in-law of Ernest Hemingway. The International Hemingway Society will meet in Petoskey in 2012.