Ha-Low ... Is This The Soady Deer Camp?

Its that time of year again. Yesterday, to mark the opening of deer season, we watched the classic big buck story, Escanaba in da Moonlight. This is the tale of how The Buckless Yooper got his buck. Yooper as in a person from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.).

The principals in this story are the Soady family along with their friend Jimmer Negamanee from Menominee, and a lost Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officer recently exiled from Detroit to Escanaba. The actors include Jeff Daniels, Harve Presnell, Joey Albright, Wayne David Parker, Randall Godwin, and Kimberly Guerrero.

We have both the regular DVD which is available from Amazon as well as the "making of" DVD, A Picture from Home: The Journey Through 'Escanaba in da Moonlight' which is available from Jeff Daniel's Purple Rose Films web site.

While watching this, my wife asked how old is Harve Presnell? So I looked him up on iMDB and found that he died this last summer at the age of 75 from pancreatic cancer.

This movie came out in the Spring of 2001 and played mostly in the Mid-West. It was released on VHS and DVD on 15 October 2002, at which time I ordered copies shipped to family all over the United States.

Looking back though my email archives, I note that Jimmer Negamanee looks quite a bit like one of the members of my Grandfather's survey crew from back when they laid out so many of the highways across the U.P. back in the late teens, early twenties.

Project Valour-IT Current Standings

Update: 13 Nov 2009 - Veteran's Day Finish Line

Project Valour-IT

This is part of the annual fund raising for Project Valour-IT.

My gift to them is to Team Navy, in honor of my father who served in the Navy SeaBees at the tail end of WWII and during Korea. As you can see above I helped to break the $100K barrier. The challenge to the Teams was to break the $140K barrier with each team raising $35K. A couple years ago, Team Navy raised the most. This year it looks like the Marines will take honors.

The name Valour-IT originally stood for Voice Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops. Seeing as many of our young service people use the technology of cell phones and the internet to communicate with family at home. This project was a way for injured troops to continue to communicate even though they were at Walter Reed and their hands were bandaged.

The back story can be found here, CPT (now MAJ) Chuck Z's blog can be found here, and Fuzzy Bear Lioness' (FbL) blog can be found here.

FbL's Selected Valour-IT Posts:

• Just Read This
• This is What It's Like
• More than Just a Laptop
• Three Kings and Valour-IT
• Bryan Anderson and Valour-IT
• CPT Ziegenfuss and Valour-IT
• Buzz Robertson and Valour-IT
• Travelogue II: The VA Hospital