Special Report -- A House on the Lake

A House on the Lake Robert Campbell Good Morning. I will not be showing any images. Those who wish to leave may do so now. What I am going to do is read you two poems, both of which I wrote some time ago. I want also to remind us of Donlyn’s two keynote quotations: Places are spaces that you can hold in the mind, care about, and make a part of your life. Places instill the choreographies of society. Above: The house on the lake. Photo by author. Each of us has once inhabited, I believe, usually in childhood, a place to which we return continually in memory and imagination. We replay scenes from our time there. The place is, for ourselves and no one else, the navel of the universe, the center against which all later places are, to some degree, peripheral. The most important place in the world is one I think of almost every day. I spent all my summers, when I was growing up, at a house on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie, a short distance from my native city of Buffalo. It was a house owned by my grandparents. I’m going to read you first a poem that I wrote about that house and place. The poem was published in the Atlantic some years ago. But first I have to describe the scene. Imagine a bay on Lake Erie, a bay lined with sandy beach. (Holds out arms in shape of a bay.) The bay is maybe two miles across. We can barely see the other side of the lake, because Lake Erie is almost as big as an ocean, but sometimes we can see freighters creeping along the horizon. At the far tip of the bay, on the left, is an amusement park called Crystal Beach. An excursion boat arrives there every two hours from Buffalo across the lake, puffing black smoke. The park with its roller-coaster towers, and the periodic boat with its smoke, are two things that are deeply recorded in my mythical consciousness. The right-hand side of the bay is enclosed by Point Abino (rhymes with cabin-oh). A single lonely tree Campbell / A House on the Lake