{"id":35893,"date":"2013-07-11T20:36:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T00:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miserybay.usanethosting.com\/wordpress\/?p=35893"},"modified":"2013-07-11T20:36:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T00:36:17","slug":"now-57","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/now-57\/","title":{"rendered":"Now and Then"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bootstrapper: A Memoir by Mardi Jo Link
\nby Jean Martin
\nDon’t try to tell me the women of rural Michigan aren’t strong and loving. Women in big cities struggle heroically, but the struggle is different when we live far away from conveniently located public transportation and services.
\nIf you doubt the above statements, you need to get a copy of Mardi Jo Link’s latest book,Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm<\/em>.
\nIt\u2019s the summer of 2005, and Mardi Jo Link\u2019s dream of living the simple life has unraveled into debt, heartbreak, and perpetually ragged cuticles. She and her husband of nineteen years have just called it quits, leaving her with serious cash-flow problems and a looming divorce.
\n\"\"Near the beginning of the book she writes:<\/p>\n

Take my word for it, burning your wedding pictures in a bonfire in your front yard, then handing over your wedding dress to a snaggle-toothed felon, can take your mind off your man troubles. Oh, it surely can.
\nBut the feeling of euphoria you’ll get from this, no matter how glorious, will only last a couple days, or until your kids get home, whichever comes first. And then you’re going to have to listen to that come-to-Jesus voice in the back of your head. The one that’s been trying, ever so gently, to tell you this truth: that no matter how much bravado you’ve got, you are not the Lone Ranger, not the lone gunman, and not even the lone wolf; you are just one woman. And you are simply a-lone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More broke than ever, Link makes a seemingly impossible resolution: to hang on to her century-old farmhouse in northern Michigan and continue to raise her three boys on well water and wood chopping and dirt. Armed with an unfailing sense of humor and three resolute accomplices, Link confronts blizzards and foxes, learns about Zen divorce and the best way to butcher a hog, dominates a zucchini-growing contest and wins a year\u2019s supply of local bread, masters the art of bargain cooking, wrangles rampaging poultry, and withstands any blow to her pride in order to preserve the life she wants.
\nI wanted Mardi’s tribulations to be over, but I didn’t want the book to end. The bottom line is that everything she schemed and suffered her way through that year was done with persistence and out of great love for her boys.
\nThe book is available at most booksellers and from Amazon.com at http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Bootstrapper-Broke-Badass-Northern-Michigan\/dp\/0307596915\/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1373491255&sr=1-1
\n<\/a>
\n\"\"
\nMardi is a first cousin to our son-in-law, St. Johns resident Dave Link. Today she continues to write and is a Feature Columnist for the Traverse Ctiy Record-Eagle. http:\/\/record-eagle.com\/featurecolumns\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bootstrapper: A Memoir by Mardi Jo Link<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-now-and-then"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}