Cover Letter Phillip D. Sterling

COVER LETTER

Phillip D. Sterling

Dear Editors:

Please consider the attached essay, “Pet-O-Sega,” for possible publication. I submit it in absence of common sense.

“Common sense” being the deer mouse I once put in the woodstove, where it burned to death. “Common” as in “natural.”

In the essay, a cluster of Petoskey stones tell in their own words about the day two million years ago when the waters of the Great Lakes parted and they made their way onto Michigan beaches.

If you don’t know, Petoskey stones are considered native to Michigan. Michiganders claim they are geologically rare. They are marketed and sold like gems. They are actually fossils.

I call it an essay because it is based on facts—history, if you will—a retelling of the legend of stones as written by the Devonian Age. Consider this: How else could the stones have gotten across a Great Lake except under their own power?

The stove was a Jøtul 400, with a glass door. Imported from Norway. The mouse was one of several that had taken up residence in the box of books I’d been storing under the stairs. At night I could hear the scritching of their tiny paws, the gnawing of their rodent teeth.

Here’s irony for ya: They’d chewed half the pages of The Mouse and the Motorcycle—a favorite book from my childhood—and used the shredding for their nest. (Along with insulation they’d looted from the attic.)

Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. I bought a trap—a live trap. I’d intended to capture the nasty little beasts and let them go in the neighbor’s field. Until I saw what they did to The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

They’d ignored the Bible I was given in Sunday school at the end of my thirdgrade year; they left My First Dictionary intact.

Still.

The stones tell an unbelievable story—of hardship and adventure, of friendship and hardscrabble, of hard work and survival. There’s even romance for those readers who are so inclined. It’s sure to be a best seller. Or at least a classic.

Alternate title: “Exodus of the Stones.”

I call the leading character “Mousy”—a loose paraphrase, if you will, of the stone’s actual name, as linguistic anthropologists have yet to decipher it. S/he is modeled on a Moses-like Biblical character, in case you haven’t guessed. (I didn’t want it obvious; I was going for allusive, not illusive, if you know what I mean.)

It’s the same reason why I didn’t use the microwave. Surely that would have been over-the-top, morally speaking—inhumane, even murderous. Field mice do not

encounter GE appliances as part of their natural habitat. The wood stove, however, is more Deist, like a forest fire ignited by lightning.

There is plenty of comic relief, too. Like the “pebble-party,” when the young stones become drunk in the Fermenting Forest. (LOL!)

“Pet-O-Sega” is, of course, based on fact.

Fact: Petoskey stones consist of “six-sided corallites, which are the skeletons of the once-living coral polyps.”

Fact: The Petoskey was named Michigan’s “official” stone in June 1965.

Fact: Pet-O-Sega was the birth name of the son of a French trader and his Indian wife. It means “Rays of the Rising Sun” in the Ottawa language. Pet-O-Sega grew up to be a respected landowner and businessman (despite his role as an Ottawa chief, some would say) and so, in 1873, a settlement on Bear River was named “Petoskey” in his honor.

Fact: Petoskey stones are as numerous as field mice in Northwest Lower Michigan.

Fact: The white-tailed deer, not the field mouse, is the official animal of the State of Michigan. Field mice—AKA deer mice—are considered pests. A single deer mouse can produce 50-100 young per year.

Fact: Petoskey stones are considered recreational “treasure.” Gift stores in Northwest Lower Michigan sell polished Petoskey stones at ridiculous prices.

Fact: A Petoskey stone has a considerably longer life span than a field mouse.

“Pet-O-Sega” is a timeless story, one that has never before been told from the stones’ point of view. Members of my reading group found it “Mesmerizing,” “Utterly Unbelievable,” “a Stonehenge of a Story.” My nephew, a licensed gemologist, told me that after reading “Pet-O-Sega” he’d never “look at a Petoskey stone in the same way again.”

For these reasons alone you should be interested. See attached! Enjoy!

Signed Electronically