Letting the Book Speak for Itself: BRINGING IT TO THE TABLE

The dualism of domestic and wild is...mostly false, and it is misleading. It has obscured for us the domesticity of the wild creatures. More important, it has obscured the absolute dependence of human domesticity upon the wildness that supports it and in fact permeates it. In suffering the now-common accusation that humans are “anthropocentric” (ugly word), we forget that the wild sheep and the wild wolves are respectively ovicentric and lupocentric. The world, we may say, is wild, and all the creatures are homemakers within it, practicing domesticity: mating, raising young, seeking food and comfort. Likewise, though the wild sheep and the farm-bred sheep are in some ways unlike in their domesticities, we forget too easily that if the “domestic” sheep become too unwild, as some occasionally do, they become uneconomic and useless. They have reproductive problems, conformation problems, and so on. Domesticity and wildness are in fact intimately connected. What is utterly alien to both is corporate industrialism—a displaced economic life that is without affection for the places where it is lived and without respect for the materials it uses.

The question we must deal with is not whether the domestic and the wild are separate or can be separated; it is how, in the human economy, their indissoluble and necessary connection can be properly maintained.

- Wendell Berry, “Conservationist and Agrarian” (2002), in BRINGING IT TO THE TABLE: ON FARMING AND FOOD (introduction by Michael Pollan), $14.95 paper

This and other books, new and used, on agriculture, food production and food are available now at Dog Ears Books.

Of Books and Shelves and Books Again

This is my new art department at Dog Ears Books, the books shelved on the large, heavy unit I moved all by myself from back storage area to front corner of bookshop, after which I decided I had earned the name Archimedea. The art books are shown off to better advantage now, and there is enough room on the shelves for them all to be together in one place, with some of them even facing out--a big advantage for bookselling but not easy to manage with space always at a premium.

Another new feature at the bookstore takes up (so far) only one little shelf. It's "Some of My Favorites," and while it's in the new book section, some of the books are new and some used. It all depends on which of my favorites I have in stock at the time. Naturally, not all of my favorites fit on this shelf, so others will still be found throughout the bookstore. But people often ask what I recommend, and this provides a sample of books particularly dear to my heart. Here's what on the shelf at present:


Bruce was at the bookstore yesterday, giving me a chance to have lunch with my friend Sally, whose tulips are looking bright and cheerful outside Dolls and More these days. (We got sandwiches and pasta from Trish's Dishes.) After lunch came the book discussion group at the library, with Still Alice on the agenda. Next book to be discussed will be the last of the Conrad Richter trilogy, and--not to brag or anything, but--I am very, very pleased at how much the group loved these books because I pushed hard for at least the first book in the trilogy to go on their book list for the 09-10 season. Now, in fact, someone said it isn't only the library group, because they've been telling others, and "all of Northport" is reading The Trees, The Fields and The Town. Well, if anyone still needs copies, here's where I shamelessly announce that I have on hand, at present (no need even to order), two copies of The Trees and one of The Fields. (My last copy of The Town is already reserved spoken for.) There's even a chance that The Trees will go on the high school senior reading list. I feel I have made a tiny mark here in Northport, and it feels good.

At the end of the working day, there was still so much bright sunshine left that I easily talked David into taking a ride and picking up dinner somewhere away from home. We ended up at Pegtown Station in Maple City.


I love Greek pizza, and theirs is fabulous--so good that we ate way too much, leaving only one piece for my lunch in Northport today. What they say on their website is all true--great pizza, local hangout. Lucky for us, co-owner Mary recognized us from the Bluebird in Leland, so we didn't feel like total strangers. I'm sure, however, that a stranger would also get a warm welcome, because that's just the kind of place Pegtown Station is.

"Nothing much changes in Maple City," David mused reflectively. Many years ago he had a post office box there when staying in his "house in the woods," down in what is now part of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore.

Beautiful day all day long! Sunset over Fishtown on our way home:



P.S. For a good laugh, check out my contribution today to the Bookshop Blog. Blogger Bruce Hollingdrake found the perfect illustration for my text!

Another P.S. Take a look here for dogs going for rides!

Chance Encounter, Lovely Craft, Common Names

I met Mary Van Arsdel from St. Petersburg by chance on a semi-wild (i.e., not yet developed) bit of land near Aripeka, Florida, in late March. It was my dog Sarah, a sociable canine, who introduced us. Later in the day David and I were driving another area of the shore, and I saw Mary a little way off the side of Osowaw Boulevard. “There’s Mary!” (Someone I know!) We stopped so I could invite her back to the house for a cold beer, and she showed me one of her recent baskets, along with bullrushes and sweetgrass she’d gathered that day.




The next day I had an e-mail from Mary:

“Today was a busy day, but I managed to hang the Black Needlerush (Bulrush) on the line in my backyard. The East sun dries one side and the West sun the other and will take about 2 months to turn a chestnut color. It is hard to believe that a day’s work only yielded ½ bucket. I enjoy harvesting it and it is good exercise. However, this is the last of the Bulrush that I will harvest until next winter.”

This lady, a data analyst by profession, is nothing if not devoted to her craft.

What goes by the common name “sweetgrass” in the South is not the same as our northern Michigan plant. Ours is Hierochlöe odorata, theirs Muhlenbergia filipes or Muhlenbergia capillaris, and while sweetgrass basketry here in Leelanau County has a Native American ancestry, that in South Carolina, where many are drawn by a strong regional tradition, traces its roots to West Africa by way of the Gullah people. What Mary calls bullrushes, by the way, is what I have called sawgrass in my winter posts from Florida’s Gulf coast.

Southern sweetgrass basket-makers increasingly find their supply of raw natural materials threatened and diminished by development, and one solution many of them are turning to is growing their own. Mary has planted in her backyard sweetgrass purchased from Karl Ohlandt, a landscape ecolopgist. Here’s more on Karl’s involvement in keeping sweetgrass from becoming extinct in South Carolina.

Mary lives in Florida at present but told me quite a bit about the South Carolina basket community and the stretch of Hwy 17 where basket-makers hawk their wares. The Gullah basket tradition there is over 300 years old.

Wildflowers, weeds, grasses, trees—plants of every kind and type have names by which they are known in different regions of the U.S. One bookstore customer today told me she is just getting interesting in herbal remedies and cooking and realizes she has to be careful about the plants she gathers. Sometimes, I told her, the name by which you know a plant depends on what your grandmother called it.


And then, of course, sometimes we choose the common names we like the best. My friend Laurie likes dog-tooth violet for the flower I prefer to call troutlily. Its Latin name, the one known around the world to distinguish it from every other plant, is Erythronium americanum--a unique identifier, thus very important, but not nearly as intimate as the common names. Another common name for this wildflower is adder's tongue. Read more about it here.


This is the season for all the wonderful spring woodland wildflowers. Later the forest canopy will fill in, Lake Michigan will no longer be visible through the trees, and few blossoms will remain on the deeply shaded forest floor. All the more reason to get out in the woods now, while the getting is good....

Friends and Road and Sunshine

There it is: my road. I feel very proprietary toward it, and you can have your old expressway. Just leave me M-37, shown here looking south, from near Baldwin. It’s one of my favorite roads in the world because (1) it’s two-lane; (2) it goes through lovely forest; (3) it goes through little towns; (4) traffic on it is usually light; and (5) whether I’m driving north or south, it’s taking me to people and places infinitely dear to my heart.

Wednesday was a cold, grey morning in Traverse City, but on down the road a while the sunshine broke through and stayed with me for the rest of my time away. Trees and shrubs and flowers were blooming everywhere in Kalamazoo, dogwood in its delicate, ethereal, just-beginning phase.



While Sarah was not with me (I kept thinking she was in the back seat, then remembering she wasn’t, and this happened over and over), my friends’ dog, Nadine, added her doggie best to the ministrations of Godfrey and Laurie, extraordinary hosts, to comfort and cheer a battered soul. Five stars to my friends!


The visit held too much for me to describe and illustrate it all, and I didn’t even get pictures of everything. For example, I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures of Vaughn Baber and Bicentennial Books on Westnedge Avenue, a shop flourishing in that neighborhood since 1975. My friend Barbara Buysse’s show of paintings downtown in the Epic Center (Arts Council gallery) I did photograph, going back a second day to do so. Seeing that show was one of my primary motivations for making a trip I could scarcely afford at this time of year; seeing my son again and friends I missed on our whirlwind passage through earlier in the month were other reasons.



(I need to mention some books, at least parenthetically, so I’ll tell you that Barbara gave me an old travel-food memoir called Paris is a Nice Dish. Prices were given in old francs, very cumbersome after the war, what with inflation and all. I took along on the trip Guy de la Valdene's For a Handful of Feathers. More about that another time.)


On Thursday, Earth Day, my friend Laurie and I worked in the woods behind her house pulling mustard garlic. We had done a big pull-out two years before--and she works at it steadily when I’m not around--with very good results. The object is to prevent this invasive species from taking over and smothering all the dear little local natives—the Mayapple, jack-in-the-pulpit, trillium, wild ginger, etc.


It’s a lot of work, all that bending and stooping, but the company and surroundings could not have been more congenial and beautiful, and we were both very satisfied to be observing the day in such an appropriate manner.

Now for today’s botany mystery. It shouldn’t be a mystery, because I should know the name of this grass, but it has slipped my mind. Anyone???


Then there was Friday’s trip home. I took a different route, starting by driving west to South Haven. Overwhelming! So many changes in that little town, so much new development, that I couldn’t even make my way to the beach! North along the coast I came to the tiny, quiet crossroads called Glenn, where I caught my breath gratefully.


There was the sweet little shop owned by people who regularly visit Dog Ears Books; unfortunately, their shop won’t be open until May, so I could not return the favor, much as I wanted to do so. Outside of town were farms with little black pigs in one field, chickens scratching in a garden in another yard, a horse standing by a fence. Nice! I turned back to Glenn and followed the road north to a small county park. The bad news (though even they are beautiful) was all the zebra mussel shells on the beach.



The good news, my reward for seeking out this beach, was finding what the locals there call a Glenn stone. It has another name. What do you call it?

The Vagaries of Fate

My camera's whereabouts continue to baffle and frustrate me. I've dug out an old picture, but today's post is mostly lots and lots of words. I have a lot on my mind.

Vagaries. A lovely word, isn’t it? In the sound is the suggestion of vague, of vagueness, but lack of clarity hardly gets at vagaries. Capricious is more like it. (Are waves capricious? Vague in French is wave.) I am feeling capricious this morning and need to get it out of my system before a Chamber of Commerce meeting, a gathering of focused, grownups. Unpredictable or erratic. It’s the unpredictable that’s on my mind—the unpredictable in relation to human projects that set out toward some more or less clear goal and then take on a life of their own.

In the beginning, an idea. Not just an abstract notion but an idea for something that one can do. A practical idea. An idea for a project to serve some future goal. Then the project. But the project takes on a life of its own. Human endeavors have a way of doing that, taking on lives of their own. Teach two sections of the same class, on the same day, and the two classes will never be the same. The form is shaped, even deformed, by the content without which it would be pointless. Sorry—all that is very vague. Let me begin again.

I have in mind two different specific phenomena, both of which grew out of ideas I had relating to my bookstore and ways to strengthen support for its continuance. The first was to invite friends to “drop in” on Tuesdays for “brown bag lunch.” The second was this blog.

My original idea for the drop-in lunch was to encourage local book-reading friends to visit the shop on a regular basis. There’s always something new in a bookstore, but getting people in the door on a regular basis is a real challenge. Besides, though I do work five to seven days a week, depending on the season, I enjoy seeing my friends. So my motives for this idea were both social and business.

The inspiration behind the blog was more far-reaching, as many of my best customers do not live nearby. They visit only on their vacations, maybe only once a year, but they love Dog Ears Books, and they miss the bookstore and Northport, they tell me, during the rest of their year. Giving Dog Ears fans a platform where these people could visit from afar was, like the brown bag lunch idea, a way I saw to connect with them more regularly, to give them a way to “drop in” more often. Again, a combination of social and business.

Lunch took on a life of its own. The blog took on a life of its own. The unpredictable courses of these two projects, the vagaries of their existences—existences which I, their originator, would have seen as complementary and overlapping—have brought me to unexpected places.

One of the surprises of the blog has been the way it has introduced me to book-lovers, dog-lovers, nature-lovers, photographers and writers from all over the country and even from other countries. Many of these people will never walk down Waukazoo Street and through the door of Dog Ears Books, but they express care and concern for my bookstore, as I feel and hope I express concern for the projects in their lives, and we are mutually enriched by our exchanges. I hadn’t foreseen this, but I appreciate it.

Lunch really took some surprising turns, so quickly that it made my head spin. It turned from brown bag to potluck, becoming more elaborate by the week. It turned from drop-in, everyone welcome (my original idea), to a set cast, with no room for more, so that it was no longer appropriate for the bookstore. The bookstore must provide a welcome for anyone and everyone whenever it’s open; if people feel they’re crashing a private party, they are uncomfortable and leave quickly. It turned from lunch into brunch into breakfast, since three of us are working women and not available for long lunches, and it turned into Saturday breakfast to accommodate one woman who needs to be on the job earlier than the other two of us. It’s a wonderful group of women. It has been, at various times and for various reasons, a support group for several.

In each case, such were the vagaries, the social aspect all but eclipsed the business goal. Well, more so with lunch than with the blog. Still....

One of the lunching women died in December. The loss of the remaining group to some of its individual members would be devastating. This phenomenon, grown out of a very different kind of original project, has taken on importance in its own right. The lunch group would be profoundly missed if it were to vanish.

The blog has its regular readers but none, I think, who would be devastated by its disappearance. There are always other blogs, other sites, other connections to be made online.

What about the bookstore? This is the third year that the building we’re in has been for sale, but this year the FOR SALE signs are plastered all over the front windows, and every day I have to field anxious questions with the only response I can honestly make: “I don’t have a clue.” At present, the bookstore is open for the season, Monday through Saturday, hours a bit irregular in April.... The consignment store that was our neighbor to the north is gone, moved to Suttons Bay. I would be surprised if the gallery opened this season, but again, "I don't have a clue." No one has given me any information, so I have none to share. "What will happen to the bookstore if the building is sold?" That’s the most frequent question, and it almost makes me laugh, because I don’t even know what will happen to the bookstore if the building doesn’t sell.

July 4 will be the 17th anniversary of Dog Ears Books, and every year has brought its joys and new friends, but every year has brought its struggles and heartaches, as well. Where the vagaries of fate will take me in the coming year, regardless of the direction I set and my efforts to steer a course, time alone will tell. Some would miss it, I know, if it were no longer here. How many? How much? That's harder to tell.

Nothing to Show, Not Much to Tell

Can't find my camera. Feeling incomplete. Here's something I wrote on Thursday, thinking I'd have pictures to go with it:

What exactly was it that Archimedes said about a fulcrum and a place to stand? Take your pick of the quotes. I have my own story, and it begins with a friend of mine. Two friends, actually, married to each other for a long time.

For years these people were remodeling their kitchen, a project that stretched on and on. When they got a little money ahead, they would buy materials and hire workers, and when the money ran out, they’d stop until finances permitted the project to move forward again. At last the end was in sight. There remained, however, the pressed tin ceiling they’d bought many years before and had in storage all this time. The wife wanted to go ahead and get it up. The husband shook his head, telling her, “That’s a three-man job, and we can’t afford to hire it done right now.” “Let’s see if we can do it ourselves,” the woman insisted. It wasn’t easy. It must have been pretty scary at times. But together, somehow, the two got that ceiling up. When I heard the story, it concluded with these words: “It wasn’t a three-man job, after all. It was a one-man, one-determined-woman job!”

David is always managing to do jobs alone that would be more easily done with help, and when I ask, “How did you do it?” his answer is always the same: “Egyptian engineering!”

There’s no way that moving a single piece of furniture can compare to installing a ceiling or doing any of the projects David undertakes, but I really did think that moving a heavy, six-foot-long, four-shelf unit would have to be a two-person job. Then the sun disappeared behind the clouds, the day dragged on, and I was alone, unhappy and impatient.

It wasn’t a two-person job, after all. It was a One-Determined-Woman job! You may call me Archimedea.

Each day, e small step.

It Takes More than a Wonder Bra (to Support Local Coffee Business)

This post is not about books or bookselling. It’s about coffee. What do you think it takes to meet expenses and make a profit selling coffee and maybe a few donuts or muffins? Why does Barb’s Bakery close in the winter, and what happens when they do? Why did I provide community coffee in the bookstore for only one season? Why did Donna at the Treasure Chest, who took over the following year, not do it this past winter, and why does Jeanette at the Northport Fitness Center, who fueled locals at Brew North in 2010, say she won’t do it again next year? Bottom line: What would it take for anyone to be able to offer Northport the friendly coffee oasis it wants during the months of January, February and March?

The coffee, all by itself, is not expensive, even if you buy the really good stuff. Say you’ve got a municipal water supply. Or, as I did one year, that you drag plastic gallon jugs of your good well water from home every morning—but no, no, let’s not go there! Let’s stick with places with up-to-code coffee-making facilities! The fact is that coffee doesn’t cost a lot to make.

And people who work (or did, before retirement) for paychecks often stop right there in their calculations. They do the same when they go to a restaurant. “We could make this at home for three dollars!” Yes, you could. But the restaurant can’t sell you that meal for three dollars and stay in business. Why?

Assume the simplest possible coffee-donut setup, leaving out full meals and a staff of servers.

Rent. Oh! That! “But they own the building!” Taxes. (Ever get a look at those on commercial property?) Maybe a mortgage.

Utilities. Phone. Garbage and trash removal. Advertising. Heat.

Heat and electric are the winter deal-breakers here in Up North small towns. You keep your business open all winter, you lose money. That’s the bottom line. Give up summer fun in the sun to make your profits (i.e., your living, i.e., what would come in the form of a paycheck if you were working for someone else) and then spend that hard-earned money heating unprofitable space all winter? Would you do it?

Let me put the question in different terms: Would you work all summer for a paycheck, then work all winter without one and also return to your employer the summer pay you’d received for the privilege of working for nothing all winter? How would that make any sense at all?

Well, how do profitable coffee house chains or big city cafes stay in business? By being in cities. Pure and simple. By being in a place with a work force, where people have jobs. Imagine a line of people stopping by on their way to work, on their breaks, on the way home, each spending pretty good money for some fancy variation on liquid caffeine. They get it and go. Or they stay and add an “overpriced” sweet to their bill. Profit! Now picture the contrasting small town scene, where a dozen retired people sit around a table for several hours, hoping against hope for unlimited refills. It’s warm, it’s cozy, it’s congenial. The trouble is, it isn’t profitable.

“Support” is more than keeping a chair warm. If it’s anything at all, it’s spending enough money to keep a business in business. Okay, who needs a donut every day? What if I just buy a cup of coffee, but I do that six days a week. Isn’t that enough? Sadly, no. By March, your provider of caffeinated comfort will be in the hole.

People in small towns don’t like it when businesses close for the winter. Some are just sad and disappointed, while others are downright pissed off. When one coffee place closes and they have to go elsewhere, the pissed-off crowd vows never to return to the one that closed for the cold season. Surprise when the substitute place isn’t open the next year, either!

Is there a solution to this perennial Up North problem, specifically for Northport? I can imagine a few possibilities. Maybe the firehouse coffee scene could be enlarged to make the whole community welcome rather than being a more-or-less closed Republican men’s club. Or maybe some other public building that’s already being heated, such as the township hall (in the same building with the library), could be set up for morning coffee—staffed by volunteers, of course, not township staff! Or, if we want to encourage private enterprise in Northport (and I always sense a bit of ambivalence on this point), perhaps a local coffee house could make it through the winter by selling winter memberships.

What’s it worth to you to have a warm place to visit with friends over coffee on winter mornings? Are you willing to pay the true cost?

Pages From My Checkered Past

Where is my camera? Where are my pictures? If the camera and pictures show up, I'll add them later. For now, here are my scattered thoughts (first on present, then on past) and one recent picture, showing my true, perennial age: third grade!

Kathy from Up in the Yoop put up a post about her readership dropping by half when her mood dipped. I had an opposite experience this week on Facebook. It's hard to know what will spark comments, either on a blog or on Fb, but my suggestion that Northport Creek's name be changed to Wildcat Creek (in honor of our local teams) sparked a comet's tail of commentary. Some people had suggestions to propose in place of mine, some liked the current name, some told of older names--it just went on and on. I've had similar experiences on the blog, with some random post that felt very trivial to me generating lots of comments, while my (ahem!) very thoughtful mental meanderings "went south," to use Kathy's phrase.

So now for that backward look, whether anyone wants to follow my thoughts in this direction or not.

--Okay, I found one picture, the one depicting not presence but absence:


One thing not welcoming us back to Northport this year was the original (1993) home of Dog Ears Books, that little shed down at the other end of the block on Waukazoo Street. Ours was a simple beginning: no heat, no phone, no computer, not even insulation or water—just a few bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. David and I sawed boards and put up shelves (I became very handy with an electric screw gun), and when the sign went up—DOG EARS—early summer visitors imagined all kinds of possibilities, one of my favorites being some kind of “fair food,” on the order of elephant ears (but presumably not as large).

There were two sheds, actually, joined together by a false front, making it look, years later, as if a tree were growing up through the building. Not so. The tree grew in the space between the two sheds, but both are gone now, along with the tree. Well, it was time. The property hadn’t been used for years and was looking very derelict, and for me that chapter was closed a long time ago.

In 2003, on the 10th anniversary of Dog Ears Books, I put together what I called a “Nutshell History” (year-by-year highlights, one short paragraph per year), accompanied by photographs, testimonials, and a list of some of my favorite and recommended titles. All this turned up a couple of days ago as I was hunting for some old tax documents. So here today, “in no particular order” (as the list modestly described itself, is the “eclectic assortment of recommended titles...from the bookseller at Dog Ears Books.” I’d add a few more since then, but I still stand by these:

Smith, Betty. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN; MAGGIE-NOW
Camus, Albert. THE PLAGUE; THE FIRST MAN
Paul, Elliot. THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS
Russell, Franklin. WATCHERS AT THE POND
Paton, Alan. CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY
Chang, Jung. WILD SWANS
Catton, Bruce. WAITING FOR THE MORNING TRAIN
Hubbard, Harlan. SHANTYBOAT
Grahame, Kenneth. WIND IN THE WILLOWS
Morley, Christopher. PARNASSUS ON WHEELS; THE HAUNTED BOOKSHOP
Berry, Wendell. JAYBER CROW; HARLAN HUBBARD, LIFE AND WORK
Franck, Frederick. THE ZEN OF SEEING
Coetzee, J.M. DISGRACE
Norris, Kathleen. DAKOTA: A SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY
“Pilgrim, Peace.” PEACE PILGRIM
Richter, Conrad. THE TREES; THE FIELDS; THE TOWN
Austen, Jane. PRICE AND PREJUDICE; PERSUASION; SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Wolfe. Tom. THE PAINTED WORD
Mosley, Walter. ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, ALWAYS OUTGUNNED; WALKIN’ THE DOG
Lovasik, Lawrence G. THE HIDDEN POWER OF KINDNESS
Alexie, Sherman. RESERVATION BLUES
DeToqueville, Alexis de. DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA; JOURNEY TO AMERICA
Tuchman, Barbara. THE GUNS OF AUGUST
Fisher, M.F.K. MAP OF ANOTHER TOWN
Browne, Tom. THE TRACKER
Least Heat-Moon, William. BLUE HIGHWAYS
Richards, Eva Alvey. ARCTIC MOOD
Scherman, Katherine. SPRING ON AN ARCTIC ISLAND
St.-Exupery, Antoine de. THE LITTLE PRINCE; NIGHT FLIGHT
Farley, Walter. All the BLACK STALLION and ISLAND STALLION books
White, T. H. Mistress Masham’s Repose
Fabre, Jean-Henri. Any of his books on insects
Kundera, Milan. THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING; THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
Tannen, Deborah. YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND
Elgin, Suzette Haden. THE GENTLE ART OF VERBAL SELF-DEFENSE
Huc, Abbe. HIGH ROAD IN TARTARY
Mattuck, Israel. JEWISH ETHICS
Dickens, Charles. AMERICAN NOTES
Arnold, Thurman. THE FOLKLORE OF CAPITALISM
Spence, Gerry. THE MAKING OF A COUNTRY LAWYER
Leveson, David. A SENSE OF THE EARTH
Carhart, Thad. THE PIANO SHOP ON THE LEFT BANK
Gopnik, Adam. PARIS TO THE MOON
Estes, Eleanor. All the MOFFAT and PYE books
Strong, Albertine. DELUGE
Van Paassen, Pierre. EARTH COULD BE FAIR; DAYS OF OUR YEARS
Van Loon, Willem Hendrick. LIVES
Brooks, Van Wyck. THE FLOWERING OF NEW ENGLAND
Dillard, Annie. PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
Verghese, Abraham. MY OWN COUNTRY
Wylie, Laurence. VILLAGE IN THE VAUCLUSE
Bromfield, Louis. MALABAR FARM; his other farming books, too
Trollope, Anthony. THE WARDEN and all the BARCHESTER series
Bulwer-Lytton. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII
Norton, Mary. THE BORROWERS; THE BORROWERS AFIELD
Berndt, Henrich. THE TREES IN MY FOREST
Hinton, William. FANSHEN: A DOCUMENTARY OF REVOLUTION IN A CHINESE VILLAGE
White, Theodore. IN SEARCH OF HISTORY; THUNDER OUT OF CHINA
Berenson, Bernard. SKETCH FOR A SELF-PORTRAIT
Beauvoir, Simone de. MEMOIRS OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER
Sendak, Maurice. CHICKEN SOUP WITH RICE
Seuss, Dr. HORTON HEARS A WHO
Cameron, Eleanor. THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET
Hatch, Richard W. THE CURIOUS LOBSTER
Thompson, William Irwin. AT THE EDGE OF HISTORY
Bracken, Peg. Anything by her, e.g., I HATE TO HOUSEKEEP
Gould, Stephen Jay. Anything by him
Beck, Phineas. CLEMENTINE IN THE KITCHEN
Gendlin, Eugene T. FOCUSING
Kipling, Rudyard. THE JUNGLE BOOKS

Came Home To:

Small bits of color in the yard--


Buds on my little plum tree--



Michigan fossils (chain coral) on Lake Michigan sand--

Friends and dog friends--



I wonder if Sadie notices her own unexpectedly rocky shadow....

Lots of changes afoot in the bookstore, cleaning and rearranging and finding room for books brought back from winter travels, but I'll wait to take pictures of the new look rather than the current mess.

My Own Private Side Trip

There are so many inviting paths, dirt roads, winding creeks and branches and rivers. They teased me all along the road. Finally, while we were stopped at a rest area along I-65 in Tennessee, I took advantage of having to "walk the dog." Sarah was amenable, and David had a guy to talk to about a Jaguar, so I figure we wouldn't be missed for a while.


Across the rest area, past the trucks, to the other side and down a path that led to the bank of the river. Violets were blooming. The river was coursing along. Rock cliffs towered. There were no loud trucks or speeding cars. It was a time to take deep breaths of fresh air.









I didn't have a canoe, but for a few minutes I was there.

Again with the Serendipity!

David and I do not set records when it comes to distance covered in a day’s driving. Today, for example, setting out from Chattanooga in a pouring rain, we missed an exit and found ourselves going in more or less the right direction (north) on the “wrong” road--not the road we’d planned to take, that is. But it wasn’t a bad road, and the traffic was lighter, so we decided we might as well stay on it until we reached I-40 and could backtrack to the west. All was well, and we were almost to the interstate when I suggested cutting back on a connecting road rather than following the narrow wedge farther east than we needed to go.

In the Cumberland region, all major roads and rivers run northeast-southwest, so that cutting across from one to another means climbing and descending the intermediate ridge. We found ourselves climbing a narrow, winding mountain road, rock rising up and out of sight into the mists on our left, plunging steeply down and away and disappearing below on our right. Huge boulders looked as if they might let loose any moment. Then came a little mountain community, a tiny cluster of stores to serve the nearby mountaintop farms. It was 68N from Spring City to Crossville, through Grandview and Grassy Cove. "I would have taken this road intentionally if I'd known about it," said David.

I know I’ve written before about taking an unexpected little road and finding a magical place. It’s happened to us before, and it happened again today, but it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t made a mistake, if everything had gone according to plan. We didn’t stop along the way, so I don’t have pictures of that mountain road. Sometimes the heart and mind must take the only pictures.

The more pervasive theme of the day’s travel, all through Tennessee and into Kentucky, was redbud. It just went on and on and on and on, and we didn’t get tired of it all day long.