My Road Trips Are Only On Paper This Fall

Don Lystra

This Thursday, remember, we will have a reception for Don Lystra, and he will read from his new collection of short stories, Something that Feels like Truth. It’s party time at Dog Ears Books, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday!

Then on Saturday the 28^th it will be party time throughout (not through, as I hastily typed on the flier composed without benefit of editor) the village of Northport with “Leelanau Uncaged.” Here’s some information from a letter describing the event:

Book on the theme -- 

Leelanau Uncaged is the street fair celebrating the tastes and talents of Leelanau in Northport on Saturday, Sept. 28. The name was picked by Andy Thomas to honor John Cage, an avant-garde musician.... The event is free.... We are closing M-201 from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. from the corner of Main and Waukazoo to the corner of Mill and Third [Streets]. Traffic on M-201 will be re-routed down Main to Rose and then West on Fourth to Mill.... There will be tents of artists and food venders.... The homecoming parade will be held that day and will come down Main Street to Rose, then north to Nagonaba and go through the festival area and up the hill on Nagonaba, then north on High. Music will be on two truck stages (on Waukazoo and on Mill) and in the park pavilion and in Lelu Cafe. Art will be upstairs and down in Lelu, in the back of Red Mullein, in Dolls and More, and on the streets.

Besides all that there will be a drum circle, native dancing, water blessings, poetry readings, and belly dancing. For further information, call 231-386-1104. I can tell you that Ken Wylie will be at Dog Ears Books that day, from 1:30 to 3 p.m., signing copies of his recently released, co-authored novel, Possessed, and we will have live music late in the afternoon from 4 to 5 p.m.

Then, come October, we will be doing something new and different at the bookstore – a bilingual poetry reading with not one but two bilingual poets! Beginning at 2 p.m., Arturo Mantecon and Mark Statman will be reading their own original poems in English, poems in Spanish, and their English translations of Spanish works of poetry. As far as I know, this is the first-ever such event in Northport, and we are all looking forward to it, poets and bookseller alike.

Meanwhile, rather than jumping in the car and heading for the Mackinac Bridge this September, I’ve been reading road trip books like crazy. But more of that later, as well as a photograph or two of the single eggplant ripening in my fall garden at the farm.

Where I am NOT this fall (Grand Marais)