The Way It Is, The Way It Was

Golden trees along M-115 on Monday 

The season --

 

Not every autumn is as colorful as this year’s fall in Leelanau County, which was, to me, surprisingly beautiful -- surprising, since I never remember what factors go into making fall color particularly vibrant and therefore had no idea what to expect. (For others like me who forget from one year to the next, here is the full explanation.) But the season was spectacular, as it turned out, and many of us could not stop trying to store the beauty. Now not much red and orange is left – mostly gold and brown -- and even the gold fades a little more every day, as more and more trees let the winds strip their branches bare.

Corner of woods near my home on Tuesday morning

Sunny Juliet and I had our last agility session for the year and are on our own now until late spring 2025. Also, because of live traps set in the yard for Mr. Porcupine, Sunny does not have her usual at-home freedom. So I take her on-leash beyond the yard, where we can have tennis ball play (off-leash) in the neighbor’s driveway through the orchard, and we go for our long walks at least once a day, sometimes twice. As for those porcupine traps, though, I’ve pretty much lost hope of any result. Mr. Porcupine seems to be finding enough to eat without being tempted by baited traps….

 

Two leashes joined give her much more than an extra inch!

Combining business and pleasure --

 

Monday took us to Cadillac, where I visited a photographer’s warehouse to stock up on jigsaw puzzles for holiday and winter bookstore visitors, afterward meeting a dear friend from Kalamazoo who brought me books I was purchasing from an estate down her way. The deal was arranged by others, my friend taking responsibility only for delivery, but our rendezvous gave us an opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives, which we enjoyed despite a very strong, cold wind across Lake Cadillac that day. 

The library in Cadillac was our rendezvous point.

Lunch was a picnic -- in the cold wind!

A beautiful beech tree nearby had a warm look.

Sadly for Ms. Sunny Juliet, finding the photographer’s warehouse and making my purchase took longer than expected, so we didn’t have time for the dog park. Laurie was willing to look for it with me after our picnic lunch (in the cold wind), but by that time I only wanted to get home again, where tennis ball play plus a good walk made up to Sunny for all her boring time in the car -- I hope!

 

Driving back from Cadillac on M-115, for several miles I noticed the brilliant red of Michigan holly berries, but with a car behind me I didn’t try to pull over and stop. In the morning, on my way southeast, driving into that bright rising sun, I hadn’t noticed those reds at all; then, going back, noticing, I thought there would be more down the road that I could stop and capture with my phone camera. But no -- most of it was right there close to Cadillac, and I didn’t spot any at all on M-37. However – surprise! When I picked up my mail at the post office in Northport and found a letter from a friend in the U.P., what did I find enclosed with the letter but a photograph of Michigan holly! 

Having friends, seeing friends, talking with friends, letters from friends -- what would we do without them?

 

 

Reading the past –

 

After reading, one after the other, all four of Albert Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, taking him from boyhood and schoolboy through music tours to his vocation as a writer, I’ve now been reading Murray writing not of a fictional self but as himself in South to a Very Old Place, a book in which he visits -- not for the first time but this time as a writer preparing a book -- various scenes of his earlier life: New York, New Haven, Greensboro, Atlanta, Tuskegee, Mobile, New Orleans, Greenville, and Memphis. The stuff of racial conflict omitted from his fiction comes out strong in these memoir essays. He pulls no punches. Still, white as I am and can’t help being, I find comfort in the cadences of his language, even in the way he and his refer to their towns – Lana, Beel, Ham (that last, Birmingham, is not given its own essay title, but the name comes up often).

The book I find myself telling people about these days, though, was published in 1833. Three Years in North America, written by James Stuart, Esq. (1775-1849), and published in New York by J. and J. Harper from the second London edition, is an account of the English author’s time spent touring the North American continent, the second volume taking him by stage from New York through Washington, D.C., down the Eastern seaboard, through the slave-holding South (often on horseback), back north up the Mississippi and Ohio by steamboat, and to St. Louis, Cincinnati, Hoboken, etc. 

 

Stuart was horrified by slavery, noting that even those enslaved people who were treated “well,” such as hotel restaurant servers, did not have beds but slept in the hallways on the floor without blankets, and after an extensive tour of Southern states, he met with many white Americans in northern states who had fled north because of slavery’s evils, though the possibility of civil war did not seem on many minds.

More and more leaves are on the ground now.

A very fact-oriented writer, Stuart gives population numbers for every city and town he visits, the width of every river traveled or crossed, cost of transportation, lodging, meals and just about anything else that can be assigned a dollar amount. At the same time, his observations and descriptions keep the account lively, and he also elicits opinions of everyone with whom he has conversation and gives his own opinions of people and places and customs and manners.  

 

Very early in the book, he attended a meeting of Congress in Washington, D.C., and he contrasted the dignity of that assembly with his own country’s Parliament (where even today interruptions and jeers are common). What struck me more, however, was the content of legislative discussion he described that day, providing lengthy quotes. A bill had been put forward to propose that the U.S. post offices be closed on Sunday. (I don’t know if a postmaster worked Sundays then or if, as has been the case all my life, the window to purchase stamps and send packages was closed but the lobby was open so that post office boxes could be accessed by their holders and mail dropped off.) The arguments given against the bill were beautifully and impressively articulate. There were several “Because” paragraphs, but I will quote only one, and that only in part to give a flavor of the objections to the bill: 

 

“Because, The bill violates that equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensable in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If ‘all men are by nature equally free and independent,’ all men are to be considered as entering into society on equal conditions,--as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less one than another of their rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an ‘equal title to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.’ While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the religion which we believe to be of Divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to men, must an account of it be rendered. 

 

(I said I would quote the paragraph in part, but stopping halfway through seems wrong. It goes on.)

 

As the bill violates equality, by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the Quakers and Mennonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their religions to be endowed, above all others, with extraordinary privileges, by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favourably of the justice and good sense of these denominations to believe that they either covet pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens, or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure.” 

 

That gives a fair idea, I think, of the quality of argument in the legislature in the first half of the 19^th century. Basically, opposition to the bill rested on freedom of conscience and separation of church and state, and those arguing against it saw not only rights violated if religion were to be a part of government but religion also weakened if the separating wall were removed, because it would be then as if the law said that religious practice could only be ensured if churches were backed up by government, that faith alone would not compel adherence.

 

This was the United States in the 1830s, almost two centuries ago. Look around the world, these legislators said, and see what harm has been done by state religions, not only to individuals but to religion itself. 

 

“…It is perhaps fortunate for our country that the proposition should have been made at the early period, while the spirit of the revolution yet exists in full vigour. Religious zeal enlists the strongest prejudices of the human mind, and when misdirected, excites the worst passions of our nature under the delusive pretext of doing God service. Nothing so infuriates the heart to deeds of rapine and blood. Nothing is so incessant in its toils, so persevering in its determinations, so appalling in its course, or so dangerous in its consequences. The equality of rights secured by the constitution may bid defiance to mere political tyrants, but the robe of sanctity too often glitters to deceive. The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual, than that of a whole community. The representative who would violate this principle would lose his delegated character, and forfeit the confidence of his constituents. If Congress shall declare the first day of the week holy, it will not convince the Jew nor the Sabbatarian. It will dissatisfy both, and, consequently, convert neither. Human power may extort vain sacrifices, but Deity alone can command the affections of the heart. It must be recollected that, in the earliest settlement of this country, the spirit of persecution, which drove the pilgrims from their native homes, was brought with them to their new habitations; and that some Christians were scourged, and others put to death, for no other crime than dissenting from the dogmas of their rulers.”

 

Surprisingly, I'm sure, to many Americans of today, the legislators of the 1830s did not even exclude atheists from the right to freedom of conscience. We were not a "Christian nation," they said. In other words, we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Puritans, now that we have a constitution guaranteeing freedom of conscience to all. “Fortunate,” they said, that this question is before us now and can be settled so as not to plague us in the future. Little did they know! 

But I don't want to close on a note of despair. Tomorrow is another day. And as long as we care about the future, there is hope for the future.

Tuesday turned strangely warm again and closed with grey clouds.