Turn, Turn, Turn

Not AI-generated! Completely unedited!

Peak Autumn Color

People kept asking if the turning fall leaves had reached peak color, and I kept saying, day after day, no, not quite yet. There was still a lot of green left. Late Saturday afternoon’s sunshine, though, invited me for a little drive after work, and Sunday’s rain, because it put the kibosh on dog park fun, tempted me farther afield in the car. You can see more of those Saturday and Sunday scenes on my photo blog, and take a look at the Lake Leelanau Narrows on Wednesday morning, while you’re there.

When did we turn the color corner? In Leelanau Township, I’d say it was overnight from Sunday to Monday. Monday! What a perfect fall day! On Tuesday came the rain and wind. Black walnuts thumped and clattered to ground, windblown leaves tossed restlessly, yellow popples shimmered and gleamed.

My stepdaughter (Artist’s oldest child) and her husband came up on Monday, and Tuesday evening we went to the Happy Hour for dinner. I kept saying that Tuesday felt like Saturday and asking why. “Because we’re here,” she said, “so it feels like a weekend.” Also, we agreed, because it just seems that peak color should land on a weekend for all those travelers and visitors hoping to catch it.

Re-reading

At least a couple times a month I pull an old favorite book off the shelf. As October races past, after having read for the first time Le premier homme, by Albert Camus, and Medicine Walk, by Richard Waganese, I turned once more to Elliot Paul’s The Last Time I Saw Paris, the closeup portrait of a Parisian neighborhood and its denizens and how they are storm-tossed by events in the larger world.

The years Paul lived in Paris were the fraught years between the two world wars when the wounds of France and Germany were still festering, both between the two countries and within their borders. My many readings of this book have made almost personal to me the anguish of that time, as the author shows growing tensions of people living on one small street of shops and residences in central Paris, but with every reading, also, something jumps out at me that hadn’t jumped out before. Elliot Paul’s portrayal of his years in France does not spare the corruption or “backwardness” of French politics or society, but he is also put to the test to explain his own country to the French, and never more so than when Sacco and Vanzetti are put to death, news that set off demonstrations across Paris by workers sympathetic to the condemned. 

 

It was no new thing to the French to have undesirables railroaded and executed on one flimsy pretext or another. But, somehow, they had hoped it was different in America, and so, in my innocence, had I.

 

-      Elliot Paul, The Last Time I Saw Paris (1942)

 

His neighbors, Paul reports, were kind to him on the sad occasion and did not hold him accountable for what they saw as his country’s miscarriage of justice.

Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, age 32, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler, age 29, were immigrants from Italy and avowed anarchists. That much is fact. In 1921 they were tried and convicted of armed robbery and murder, numerous requests for appeal were refused, and they were put to death by electrocution on August 23, 1927, continuing to insist on their innocence.

Were Sacco and Vanzetti guilty? The court said they were. Some believed Sacco was guilty, Vanzetti innocent. In 1925, another prisoner in the same prison as Sacco, Celestino Madeiros, member of the Morelli gang of robbers, claimed in writing that it was he, not Sacco, who was guilty of the armed robbery and murder of the two payroll guards, and in 1927 Felix Frankfurter, later to become a Supreme Court justice, wrote that “every reasonable probability” pointed  to the Morelli gang and away from Sacco and Vanzetti. History, while not taking a definite stand on guilt or innocence, agrees that the defendants did not receive a fair trial, that they were condemned for their beliefs and their status as immigrants rather than for anything they had done or not done.

 

 

Another Four-Letter English Word

To HATE: to dislike intensely, passionately; to feel aversion or hostility toward. 

Most of us growing up in the U.S. in my generation were told as children that hating is wrong. We were even told often that we were mistaken about our own feeling. “You don’t hate your baby sister,” a parent would say patiently, if we were lucky. No, we were jealous, worried that the baby would take all our parents’ attention, etc. That wasn't hate. Later, did another child at school hate me? Or was that child jealous (for some reason) or even, if a member of the opposite sex, attracted but confused?

In the Christian Gospel of Matthew, Jesus counsels against hate and sets a high bar for those claiming to follow a God of love: 

 

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^’ and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

 

Last Saturday across the United States of America protestors demonstrated against the current administration in joyful, high-spirited pro-democracy rallies. The president and his Cabinet members insisted ahead of time and continued, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, to claim that these were “hate American” rallies, peopled by Marxists and other extremists, including “Antifa” (which the president thinks is an organization). It was also claimed, entirely without evidence—because it was a false claim—that George Soros and other “leftist billionaires” had funded the demonstrations, paying people to attend.

HA! They would like that to be true, but it is not.

I know those demonstrators, not only in Traverse City, but in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Marquette, Chicago, Joliet, Seattle, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. They were my friends and neighbors. They were my bookstore customers. They were my family. They carried hand-made signs. And yes, some of them made negative observations on the president, because “No Kings” was the theme of the day, everyone having decided ahead of time not to fragment the message with a variety of issues, because the bottom line is we do not want anyone in power running roughshod over freedoms guaranteed us in the U.S. Constitution.

Demonstrators were out on Saturday because they love this country! There were many American flags. The protests were peaceful. Counter-protestors were safe, too.

Republicans (I do not call them “conservatives” because they are not) who decry “hate” coming from the president’s opposition would be well advised to look to the president himself. “I hate my opponent! And I don’t want the best for them!” Words from the president of the United States. As for his king-in-the-plane social media cartoon, enough has been said about that. The image spoke for itself. 

Hate pours down from the top, coming from the same source since the campaign of 2016. It takes a lot of resolve not to respond to his words and actions with reciprocal hate but with determination and hope and resolve for a better future. Because there is, too, the image of the East Wing of the White House under demolition, after the president’s earlier assurances that the structural integrity of the building would be preserved. Now, it turns out, he never thought “much” of the building. It was “very small,” he says, way too small. Not the first time he’s promised one thing and done the opposite. All presidents have made changes, you say? Redecorating and even remodeling are not demolition. The demolition image is a metaphor, a friend said. Sadly, yes.

I attended Saturday’s rallies all over the country in spirit. In my bookstore, my colors were on display for everyone to see. 

Hostility, aversion, passionate dislike? Yes, I feel it. What do I hate? 

I hate the militarization of American cities, the setting aside of due process, the attempts to gag the free press and allow only government propaganda as “news.” I hate the storm trooper actions, under orders from the administration, that tear men, women, and children out of their beds and zip-tie them for hours before deciding that some of them have done nothing wrong and can be allowed to return to their ransacked apartments. 

I hate the lies. 

I hate the desecration of the White House, the attempted destruction of unions, and the executive demolition of long-established social safety nets and environmental protections. I hate the killing, by my country and therefore in my name, of unknown people from other countries in open waters with no evidence presented against them and no trial to determine guilt of any kind. I hate having my own government violating the First Amendment here at home.

I hate the lies. 

I hate the way Americans have been encouraged by a would-be dictator (“Vote for me, and you’ll never have to vote again”) to turn against each other and see their own neighbors and family members as enemies.

I hate the lies.

He would never have been put in the White House if he had told the truth all along. No one can support the current administration and the rule of law. To support one demands opposing the other. 

 

Did you mark your calendar yet?

The date is November 12. It’s a Wednesday. The time is 4 p.m., so it won’t interfere with any evening meetings or keep anyone away from dinner or up too late at night. We will have a special guest speaker, with a new book, in the gallery next to Dog Ears Books. I’ll tell you all about it when November arrives.... 

 

But first, Halloween!

A couple of young moms in Northport have been going around town to get those of us in the central part of the village on board for trick-or-treating. I’m on board. Whether or not I’ll be in costume is an open question, but I’ll be there at the bookstore door from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 31, and I hope Halloween 2025 will be as much fun as past Halloweens on Nagonaba Street years ago. Here are some trick-or-treaters from 2004. Yes, 21 years ago in Northport!