Color/Light and Home in Autumn

 

 All the color that you see is light, pure and simple. And when there is no light there is no color. We think we see colored things, and in a sense we do. However, it is more accurate to say that we see the colored light reflected, transmitted, or emitted by things. It is the light alone that we see, not the things themselves. Thus our only visual contact with things is through light, light that enters our eyes.

 

…The only colors that we see are light, and as we are seeing them this light is falling on the retinas of our eyes. Were it not for light and the light-sensitive retina, we would see no color at all. Remember: color is light.

 

-      Ralph Hattersley, Beginner’s Guide to Color Photography

 

 

The Artist and I used to have frequent conversations about color and light. In my graduate philosophy classes, I learned to categorize color as a ‘secondary quality,’ that is, a quality not inherent in objects but created from interaction between objects and our senses, or, as Hattersley writes, between the “things themselves” and the retinas of our eyes--which leaves out the brain’s interpretation, but you get the point. Quick review of primary and secondary qualities, ignoring subsequent challenges to the distinction, can be found here. 

 

There are certain seasons, certain sensual prompts, that take me back to the Home Place. Now, as back then, fall is the time when nature speaks most clearly to me. In autumn one is treated to an orgy of sights, sounds, and smells that can be wonderfully overwhelming. … The tired sameness of September’s deep green fades then flames into October’s vermilion sumacs and scarlet maples, lemon-yellow poplars and golden hickories. In those days of crispness I want to linger long enough to hear every sound and look far enough to see into forever. 

 

-      J. Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature

 

 

Of all the seasons, autumn for me is the most deeply drenched in memory, the most saturated (even in its colorful dress) with poignancy and longing for what will never be again. And yet, it is not only September getaways and “county cruises” with the Artist that haunt me, but long walks home from first grade, university classes, my son’s baby and toddler years, past dogs, and so on, split-second images from years ago flashing, superimposed, on achingly beautiful scenes of the present. And yet (again, “and yet”!), fall is so beautiful, whether colors are shining in the sun or gleaming in the rain—or, as last Sunday evening, sleeping in the dark while an old ivory crescent moon lit my way home—that despite the pangs, I find myself wanting to gather up every moment of it and hold it tight, as if it could be harvested to carry through the monochromatic weeks ahead.

 

More than anything else, the degree of satisfaction to be gained from a life rooted in home depends on the strength of one’s conviction that there is nothing better down the road. Betterment comes from within a person, not from within geography. But I believe that had I not left home for awhile [sic], I would not have been completely convinced of that. There would always have been a lingering question in my mind: Would life somewhere else have been more pleasant?

 

-      Gene Logsdon, You Can Go Home Again

 

I had an interesting conversation today with a younger woman whose dream of country living in Leelanau County did not bring her the contentment it brought me. Perhaps it was the commotion of extensive remodeling added to raising three children in it that broke the marriage’s back. Whatever it was, taking care of the farmhouse and acreage on her own proved much more work than she wanted, and she is happier now (divorced, the house sold) with a lighter load of responsibility. She is also particularly hungry for travel. 

The two of us realized that our present situations and feelings, hers and mine, are diametrically opposite. I don’t know if I will ever travel again, if it involves flying and leaving my dog and/or the borders of my country. (Day trips with my dog are another matter.) Even on the rare occasions when I go out for an hour or two in the evening, I often look forward to coming home to Sunny again before I’ve gotten out the driveway. 

I have traveled to other places and lived in other places (I still miss those winters in Cochise County, Arizona), but where I am now is home. “We’re very lucky to have a home,” I tell Sunny.

Sunny seems to agree. At least, she isn’t complaining. And we will get through the winter together.

With a little help from our friends!

Very Important Postscript: Identity of November guest author has been revealed on my Northport Bookstore News blog! I will post more about the author's new book on this blog before his appearance on Nov. 12. 

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 America” 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!

That Was Then, This Is Now

 A Bit of Bookstore History (Northport)

 

The little shed in the photo above once stood on Waukazoo Street. Long gone now, it was the original Dog Ears Books in 1993. By 2008, the year the photograph was taken, so much vegetation had grown over the entrance that the shed had the air of an enchanted fairy tale hut. Only one pure in heart would know the magic words to utter for the door to swing open! Ah, but the treasure was gone by then, the bookstore at home in a new location, north and around the corner on Nagonaba Street.

 

By now, late 2023, we have been back on Waukazoo Street long enough (since winter of 2005-06) for an entire Northport generation to get born and graduate from high school. Kids whom I remember from their middle school days are running their own businesses now, and only the other day someone reminded me, “You’re hardly a spring chicken!” I’m not? Gee, thanks!

Friends

 

Mortality With Friends, a book of essays by Fleda Brown, speaks to me, because “who would inhabit this bleak world alone?” It is good to have friends! Some of my friends, when they heard that I’m staying in northern Michigan all winter this time around -- for the first time in eight years – asked if I would have the bookstore open. The question amazed me. Yes, of course! I can’t imagine staying home in my old farmhouse week after cold winter week, seeing no one but my dog! The artist next door (in my husband’s former storefront studio), Deborah Ebbers, will be around, too, and I’m thinking the two of us may have to cook up a little snow season merriment now and then because, even with a forecast predicting that Michigan will not be as wet or cold as usual this winter, there are bound to be a few gloomy days, days that will need brightening up, and what better than friends and laughter to do just that?

I had a general thought about friendship the other day. It came as I was musing on something I’ve often heard people say after losing a pet: “Oh, I couldn’t have another one! It’s too hard when they go! I can't go through that again!” Couldn’t someone say the same of friends? 

Having reached the era of life when every week, it seems, brings a loss, we hardly wish not to have had those friendships! One old friend (now “late,” as people say in the Botswana novels of Alexander McCall Smith) used to say he didn’t want to make any new friends, but even that seems short-sighted. There’s no shortcut to a long friendship, it's true, and it's certainly true that old friends can never be replaced, but, as we used to sing in those long-ago Brownie troop days, of old and new friends, “One is silver, and the other gold.” 

 

 

My Neck of the Woods

I live ever so slightly north of the 45^th parallel, a geographical smidgeon closer to the North Pole than to the Equator. The bulk of Leelanau County, however, lies below that imaginary line. At any rate, I make no apologies for the title of a new book on how best to see Northern Lights (which have been spectacular this year), Below the 45^th Parallel: The Beginner’s Guide to Chasing the Aurora in the Great Lakes Region, by Melissa F. Kaelin. As the founder of Michigan Aurora Chasers, this author is well suited to provide advice to the novices among us, whichever side of the line we call home. I suppose one piece of advice she will give, though, involves bundling up and getting outside in the middle of the night. Sigh!

 

On Saturday morning the 45th parallel stopped me alongside Grand Traverse Bay. I didn’t remember seeing the stone announcing the Line on previous occasions when I’d pulled off M-22 to enjoy coffee and views, but the big rock got me out of the car, and I was then able to frame the road curving north.

(Getting out of the car for dog-walking is something we don’t do on the highway, only on back roads.)

 

 

A Swiftly Passing Season

 

Grey skies notwithstanding, fall color was spectacular these past few days -- pretty white birches with happy, quivering yellow leaves, brilliant reds and oranges and golds of maples, blazing scarlet sumac, and the deep blood-red of osiers and chokecherries. Beech leaves in the fall always make me think of buttered toast dripping with honey. Almost every bend in the road gave reason to gasp and pause, même sous un ciel couvert, though we were all, locals and color tourists alike, rather pining for sunshine and blue skies.

We get what we get in this life, though, and what we got was spectacular and isn’t over yet.

Despite the eye-popping, brighter colors of other trees and shrubs, to me nothing speaks the truth of autumn’s poignancy more eloquently than the soft, subtle tones of the ash. Even its name, ash, reminds us that all lives, individual, are destined to end, even as Life, the force, springs renewed after each winter’s sleep. 

Butterscotch to plum

And because the emerald ash borer so devastated Michigan’s adult ash population in recent years, I cannot bring myself to discourage seedling and sapling ashes on land I otherwise want to maintain, loosely, as open meadow. Autumn olive is not welcome there, nor are black walnuts or silver maples (any of those three species would gladly take over the meadow if I let them), but volunteer ash trees and hawthorns are under my protection.

Baby ash tree

Haws (hawthorn fruit)

Farmer-author Gene Logsdon, whom I met once at a book trade show in Dearborn, Michigan, believed that ash trees would make a comeback, with young volunteers gradually maturing to take the place of their late departed elders. I hope he was right. I am rooting for the trees.

 

Hunting Season

 

Bow season is now, to be followed by firearm deer season, muzzle-loading, and then back to bow. Sunny isn’t crazy about her high-visibility costume, but it’s important to me that she doesn’t get mistaken for a deer when we’re outdoors. Please be very careful out there, friends!

Against her will, Sunny Juliet models hunter orange this season.

"We're living on borrowed time." Those were his very words.

Glorious Sunday morning sunlight!

That’s what the cashier at the little grocery store observed to a tourist during their short exchange about our glorious weather of the past weekend, when the “gales of November” that arrived in October backed off for three days, and the sun shone as if there would be no tomorrow. But there was a tomorrow, and then another – Friday, Saturday, Sunday, all glorious with balmy air, glowing fall colors, and clear blue skies. “Locals’ summer,” a phrase I learned only this year, might be expected more reliably in September, but for three consecutive days this month locals and visitors alike gleefully shrugged off jackets and sweaters.

 

“Bother fall housekeeping!” I said aloud impatiently (well, I might have, you know), translating the Mole’s utterance (WITW) from spring to autumn, because when life gives us heavenly days on earth, it would be wrong to spend all those hours indoors. I enjoyed a long walk with my dog, then a bit of botanizing in the meadow with downstate visitors,  and continued my now almost-finished apple harvest. Finally, reluctantly, after putting away some of summer's outdoor furniture, I spent some “indoor” time, preparing apples for applesauce, but spent it on the front porch with the door open, after which Sunny and I had a play session in the yard with tennis balls. 

Come late afternoon, I was ready to collapse on the porch with a book when I saw a text on my phone from good friend Laura, inviting me to enjoy the sunset at Good Harbor with her! I was so tired! But there is never enough time with friends, and “locals’ summer” could end any day now. Besides, how many times have I been on the beach at Lake Michigan this year? (Only once!) So of course I was up for a picnic supper and sunset!

A couple of Northport neighbors had walked farther down the beach for sunset, and as sky colors faded they walked back our way, and we visited a while, luxuriating in the softness of the breeze. Nearby a couple of small children ran in and out of the water. Lake Michigan! After sunset! In late October! Can you believe it?

Monday was an early morning for Sunny and me, our last agility session together until spring, and the day was cloudy, but the colors went on singing, and they sang again in the Tuesday's rain, also, a poignant tune, that, in which I imagined wailing Parisian accordion notes between the falling leaves.

Books Read Since Last Posted List

105.  Cozzens, James Gould. The Just and the Unjust (fiction)

106. Kresge Foundation (various authors). The Culture Keeper: Olayami Dables’ Grand Vision (nonfiction)

107. Wheeler, Jacob. Angel of the Garbage Dump: How Hanley Denning Changed the World One Child at a Time (nonfiction)

108. Gibbon, Lewis Grassic. Sunset Song (fiction)

109. Jance, J.A. Partner in Crime (fiction)

110. Gwynne, S.C. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History(nonfiction)

111. Fuselier, David. A Fog on Spirit Island (fiction)

And now --

Sing, colors, leaves, friends, rain or shine! Borrowed time is all we ever have, so let’s make the most of it!

Singin' in the rain