No Sunrises, No Sunsets, Lots of Changes

Deborah Wesley photograph

Wildfires are currently burning (as of Wednesday morning) in the U.S. states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, as well as in western Canadian provinces (from British Columbia to Newfoundland but mostly from western Ontario to the Pacific Ocean). Since prevailing winds blow west to east across North America, air quality in the Midwest and all the way to the eastern seaboard is affected. The only escape is indoors, but who wants to stay indoors all summer? Some people must; others of us are taking our chances, despite the occasional cough. (Don't scold, please! I won't live forever!) My two younger sisters from Illinois came for a visit, and we spent time outdoors each day. 

Three sisters -- yes, styles have changed, too.

My sister Deborah also spent considerable time spoiling Sunny Juliet—that is, tossing tennis balls out in the yard for a certain lucky dog girl to chase. When all three of us were outside, Sunny still brought her tennis balls to Auntie Deborah rather than to her dog mom. No fool, my Sunny!

I finished In the Merrimack Valley: A Farm Trilogy with a big sigh. Like The Vacation, by Carlos Fuentes, and This Magnetic North, by Tim Mulherin, Jane Brox’s book is a story of change. I guess that is the story of life, isn’t it? Change! I learned a few things in the Brox book, and one of those things is that big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), a native prairie grass I seeded into the edge of my meadow 25 years ago—a native grass, mind you, not an invasive alien—can nevertheless outcompete other plant species. Now I’m thinking maybe that’s what happened to those purple coneflowers that failed to appear last summer after a quarter-century. The little grey-headed coneflowers are holding their own, so far, but the purple ones have vanished. 

Gone with the wind! Here they were years ago.

These are still with me...

co-existing, for now, with big bluestem.

A meadow, a forest, even a roadside changes from year to year. About three years ago I noticed a little bright yellow flower blooming on the side of M-22 just north of Fischer’s Happy Hour Tavern. Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) is a nitrogen-fixing legume, but it is invasive and aggressive, forming root mats that crowd out native plant roots, and this year I am noticing it blooming all up and down M-22. Spreading rapidly! So, pretty though it is, I will not be transplanting any to my meadow, which changes just gradually enough (except for the disappearance of purple coneflowers) that I manage to accept the differences from one year to the next. 

Birdsfoot trefoil

This Saturday (already!!!) is Northport’s annual dog parade—and how many does this make? My old Nikki was in the parade back in 1997 ("Mardi Growl”) and again in 1998 (“Treasures of King Mutt”).

Memorabilia! Priceless!

Our Sarah made one parade appearance. That year (2010, and you can find Bettie and Ben and Gracie and Sarah by following this link) my sister and her husband were visiting, along with our mother and their dog, Gracie, so Ben and Bettie each had charge of a dog while I stayed near my shop, watching the parade with our mother. Mother is gone, Gracie and Sarah are gone. More changes…. But the dog parade goes on, this year as “Bone Appétit.” (Note: That final 't' is silent.)

The pretty Bernese below made her first bookstore visit—first time in any bookshop—to Dog Ears! She will have moved on from Northport before parade time, but we commemorated her inaugural bookshop visit with a photo shoot.

My own general view of change (returning to my theme) is that I can handle it better if and when it’s gradual rather than overnight. How about you? 

Please come for guest author Tim Mulherin’s talk at Dog Ears Books on Wednesday, August 13, starting at 7 p.m. The topic will be changes in our own Northern Michigan! 

The book for August 13 event

Author Tim Mulherin

August Afterglow

Lake Michigan after sunset

The past weekend brought many visitors to Northport, some familiar for years with Leelanau, others seeing it for the first time. My stepdaughters had booked four nights at the Jolli-Lodge, south of Leland on Lake Michigan, their favorite place for the past two years, owing to special 2022 memories, while grandson Jack and his college buddy, Daniel, tent-camped in the backyard of my old farmhouse. 

Jolli-Lodge

Backyard camp

Before any family showed up, however, my friend and book colleague Helen, from Arizona, appeared in Northport on Thursday evening, all the way from Arizona! We had dinner together at Faro and then a visit in the bookstore on Saturday, when I was able to introduce her to my stepdaughters. Our visits are never long enough, since that very first week we spent together in Carefree years ago, but Helen’s first visit to northern Michigan will not be her last, and we are already looking forward to the next. Book people never run out of conversation!

 

Booksellers Pamela and Helen

My Michigan-&-Minnesota contingent joined me for Indian food (from Rosie at NJ’s) on the porch on Saturday after my stepdaughters enjoyed their very first Northport dog parade and the boys showed up (too late for the parade) from Kalamazoo. And after dinner? Those college boys cleared the table and did the dishes and put away the leftovers, all on their own sweet initiative! What a treat that was! They can visit any old time they want, believe me! I must admit there was a lot of barking over the weekend, but no wonder! We were all in high spirits. 

Sunny loved the soccer ball.

I took Sunday off work – did not even go to Northport – and, other than giving Sunny a bath and doing a single load of laundry to hang out in the sunshine, did very little before our family dinner meet-up at Nitolo’s in Lake Leelanau. Resisted the compulsive urge to make another batch of two of jam and held myself down to a little desultory weeding and edging, cutting of flowers for the porch table, tossing a tennis ball and a Frisbee a few times before stretching out comfortably with a book on the end of the porch -- the book at last resting on my face, I took a short summer nap! (What a concept!) Meanwhile, the boys explored Sleeping Bear and Traverse City, and the women beach and vineyard, disappointed only that the Port Oneida Fair on Friday and Saturday did not continue through Sunday, as they'd hoped.

But Nitolo’s never disappoints, and neither did sunset afterward at the Jolli-Lodge with s’mores, beach fires, happy families, lapping waves, and Petoskey stones. 

BIG one!

Sweet, peaceful place! No doubt there would have been less sleeping that night if any of us had remembered the Perseid meteor showers and/or known in advance that there would be a show of northern lights! As it was, we missed both. Still, no complaints. 

Before Monday morning’s bookstore opening, there was an agility session for Sunny and me. I can’t be taking photos while we work, but when Sunny and Duffy had a little playtime after the work, I whipped out my phone. These shots aren't much, but we don't want to leave the dogs out of the post, do we? Especially since the past two years I have not photographed the dog parade but just let myself "be in the moment." 

The triple jump

Coach Mike's sheltie, Duffy

I have finished my reading of Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Anne, a novel that took many twists and turns before the last page (I won't give away any of the plot of Anne, so that anyone who digs up a modern reprint won't be deprived of surprise), and have started A Lantern in Her Hand, by Nebraska's Beth Streeter Aldrich. (It was, in fact, the Aldrich book that led me gently into an afternoon nap on Sunday.) Published in 1928, A Lantern in Her Hand tells of the life of a pioneer girl grown to womanhood in the days of prairie homesteading, with descriptions of both the beauties and the hardships of frontier life in 19th-century Nebraska. Woolson and Aldrich both portray strong female characters making their way and finding happiness in American times past, despite challenges and social strictures. 

 

From the visit of my Arizona hiking buddy and her dog through visits from my son and his wife to the annual sisters get-together and now August bringing another friend and more family, summer has been a busy time, passing as always in a happy blur. All of my July FOLTL book-author events are behind me now, too, and the long sunset of summer has begun. 

Family time. Happy dogs. Good books. Fresh cherries and sweet corn and bright flowers and berries galore. Sun and wind and water. We are almost halfway through August. Now life might be slowing down a little bit. Do you think it's possible? Afterglow --

Annes and Islands, Dogs and Dog

 

A Different Anne, a Different Island

 

Anne of Green Gables was one of my mother’s favorite books (others in the series among that group), and I have written before of my copy of Anne's House of Dreams, once my mother's own, but I have long wanted to read the story of a different fictional Anne, a novel not set in Canada’s Maritime provinces, but, at the beginning, at least, right here in Michigan – that is, up in the Straits of Mackinac, on Mackinac Island. Constance Fenimore Woolson, great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper, born in Massachusetts in 1840, was a great traveler. Besides visiting the Great Lakes, she also traveled to Florida (her mother lived in St. Augustine), England, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, and was buried in Rome upon her death (possibly from suicide) at age 54. Stories in Woolson’s collection Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches are set predominantly in the Great Lakes, where the author had a particular attachment to northern Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Mackinac Island. 

Anne, a novel often identified as feminist fiction, opens with the eponymous young woman’s life on the island, her mother and stepmother both having died and her father having faded into a dreamlike, unremunerative idleness. Still in her teens, Anne is in charge of a household that includes four little half-siblings, three boys and a strange, fey little girl. When the father also dies and Anne learns for the first time how perilous is the family’s financial situation, she realizes also that she must prepare herself to make a living, and so, several chapters into the story, she enrolls in a private Eastern school for girls.

Woolson describes characters' looks and dress in detail, as she does the landscapes and worlds of her fiction. The glories and riches of the fur trade are already past by the time of Anne’s Mackinac Island, but the fort is still manned, island economy restricted to fishing and subsistence farming (both seasonal occupations), while shipping is conducted by sail and steam. The novel, Woolson’s first, was published in 1880 and is a window into late 19^th-century America, in general, as well as into its main character’s life and character. 

 

Reading about Woolson and her work, one regularly encounters quite subjective notes. An article in The New Republic, for instance, leads off with this sentence below its title:

 

Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote bitter, morbid, and severe fictions, but her devotion to James was her undoing. – Max Nelson, “Betrayed by Henry James,” March 1, 2016

 

(Well, Henry James -- there was a cold fish, eh?) Lehigh University, on the other hand, notes that “Woolson was a literary success almost from the start,” while Britannica emphasizes that the author’s works of fiction were “particularly notable for the sense of place they evoke.” That last comment captures my reasons for wanting to read this book.

 

I am not yet halfway through Anne so cannot say if I will find the novel “bitter, morbid, and severe” in its later chapters. Anne’s great-aunt, to be sure, is a horrid person, but the Frenchwoman who heads the school Anne attends is a darling and manages the great-aunt (who has agreed to pay for a single year of Anne’s education, with no added frills!) with Gallic charm and diplomacy. I’m wondering at this stage in my reading if Anne’s fiancé will prove true to his promise – but also wondering if Anne herself is really in love with him or if she will find someone else. And what will be the role of the sly little half-sister as the story unfolds? 

 

If you have read this novel, please do not answer any of the questions I have posed above!

 

 

Northport Dog Notes

Northport Dog Parade 2021

Dog Parade is this Saturday! No, Sunny Juliet (a.k.a. Naughty Barker) will not be in it, but if you want to participate with your dog and be eligible for prizes, please don’t wait until Saturday morning to register! At least, don't try to register at Dog Ears Books on Saturday, because registration forms I have will be picked up at the end of Friday afternoon. Pre-registration is $5 per dog, and registration on Saturday is $10 per dog. That's if you want to be eligible for prizes. 

 

(More) Dog Notes

 

Sunny and I did much better this week at our agility session. That is, Sunny was a star, a champion, and I didn’t make as many mistakes as usual, which helped her shine. We have some new routines to work on at home, where fun with tennis balls is as much of a reward for her as dog treats. How she loves to leap for tennis balls! Now, if only she could work up the same enthusiasm for a Frisbee – and maybe in time that will come, too. 

Field Notes

 

My meadow is gay with dancing daisies and swaying grey-headed coneflowers, apples are reddening on the trees, and ripening blackberries tempt Sunny Juliet to harvest them one by one with her dainty dog lips. Mornings are quieter, August (unlike June) not ringing with dawn birdsong as summer begins to wind down.

Invasive but beautiful loosestrife is blooming in ditches and narrows. It really is lovely and can’t help its nature, and who can resist the name? Loose strife! Begone, dull care!

What a Weekend! (And what a transition, from dog parade to French literature!)

Summer is winding down....

This past Saturday was the Northport Dog Parade, the second-biggest day in the Northport summer – second only to crowds for the 4^th of July fireworks, that is, but as for daytime crowds probably the biggest day, and the 2023 theme, “Canine Couture,” certainly inspired colorful entries. I took a different approach to watching the parade this year. I didn’t take my camera outside, just stood on the sidelines enjoying the spectacle and applauding the entries as they passed by. Other people – plenty of other people! – would be taking plenty of photographs and videos, I knew, and so it was. The Traverse City Record-Eagle even sent a reporter and photographer to cover this year’s event. In this video you can see our former township librarian, Deb Stannard, parade marshall, in a car driven by Clifford the dog.

Sunny and friend -- reunited!

Sunny and I had other important fish to fry that same evening and all the next day and on into Monday morning, because Therese and Yogi, formerly our Arizona hiking buddies, came for a visit! Sunny and Yogi greeted each other with joyful abandon and familiarity, as if they had been parted only the day before. There was playtime in the yard, there were long walks, even trips to beaches – the whole nine yards. Yogi did the first dog paddling of her life! My visits to nearby Lake Michigan now number seven for the summer. It’s probably been years since I’ve been so diligent about getting to the beach. (Diligent? Yes, that’s what I mean. Double digits are now within reach!) But again, no photos from the beach. My friend took photos and videos, though, so here are the two of us: 

Another pair of hiking partners reunited!

Once dog parade is past, and we reach mid-August, though, once the first goldenrod blooms, cherry harvest is over, and apples are beginning to ripen, fall is in the air. Pow-wow is next weekend, and for me that marks the transition from summer to autumn. It's time to get the rest of my berry jam made as soon as possible to clear the decks for making applesauce and drying apples. 

 

As time permits (i.e., at night before I fall asleep or when I wake in the middle of the night), I’m nearing the end of Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian and plan to read it again soon in English translation, amazed at myself for being so enthralled with historical fiction, especially set in the time of the Roman Empire. But there was a reason Yourcenar was admitted into the French Academy (first woman member): her telling of Hadrian’s life in a voice she invented as his is mesmerizing and convincing.

“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.”  

― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

 

What are you reading as summer of 2023 winds to an end?

Ready or Not -- Here Come the DOGS!!!

 

Every year, the dog parade is the best ever. This year I have to say it was MORE -- more vehicles, more floats, more music, more elaborate costumes. Maybe more dogs, but I haven't heard the count yet.

-- And then my camera gave my that awful message CARD FULL, so I didn't get the last few entries in the parade.... But there is always next year!