It's all in here: the sublime, silly, dangerous, petty, too cute for words, and a shed tear.

December 2, 2025

My banner photograph today is of the copper beech tree in Northport, brought from England long ago by a member of the Thomas family and still flourishing today. In which season is this venerable tree at its loveliest? I can’t decide but took the photograph above with my Samsung android phone one December morning, a little after 10 a.m., and to my eye it looked magnificent.

  

Ogden Nash

I don’t think it’s belittling his gift to call Ogden Nash a versifier. My discovery of Nash came in a volume called Parents Keep Out! on the shelves in my hometown library children’s room, and how could any kid resist a book with that name? What fun to memorize Nash’s poems, from two-liners to those of many stanzas! 

Here is probably the shortest verse Ogden Nash ever wrote. It’s called “Fleas,” and the entire poem is as follows:

Adam

Had ‘em.

Imagine my shock, however, to see that the site “All Poetry,” in analyzing the verse, refers to this clever couplet as a “witty quatrain”! Quatrain? A four-line stanza? Obviously not! Witty, yes. Quatrain, no.

Here is another two-line Nash poem, a favorite of my father’s and one of the earliest that I knew by heart without even trying:

God in his wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why.

One of my longer favorites was “Very Like a Whale,” which I leave you to look up for yourself by following this link—and then see if you can stop from reading more and more Ogden Nash verse. Fair warning: It is addictive.

Why do I drag in these humorous poems instead of some more ethereal ode to trees? Because Nash himself took off on Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” following Kilmer’s first two-line stanza with a second of his own:

 

Perhaps, unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all.

 

Silly? Yes. Corny? Yes. But also irresistibly memorable, especially to a child discovering mockery of sacred literary cows for the first time.

 

Get Off of Your Cloud!

My son told me a couple years ago, “The cloud is just someone else’s bigger computer,” and with my initial skeptical aversion to cloud storage thus vindicated, I have continued to buy, read, and hold onto printed, bound books; to write letters and send them through the mail in stamped envelopes (treasuring written replies); and to store my digital files only on my own devices. (Note to self: Need a couple more flash drives, memory sticks, whatever they're called.) Here were my initial arguments against relying on the so-called cloud, i.e., “someone else’s computer,” somewhere else --

 

Ø How do I know the cloud won’t crash? 

Ø How do I know my data (i.e., my precious image and text files) will remain unchanged, uncorrupted, and accessible by me—and only by me?

Ø Finally, after reading about the massive amounts of water and power necessary to maintain those so-called clouds, and the dreadful 24/7 noise the data banks put out, why would I want to park in someone else’s backyard something I don’t want in my own? Better, I believe, to buy extra camera cards and additional flash drives and keep them in a safe place at home. 

If those arguments didn’t convince you, how about this one: Many people believe that massive data centers, currently touted for AI, are a bigger financial bubble than the country has ever yet seen. It all boils down to extractive industry and good old entropy. Most of the spending on the AI bubble, as is true of your beloved cloud storage, is not “virtual,” but very, very physical. Real estate. Buildings. Hardware. Electricity. Water. Now add to the deterioration of the surrounding physical environment and the rapid deterioration of electronic chips a super-scary degradation--the deterioration of information (“intelligence”?) gathered and synthesized as LLMs (Large Language Models) are put through post-training “learning.” 

Word of the day: sycophantic. Look it up. So-called artificial intelligence degrades rapidly the more it “learns” from what human beings say online. Garbage in, garbage out. Bullshit in, bullshit out. When put through post-training, AI becomes an obsequious flatterer rather than a knowledgeable advisor!

If you don’t understand how something is made, you should not invest in it. (Think cryptocurrency.) In the case of generative AI, the more you know about it, the less likely you are to invest. Seriously, watch and listen, because others are investing for you—your government, your money managers—and you cannot afford not to know what's going on. Has your community been asked to make room for a data center? Sooner or later, one will be proposed near you, so prepare yourself now with information.

Fonts and Politics???

Do you recognize the font I use on this blog? It's called Bookman Old Style, and I like both the name and the look, being a bookseller and always having been partial to serifs (particularly adnate serifs), those little extras that seem so graceful and generous. Do you see them as unnecessary furbelows? Consider:

Bookman Old Style example: AI

Helvetica example: AI

Which one is clearer to you? To my eye, the capital letter I without a serif looks like a small L or even the number 1. With a serif, there is no such confusion. And, as I say, I have always simply found serif fonts graceful and generous in appearance, overall more attractive, although many people see the matter differently and consider the sans serif fonts easier to read, cleaner, and more modern. 

One thing that would never have occurred to me would have been that a switch to a san serif font signaled some kind of political agenda, but leave it to Republicans to suspect liberalism's vile fingerprints on anything done by a Democratic administration, and so it isn't as unbelievable as it should be that Marco Rubio, current Secretary of State, has declared Anthony Blinken's switch to the simpler Calibri font a symptom of wokism and, somehow, “another wasteful DEIA program.” Good lord, it's almost enough to make me renounce serifs for life! But no, not quite. This insanity cannot last forever. For now, however, Rubio is reinstating the Times New Roman font “to restore decorum and professionalism” to the State Department. 

Ha! Wouldn't that be nice? To see “decorum and professionalism” again in our nation's capitol? (Why do I think that will take more than a change of typeface?) For now, who can tell me how eliminating serifs was more costly than restoring them will be? How petty can anyone be?

Just another red herring, folks. Another little brushfire to add to the giant smokescreen....

Turning Toward the Sun

No, not yet. It will be eleven more days before days begin to grow longer, and yet I'm sure I heard on the radio that yesterday was the year's earliest sunset and that tonight the sun will set marginally later. Can that be? Did I only imagine it? And will it matter, anyway, if clouds keep us covered? 

For me, though, every morning is a Sunny morning, come rain or come shine, and I know you want to see her, too, so here's the dog girl!

Her ears were blowing in the cold, cold wind!

Indoors, cozy and photogenic

We Lost a Most Memorable Northporter

It was a shock to learn on Monday evening that David Chrobak had died only that afternoon. My last relaxed visit with David (I'm not counting sidewalk chats outside the post office) was in his front yard one evening this past summer, and somewhere I have a photo taken from the yard, looking through hanging prisms and flowers to the Willowbrook Inn, but where can it be? Here, anyway, and much better, is a photo of David himself. The occasion was the 21st anniversary of my bookstore, which David on the cake he baked and decorated called “a love story.” David loved Northport, and Northport loved him back. There will never be another like him. David, we miss you already!

David Chrobak, Northport, MI, June 2014

Love Takes Many Forms

Never before have I fallen in love with a font, or even thought of so doing, but now that previously unconsidered possibility has become reality. I write not of the font I use to compose these sentences, Bookman Old Style, although I appreciate it and am glad to have fallen upon it after one reader years ago complained gently of another I had been experimenting with using. No, the object of my new but deep regard can be seen in the photograph at the top of this post. The name of the type is Poliphilus. I will quote from the note on the type at the end of the book:

Poliphilus had its origin in the singularly beautiful roman type cut by Francesco da Bologna for the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, issued in 1499 by Aldus Manutius (1450-1515).

Who deserved the greater share of credit for the invention of italic type, Aldus (the printer) or Francesco (the typecutter)? And who was Francesco, anyway? And does the name italic derive from — Italy, its home ground? If these questions intrigue you, let them guide your researches. For now, and for myself, I prefer to remain in the company of these beautiful pages of the illustrated edition (my copy a later printing of the 1927 edition) of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.

The type I am admiring is large and bold and clear. The serifs (and I love a serif) are minimal but not, thank heaven, omitted; letters are uncrowded, words and sentences easily read. At the same time, certain elegances of style make themselves noticed: the 'st' diphthong gracefully conjoined, for example, and the hyphen, rather than a dull horizontal, tipped obliquely upward in the direction of the reader’s progress.

Nor does the beauty end with the font. Every page is visually delightful, honoring the author’s work. Harold Von Schmidt, a California-born painter of Western scenes who was in 1968 awarded the first gold medal given by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, spent two years on the illustrations for this special edition of Cather’s novel. They were unlike his own more characteristic work (realistic illustrations of cowboys and horses, a world he knew firsthand), but the quiet dignity and peacefulness of the images on these pages are such that the story could not have been better served by any other style.

And the physical pages themselves! Look closely at the quality of the paper — at least, as much as you can detect in a photographic image presented to you on a lighted screen. Can you see the watermark? At the end of the note on type we find —

Composed, printed and bound by The Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. Paper made by S. D. Warren Co., Boston.

Ah, well, and of course there is the story itself, the novel some critics have said is not a novel at all (a criticism leveled also at Sarah One Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs). The main character, the fictional Jean Marie Latour, who came from France as a missionary in the Great Lakes region in the mid-nineteenth century, is based on the historical personage of Father Lamy, who with his fellow seminarian Father Macheboeuf spent years in New Mexico. The latter goes by the name of Valiant in the novel. The cathedral  Archbishop Lamy dreamed of building in Santa Fe stands there now, its golden hue fulfilling the fictional French padre’s dream for his flock. 

As was true in My Antonia, the author interrupts the main character’s story with stories of other minor characters, many of these interruptions self-contained and not necessarily adding to anything like a plot — but then, aren’t our lives like that? We remember knowing someone briefly and recalling a story that pinned that person in memory, and that story, unconnected to the ongoing narrative of our life, nevertheless holds its place. As Father Latour, now the retired archbishop, finally lies dying “of having lived,” he relives episodes of his life that stand out as if still present and ongoing. 

It is true, as the critics say, that Latour’s character does not “develop,” in the sense of changing over time. He is more or less himself from beginning to end. At a certain point, doubts of life’s meaning darken his way for a while, but basically he remains the man we meet in the beginning of the novel, and the same is true of his life-long friend, Father Vaillant. The two men are bound by memories of their youth and their homeland, as well as years of work together, but a time of parting finally arrives when Father Vaillant is called north to the rude Gold Rush settlement, and he goes eagerly.

Yes, [Latour] reflected, as he went quietly to his own room, there was a great difference in their natures. Wherever he [Father Vaillant] went, he soon made friends that took the place of country and family. But Jean [Father Latour], who was at ease in any society and always the flower of courtesy, could not form new ties. It had always been so. He was like that even as a boy; gracious to everyone, but known to a very few. 

Vaillant greets every new person he meets with excited enthusiasm, while Latour hides his dismay with impeccable manners. They remind of two little boys I know. Arriving at the playground to find other children there, one grumbles with a frown, “Oh, no! Other people!” while the other rejoices, “Oh, good, we can make new friends!” I imagine these differences will remain in their characters as they grow to manhood.

Cather came along too late in history to meet the historical Lamy and Macheboeuf, but not too late to fall in love with New Mexico, and that love shines through every line of description, whether she is describing a mountain blizzard, cottonwoods along a dry riverbed, apricots in the priest’s garden, or the peace to be found sometimes in his church. In fact, she makes us feel the way the way all these scenes are bound together.

He fitted the great key into its lock, the door swung slowly back on its wooden hinges. The peace without seemed all one with the peace in his own soul. The snow had stopped, the gauzy clouds that had ribbed the arch of heaven were now all sunk into one soft white fog bank over the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The full moon shone high in the blue vault, majestic, lonely, benign. The Bishop stood in the doorway of his church, lost in thought, looking at the line of black footprints his departing visitor had left in the wet scurf of snow.

Bookseller Musings: Slipcases, Curating, and Fonts

Snug in Our Boxes

Sturdier than a jacket, covering all of a book but spine, a slipcase protects its inhabitant. No dust can collect on the slipcased book’s top edges. No hasty index finger can tear the binding at the top of the spine by careless removal of book from shelf. The slipcase demands respect for the book – and yet, there is nothing forbidding about it. Instead, it invites us in. Its presence lends anticipation to our reading experience before we remove the book from its shelter and carefully open to the pages within. 

We set the slipcase aside gently while reading the book. And when it comes time to return the volume to our shelves, there is again something magical and sweetly secretive about not only closing the book but slipping it into a neat box designed to fit that book and only that book.

In cold midwinter, when most of northern life is lived within doors, humans and pets snug in the “boxes” of homes and places of employment, a slipcased book has a special familiarity. In my bookstore, books in their cozy boxes are surrounded by the larger box that shelters us all.

Curatorial Publishing and Bookselling

Reading an interview with John Makinson, chairman of the recently merged Penguin Random House group and owner with his brother of a small bookshop in Norfolk, England, I came across a phrase that was new to me: curatorial publishing. When the interviewer asked about how Penguin Random House is negotiating the current [digital] environment, his answer began like this:

I wish I had some sort of cosmic message for you, but it is very difficult to divine the essence of curatorial publishing, the kind of publishing we do. That said, it’s about human relationship, a commitment to skill and craft. So the progress we make in any market is incremental.

How refreshing that someone in such a huge business can be content to make incremental progress! How heartening to read about commitment to skill and craft! Years back, an admirer of my bookstore referred to my curated collection. Now, reading Makinson’s phrase curatorial publishing, I was moved to get out a Webster’s unabridged dictionary.

Disappointment was my lot. 

The dictionary defined the verb ‘to curate’ as ‘to act as a curator,’ and ‘curator’ as ‘the person in charge of a museum, art collection, etc.’ or ‘a manager; superintendent.’ Is that all? I felt cheated. If ‘curatorial’ is nothing more than a management function, ‘curatorial publishing’ is simply a redundant phrase, the adjective contributing nothing. I’m not satisfied. I’m sure more is meant.

I conferred over lunch (homemade chicken soup with rice) with my artist husband. I told him I see a curator’s role primarily one of selection, ensuring quality, and I was happy to have him agree with me. Perhaps some readers take quality in selection as implied in managing or superintending. I don’t. It’s great when quality is one of a manager’s responsibilities, but whether or not it is seen that way will depend on others – chief officers, boards, even stockholders. Certainly, in business we’re talking about, management is generally first and foremost about sales and profits. The phrase ‘quality control’ is an add-on.

One of the ways booksellers have always survived has been (1) to sell products other than books along with books (e.g., greeting cards and non-book gift items) and (2) to stock large numbers of bestsellers by famous authors, fewer (if any) numbers of slower-moving, niche category books by unknown or forgotten writers. That is a perfectly legitimate management plan. It is not, however, the plan of a curatorial bookseller.

Any curated collection offered by any independent bookseller, whether or not augmented by items other than books, will reflect that bookseller’s interests and values, with selections made according to quality as determined by that bookseller. For example, someone once jokingly advised me that if I were to “get rid of all these science books, there would be more room for fiction.” I cannot envision a bookstore without fiction, but neither can I imagine one without books on the sciences. For me, that would be no bookstore at all.

Font Choice

I have abandoned (for some time now) Times New Roman on this blog for Bookman Old Style. Both have the serif, which I like for its generosity, but Bookman (besides sounding appropriate to a bookseller’s blog) has more readable spacing, to my eye, and a satisfying roundness. 

Again, I have made a selection that pleases my own eye. Comments? Like or dislike? Agree or disagree?