Medicine for Moody Times

Sometimes even mornings seem dark and brooding.

 

God forbid that I should say a word against a public library, but nothing will take the place or a rack of a shelf full of books by one’s own chair, close to a well-adjusted light, whether it be a lamp or a window. Everyone’s shelf will contain different books, and the books which give joy to youth may not delight age, but the pleasure of reading continues. I see to-day greater anxiety written on the faces of my millionaire friends than I do on the faces of the poor men who resort day after day to our public libraries, there to solace themselves with a book. In an established love of reading there is a policy of insurance guaranteeing certain happiness till death. 

 

-      A. Edward Newton, End Papers: Literary Recreations (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1933)

 

Newton was writing during the years of the Great Depression (“What was so great about it?” a young person might ask, and that would be a good question), when no doubt his “millionaire friends” had plenty of anxiety. But anxiety is not limited to millionaires, nor to periods of economic depression, so it is all the better insurance to those of us further down in the world’s financial hierarchy that public libraries still thrive in our United States and that personal, private collections of books can be had for very little -- though an occasional splurge, like the occasional cheesecake wedge for dessert, is not always to be resisted.

Newton, an American, was a serious high-end book collector, and his specialty was English literature – that is to say, he preferred books from “across the pond,” as he put it. For others he recommended Americana, specifically Walt Whitman; for himself, however, a book lacking any mention of Dr. Johnson rarely attracted him. Moreover, urban to the core, he had no interest in the world of nature. 

A noted exception to his Johnson/no nature rule was the fiction of Mary Webb, and he lauded her books so highly that I rushed to my bookshop shelves to find Precious Bane, smuggled it home that very night, and began reading Webb's masterpiece as soon as I closed the cover on End Papers.  

 

 

…It was a wonderful thing to see our meadows at Sarn when the cowslip was in blow. Gold-over they were, so that you would think not even an angel’s feet were good enough to walk there. … Every way you looked, there was nought but gold, saving towards Sarn, where the woods began, and the great stretch of grey water, gleaming and wincing in the sun. Neither woods nor water looked darksome in that fine spring weather, with the leaves coming new, and buds the color of corn in the birch-tops. Only in our oak wood there was always a look of the back-end of the year, their young leaves being so brown. So there was always a breath of October in our May. 

 

-      Mary Webb, Precious Bane (NY: Dutton, 1926)

 

 

Blooming cowslips (Michigan’s marsh marigolds) were known as paigle, or keys of heaven, to the natives of Mary Webb’s Shropshire meres. A much-neglected classic, I was ready to agree, after only two chapters of the novel. 

It is October now in Leelanau, always a quixotic month and this year alternating summer and autumn from one day to the next. By Sunday, had it settled down? Full, peak color and cold rain seemed to say yes, and while the colors gleamed in the rain, my mood was sad, or at least bittersweet. Although the Artist always used to say he loved the leafless trees in November and the time when the “bones of the earth” are laid bare, my memory calls back so many slow county cruises in October (following a getaway to the U.P. or Lake Huron in September) that seeing the beauty of the dying leaves by myself feels almost unbearable. 

Luckily, for whatever grip on sanity I possess, there is Sunny Juliet. Like October, Sunny has a variety of moods. Here is an introduction to a few of them, as demonstrated this past mid-October weekend.  

Looking goofy

Caught a mole!

Pretending it's time to get up.

Homework!

To my way of thinking, there is nothing like books and dogs to chase away the blues of politics and the approach of winter. 

Dark is coming earlier and earlier.

But can you see the tiny sliver of moon? Look closely!

Figuring Things Out

Morning clouds, October

This could be a short post. We'll see! If I were writing about all the things I have not figured out, it would be long, but I’m taking the easy way out. 

Happy girl!

First (because I know that’s why many of you tune in), Sunny and I are making great strides in our agility sessions with Coach Mike. I’m able to keep more of the course in my head at once, and our race from one station to the next is becoming smoother all the time. If there were an indoor agility course in Leelanau Township, I would be more than willing to continue through the winter. 

Scene of someone's adventure glimpsed on our way to agility --

(Parenthetically, in answer to the often-asked question, “How late in the season will you keep the bookstore open?” the answer is that Dog Ears Books will be open all winter. Come November, weeks will be shorter [Wednesday through Saturday], and days will be shorter, too [11 to 3], but weather and roads permitting, the shop will be open four days a week.)

 

I’m pretty sure I have the answer now to why Albert Murray is not better known as a writer of fiction. By now well into the fourth of his semi-autobiographical novels, more and more I realize that while his characters and settings are vivid, the world large and complex (from Alabama to Hollywood to Paris and back to New York), there is simply no conflict. The narrator makes a single mistake as a boy, is saved from the consequences by one of his boyhood idols (an understanding and sympathetic character with the wonderful name of Luzanna Cholly), and from there on there are no obstacles in Scooter's life path. When he learns a secret about his parentage, he takes in the new knowledge without a moment’s angst, and it never troubles him later, either. He is given a string bass and within months is touring the country and the world with one of America’s top dance bands. All women want him, no men are ever jealous, and the woman he wants to marry waits contentedly for his return. Marked out from the beginning for great things, he is the golden boy from start to finish, with everything falling into place for him. 

 

Just as Murray decried interpretations of the blues as music of suffering, he had little patience for stories of Black victimhood. He heard the blues as celebratory, not moans of misery, and he wrote his hero’s progress through the world as a story of success, and that’s great – except that we don’t see Scooter triumphing over anything, because nothing ever blocks his way. There is no agon to make him a protagonist. 

 

I say all this more as explanation than critique because I am still very much enjoying these books and looking forward to rereading them in years ahead. Any one of so many little vignettes, e.g., a scene in a barbershop, is as delightful as many a short story from a less-skilled writer, and discussions between characters about history, literature, and music are endlessly fascinating. I’m no longer troubled by neglect of Murray as a novelist, though, because I see what’s missing in his books as fiction: there is no tension, conflict, struggle, and so no real drama. 

 

It’s hard to believe that Murray’s own life was as velvet-smooth and free of difficulty as Scooter’s road. Life is never that easy for anyone! But he apparently felt free to leave out the bumps in the road, thoroughly covered as they had been by other Black writers. I’ll be interested to read this author’s nonfiction work and see how it compares to the fiction: Next up on my Murray agenda is The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture.

An already colorful curve in the road --

We should have peak color here in Leelanau by next weekend, although I almost hate to see it build to a climax, knowing that the gales of November will soon follow. And we still need rain! But who can argue with blue skies and the warm, albeit temporary, palette of our upper Midwest trees in autumn? 

So here it is for today – dog, books, outdoors. Because that’s my life. 

Wait for it...

...to turn blue!

“It’s just books in there.”

Outside these days, it's "just" (beautiful) wild asters.

When I heard a woman out on the sidewalk in front of Dog Ears Books utter those words to her companion, I had to smile. Yep, it’s a bookstore, bookshop, a place full of pretty much -- “just books.” And that’s what today’s post is, too, my “Books Read” list for September, but if you missed the story and pictures from my pre-UnCaged morning and from Sunny Juliet’s teeter work at our last agility session, you can find that stuff here. Today, though? Just books.

Books Read in September 2024 

 

129.        MacHarg, William & Edwin Balmer. The Indian Drum: A Romance of the Great Lakes (fiction, 1917). This novel is a Michigan classic, and I had never read it before. Expecting a story of Native Americans, then, I was surprised to find the action centered on Lake Michigan shipping (over a century ago) from Chicago to the Straits of Mackinac. A young man who has been raised in Kansas is summoned to Chicago by a man he comes to believe must be his father. When the older man disappears, his secrets untold, the younger begins working lake boats in search of answers. While mystery drives the plot, it is the character of Lake Michigan and the men of its lakes that sustain a reader’s interest. A modern author “retold” the story, under a different title but with the same character names, to the distress and disappointment of readers of this, the original version.

130.        Stanwell-Fletcher, Theodora C. Driftwood Valley (nonfiction, 1947). See September 12 post for my very brief synopsis of this book, with a couple’s adventures beginning in 1937.

131.        Grinnell, George. A Death on the Barrens (nonfiction, 2004). At the age of 70, the author finally published his story of an expedition begun in July of 1955 by six young men who set out in three canoes to be the first to cross the empty, treeless, and largely unexplored area of northern Saskatchewan known as the Barrens. What some members of the team, Grinnell included, hoped would be an adventure became a brutal test of endurance that only five survived. This book is Grinnell’s tale of physical challenge, spiritual transformation, and a life forever changed. 

132.        Hawkins, Karen. The Book Charmer (fiction, 2023). I expected light chick lit, and that’s what I was in the mood for and basically what I got – but I also had tears in my eyes a couple of times, laughed a couple of times, and didn’t feel that my day off spent reading outdoors in the shade was wasted at all. And even though I could see the romantic happy ending coming right from the start, there were a couple of serious issues dealt with in a helpful, positive manner. Hawkins is a good writer.

133.        Boyd, James. Drums (fiction, 1925). Drums is a novel set during the period leading up to and through the American Revolution period of history, but there are only two major battle scenes, and both (one at sea, one on land) occur late in the story. This book is not analyzing the reasons for war or viewing its conduct on the battlefield but seeing how people of the time thought of the situation, chiefly through the eyes of a young man who is no more than a boy at the beginning of the story. Johnny’s Scottish father doesn’t believe war will come or, if it does, that anyone can beat the English. Johnny himself becomes more and more pro-English during the time he studies with a gentle English cleric on the East Coast and associates with English gentry living there. (I always want to put “gentry” in scare quotes. Really!) It takes the experience of living and working in England, where he was happy to flee the possibility of combat, for Johnny to become disillusioned with the British value put on titles and wealth. This is a difficult book to read by reason of its casual racist language and stereotypes. Despite the author’s negative and frankly appalling description of a “slaver,” when the ship carrying its dying cargo anchors offshore, he seems to accept the general establishment of slavery without a twinge, and as for Native Americans, the only speaking Cherokee character is shown defeated by alcohol, as well as by white westward encroachment on traditional hunting lands. Johnny himself, the protagonist, highly impressionable and with vacillating principles, is often hard to find sympathetic. It is his spiritual and intellectual journey to manhood, however, that makes the story, along with a wide variety of characters and the very different ways they meet their tumultuous times. My main takeaway from this novel is that ours is a country that was born splintered and divided. See a previous blog post for more.

134.        Henry, Emily. Happy Place (fiction, 2023). Not sure how I feel about this book. Henry’s novels are very popular, with love themes and happy endings, so I kind of knew what I was getting into and wanted a change of pace after Drums. I had not expected the high level of unresolved sexual tension throughout most of the book, however, and part of Emily’s two- or three-part decision at the end (I’m not doing a spoiler here) disappointed me, though regular readers of romance novels will probably not share my view.

135.        Murray, Albert. Train Whistle Guitar (fiction, 1974).* 

136.        Murray, Albert. The Spyglass Tree (fiction, 1991).* 

*See paragraph below. 

As you can see, my September list is short, only eight books long, owing to my frequent “locals’ summer” vacationing while the sun shone on Leelanau. This morning I reached the third and final section of Albert Murray’s The Seven League Boots, but that book will be on October’s list, because I haven’t yet reached the end. And there’s a fourth after that one, too, and then poems and nonfiction by Murray, so I’ll postpone further discussion of his writing for now, except for referring you to what's in my previous post, the one from UnCaged. 

My Lovely (Lucky!) End-of-September in Leelanau

Northport celebrates! 

Although a little slower in general, the month of September brings its own highlights and excitement, not the least of which is Northport’s fabulous street fair, Leelanau UnCaged. “Get out of whatever cage you’re in,” a sign urged in a previous year, and the John Cage-inspired event brings music and dancing, art and crafts, food and drinks out onto Waukazoo, Nagonaba, and Mill streets. 

Sign on Mill Street

As a business proprietor, I spend the day indoors, 10 hours straight this year. (You might not think people at a street fair would come into a store and buy books, but they do, bless their hearts!) Before opening, however, I walk around with my camera to photograph our town making preparations. 

Setting up the dance stage

Cheerful volunteer Ty Wessell on Mill Street

Vendors on Nagonaba Street

My friend Sally getting ready

Waukazoo Street vendors setting up early

New Bo warning: only BREAKFAST sandwiches today!

Added string of beautiful birds this year

With this year’s absolutely perfect weather, I had my shop door wide open all day and could enjoy jazz coming from just up the street. Lovely!

 

After all that excitement, my Sunday at home was pretty much a day of rest. Only minimal mowing and raking. The gardens needed watering, of course, because after a single night of precipitation we are still waiting for more rain. Sunny and I worked on the hurdles and weave poles, and we got in a little Frisbee practice, too. Sunny, nunca te rindas! You’re getting better and better! 

I haven’t given up on my morning glory vine, either, and look! When these unfurl -- !!!

Early morning and late evening these days, as September turns to October, I have been spending a lot of mental time in Alabama and am now traveling all over the country with a band. Other than cowgirl, singer with a band was my other dream life for years, but it’s the magic of reading that takes me on these journeys, and my author-guide and companion is a writer I should have met long before now – but so should other avid readers, and so far no one I’ve asked has been familiar with his name. Does that make me feel better or worse? I was not alone in my previous ignorance, but such a writer deserves to be far better known in his own country.

 

Albert Murray, novelist and poet, music critic, essayist, and biographer, was born in Nokomis, Alabama, in 1916. Britannica says of him that his writings “assert the vitality and the powerful influence of black people in forming American traditions,” in particular, that jazz and blues styles developed “as affirmative responses to misery.” Among many awards he received in his lifetime, from a variety of groups, Murray won the very first Harper Lee Award in 1987.

 

My Library of America volume contains all four of Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, beginning with Train Whistle Guitar (title alone gave me an appetite for that one), and I’m now well into Seven League Boots, a hero’s journey in music. It didn’t take many pages of Train Whistle Guitar, however, before I began looking forward to future readings in years to come. I want to read other books of his, too, especially The Omni-Americans and South to a Very Old Place.

 

Monday, believe it or not, I had an appointment to have snow tires mounted, because yes, winter will come (last year it snowed on Halloween), but first Sunny and I went for an agility session for Coach Mike, and we had a great session. We concentrated on my giving hand signals to Sunny without vocal commands (except for “Tunnel!”) and giving more commands to her from a distance so that I am not trying to run the course as fast as she can run it. For the sake of documentation, we slowed the action to a few successive stops for the following photos, with Sunny on the “teeter,” Coach Mike on my phone, and me with Sunny. When we are actually running the course, there are no more treats at the end of the teeter -- we just race to the next station! 

Teeter: uphill,

Downhill,

Target area and reward.

The sun is coming up later these days in northern Michigan and setting earlier, but while it shines it is bright, bright, bright, and has given us a beautiful “locals’ summer” September. I am counting my blessings and thinking about which organization to donate to for hurricane and flood relief in the South, where the sun was not shining recently, many died, and millions are without power. Unimaginable devastation -- time for Americans to come together....

Shifting of the Gold

Goldenrod & bracken have both gone dull.

Although goldenrod’s bright color has already dimmed in Leelanau, I look forward to the near future gold of tamarack. Anomalous among conifers, tamarack trees change from green to gold and then, acting like leafy deciduous trees, shed their feathery needles as winter approaches. By the time the tamarack trees are bare, bracken fern on the ground will have gone from green to yellow to brown, from spring soft to fall stiff to winter brittle. (In hunting season, bracken crunches underfoot.) Some Leelanau bracken has a head start on that seasonal change.

Tamarack in U.P.

I made another quick run up over the Mackinac Bridge on Sunday, rewarded by a porch visit with my dear friend, author Ellen Airgood, who took half an hour away from cookie baking for our chat. Cool U.P. air plus rain called forth my sweatshirt. When last up to see my friends in June, I hadn't taken a warm jacket, which Ellen rightly branded a "rookie mistake." I was better prepared this time around.

Hot cocoa at the Uglyfish Baking Company hit the spot, too.

It was great to catch up with Ellen, talking dogs, books and reading and writing, plans for cozy winter days, and life in general. My drive back south felt longer than the drive north, with pouring rain from Newberry to Traverse City, but the trip was worth it to have time with my friend, and I was safely home in bed by 9 p.m. with book and dog.

My current bedtime reading is a Library of America volume that includes all four of Albert Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, starting with Train Whistle Guitar. Besides fiction, Murray wrote quite a bit about jazz and blues, and much of his writing has a jazzy quality to it that is simply delightful. This writer won me with his very first paragraph:

 

There was a chinaberry tree in the front yard of that house in those days, and in early spring the showers outside that window always used to become pale green again. Then before long there would be chinaberry blossoms. Then it would be maytime and then junebugtime and no more school bell mornings until next September, and when you came out onto the front porch and it was fair there were chinaberry shadows on the swing and the rocking chair, and chinaberry shade all the way from the steps to the gate. 

 

-      Albert Murray, Train Whistle Guitar

 

Despite the heavy rain I drove through farther north, I learned the next day (a bright, sunny Monday) that Leelanau had only gotten a fraction of an inch, and the weather app on my phone showed no hope of further rain until next week. But then during the day on Tuesday, the wind shifted, and with that the weather forecast also changed: Rain on Tuesday evening, rain Wednesday, rain Thursday? Dare we hope? I write this on Tuesday evening, waiting for rain…. Hearing coyotes....

Having done a little mowing and raking on Monday, I did more raking Tuesday evening and a little edging around my perennial border, with frequent breaks to launch tennis balls for Sunny Juliet, and after supper we went outdoors again for Frisbee and agility. She is figuring out the weave poles! Her Frisbee catching is improving! She loves any activity that we do together, and while she eagerly accepts little treats for a good performance, sometimes it seems the activity itself is sufficient reward, which of course is the best scenario possible. Do what you love; love what you do.

My reading of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile had me so excited that I signed up to “follow” him on Facebook, but I should have known better, because just as I enjoy conversation more with one or two or three people than in larger groups, I’ve never been a very good follower, either, and by halfway through Taleb’s Skin in the Game I had fallen out of love -- possibly for trivial reasons, but aren’t reasons for falling out of love often trivial? 

For one thing, Taleb seems to think no one could really enjoy Proust but would only carry the books around to impress people. Is that the only reason why people carry around the Wall Street Journal or the Economist or a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb? Some, I’m sure, but really, is it too much of a stretch to acknowledge that different people have different interests and pleasures? 

Then – and this is really trivial! – in his list of all the ways people he does not admire show themselves to be wimps, he notes that they never curse on social media. Well, if cursing is such a sign of superiority, why does he spell ‘bullshit’ in his book ‘bull***t’? Prithee, why so coy? I don’t often read half a book and quit but probably will with this one. Like Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, I’m finding the going repetitive, the repetition self-indulgent. 

My advice: Read Antifragile. It’s worth reading. If you want an introduction to it, you can start with The Black Swan, but Antifragile is meatier, and you can get the black swan idea there. As for Skin in the Game, the book’s basic point is that you shouldn’t take advice from people with nothing to lose. Naturally, there are sub-propositions and logical inferences, but you can read a few chapters at the library. Or, if you want to buy a paperback copy from me, I have two available at the cover price of $20.

(I had a third trivial reason for falling out of love, but who cares?)

Still in love with: Michigan! My life as a bookseller. My dog. Proust. My country life. My friends!

There she is, writer and cookie baker extraordinaire!

THIS SATURDAY: Northport’s annual street fair, LEELANAU UNCAGED!!! 

Get ready. Get set. --