Past Mid-Summer to Mid-August

Headliner!

 Travel

Naughty Barker, Tree Guy, and I took a quick trip up over the Bridge. Just an overnight, but a good one.

Tree Guy informed me on Monday evening that we had been away 33 hours and had spent 11 hours in the car. Next trip north will be longer with more extravehicular time, but it’s always good to smell the Upper Peninsula air (wildfire smoke had cleared off completely) and enjoy for breakfast what you couldn’t finish for dinner the day before. We saw a few people briefly, spent the night in the woods with a cozy fire, and lazed around the next morning before driving back home. 

We could hardly wait to get our pasties!

Sunny Juliet was a pretty good traveler. In fact, she became better in the course of our short trip, finally learning (at the ripe old age of 4-1/2 years old) the meaning of “Get back!” Since puppyhood she has always wanted to stand with her head forward between the front seats, blocking driver and passenger’s views of each other and blocking driver’s rearview mirror view of vehicles following, so having her understand and obey the “Get back!” command was a giant step forward. Naturally we had to say it more than once, but we could say it quietly, and she got the message almost every time. 

She absolutely loved the Great Outdoors at Tree Guy’s spiritual home, and indoors she was happy to join us on the couch or lie quietly on the floor. It was the stairs without risers that freaked her out, but patient, encouraging wheedling got her through the challenge, and we expect she will have less trepidation in the future.

Happy girl in the lead on evening walk

Gone to the Dogs

Saturday, August 8th, was the 2026 Northport Dog Parade, and the weather could not have been better. Blue sky and summer warmth without oppressive heat brought out the crowds—and their dogs! 

You wouldn’t think a dog parade would make anyone cry, but I nearly did when the tribute to the late David Chrobak, originator of the Northport Dog Parade, came down Waukazoo Street. See more photos here. He would have loved it!

Reading

Okay, I finished reading The Meadow, finished Mistress Masham’s Repose (for the -nth time), and finished The Guru Papers. In my previous discussion of The Guru Papers, I brought up Ayn Rand and subsequently found a glancing reference to her philosophy in Kramer and Alstad’s book. My insight, confirmed by their reference, was that Rand’s philosophy, with its valorization of selfishness, is simply traditional morality’s demand for selflessness turned upside-down. In other words, Rand’s philosophy is tainted by the same divisive, either/or thinking that makes its ideal unattainable by separating it from what it sees as its opposite, thus denying a very real part of human nature. Both self-centeredness and care of and love for others are human, and denying either one a place in our lives to idealize the other is a recipe for a soul tragically divided against itself.

In the last few pages of The Guru Papers, I was delighted to recognize one of my favorite philosophers, though the authors did not name this one, and I doubt very many people would thinking of him as they read Kramer and Alstad’s prescription for an alternative to either/or thinking. First, the passage:

The dialectical perspective offered here is not merely an intellectual romp. It is a way of raising the level of abstraction, enabling one’s point of viewing to be more inclusive. It does not separate process from content, and thus takes movement into account rather than reifying abstractions into static, separate entities [my emphases added]. 

That is the philosophy of Henri Bergson in a nutshell! Life is movement. Time is movement. Experience is had in this movement. When the intellect analyzes time, however, it chops it into pieces. This analysis is useful in many ways, but it distorts reality by making a series of blocks out of what was flow. While this distortion helps humans deal with the material world and its mechanical aspects, it leads us astray in other ways. Experience, Kramer and Alstad emphasize time and time again, always takes place in a present, living context, whereas language, the intellect’s tool for thinking, in giving names to experience, conceptualizes frozen pieces of it.

What do you make of that adjective ‘dialectical’ above? Hegelian dialectic saw social evolution occurring through a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, in which an initial idea or situation called forth its opposite, creating conflict that eventually resolved into a synthesis. Marxist dialectic was similar but material rather than conceptual: material conditions called up opposing conditions, thus conflict, resulting in synthesis when the conflict was resolved. 

I don’t read Kramer and Alstad’s dialectic in either of those ways. Self-centeredness and care for others, for example, are not opposites and not locked in conflict. Each implies the other, and the two are intertwined, both human, both necessary for human survival and thriving. Different contexts will determine for any individual which will take precedence at a given juncture, and I would insist (and I think K&A would agree) that in many cases both may operate as motives in tandem. 

Kramer and Alstad think the most basic polarity is that of unity and diversity. In philosophy, this is known as the Problem of the One and the Many: How can one name—say, ‘rose’—apply to a multitude of objects? Which is “more real,” the universal feature individuals share (roseness) or the discrete individuals (roses)? How can a multitude of individuals be comprised in “one nation, indivisible”? Should citizens be required to sacrifice for their country, or should the country nurture and care for its members?

Viewing unity and diversity as dialectically embedded is a more inclusive abstraction that gives as much importance to individuals as it does to their participation in the whole. It can give support to both the selfless and the self-centered, seeing them as interdependent poles in the fabric of existence.

Summer is racing to a close, and this Thursday is my bookstore event with Northport author Jenny Sager! 4 p.m. in the afternoon, leaving you plenty of time for cocktails, dinner, and the theatre afterward. Please join us!

Recent Past in Village and at Home, In the Midst, and Coming Events

 

Dinosaurs sighted in Northport

That was a surprise as I was leaving the bank parking lot on Thursday morning, and I had to go back for a better view. Apparently both male and female T-rexes had been at the Leelanau Township Library. The plant-eating dinosaur over by the Depot did not seem fazed by the arrival of carnivorous cousins.

Other of us (non-dinos) were somewhat fazed by commotion on Waukazoo Street a little later. What was going on? It involved shutting off the water for our whole block, which meant closing our block off to vehicular traffic and unanticipated time off for the restaurants. 

Bookstore stayed open, though. We had lights. And now, on Friday morning, everything is back to normal.

Home Life

Life continued busy as we northern Michiganders launched ourselves into August. Raspberries have peaked, however, and rain overnight on Wednesday meant I didn’t have to water gardens on Thursday morning. I also picked what look like the last of the beans for this summer (having failed once more to stagger bean plantings). So a few things are no longer on my daily to-do list.

Purple on the outside,
these beans turn green in hot water.

We had our first August company, as my younger stepdaughter and her husband brought their adorable little camper and set it up in the yard for a couple of nights. 

Her sister drove up from Kalamazoo to join the fun, and we all had an collaborative al fresco dinner at the farm on Tuesday (featuring fresh Kolarik sweet corn, a neighborhood treat), followed by a night out at the new Bluebird on Wednesday (treated by the sisters). Wonderful, all of it! Tree guy pronounced our guests “cool,” and they found him “delightful!” Sunny was even exceptionally good with company in the house and yard—as long as there were plenty of tennis ball tosses and as long as her momma didn’t forget Sunny’s meals. I admit she had to bark a couple times to remind me.

Cherry pie was my contribution from one of the three quarts of fresh tart cherries Carlos Fuentes gave me from his gleaning adventure in a neighborhood orchard where he has known the owner for years. He picked and offered, I pitted. (The end of a potato peeler works great for pitting cherries, by the way.) Result: Yum!

My reading

I continue to make progress in the fascinating saga of the 17th-century life of Roger Williams, having gotten him at last from England to colonial America. Among the many, many fascinating facts and events, I was delighted to learn that before he undertook to act as missionary to the Native Americans, Williams took the time, on his own initiative, to learn the language and the customs of local indigenous peoples. The treatise he wrote at the request of the governor of Plymouth authorities and presented to Governor John Winthrop unfortunately exists no longer, but apparently he ruffled a few feathers when he argued (having learned the law in England under Coke) that the Native Americans did make use of the land on which they lived and therefore had legal ownership of it, that the land was not just lying there unused for the indiscriminate taking by Englishmen! He ruffled even more feathers, however, when he stated baldly that the English king was a liar. I am liking this Roger Williams fellow more and more all the time, but he offered his treatise to be burned when the authorities persuaded him that its existence put him in danger. As had so many others and as is still the case today, he gave in to the pressure of the group. 

Reading more than one book at a time sometimes brings surprises. One such for me is how well The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, dovetails with the life of Roger Williams. Late 17th-century colonial America and the early 21st-century United States of America have more in common than I would have guessed. 

Three years earlier suffrage had been restricted to male church members, but during those three years, three years during which the population grew enormously, church membership became increasingly exclusive. Initially, one had had to do little more than sign the church covenant to become a member. That soon changed: to join a church now, potential members had to prove themselves “visible saints,” had to prove that they were among the precious few whom their Calvinist God would save. This forced potential members through a stringent and arduous process that included standing before the entire congregation and presenting evidence that God had made the seeker a saint…. This was no pro forma ritual. It was an intimidating, difficult, rigorous, and by no means always successful test. In most churches the congregation had to vote unanimously to accept the new member. Those who either did not seek or were rejected from membership could worship in a church—in fact, the law required them to do so. But they could not belong to a church.

As a result, only a minority of the population, and a decreasing minority, were church members and qualified as freemen with voting privileges.

- John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty

Who are the “true” Christians? Can a non-Christian be a good person (or a good American)? Should the laws of the community—colony, state, nation—be determined by churchmen? (If so, which churchmen?) What of people who disagreed, whether church members or otherwise? What of those who followed other religions or no religion at all? What gives law its authority? 

Kramer and Alstad argue that Americans today (though not only Americans) have internalized authoritarianism in ways we don’t even recognize. Blind submission to any authority, they say, has its root in self-mistrust, and self-mistrust comes from a psyche divided against itself, with one part labeled ‘good’ and the other part labeled ‘evil.’ They point out that most religions, including Buddhism, consider self-centeredness to be bad, selflessness the ideal good. And so, when we seek a positive good for ourself that does nothing for anyone else, we feel selfish and bad. The divide is embedded in our culture.

Here is an insight I had the other day about their idea: Ayn Rand’s “virtues of selfishness” philosophy does not introduce a new value system at all. It merely flips the good/evil division, insisting that selfishness is good and altruism bad. The “new” morality she offers is just as divisive as the old was, and, like Nietzsche, the “purity” her morality demands can do nothing to integrate what Kramer and Alstad identify as a divided psyche. In the obsession with purity, where someone following a traditional morality would have to twist her reasoning considerably to find altruism in a selfish choice or action, the Randian practitioner has to brand her altruism somehow as selfishness to feel good about herself. 

Kramer and Alstad write (and they are always very clear when stating their opinions that they are doing just that), 

In our framework[,] being self-centered is simply an aspect of being human, as is the capacity to truly care for others. Not only does each have its value and function, they are intertwined rather than totally separate or even separable. Any morality that separates the two, giving much more value to one (the selfless), cannot but deeply divide the psyche of those who accept this frame.

        - Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power 

While they do not address Ayn Rand’s philosophy,* I find a general parallel in what they say about American society’s double message--the fascination with rule-breaking individuals, the romance of the “lawless” frontier, the American love affair with criminals and with fictional bad boys. 

“Rebellion is bad and dangerous,” on one side; and “Rebellion is not only exciting and exhilarating, it is freedom,” on the other. Double messages from parents have been shown to cause schizophrenia in children. The double messages a society puts out likewise must fragment its members, but here the resulting pathology is disguised by being the social norm.

A fascinating book! I was able to find The Guru Papers still available from my distributor so put two copies on my last order. One sold almost immediately. The other is still available. My own copy was already marked up by a previous reader, and I have marked it up even more. 

I finished reading The Meadow, by James Galvin, and still re-reading Mistress Masham’s Repose, by T.H. White, though I haven’t gotten through many pages of either book the past few mornings or evenings.

*Next day: Nearing the end of the book, I find this in a passage about guilt and frustration creating "a self-absorbing vicious circle, for most guilt can be traced back to guilt about being self-absorbed." They continue:

Either/or thinking creates various types of reactions. For example, the "me first" attitudes much in evidence these days (we call it the Ayn Rand syndrome [my emphasis added]) react against puritanical, selfless values by embracing self-centeredness as the "real truth." ...But being an either/or reaction...it also mistakes one aspect of the person for the whole. If we were instead to acknowledge the reality of self-centeredness along with the reality of care and love for others, we would be able to focus more on appropriately balancing the two, both in our own lives and in our social systems.

Coming bookstore author event

Trying to keep up with myself as summer races by, I managed (just barely) to get a press release to our county newspaper for the bookstore event next Thursday, a reading by and audience conversation with Jennifer Sager, whose book Steph’s Story won my heart. Jenny is a delightful person--read more about her here--and I hope many of my local bookstore friends and summer visitors will find time to come learn about her book and her sister. 

The date is August 13, the time 4 p.m., so you’ll have plenty of time to hear and speak with Jenny and not miss your cocktail hour, let alone dinner. 

Oh, and this very Saturday, August 8, is Northport's annual dog parade! Theme this year is “Pawty Like a Rockstar,” so we anticipate a lot of creative and colorful costumes. Wow! It's summer, and the hits just keep on comin'!

Books, Dog, Tree Guy, Me, and More

Another busy week has been flying by.

I took a real day off on Sunday, though. Well, most of a day off. Several hours, anyway. Tree guy and I ventured down to the Leelanau/Benzie county line to explore several little lakes: Armstrong, Brooks, and Pearl. My favorite was Brooks, the smallest of the three. (I have no explanation or excuse for why I originally named the wrong lake as my favorite but have corrected that error now.) There was a public access but no dock. Very few houses. A very peaceful setting. Just standing and gazing felt restorative. 

Shoreline mystery plant. Can anyone identify it for me?

Eventually, turning northward again, we stopped in Cedar for Polish food from Tom Koch’s Polish Kitchen food truck. Wow! Pierogis with jalapeño popper filling! And Tom’s dill pickles are the best I’ve ever had—just dill enough, with a fresh, satisfying, crispy crunch. 

Lakes and lunch were so exciting that we had to rest a while when we got home again in the early afternoon.

Monday, though, was a super-busy day off, as Mondays usually are. It began with an agility session for Sunny and me, only our second this summer. Good to get back in the swing! Then there was housework, laundry, shopping, mowing—the usual Monday routine. Up early on Tuesday, I had plenty of time and leisure to refresh my memory of The Vacation, by Robert ‘Carlos’ Fuentes, over coffee, even time to write up some questions to ask him in our onstage conversation that evening at the Willowbrook.

What fun! Carlos is such a lively guy, with such a happy, positive outlook on life! I only hope the audience enjoyed our onstage conversation as much as we did.

Carlos Unleashed! Give him a microphone and stand back!

After a long-anticipated event, I’m always happy to have a quiet morning, and Wednesday morning’s fresh, cool, still air made being outdoors the best possible way to start the day. I’d only had enough energy to read about four pages of Mistress Masham’s Repose before falling asleep the night before, but when Sunny was ready to get up and go! her momma wasn’t far behind. Coffee, toast, yogurt, and a handful of berries right off the canes was breakfast. I’ve made two batches of jam, and the freezer is still full of berries, so now I can indulge in desultory snacking as the annual harvest diminishes.

Although my new domestic partner is also a reader, my reading has slowed down with another human being in the house, but somehow I managed to finish a couple of books over the weekend, one long one I’d been working on for weeks, Spirit of Place: The Making of an American Literary Landscape, by Frederick Turner, another a short, quick novel from the first half of the 20th century, Edith de Born’s The House in Vienna. Then I thought I would re-read all of Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog stories, but I’m bogging down already in the second one. They really are “guy” stories! And while I may be a tomboy, in some ways, I have never been a “guy” and never wanted to be one. When I said as much one afternoon, Tree Guy reminded me of what a wonderful novel Dalva is. “Right. And that’s not a Brown Dog story,” I reminded him.

My attention was not held. 

The other day I received an email—no, actually, it was caught in my spam filter, but I did glance down the list of spam and saw the heading—entitled, “Can we be honest with you?” I don’t know what it was about. I did not read further. But the question stuck in my head. CAN whoever-it-was be honest? One hopes so! Some people, it seems, are incapable of honesty. No doubt the writer intended to ask, “May we…?” Well, why would I want to receive lies? If asked, “May we send you a garbage can of disinformation?” naturally I would decline. But then, as I say, I only looked as far as the heading before deleting what had already been caught by my spam filter.

Life with Dog

Zen-girl, a.k.a. Sunny Juliet, is blissfully ignorant of economics and politics. Sometimes her humans linger over coffee for what she considers an unnecessary length of time, but the corner of a piece of toast now and then is all the bribe she needs to be patient a little longer. I asked a friend how his new little dog was doing, and he said the dog is providing him with a lot of “satisfaction,” in that he is “good company."

When Sunny and I resumed agility sessions after a three-week hiatus, a hiatus during which the dog momma completely forgot about getting out and setting up the weave poles, the most challenging station of any course for our team, Sunny did not chide me for my mistake but did the best weaving she could, as if we’d been practicing every day! She is in the moment, whatever the moment may be. Of course, she doesn’t have bills to pay or meals to plan or laundry to do, and she doesn’t vote and never will. She’ll never apply for a paying job or move into her own apartment or even read a newspaper. All she has to do is be ready to jump in the car when the momma asks, “Go for a ride?” Or come in the door after our evening walk when she hears the word, “House!” A pretty simple life. 

No human life can ever be as simple as a dog’s life, but their companionship makes our lives all the more worth living. Really--what would we do without them?

P.S. For new flower photos, see here. For pj's latest rant, see here. 

Summer Flowers

WELCOME!!!

First we had a flood in Northport, then a heat wave, then smoke-filled air, more rain and wind and surprising cold, and now we are back to practically perfect summer weather: blue skies and sunshine, with temperatures in the 70s. Idyllic times from a weather standpoint, and village gardens are responding with glorious blooms.

I had an author visit recently, Diane Les Becquets (pronounced lay-beck), who wrote Where the Water Meets the Sky, a novel set in the U.P., stopped by with her dog, Izzy. It was lovely to meet them both! Diane's novel, while not in the murder mystery genre, holds several mysteries and surprises. Suspense in a beautiful Michigan setting!

Diane and Izzy

Carlos

I’m being lazy this time around with a new blog post. My excuse, if I need one, is that I’ll be onstage next Tuesday evening to interview guest author Robert “Carlos” Fuentes with his book, The Vacation, a 2025 Michigan Notable winner, at the Willowbrook Inn on Mill Street (7 p.m.). It will be the fourth and this year’s last FOLTL summer author series evening for 2026 so don’t miss it if you’re in town. Carlos is a delight, and you’ll learn a few things, too, about the life of orchard workers in the 1960s.

For more bookstore and book news, see the most recent post on my other bookstore blog. 

And now I’ll write no more but simply include a short list of quotes gleaned recently from books I picked up in my shop:

From Adrienne Rich’s essay called “A Leak in History”: “For ordinary people to sing or whistle used to be as common as breathing.” (That's how we were in my family. I'm still that way.) 

From How to Imagine: a narrative on art and agriculture, by Gianfranco Baruchello & Henry Martin: “I decided to reorganize a couple of bureau drawers. I was running out of storage space and there were some things that had to be gone through so that some of them could get thrown out, and that’s not always easy since I have a curious kind of fidelity where objects are concerned. If something gets dropped or accidentally placed somewhere, I tend to leave it there and it’s difficult to decided just to throw it away or to put it someplace else…. It’s just where it is since that’s where it seems elected to stay in.” (Sort of how I live.)

From “Westward Ho” (the second Brown Dog story), by Jim Harrison: “The hardest thing for a rural stranger in a huge city is to figure out the relationship between what people do for a living and where they live. …In Los Angeles any sort of comprehension is out of the question….” (In Northport, we pretty much know what people do.)

From the poem “Dulce Siempre,” by Pablo Neruda: “Sin nosotros o con nosotros/lo dulce seguirá viviendo/y es infinitamente vivo/eternamente redivivo/porque en plana boca del hombre/para cantar o para comer/está situada la dulzura.” (So lovely!)

From The Book of Dead Philosophers, by Simon Critchley: “Bergson died a genuinely heroic philosophical death.” (That's what I've always maintained.)

From Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From an American,” July 22, 2026: “Fascism has always been a vehicle for frustration with a system that was failing the people. But it has never been a solution for fixing that system.” (Again and again, people fall for "solutions" that have proven false every time they've been tried!)

* * *

I won’t even include a political rant today. Either you see the blinding light of an oncoming metaphorical train wreck or you’re still blind to the desperate crisis our country is suffering. If the former (as I fervently hope), don’t give up! 

¡Nunca te rindas!

And don't stop counting blessings!

Escaping Thoughts and Impressions of a Wandering Mind

Geese in smoky sky

Our Outdoor World

June’s weather story in northern Michigan was a flood. July’s is smoke. 

With over 800 wildfires burning in Minnesota and Canada, we are having evenings without sunset and mornings without sunrise. We catch a brief glimpse of the mid-morning sun before it is swallowed up by thick smoke (not haze, though it looks like haze), aromatic as a campfire but impossible to escape by walking away. A shifting orange-brown shroud hangs over almost half the country, though the flames are hundreds of miles away from us here in Leelanau. Will we get rain, and will it help dampen down the smoke? Time will tell. Meanwhile, I break out a mask for brief outdoor sorties.

Uncomfortable, but 95% protection is better than zero

“How’s your summer going?” It’s half-over! comes the unwelcome thought. But that’s only if summer is June, July, and August, right? If it’s July, August, and September, as I like to think, it is barely underway. After all, my cucumbers and beans have produced only flowers as yet, edible portions still to come. 

Black raspberries ripen continuously now and require twice-daily picking. 

There will be only a handful of gooseberries, but I’m hoping for a good apple crop this year, after two dud years (first codling moth worms in 2024, then in 2025 a late freeze that killed blossoms).

General garden knowledge can be gathered from books, but site-specific knowledge home accumulates only through the years. Monarda, a.k.a. bee balm, seems happy in my hard and has been blooming steadily in the border, a number of plants providing various colors in sequence—pale lavender, bright fuchsia, deep pink, pale pink. Hellebores are very happy in one spot; in another they were miserable, and I’m hoping they will be happier in a new corner. Hollyhocks by the backyard clothesline didn’t come back this year at all. That was disappointing, as I thought I would have them for the rest of my life, thinking of my grandmother’s hollyhocks growing by the outhouse. (Maybe if I’d had a working outhouse, my hollyhocks would have lasted?) In wild areas it’s all Black-eyed Susans and sweet peas now. 

My World of Books

Acquisition: It’s been two years since I made the big book buy from a former dealer in Leland. This year’s largest purchase wasn’t quite as big (only three carloads in 2026 rather than the eight trips in 2024, two with a pickup truck accompanying my car), but I am so well stocked that I almost passed on a chance to look at books from an estate—until I realized it was the home and the books of a very close friend of many years. The old friend’s house … his enormous book collection … some books he had written himself and many others by mutual friends … stray photographs and snapshots and prints by and of old friends … the yard engulfed by brambles, deck railings broken, electricity off in the house. As I went through shelves, selecting books, more and more memories kept coming to light. An emotional evening....

Authors: This past Tuesday Barbara Stark-Nemon was onstage at the Willowbrook, interviewed by another Northport author, Karen Mulvahill. It was the second in this year's Friends of the Leelanau Township Library summer author series and a lovely evening in every possible way!

Barbara's first embroidery project, a copy of her new novel's cover

Reading: Although I’d only gotten to Chapter 6 of that fascinating book about Roger Williams (a little about it in this recent post), more recently I fell into another that I’d never heard of before, its contents spellbinding and thought-provoking.

THE GURU PAPERS: MASKS OF AUTHORITARIAN POWER, by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad.

Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books/Frog Ltd., 1993

Here are some lines from the preface: 

…We found authoritarianism embedded in people’s psyches, affecting much more of day-to-day existence than is generally conceived. This is because in most people’s minds authoritarianism is associated with political systems such as dictatorships rather than with worldview…. In the process of writing this book, we deepened our understanding of how authoritarianism in its varied guises has been and largely still is a primary mode of social cohesion—and also how it has now become a major factor in social disintegration.

Then toward the end of the preface: 

This book presents a point of view and ideas that we want to stand or fall on their own merit. … Our major concern is clarity—namely, that anyone who cares to follow the train of thought will understand it, whether in agreement or not. 

The authors' “enemy,” so to speak, is any individual who (or institution) that would encourage people to mistrust their own minds and impressions and perceptions. They hope to foster “self-trust as a foundation for living.” 

Their view of authoritarianism, therefore, is broader than simply a study of dictatorships, and they use the guru relationship not as the only variety of authoritarian structure but as a paradigm. The first, early stage of the relationship they call messianic proselytizing, with the guru preaching a message of higher good, such as saving mankind. This phase offers a “celebratory, party-like atmosphere” to new recruits. The fully enlightened guru is at the peak of the group’s hierarchical pyramid, his inner circle just below, etc., but even the lowest can feel superior to outsiders who have not yet even realized their need to be on this particular path to enlightenment.

Then, 

A time inevitably comes when the popularity and power of the group plateaus and then begins to wane. 

People begin to doubt and must be pulled in more tightly. Our authors say either one of two things happen (I’m wondering if both can occur simultaneously): either the guru’s message will turn to a doomsday forecast of disaster, or he “makes increasingly extreme promises and bizarre claims….” It is dangerous, he tells his followers, to associate with anyone not on their path, and the mistrust the believers have for outsiders is 

...not totally paranoid (there is a reason for it) because as the group becomes more closed and bizarre, outsiders react more negatively. 

The chapter on “The Attractions of Cult Hierarchy” (the cult offers certainty in a tumultuously changing life or world—though the authors are careful to point out that a hierarchy in itself need not be authoritarian) ends on page 90, so I have a lot of ground yet to cover, but this is a fascinating book! I will not draw explicit parallels to our world today, which you can do for yourself. Oh, but here is one more bit before I get off the subject: 

Looking carefully at a guru’s inner circle is extremely revealing. Those closest to him, his most dedicated students, display better than anything else where his teaching leads…. Are they strong and interesting in their own right or are they boring sycophants who continually feed his ego? It is also very enlightening to observe how gurus treat and refer to those who leave their fold.

Bad News/Good News/Bad News

The death-dealing ICE traffic stops struck once again. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was on his way to work, as usual, and he was not even the target ICE was seeking, but he is now dead (his wife a widow, his children orphans), and so is Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, and so is a 28-year-old man in Florida—three deaths in one week—no charges made against them, let alone any opportunity for a trial.

One day we had surprisingly good news: ICE did not plan to cease traffic stops completely but would scale back on the number. Unexpected relief! Because otherwise, what could we do? Protest each succeeding death, with no hope that there would be an end to them? Hope surged.

The very next day came the bad news: the president told ICE not to reduce the number of traffic stops. The idea, apparently, is to keep people running scared.

It was hard for me to work up a lot of enthusiasm for the 4th of July 2026, the 250th birthday of our nation. I love my country. I love its ideals, and I love the progress we seemed to be making for decades. Now, from where I stand, we are going backward at rocket speed. I cannot think of a single aspect of our national life that has been improved under the current administration. In fact, it’s difficult to see any positive aspect of that same national life that has not been reduced, degraded, or outright eliminated. 

Protections for workers and for the environment are stripped away. Public health is on the trash heap. There has been no real help for health care costs and inflation in general, despite the campaign promises. Is discrimination against minorities even illegal any more, or is bigotry what is now protected? The United States has become an aggressor country in the world theatre—the bully, not the one protecting others from bullies. And the president is so terrified that his party will be voted out of power that he threatens the election process itself. No surprise there. No surprise—and yet it is heartbreaking, maddening, so shameful!

One night I woke up with the thought: This isn’t even murder. It’s vivisection. A living entity, our country, is being tortured and torn apart and cut up in pieces. No more sleep that night!

Yet all of us go on with our lives, because we are alive and have no choice. Both those who oppose the current administration and those who—incredibly! inexplicably!—continue to support it live our lives as best we can one day after another, we the opposition with breaking hearts and determined, resolute hope. 

Do their hearts not break, the hearts of the supporters? Do they not miss the neighborliness we used to share? Can they look unmoved upon the deaths of children, of children’s parents, of their own neighbors? If they are so certain that God’s will is ordering everything that happens, what explains their frantic politicking and their desperate denials of fact? 

I do still hope, fervently, stubbornly, however, that our country will survive and turn once again toward freedom and the common good for all our grandchildren and great-grandchildren—. Don't you?

***

Coming back to add another wandering thought I had this past week about Republicans in Congress: I was wondering whether they are simply spineless (afraid to lose favor with the naked emperor) or if they are terrified deer in the headlights of oncoming history, realizing full well that theirs is a doomed legacy of shame. The thing is that remaining paralyzed is no protection against history, which just keeps rollin’ along. The moving finger writes, and all that. In time, history itself throws cowards under the bus. Their only hope is to wake up, jump out of the road, and yell “Sorry!” as loud as they possibly can. A good first step would be to vote against confirmation of the most inappropriate candidate for U.S. Attorney General ever proposed to fill the position. 

On the Home Front

Merging households, especially in a busy season like summer, involves a period of transition, so there’s a little chaos and a lot of clutter at Casa Bookseller-Tree Guy these days. Small items go missing on a daily basis. We had that big three-carload book move during the heat wave immediately preceding the holiday weekend, too! Despite it all, we are finding our new life together almost unbelievably easy and natural, and Naughty Barker goes right along with it, too. She now has company during the day when her momma goes to work, and she gets extra walks and extra attention and another someone willing to throw tennis balls for her. And have I mentioned that Tree Guy is a reader? Icing on the cake!