Rambling Post in Need of a Unifying Title

 

Beautiful colors of ash leaves in October

Timely reminder first:

Bonnie Jo Campbell at Dog Ears Books!

Bonnie's suggestion was that we plan to do as we did with her last visit, which is to give her a chance to chat informally with customers who want books signed. If a crowd builds up and clamors for more, she is willing to read an excerpt for us, but you should feel free to drop in any time between 4 and 5 p.m. next Friday and not worry that you'll be late.

A Seth Family Story

Giving a visiting out-of-town friend a little township scenic auto tour on Monday, for the first time when I saw the sign for Seth Road it linked up in my mind with poet and novelist Vikram Seth, as I am currently reading his book titled Two Lives, though the road and the author have nothing to do with each other.

Two Lives begins with Seth's own antecedents and life and then goes on to detail the life of “Shanti Uncle,” his father’s brother, and Shanti’s German wife, Henny. “Vicky,” as his family sometimes called him (with no suggestion of femininity), had traveled from India to England for education and lived with his aunt and uncle off and on in London while in school, the three growing very close. Years later, his Aunt Henny suggested that he interview Shanti Uncle about his (the uncle’s) life, and those eleven long interviews formed the first basis for a book that eventually included the second life, that of Henny, when a trunk of old letters she had written and received turned up in the attic of the house Shanti had bought when he first set up his dental practice, the house where he brought Henny has his bride, and where both lived until their deaths.

Shanti Seth served in the British Army as a dentist until he lost his right arm below the elbow in bombing hear Monte Cassino. The story of how he was able to retrain himself and return to dentistry is itself a testament to courage and perseverance. He had met Henny and her family in Berlin while in dental school and was one of a social circle of the daughters’ friends, both Jewish and Christian Germans, in the 1930s. You can see where this is going. Henny eventually was able to emigrate and go to London, where she and Shanti were once again in the same social circle and eventually married, but her mother and sister were trapped in place, a brother overseas having squandered money that was to help the family emigrate, and they were eventually “transported” and died, Henny’s mother in Theresienstadt and sister Lola in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Author Seth only learned of this history after the trunk of letters was discovered, motivating him to do further research. Henny had never spoken of her family history to him.

A 1948 letter to Henny from her best friend back in Berlin closes with these words: 

"I am reading Seneca, and it makes me think of how old Herr Mahnert once left his rucksack on the train, and then declared as a distinguishing feature that it contained Seneca’s The Happy Life. Reading is still the best thing. I always read in bed till I drop off to sleep…."

Two years earlier, Henny herself had written to that same “old Herr Mahnert” that she could find “no solace or peace” in the case of her mother’s and sister’s deaths. 

"You can understand [she wrote] that I hate each and every German who has been connected with the Nazi Ideology. This naturally does not hold good for the people like you who, I know, have always been against the beastly Nazi Regime from the very first day. I know, that some of my old friends changed with the time as the tide changes with the moon and you cannot blame me if I despise such people. I know ’to err is human, to forgive divine,’ but the way the Nazis have erred is inhuman and can never be forgiven and, I hope, never be forgotten."

In recounting the life stories of his uncle and aunt, the author generally lets them speak for themselves. In one of the later sections of his book, however, he allows himself to speculate on the past and the future of our world. He asks why Germany was such a lightning rod for so much of what happened in the 20th century (“Berlin shaped the first half of the twentieth century, and epitomized the second”) and comes up with the following reasons: communism played a “crucial role,” both theoretical and actual; Germany made “singular contributions” in “science, quasi-science, and pseudo-science”; German pseudo-science led to and supported a German belief in their own superiority as well as the inferiority of other peoples; finally, there was Germany’s geographical location between East and West, fueling its determination not to be overtaken in either direction but to expand its own territory, having taken a path toward imperialism when the German states unified in 1871.

Seth speculates that the “terrible tragedies both caused by and inflicted on Germany” could serve as a lesson for the future, the way that the postwar Marshall Plan avoided the punishing repercussions that followed the “Great War” and laid the groundwork for a more lasting peace in Europe. But will we learn from the 20th century? Is there any sign that the world has learned the terrible price of war? Seth raises the possibility without full confidence and says of his own hope:

This may well smack of wishful thinking; all too often one finds among the very people to whom wrong has been done a blindness to the suffering of those whom they are wronging.

- Vikram Seth, Two Lives (HarperCollins, 2005)

Each leaf lives but a season.

What lessons can we draw from the past, and how?

Looking around at conflicts today in so many places, it is certainly difficult to be optimistic about the world’s future. It is also difficult to imagine forgiving, in the future, those who at present are changing with the time “as the tide changes with the moon,” going along with brutality on the part of our own government—or at least shrugging and turning away as if it doesn’t concern them. I can forgive a wrong done to me—but wrongs done to others in my name? That is entirely different.

Which reminds me (lightening the tone for a moment) about the time a friend tried to convince me that the Universe was setting “lessons” for each of us as individuals. I didn’t buy it. (I can’t see the “Universe” having me in a microscope!) “But I do try to learn from my experiences,” I told her, “so pragmatically there’s no difference between your belief and mine.” 

She didn’t buy that! “One of us has to be right and the other wrong,” she protested. 

I held to my position and still do, because if one of us were right and the other wrong, (1) how would we ever know which was which, and (2) (as I said to her then) what difference would it make, as long as both of us tried to learn what we could?

Fall color of shasta viburnum

"Why do human beings never learn from history?” another friend asked. 

Who knows? I think a large part of it is that our own lives are so short—history so long!—and we have a hard time learning from something we have not been through ourselves. Knowing is nothing like experiencing. And even then, two people never experience the “same” event the same way.

Don’t we all know people who have grown wiser with age and others who have grown more foolish? What can we conclude from that?

But I seem to have painted myself into a corner here, so it’s probably time to stop talking about lessons.

From My Little Corner

Coming into the village

It is peaceful in my little corner of the world. In Northport I read and sell books and buy and order more. At home I wage war only on invasive species, usually autumn olive (and a single nasty buckthorn so far; I hope there won't be more). I read there, too, tend outdoor plants and engage in agility work and tennis ball play with Naughty Barker, take walks with her and Tree Guy. 

An unusually grim mood invaded our usually placid domestic space when Tree Guy belatedly learned of the slaughter of over 400 trees in our nation's capitol. The trees were cut down in violation of a court order, devastation underway shortly before 5 p.m. of the recent holiday weekend impossible to see as coincidental timing. 

I realize that my preceding paragraph provides no relief from “the violence of the political internet,” as one person commenting referred to my blog last week. While neither engaging in violent rhetoric nor inciting violence, I have definitely referred to it. Why? Because it's there, and I can't pretend it isn't, and while these recent dead are trees and not human beings, it is yet another example of wanton destruction, occurring daily, not visited on us by nature but by human beings, and haven't we seen enough for the entire rest of this century (barely underway)? 

The old Bob Dylan song keeps going through my head, as I ask myself, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?” People I know! Fundamentally—I truly believe it—decent people, somehow at present blind (willfully?), who will, surely, one day wake to ask themselves how they ever—. But what point is there in going over this again and again? They won't see until they let themselves see, and then their hearts will break as ours break, day after day, now. Or do they see and not care? And how can that be?

For relief from the violent present, I turn to my plants, to stories set in other times and places, and to my dog and my partner. We are so, so lucky. We are here now!

And I have the best job in the world! 

What's so great about being an indie bookseller? I spent my days with books! I don't have a boss, and I don't boss anyone else. 

Book by a retired conservation officer

I meet interesting people all the time, each day presenting delightful surprises I could not have predicted the day before, fascinating people from all over, some of them writers, all of them readers, with backgrounds varied far beyond the confines of libraries and academic classrooms. 

There are parts of the world in which the life I lead would not have been possible for someone like me--a woman running a business (albeit a tiny one!) in books, with full control over the titles I stock. No one tells me what to wear or what hours my shop must be open or what books I must sell or any that I am forbidden to handle. I do not take these freedoms for granted, any more than I take for granted other ways my life has been and continues to be fortunate.

Sounded important to me

Mine is a human life. Conflicts arise from time to time, and, as does everyone, I have my worries and struggles along the way. In time, death will come, as it comes to all. That, as Tree Guy says, is “part of the deal.” We did not make the deal. We were born into it, given the gift of life, and accepting that is accepting all of it, including death. Okay! I gratefully accept.

What's New Around Here?

Besides Bonnie Jo's new book and upcoming visit, I have a few other new titles to share, one special one a little book on the stars.

I don't recognize many constellations. Half a dozen at most. And I can't tell you what started me thinking about their names or when it occurred to me that learning names here in Michigan that were given the stars by ancient Greeks who never set foot on North America was a little strange, and I wondered what names Native Americans gave to our familiar northern constellations? Here is the book that answers the question: 

Whether at home in Michigan, where Orion appears over my barn, or out in southeast Arizona those five winters past, where I saw the same stars in the high desert sky, the familiar constellation gave me a feeling of home. That feeling is enhanced now by learning the Ojibwe name, Wintermaker, or Biboonikeonini. Yes, that fall constellation tells us what is soon to come. Familiar. Part of home. As familiar and homelike as the yipping of coyotes in the dark.

Moon before dark...

Color is a developing story. So is my bookshop.

Sunny in the morning sun 

We have been having a spate of lovely mornings so far this October. Spate. That’s an interesting word. A large number of anything, definitions of the word say, although a few add that it usually refers to bad things. No, no! Lovely mornings are good! They are beautiful gifts, and we can never have too many of them! 

Barbara clouds at sunrise

Wild aster festival

A bend in the road

(For a very early morning sight, look here.)

Sometimes I make notes or lists ahead of time for a new blog post; other times the writing becomes a seat-of-the-pants improvisation. (Fiction writers are sometimes said to be “plotters” or “pantsers,” the former planning and charting a novel’s action, the latter just seeing where the action takes the story.) One reason I omitted from my last post the visit from a dear friend of 60 years (!!!) and her husband is that somehow, unbelievably, she and I completely forgot to have the guys take a picture of us together, and I was writing my post largely from photographs (except for the book stuff), so there you are. Terrible me! Sixty years! Jeanie, how could we???

If I work from photographs today, this will be another pantsed (seat-of-the-pants) post, and it looks like that’s what it’s going to be.

Always ready for fun

The World Around Us

Again, because I was unable to photograph it, I keep forgetting to record my sighting of a red-bodied dragonfly along our daily two-track road a few weeks back. Entrancing! Was it a common darter? A meadow skimmer? I confess I prefer the name meadow skimmer, so that's what I want to think it was. 

Red is not as common in nature, it seems to me, as green or white or yellow. Cardinal flower stands out for that reason alone. In this season, it is the leaves of the pin cherries that enchant me. 

What could be lovelier?

Virginia creeper?

Garden and Orchard Notes

Wanting to introduce Tree Guy to my favorite area nurseries, I drove us to one on the way home from errands in Traverse City, not intending to buy anything but simply to luxuriate in the arboretum atmosphere--until I saw something that had to come home with me, a little native shrub with the most beautiful fall color imaginable.

American hazelnut planted Monday

I was a goner! It fit in the car, and before sunset it was in the ground near my boardwalk perennial border.

Although shrubs involve more initial cost than most perennials, I am coming to think they might be a better bargain. How many so-called perennials have I planted, only to have them disappear after two or three seasons? Also, like a tree, a shrub it its beautiful self for at least half the year. Long ago I fell in love with a viburnum (var. 'Chenault') for its fall color, having no idea what it would look like when it flowered in summer. That shrub I planted in Northport in the late 1990s is still strong and healthy and beautiful, so I have high hopes for the shasta viburnum a friend brought me from a garden being bulldozed, another new member of my garden family.

Shasta viburnum planted Tuesday

I disassembled my strawberry tower to bring it to the bookstore for the winter. Maybe the plants will die, unhappy without a dormancy period. The whole tower was an experiment, anyway, wild plants not fruiting that I dug up along the back of my house, so there was nothing to lose.

Its earlier incarnation

Moving for the winter

More and more of the plant world is shutting down as the days grow shorter. The time for rest will soon be here. 

A late statement of color

The big harvest and preserving push at present involves apples. Peeling, slicing, saucing and drying. So far, I have two batches of sauce in canning jars and a second batch of slices in the dehydrator.

Adventures in Reading

Sounds like a schoolbook, doesn't it? As a lifelong reader, however, and bookseller of over three decades, I have to admit that many of my life's adventures are vicarious, found in the pages of books. One that held me spellbound was Venture to the Interior, by Laurens Van Der Post, although when I read about his life after reading the book, I wondered if I had been completely taken in. Were his facts really facts? Were the emotions he recounts what he truly felt? The morning those doubts assailed me, I began reading a memoir by Vikram Seth, Two Lives, and then watched a video of an interview with Seth, interested to note that he considers himself primarily a poet, although the world knows him chiefly as a novelist--much like Jim Harrison, I couldn't help thinking, the market (and how crass that word sounds in this context!) for poetry being so much smaller than that for long fiction.

Then there is nonfiction, which can be as fascinating as any novel written and as beautiful or heart-wrenching as any poem. Three nonfiction books in my recent reading, if they must be given a category (because nonfiction is not really a category, is it?), would have to be called anthropology. Two are called that, another subtitled “oral history.”

Chinese Lives: An Oral History of Contemporary China, by Zhang Xinxin & Sang Ye, with a preface by Studs Terkel, is a collection of stories made in China, inspired by Terkel's collections of Americans' stories. The man and woman who put these stories together were themselves Chinese, born in 1953 and 1955, respectively, Zhang having worked as a nurse and a factory worker before establishing herself in journalism, Sang trained as an electrician who also turned to journalism and modern Chinese history.

John Langston Gwaltney, who received part of his training in anthropology under the late Margaret Mead, collected in Drylongso (that word means “ordinary” in the Gullah language of coastal Georgia and South Carolina) the stories of black Americans of all ages from many different walks of life as his 1970s field study, which he called a “portrait of core black culture,” because as a Black man he felt his people had not been accurately represented in standard social science. Rather than concentrating on poverty or dysfunction, he looked for the ordinary, the drylongso, of Black American culture, and those who spoke with him (many of whom had known him all their lives) did so trusting him with their stories.

Ōkubo Diary: Portrait of a Japanese Valley, by Brian Moeran, was also an account by an anthropologist, but it was very different from Chinese Lives and Drylongso, in that Moeran, the author, (1) was an outsider, a Westerner, and (2) gave his own observations of the life of the Japanese village from a subjective, first-person standpoint. His Japanese wife came from an urban rather than a rural background and so was almost as much an outsider as he was (both spoke Japanese but not the local dialect); however, they bought a house in the valley, hoping to settle there permanently and that they would eventually be seen as “belonging.” Two years later, those hopes were dashed. 

Zhang and Sang, like Gwaltney, allow their subjects (for want of a better word) to speak for themselves, and as readers we feel we are meeting these individuals directly. Fascinating as Moeran's book is, we never have that same feeling. We are given only his stories of the people among whom he lived, and so, like him, we are held at a distance from their lives. Like him, we remain an outsider.

I'll be getting back to Vikram Seth soon. But Tree Guy and I will also be having more company this month, and there is still a lot of fall work to be done, too, around the home place. 

We are still learning, Sunny and I.

One of my favorite portraits of her

Last Monday may have been our last agility session for the season, or we may have one more, depending on the weather. Be that as it may, I asked Coach Mike to take a couple pictures of Sunny and me on the course, and this is what I have:

Sunny and I do pretty well at everything except the weave poles, so I am determined that we will focus on those next summer. Practice, practice, practice! It is the key to success in so many endeavors.

Endings can be beautiful, too.

Besides lovely October dawns, we have also had some spectacular fall sunsets. Those are the Manitou Islands out there on the horizon. 

October's Quiet Entrance

Monday: Quiet aftermath

The Lull After the ???

Do we want to call the 12th annual Leelanau UnCaged street fair a storm? Probably not, even though, once again, it brought thousands of festival-goers to our little village. Despite the numbers, though, somehow the crowd is not overwhelming, as everyone is intent on enjoying the scene: music, arts and crafts, fair food, activities for children, people- and dog-watching extraordinaire, and general good vibes all around. I think I may also say, without fear of contradiction, that the weather was perfect. Last year's weather was close to perfect. (A few people actually thought it was “a little too warm”! Really!) This year could not have been any better.

Saturday morning: All set up and ready to go!

Every year I enjoy strolling through the village in the morning as booths are being set up for the day, and though I spend the day indoors in my bookshop, I was able to have the door open all day this year, and everyone is so happy at UnCaged that I feel very much part of the scene. From the very first year, it has felt like a homecoming for the village and the whole township. 

And then comes a quiet week, the lull after the festivities, everyone still floating on top of a cloud (in the sunshine!), happy that grey, rainy weather held off and did not dampen our celebration on Saturday.

Thursday: Rain

Where does fall color start?

Virginia creeper first, closely followed by staghorn sumac, but never fear, autumn is barely underway, and weeks of beauty lie ahead. The few trees already losing green are mostly urban specimens, surrounded by cement or other hard paving. Trees in the rural landscape are still green.

Green trees, red sumac

Village scene with falling leaves

Grimace of Recognition

Warm, tender, funny, cozy. These words have been used to describe Receipts From the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year in an English Seaside Town, by Katie Clapham, one year of a independent bookseller’s diary about bookshop life in her English seaside town. From my own Michigan lakeside village shop, also fiercely independent, I can’t help having a somewhat different take from that of the casual, uninvolved reader. Mine, the response of a committed insider, cannot help responding with (not a shock, but) a wry grimace, whether over bits of conversation that the English bookseller hears from people passing her open shop door without entering or mental notes of the bookseller herself when she sees that July sales in the year she is reporting were less than July sales the year before.

Let me say quickly that my grimace of recognition is not over a business account balance in the red! Frankly, I don’t understand that at all. If your business is losing money, how is it that you are still in business? How do you pay your bills? How do you buy groceries? Unless you have income from another source or are independently wealthy, and then yours is more a hobby than a business. 

Come on in!

“What a cute hobby!” a woman exclaimed once in my shop. Whether or not my shop is “cute” is not for me to say, but it is definitely not a hobby. If it could not support itself and also provide for me, the door would have closed long ago!

But yes, those overheard bits of conversation (e.g., “It’s just books in there,” as I heard someone say once outside my door, dragging her companion past) ... and the inquiries for a specific book that, when put in the customer’s hand, she for some reason decides against purchasing ... and then observations like this:

If you’re wondering whether just one paperback is really such a significant sale, consider the obstacles we’ve overcome to secure it: the dark night of the soul that is winter, not to mention the insidious shift of retail from the high street to the internet and the gentle surrender of attention spans everywhere as the commitment to reading becomes too costly in the attention economy. Buying a book from a bookshop really is an act of resistance; a retro act of resilience and determination to maintain or regain some screen-free time, and a defiant stand against the big corps that assume people value an extra couple of quid over keeping retail afloat in their own home towns. Yes, even if you only picked one up on the way to get your venti mocha, a single paperback is enough to make a difference to us, every damn day. 

- Katie Clapham, Receipts From the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year in an English Seaside Town

And yes, my bookshop is unique!

I would not call my bookshop “most unique,” because—well—I wouldn’t call anything “most unique,” unique meaning “the only one of its kind,” and so anything either is unique or it isn’t, and nothing is more or less, let alone least or most unique. But is my bookshop unique? Yes, it is. 

Mine is an independent shop, i.e., not part of a chain, not owned by a corporation, and it’s the only bookstore I own, and I am unique, so there you are. Or, here I am. No two indie bookstores are identical, even if one person or family owns and operates more than a single storefront. Mine is also the only bookshop in Northport, Michigan, and no other bookshop, in Northport or anywhere else, has a collection identical to mine. Each indie bookshop—as is true of a village or an individual human being—wherever it is, has its own unique personality. 

New offerings appear weekly (sometimes oftener).

Answer to the Question You Didn't Ask:

How do you grow an avocado from seed? Keep throwing avocado pits in the compost pile. Sooner or later (maybe much, much later, as happened for me) one or two will produce baby trees that you can dig up and pot for indoor life. Over the decades I have tried every other recommended method, over and over, and none worked for me. This one did. Twice! In one summer!

My window garden will expand over the winter.

 

Are you looking for color?

Equinoctal moon --
color only beginning now

Glimpses of color:

Tree Guy tells me that the red and orange and gold and yellow colors of autumn leaves are there all summer long, hidden by green. When the green seeps away (chlorophyll “breaks down” and/or stops being produced—obviously, I’m pretty vague on the science), other colors sing forth. 

Already in early September the green of our deciduous trees was noticeably less bright, red undertones darkening the overall effect of the woodland edges. Where I notice brighter color most in September is in pockets—peony foliage in my border, columbine in the shade garden, an isolated, stressed tree here and there along the road, the first red sumac leaves and berries. But the big color show, once it gets underway, will develop quickly—and then be over all too soon, as happens every year.

And oh, already the pin cherries! How often do we pay any attention to them? Look at their vivid color with the low, almost-setting sun behind the leaves!

Flowers and Gardens of the Shoulder Season:

When bee balm goes to seed and phlox begins dropping its petals, I sometimes, with a wave of sadness, almost panic, that the time of blossoms is past—and then the asters begin to bloom. Asters in the village, asters in my meadow, asters along the roadside! Tiny white and pale pink ones and splashy big deep purple flowers. The bees love them, and so do I. 

My old corner from long ago!

Busy bee --

Chrysanthemums in pots appear around the same time and certainly fill an important niche, but it’s the wild asters that make me stop and smile. Carefree as weeds, bright and varied in their colors, they are Nature’s free will offering. Thank you!

Meadow asters

More

There are colors in my garden, too, though. A few marigolds from last year’s seeds, some dwarf hollyhocks (why they came up where they did and why they are so small, I have no idea), a handful of zinnias. My strawberry tower did not yield fruit but survived the summer, and I’m considering bringing it to the bookstore for the winter to see what it will do. Any thoughts on that?

Garden gold

Strawberry tower

Look out for this invader!

I had a nasty shock while Tree Guy and I were working on reducing the number of (total elimination is a pipe dream) young black walnut trees and the ever-invasive autumn olive. A large shrub I had been walking by for years was covered with black berries. What were they? Anything edible? Imagine how I recoiled in dread when the identification turned out to be the horrible buckthorn! That, too? No fair!

Chainsaw, loppers, pruners, poison, and a bag to contain the berries stole an hour from our pursuit of other goals, but I will be on the lookout from now on, and if you see this invader on your land, don't let it get the upper hand!

Buckthorn! Very unwelcome!

What of the 2026 apple crop?

Judging only from what I see as I travel county roads, it looks like a fantastic apple year! My own little trees have produced nicely after two off-years (first because of codling moths, then the next year a late spring killing frost nipping the blossoms). This year I was ready with traps for the moths at the end of winter, and spring frosts were unproblematic, so my only regret now is having neglected to thin the crop, because there are too many undersized apples, too much fruit competing for the trees’ resources. Three years ago, I did a good job of thinning, but this summer I forgot all about it. Oh, well! There are some good-sized apples in the mix, too.

One of my overloaded trees

Orchardists will not have made my mistake. Their crops look great! A place on Swede Road makes the most delicious fresh sweet cider with theirs. 

Cider stop, Swede Road

Wild apple trees look to have had a boom year, also, so there will be plenty of fruit for wildlife this winter.

Big wild apple

What people have been reading this year:

Three categories of fiction frequently requested this past year stand out, along with one of philosophy: (1) science fiction; (2) fantasy; (3) romance; and ((4) Stoicism. Even given the dystopic, post-apocalyptic trends in (1) and (2), the first three genres, as I see them, spell escape from present reality. 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours….

So wrote William Wordsworth, noting further that “we are out of tune.”  

Out of tune. Not in harmony. Out of tune with nature, surely, tragically. Out of tune with our times—perhaps not such a bad thing, since the times themselves are out of tune with nature. 

So where does that leave (4)? Why are American readers—at least in Northern Michigan—turning to an ancient school of philosophy? Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus. As with the escape reading, the Stoics seem clearly a response to the times in which we live, with the difference that Stoicism would have us deal with our challenges, accept our limitations, and keep our cool rather than explode in anger, simmer and shiver in anxiety, or fearfully burrow down the rabbit hole of escapism.

The Serenity Prayer is an example of the Stoic approach to life: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

 

Courage to change the things I can, 

 

and Wisdom to know the difference.

Stoicism is not resignation. Change what you can and then don’t give your one brief precious life over to agonizing about what you cannot control.

It has been an interesting summer of bookstore requests, this one of 2026, with three frequently requested categories of reading to escape reality and one to help us deal with it.

I am reminded by a recent customer request that there have also been more older adults than usual looking for the simple stories of their early years. Women have always been ready to revisit Nancy Drew, but in 2026 I’ve had men in their 70s wanting to re-read Hardy Boys books. Comfortable familiarity is another welcome escape, so there is a fifth popular category.

What I’ve been reading and thinking about:

For myself, I read and think and attempt to deal with life as it is and also periodically plunge from the present day to a previous century and another continent, escaping the here and now, or binge on two or three murder mysteries in a row. (Murder mysteries are a satisfying escape because the genre generally dictates that justice triumph in the end.) I recently finished my reading of the Anatole France novel, The Gods Are A-Thirst, a novel of life immediately following the French Revolution of 1789 (which is not at all escape reading, given the Terror and all that it involved), but I fell into a nonfiction book that turned out, to my surprise, to lead off with an introduction to Stoicism, and while I can’t go the whole nine yards to believing that “everything happens for a reason,” i.e., according to some kind of grand plan, the idea of imagining a worst-case scenario is long familiar to me, something I’ve done for years, though I never gave it a name or realized it was part of Stoic practice. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Thinking about a possible worst case, I can decide ahead of time how to deal with it, should it come to pass. That gave me a measure of control—not over the outcome but over my response—and thus a reason not to fret overmuch.

Memento mori thinking is something else that has meaning for me, so encountering it in Stoicism is like meeting an old friend. Before my husband died, we had already lost many good, lifelong friends, and the Artist would often say in the morning, “It’s a beautiful day! And we’re alive!” The implication, sometimes voiced, always implied, was that we would not always be alive—obvious, but not something everyone wants to contemplate daily but for us a happy reminder to rejoice in the day we were beginning together. Now that he is gone, remembering that I too will die still reminds me to appreciate the moment and hour I have while I am in them. Not only will I die, but so will Tree Guy, and so will Naughty Barker, and so will all the people I know and love, but we are here now, and life is all the more precious because not unlimited. 

Stoicism, though, isn’t just about feeling good. That would be a shallow and simplistic reading of it. As Oliver Burkeman notes in his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, when a Stoic thinks that any day could be her last, she doesn’t go wild and max out her credit card because she won’t have another chance to buy things and besides, she’ll be dead and won’t have to pay the bill. That is not memento mori thinking at all. Rather, the Stoic idea is that every day is an opportunity to live a virtuous life, to be courageous, practice healthy moderation, and to pursue justice and seek wisdom. We won’t have an eternity of chances, but we have today. Here’s a quick introduction that may lead you to want to read more.

Dogs are natural stoics, a friend reminded me. So true! The dog with a sore leg avoids straining it as much as possible, and even a dying dog doesn’t weep and wail, “Why me???” Which makes me think of Sarah's last day of life and the photo I will put here of that day, and, as for taking the opportunity to practice doggie virtue, the way she staggered to her feet in the late afternoon, four hours before her last breath, and asked to go outside. She needed to pee. We would not have cared if she had peed on the floor, but she was still concerned with doing right, as a good dog sees right.

Our last day together: Dos Cabezas, Arizona

Brief comment on the news:

I really will keep this brief. My response today is to the Vice President of the United States, who defends the President's actions against media networks whose coverage he doesn't like. (The president has barred those networks from future press conferences. They are suing.) The Vice President says that negative coverage of the president is (I'm going to paraphrase rather than look this up) “not representative of the American people's views.” Huh? Does he understand the difference between news and opinion? Or is he like my stepson's grade school teacher? That teacher told the class, “We only like nice news.” VP also called negative coverage “left-wing propaganda.” Hmmm, propaganda. News ≠ opinion ≠ propaganda. I could say more but won't. You all know what propaganda is, I hope.

A common enemy?

It’s often said that nothing unites people as much as seeing a common enemy. Without one, we find reasons to feud with each other; with one, we make common cause. 

With election year competition and conflict and vitriol building to fever pitch, there is at the same time a growing sense that the American people see AI as their common enemy. Will this be the future conflict? Humans vs. (for lack of a better word) “robots”? Sounds like science fiction, but if it would unite all human beings on earth, I can imagine worse scenarios (e.g., the one we've been living most recently).

How agile are we?

Sunny and I had another agility session with Coach Mike on Monday morning, and he had us doing some complicated new things that we did, I must say, very well. Sunny seemed happy to do what I asked of her, and I was happy with how well we both did. One more reason to keep the grass mowed in my yard is to keep the stage clear for agility equipment. Ah, but Sunny is just as happy with her beloved tennis balls. She is demanding but only within a narrow range!

(I can't photograph her when we are running the course.)

I cannot leave this unsaid.

I learned this morning that one of my oldest and dearest Leelanau friends died last night, Wednesday, Sept. 22. I saw her the previous Friday and a couple Mondays before that and thought there would be more visits, more time to hold her hand and tell her I loved her and what a good friend she had always been. The next-to-last time I was with her, I'm not sure she knew me, though she had called me by name two weeks earlier, and we had shared some laughs. Last Friday, though, she had a beautifully lucid moment when I mentioned all the good times we had had together. She said, “There's one thing we didn't do. We didn't go to the U.P. together. We need to make that trip.”

Ellen, you will be in my heart wherever I go!

Another: One year four of us drove down to the countryside near Buckley to see the giant elm. At the side of the road, on a metal folding chair, inside a Tupperware sheet cake container, there was a guest book. We all wrote something in the book and signed our names. I don't remember what year that was, and now I can't ask the others, because they are all gone.

Ellen, Ann, Linda
(I was cameraperson for this shot.)