My Bookish Life and the Great Outdoors

On the shelf? Answer to question below?

Where Do We Belong?

 

When I posted a couple of photos of my yard and gardens, and a similarly inclined friend commented, I replied to her comment, “Isn’t our real life outdoors?” and she replied, “It’s where we belong.” Ah, but this friend also has a bookstore, so this morning I was thinking, But our books belong indoors – most of the time, at least, except when we’re reading one under a tree or by the edge of the lake or something. It's a booklover’s/outdoor woman's conundrum! And then there is bedtime reading and winter reading, cozy indoors. But right now it’s still summer….

 

 

Library Friends: FOLTL and Me, 2023

 

The last two events of the Friends of the Leelanau Township Library Summer Author Series kept up the standard set by earlier presenters, Dave Dempsey, author of Great Lakes for Sale,* and Jacob Wheeler, author of Angel of the Garbage Dump. Sarah Shoemaker and Soon-young Yoon enlightened and educated their assembled audiences as they entertained. Discussion following was deep in both cases, history with Sarah, policy with Soon-Young.

Below, from left to right, are (first) Sarah Shoemaker, author of Children of the Catastrophe; Silvia Gans, FOLTL president; and Suzanne Landes, past president. In the second photo, again left to right, are Soon-young Yoon, author of Citizen of the World; Beth Verhey, her interviewer for the evening; Julie Alpers-Preneta, Leelanau Township Librarian; and Pamela Grath of Dog Ears Books. Mimi and Joel Heberlein provided the venue this summer, the Willowbrook Mill on Mill Street.

FOLTL is Friends of the Leelanau Township Library. After losing my long-time volunteer to retirement this year, as well as the more global and permanent loss of my husband last year, I have not hosted author events in the bookstore/gallery myself, content to promote and attend FOLTL events and offer those authors’ books for sale following their presentations. I do, however, have two poets scheduled for the day of Leelanau UnCaged, last Saturday in September – scheduled on the day, that is, with reading time not yet set. Fleda Brown and Michael Delp will be here that Saturday, and you won’t want to miss them.

 

 

Bookish Temptations

 

I have not yet let myself even open Horse, by Geraldine Brooks, because if I do, I won’t be able to stop reading, and all the books I’m halfway through will feel justifiably slighted. That’s what happened when I picked up The Hearts of Horses, by Molly Gloss, a book I highly recommend. I mean, horses!!! But also, her writing so impressed me that I not only ordered paperback copies of that title but two others of hers, as well, confident that they will also be wonderful. 

Wonderful also is Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, which I had never attempted until recently and am now about halfway through. She published that literary tour de force (historical fiction) in France at the age of 48 but had been writing it off and on for a decade. Never having been a great reader of historical fiction in general or an amateur of the Roman Empire, I am surprised at how involved I have become in the life and times of Hadrian, fictionally imagined by a 20^th-century woman. Yourcenar was admitted to the Académie française in 1980, the first woman to receive that honor. She deserved it!

 

 

My Nonliterate Sidekick

 

Sunny Juliet has no interest whatsoever in books but is excelling at agility. This week she did not only jumps and tunnels but teeter-totter (“Teeter!”) and the bridge (“Walk it!”). By summer’s end she will probably be introduced to the weave poles, though proficiency at weaving is the most difficult agility challenge, as it’s nothing dogs would have any reason to do ordinarily. But I can't photograph her at work because we are working the course together....

Don't let the sleepy act fool you. She is ready to go on a moment's notice!

I asked our instructor (Sunny and I work as a team, and I have as much to learn as she does) if the idea of the dog agility course came from equestrian events, and he said one trainer he worked with started out as a horse trainer but found over the years that he had fewer and fewer students, so when he observed that everyone has dogs, he turned his attention to working with people and their canine companions. 

Ready!

What’s in a Phrase? “It's the Berries!”

 

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Black raspberries were so plentiful this year that they threatened to bury me alive. (They are winding down now at last.) Sunny liked to “pick” them right off the canes with her dog lips, and I encouraged the help. Get those low berries, girl, so the momma won’t have to! Recently I noticed blackberry canes at one end of one of my raspberry patches, and that’s encouraging, because the main wild blackberry patch – enormous in extent, prolific in fruiting – is too close to orchard trees for me to risk gathering sprayed fruit. Even closer to the house red raspberries and red gooseberries are appearing, and I’ve been ridding them of competition in hopes they will multiply. 

“It’s the berries” is slang that was outdated when I was young, along with “the cat’s meow” or "the bee's knees," but really, don’t those expressions sound kinder and gentler than saying something is “the bomb” or that so-and-so “killed it” with a performance? And then, of course, there is the song. Take a listen: it will make you smile.

No books here -- what gives?

Recent Bookish Losses 

 

One “old Leland” friend who died recently was Barb Nowinsky, the first Leelanau County librarian I ever knew by name and could call a friend. That made me sad. 

 

*Another loss was Bob Giles, former editor and publisher of the Detroit News, a journalist many of my friends knew as a beloved boss, and the author (most recently) of When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later, published in 2020 and very much still worth reading. Bob was in Northport only five weeks ago, when he interviewed Dave Dempsey, author of Great Lakes for Sale, in the first of four FOLTL Summer Author Series events and one Bob dedicated to his late wife, Nancy, a strong library supporter. His body was failing, but his mind was strong and sharp. I'm glad that my last memory of him will be that one.

 

 

Another Point of View on Death and Loss

 

My experience of encountering memories along every mile of every county road is hardly unique to me. Sometimes it breaks my heart, other times I find it comforting. A friend reported another friend’s young child observing the phenomenon thusly: “First you’re here, then you’re everywhere.” I like that thought. For me, Leelanau County is crowded with friends, some still living, others departed but not gone from my memory. I'm glad they are still "everywhere," though no longer here at my side.