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....