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| Poet Jennifer Clark |
Racing Season
Not a season of races, that is, but a season racing by, as summer always does. (Yes, even before it officially arrives!) Overnight, it seems, the rivers of gold that were the blooming cowslips (marsh marigolds) turn to wet-footed, narrow meadows of lacquer-yellow buttercups; sweeping white hills of woodland trillium fade and disappear; the tree canopy grows dense; and yellow-eyed white daisies (the happy days’ eyes) dance along roadsides in sun or in rain. Forget-me-nots have gone to seed for another year, and so has the first round of dandelion blossoms, but cheery little English daisies enliven otherwise monochrome green lawns, and now—coreopsis already!!!
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| Coreopsis here before the longest day! |
Gardening
My fall bulb catalogs arrived in May, and I am determined to order early this year, because if I wait too long I will forget again … or decide not to bother … even knowing what pure delight those flowers that bloom in the spring (“tra-la!”) will give.
Meanwhile, there is always “just one more” trip to a garden center or nursery, “just one more” plant that my garden must have! Oh, yes, borage!
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| Magical borage -- |
Books
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| Did you ever read this one? |
Do you remember some of your favorite books from grade school? One of mine was Oliver Butterworth’s The Enormous Egg. I was reminded of that favorite story when a little boy visited my bookshop wearing a striped t-shirt with a line of Triceratops dinosaurs marching along every other stripe. In the book, young Nate Twitchell is almost as faithful as the family hen in taking care of the unusually large, leathery egg in hopes it will hatch—and it does! But the little dinosaur does not stay little for long.
I didn’t remember the ending, so I had to order and reread the whole book. Thus I traveled with Nate and Dr. Ziemer and Uncle Beazley (the triceratops) from New Hampshire to Washington, D.C., and then right into the halls of Congress, where a United States senator proposed legislation that would outlaw Uncle B. and have him killed and stuffed! Given the expense of housing a dinosaur over the course of its lifetime, there is support in the Senate for the bill. Uh-oh! What hope does young Nate have of saving his rapidly growing pal? Wonderful story!
A much older book that went home with me for bedtime reading was a falling-apart copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Second Jungle Book, in which we meet again Mowgli and his animal friends.
There are also other stories in the book, including one that takes place in the high Arctic, but Mowgli and friends are the center. As captivating as the stories, once I stopped to look at them more closely, are illustrations by the author’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, the smallest seeming at first glance only decorative. But no! Each one clearly depicts something in that particular story.
John Lockwood Kipling deserves a new paragraph. Although his career was overshadowed by that of his famous son, Lockwood was an astonishingly accomplished polymathic artist in his own right, producing drawings, furniture, sculpture, pottery, and more. During his 25 years in India, as teacher and later museum curator in Lahore, he was also active in a revival of traditional Indian arts and crafts.
And let me say right here that wonderful as much of Walt Disney’s work was (and his "Jungle Book" film was the last for Walt), Disney’s Mowgli is not Kipling’s Mowgli, and people need to read the books to learn the Law of the Jungle as the man-cub learned it.
Alongside these deep and deeper dives into the past, I read also a novel published only two years ago, inspired because the author came to Northport. Mary Kay Zuravleff gave a reading and presentation following the business portion of the annual meeting of the Friends of Leelanau Township Library (FOLTL) on Saturday, June 14. When she and local author Karen Mulvahill stopped by the bookstore ahead of her FOLTL appearance, they took a couple extra books from my stock, in case they ran short. And they would have! Note: I am ordering more and will be restocked by this Friday.
The title of Zuravleff’s novek, American Ending, comes from the fictional narrator’s mother, a Russian immigrant. When telling her children bedtime stories, she would ask, “Russian ending or American ending?” In the Russian ending of a fairy tale, the wolf eats the bride who wanted a ride on his back to her wedding, while the American ending has the groom slicing open the wolf’s belly and the bride leaping out unharmed. But even as a child Yeleni doesn’t fully trust American endings, suspecting that good luck isn’t necessarily permanent and that life can take sorrowful turns.
The setting is a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, and the story opens in 1908. It is a complicated family saga, with a large cast of characters, but American-born Yeleni’s voice, steadily throughout the book, keeps us oriented. This is a world where girls are married as early as 13 years old to grooms chosen by their parents, young boys taken from school and sentenced to dangerous lives underground, and adults too often seek solace from poverty’s troubles in alcohol. Yet, for all that, it is also a life of tradition and memory and feasting and celebration. When Yeleni’s mother invites the schoolteacher to Thanksgiving dinner, the whole neighborhood contributes.
It was a miracle the way people pitched in when they weren’t even invited, and not with a shriveled turnip or the stringy end of a roast either. Here came a sturgeon turnover to fatten up the schoolteacher, poppyseed bubliks for the single men, cherries in a jar if Lethia wanted to bake pie. Lethia collected candle stubs at church and polished the table with beeswax and beef tallow, another miracle. Robert and Pa captured two wild turkeys. Really, Kostia did. The birds were always in the meadow nipping at him, and Kostia led them into a trap….
- Mary Kay Zuravleff, American Ending
Despite being a story set in the America of over a century ago, the novel is also very much a story of today. Late in the novel, when Yeleni urges her husband to apply for U.S. citizenship, he answers,
“I’ll need a witness willing to swear I’m not a phut.”
“English, please,” I said, “or they’ll send you back on the next boat, crook or not.”
It was one of my fears, though Erie Russians scoffed at the idea of anyone being sent back. Who would make the town’s streetcars, engines, or boilers; their boots and buttons; their paint, paper, or pickles? Who would slaughter the meat or tan the leather if Russians were sent back?
Sound familiar? Since summer is my heaviest work season, both at home and in my bookshop, reading time is at a premium, but I still manage to squeeze it in. (Not having TV helps!) American Ending is Mary Kay Zuravleff’s fourth novel and the first of her work I have read, but it certainly will not be the last.
And then one night I turn to an old favorite, Harlan Hubbard’s Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society, a sequel to Shantyboat, the story of Harlan and Anna’s river adventure years.
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| I love Harlan's sketches in the book |
Returning at last to the Ohio River as to an old friend, the Hubbards settled down and built a house on the river bank (shades of Rat and Mole), put in a garden, raised goats, and continued their evening practice of reading aloud to each other and playing duets. Their “bijou riverside residence” (as the Mole called Rat’s hole in the bank) was larger than their old shantyboat but, like it, lit by fireplace and oil lamps and complete with cunning cupboards for the storage of food and a bed that slid away out of sight when morning came. Harlan and Anna kept to old, simple ways.
…So many times have the advantages of a garden tractor or tiller been pointed ot to me that I half believe the argument myself…. My strength returns when I am alone in the garden, working with some beloved tool, the birds whistling overhead. Even on a sultry July morning, when not a breath of air stirs, when the sun’s heat is magnified by the encircling trees, and weeds are sprouting everywhere, not even then could I welcome one of those nondescript, unlovable gadgets, brightly painted and streamlined, which make an intolerable noise and smell bad. They get the work done, you say? I say they are expensive and insidiously destructive. I will get the work done in my own way. Save time? The best use of time is to enjoy it, as I do when working in peaceful silence.
- Harlan Hubbard, Payne Hollow
Oh, that is exactly how I feel about working outdoors! No string trimmers or leaf blowers for me, please!
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| How economically he captures chickadee and woodpecker! |
Agility work
Sunny Juliet and I had our first session of the year with Coach Mike, who is very enthusiastic and encouraging and genuinely loves the sport and all his doggie pupils. He is an excellent teacher!
Agility work is as challenging—maybe even more so—for the human member of the team as it is for the dog. The sport was inspired by equestrian show jumping, and more and more I realize the strong parallels between work with horses (which I must admit, sadly, I know about almost exclusively from reading) and work with dogs. We humans are a talky species, and we are usually so busy talking and listening to each other and thinking about what we want to say next that we lack awareness of what our bodies are telling us and telling others.
Anyone knows that riders “tell horses what to do” by applying reins and knee pressure, but horses also respond to much more subtle signals, whether or not the rider intends the signaling. How one sits and every little shift of the seat is information to the horse. A well-trained dog responds to voice commands, but any dog is also, and much more continually, paying attention to physical cues.
In our agility work Sunny is aware of every little move or gesture I make, intentional or inadvertent, although I am not physically in contact with her. If I shift my shoulders slightly or vary the height of my hand from the ground or speed up or slow down or merely glance off to the side—all that is telling her something, which means that I too have to be aware of my body in order to give her the proper signals.
And have you ever thought about the difference in peripheral vision between humans and canines? (Don’t feel bad. I never had.) We see about 180 degrees, or half of the circle of which we are the center, but dogs’ eyes are spaced more widely apart than ours, so their peripheral vision is much wider, 250 to 270 degrees (depending, I guess, on the shape of a particular dog’s head, which would vary from one breed to another), which means Sunny is still seeing me after she runs past, so if I stop and turn around, she thinks she needs to do that, too!
It’s a lot to think about. It’s also impossible, as you can imagine, for me to get video or even still footage in the middle of our demanding work!
But now—oh, dear! Sunny has developed a limp that seems to come and go, as if maybe she pulled a muscle or something (it started with that porcupine chase), so for now my girl needs to rest from strenuous activity. She’s to be on-leash for a week, with aspirin or Tylenol twice a day, the vet says. Poor Sunshine! She thinks “taking it easy” is a great big bore!
Tenting Tonight
My birth family went on our first camping trip when I was 12 years old, five of us sleeping in a borrowed tent, a heavy canvas umbrella tent. It rained all week. And we all wanted to do it again!
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| Jack and his crew |
Now grandson Jack from St. Paul, Minnesota, a newly graduated art student from Kalamazoo College, is here this week, rain and/or shine, with his ten senior-year classmate/housemates, the whole crew camping in the yard and eagerly exploring Leelanau. (I know the kids would love to play Frisbee with Sunny, and ordinarily I’d have been all for it, but not right now, as she needs to rest her jumping muscles. If only she would rest her barking muscles, too!) What a happy scene the tents and hammocks and everything else make in our usually empty yard! At last it felt as if there had been a point to all that grass mowing!
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| Fog rolled in, but the campers are happy. |
While all of the young people are delightful, naturally grandson Jack is very special to me. When I look at a closeup of Jackson examining a camera I found for him, I see his grandfather, alive and young again.
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