Color/Light and Home in Autumn

 

 All the color that you see is light, pure and simple. And when there is no light there is no color. We think we see colored things, and in a sense we do. However, it is more accurate to say that we see the colored light reflected, transmitted, or emitted by things. It is the light alone that we see, not the things themselves. Thus our only visual contact with things is through light, light that enters our eyes.

 

…The only colors that we see are light, and as we are seeing them this light is falling on the retinas of our eyes. Were it not for light and the light-sensitive retina, we would see no color at all. Remember: color is light.

 

-      Ralph Hattersley, Beginner’s Guide to Color Photography

 

 

The Artist and I used to have frequent conversations about color and light. In my graduate philosophy classes, I learned to categorize color as a ‘secondary quality,’ that is, a quality not inherent in objects but created from interaction between objects and our senses, or, as Hattersley writes, between the “things themselves” and the retinas of our eyes--which leaves out the brain’s interpretation, but you get the point. Quick review of primary and secondary qualities, ignoring subsequent challenges to the distinction, can be found here. 

 

There are certain seasons, certain sensual prompts, that take me back to the Home Place. Now, as back then, fall is the time when nature speaks most clearly to me. In autumn one is treated to an orgy of sights, sounds, and smells that can be wonderfully overwhelming. … The tired sameness of September’s deep green fades then flames into October’s vermilion sumacs and scarlet maples, lemon-yellow poplars and golden hickories. In those days of crispness I want to linger long enough to hear every sound and look far enough to see into forever. 

 

-      J. Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature

 

 

Of all the seasons, autumn for me is the most deeply drenched in memory, the most saturated (even in its colorful dress) with poignancy and longing for what will never be again. And yet, it is not only September getaways and “county cruises” with the Artist that haunt me, but long walks home from first grade, university classes, my son’s baby and toddler years, past dogs, and so on, split-second images from years ago flashing, superimposed, on achingly beautiful scenes of the present. And yet (again, “and yet”!), fall is so beautiful, whether colors are shining in the sun or gleaming in the rain—or, as last Sunday evening, sleeping in the dark while an old ivory crescent moon lit my way home—that despite the pangs, I find myself wanting to gather up every moment of it and hold it tight, as if it could be harvested to carry through the monochromatic weeks ahead.

 

More than anything else, the degree of satisfaction to be gained from a life rooted in home depends on the strength of one’s conviction that there is nothing better down the road. Betterment comes from within a person, not from within geography. But I believe that had I not left home for awhile [sic], I would not have been completely convinced of that. There would always have been a lingering question in my mind: Would life somewhere else have been more pleasant?

 

-      Gene Logsdon, You Can Go Home Again

 

I had an interesting conversation today with a younger woman whose dream of country living in Leelanau County did not bring her the contentment it brought me. Perhaps it was the commotion of extensive remodeling added to raising three children in it that broke the marriage’s back. Whatever it was, taking care of the farmhouse and acreage on her own proved much more work than she wanted, and she is happier now (divorced, the house sold) with a lighter load of responsibility. She is also particularly hungry for travel. 

The two of us realized that our present situations and feelings, hers and mine, are diametrically opposite. I don’t know if I will ever travel again, if it involves flying and leaving my dog and/or the borders of my country. (Day trips with my dog are another matter.) Even on the rare occasions when I go out for an hour or two in the evening, I often look forward to coming home to Sunny again before I’ve gotten out the driveway. 

I have traveled to other places and lived in other places (I still miss those winters in Cochise County, Arizona), but where I am now is home. “We’re very lucky to have a home,” I tell Sunny.

Sunny seems to agree. At least, she isn’t complaining. And we will get through the winter together.

With a little help from our friends!

Very Important Postscript: Identity of November guest author has been revealed on my Northport Bookstore News blog! I will post more about the author's new book on this blog before his appearance on Nov. 12. 

Turn, Turn, Turn

Not AI-generated! Completely unedited!

Peak Autumn Color

People kept asking if the turning fall leaves had reached peak color, and I kept saying, day after day, no, not quite yet. There was still a lot of green left. Late Saturday afternoon’s sunshine, though, invited me for a little drive after work, and Sunday’s rain, because it put the kibosh on dog park fun, tempted me farther afield in the car. You can see more of those Saturday and Sunday scenes on my photo blog, and take a look at the Lake Leelanau Narrows on Wednesday morning, while you’re there.

When did we turn the color corner? In Leelanau Township, I’d say it was overnight from Sunday to Monday. Monday! What a perfect fall day! On Tuesday came the rain and wind. Black walnuts thumped and clattered to ground, windblown leaves tossed restlessly, yellow popples shimmered and gleamed.

My stepdaughter (Artist’s oldest child) and her husband came up on Monday, and Tuesday evening we went to the Happy Hour for dinner. I kept saying that Tuesday felt like Saturday and asking why. “Because we’re here,” she said, “so it feels like a weekend.” Also, we agreed, because it just seems that peak color should land on a weekend for all those travelers and visitors hoping to catch it.

Re-reading

At least a couple times a month I pull an old favorite book off the shelf. As October races past, after having read for the first time Le premier homme, by Albert Camus, and Medicine Walk, by Richard Waganese, I turned once more to Elliot Paul’s The Last Time I Saw Paris, the closeup portrait of a Parisian neighborhood and its denizens and how they are storm-tossed by events in the larger world.

The years Paul lived in Paris were the fraught years between the two world wars when the wounds of France and Germany were still festering, both between the two countries and within their borders. My many readings of this book have made almost personal to me the anguish of that time, as the author shows growing tensions of people living on one small street of shops and residences in central Paris, but with every reading, also, something jumps out at me that hadn’t jumped out before. Elliot Paul’s portrayal of his years in France does not spare the corruption or “backwardness” of French politics or society, but he is also put to the test to explain his own country to the French, and never more so than when Sacco and Vanzetti are put to death, news that set off demonstrations across Paris by workers sympathetic to the condemned. 

 

It was no new thing to the French to have undesirables railroaded and executed on one flimsy pretext or another. But, somehow, they had hoped it was different in America, and so, in my innocence, had I.

 

-      Elliot Paul, The Last Time I Saw Paris (1942)

 

His neighbors, Paul reports, were kind to him on the sad occasion and did not hold him accountable for what they saw as his country’s miscarriage of justice.

Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, age 32, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler, age 29, were immigrants from Italy and avowed anarchists. That much is fact. In 1921 they were tried and convicted of armed robbery and murder, numerous requests for appeal were refused, and they were put to death by electrocution on August 23, 1927, continuing to insist on their innocence.

Were Sacco and Vanzetti guilty? The court said they were. Some believed Sacco was guilty, Vanzetti innocent. In 1925, another prisoner in the same prison as Sacco, Celestino Madeiros, member of the Morelli gang of robbers, claimed in writing that it was he, not Sacco, who was guilty of the armed robbery and murder of the two payroll guards, and in 1927 Felix Frankfurter, later to become a Supreme Court justice, wrote that “every reasonable probability” pointed  to the Morelli gang and away from Sacco and Vanzetti. History, while not taking a definite stand on guilt or innocence, agrees that the defendants did not receive a fair trial, that they were condemned for their beliefs and their status as immigrants rather than for anything they had done or not done.

 

 

Another Four-Letter English Word

To HATE: to dislike intensely, passionately; to feel aversion or hostility toward. 

Most of us growing up in the U.S. in my generation were told as children that hating is wrong. We were even told often that we were mistaken about our own feeling. “You don’t hate your baby sister,” a parent would say patiently, if we were lucky. No, we were jealous, worried that the baby would take all our parents’ attention, etc. That wasn't hate. Later, did another child at school hate me? Or was that child jealous (for some reason) or even, if a member of the opposite sex, attracted but confused?

In the Christian Gospel of Matthew, Jesus counsels against hate and sets a high bar for those claiming to follow a God of love: 

 

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^’ and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

 

Last Saturday across the United States of America protestors demonstrated against the current administration in joyful, high-spirited pro-democracy rallies. The president and his Cabinet members insisted ahead of time and continued, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, to claim that these were “hate American” rallies, peopled by Marxists and other extremists, including “Antifa” (which the president thinks is an organization). It was also claimed, entirely without evidence—because it was a false claim—that George Soros and other “leftist billionaires” had funded the demonstrations, paying people to attend.

HA! They would like that to be true, but it is not.

I know those demonstrators, not only in Traverse City, but in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Marquette, Chicago, Joliet, Seattle, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. They were my friends and neighbors. They were my bookstore customers. They were my family. They carried hand-made signs. And yes, some of them made negative observations on the president, because “No Kings” was the theme of the day, everyone having decided ahead of time not to fragment the message with a variety of issues, because the bottom line is we do not want anyone in power running roughshod over freedoms guaranteed us in the U.S. Constitution.

Demonstrators were out on Saturday because they love this country! There were many American flags. The protests were peaceful. Counter-protestors were safe, too.

Republicans (I do not call them “conservatives” because they are not) who decry “hate” coming from the president’s opposition would be well advised to look to the president himself. “I hate my opponent! And I don’t want the best for them!” Words from the president of the United States. As for his king-in-the-plane social media cartoon, enough has been said about that. The image spoke for itself. 

Hate pours down from the top, coming from the same source since the campaign of 2016. It takes a lot of resolve not to respond to his words and actions with reciprocal hate but with determination and hope and resolve for a better future. Because there is, too, the image of the East Wing of the White House under demolition, after the president’s earlier assurances that the structural integrity of the building would be preserved. Now, it turns out, he never thought “much” of the building. It was “very small,” he says, way too small. Not the first time he’s promised one thing and done the opposite. All presidents have made changes, you say? Redecorating and even remodeling are not demolition. The demolition image is a metaphor, a friend said. Sadly, yes.

I attended Saturday’s rallies all over the country in spirit. In my bookstore, my colors were on display for everyone to see. 

Hostility, aversion, passionate dislike? Yes, I feel it. What do I hate? 

I hate the militarization of American cities, the setting aside of due process, the attempts to gag the free press and allow only government propaganda as “news.” I hate the storm trooper actions, under orders from the administration, that tear men, women, and children out of their beds and zip-tie them for hours before deciding that some of them have done nothing wrong and can be allowed to return to their ransacked apartments. 

I hate the lies. 

I hate the desecration of the White House, the attempted destruction of unions, and the executive demolition of long-established social safety nets and environmental protections. I hate the killing, by my country and therefore in my name, of unknown people from other countries in open waters with no evidence presented against them and no trial to determine guilt of any kind. I hate having my own government violating the First Amendment here at home.

I hate the lies. 

I hate the way Americans have been encouraged by a would-be dictator (“Vote for me, and you’ll never have to vote again”) to turn against each other and see their own neighbors and family members as enemies.

I hate the lies.

He would never have been put in the White House if he had told the truth all along. No one can support the current administration and the rule of law. To support one demands opposing the other. 

 

Did you mark your calendar yet?

The date is November 12. It’s a Wednesday. The time is 4 p.m., so it won’t interfere with any evening meetings or keep anyone away from dinner or up too late at night. We will have a special guest speaker, with a new book, in the gallery next to Dog Ears Books. I’ll tell you all about it when November arrives.... 

 

But first, Halloween!

A couple of young moms in Northport have been going around town to get those of us in the central part of the village on board for trick-or-treating. I’m on board. Whether or not I’ll be in costume is an open question, but I’ll be there at the bookstore door from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 31, and I hope Halloween 2025 will be as much fun as past Halloweens on Nagonaba Street years ago. Here are some trick-or-treaters from 2004. Yes, 21 years ago in Northport!

My Little Life

One little begonia bloom

Does it ever strike you (my sister will forgive me for repeating here something I wrote to her in a letter) how focused each of us is on our own personal lives, even as we recognize how small they are on the global scale? The other day I notice a woolly bear caterpillar on my boardwalk and wondered what concerns were occupying that small creature in its own brief little life and if it had the slightest clue of the big changes it would undergo if it survived! I know the diminishment ahead for me as I grow older, but let’s not get into that. 

 

 

Let’s Begin Instead with Beauty

 

We have had some gorgeous fall mornings lately. I’ll start with that and will try to end on a high note, too, wedging my gripes somewhere in the middle, where you can jump over them if you like. Sometimes we have what my grandmother called “red sails” both at sunrise and sunset—and what does that tell sailors? I guess “Red sails at morning/sailors take warning” is about the day to come, and “Red sails at night/sailors’ delight” predicts overnight calm, so there is no contradiction, but I am not a sailor, so don’t take my word for it.

What is prettier than sumac in autumn?

As fall color begins to paint Leelanau, Sunny and I continue to take long walks or mini-vacations in the morning. You can see one of our mini-vacations down into Leland Township here. It’s all still Leelanau County, after all, beautiful in the big picture and in the details, as well.

 

Griping About Grammar

 

Call me petty, but I will never get over incorrect pronoun usage. As one of my sisters remarked when I quoted an example to her, it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to hear or read these errors. Consider, please:

 

They gave it to Jim. They gave it to me.

 

There you have two statements. Now conjoin them, and you have:

 

They gave it to 

Jim and me.

 

You would never (I hope!) say, “They gave it to I,” would you? 

 

An or conjunction works the same way: 

 

Call Mary.

Or you can call me.

Call Mary or me.

 

 

If there is a question about which pronoun to use when a sentence involves a proper name and a pronoun, just drop the proper name, and the correct pronoun will be obvious. 

 

Sunny and I had a glorious morning!

The morning was good to Sunny and me.

 

Here’s a factoid that I find interesting. In logic, the conjunctions and and or are equivalent. There is no logical difference between them. 

 

Sun was shining. The air was chilly.

Sun was shining, and the air was chilly.

Sun was shining, but the air was chilly.

 

Do we hear the second and third compound sentences the same way, though? I think we hear them differently, that in sentence #3 we hear “chilly air” as somehow detracting from the “shining sun.” It’s the old “Yeah, but” phenomenon. What do you think? We would never say “Everything worked out perfectly, but I was happy.” The oddness of that sentence sends a mixed message beyond grammar or logic.

 

 

I spent much of last night in Algiers.

 

“I don’t expect to sleep the night,” as the Paul Simon song says. Almost every night, I wake up at least once and often as many as three times, reading myself back to sleep each time rather than lie awake staring into the dark. My current read-myself-to-sleep book is an unfinished autobiographical novel by Albert Camus titled Le premier homme (The First Man), which I’m reading in French, though not rapidly. I run into unfamiliar words and would be hard pressed to give any kind of smooth translation of the text, but I just keep going most of the time, only rarely stopping to look up a word, figuring things out from the context, and it's quite astonishing to me how vivid the scenes are in my mind as I read. Page after page, I am seeing what the author describes. As when reading the novels of Niall Williams, I am elsewhere. 

The First Man (to use the English title) is as different as can be from The Stranger. Typical sentences in The First Man are not short, staccato, Hemingway-like statements but long, voluptuous, descriptive meanders, with many phrases separated by commas between the subject at the beginning and the verb near the end. A sentence may begin two-thirds of the way down one page and go on until halfway down the next page. It comes across (to me, at least) as generosity in the writing. Here is an article I found online that seems to capture very well the soul of the work. 

 

Besides sentence structure, another enormous difference I notice between The Stranger and The First Man (Eve Webster, in the article linked above, notes many important reversals from one story to the other) is the absence of emotion in the narrator of the first contrasted with its overflowing presence in the narrator of the second. Jacques Cormery, thinly disguised alter ego of Albert Camus, is full of both joy and anguish. Rather than accepting each day without question or reaction, like Meursault, Camus/Cormery’s life is a quest for meaning from boyhood through to adulthood. 

 

I recommend The First Man (David Hapgood translated the English version published by Penguin Random House, paperback $16) for anyone who wants to know le vrai homme Camus, as well as he can be known at this distance in time. 

 

On hot days the thick blue sky lay over the street like a steaming lid, and the shade was cool under the arcades. On rainy days the whole street was nothing but a deep trench of wet shiny stone. Under the arcades were rows of shops; wholesale textile dealers, their façades painted in dark colors, piles of light-colord cloth glowing softly in the shade; groceries that smelled of clove and coffee; small shops where Arab tradesmen sold pastries dripping with oil and honey….

 

The passage above is from Hapgood’s translation, a copy of which I have in my shop, handy for this post. 

Did it set you dreaming?

Side Roads

Closeup in the blogosphere

 

Occasionally (not continually or compulsively) I look at the stats for this blog and learn how many people for a given period—24 hours, 30 days, all time—have looked at the blog and also how many looked at specific posts. The latter numbers always interest me, showing me where something I might have written years ago has suddenly found new life for a handful of readers. I always wondered why an old post reappears that way in a particular day’s stats. Why, for example, did three people on Thursday morning look at from my old 2018 post on writer Thomas Mann? I was curious enough to give it another look myself to see what I’d said about that German writer seven years ago.

 

Our “intrepid Ulysses reading circle” had decided to read The Magic Mountain after realizing that we had read classics from France, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Japan, as well as from the U.S. and England, but had read nothing from the German tradition. I even admitted to the group that I had avoided German literature and felt I needed to get over my prejudice. I tried The Glass Bead Game, by Herman Hesse, but thought it would unduly tax the patience of group members (it’s a very strange “story,” if it can even be called a story), and so, somehow, we landed on The Magic Mountain, and I wrote about it for Books in Northport.

 

By early Friday morning, when I looked again (my curiosity now augmented by having begun a post on the subject), I saw that over 30 people had chosen to view a 13-year-old post about art, old books, and ephemera. Why? Was there something in the labels that attracted them? Heaven knows. I don’t.

 

 

Oh-So-Ordinary!

 

My reactivated appreciation for flowering annuals steadily increases. For years, I looked down on them, wanting only perennials (more expensive), but one genus and species at a time the annuals have crept back into my heart. 

Lobelia may have been the first to return. That intense blue! And the way it keeps blooming throughout the season, while perennials come into bloom once and all too soon finish up for the year. Three or four years ago I discovered bacopa and have bought plants every summer since. Like lobelia (and they go together beautifully), it continues from time of purchase until frost, blossoming and fading and blossoming, again and again and again. I like bacopa with begonias, too, tender begonias that make such a splash all summer long. It’s October now, and they are still going strong. 

The really ordinary annuals, of course, are the ones you can easily and successfully plant from seed, such as marigolds or snapdragons. Snaps often volunteer (from the previous year’s seeds?) or—believe it or not, this happened with one clay pot I left on the porch last year—occasionally go dormant and revive in the spring, without benefit of warmth or watering while they chill! I wouldn’t count on it, but it's happened in my life. 

 

And as for marigolds? How could I ever have thought marigolds weren’t special enough to be part of my life? Outdoors and indoors, they continue to brighten into the fall. They also remind me of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” an enchanting movie, and the wonderful, long novel by Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy. Here is a strange thing, though, in that link to the movie. The site omits on its list of “stars” (you can find him by digging deeper) Dev Patel, who was, in my mind, the heart and soul of the film! 

 

 

Does old-fashioned mean outdated?

 

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was headlined “Young People Are Falling in Love With CDs and Digital Cameras.” The young woman introduced at the beginning of the piece also uses paper maps and “calls the local cab company when she needs a ride.” (I want to cheer for maps and cabs!) A certain segment of teens and twenty-somethings, we are told, has had it with screens and “are resurrecting digital cameras, flip phones and CDs.” Maybe, too, they want to have their own music and photographs safely in their possession and not off in a “cloud,” which, my son informed me long ago, is nothing but “someone else’s much bigger computer” (which also requires ENORMOUS energy inputs and maintenance!).

 

My digital camera's storage card,
compared to size of postage stamps

I shared the article with a bookseller colleague, commenting to him, “They forgot books,” because I have noticed in the past few years that more and more young people, who have grown up with electronic devices and see them as completely ordinary and unexciting, albeit useful, are thrilled to get their hands on a book printed, bound, and published in the 1800s. They hold such a book carefully and turn its pages with something like reverence. Again, and even more so than with keeping digital images in digital files, these objects are something you can take home and possess securely. They aren’t going to disappear, as items from a digital library can do, and when the power goes out, you can read a book by kerosene lamp, as I have done. 

 

My colleague agreed with me about books and added that the WSJ article had also forgotten to mention typewriters. He, Paul Stebleton of Landmark Books in Traverse City, has made a sideline specialty of manual typewriters. While I don’t use one these days (there are one or two in my house), I remember my first one fondly. When a key stuck, I could turn the old black machine upside-down and fix it myself. I could and did change the ribbon myself. Maintaining that typewriter gave me a kind of independence that few of us have when our electronic devices malfunction.

***

 

Blogging, gardening, legacy media (!) – where can I go next? How about specific books? The last one I finished was E.B. White On Dogs, edited by his granddaughter, Martha White. Long a staff writer at the New Yorker, White is probably most widely known for his children’s books, Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, and for The Elements of Style, but Here Is New York also remains a classic. On Dogs (how could I resist?) includes some of the author’s short New Yorker pieces, a couple or so longer essays, and quite a few personal letters. Often the letters have only a brief passage about dogs, but I was glad to have the entire letter each time and to read about the author’s homey country life, with pigs and chickens and other animals, in addition to dogs. 

 

Martha White writes in “A Note to the Reader,” following her introduction, 

 

…The letters … are more casual in style, and my Tilbury House editor was surprised to find that the co-author of The Elements of Style did not always get his that and which correct, especially in the early years. Our hands-off policy [not correcting the writer’s grammar] nearly killed her.

 

Which goes to show that all of us have things to learn as we go through life!

 

And there! I have kept things light today, for a change. Feel free to breathe a sigh of relief and thank me, but do not mistake this lightness as a promised change of direction for future posts.

Daisy and Sunny take a break.

Our World Today

Sun in the morning, moon at night

Sunrise (almost) over Northport harbor

We humans pay more attention to sunrises and sunsets than to the rising and setting of the moon, and that only makes sense, since our planet is dependent on the sun for light and warmth, and without it earth would be lifeless. There would be no us.

 

The moon, on the other hand, we could live without, right? We only see it, with no light of its own, because it reflects sunlight, and when earth blocks the path of that sunlight and the moon is “dark,” invisible to us, how much does the darkness of the moon change our daily lives? It’s only a satellite. 

 

And yet, I love a moonrise. It reminds me of summer nights when friends used to visit and we all (younger then) sat outdoors and watched the moon come up over the meadow. These nights it still comes up over the meadow and sets behind my big barn, but the other evening I drove to higher ground to watch the moon come up and the sun go down.

Moonrise on Saturday evening

Sunset afterglow

This is the little world of my country neighborhood, a peaceful place, and we have been having a beautiful, balmy fall. I didn’t even mind the rain on Monday, perfectly timed to begin at the end of Sunny’s and my agility session with our coach and then gently watering the rooted viburnum cuttings I’d gotten into the ground on Sunday afternoon. For me, the rain was perfectly timed.

Viburnum cutting in the ground

Sometimes forces we can’t control work out well in our favor, sometimes not. The onset of Monday’s rain worked out perfectly for Sunny and me, but not so well for the team that was supposed to follow us. 

 

 

About Trust (books mentioned in this section)

 

Do you have people in your life whom you trust? What does that mean to you, trusting someone? On one website I found with definitions of trust from people in a variety of disciplines, my favorite was this one from Brené Brown: 

 

Trust is defined as: choosing to make what’s important to you, vulnerable to the actions of someone else. Distrust is defined as: what I shared with you, is not safe with you.

 

In the novel Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrik Backman, the main character recalls the way her family life deteriorated after a road accident took the life of her sister and left Britt-Marie alive as an only child: Her father came home later and later, and her mother talked less and less, finally not at all. “They never spoke about the accident,” the author writes, “and, because they didn’t, they also couldn’t talk about anything else.” The death of a child, if it results in silence or blame, can also be the death of a marriage. 

 

In my own life, there have been at least a couple of times when someone (a man in both cases) ruled one particular subject out of bounds for discussion. It was not the same subject with the two men (one was personal, the other political), but both times it was a topic important to me and something I wanted, felt I needed—to explore and understand. 

 

Well, didn’t we have a lot of other mutual interests, other things to talk about? Certainly, in both cases, and yet in both cases I found the unilateral gag order chilling, which is why that sentence in the Backman book (you’ll find it on page 50 in the paperback edition) struck me with such force. Having one topic absolutely forbidden did not incline me to pursue other subjects with enthusiasm but rather to find other conversational partners who would not place limits on what I would be allowed to say.

 

My best friend is my best friend in large part (besides our history together) because I feel I can say anything to her. She doesn’t have to see everything just as I see it or agree with every position I take. Trust, as I understand it, does not demand total agreement or even complete understanding. It is, however, a willingness to hear and, if possible, to respond. 

 

Trust, for me—and anyone can make the first trusting move—creates room for dialogue in Martin Buber’s I-Thou sense. In this wonderful presentation by Ben Sax, he talks about taking off our armor. What a great way to put it! 

 

In another novel I read recently, What the Fireflies Knew, by Kai Harris, it was a father who died (of a drug overdose), and the child narrator remarks that her mother’s grief was so overwhelming that the mother had no room to deal with the grief of her daughters, who had lost their father. Again, a family death had become a forbidden topic, and the enforced silence damaged relationships. 

 

These limited examples of refusing dialogue on a particular subject don’t touch on other ways we may refuse trust. It’s a narrower focus that I address today. Obviously, we may fear that a certain person may harm us physically or take advantage of us financially or even betray a confidence. But Britt-Marie’s parents were not concerned that she would tell someone else about her sister’s death: Everyone already knew about their loss. You might say they had been hurt too badly to open themselves up to the possibility of further hurt by letting themselves feel their pain. (A losing proposition!) Kenyatta’s mother, in the second novel, takes a more positive step, going into therapy to deal with her loss so she can get back to mothering her children. 

 

“Feeling safe” with someone does not have to mean entrusting that person with a secret. Values important to me are not secret. Far from it. You are reading about them here. Actually, I think that “feeling safe” can be at least as much a matter of self-confidence as of trust in another, but that’s another large topic, one I won’t get into today.

 

Trust isn’t something we owe anyone else. (It’s more than respecting someone’s personhood.) If you are leery of trusting faceless strangers online, that just makes sense. Not giving someone a blank check, not handing over your car keys to a drunken friend—that’s simple prudence. And anyone who attempts to force your confidence is unlikely to be someone you’ll trust very far, if you're anything like me. 

 

There may be people, though, who would say it’s better, it’s ideal, to trust everyone. I can’t go that far. But I will stick my neck out to trust those I love and admire, and it’s important to me that they reciprocate so we can see and hear each other.

 

Color is coming on.

The larger scene

 

I have said before in this space that I am a lucky woman, despite having lost the love of my life. I live in a beautiful place and have what feels like meaningful work. (I believe in books!) I have in my life family, friends, a dog, many books, and lots of outdoor space to explore, thanks to continuing health. I have good neighbors. Given all these blessings, it’s not difficult for me most of the time to heed the wish, “Have a good day!” 

 

Because the majority of the inventory in my shop’s curated collection are used books, I am often asked, “Where do you get all your books?” and here’s my answer: I order most of my new books from Ingram, a national distributor, and a few I can’t get that way from self-published authors or small presses that don’t deal with Ingram, but the used books generally come to me. After over 32 years in the business, people with “too many books” either know me or easily find out that I’m here. Some of these books I buy outright, if they meet my criteria and budget; a very limited few I take on consignment; I frequently offer trade credit; sometimes, yes, books are simply given to me; but some I turn away (musty or otherwise unsalable), though always thanking the person who brought them in for thinking of me. However the books come to me, though, costly or free, I invest my judgment and my time.

The other day I was asked a different question, and the wording of the query landed strangely on my ear: “Where do you get your opinions?” Beg pardon? I don’t shop for opinions or buy them wholesale or pick them up at a social media thrift shop. If I did, they wouldn’t be “mine,” would they? I form my opinions in part from my own limited experience but also from facts at my disposal, which are generally also at the disposal of anyone willing to spend the time gathering and weighing information from reliable sources. 

Sunny's opinion: It's playtime!

My questioner was asking about political opinions, and I should say that his opinions and mine are at variance, to put it mildly. But as I told him, facts about current events are readily available. Sometimes we have to seek them out—no single source of news will present all the available facts—but they are there to be seen and heard. 

 

For example, the president of the United States speaks, and his rambling, insulting, threatening words of hate and derision are there on radio, television, and online video to be heard. ICE is ordered out, masked, in full tactical gear, into neighborhoods, and what they do is there, out in the open, to be seen, televised, and disseminated. Those words and actions are not my opinion. Now the governor of Texas has volunteered his National Guard troops and sent them to Chicago, against the wishes of the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois. My very negative opinion is my judgment of those words and actions, combined with American values taught me from childhood. 

 

Where does my questioner get his facts? Which issues does he consider important, and how does he weigh the relative importance of the vast variety of important issues facing us today? Does he see immigrants and Democrats as enemies of the United States? (The president holds and encourages such a view.) Does he envision one-party rule as a solution to current divisions? 

 

Supporters of the current administration in Washington love to talk about “the law” when they discuss immigration. They want people to apply for citizenship through legal channels and “wait their turn.” I’m not sure how they feel about anyone seeking asylum. Usually it’s just “Do it the legal way!” -- end of story; that’s all she wrote. Adults brought here as children? Ship ‘em back to where they were born, even if they don’t speak the language, and let ‘em apply from there! Obey the law! But when it comes to the president following the law—NOT; or the president governing according to the Constitution—NOT; or the president pursuing frivolous, baseless lawsuits against a newspaper for criticizing him or against a judge for ruling against him—when it comes to a felon convicted on 34 counts sitting in the Oval Office rather than in prison, an American president claiming to be above the law—there these same vociferous “law and order” folks see no problem. Doesn't it hurt their brains to maintain belief in such a blatant contradiction? 

 

They also like to say our country is not a democracy but a republic. A republic? (Not a democratic republic?) But somehow it’s okay to send National Guard troops from the State of Texas to the State of Oregon when Oregon doesn’t want them? Where are the rights of Oregon when the U.S. president and Texas governor can conspire against Oregon? Read about it from a far-from-unbiased news source.

 

“We support law enforcement,” they say. They don’t add, “as long as the law is not applied to ‘our side,’” but how else can their talk of support for the rule of law be understood, given the many illegal outrages on which they remain silent?

Now the president, the same man who incited his followers to storm the capitol on January 6, 2022, to overturn an election he lost, is considering invoking the Insurrection Act to place Chicago under military control. The irony is unsurpassable.  

As for out-and-out corruption, read how a true conservative sees it. Can you read this without wanting to vomit? Without thinking the words BANANA REPUBLIC? I can't.

 

How to Remain Sane

 

I should put a question mark there. How do we face up to what's happening and not lose our sanity or our courage? Again, I live in a beautiful place, and if I were to close my eyes to the rest of the country I could pretend that I am living in Paradise, but innocent people in this country are being detained without cause in my name; children in this country are being separated from parents in my name; hard-working government workers are losing their jobs and the health coverage in my name; and slaughter continues in Gaza in my name. The list goes on and on. Because I am an American, what my country does it does in my name, and I can’t pretend otherwise. I cannot enjoy the benefits and privileges of citizenship in this country and wash my hands of its ongoing crimes as if they have nothing to do with me. Like it or not, I am implicated. 

 

It’s a narrow, wobbly walk from one day to the next, remaining aware and informed and vigilant and taking responsibility, on the one hand, while at the same time being grateful for the gifts of life, maintaining vital, loving relationships, and continuing to work and hope for a better tomorrow. I wake in the dark with a torn and lacerated heart but take up my hope and resolve again when morning comes because I love my country!

Salute and gratitude today to Governor J.B. Pritzger of Illinois. 

  

¡NUNCA TE RINDAS!

Never give up!

P.S. to those who need a refresher course in geography: Chicago is not on the border with any other country. Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that lies wholly in the U.S. Look it up. You might start here, but any map or atlas will show the same thing. Border Patrol operating in Chicago, therefore, is way out of its jurisdiction, although I see they have redrawn the maps to show something very different.

The opinions here are mine.
You can verify the facts yourself.