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| Saturday morning glory! |
Happy News: Sunshine and Standing Up
Last Thursday was very cold, but it was also sunny. Friday, sunny morning, cloudy afternoon with heavy snow. Saturday, cold and sunny again. Two and a half sunny days in a three-day streak is something to write home about in January, but I am already home, so I’m writing it to all of you who are elsewhere to let you know what you’re missing in your winter perches in Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico, south Florida, etc. Now on Sunday, the first day of the year's shortest month, sunshine again! Sunshine on pristine, glistening, sparkling snow!
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| Sunny day, Sunny! |
Do you envy those of us back here in northern Michigan? A friend sent me a link to a video about a 4-year-old girl who received a gift pony and whose parents allowed her to show the pony her bedroom. My friend asked me, “Are you jealous?” and I answered, “Yes!” But right now I wouldn’t be anywhere else these days than northern Michigan, because my little personal life here is very happy, outside of my anguish over attacks on democracy and the rule of law all over our country, and even there, more and more Americans are standing up and taking brave public positions, so that is reason to be encouraged. Or, as a friend would have it, enCOURAGEd.
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| Homemade sign. NOT a "paid protester"! |
(Graphic design is obviously not my forte. There are more snow and protest images and thoughts, however, in my previous post.)
Happy Book News
In my work as a bookseller (one aspect of my little personal life), I was thrilled to hear on Saturday from Robert Carlos Fuentes, author of The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan, that his book has won a Michigan Notable Book Award for 2026. Carlos wanted to thank me again for nominating his book, but I told him all I had to do was to call the committee’s attention to it (which was my honor and privilege), and his book did all the rest. I’ll let you know when the author (from Lansing), whose story takes place in Lake Leelanau, will next be in Northport. Author Tim Mulherin, who spoke at Dog Ears Books in late 2025, also received an award for his book, This Magnetic North. “My” authors! Bravo!
So there was all that sunshine--my final count for the month of January was four and one-half days--and there was the wonderful Michigan Notable Book news.
Then, Serendipity: From Other Books
Surrounded by books, both at work and at home, it’s easy for me to open covers and turn pages at random and find just the words I need. In a volume called Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde, in an interview with poet Adrienne Rich, Lorde says, “You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for.” I find that wonderful! It’s when you are afraid that you need courage. It’s when life challenges your strength that you need to be strong, and you become strong.
At home, from my favorite philosopher, I found these words:
Between the closed soul and the open soul there is the soul in process of opening. Between the immobility of a man seated and the motion of the same man running there is the act of getting up, the attitude he assumes when he rises.
- Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
What We’re All Doing Here
Friends and neighbors. And everyone in need is a neighbor, whether next door or a thousand miles away. Help however you can.
