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| Monday: Quiet aftermath |
The Lull After the ???
Do we want to call the 12th annual Leelanau UnCaged street fair a storm? Probably not, even though, once again, it brought thousands of festival-goers to our little village. Despite the numbers, though, somehow the crowd is not overwhelming, as everyone is intent on enjoying the scene: music, arts and crafts, fair food, activities for children, people- and dog-watching extraordinaire, and general good vibes all around. I think I may also say, without fear of contradiction, that the weather was perfect. Last year's weather was close to perfect. (A few people actually thought it was “a little too warm”! Really!) This year could not have been any better.
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| Saturday morning: All set up and ready to go! |
Every year I enjoy strolling through the village in the morning as booths are being set up for the day, and though I spend the day indoors in my bookshop, I was able to have the door open all day this year, and everyone is so happy at UnCaged that I feel very much part of the scene. From the very first year, it has felt like a homecoming for the village and the whole township.
And then comes a quiet week, the lull after the festivities, everyone still floating on top of a cloud (in the sunshine!), happy that grey, rainy weather held off and did not dampen our celebration on Saturday.
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| Thursday: Rain |
Where does fall color start?
Virginia creeper first, closely followed by staghorn sumac, but never fear, autumn is barely underway, and weeks of beauty lie ahead. The few trees already losing green are mostly urban specimens, surrounded by cement or other hard paving. Trees in the rural landscape are still green.
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| Green trees, red sumac |
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| Village scene with falling leaves |
Grimace of Recognition
Warm, tender, funny, cozy. These words have been used to describe Receipts From the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year in an English Seaside Town, by Katie Clapham, one year of a independent bookseller’s diary about bookshop life in her English seaside town. From my own Michigan lakeside village shop, also fiercely independent, I can’t help having a somewhat different take from that of the casual, uninvolved reader. Mine, the response of a committed insider, cannot help responding with (not a shock, but) a wry grimace, whether over bits of conversation that the English bookseller hears from people passing her open shop door without entering or mental notes of the bookseller herself when she sees that July sales in the year she is reporting were less than July sales the year before.
Let me say quickly that my grimace of recognition is not over a business account balance in the red! Frankly, I don’t understand that at all. If your business is losing money, how is it that you are still in business? How do you pay your bills? How do you buy groceries? Unless you have income from another source or are independently wealthy, and then yours is more a hobby than a business.
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| Come on in! |
“What a cute hobby!” a woman exclaimed once in my shop. Whether or not my shop is “cute” is not for me to say, but it is definitely not a hobby. If it could not support itself and also provide for me, the door would have closed long ago!
But yes, those overheard bits of conversation (e.g., “It’s just books in there,” as I heard someone say once outside my door, dragging her companion past) ... and the inquiries for a specific book that, when put in the customer’s hand, she for some reason decides against purchasing ... and then observations like this:
If you’re wondering whether just one paperback is really such a significant sale, consider the obstacles we’ve overcome to secure it: the dark night of the soul that is winter, not to mention the insidious shift of retail from the high street to the internet and the gentle surrender of attention spans everywhere as the commitment to reading becomes too costly in the attention economy. Buying a book from a bookshop really is an act of resistance; a retro act of resilience and determination to maintain or regain some screen-free time, and a defiant stand against the big corps that assume people value an extra couple of quid over keeping retail afloat in their own home towns. Yes, even if you only picked one up on the way to get your venti mocha, a single paperback is enough to make a difference to us, every damn day.- Katie Clapham, Receipts From the Bookshop: A Bookseller’s Year in an English Seaside Town
And yes, my bookshop is unique!
I would not call my bookshop “most unique,” because—well—I wouldn’t call anything “most unique,” unique meaning “the only one of its kind,” and so anything either is unique or it isn’t, and nothing is more or less, let alone least or most unique. But is my bookshop unique? Yes, it is.
Mine is an independent shop, i.e., not part of a chain, not owned by a corporation, and it’s the only bookstore I own, and I am unique, so there you are. Or, here I am. No two indie bookstores are identical, even if one person or family owns and operates more than a single storefront. Mine is also the only bookshop in Northport, Michigan, and no other bookshop, in Northport or anywhere else, has a collection identical to mine. Each indie bookshop—as is true of a village or an individual human being—wherever it is, has its own unique personality.
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| New offerings appear weekly (sometimes oftener). |
Answer to the Question You Didn't Ask:
How do you grow an avocado from seed? Keep throwing avocado pits in the compost pile. Sooner or later (maybe much, much later, as was the case in my compost pile) one or two will produce baby trees that you can dig up and pot for indoor life. Over the decades I have tried every other recommended method, over and over, and none worked for me. This one did. Twice! In one summer!
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| My window garden will expand over the winter. |
