Rambling Post in Need of a Unifying Title

 

Beautiful colors of ash leaves in October

Timely reminder first:

Bonnie Jo Campbell at Dog Ears Books!

Bonnie's suggestion was that we plan to do as we did with her last visit, which is to give her a chance to chat informally with customers who want books signed. If a crowd builds up and clamors for more, she is willing to read an excerpt for us, but you should feel free to drop in any time between 4 and 5 p.m. next Friday and not worry that you'll be late.

A Seth Family Story

Giving a visiting out-of-town friend a little township scenic auto tour on Monday, for the first time when I saw the sign for Seth Road it linked up in my mind with poet and novelist Vikram Seth, as I am currently reading his book titled Two Lives, though the road and the author have nothing to do with each other.

Two Lives begins with Seth's own antecedents and life and then goes on to detail the life of “Shanti Uncle,” his father’s brother, and Shanti’s German wife, Henny. “Vicky,” as his family sometimes called him (with no suggestion of femininity), had traveled from India to England for education and lived with his aunt and uncle off and on in London while in school, the three growing very close. Years later, his Aunt Henny suggested that he interview Shanti Uncle about his (the uncle’s) life, and those eleven long interviews formed the first basis for a book that eventually included the second life, that of Henny, when a trunk of old letters she had written and received turned up in the attic of the house Shanti had bought when he first set up his dental practice, the house where he brought Henny has his bride, and where both lived until their deaths.

Shanti Seth served in the British Army as a dentist until he lost his right arm below the elbow in bombing hear Monte Cassino. The story of how he was able to retrain himself and return to dentistry is itself a testament to courage and perseverance. He had met Henny and her family in Berlin while in dental school and was one of a social circle of the daughters’ friends, both Jewish and Christian Germans, in the 1930s. You can see where this is going. Henny eventually was able to emigrate and go to London, where she and Shanti were once again in the same social circle and eventually married, but her mother and sister were trapped in place, a brother overseas having squandered money that was to help the family emigrate, and they were eventually “transported” and died, Henny’s mother in Theresienstadt and sister Lola in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Author Seth only learned of this history after the trunk of letters was discovered, motivating him to do further research. Henny had never spoken of her family history to him.

A 1948 letter to Henny from her best friend back in Berlin closes with these words: 

"I am reading Seneca, and it makes me think of how old Herr Mahnert once left his rucksack on the train, and then declared as a distinguishing feature that it contained Seneca’s The Happy Life. Reading is still the best thing. I always read in bed till I drop off to sleep…."

Two years earlier, Henny herself had written to that same “old Herr Mahnert” that she could find “no solace or peace” in the case of her mother’s and sister’s deaths. 

"You can understand [she wrote] that I hate each and every German who has been connected with the Nazi Ideology. This naturally does not hold good for the people like you who, I know, have always been against the beastly Nazi Regime from the very first day. I know, that some of my old friends changed with the time as the tide changes with the moon and you cannot blame me if I despise such people. I know ’to err is human, to forgive divine,’ but the way the Nazis have erred is inhuman and can never be forgiven and, I hope, never be forgotten."

In recounting the life stories of his uncle and aunt, the author generally lets them speak for themselves. In one of the later sections of his book, however, he allows himself to speculate on the past and the future of our world. He asks why Germany was such a lightning rod for so much of what happened in the 20th century (“Berlin shaped the first half of the twentieth century, and epitomized the second”) and comes up with the following reasons: communism played a “crucial role,” both theoretical and actual; Germany made “singular contributions” in “science, quasi-science, and pseudo-science”; German pseudo-science led to and supported a German belief in their own superiority as well as the inferiority of other peoples; finally, there was Germany’s geographical location between East and West, fueling its determination not to be overtaken in either direction but to expand its own territory, having taken a path toward imperialism when the German states unified in 1871.

Seth speculates that the “terrible tragedies both caused by and inflicted on Germany” could serve as a lesson for the future, the way that the postwar Marshall Plan avoided the punishing repercussions that followed the “Great War” and laid the groundwork for a more lasting peace in Europe. But will we learn from the 20th century? Is there any sign that the world has learned the terrible price of war? Seth raises the possibility without full confidence and says of his own hope:

This may well smack of wishful thinking; all too often one finds among the very people to whom wrong has been done a blindness to the suffering of those whom they are wronging.

- Vikram Seth, Two Lives (HarperCollins, 2005)

Each leaf lives but a season.

What lessons can we draw from the past, and how?

Looking around at conflicts today in so many places, it is certainly difficult to be optimistic about the world’s future. It is also difficult to imagine forgiving, in the future, those who at present are changing with the time “as the tide changes with the moon,” going along with brutality on the part of our own government—or at least shrugging and turning away as if it doesn’t concern them. I can forgive a wrong done to me—but wrongs done to others in my name? That is entirely different.

Which reminds me (lightening the tone for a moment) about the time a friend tried to convince me that the Universe was setting “lessons” for each of us as individuals. I didn’t buy it. (I can’t see the “Universe” having me in a microscope!) “But I do try to learn from my experiences,” I told her, “so pragmatically there’s no difference between your belief and mine.” 

She didn’t buy that! “One of us has to be right and the other wrong,” she protested. 

I held to my position and still do, because if one of us were right and the other wrong, (1) how would we ever know which was which, and (2) (as I said to her then) what difference would it make, as long as both of us tried to learn what we could?

Fall color of shasta viburnum

"Why do human beings never learn from history?” another friend asked. 

Who knows? I think a large part of it is that our own lives are so short—history so long!—and we have a hard time learning from something we have not been through ourselves. Knowing is nothing like experiencing. And even then, two people never experience the “same” event the same way.

Don’t we all know people who have grown wiser with age and others who have grown more foolish? What can we conclude from that?

But I seem to have painted myself into a corner here, so it’s probably time to stop talking about lessons.

From My Little Corner

Coming into the village

It is peaceful in my little corner of the world. In Northport I read and sell books and buy and order more. At home I wage war only on invasive species, usually autumn olive (and a single nasty buckthorn so far; I hope there won't be more). I read there, too, tend outdoor plants and engage in agility work and tennis ball play with Naughty Barker, take walks with her and Tree Guy. 

An unusually grim mood invaded our usually placid domestic space when Tree Guy belatedly learned of the slaughter of over 400 trees in our nation's capitol. The trees were cut down in violation of a court order, devastation underway shortly before 5 p.m. of the recent holiday weekend impossible to see as coincidental timing. 

I realize that my preceding paragraph provides no relief from “the violence of the political internet,” as one person commenting referred to my blog last week. While neither engaging in violent rhetoric nor inciting violence, I have definitely referred to it. Why? Because it's there, and I can't pretend it isn't, and while these recent dead are trees and not human beings, it is yet another example of wanton destruction, occurring daily, not visited on us by nature but by human beings, and haven't we seen enough for the entire rest of this century (barely underway)? 

The old Bob Dylan song keeps going through my head, as I ask myself, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?” People I know! Fundamentally—I truly believe it—decent people, somehow at present blind (willfully?), who will, surely, one day wake to ask themselves how they ever—. But what point is there in going over this again and again? They won't see until they let themselves see, and then their hearts will break as ours break, day after day, now. Or do they see and not care? And how can that be?

For relief from the violent present, I turn to my plants, to stories set in other times and places, and to my dog and my partner. We are so, so lucky. We are here now!

And I have the best job in the world! 

What's so great about being an indie bookseller? I spent my days with books! I don't have a boss, and I don't boss anyone else. 

Book by a retired conservation officer

I meet interesting people all the time, each day presenting delightful surprises I could not have predicted the day before, fascinating people from all over, some of them writers, all of them readers, with backgrounds varied far beyond the confines of libraries and academic classrooms. 

There are parts of the world in which the life I lead would not have been possible for someone like me--a woman running a business (albeit a tiny one!) in books, with full control over the titles I stock. No one tells me what to wear or what hours my shop must be open or what books I must sell or any that I am forbidden to handle. I do not take these freedoms for granted, any more than I take for granted other ways my life has been and continues to be fortunate.

Sounded important to me

Mine is a human life. Conflicts arise from time to time, and, as does everyone, I have my worries and struggles along the way. In time, death will come, as it comes to all. That, as Tree Guy says, is “part of the deal.” We did not make the deal. We were born into it, given the gift of life, and accepting that is accepting all of it, including death. Okay! I gratefully accept.

What's New Around Here?

Besides Bonnie Jo's new book and upcoming visit, I have a few other new titles to share, one special one a little book on the stars.

I don't recognize many constellations. Half a dozen at most. And I can't tell you what started me thinking about their names or when it occurred to me that learning names here in Michigan that were given the stars by ancient Greeks who never set foot on North America was a little strange, and I wondered what names Native Americans gave to our familiar northern constellations? Here is the book that answers the question: 

Whether at home in Michigan, where Orion appears over my barn, or out in southeast Arizona those five winters past, where I saw the same stars in the high desert sky, the familiar constellation gave me a feeling of home. That feeling is enhanced now by learning the Ojibwe name, Wintermaker, or Biboonikeonini. Yes, that fall constellation tells us what is soon to come. Familiar. Part of home. As familiar and homelike as the yipping of coyotes in the dark.

Moon before dark...