How Do You View It?

Weeds are looking weedier. This is chicory.

The Artist liked to call August “the rotten heart of summer.” It's the time when much of what was bright and blooming starts to look tired, tattered and seedy. The atmosphere reeks of pollen, especially that of Queen Anne's lace, rank smell belying regal name.

The more common name for late summer is “dog days,” the name coming from the Dog Star, Sirius, appearing in the sky close to sunrise. (“What is the brightest star in the sky?” my parents would ask little toddler P.J., and I would respond on cue with the answer they had taught me, “Sirius, the Dog Star!” Did I lisp the name?) Hot, humid, dense, thick, and heavy lies the air in northern Michigan during the dog days. 

The angle of the light seems changed (and probably is).

A time of thunderstorms and frequently the most uncomfortable stretch of summer, the dog days are also, paradoxically, a popular time for family vacations. My birth family—father, mother, three girls—always vacationed in August. The reasoning was that lakes were still cold in June, and if we put off vacation until just before school we could look forward to it for weeks. It was our summer's dessert. 

Sunny takes the seasons and their changes in stride.

When I look at the etymology for "dog days," I find the familiar story of Sirius but also learn that Swedes and Finns call this time the “rot month,” warmer weather making infections and food spoilage more likely. It seems the Artist was not alone in his thinking.

In France, traditionally, all family vacations were taken in August, which made it beastly hard on foreign tourists. All over the City of Light, shops were closed up tight. Where to obtain the daily baguette? Finally Parisians got wise and began staggering annual closures within each neighborhood so that every quartier had at least one bakery, one grocer, one cafe, etc. open that month. 

Restaurant workers and retail clerks in Michigan tourist towns are worked pretty hard by the time the dog days roll around. Many schools also begin before Labor Day, leaving many businesses short-handed without their seasonal student help. 

And yet also in August come many regular annual customers. For me, many are dear friends I look forward to seeing every year. Kids grow taller, graduate from high school and then college, get married, have children of their own. Grandkids arrive! And we older ones grab the opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives and wish each other healthy winters until another summer rolls around. For now, we’re still here! We’re still here!

More Friendship!

My friend Juleen and I RELAXED together!

Sunny and I had more company! A friend of mine from decades-ago Kalamazoo days, Juleen has made her home in Tucson, Arizona, for such a long time now that lush, jungly, green and humid Michigan was a visit to her past in more ways than one. Before coming up to see me in Leelanau, she reunited with old friends she had worked with years ago at a camp down in Arcadia, Michigan, and after our time together she turned back south again to Kalamazoo, where more friends awaited. While she was here, we enjoyed two leisurely evenings and two mornings together, and I shared with her some of my "wild nearby." She remarked on the look of so many Michigan gardens, with little to no space between plants: In Arizona desert landscapes, plenty of open space is left between plants to eliminate hiding places for rattlesnakes!

Sunny has become more gregarious this summer with each successive visit. She is finally starting to see visitors as playmates rather than as intruders. She was positively a pest at times, wanting Juleen to play, play, play with her all the time, but that was better than nervous, hostile barking, and by the second morning Juleen caught on to giving firm commands when she wanted a break. I was very happy that my dear friend and my dear dog got along so well!

"Come play with me!" Sunny kept saying.

Naturally, my friend spent time with me in my bookshop, also, where neighbor Clare obligingly photographed us together. The image immediately below is the only one that was slightly blurred, but I am using it, anyway, because I love its liveliness. 

We laughed a lot.

We laughed about all kinds of things!

And here is a photo that didn't make into a previous post:

My sisters and my dog!

Author! Author!

People who came to hear Tim Mulherin speak on Wednesday evening were glad they had made the time. His presentation was informative, sensitive, and entertaining (he has a subtle and wry sense of humor), and the audience was attentive and engaged, several people staying afterward to talk with him further. I was only sorry I didn't have twice as many people on hand to appreciate (and reward him for) his good work. I do, however, have signed copies of his book for those who missed meeting him and hearing him speak.

Other Books

Every American should read Robert Reich’s new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America. Every American, from yellow dog Democrats to MAGA Republicans—and also all Independents and disaffected voting dropouts. Every American. Much more than a memoir, the book is American political history from postwar 1950s to the present day. Not from someone running for office or married to a political party or in bed with large corporate interests, either! Robert Reich may be smarter than you and me (he’s certain smarter than I am), but his head is not in the clouds. I have the hardcover book in my shop, and the audiobook is available through libro.fm. If your library doesn’t have it, they need to get it. Read the book! Then share your thoughts with me, please, whatever those thoughts may be.

I also want to plug a couple new nonfiction books with special regional interest. The first is The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan, by Robert "Carlos" Fuentes, a happy Lake Leelanau story. 

The second, very different book, is Prison: The Inside Story — Transforming Lives as an Officer and an Educator, by Jack Myette, the story of his 25 years in Michigan prison work, which I only received and am beginning to read today ( Thursday, 8/14). 

Agricultural work and prison life are two very different aspects of American life, common only in that many Americans never experience either one. That’s one reason I am recommending these books. Another is that both titles come from Michigan authors. And the third is that I believe both can help us, in important ways, when we are considering and making choices about the kind of Michigan and the kind of United States we want to shape for the future—a message that was part of what Tim Mulherin (section above) said in the conclusions of his prepared remarks on Wednesday evening. 

What's ahead? Who knows?

There is no stopping change, but we can at least try to guide it away from treacherous shoals and into safer water if we are clear about what changes we can accept and which we absolutely don't want. Farm workers, like all who live and labor, deserve safe working conditions and decent treatment, the kind Carlos and his family enjoyed. And when people who have committed crimes must pay the price by losing their freedom, they should not also lose their humanity. (Prisons should not be "monster factories.") I'll get back to you with more on Myette's book when I've had a chance to read it. 

Goldenrod is exploding everywhere like silent fireworks.

Is summer almost over?

Don’t cry! Summer’s ending is autumn's beginning, a cooling-off and slowing-down in tourist trade (though teachers and others are gearing up, I know), and then before we know it we will have beautiful fall colors and a tide of new fall books.

Black-eyed Susans have not all gone to seed yet.

 

No Sunrises, No Sunsets, Lots of Changes

Deborah Wesley photograph

Wildfires are currently burning (as of Wednesday morning) in the U.S. states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, as well as in western Canadian provinces (from British Columbia to Newfoundland but mostly from western Ontario to the Pacific Ocean). Since prevailing winds blow west to east across North America, air quality in the Midwest and all the way to the eastern seaboard is affected. The only escape is indoors, but who wants to stay indoors all summer? Some people must; others of us are taking our chances, despite the occasional cough. (Don't scold, please! I won't live forever!) My two younger sisters from Illinois came for a visit, and we spent time outdoors each day. 

Three sisters -- yes, styles have changed, too.

My sister Deborah also spent considerable time spoiling Sunny Juliet—that is, tossing tennis balls out in the yard for a certain lucky dog girl to chase. When all three of us were outside, Sunny still brought her tennis balls to Auntie Deborah rather than to her dog mom. No fool, my Sunny!

I finished In the Merrimack Valley: A Farm Trilogy with a big sigh. Like The Vacation, by Carlos Fuentes, and This Magnetic North, by Tim Mulherin, Jane Brox’s book is a story of change. I guess that is the story of life, isn’t it? Change! I learned a few things in the Brox book, and one of those things is that big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), a native prairie grass I seeded into the edge of my meadow 25 years ago—a native grass, mind you, not an invasive alien—can nevertheless outcompete other plant species. Now I’m thinking maybe that’s what happened to those purple coneflowers that failed to appear last summer after a quarter-century. The little grey-headed coneflowers are holding their own, so far, but the purple ones have vanished. 

Gone with the wind! Here they were years ago.

These are still with me...

co-existing, for now, with big bluestem.

A meadow, a forest, even a roadside changes from year to year. About three years ago I noticed a little bright yellow flower blooming on the side of M-22 just north of Fischer’s Happy Hour Tavern. Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) is a nitrogen-fixing legume, but it is invasive and aggressive, forming root mats that crowd out native plant roots, and this year I am noticing it blooming all up and down M-22. Spreading rapidly! So, pretty though it is, I will not be transplanting any to my meadow, which changes just gradually enough (except for the disappearance of purple coneflowers) that I manage to accept the differences from one year to the next. 

Birdsfoot trefoil

This Saturday (already!!!) is Northport’s annual dog parade—and how many does this make? My old Nikki was in the parade back in 1997 ("Mardi Growl”) and again in 1998 (“Treasures of King Mutt”).

Memorabilia! Priceless!

Our Sarah made one parade appearance. That year (2010, and you can find Bettie and Ben and Gracie and Sarah by following this link) my sister and her husband were visiting, along with our mother and their dog, Gracie, so Ben and Bettie each had charge of a dog while I stayed near my shop, watching the parade with our mother. Mother is gone, Gracie and Sarah are gone. More changes…. But the dog parade goes on, this year as “Bone Appétit.” (Note: That final 't' is silent.)

The pretty Bernese below made her first bookstore visit—first time in any bookshop—to Dog Ears! She will have moved on from Northport before parade time, but we commemorated her inaugural bookshop visit with a photo shoot.

My own general view of change (returning to my theme) is that I can handle it better if and when it’s gradual rather than overnight. How about you? 

Please come for guest author Tim Mulherin’s talk at Dog Ears Books on Wednesday, August 13, starting at 7 p.m. The topic will be changes in our own Northern Michigan! 

The book for August 13 event

Author Tim Mulherin

The season is moving right along

Days begin and end in smoky haze.

Smoke from Canadian fires makes for dramatic sunrises and sunsets, in addition to reduced air quality. I was going to say “daytime” air quality, but quality must be compromised at night, too, though we don't see the haze. 

In my neighborhood, cherry harvest is over for another year. The month of July is over everywhere! Admittedly, the season we anticipate all winter long, summer, always passes too quickly, but I can’t believe how this one is flying by—a blur, as I always tell people when they ask how my summer is going or, later, how my summer was.

Daisies at their peak bloom. This now is in the past.

For now we still have black-eyed Susans, and the raspberries aren’t quite finished, but already daisies are going to seed, Joe Pye-weed is blooming, and the first goldenrod is showing its bright color. Too soon! Too soon! 

Goldenrod already!

What Has Happened

The Friends of Leelanau Township Library wrapped up their summer author series with guest author Aaron Stander, who read from the 12th book in the very popular Sheriff Ray Elkins series, Smoke and Mirrors, set right here in what he calls “Cedar” County. Aaron shared with the audience some background on how he started writing murder mysteries (Elmore Leonard inspired him) and told stories of having an agent (briefly), looking for a publisher (one was interested until she learned the author's age), and—this was the happiest story—having a loyal, trustworthy editor.

"Did I overdress?" he asked me facetiously.

On the home front, Sunny and I had a visit from a couple old friends of mine and the new little dog of one of those friends. How apprehensive I was beforehand! Would my Naughty Barker terrorize the little rescue pup, who had been cagebound for most of his life until he came to live with Sandra? 

Little Milton, visiting dog

They were fine! They were better than fine! Milton was friendly and relaxed, and so was Sunny. My girl barked briefly at introductions, but soon the two dogs seemed to have been best dog buddies all their lives, and their easy-going happiness added to the humans’ enjoyment of the visit. Relieved? I was overjoyed! It was almost as if Sunny Juliet were channeling Sarah….

Getting acquainted...

Accepting...

Posing...

Resting, hanging out after play -- ah!

What’s Still to Come

Please disregard the erroneous headline in the Enterprise story on my upcoming bookstore event. Our township librarian was even more startled than I was to see the words “library event” (she thought she had forgotten something major!) above the story about Tim Mulherin’s August 13th appearance at Dog Ears Books. 

We’ll begin at 7 p.m. that Wednesday, but you might want to come a little earlier to be sure of a chair, because I’m thinking Tim’s topic is one that could draw a pretty big audience.

Even before that, Northport will have on Saturday, August 2, the annual Fly-In and pancake breakfast, and on Saturday, August 9, the annual and always highly anticipated dog parade. The theme this year is Bone Appétit (please note that final 't' is silent), and, please note, I am registering dog parade entries at Dog Ears Books.

AND my sisters are coming for a visit!!!

My Current Reading

I am still reading the book about Aristotle mentioned in my previous post, along with the other book I wrote about there, In the Merrimack Valley, but was sidetracked yesterday by a very small paperback that I haven't finished yet, an account written in prison—of what turned out to be his last days on earth—by Andrei Ivanovich Shingarev. He was arrested and thrown into prison, without trial, on November 27, 1917, and murdered in January 1918 after being transferred to a hospital. What is available online about Shingarev's life is sparse and conflicting. I have to say, however, that when he writes from prison that members of his political party, the Constitutional Democrats, were declared “enemies of the people” by the antidemocratic Bolsheviks, I thought of similar name-calling from our own White House in our own time. He also writes of lies and hypocrisy but is steadfast in his hope that the Russian people will eventually wake up and throw off those who betrayed their revolution. An empty hope, as it turned out, for that country. Will Americans be different?

Words he wrote from prison --

Which leads me to....

My Thoughts on Forgiveness (because it’s something I think about)

If someone hurts me but exhibits remorse and asks for forgiveness, I can forgive that person. If there is no remorse, no “Sorry!”—let alone a mending of the ways—I feel no compulsion to forgive. I can “move on” without it. Because you can’t make people care.

As I see it, though, forgiving wrongs done to others is an entirely different matter. That is not a matter of forgiveness for me. It is not up to any unharmed and uninvolved person but up to the person or persons harmed to offer forgiveness—if they are still alive and can find it in their hearts to forgive.

In this light, when I look at what is being done in the name of my country in today’s world, at members of our own government who are inflicting harm in our name within our borders and around the world, I not only hold them responsible but also those who put them in office and continue to support them. Can I ever forgive these people? I doubt I will ever be asked, but if I were, my answer would be no. I could forgive ignorance if the truth were inaccessible, but it is not. I could forgive honest mistakes if they were admitted and ways mended, but this is not happening. And even then, I myself cannot forgive violations of the rights and liberties and lives of other people, the ones wronged. 

People who support these violations and call themselves Christian (or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu or whatever!) can ask their God for forgiveness. Rudolf Vrba wrote a book about the Holocaust and the concentration camps and titled it I Cannot Forgive. As I see things (and I realize not everyone will agree), he was right not to.

And as the unforgivable continues to take place day after day, so does rallying around the golden calf. Where is Moses when we need him?

Never malicious —

That’s one of the things I love about the world of plants and sky and rock. Any of these can hurt you, but they never do so intentionally. Even poisonous plants bear us no malice. They are—and I appreciate this from the bottom of my heart—indifferent to human life. Storms may rage, winds may howl, and trees may crash to the ground, but they would do the same if we weren’t in their way, and if we are—well, that’s our bad luck. 

Nothing living lives forever.

Only one of our fellow living beings can push us off a mountain ledge. We may be alone and slip on loose rock, but the mountain is not responsible. There is no one to blame and nothing to forgive. I find that infinitely comforting.

I love their indifference.

Raspberries, Books, and Eudaimonia

Sunny harvesting black raspberries

Too tired after a very busy bookshop day to make another batch of jam on Wednesday evening, I fell asleep over a book until awakened by high winds and rain battering the front porch windows. Time to close windows and go to bed. Up early in the morning, there was time for jam-making, even for a second cup of coffee. 

Mixed with Bardenhagen strawberries

Coming to a rolling boil

My evening reading this week is The Merrimack Valley: A Farm Trilogy, by Jane Brox, which is not the idyllic escape reading you might imagine from the title. Her grandparents came as immigrants, mother’s parents from Italy, father’s from what was then Syria, and life was not a bowl of cherries for anyone. As the author saw local history, stories of “failure” flowed through the lives of valley inhabitants, from indigenous peoples forced out by Europeans to later small farm operators pressured to sell out for financial reasons. Where one generation struggled to make a living, newcomers brought with them (or adopted) different ways of life, and the older ways of living on the land were supplanted by newer methods and technologies, as well as suburban encroachment. 

There was no way to compete with crops being grown more cheaply and efficiently on better soils, or soils that simply had not yet been exhausted. The poorer upland farms were the first to go, though I still see one now and again—a handful of cattle wandering a rocky slope or picking out grasses among the pines, a wrackline of saved, rusted machinery alongside the house. One light selves the night, and every time I pass by I wonder who or how?

- Jane Brox, In the Merrimack Valley: A Farm Trilogy 

The author’s parents hung on in the stony valley. Early on, the family’s original 35 acres deeded to an immigrant grandfather in 1902, though small by standards farther west, was large enough to sustain a dairy herd. When the dairy operation was no longer feasible, her father kept working the orchards (mainly apples) and fields of the popular vegetables (he saved Hubbard squash seed every year) that the family sold at their roadside farmstand each year. Jane made a place in the stand for fresh herbs, but it was corn and tomatoes and beans, squash and pumpkins that the customers wanted. Those and the apples.

Anyone who would plant an orchard must be undaunted by time, willing to wait long years with little chance of seeing the finest seasons. And since an orchard is land narrowed to one crop only, anyone who would plant an orchard must abide by the final decisions. The chosen rootstock, size, variety, the methods of pruning, are promises that can’t be gone back on, promises requiring care to the end.

An orchard is a commitment.

A third-generation Leelanau farmer grows cherries around my home on land leased from another neighbor, but Jane and her sister left their Massachusetts farm, while their brother’s drug use, celibacy (no children to help on the farm), and general unreliability made him an unlikely candidate for another farming generation. Her parents growing old, Jane came home and tried to work with her brother but found it impossible. Then their father died. 

Jane Brox is a poet. (Her father had a hard time seeing writing as work—the fate of many artists whose parents shake their heads over their children's life choices.) Because she lives by words and employs them so masterfully, her stories of “failure” have a beauty not found in most stories of what the world deems success, and even if history is a tragic progression through time (as it so often seems), surely the finding and sharing and preserving of beautiful moments is a worthwhile life’s work. But I have only just begun reading the second book in the Brox trilogy so cannot tell you where it will go in the end. 

My current morning reading (one book for bedtime, another to start a new day) pleases me in a different way.

Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life was written for a popular audience by one of the foremost classicists in England, Edith Hall, a professor at Kings College, London. Dr. Hall, however, the first woman to have been awarded the Erasmus Medal of the European Academy, is no narrow scholar, and the way she champions Aristotle is, to me, absolutely delightful--undoubtedly because (I admit) it affirms my own preference for Aristotle over Socrates and Plato. 

In her introduction, Hall directly addresses the question of Aristotle’s views on women and slaves, the most troublesome parts of his philosophy for those of us who love all the rest. “I stress,” she writes, “Aristotle’s consistency in arguing that all opinions must always be open to revision."

If you receive incontrovertible evidence that your opinion is wrong, then changing your mind, which some people might condemn as inconstancy, is worthy of high praise. ...[So] I like to think that if we could talk to Aristotle, we could persuade him to revise his opinion on the female brain.

- Edith Hall, Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life

(And his opinion of slavery, as well, I would add.)

Hall admires Aristotle for the same reasons I hold his writings dear: Aristotle did not see human embodiment as loathsome or regrettable, and he neither accepted nor promulgated absolute rules for behavior. (Dr. Hall finds his writings in many ways “very modern.”) He was interested in the entire physical world (not only life in the polis), in the senses and the emotions, and he was very concerned with the practical matter of how human beings could live good lives.

What was a good, happy life? How could it be achieved? Aristotle wondered about and pondered many aspects of the universe but perhaps this above all—eudaimonia, the good life.

Aristotle thought that general principles are important, but without taking into account the specific circumstances, general principles can often be misleading. This is why some Aristotelians call themselves ‘moral particularists.’ Each situation and dilemma requires detailed engagement with its nitty-gritty particulars.

I love Aristotle’s metaphysics, in that there are no ghostly (Platonic) Forms apart from matter, and I love his idea of the soul (the beginning of action) and his fascination with all of living nature, but it is the primacy of his ethics that, for me, too, makes his philosophy important. Edith Hall’s contention is that his way of looking at Aristotelian ethics is as relevant today as it was for the ancient Greeks. 

I am only in the initial pages of this book but already so excited by it that I couldn’t wait to write something here on the blog and have ordered a couple new paperback copies for store stock. Not that I expect everyone to start loving philosophy, but doesn’t everyone want to be happy? And what if, as Aristotle believed, it is impossible to be happy without trying also to be good? How can you live in such a way as to be happier, no matter what your life situation? 

Confession: I do not wake up happy every day. I miss my life partner, the Artist. Nightmare gremlins can hang on into the morning dark, too. Then, taking only one day off from my bookshop a week this summer and still having a dog to exercise, laundry to do, grass to mow, and gardens to water and weed, I occasionally feel overwhelmed, because whatever needs doing in my home or business, if I don't do it, it doesn't get done.

So it takes dog kisses and good coffee to put me in a better morning mood and remind me what a fortunate life I have. My own bookshop? Sunny Juliet? An old farmhouse with trees and flowers and room for Sunny to play? How lucky is that? It's the life the Artist and I dreamed about for years before we were able to make the dream come true, and I still have everything but him—which is a huge, unfillable lacuna, but still, every moment and every inch of my life is enriched by memories of our life together.

Picking berries and making jam, which seems today like a never-ending task, will soon be at an end for another year, and the fruits of my labors will last all winter long. Come January, I'll be spreading summer sunshine on my toast and sharing it with family and friends. And yes, I can afford to become a sustaining member of Interlochen Public Radio, too. I don’t want to imagine northern Michigan without that resource, and thinking about Aristotle and eudaimonia has inspired me to step up. 

Life is not always easy, but it is good.

Sunny says, "Life is good, and ricotta is delicious!"

Summer Days Are Very Full

 

Always perky in the mornings -- and most other times, too.

This first photo is out of sequence, because Sunny Juliet is such an attention magnet. Our mornings, however, start much earlier, in the 5 a.m. dark, when Sunny's dog momma makes herself a first mug of strong coffee. 

Mug from the U.P. Do you know that place?

The sky is growing light. We can get up now and start out into the world.

Most often when Sunny and I have little mini-vacations before my work day, we head south (go to my photo blog to see the most recent morning south of M-204), but when the morning includes an agility session out in Cherry Home it makes more sense to go north, and stopping at dear little Woolsey Airport is a temptation there's no reason to resist.

Helpful hint: August 2nd will be a good time to visit Woolsey Airport. Get there early and watch the planes come in! Another reason to be an early bird is to get your pancake breakfast before the line is too long. 

After that stop, I ducked down a nearby unpaved back road. These are some of my favorite places -- what I call Leelanau insolite!  I learned that French word--in the context of travel--to mean out-of-the-way or off-the-beaten-path. Only today did I stumble on the fact that it used to be part of the English language too but is now considered obsolete. Interesting. 'Insolite' is obsolete....

Off the paved road, anyway --

We still had a little time before our agility session appointment, so returning to the morning-quiet "highway," I drove as far as the old original Cherry Home. It had been years since I'd been out that way, and the buildings looked beautiful in the morning light. That was where we turned back, but it seemed very worthwhile to have gone that far.

The road continues to Leelanau State Park and the lighthouse.

But now let's turn to books, because my bookstore is where I spent six summer days a week. My "ancient" section of children's books got a shot in the arm the other day with half a dozen Walter Farley books, all first editions and only one lacking its colorful dust jacket. (There are a few newly arrived Happy Hollisters, too, but horse stories that excite me more.) Bookstore inventory changes on a daily basis, the new as well as the used. I am delighted to offer some great titles in reprint from David R. Godine and can personally vouch for Jane Brox, Laurie Lee, and Clémentine. 

An older title illuminates the London Blitz in letters from one who was there.

I wrote about the new books above, along with Respectfully Yours, Annie, on one of my other blogs, so you can learn more here.

In the evenings--at least on an evening when it's neither raining nor does grass need mowing--my old farmyard is a place where I can relax in the shade, tossing tennis balls for Sunny to chase and sharing the occasional potato chip with her while currently the blossoming linden trees (basswood, to be more specific) are humming and thrumming with bees. Sometimes, of course, I'll take a book out there, too.