The Way It Is, The Way It Was

Golden trees along M-115 on Monday 

The season --

 

Not every autumn is as colorful as this year’s fall in Leelanau County, which was, to me, surprisingly beautiful -- surprising, since I never remember what factors go into making fall color particularly vibrant and therefore had no idea what to expect. (For others like me who forget from one year to the next, here is the full explanation.) But the season was spectacular, as it turned out, and many of us could not stop trying to store the beauty. Now not much red and orange is left – mostly gold and brown -- and even the gold fades a little more every day, as more and more trees let the winds strip their branches bare.

Corner of woods near my home on Tuesday morning

Sunny Juliet and I had our last agility session for the year and are on our own now until late spring 2025. Also, because of live traps set in the yard for Mr. Porcupine, Sunny does not have her usual at-home freedom. So I take her on-leash beyond the yard, where we can have tennis ball play (off-leash) in the neighbor’s driveway through the orchard, and we go for our long walks at least once a day, sometimes twice. As for those porcupine traps, though, I’ve pretty much lost hope of any result. Mr. Porcupine seems to be finding enough to eat without being tempted by baited traps….

 

Two leashes joined give her much more than an extra inch!

Combining business and pleasure --

 

Monday took us to Cadillac, where I visited a photographer’s warehouse to stock up on jigsaw puzzles for holiday and winter bookstore visitors, afterward meeting a dear friend from Kalamazoo who brought me books I was purchasing from an estate down her way. The deal was arranged by others, my friend taking responsibility only for delivery, but our rendezvous gave us an opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives, which we enjoyed despite a very strong, cold wind across Lake Cadillac that day. 

The library in Cadillac was our rendezvous point.

Lunch was a picnic -- in the cold wind!

A beautiful beech tree nearby had a warm look.

Sadly for Ms. Sunny Juliet, finding the photographer’s warehouse and making my purchase took longer than expected, so we didn’t have time for the dog park. Laurie was willing to look for it with me after our picnic lunch (in the cold wind), but by that time I only wanted to get home again, where tennis ball play plus a good walk made up to Sunny for all her boring time in the car -- I hope!

 

Driving back from Cadillac on M-115, for several miles I noticed the brilliant red of Michigan holly berries, but with a car behind me I didn’t try to pull over and stop. In the morning, on my way southeast, driving into that bright rising sun, I hadn’t noticed those reds at all; then, going back, noticing, I thought there would be more down the road that I could stop and capture with my phone camera. But no -- most of it was right there close to Cadillac, and I didn’t spot any at all on M-37. However – surprise! When I picked up my mail at the post office in Northport and found a letter from a friend in the U.P., what did I find enclosed with the letter but a photograph of Michigan holly! 

Having friends, seeing friends, talking with friends, letters from friends -- what would we do without them?

 

 

Reading the past –

 

After reading, one after the other, all four of Albert Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, taking him from boyhood and schoolboy through music tours to his vocation as a writer, I’ve now been reading Murray writing not of a fictional self but as himself in South to a Very Old Place, a book in which he visits -- not for the first time but this time as a writer preparing a book -- various scenes of his earlier life: New York, New Haven, Greensboro, Atlanta, Tuskegee, Mobile, New Orleans, Greenville, and Memphis. The stuff of racial conflict omitted from his fiction comes out strong in these memoir essays. He pulls no punches. Still, white as I am and can’t help being, I find comfort in the cadences of his language, even in the way he and his refer to their towns – Lana, Beel, Ham (that last, Birmingham, is not given its own essay title, but the name comes up often).

The book I find myself telling people about these days, though, was published in 1833. Three Years in North America, written by James Stuart, Esq. (1775-1849), and published in New York by J. and J. Harper from the second London edition, is an account of the English author’s time spent touring the North American continent, the second volume taking him by stage from New York through Washington, D.C., down the Eastern seaboard, through the slave-holding South (often on horseback), back north up the Mississippi and Ohio by steamboat, and to St. Louis, Cincinnati, Hoboken, etc. 

 

Stuart was horrified by slavery, noting that even those enslaved people who were treated “well,” such as hotel restaurant servers, did not have beds but slept in the hallways on the floor without blankets, and after an extensive tour of Southern states, he met with many white Americans in northern states who had fled north because of slavery’s evils, though the possibility of civil war did not seem on many minds.

More and more leaves are on the ground now.

A very fact-oriented writer, Stuart gives population numbers for every city and town he visits, the width of every river traveled or crossed, cost of transportation, lodging, meals and just about anything else that can be assigned a dollar amount. At the same time, his observations and descriptions keep the account lively, and he also elicits opinions of everyone with whom he has conversation and gives his own opinions of people and places and customs and manners.  

 

Very early in the book, he attended a meeting of Congress in Washington, D.C., and he contrasted the dignity of that assembly with his own country’s Parliament (where even today interruptions and jeers are common). What struck me more, however, was the content of legislative discussion he described that day, providing lengthy quotes. A bill had been put forward to propose that the U.S. post offices be closed on Sunday. (I don’t know if a postmaster worked Sundays then or if, as has been the case all my life, the window to purchase stamps and send packages was closed but the lobby was open so that post office boxes could be accessed by their holders and mail dropped off.) The arguments given against the bill were beautifully and impressively articulate. There were several “Because” paragraphs, but I will quote only one, and that only in part to give a flavor of the objections to the bill: 

 

“Because, The bill violates that equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensable in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If ‘all men are by nature equally free and independent,’ all men are to be considered as entering into society on equal conditions,--as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less one than another of their rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an ‘equal title to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.’ While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the religion which we believe to be of Divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to men, must an account of it be rendered. 

 

(I said I would quote the paragraph in part, but stopping halfway through seems wrong. It goes on.)

 

As the bill violates equality, by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the Quakers and Mennonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their religions to be endowed, above all others, with extraordinary privileges, by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favourably of the justice and good sense of these denominations to believe that they either covet pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens, or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure.” 

 

That gives a fair idea, I think, of the quality of argument in the legislature in the first half of the 19^th century. Basically, opposition to the bill rested on freedom of conscience and separation of church and state, and those arguing against it saw not only rights violated if religion were to be a part of government but religion also weakened if the separating wall were removed, because it would be then as if the law said that religious practice could only be ensured if churches were backed up by government, that faith alone would not compel adherence.

 

This was the United States in the 1830s, almost two centuries ago. Look around the world, these legislators said, and see what harm has been done by state religions, not only to individuals but to religion itself. 

 

“…It is perhaps fortunate for our country that the proposition should have been made at the early period, while the spirit of the revolution yet exists in full vigour. Religious zeal enlists the strongest prejudices of the human mind, and when misdirected, excites the worst passions of our nature under the delusive pretext of doing God service. Nothing so infuriates the heart to deeds of rapine and blood. Nothing is so incessant in its toils, so persevering in its determinations, so appalling in its course, or so dangerous in its consequences. The equality of rights secured by the constitution may bid defiance to mere political tyrants, but the robe of sanctity too often glitters to deceive. The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual, than that of a whole community. The representative who would violate this principle would lose his delegated character, and forfeit the confidence of his constituents. If Congress shall declare the first day of the week holy, it will not convince the Jew nor the Sabbatarian. It will dissatisfy both, and, consequently, convert neither. Human power may extort vain sacrifices, but Deity alone can command the affections of the heart. It must be recollected that, in the earliest settlement of this country, the spirit of persecution, which drove the pilgrims from their native homes, was brought with them to their new habitations; and that some Christians were scourged, and others put to death, for no other crime than dissenting from the dogmas of their rulers.”

 

Surprisingly, I'm sure, to many Americans of today, the legislators of the 1830s did not even exclude atheists from the right to freedom of conscience. We were not a "Christian nation," they said. In other words, we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Puritans, now that we have a constitution guaranteeing freedom of conscience to all. “Fortunate,” they said, that this question is before us now and can be settled so as not to plague us in the future. Little did they know! 

But I don't want to close on a note of despair. Tomorrow is another day. And as long as we care about the future, there is hope for the future.

Tuesday turned strangely warm again and closed with grey clouds.

Figuring Things Out

Morning clouds, October

This could be a short post. We'll see! If I were writing about all the things I have not figured out, it would be long, but I’m taking the easy way out. 

Happy girl!

First (because I know that’s why many of you tune in), Sunny and I are making great strides in our agility sessions with Coach Mike. I’m able to keep more of the course in my head at once, and our race from one station to the next is becoming smoother all the time. If there were an indoor agility course in Leelanau Township, I would be more than willing to continue through the winter. 

Scene of someone's adventure glimpsed on our way to agility --

(Parenthetically, in answer to the often-asked question, “How late in the season will you keep the bookstore open?” the answer is that Dog Ears Books will be open all winter. Come November, weeks will be shorter [Wednesday through Saturday], and days will be shorter, too [11 to 3], but weather and roads permitting, the shop will be open four days a week.)

 

I’m pretty sure I have the answer now to why Albert Murray is not better known as a writer of fiction. By now well into the fourth of his semi-autobiographical novels, more and more I realize that while his characters and settings are vivid, the world large and complex (from Alabama to Hollywood to Paris and back to New York), there is simply no conflict. The narrator makes a single mistake as a boy, is saved from the consequences by one of his boyhood idols (an understanding and sympathetic character with the wonderful name of Luzanna Cholly), and from there on there are no obstacles in Scooter's life path. When he learns a secret about his parentage, he takes in the new knowledge without a moment’s angst, and it never troubles him later, either. He is given a string bass and within months is touring the country and the world with one of America’s top dance bands. All women want him, no men are ever jealous, and the woman he wants to marry waits contentedly for his return. Marked out from the beginning for great things, he is the golden boy from start to finish, with everything falling into place for him. 

 

Just as Murray decried interpretations of the blues as music of suffering, he had little patience for stories of Black victimhood. He heard the blues as celebratory, not moans of misery, and he wrote his hero’s progress through the world as a story of success, and that’s great – except that we don’t see Scooter triumphing over anything, because nothing ever blocks his way. There is no agon to make him a protagonist. 

 

I say all this more as explanation than critique because I am still very much enjoying these books and looking forward to rereading them in years ahead. Any one of so many little vignettes, e.g., a scene in a barbershop, is as delightful as many a short story from a less-skilled writer, and discussions between characters about history, literature, and music are endlessly fascinating. I’m no longer troubled by neglect of Murray as a novelist, though, because I see what’s missing in his books as fiction: there is no tension, conflict, struggle, and so no real drama. 

 

It’s hard to believe that Murray’s own life was as velvet-smooth and free of difficulty as Scooter’s road. Life is never that easy for anyone! But he apparently felt free to leave out the bumps in the road, thoroughly covered as they had been by other Black writers. I’ll be interested to read this author’s nonfiction work and see how it compares to the fiction: Next up on my Murray agenda is The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture.

An already colorful curve in the road --

We should have peak color here in Leelanau by next weekend, although I almost hate to see it build to a climax, knowing that the gales of November will soon follow. And we still need rain! But who can argue with blue skies and the warm, albeit temporary, palette of our upper Midwest trees in autumn? 

So here it is for today – dog, books, outdoors. Because that’s my life. 

Wait for it...

...to turn blue!

My Lovely (Lucky!) End-of-September in Leelanau

Northport celebrates! 

Although a little slower in general, the month of September brings its own highlights and excitement, not the least of which is Northport’s fabulous street fair, Leelanau UnCaged. “Get out of whatever cage you’re in,” a sign urged in a previous year, and the John Cage-inspired event brings music and dancing, art and crafts, food and drinks out onto Waukazoo, Nagonaba, and Mill streets. 

Sign on Mill Street

As a business proprietor, I spend the day indoors, 10 hours straight this year. (You might not think people at a street fair would come into a store and buy books, but they do, bless their hearts!) Before opening, however, I walk around with my camera to photograph our town making preparations. 

Setting up the dance stage

Cheerful volunteer Ty Wessell on Mill Street

Vendors on Nagonaba Street

My friend Sally getting ready

Waukazoo Street vendors setting up early

New Bo warning: only BREAKFAST sandwiches today!

Added string of beautiful birds this year

With this year’s absolutely perfect weather, I had my shop door wide open all day and could enjoy jazz coming from just up the street. Lovely!

 

After all that excitement, my Sunday at home was pretty much a day of rest. Only minimal mowing and raking. The gardens needed watering, of course, because after a single night of precipitation we are still waiting for more rain. Sunny and I worked on the hurdles and weave poles, and we got in a little Frisbee practice, too. Sunny, nunca te rindas! You’re getting better and better! 

I haven’t given up on my morning glory vine, either, and look! When these unfurl -- !!!

Early morning and late evening these days, as September turns to October, I have been spending a lot of mental time in Alabama and am now traveling all over the country with a band. Other than cowgirl, singer with a band was my other dream life for years, but it’s the magic of reading that takes me on these journeys, and my author-guide and companion is a writer I should have met long before now – but so should other avid readers, and so far no one I’ve asked has been familiar with his name. Does that make me feel better or worse? I was not alone in my previous ignorance, but such a writer deserves to be far better known in his own country.

 

Albert Murray, novelist and poet, music critic, essayist, and biographer, was born in Nokomis, Alabama, in 1916. Britannica says of him that his writings “assert the vitality and the powerful influence of black people in forming American traditions,” in particular, that jazz and blues styles developed “as affirmative responses to misery.” Among many awards he received in his lifetime, from a variety of groups, Murray won the very first Harper Lee Award in 1987.

 

My Library of America volume contains all four of Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, beginning with Train Whistle Guitar (title alone gave me an appetite for that one), and I’m now well into Seven League Boots, a hero’s journey in music. It didn’t take many pages of Train Whistle Guitar, however, before I began looking forward to future readings in years to come. I want to read other books of his, too, especially The Omni-Americans and South to a Very Old Place.

 

Monday, believe it or not, I had an appointment to have snow tires mounted, because yes, winter will come (last year it snowed on Halloween), but first Sunny and I went for an agility session for Coach Mike, and we had a great session. We concentrated on my giving hand signals to Sunny without vocal commands (except for “Tunnel!”) and giving more commands to her from a distance so that I am not trying to run the course as fast as she can run it. For the sake of documentation, we slowed the action to a few successive stops for the following photos, with Sunny on the “teeter,” Coach Mike on my phone, and me with Sunny. When we are actually running the course, there are no more treats at the end of the teeter -- we just race to the next station! 

Teeter: uphill,

Downhill,

Target area and reward.

The sun is coming up later these days in northern Michigan and setting earlier, but while it shines it is bright, bright, bright, and has given us a beautiful “locals’ summer” September. I am counting my blessings and thinking about which organization to donate to for hurricane and flood relief in the South, where the sun was not shining recently, many died, and millions are without power. Unimaginable devastation -- time for Americans to come together....

Shifting of the Gold

Goldenrod & bracken have both gone dull.

Although goldenrod’s bright color has already dimmed in Leelanau, I look forward to the near future gold of tamarack. Anomalous among conifers, tamarack trees change from green to gold and then, acting like leafy deciduous trees, shed their feathery needles as winter approaches. By the time the tamarack trees are bare, bracken fern on the ground will have gone from green to yellow to brown, from spring soft to fall stiff to winter brittle. (In hunting season, bracken crunches underfoot.) Some Leelanau bracken has a head start on that seasonal change.

Tamarack in U.P.

I made another quick run up over the Mackinac Bridge on Sunday, rewarded by a porch visit with my dear friend, author Ellen Airgood, who took half an hour away from cookie baking for our chat. Cool U.P. air plus rain called forth my sweatshirt. When last up to see my friends in June, I hadn't taken a warm jacket, which Ellen rightly branded a "rookie mistake." I was better prepared this time around.

Hot cocoa at the Uglyfish Baking Company hit the spot, too.

It was great to catch up with Ellen, talking dogs, books and reading and writing, plans for cozy winter days, and life in general. My drive back south felt longer than the drive north, with pouring rain from Newberry to Traverse City, but the trip was worth it to have time with my friend, and I was safely home in bed by 9 p.m. with book and dog.

My current bedtime reading is a Library of America volume that includes all four of Albert Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, starting with Train Whistle Guitar. Besides fiction, Murray wrote quite a bit about jazz and blues, and much of his writing has a jazzy quality to it that is simply delightful. This writer won me with his very first paragraph:

 

There was a chinaberry tree in the front yard of that house in those days, and in early spring the showers outside that window always used to become pale green again. Then before long there would be chinaberry blossoms. Then it would be maytime and then junebugtime and no more school bell mornings until next September, and when you came out onto the front porch and it was fair there were chinaberry shadows on the swing and the rocking chair, and chinaberry shade all the way from the steps to the gate. 

 

-      Albert Murray, Train Whistle Guitar

 

Despite the heavy rain I drove through farther north, I learned the next day (a bright, sunny Monday) that Leelanau had only gotten a fraction of an inch, and the weather app on my phone showed no hope of further rain until next week. But then during the day on Tuesday, the wind shifted, and with that the weather forecast also changed: Rain on Tuesday evening, rain Wednesday, rain Thursday? Dare we hope? I write this on Tuesday evening, waiting for rain…. Hearing coyotes....

Having done a little mowing and raking on Monday, I did more raking Tuesday evening and a little edging around my perennial border, with frequent breaks to launch tennis balls for Sunny Juliet, and after supper we went outdoors again for Frisbee and agility. She is figuring out the weave poles! Her Frisbee catching is improving! She loves any activity that we do together, and while she eagerly accepts little treats for a good performance, sometimes it seems the activity itself is sufficient reward, which of course is the best scenario possible. Do what you love; love what you do.

My reading of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile had me so excited that I signed up to “follow” him on Facebook, but I should have known better, because just as I enjoy conversation more with one or two or three people than in larger groups, I’ve never been a very good follower, either, and by halfway through Taleb’s Skin in the Game I had fallen out of love -- possibly for trivial reasons, but aren’t reasons for falling out of love often trivial? 

For one thing, Taleb seems to think no one could really enjoy Proust but would only carry the books around to impress people. Is that the only reason why people carry around the Wall Street Journal or the Economist or a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb? Some, I’m sure, but really, is it too much of a stretch to acknowledge that different people have different interests and pleasures? 

Then – and this is really trivial! – in his list of all the ways people he does not admire show themselves to be wimps, he notes that they never curse on social media. Well, if cursing is such a sign of superiority, why does he spell ‘bullshit’ in his book ‘bull***t’? Prithee, why so coy? I don’t often read half a book and quit but probably will with this one. Like Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, I’m finding the going repetitive, the repetition self-indulgent. 

My advice: Read Antifragile. It’s worth reading. If you want an introduction to it, you can start with The Black Swan, but Antifragile is meatier, and you can get the black swan idea there. As for Skin in the Game, the book’s basic point is that you shouldn’t take advice from people with nothing to lose. Naturally, there are sub-propositions and logical inferences, but you can read a few chapters at the library. Or, if you want to buy a paperback copy from me, I have two available at the cover price of $20.

(I had a third trivial reason for falling out of love, but who cares?)

Still in love with: Michigan! My life as a bookseller. My dog. Proust. My country life. My friends!

There she is, writer and cookie baker extraordinaire!

THIS SATURDAY: Northport’s annual street fair, LEELANAU UNCAGED!!! 

Get ready. Get set. --