August Afterglow

Lake Michigan after sunset

The past weekend brought many visitors to Northport, some familiar for years with Leelanau, others seeing it for the first time. My stepdaughters had booked four nights at the Jolli-Lodge, south of Leland on Lake Michigan, their favorite place for the past two years, owing to special 2022 memories, while grandson Jack and his college buddy, Daniel, tent-camped in the backyard of my old farmhouse. 

Jolli-Lodge

Backyard camp

Before any family showed up, however, my friend and book colleague Helen, from Arizona, appeared in Northport on Thursday evening, all the way from Arizona! We had dinner together at Faro and then a visit in the bookstore on Saturday, when I was able to introduce her to my stepdaughters. Our visits are never long enough, since that very first week we spent together in Carefree years ago, but Helen’s first visit to northern Michigan will not be her last, and we are already looking forward to the next. Book people never run out of conversation!

 

Booksellers Pamela and Helen

My Michigan-&-Minnesota contingent joined me for Indian food (from Rosie at NJ’s) on the porch on Saturday after my stepdaughters enjoyed their very first Northport dog parade and the boys showed up (too late for the parade) from Kalamazoo. And after dinner? Those college boys cleared the table and did the dishes and put away the leftovers, all on their own sweet initiative! What a treat that was! They can visit any old time they want, believe me! I must admit there was a lot of barking over the weekend, but no wonder! We were all in high spirits. 

Sunny loved the soccer ball.

I took Sunday off work – did not even go to Northport – and, other than giving Sunny a bath and doing a single load of laundry to hang out in the sunshine, did very little before our family dinner meet-up at Nitolo’s in Lake Leelanau. Resisted the compulsive urge to make another batch of two of jam and held myself down to a little desultory weeding and edging, cutting of flowers for the porch table, tossing a tennis ball and a Frisbee a few times before stretching out comfortably with a book on the end of the porch -- the book at last resting on my face, I took a short summer nap! (What a concept!) Meanwhile, the boys explored Sleeping Bear and Traverse City, and the women beach and vineyard, disappointed only that the Port Oneida Fair on Friday and Saturday did not continue through Sunday, as they'd hoped.

But Nitolo’s never disappoints, and neither did sunset afterward at the Jolli-Lodge with s’mores, beach fires, happy families, lapping waves, and Petoskey stones. 

BIG one!

Sweet, peaceful place! No doubt there would have been less sleeping that night if any of us had remembered the Perseid meteor showers and/or known in advance that there would be a show of northern lights! As it was, we missed both. Still, no complaints. 

Before Monday morning’s bookstore opening, there was an agility session for Sunny and me. I can’t be taking photos while we work, but when Sunny and Duffy had a little playtime after the work, I whipped out my phone. These shots aren't much, but we don't want to leave the dogs out of the post, do we? Especially since the past two years I have not photographed the dog parade but just let myself "be in the moment." 

The triple jump

Coach Mike's sheltie, Duffy

I have finished my reading of Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Anne, a novel that took many twists and turns before the last page (I won't give away any of the plot of Anne, so that anyone who digs up a modern reprint won't be deprived of surprise), and have started A Lantern in Her Hand, by Nebraska's Beth Streeter Aldrich. (It was, in fact, the Aldrich book that led me gently into an afternoon nap on Sunday.) Published in 1928, A Lantern in Her Hand tells of the life of a pioneer girl grown to womanhood in the days of prairie homesteading, with descriptions of both the beauties and the hardships of frontier life in 19th-century Nebraska. Woolson and Aldrich both portray strong female characters making their way and finding happiness in American times past, despite challenges and social strictures. 

 

From the visit of my Arizona hiking buddy and her dog through visits from my son and his wife to the annual sisters get-together and now August bringing another friend and more family, summer has been a busy time, passing as always in a happy blur. All of my July FOLTL book-author events are behind me now, too, and the long sunset of summer has begun. 

Family time. Happy dogs. Good books. Fresh cherries and sweet corn and bright flowers and berries galore. Sun and wind and water. We are almost halfway through August. Now life might be slowing down a little bit. Do you think it's possible? Afterglow --

Annes and Islands, Dogs and Dog

 

A Different Anne, a Different Island

 

Anne of Green Gables was one of my mother’s favorite books (others in the series among that group), and I have written before of my copy of Anne's House of Dreams, once my mother's own, but I have long wanted to read the story of a different fictional Anne, a novel not set in Canada’s Maritime provinces, but, at the beginning, at least, right here in Michigan – that is, up in the Straits of Mackinac, on Mackinac Island. Constance Fenimore Woolson, great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper, born in Massachusetts in 1840, was a great traveler. Besides visiting the Great Lakes, she also traveled to Florida (her mother lived in St. Augustine), England, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, and was buried in Rome upon her death (possibly from suicide) at age 54. Stories in Woolson’s collection Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches are set predominantly in the Great Lakes, where the author had a particular attachment to northern Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Mackinac Island. 

Anne, a novel often identified as feminist fiction, opens with the eponymous young woman’s life on the island, her mother and stepmother both having died and her father having faded into a dreamlike, unremunerative idleness. Still in her teens, Anne is in charge of a household that includes four little half-siblings, three boys and a strange, fey little girl. When the father also dies and Anne learns for the first time how perilous is the family’s financial situation, she realizes also that she must prepare herself to make a living, and so, several chapters into the story, she enrolls in a private Eastern school for girls.

Woolson describes characters' looks and dress in detail, as she does the landscapes and worlds of her fiction. The glories and riches of the fur trade are already past by the time of Anne’s Mackinac Island, but the fort is still manned, island economy restricted to fishing and subsistence farming (both seasonal occupations), while shipping is conducted by sail and steam. The novel, Woolson’s first, was published in 1880 and is a window into late 19^th-century America, in general, as well as into its main character’s life and character. 

 

Reading about Woolson and her work, one regularly encounters quite subjective notes. An article in The New Republic, for instance, leads off with this sentence below its title:

 

Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote bitter, morbid, and severe fictions, but her devotion to James was her undoing. – Max Nelson, “Betrayed by Henry James,” March 1, 2016

 

(Well, Henry James -- there was a cold fish, eh?) Lehigh University, on the other hand, notes that “Woolson was a literary success almost from the start,” while Britannica emphasizes that the author’s works of fiction were “particularly notable for the sense of place they evoke.” That last comment captures my reasons for wanting to read this book.

 

I am not yet halfway through Anne so cannot say if I will find the novel “bitter, morbid, and severe” in its later chapters. Anne’s great-aunt, to be sure, is a horrid person, but the Frenchwoman who heads the school Anne attends is a darling and manages the great-aunt (who has agreed to pay for a single year of Anne’s education, with no added frills!) with Gallic charm and diplomacy. I’m wondering at this stage in my reading if Anne’s fiancé will prove true to his promise – but also wondering if Anne herself is really in love with him or if she will find someone else. And what will be the role of the sly little half-sister as the story unfolds? 

 

If you have read this novel, please do not answer any of the questions I have posed above!

 

 

Northport Dog Notes

Northport Dog Parade 2021

Dog Parade is this Saturday! No, Sunny Juliet (a.k.a. Naughty Barker) will not be in it, but if you want to participate with your dog and be eligible for prizes, please don’t wait until Saturday morning to register! At least, don't try to register at Dog Ears Books on Saturday, because registration forms I have will be picked up at the end of Friday afternoon. Pre-registration is $5 per dog, and registration on Saturday is $10 per dog. That's if you want to be eligible for prizes. 

 

(More) Dog Notes

 

Sunny and I did much better this week at our agility session. That is, Sunny was a star, a champion, and I didn’t make as many mistakes as usual, which helped her shine. We have some new routines to work on at home, where fun with tennis balls is as much of a reward for her as dog treats. How she loves to leap for tennis balls! Now, if only she could work up the same enthusiasm for a Frisbee – and maybe in time that will come, too. 

Field Notes

 

My meadow is gay with dancing daisies and swaying grey-headed coneflowers, apples are reddening on the trees, and ripening blackberries tempt Sunny Juliet to harvest them one by one with her dainty dog lips. Mornings are quieter, August (unlike June) not ringing with dawn birdsong as summer begins to wind down.

Invasive but beautiful loosestrife is blooming in ditches and narrows. It really is lovely and can’t help its nature, and who can resist the name? Loose strife! Begone, dull care!