Winter has arrived! Are you prepared?

Winter is all around us.

A friend of mine goes places in her car in winter in her indoor clothes, adding only a down vest. No gloves or mittens. No knitted cap. No heavy jacket. “I’m in the car!” she tells me. I ask her, “What if you had car trouble?” and she replies, “I would use my cell phone!” 

So wiper blades don't freeze to windshield overnight....

By contrast, I am not only layered up for driving but have an extra pair of work gloves with me in case I need to, say, open the hood—or get that shovel out of the back of the car to dig myself out of a snowbank—or whatever! Yes, I have a shovel with me. (No sandbags, but I figure I could use the car’s floormats, if necessary. Sandbags are very heavy.) Also engine oil, windshield wiper fluid, antifreeze, flashlight, and jumper cables. The bottle of drinking water, for myself and my dog, if she happens to be with me, has to come in the house overnight, or it would be just a bottle of ice, and who needs that in an emergency? (Note to self: Put blanket in car!) I take my clue from the old Tom Lehr song, “Be Prepared!”

 

On the evening of the day of his state funeral, I began reading Jimmy Carter’s memoir, Keeping Faith, about his years in the White House. I have had the book for several years but hadn’t read it because, while I have always loved Jimmy, I am usually bored by political memoirs. Too many big names, too many dates, generally not much that is personal, not much to give me insight into the writer’s personality and character. 

 

I’m happy to say that Carter’s book is very different. For one thing, he wrote it himself. It isn’t the work of a ghost writer. For another, he begins at the end, leading off with the most painful episode of his presidency, the hostage crisis. How many presidents would ever have done that? In the first pages of his memoir, he shows himself at his most vulnerable. And, of course, by then he has already lost his bid for re-election, so as the hostages are being released, he is onstage at the inauguration of his successor, Ronald Reagan. Hardly a moment of glory for Carter. But he had done the work, and the hostages were freed and came home alive.

 

He was never one to take shortcuts or “fake it,” in any of his life roles. He took the job of president of the United States seriously, writing of his preparation:  

 

From the beginning, I realized that my ability to govern well would depend upon my mastery of the extremely important issues I faced. I wanted to learn as much as possible…. (p. 57 of the Easton Press edition)

 

In his first campaign for the presidency, coming to national politics from the governorship of Georgia, Carter was so confident that he would win the White House that many called him overconfident. Yet he wrote that his “freedom to act and speak during the campaign was severely restrained by the same confidence.” What could that mean? How and why would confidence of victory restrain his freedom to act and speak? Precisely, again, because he took so seriously the job of president.

 

I ran as though I would have to govern—always careful about what I promised and determined not to betray those who gave me their support. Sometimes I irritated my opponents and the news reports by firmly refusing to answer to questions to which I did not know the answers. And repeatedly I told reporters, ‘If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president.’ Even during the earliest days I was always thinking about what would have to be done in the Oval Office after the inauguration ceremonies were over. (p. 65)

 

It drove reporters crazy that he would occasionally “I don’t know” to a question. What he needed to know, he worked to find out. What he couldn’t know ahead of time, he admitted. But always, as he campaigned for the highest office in the land, he prepared himself not only to win but to govern.

 

My life is ever so much simpler. I prepared for winter with snow tires, a new furnace, and a refill of my propane tank. Good thing, because in keeping with yo-yo weather patterns of recent months, our temperate winter weather over the holidays in northern Michigan has now given way to January temperatures in the ’teens, with single-digit wind chill (or “feels like”) readings. 

We have wind chill!

("When I was a kid," I used to tell my son, "we didn’t have wind chill!" That is, of course, we didn’t have a name for it. What would the word ‘rose’ name if there were no more roses?)

She doesn't mind snow or cold.

Dogs, though. A dog is like the legendary postman: Whatever the weather, out we go, and little does Sunny Juliet suspect how slight is her dog mom’s inclination for outdoor adventures in a punishing, sub-freezing northwest wind, sun perpetually hidden above low-hanging clouds of depressing gunmetal grey! I make my voice enthusiastic and let her watch me load my pocket with treats.... 

 

She doesn't mind at all.

Every day of our human lives, in one way or another, we are preparing for days to come, aren’t we? For me, Sunday was housework (an attempt to keep entropy at bay), Monday paperwork (getting ready for tax time), and Tuesday an early morning expedition, sans dog, to Leland to have a new (working) headlight installed, which gave me an opportunity while my car was at Van’s Garage to have coffee and breakfast in what was formerly the Early Bird (now Great Lakes Chocolate & Café) and to sit in the very corner where the Artist and I sat so many, many mornings in past years. 

View from the "bus driver's seat" --

The restaurant has not been the Early Bird for a long time, but after we moved from the village of Leland out to Leelanau Township in 2021, the Early Bird routine was no longer part of our lives, and more recent incarnations of the place never really registered on my radar. Anyway, the building has the same configuration, and the view from what the Artist used to call the “bus driver’s seat” (no booths now, but I hitched my chair around to face north) is pretty much the same. I should have been prepared for the flood of memories, but the emotions caught me off-guard. 

Then, home to books and dog! I am so lucky to have a warm, sheltering home and a lively, affectionate little companion! I still inhabit the life the Artist and I made together, and Wednesday will find me back in Northport, on Waukazoo Street, in my other little world, surrounded by books. 

Be prepared!

Meeting Mrs. Carter

Where are we?

 

This link will take anyone who wants to follow it to an old post of mine about the little town that President Jimmy Carter and his wife of 77 years, Rosalyn Carter, called home. If you choose, you can see the high school from which both Jimmy and Rosalynn graduated, and – more pointedly to my little story – Mom’s Kitchen, the restaurant in Plains. (I have included above a photo of the parking lot.) Go ahead. Take a moment to look back now at Plains….

 

When the Artist and I drove to Florida for a winter getaway, as we did for several years (first with our old dog, Nikki, later with puppy Sarah), we always made sure that our otherwise freeform route would put us overnight Saturday in Americus, Georgia, so that we could go to Plains for Sunday dinner the next day at Mom’s Kitchen. From there we would make another pilgrimage, out to Archery, Jimmy Carter's boyhood home. 

 

One year, though --. But I need to explain. Mom’s Kitchen has a large dining room with a cafeteria arrangement at one end where you line up and make your dinner choices. In the back corner past the food, another doorway leads to a second dining room. The Artist and I always sat in the main room, but when President and Mrs. Carter were there after church, their place was at the big round corner table in the back dining room. The restrooms, accessible from both dining rooms, are at the opposite end of the building from the kitchen and cafeteria line, and you turn left in the hallway coming out from the restroom, you re-enter the main dining room, while a right turn and then a left takes you to the back dining room. I’m telling all this for a reason.

 

See doorway at far right.

Because once when we were there, Mrs. Carter came from the restroom through the front dining room (where she probably knew everyone but us!) and stopped at our table to welcome us to Plains and exchange a few friendly sentences. She would not have had to come through the main dining room at all to rejoin her husband in the back room, and nothing obligated her to stop to welcome strangers. Nothing but exquisitely gracious manners and the sense of social obligation she no doubt felt as a former First Lady of the United States in this simple little farm town. 

 

As we shared a few moments, it was obvious to me that Mrs. Carter was a very reserved person, perhaps even shy, and had undoubtedly pushed herself beyond what we would now call her “comfort zone” for a lifetime. Not only, I think, because her role as a president’s wife demanded it but because she realized that she was in a position to do good in the world.

 

For me, that encounter was terribly moving, and as we left to continue our way south my eyes filled with tears. They fill with tears again today, thinking of that dear lady and her loving husband.

 

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, after four years in the White House, returned to Plains to live what many saw as a startlingly modest life. Whenever they were interviewed, however, their smiles and soft Southern accents could not hide the firm convictions held by both or the keen, penetrating intelligence both possessed, and they continued to make contributions to their country and to the world through Habitat for Humanity and The Carter Center. 

 

How sad that stories such as theirs are so rare in our world! But how wondrous that they lived in our world – and worked for us and beside us -- for so long!

Behind Us at Last!

The End!
 

That fateful, “unprecedented” year, 2020, the year in which you heard the word “unprecedented” more frequently than ever before in your life – heard it with unprecedented frequency! -- is finally in our rearview mirrors!

 

What a relief! 

 

As communities, we struggled not only social, racial, and political strife -- the stuff of nightmares, so much of it -- but also COVID-19 and the many hardships and losses brought on by the virus. Anxiety, stress, exhaustion. Today, on January first, 2021, not out of the woods yet, by any means, we have at least the sense of hope that comes with every new year, a feeling that, somehow, we can “start over” with renewed strength.

 

We’re going to need renewed strength, aren’t we? We all know that, right? 

 

As for this quiet blog, the discursive and eclectic meanderings of a “tiny bookseller,” I have to admit that what with everything going on, my reading suffered in the year just past: I read 28 fewer books in 2020 than in 2019 (most of the slow-down occurring in late November and early December along with the loss of our beloved dog, Sarah). Reading fewer books in a given year is hardly a tragedy, even on the subjective, personal scale of things. I only mention it, first, because this blog, after all, is called “Books in Northport” and, second, because it is a measure of my own mental and emotional state during those non-reading weeks. In a word, turmoil. I’m sure many others experienced turmoil in the course of the past year, although perhaps with different effects. Maybe you gained a lot of extra and unwanted weight. Or maybe, as did a good friend of mine, your anxiety resulted in weight loss. And/or maybe you had whole days when you couldn’t find the energy to get dressed – since you weren’t going anywhere, were you? 

 

It was a challenging, difficult, heartbreaking year. 

 

The divide between December 31^st and January 1^st is a strange one. The winter solstice would be a more natural cutoff from the old year. Inauguration Day, for Americans, would better capture a new political beginning. And yet, on a night between those two important dates, we “ring out the old year” and welcome the new. Celebrations were quiet this year, the ball falling in Times Square in what could hardly be called a "crowd" a striking symbol.

 

Are you a New Year’s Day traditionalist? Ever since the two winters I spent in Cincinnati, Ohio, hoppin’ john has been my tradition on the first day of the new year. Sometimes we have had New Year's Day with friends, in a party atmosphere marked by champagne toasts. This year we’ll have it quietly, perhaps with small glasses of sherry like those that preceded our New Year’s Eve dinner. (New Year's Eve dinner post is here.)

 

Our new dog, Peasy, already a creature of domestic routine, let me sleep in until 6:30 a.m. today! Here is our morning schedule, times variable but order always the same: Peasy goes outside on a leash for his morning pee; we come back inside, where he has his breakfast, and I have my first coffee; next he gets his first peanut butter kong of the day and after enjoying that must amuse himself quietly (as quietly as possible, that is) with chew toys while I read and write. Eventually there will be coffee for the Artist, radio news from NPR, and another on-leash sortie for Peasy to take care of important dog business, followed perhaps by “pack time” up on the bed, all three of us together – before I get dressed and take the little dog out for his first joyous run of the day. 

Peasy indoors

Peasy outdoors

Non-Peasy aspects of our ghost town winter morning routine include, for me, a daily phone conversation with my son and, except on Sundays and holidays, a stroll down to the mailbox on the highway, in hopes of cards or letters from friends.

Dog encroaches on private library

I indulged in a lot of comfort reading this past year but made the decision on New Year’s Eve that I would begin the new year with a serious and yet positive book of nonfiction. I have been wanting to read President Carter: The White House Years, by Stuart E. Eizenstat, since the first reviews came out, and this morning the moment to begin arrived. My love and respect for Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is no secret, and I have been a contributor to the Carter Center for many years. Author Eizenstat wraps up his introduction with these words from President Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale:

 

“We told the truth, we obeyed the law, 

we kept the peace.”

 

There was, of course, much more to the Carter presidency than can be captured in any single sentence, but I find deep significance and honor in those words of Walter Mondale and hope the incoming president and vice president of the United States will be able to say something similar  -- and say it honestly – when they leave office, whenever that may be.

 

So now, if you fell asleep before midnight or stayed up until dawn, find a moment today to “take a cup o’ kindness,” and may you be strong and healthy in the months ahead and blessed with love of family and friends!

 

Happy new year, everyone!

Seizing the Carp

Summer is a challenge for me, for us, every year. What is more lovely than a day in June — and how often does the grass in June need mowing! Home, yard, and bookstore:  each could use full-time attention and care. But even if I were three people for those jobs, there is no point in living somewhere beautiful and not taking time to soak in its beauty, no point in living surrounded by books and not taking time to read. 

The Artist shares some of my challenges and has a few others of his own. Sarah is neither job or diversion. She is simply Constant Companion, an integral part of our lives, always there, making few demands, providing endless comfort to us both.

Oh, loveliness of dog and books! We humans in the house, even when worn out by long days of work, sometimes find it difficult to sleep, minds chewing over tasks still undone. That’s when I get out of bed and into a book, escaping into someone else's world for a while. And so, overwhelmed recently (can one be “somewhat overwhelmed,” or is that an oxymoron?) by the rising tide of summer’s demands, I turned once again to Ellen Airgood’s South of Superior, reading it through for the fifth time. It’s good to visit that little Upper Peninsula town and spend time with my old friends there as they deal with the challenges in their lives — although these days I identify as much or more with old Gladys than with 35-year-old Madeline! 

No, I’m nowhere near Gladys’s age yet (85) but edging closer to her as the distance increases between me and thirty-five, Gladys and Madeline always 85 and 35, while I continue to age. But fictional Madeline has her challenges, and Gladys has hers, and so do Paul and Randi and little Greyson and everyone else in McAllaster, Michigan, on the shore of Lake Superior. By the time I reach the last page, most of the various characters have come to some kind of peace, but those who have learned the deeper lessons have also the sure knowledge that their peacefulness and ease is only a temporary resting place. More troubles will come and will have to be faced. More joys will also come. Life, that is, will continue to be interesting, always. Contented in a moment of ice-fishing, Madeline’s eyes on the dipping, quivering bobber, she “watched in anticipation for what would happen next.”

And that’s it. Moments of peacefulness. Summer or winter, spring or fall, out on the ice waiting for fish to bite or hanging laundry on the line in bright sunshine or walking in the northern woods or southwestern desert with a dog or sitting outdoors with friends at the end of a long, beautiful day. Carpe diem! Or, as we used to say in Leland (and as other people down the road there doubtless still say), “Seize the carp!”

When I woke at 3 a.m. the following night, I took Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma Ramotswe as my companion. In The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine, Mma Ramotswe takes a holiday from work and at first, finding herself at loose ends, she begins to speculate about how a black mamba snake might get into her kitchen and where it might hide.

She replaced the egg and gazed at the food cupboard, trying to remember when it was that she had last tidied it. Never, she thought, I have never tidied the food cupboard. The thought made her smile. How many women were there in Botswana walking about with the guilty knowledge that they had never tidied the food cupboard?

In my case, “never” would be an exaggeration, but “not for quite a while” would not. Should that task be undertaken today? Sigh! Must I?

Mma Ramotswe tidies her cupboard and then decides to meet friends for tea. That occasion is not a great success (too much gossip), but in the hotel parking lot, she encounters a small boy in need of rescue, a young boy living in the backyard of a woman who drinks and beats him and steals the coins he brings home from “watching” people’s cars for them in the parking lot. Such a person must not be allowed to victimize the boy further, and Mma Ramotswe is soon on her trail. The bad woman’s house, Mma Ramotswe discovers, was not well maintained, and 

…the yard was ill kempt, which spoke volumes, as it always did. If you did not keep your yard in reasonable order, then your whole life would be similarly untidy. A messy yard told Mama Ramotswe everything she needed to know about its owner.

One or two piles of cut and stacked invasive

Instantly I feel better! While Bruce was at the bookstore on Friday and I could have been tidying my cupboards (or cleaning out closets or scrubbing floors or washing windows), instead I had been out in the meadow, waging my annual war on autumn olive. I’ll never eradicate it — it is taking over the entire neighborhood, any and all bits of land that are not regularly tilled or mowed — but holding it at bay for as long as I’m here is important to me, and looking out now at the expanse cleared of its unwelcome presence gives me great satisfaction. The job isn’t finished, but another day or two should take care of it until next spring. 

I avoided another opportunity for housework by watering my straw bale garden and weeding and mowing grass in our outdoor dining area and around the straw bales. Our yard is not messy! Well, it has its cluttered corners (mostly in and around the old, dilapidated barns), but the general appearance is neat and welcoming and colorful with pots of flowers, and I would not be ashamed to have Mma Ramotswe drop by. I think she would focus on the bright, well-tended areas and understand that one woman — even one man and one woman, at our ages — cannot do everything we once did.

After rescuing the little boy and installing him in a safer, more congenial living arrangement at her friend Mma Potokwane’s Orphan Farm, Mma Ramotswe sings aloud as she drives her tiny white van back to town. She has met a challenge, it’s a beautiful day, and no matter if people in other cars think she is a lunatic, Mma Ramotswe is happy, and she will sing!

It was not a big change in the overall scale of things; it was not something that would be noted by more than a handful of people — at the most — but it was something to be pleased with, even to sing about.

I was happy to have the rest of the book to look forward to later, after morning housework and time spent with friends in the afternoon and before a full day of errands in town on Monday. 

Sometimes making a “mistake” means a day turns out better. I distinctly heard Sarah Shoemaker say that her letter to the New York Times Book Review would appear in the June 17 issue, so why did I rush down to Lake Leelanau as soon as NJ’s opened on Sunday morning, expecting to read Sarah’s letter on June 10? Well, am I glad for having jumped the gun in this case, for the sake of the book review section, because under the headline “Underrated and Unappreciated” was a review of a new book about President Jimmy Carter, a book the reviewer calls “a measured and compelling account,” one that considers Carter’s weaknesses along with his strengths. 

The author of President Carter: The White House Years, Stuart Eizenstat, and the book reviewer, Peter Baker, both seem to share my own view, which is that Jimmy Carter’s presidency has never been properly evaluated. Instead, policies that might very well have led us to a much better world than we find ourselves occupying today were largely undercut by the tone of his message. President Carter’s unflinching honesty compelled him to deliver bad news, hoping America would see its errors and change its ways, but it was the stick, not the carrot, a call to sacrifice, not “You can do it!” optimism. And so, while almost everyone admires him for his post-presidential work, his accomplishments in the White House are generally forgotten. Now comes President Carter: The White House Years from St. Martin’s Press to correct the national memory. It’s about time.

When President Carter’s energy report came out in the 1970s, I was working in a university office concerned with environmental issues and so had a chance to leaf through that weighty tome in our office library. Before that, while I’d voted for him, I hadn’t been excited by Carter’s presidency. That energy report changed my attitude. I was excited by his ideas for energy independence, even if it meant higher gas and oil prices during a transition, and I began paying closer attention to everything he said and did. When he arranged a Middle East Peace Conference at Camp David, I hoped to see conflict permanently resolved in Israel. In general, I noticed with nothing short of amazement that when President Carter gave a press conference, he actually tried to answer the questions asked rather than wiggle out of answering! Incredible!

Despite the unsettled weather an east wind always brings, Sunday was a lovely day. It brought work, and it brought friends. And at day’s end, tired and happy, I took up again The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine. 

Normally Mma Ramotswe would be up first and make tea for her still somnolent husband. This she would place on the dresser at the side of the bed before going out into the garden to inspect the plants, savour the crisp morning air, and watch the sun float up over the horizon.

In our house, it is coffee rather than tea in the morning, and Mma Ramotswe has no dog, but otherwise the morning routine in the novel pretty closely mirrors my own. (See above.) Another morning, another day. But first, the restfulness of a sweet, green June evening.

Georgia Road Trip, January 2003

Yes, you read that subject heading correctly: it was a full decade ago, almost five years before I started this blog, that David and I drove south with our old dog, stopping in many little towns along the way. A couple old photo CDs from that trip surfaced recently, and in response to one of my readers, Bob and Carol’s daughter (who may not even know that her mother told me she, the daughter, missed my road trip posts from other winters), I’ve decided to take one day a week for a while to revisit vacation scenes of years ago. Ready? Let’s go! The year is 2003, and we are making the first of several pilgrimages to Plains, Georgia, home of President Jimmy Carter. Plains is a pretty small town, but for part of the year it is serviced by a short line train from nearby Americus. Here is downtown Plains:

Plains, Georgia

Whenever we go to Plains (most recently in January of 2010), we plan to arrive about midday on Sunday, just in time for a big Sunday Southern dinner at Mom’s Kitchen, a no-frills, cafeteria-style restaurant with some of the best home cooking in the South. Whatever you do, do not miss the sweet potato pie!!! But then, anything you have to eat there will be good. You'll leave clean plates behind....

Mom's Kitchen, Plains, Georgia

Then we visit the Plains Trading Post and walk around the old peanut warehouses. Red clay soil and red bricks—it all makes sense.

Arcade, downtown Plains

Slightly scary old warehouse sign

Nikki had a little trouble on this first trip, and we were terribly worried that she might not even make it out of Plains. What if she died and we had to bury her there? We took pictures of each other with her, and an obliging policewoman took a picture of all three of us. She was an old dog, but she recovered and lasted another four years, bless her heart!

The old pack pauses on the road

President Carter went to high school in this handsome building, now a museum. I would have loved to watch the first Obama inauguration here!

President Jimmy Carter went to high school here

Old Plains High School Auditorium

A short drive through the countryside from Plains takes us to Archery, the little community that was Jimmy Carter’s boyhood home. Here is the house, which is in my favorite Georgia architectural style.

Old Carter home, Archery

And nearby is the store that Carter’s father ran, the store young Jimmy worked in as a boy.

Old country store at Archery

Inside country store

We’re staying home again this winter, but that’s no reason not to do a little armchair traveling. And for follow-up reading, my book recommendation to go with today’s trip is Carter’s engaging memoir, An Hour Before Daylight. It’s a lovely book to read aloud to someone you love on a snowy, cold, Michigan winter night.

[This is the twelve-hundredth post on Books in Northport.]