July in its infinite variety

Summer days. They can be good days from morning ‘til night, somewhat uncomfortable (we don’t often say “hot” in northern Michigan), or bring crop-damaging storms. “What’s it like here in the winter?” visitors ask. Well, what’s it like now, in the summer? It varies – enormously!

Do you tell yourself you’ll do such-and-such when you “have more time”? You never will. Each day that slips away is forever gone. That why those of us who work all summer don’t want to waste a moment of precious days off.

Bruce worked in the bookshop for me on Wednesday, giving me a chance to drive down past the Glen Lake Narrows to pick up books from Leelanau Press. The dunes were lovely, the water sparkling. It could have been a good beach day. Instead, my patient canine companion and I went home to her once-a-month bath, after which we lolled around outdoors in the shade, enjoying the breeze. Well, she lolled. I hung laundry on the line, clothes and towels that dried so fast in the hot wind that I was able to run through the routine more than once.

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Here I want to backtrack for a minute to the “different roads” theme of the other day, with a few more images of Leelanau's summer variety, today showing you small, hidden-away waters, because sometimes I think I love these as much if not more than the magnificent lakes. They are modest secrets, but you can find them if you look. 

Along one of our favorite back roads this month I also discovered a wildflower I haven’t seen for years, on this road or anywhere else. The stalk is slender and tall, standing at the height of my hip; the flower is bright but very small. Because it is neither large nor massive, the plant is easily overlooked (so perhaps it’s been there for years, and I was simply missing it), even when one is on foot.

I remembered seeing it once before, and I can even conjure up the immediate surroundings but cannot put that mental picture on a larger map. The name of the plant eluded me until the end of the day, when suddenly I exclaimed, “Deptford pink! That’s what it was!” Much to David’s bemusement. Another flower....

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Another change of topic – Thursday’s guest author:

Kelly Fordon was charming, relaxed, and personable. We were a small group but entirely caught up in her reading, though I had already read and so knew what was going to happen at the end of that first surprising story. It is always a pleasure to meet an author whose writing I have admired, and I was very grateful to the weather gods for backing that heat off and giving us more comfortable temperatures for a bookstore event.

Kelly signed a few extra copies of Garden For the Blind, and Karen Trolenberg stopped by near the end of the day with a couple more copies of Flight of Megizzewas, which she kindly signed.

July light is heart-breakingly lovely. July is generous in giving us long days, each  unique and never to come again. I hope all of you are able to make the most of your July 2016, wherever you are.

Try a Different Path Once in a While

Nothing has been planted along our old driveway. What grows there is of Nature’s choosing. Like any more carefully landscaped drive, however, its flowers change with the season’s advance. Just now it is the turn of gaudy wild sweet peas, happy daisies, bright yellow St. John’s-wort, delicate, pale bladder campion, and the sweet lavender blue rays of chicory. Early in the morning, greeting the sun, chicory flowers are both wide-eyed and eye-catching. Unfortunately, I left my camera's memory card in the card reader at the shop so couldn't photograph the chicory this morning as I'd planned.

Monday inserts (after original posting:

A woods road presents a very different aspect, mostly green now that the canopy has filled in and the blooming of spring ephemerals long past. But there are ferns, and you may find the wild rose-like petals that promise blackberries in the near future. Little wild geraniums, storksbill and cranesbill, seem to be happy anywhere, in the sun or in the shade.

Beaches, bogs, wandering creeks, lakesides – each habitat offers something different out of nature's variety. The same diversity holds true with fiction. Each genre, in all different lengths, presents a different kind of reading experience, all of them valuable.

Two of my Michigan guest authors in July are writers of adult fiction, and both their new books are short story collections. Some bookstore customers, I know, resist short stories, not wanting to meet and have to get to know new characters in every new “chapter,” as it were, but Kelly Fordon and L.E. (Lynn) Kimball have demolished that objection by linking their stories, so that the overall effect in each case is very similar to that a reader experiences in reading a novel.

Garden for the Blind, by Kelly Fordon, is set in the contrasting worlds of suburban materialism and urban decay of southeast Michigan. (Here is a good review.) Alice can perhaps be thought of as the central character, for it is Alice we meet first, as a child, in “The Great Gatsby Party,” and it is Alice and her daughter’s story, “Garden for the Blind,” that conclude the volume, though the cast of characters as a whole is large and diverse. This is a book that overcomes your aesthetic distance (and, at times, moral repugnance) gradually, pulling you in slowly and almost imperceptibly, until you catch your breath, literally, having arrived at empathy.

L.E. Kimball’s Seasonal Roads is set in the Upper Peninsula and features three generations of U.P. women. I reviewed this book in the spring but want to reiterate here the sense the stories give of a longer work, what some would call a “nonlinear novel.”

Wayne State University, the publisher of both these books, does not publish novels. They do publish short story collections. But what I’m telling you is that if you’re a reader of novels who generally eschews short stories, you need to give these two WSU titles the benefit of the doubt. Either one is an excellent introduction to the high literary quality of today’s Michigan fiction. The authors are coming to Dog Ears Books not only because they want to come but because I am able to recommend their work without qualification.

Kelly Fordon is coming to Dog Ears Books on Thursday, July 14, from 1-3 p.m., to read from her book and sign books for customers.

Lynn Kimball will be here the following week, on Friday, July 22, from 1-3 p.m. She also will read excerpts and sign books.

I hope all local readers of fiction will decide to give these short story authors a hearing and reading. It is a privilege to have them come to Northport.

With Holiday, Real Summer Begins

Declaring independence!

In Northport, Beautiful 4th of July Weekend

Most years past in Northport, we've seen an influx of tourists and summer residents for Memorial Day weekend, followed by quiet weeks through June until the 4^th of July, but this time around summer seemed to kick off early, with more visitors in June than I ever remember before. Apparently word has gotten out that June is a heavenly month Up North. And this yea's 4th of July weekend could not have been lovelier. Weather was warm enough for the beach, not hot enough to be uncomfortable, with refreshing morning and evening breezes.

Kathleen Stocking signs book for Ty Wessell

My first bookstore event of the summer season was a signing of The Long Arc of the Universe, by Kathleen Stocking, on Sunday, July 3. Once again, I neglected to have my picture taken with my guest author! When will I learn to make this a routine part of every author event? Well, the good news – and not just for my memory book – is that Stocking will return for a second event in August. We will set up chairs in David Grath’s gallery next door, and the author will give a talk, with an opportunity for audience questions -- and I guarantee a lively, stimulating evening! More on this subject later....

Wildflowers on porch table

At home

There is never enough time for sitting at home on the front porch, but I enjoy every morning and evening minute of it that I have. Over the holiday weekend I re-read Letters from the Leelanau, by Kathleen Stocking, and Drummond Girls, by Mardi Link, then read Kelly Fordon’s short story collection, Garden for the Blind. Not only is Kelly my next guest author (Thursday, July 14, 1-3 p.m.), but she has been getting well-deserved rave reviews for this book. I look forward to meeting her and hosting her event, and I hope all my local writer friends will be able to make it to her reading. I'll have more to say about her stories, too, as we get closer to her visit. 

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Classics

Back in Northport

One day, during the usually midafternoon lull in the bookstore, I got to musing about phrases people use. For instance, people who come in out of curiosity, not necessarily because of an interest in books, usually insist that they don’t need assistance or information because they are “just browsing.”

Okay, I learned from my mother at an early age about telling salespeople, “Thanks, I’m just looking.” But looking, as I see it, is not browsing.

You can look with hands in pockets. You can look while in continuous motion, without ever coming to a halt. You can look pretty quickly -- and be out the door again in a flash! As I have heard tourists say to friends on the sidewalk, more than once, “It’s just books in there.” (Yep, pretty much just books, which explains why I call it a bookstore and why its name is Dog Ears Books.)

Browsing is something different.

Bookstore browsing is done with hands as well as eyes. It involves touching books, taking books from the shelves, opening book covers, sometimes reading a few pages, maybe even finding a nearby chair to investigate more closely a volume that has captured the eye and hands. A taste here, a taste there, the chewing-over of a thought or idea. Because unless you are already familiar with the book that catches your eye – and know that you want it – the title on the spine won’t tell you all that much. It’s what’s inside that counts, and the insides of books are a lot more than merchandise to be judged at a glance.

Now I know that I am not, single-handedly, going to change Americans’ use of the English language. “I’m just browsing” means, to most of the people who use the phrase in my bookstore, “I’m just taking a look around. I probably won’t buy anything. Don’t bug me!” I get it. Not that I bug anyone in my bookstore. There is no high-pressure sales force at work here. I offer once, so no one will feel ignored, and that’s that.

Browsers don’t have to explain themselves to me because their behavior tells the story. Like philosophers in the halls of academe, speculating on the dreams of dogs instead of obsessing about fringe benefits and retirement packages, browsers are my people. We understand each other. Looking is not enough for us. Rather, we look to lose ourselves in books.

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Random bovine

I’d just drafted the paragraphs above about browsing (originally with introductory material about horses and cattle browsing and grazing, just because I love horses and cows, but it was kind of a reach) when a mother and daughter walked in the door, and the mother exclaimed, “I’ve never been in a real bookstore before! I feel like I’m in a movie!” She had, as it turned out, been in large chain bookstores, but not in any quirky little independent place like mine, and her delight delighted me.

And they browsed! The daughter bought an art book! As they were leaving, I told them they had taken a new turn in their lives, and the daughter replied, “Yes, now we’ll never not go into a bookstore!” Music to my ears!

Bookstore bulletin board

A Pause as Time Rushes By

I hope everyone’s summer is off to a good start, and I hope it doesn’t race by too, too fast, though I already know that it will. Summer is like that. But we love it!

Tuberose begonias

Exciting Week in So Many Ways

With so many different avenues of excitement, it’s hard to know where to start, but a picture of Sarah is a good introduction to almost any story, so there she is, above, soaking up attention from her aunt and grandma, i.e., my sister Deborah and mother Nora, who came to visit from Illinois Sunday through Friday. Sarah gets two-three times as many walks when Aunt Deborah, a dog person without a dog of her own at this time of life, is on the scene.

We had many quiet, peaceful suppers on the front porch and also a few breakfasts out and one restaurant dinner. My mother’s Thursday dinner was the fanciest, while fanciest breakfast on Friday was Deborah’s.

Way before last weekend began, I came to the bookstore one morning to find a bouquet of enormous peonies on my doorstep. Now it’s Friday, a week later, and the are still gorgeous. What a treat! At home, I have only one peony bud beginning to open, so the magnificent Japanese-appearing blooms were (and still are) very exciting. They also have a beautiful natural perfume.

It’s been an exciting week for selling Kathleen Stocking’s newest book, The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale, and Jim DuFresne’s The Trails of M-22, my two current bestsellers. Then on Thursday came delivery of the latest Lynne Rae Perkins, Frank and Lucky Get Schooled. “Is it like Christmas?” the UPS man asked when he brought in the boxes. Every day in a bookstore is like Christmas!

Then toward the end of Thursday afternoon, Kathleen Stocking herself made a surprise visit, and I had a chance to introduce my mother and sister to her before she and I got into a deep shop talk conversation. Unfortunately, thanks to the shop talk, I didn’t think of taking my relatives’ picture with the author until after she had left! Kicked myself for missing that opportunity.

July is going to be a busy, busy month, with four authors on the bookstore calendar. See the list in the right-hand column for dates and times. Latest addition to the lineup is Kelly Fordon, whose “novel-in-letters,” Garden for the Blind, was chosen as a 2016 Michigan Notable Book, was a finalist for the Midwest Book Award, the IPPY Award, Foreword Reviews' INDIEFAB Award and the Eric Hoffer Award. In addition it received an honorable mention at the New York Book Festival. My northern Michigan writer friends will definitely not want to miss Kelly’s book or her appearance in Northport -- or any other of my special visiting authors and their wonderful books.

Constant companion -- she would read if she could!