Summer Is: Flowers, Family, Friends, and Books

Color riot in my front yard!
 

When the Artist was still with me in our old farmhouse, for some years I aimed at subtlety in my plantings. One year, for example, it was all white and dusty green. Then I came home from Arizona without him in May of 2022, and all I wanted in my gardens was color, a preference that is still very much alive. 

Bright colors! I need them! Especially after a Michigan winter, which was easy going as far as snow was concerned but had the usual short days with overcast skies.

During my son’s recent visit, we were out walking with the dog when I commented to him that this – July – seems like “real life.” What I meant is that in Michigan we look forward all year to summer, so while it is only a small part of the calendar year, our lives expand then to fill the long daylight hours. This year I’ve been keeping a list (somewhat haphazard, not nearly as methodical as the lists of Thomas Jefferson or Henry David Thoreau) of what I see emerging or blooming for the first time each day, starting with wild leeks in the woods in April. Now the black-eyed Susans have begun, joining daisies and coreopsis, and trees get in the act, too. 

My catalpa at home (at what a friend calls “Frost Pocket Farm”) flowered later than trees elsewhere in the county but has blossoms now, and soon the basswood will flower, and its branches will be – I hope! – filled with happy bees. And this year there were local cherries for Cherry Festival!

Overcast Wednesday morning turned sunshiny before noon.

My hiking parter from Arizona visited with her dog, my son and his wife visited, and next come my sisters on their annual northern Michigan getaway, something they’ve done every summer for years, bringing our mother with them many times, providing memories that sustain us now that she’s gone. 

 

I’ll post my “Books Read” list for June separately. For today I'm giving you timely information about Leelanau Township’s Friends of the Library (FOL) events for this new month. First, this Saturday, July 6, is the annual used book sale at the township hall, beginning at 9 a.m. You might want an umbrella this year and a few plastic bags, but the book sale is only one day, so you don’t want to miss it. 

 

Then there is the FOL Summer Author Series, every Tuesday evening for four weeks, beginning the week after the 4^th.

 

Tuesday, July 9: Don Lystra, with his third book, a new novel titled Searching for Van Gogh, a coming-of-age story set in 1960s Michigan. Don is the first presenter in this year’s series. I will be interviewing this beloved local author and will have copies of his book available for purchase, which he will be happy to sign. (In fact, I will have copies of the books of all the authors in the series at their respective presentations.)

 

Tuesday, July 16: Joan Strassmann, a summer Leland resident, brings us Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard, and who could resist that? The COVID lockdown may be over, but our love affair with birds continues. Strassman, a well-known writer on animal behavior, is Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Tuesday, July 23: Northport claims chef and author Abra Berens as one of our own, due to her history in Leelanau Township as co-farmer of Bare Knuckle Farm, established in 2009. After eight years as a farmer, she moved to Chicago to become a chef. Her two previous cookbooks are Ruffage and Grist; the new one is Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit – perfect for summer!

 

Tuesday, July 30: Traverse City’s Stephen Lewis, author of Murder on Old Mission and Stone Cold Dead, brings us historical fiction this year, with From Infamy to Hope, the story of a housemaid in 17^th-century Puritan Boston who is a victim of religious persecution, branded as a fornicator, and dresses as a boy to become a soldier in the colony’s war with the Pequots.

All events in the LTFOL Summer Author Series will take place at the Willowbrook Inn on Mill Street and will begin at 7 p.m. Admission is free. 

Note: On Summer Author Tuesdays, the bookstore will close by 4 at the latest, so I can go home to my dog for a while before returning to Northport for the evening event. 

 

It’s summer! Live it up! And Happy Independence Day!!!

Did you ever -- write a letter to a stranger?

Patience on a comforter

 

Good morning! And no, to answer a question about my question, politicians don’t count (although writing to them is always a good idea). I'm thinking of writing to someone geographically distant whose story you read or heard somewhere, and you’ll never run into each other at your local grocery store, but you thought, We have a lot in common. I’d like to know him-or-her-or-them. (There. I’m practicing using they/them as a singular pronoun. I need practice with that, I guess.) Have you ever done that?

 

Occasionally I receive notes in the mail from people I’ve never met or encountered so fleetingly that no memory image remained, because I have had a bookstore in Up North tourist country for 29 years and counting. (Thirty next summer!!!) Because some of my annual visitors keep track of my life on this blog. Or because someone ordered a book or books from me years ago, and we fell into correspondence for a while.

 

But it doesn’t always work out long-term.

 

Once, for example, I had a book order from a Frenchman who was teaching at the time in an agricultural lycée on an island in the Indian Ocean. We were both devotes of the entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre. He had ordered a Fabre book I had listed online (back when I did that sort of thing) and explained the reason that his mailing address was France: all mail went there first, then came to the end of the island where the airfield was, and eventually worked its way to the other end of the island where the school was. He sent me a little package of vetiver, one of the island’s chief exports. 

 

I sent something back (I don’t remember what), and things were going along swimmingly until I shared an idea I had: When he and his wife returned to France, we should set up agricultural exchange visits! I imagined having my French visitors stay in our old farmhouse and touring them around Leelanau County, introducing them to cherry growing culture and farmer friends in my township and beyond. They would have so many questions and would love northern Michigan, wouldn’t they? Then they could host an agricultural visit in return. We might have several of these from one year to the next -- as I imagined the concept growing.

 

But after sharing my brilliant idea, I never heard from my distant friend again. In retrospect, I think he must have thought I, personally, was angling for a free country place to stay in France with my husband, which wasn’t at all the idea, but I never followed up on whatever misconception or misunderstanding there must have been, and there ended our exchange. 

 

Another correspondence was more successful. My distant customer was a woman who ordered several books of old dog stories, and as it turned out, she was also a writer. When her next book came out, she sent me an early copy. Wonderful writer! That was years ago, and we are still in touch, albeit infrequently. 

 

So now, this morning, I’m kind of on the fence. Does a woman-woman letter-writing connection between strangers work better, especially when the women are roughly the same age? Or is there any chance at all that a young(er) male Scottish bookseller (my son’s age) would welcome hearing from an aged female colleague in the wilds of northern Michigan? He and my son have the same birthday, but surely the fascination of that coincidence is only in my point of view and would mean nothing to him. 

 

Really, don’t I already have enough to do without launching – no, attempting to launch – another pen pal relationship? That was a rhetorical question….

 

Happy Labor Day weekend! And remember to join us at Tuesday evening’s open house at the Leelanau Township Library, where you can have Sarah Shoemaker sign a copy of her new book for you, beginning at 7:30 p.m. 

 

Growing -- and Growing Up

Camera Work

I’ve been experimenting with a new shooting mode on my camera and also spending time cataloging the fauna on my home ground, going back to the latter post again and again to add to my lists as I see plants I hadn’t noticed the first time around or spring-flowering plants I'd forgotten. The plant catalog is a work-in-progress, and the photographs may play a bigger part in that one of these days. 

Quick Reminder

Monday is Labor Day (eek!!!), and the very next day, Tuesday, September 6, is the release date for Sarah Shoemaker’s new novel, Children of the Catastrophe, which we will be launching at the Leelanau Township Library that evening. If you missed my post about the book and want to know more, look here. 

The September 6 event is an open house – meet and greet, buy books and have them signed – refreshments will be served. Doors will open at 7:30, but there is to be no formal program, so stop in when you can. We hope to see you there!

Dog Stuff

The graduate!

Sunny Juliet completed her Junior Ranger class and received a certificate, which told me there had probably never been a possibility she would flunk. She was, however, the wildest puppy in the class, and her energy level is not explained solely by “She’s a puppy!” and neither does “She’s an Aussie!” tell the whole story. There is a name for Sunny’s personality: hyperarousal. The good news is that she is not fearful, anxious, or aggressive, only prone to overexcitement – and it doesn’t take much to excite her!

She made progress, though – we both did – and the day after her last class she was spayed and then on-leash and on-meds for 10 days of restricted activity, which was perfect timing, as far as I was concerned, because having a name for Sunny’s wildness led me to learn more. Two of the things I learned: (1) she cannot be “worn out” with heavy amounts of hard exercise, and (2) trying to “wear her out” will only push her to an even higher level of excitement (which explains those episodes where she decided, after a wonderful long run, that her momma was a sheep and needed to be jumped on from behind!). Hyperarousal has to do with stress hormones, apparently, and you can read more about it if you’re interested. I checked back with the class instructor, though, and she agreed that what’s important for Sunny to learn is how to relax. This was, in fact, one of the key elements of the 8-week class and the hardest one for Sunny to master. Her skills in that area continue, frankly, to need work.

The bottom line for me is to find more ways to exercise my puppy’s mind. Problem-solving requires focus, and focus means putting wildness to the side, so we will be trying a little something new soon, and I’ll get back with a report on how it works out. She (we) did complete that class, though, and she (we) never missed a single session! 

Books Read Since Last Listed

85. Busse, Ryan. Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America (nonfiction)

86. Taylor, Edmond. Awakening From History (nonfiction)

87. Johnson, Dirk. Biting the Dust: The Wild Ride and Dark Romance of the Rodeo Cowboy and the American West (nonfiction)

88. George, Henry. Progress and Poverty (nonfiction

89. Ward, Jesmyn. Sing, Unburied, Sing (fiction)

90. Marriott, Alice. Maria: The Potter of San Ildefonso (nonfiction)

91. Hollows, M. J. The German Nurse (fiction)

92. Brangwyn, Frank, illus. by Hayter Preston. Windmills (nonfiction)

At present I am indulging myself in a second reading of Shaun Bythell’s Confessions of a Bookseller and enjoying it immensely.

And that's life in and around Northport and home for me these days. Sic transit August!

Northport Loves Books

Virginia Johnson, my most recent TEA guest

[In which some old photographs appear....]

Summer of 2018 has seen two landmark literary anniversaries in the village of Northport: the 50th anniversary of the Leelanau Township Library on Nagonaba Street and the 25th anniversary of Dog Ears Books, born on Waukazoo Street and now back on Waukazoo again. A half-century and a quarter-century — noteworthy milestones in the life of our village, our township, and our county.

Volunteer-maintained library garden

Although the current Leelanau Township Library building opened to the public on May 20, 1968, Northport residents were investing in their library as early as 1856, when Rev. George Smith noted in his diary that books were to be purchased in Chicago for use by the “Town Library.”  Before moving to its present home in 1968, the library’s collection was housed at various times in an earlier Township Hall; in different homes and businesses; on the second floor of a local store; and in a house on Waukazoo Street.

Original Dog Ears Books

Dog Ears Books first appeared much later, opening for business on July 4, 1993 on Waukazoo Street in a little shed next door to the old Woody’s Settling Inn. (Who remembers?) Both shed and restaurant have since disappeared, replaced by Tucker’s, but after a stretch of several years in different buildings on Nagonaba Street, I am content to be back on Waukazoo Street, near the modest beginnings of my bookstore and next door to the studio and gallery of my husband, artist David Grath. 

Both library and bookstore have seen support for their endeavors increase over the years. The two book venues have loyal followers among summer residents, as well as the love of year-round residents.

One library fan, Pauline McClure, summed up her experiences as a former long-time volunteer at the Leelanau Township Library over the years by saying, “One of my greatest joys was patrons coming in and gushing over their favorite library or, at this time of year, returning from wherever and expressing how much they missed and loved this library, asking what would ‘we’ do without you, and so forth. The ‘we,’ of course, is a community of loyal patrons and visitors who realize what a treasured resource we enjoy in this small, award-winning library."

Appreciative library audience

A bookstore customer friend and Northport resident who also happens to be a nationally known writer, Sarah Shoemaker (author of Mr. Rochester, the biggest book launch I ever hosted), when asked about her favorite book find at Dog Ears Books, responded instead in general terms: “What I have found at Dog Ears is a warm welcome, an open mind and heart, good and wise advice on books and life in general. I love the author visits, the chance to sit and listen to an author read, and to ask questions and buy the books and get them signed. I love that there are so many books at Dog Ears that have a local connection.” The bookstore has a wide-ranging collection, in terms of both content and price, but naturally focuses as much as possible on Michigan history and fiction. When book-lovers like Sarah take the time to peruse and appreciate my collection, I am richly rewarded.

The late Mac Thomas launches his life story at Dog Ears Books

In the course of its history, the Leelanau Township Library has invited a wide array of guest authors for its Summer Writers Series in July and its Poetry Month events in April. Dog Ears Books has brought many writers to Northport over the years, as well, and has hosted its own author events. In fact, library and bookstore guests have overlapped more than once. One such was the late Al Bona, a good friend and a marvelous local poet. Here he is reading at the library:

Al Bona at library poetry evening

And so, while the general public may see libraries and bookstores as competitors, librarians and booksellers don’t see their work in that light. Our aims are complementary, and we often work together. Librarian Nellie Danke agrees with me. "We share many of the same goals and both want to promote reading, writing and learning,” says Danke. “The community really benefits from having more than one resource.”

(As a side note, I'll add that bookstore owners in various Leelanau County villages have generally regarded one another as colleagues, rather than as competitors. We call each other to inquire about things our customers have that we don't have in stock often send each other customers on general principle. That collegiality is a wonderful aspect for me of bookselling here Up North.)

The Leelanau Township Library has been presenting its  annual Summer Writers Series on Tuesday evenings this summer, and Dog Ears Books (as readers of this blog are already well aware) has been hosting a summer-long literary season called  "Thursday Evening Authors," TEA for short, to celebrate our quarter-century mark. See my sidebar for remaining events and visit the library website for theirs.

Under a beach umbrella, in a gently swinging hammock, or in front of a cozy fire while a blizzard rages outdoors, we in Northport count books -- and writers -- as valued neighbors. Northport loves books, and the Leelanau Township Library and Dog Ears Books are happy to welcome locals and visitors alike to indulge that love. As you can see from this sampling of images, we are making literary memories to last a lifetime.

Many writer friends pictured here

Postscript: The story of my bookstore would not be complete without mention of my loyal volunteer of many years, Bruce Bales. Without Bruce, I would never have had a day off in the summer! Bruce, Dog Ears Books salutes you and thanks you!

My volunteer "contingent," Bruce Bales

And I should not omit mention of Sarah, since so many bookstore visitors adore our darling doggie. Here she is a few years younger, charming summer visitors. And for those who were concerned, I'll tell you that she came through her surgery on Thursday with flying colors. The girl is good! Thanks to everyone who's been asking!

Sarah and friends

Twenty Years (20) of Dog Parades in Northport (or is it 21?)

Ho-hum. Another day in the bookstore....

What's this? Dogs going by?

While kids look at books, Sarah checks out sidewalk traffic.

Whose car is this? Cool plate!

Anticipation....

Then, somehow, I missed the very beginning of the parade! Missed the dog parade banner coming down the street! Did it mention "20 Years"? I don't know. I'm still working on the calculation myself, starting with the age of my bookstore (22), subtracting the three summers it was in Traverse City (19), adding back the two dog parades I know we missed (2) -- 21 years? I'm confused. Who's got the count?

Never mind. Here come dogs! This year's theme, "Woofstock," was truly inspired -- and inspiring.

Not all of my pictures turned out great, but I'm including a couple fuzzy ones nonetheless, because they are important parts of village life.

Northport Promise

Northport Wildcats!!!

Along the way, with dogs, dogs, dogs, were people marching with a Coming Attraction, the Leelanau UnCaged street fair the last Saturday in September.

The street fair is as much fun as the dog parade -- maybe more, in that it lasts all day long. But right now it's still August, and today was the day Northport went to the dogs. Beneficiaries of this year's parade fees were the Cherryland Humane Society, Black Sheep Crossing, and Silver Muzzle Cottage.

Sarah had a good time watching the parade, especially when she saw dogs she knows, like Laddie and Nessie.

Laddie

Nessie

We were also excited and pleasantly surprised to see Sarah's former groomer, Jamie. She is only Sarah's "former" groomer because she, Jamie, moved down to Grand Rapids. We miss her!

It's Jamie!!!

Omena has a big doggie presence. (Their mayor is a dog.)

And the dogs and hippies just kept comin'

Our librarian and her entourage and the Friends of the Library in the Stanley Steamer took the prize for bending Sixties slogans to their own agenda, and since it's an agenda I share, I loved their signs. 

Big dog makes big shadow!

It isn't a parade without a band

Neighbors and neighbor dogs

I hope someone counted all the dogs in this year's parade -- and then, too, all the dogs like Sarah along the parade route, enjoying the scene from the sidelines. 

Then the parade was over for another year, leaving behind smiles and memories. What a wonderful tradition! In Northport, we love our town, and we love our dogs.

Kirk in t- and bandana