Summer Flowers

WELCOME!!!

First we had a flood in Northport, then a heat wave, then smoke-filled air, more rain and wind and surprising cold, and now we are back to practically perfect summer weather: blue skies and sunshine, with temperatures in the 70s. Idyllic times from a weather standpoint, and village gardens are responding with glorious blooms.

I had an author visit recently, Diane Les Becquets (pronounced lay-beck), who wrote Where the Water Meets the Sky, a novel set in the U.P., stopped by with her dog, Izzy. It was lovely to meet them both! Diane's novel, while not in the murder mystery genre, holds several mysteries and surprises. Suspense in a beautiful Michigan setting!

Diane and Izzy

Carlos

I’m being lazy this time around with a new blog post. My excuse, if I need one, is that I’ll be onstage next Tuesday evening to interview guest author Robert “Carlos” Fuentes with his book, The Vacation, a 2025 Michigan Notable winner, at the Willowbrook Inn on Mill Street (7 p.m.). It will be the fourth and this year’s last FOLTL summer author series evening for 2026 so don’t miss it if you’re in town. Carlos is a delight, and you’ll learn a few things, too, about the life of orchard workers in the 1960s.

For more bookstore and book news, see the most recent post on my other bookstore blog. 

And now I’ll write no more but simply include a short list of quotes gleaned recently from books I picked up in my shop:

From Adrienne Rich’s essay called “A Leak in History”: “For ordinary people to sing or whistle used to be as common as breathing.” (That's how we were in my family. I'm still that way.) 

From How to Imagine: a narrative on art and agriculture, by Gianfranco Baruchello & Henry Martin: “I decided to reorganize a couple of bureau drawers. I was running out of storage space and there were some things that had to be gone through so that some of them could get thrown out, and that’s not always easy since I have a curious kind of fidelity where objects are concerned. If something gets dropped or accidentally placed somewhere, I tend to leave it there and it’s difficult to decided just to throw it away or to put it someplace else…. It’s just where it is since that’s where it seems elected to stay in.” (Sort of how I live.)

From “Westward Ho” (the second Brown Dog story), by Jim Harrison: “The hardest thing for a rural stranger in a huge city is to figure out the relationship between what people do for a living and where they live. …In Los Angeles any sort of comprehension is out of the question….” (In Northport, we pretty much know what people do.)

From the poem “Dulce Siempre,” by Pablo Neruda: “Sin nosotros o con nosotros/lo dulce seguirá viviendo/y es infinitamente vivo/eternamente redivivo/porque en plana boca del hombre/para cantar o para comer/está situada la dulzura.” (So lovely!)

From The Book of Dead Philosophers, by Simon Critchley: “Bergson died a genuinely heroic philosophical death.” (That's what I've always maintained.)

From Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From an American,” July 22, 2026: “Fascism has always been a vehicle for frustration with a system that was failing the people. But it has never been a solution for fixing that system.” (Again and again, people fall for "solutions" that have proven false every time they've been tried!)

* * *

I won’t even include a political rant today. Either you see the blinding light of an oncoming metaphorical train wreck or you’re still blind to the desperate crisis our country is suffering. If the former (as I fervently hope), don’t give up! 

¡Nunca te rindas!

And don't stop counting blessings!

How Do You View It?

Weeds are looking weedier. This is chicory.

The Artist liked to call August “the rotten heart of summer.” It's the time when much of what was bright and blooming starts to look tired, tattered and seedy. The atmosphere reeks of pollen, especially that of Queen Anne's lace, rank smell belying regal name.

The more common name for late summer is “dog days,” the name coming from the Dog Star, Sirius, appearing in the sky close to sunrise. (“What is the brightest star in the sky?” my parents would ask little toddler P.J., and I would respond on cue with the answer they had taught me, “Sirius, the Dog Star!” Did I lisp the name?) Hot, humid, dense, thick, and heavy lies the air in northern Michigan during the dog days. 

The angle of the light seems changed (and probably is).

A time of thunderstorms and frequently the most uncomfortable stretch of summer, the dog days are also, paradoxically, a popular time for family vacations. My birth family—father, mother, three girls—always vacationed in August. The reasoning was that lakes were still cold in June, and if we put off vacation until just before school we could look forward to it for weeks. It was our summer's dessert. 

Sunny takes the seasons and their changes in stride.

When I look at the etymology for "dog days," I find the familiar story of Sirius but also learn that Swedes and Finns call this time the “rot month,” warmer weather making infections and food spoilage more likely. It seems the Artist was not alone in his thinking.

In France, traditionally, all family vacations were taken in August, which made it beastly hard on foreign tourists. All over the City of Light, shops were closed up tight. Where to obtain the daily baguette? Finally Parisians got wise and began staggering annual closures within each neighborhood so that every quartier had at least one bakery, one grocer, one cafe, etc. open that month. 

Restaurant workers and retail clerks in Michigan tourist towns are worked pretty hard by the time the dog days roll around. Many schools also begin before Labor Day, leaving many businesses short-handed without their seasonal student help. 

And yet also in August come many regular annual customers. For me, many are dear friends I look forward to seeing every year. Kids grow taller, graduate from high school and then college, get married, have children of their own. Grandkids arrive! And we older ones grab the opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives and wish each other healthy winters until another summer rolls around. For now, we’re still here! We’re still here!

More Friendship!

My friend Juleen and I RELAXED together!

Sunny and I had more company! A friend of mine from decades-ago Kalamazoo days, Juleen has made her home in Tucson, Arizona, for such a long time now that lush, jungly, green and humid Michigan was a visit to her past in more ways than one. Before coming up to see me in Leelanau, she reunited with old friends she had worked with years ago at a camp down in Arcadia, Michigan, and after our time together she turned back south again to Kalamazoo, where more friends awaited. While she was here, we enjoyed two leisurely evenings and two mornings together, and I shared with her some of my "wild nearby." She remarked on the look of so many Michigan gardens, with little to no space between plants: In Arizona desert landscapes, plenty of open space is left between plants to eliminate hiding places for rattlesnakes!

Sunny has become more gregarious this summer with each successive visit. She is finally starting to see visitors as playmates rather than as intruders. She was positively a pest at times, wanting Juleen to play, play, play with her all the time, but that was better than nervous, hostile barking, and by the second morning Juleen caught on to giving firm commands when she wanted a break. I was very happy that my dear friend and my dear dog got along so well!

"Come play with me!" Sunny kept saying.

Naturally, my friend spent time with me in my bookshop, also, where neighbor Clare obligingly photographed us together. The image immediately below is the only one that was slightly blurred, but I am using it, anyway, because I love its liveliness. 

We laughed a lot.

We laughed about all kinds of things!

And here is a photo that didn't make into a previous post:

My sisters and my dog!

Author! Author!

People who came to hear Tim Mulherin speak on Wednesday evening were glad they had made the time. His presentation was informative, sensitive, and entertaining (he has a subtle and wry sense of humor), and the audience was attentive and engaged, several people staying afterward to talk with him further. I was only sorry I didn't have twice as many people on hand to appreciate (and reward him for) his good work. I do, however, have signed copies of his book for those who missed meeting him and hearing him speak.

Other Books

Every American should read Robert Reich’s new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America. Every American, from yellow dog Democrats to MAGA Republicans—and also all Independents and disaffected voting dropouts. Every American. Much more than a memoir, the book is American political history from postwar 1950s to the present day. Not from someone running for office or married to a political party or in bed with large corporate interests, either! Robert Reich may be smarter than you and me (he’s certain smarter than I am), but his head is not in the clouds. I have the hardcover book in my shop, and the audiobook is available through libro.fm. If your library doesn’t have it, they need to get it. Read the book! Then share your thoughts with me, please, whatever those thoughts may be.

I also want to plug a couple new nonfiction books with special regional interest. The first is The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan, by Robert "Carlos" Fuentes, a happy Lake Leelanau story. 

The second, very different book, is Prison: The Inside Story — Transforming Lives as an Officer and an Educator, by Jack Myette, the story of his 25 years in Michigan prison work, which I only received and am beginning to read today ( Thursday, 8/14). 

Agricultural work and prison life are two very different aspects of American life, common only in that many Americans never experience either one. That’s one reason I am recommending these books. Another is that both titles come from Michigan authors. And the third is that I believe both can help us, in important ways, when we are considering and making choices about the kind of Michigan and the kind of United States we want to shape for the future—a message that was part of what Tim Mulherin (section above) said in the conclusions of his prepared remarks on Wednesday evening. 

What's ahead? Who knows?

There is no stopping change, but we can at least try to guide it away from treacherous shoals and into safer water if we are clear about what changes we can accept and which we absolutely don't want. Farm workers, like all who live and labor, deserve safe working conditions and decent treatment, the kind Carlos and his family enjoyed. And when people who have committed crimes must pay the price by losing their freedom, they should not also lose their humanity. (Prisons should not be "monster factories.") I'll get back to you with more on Myette's book when I've had a chance to read it. 

Goldenrod is exploding everywhere like silent fireworks.

Is summer almost over?

Don’t cry! Summer’s ending is autumn's beginning, a cooling-off and slowing-down in tourist trade (though teachers and others are gearing up, I know), and then before we know it we will have beautiful fall colors and a tide of new fall books.

Black-eyed Susans have not all gone to seed yet.

 

It's time for WHAT?

Mid-county scene, looking north

Looking south

 On the home front

Cucumber vines climbing screen

Parsley going crazy!

Chimichurri on pasta

Cucumber vines have blossomed, and parsley was so bushy and plentiful that I made a batch of chimichurri, tried it on pasta, and recommend the combination. Mixed in avocado the next evening for a tortilla chip dip, and that's good, too.

 

Although daisies are taking their sweet time, I have hopes they will be blooming soon, and meanwhile, I pore over catalogs and books on perennials and dream of paths winding through yard-sized gardens.

 

By the way, have you ever heard of ‘pour-over coffee’? Apparently, it’s a thing. New to me!

 

(That’s the pore/pour lesson. I’ll let sleeping dogs lie for today on lie/lay.)

As for Sunny Juliet, we are varying the tennis ball retrieval game, starting today, so stay tuned!

Always ready...

Now, "Jump!"

My recent, albeit modest stroke of genius

 

You know how you have a brilliant thought while driving or before falling asleep – sometime when it’s too much trouble to stop to write it down – and you think, I’ll remember that. And then so often you don’t? One of those thoughts visited me one evening, like a brightly colored bird that quickly flitted away before my eyes closed, and somehow (this is the miracle) I remembered it the next morning!

 

…I was thinking of the years when Northport was in the doldrums and people who accidently wandered off the M-22 loop would ask in whiny, put-upon voices, “What’s the matter with Northport?” I was sure it was just a matter of hanging on before Northport would turn around, and in the meantime I subbed at the school, picked apples, worked on a garden crew, etc. – all to keep my bookstore afloat.

 

…I was thinking about all the times people had said to me (as if contradiction were unthinkable), “No one reads books any more.” One young father, his toddler riding piggy-back on his shoulders, waved his hands to indicate my array of volumes and told the boy, “Someday all this will be gone.”

 

...I was thinking of when Borders came to Traverse City and what a fabulous bookstore it was (then) and how someone said to me mournfully (as if I had been trying to do something like Borders, when my bookstore idea was so very, very different), “Oh, you just can’t compete with Borders!”

 

Now in 2023 Borders is no more, everyone loves Northport, and people are still reading books. Lots of people! Many even buy books! Hence -- my anniversary motto for Dog Ears Books: 

 

“Disproving the skeptics for 30 years”

 

What do you think? “Three decades” or “30 years”?

(My personal life motto)

 

Authors in Northport

 

Tuesday, July 11, is the first of four evenings in the Friends of the Library (Leelanau Township) Summer Series, with Dave Dempsey kicking off the series this year with Great Lakes for Sale. Remainder of the 2023 series will feature the following authors and books:

 

July 18, Jacob Wheeler, Angel of the Garbage Dump: How Hanley Denning Changed the World One Child at a Time

 

July 25, Sarah Shoemaker, Children of the Catastrophe

 

August 1, Soon-Young Yoon, Citizen of the World: Soon-Young and the UN

 

All four summer author events this year will be held at the Willowbrook on Mill St., each one beginning at 7 p.m. The events are free, and no reservations are required. Books will be available for purchase.

 

Reminders

 

Join Northport booklovers for these events, visit Dog Ears Books Tuesdays through Saturdays this summer, follow “Books in Northport” and share it with friends. Thanks, all! Thirty years!!!

Taking Stock — and Putting Stock in Truth and Books

Although winter is still far in the future, there is a rich, fecund aroma of autumn in the September air, and the inevitable lull following the Labor Day weekend seems like a good time to take stock (before "going forward," as it seems we must say these days, adding that phrase to anything having to do with the future). So here is my very general report on the 2019 season for my life, my bookstore, my authors, and for bookstores in general in the United States. How’s that for biting off more than anyone will feel like chewing on a rainy Tuesday morning?

Our pack of three got through the busy summer without catastrophes of any kind. We kept up (if barely) with laundry and mowing grass and got enough sleep most nights that morning’s arrival did not bring excessive dismay. June, you may recall, was cool and wet (that’s when the grass grew at jungle speed), July and August more summery but only rarely too warm. It was a beautiful summer, really. 

Old Sarah, now 84 in dog years, staggers a bit from time to time but can also still run like the wind and jump like a steeplechase champion. Her dog mom and dad — that’s me and the Artist — have slowed down, too, but then we don’t even try to keep up with the pace of former years. Visits from family and friends are less strenuous, because our plans for the time are less ambitious. Being together is enough.

It was a good season in the bookstore. Being closed on Sundays was a good decision, and opening at 10 a.m. most days, instead of the officially stated 11 a.m., worked out well, too. (No one minds when a business opens early.) Having TEA events (Thursday Evening Authors) every other week, for a total of five, was a manageable and successful plan that I’ll repeat in 2020. And taking credit and debit cards for the second year in a row was a life-saver both for my business and my customers.

My authors! I would be nowhere and nothing without them! Here are the nine top-selling titles for August at Dog Ears Books:

1. From the Place of the Gathering Light, by Kathleen Stocking
2. Beautiful Music, by Michael Zadoorian
3. Downstream From Here, by Charles Eisendrath
4. The Leisure Seeker, by Michael Zadoorian
5. Letters from the Leelanau, by Kathleen Stocking

(Do you see some repetition of author names in the list so far? And we’re not done yet.)

6.  Dune Dragons, by Gretchen Rose, tied with Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit, by Michael Zadoorian

7.  The Marsh King’s Daughter, by Karen Dionne

8.  Lake Michigan Rock Picker’s Guide, by Bruce Mueller and Kevin Gauthier

9.  And in a 5-way tie for ninth place we have:

Even in Darkness, by Barbara Stark-Nemon

Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems

Leelanau by Kayak, by Jon R. Constant

Long Arc of the Universe, by Kathleen Stocking

and

Trails of M-22, BY Jim DuFresne

I’ll not continue to tenth place, because there are far too many in that position to list.

And now for the general state of indie bookstores across the United States, for those readers who may be interested. 

I had to do some digging on the question, and what prompted my quest was yet another wanderer one day last week bemoaning the disappearance of bookstores. His wife had given him a time limit of 10 minutes to look at books. He proclaimed that time constraint as he entered, along with his love of bookstores -- but then, instead of using his precious time to peruse the shelves, he came and planted himself in front of my desk and demanded to know: “How do you stay in business?” 

I really hate questions about business from curiosity-seekers! I love questions about books! I even welcome questions about other bookstores! But inquiring about the health of my business is like asking a cattleman how many cows he runs or querying an investor about the returns on her stock portfolio. (NYOB!) You’re here, in a bookstore! It’s open! The shelves are filled with books! I want to say, “If you truly love books, you won’t be able to keep your hands off them, and if you’re not interested in books, why did you come in at all?”

But back to his question: “How do you stay in business?”

My answer was brief and to the point: “I sell books.”

He then starts into a long “yes, but” routine about bookstores closing right and left, and I ask him where he lives, if he visits bookstores there, and if he buys books in those bookstores. He says he does. “Well, that’s how they stay in business,” I tell him.

Unfortunately for me, though, he happened in during a quiet afternoon lull and could not let go of his curiosity, so fixated on what he was convinced is the sad, sorry state of American bricks-and-mortar bookselling that he was blind to my treasure-filled shelves. Sigh! If my business were in decline — which it is not — he and his ilk would not be the cure!

But what how much evidence does he have for his belief? And what is the truth of this widespread belief, anyway, the claim I have heard so many times over the years and, yes, this past summer, also, that bookstores are vanishing from the American scene?

Each issue of my daily e-mail “Shelf Awareness” newsletter brings me news of various independent bookstores opening, moving, offered for sale, bought by new owners, and closing across the country. If I look beyond the newsletter, it’s fairly simple to find statistics on how many bookstores have closed during a certain time period, but I don’t find similar stats for the new bookstores that opened. What is the bottom line? Are we indie booksellers an endangered species, like the hawksbill sea turtle, and I just haven’t gotten word yet of my imminent demise? 

Here’s a surprise: There are more bookstores in the United States today than there were in the 1930s. When you stop to think about how much closer to home in general people shopped back then, that seems counterintuitive, which goes to show once again that what “makes sense” to us isn’t always how things are or ever were.

Next surprise: Between 2000 and 2007, over a thousand American bookstores closed their doors, for one reason or another. But between 2009 and 2015, the number of indies rose by 35%! 

Another surprise: Sales rose 9% in indie bookstores from 2017 to 2018. Who expected that back in 2007?

My view from the bookstore counter goes back now 26 years, and during the very first summer,1993, in the little shed right down Waukazoo Street (long gone now) from where I sit this morning, over and over I heard visitors to my little treasure island lament upon entry, “No one reads books any more!” Mind you, they were not referring to themselves but to people they took to be the majority of Americans. They, of course, did read, and that's why they were delighted to find a bookstore while on vacation. Some had very extensive private libraries  at home that held many more volumes than my then-tiny shop had on offer. But time and time again I heard the mournful refrain: “No one reads books any more!” 

Well, if that had been true in 1993 or if it had become true in any of the intervening years since, I would not still be a bookseller, because my business is not a hobby. There’s no secret trust fund behind it, paying expenses and buying inventory. What I told last week’s curiosity-seeker was my bottom-line truth: I stay in business by selling books.

Maybe we readers are tempted to think of bookstores as endangered and of books as disappearing because it seems to add value to what we love and allow us, as readers, to feel more special, perhaps even elite. I can kind of understand that, but at the same time I want to push back against it and object, albeit gently and lovingly, as follows: 

Dear friends, 

Personally written and illustrated, printed-on-paper, well-produced books are special, but it is not their scarcity that makes them precious. Books are part of our common human heritage, the earth’s history and cultures that have made us and continue to make us who we are. The more of us who share in that wealth, the richer we all are! Is that a paradox? Nonetheless, I believe it to be true. And you, my readers, my bookstore customers, are very special people, every single one of you! Thank you for another wonderful summer of books in Northport!

Love,

Pamela

“How Doth the Busy Little Bee…”?

Can you believe it’s practically the middle of July already? Is summer half-over? Vacation just starting or still a few weeks in the future? Anyway, the marsh marigolds have given way to daisies, yarrow, and sweet peas along the roadsides, and while coreopsis and St. Johnswort were a little late this year they're now making quite a showing, as are garden roses, making up for the iris performance that's over for the season. Cherries are ripening. Hay is being cut and baled and transported from the fields.

It was another very busy week in your Up North bookseller’s life (making hay while the sun shines) -- so busy I’ve already forgotten what happened on Monday. Tuesday, I know, brought Barbara Stark-Nemon to the library with her new novel, Hard Cider; Wednesday our little reading circle escaped vicariously to Vienna for a couple of hours (with the help of a couple book and three special guests); and Thursday, of course, Kathleen Stocking was my Thursday Evening Author at Dog Ears Books, where we had, as I had anticipated, standing room only in the Artist’s gallery, with audience spilling over into studio and bookstore. I have to thank the versatile Artist, David Grath, not only for letting us use the space but also for setting up chairs and for his beautiful painting on the cover of the guest author’s book! Sorry I don't have better photos -- I mean, really, sorry I don't have good, illustrative photos at all of the evening. There was just no room to maneuver.

As it was, I had to elbow my way past the overflow crowd to get the above.

Kathleen Stocking is, to resort to a word I generally consider overused but one very appropriate in this case, iconic Leelanau. On this particular occasion (she seems to have a different twist for every appearance) she brought along children of a friend to perform a skit illustrating the history of the universe! Who would have expected that? And after her talk, copies From the Place of the Gathering Light: Leelanau Pieces flew off the sales counter. 

Whenever I’m tempted to say the weather is or was “hot,” as it was on Wednesday, I am always reminded of a friend (you are gone but not forgotten, Chris) who forbade the use of that word in northern Michigan. He would allow his friends to say “warm,” when summer finally came after a long northern winter, but no complaining, ever! Whatever you call temperatures in the 90s, I was relieved when a cold front moved in Wednesday evening, so that the Artist’s gallery space on Thursday, even filled to overflowing, remained comfortable. 

If you missed the event, a few signed copies are still available, along with signed copies of Stocking's previous book (her third of four), The Long Arc of the Universe—Travels Beyond the Pale, which I highly recommend you read, also. In short, it was a glorious evening!

[Note on refreshments (skip if not interested): The event series is still called TEA, but I’ve switched to punch this summer. We had “library punch” for Jennifer Clark (Vernor’s and white grape juice — always good), and for Kathleen I modified a punch recipe that is so good that it needs a name of its own. Nancy Giles makes her punch with frozen orange juice, frozen lemonade, pineapple juice, 7-Up, water, vanilla extract, and almond extract. My modification was the substitution of Vernor’s for 7-Up, and because of that change I omitted the almond extract. Sorry not to include measurements here, but I kind of winged it on those, reducing the amount of Vernor’s and water and trusting on melting ice to make up for it. Tip on Note: Don’t add all the carbonated liquid at once, but add a more gradually as the ice melts to keep the kick in the punch.]

Friday morning was beautiful, too, and, with Bruce opening the bookstore for me, I treated myself to a leisurely late rising and unrushed garden-watering session. Forget Shakespeare’s sonnet about June — it’s July that is bringing perfect days to northern Michigan this year. Perfect morning for farmers market on Friday. Perfect evening for Music in the Park. Perfect all day long for strolling around the village to admire garden blooms.

Perfect days for relaxing with good books, too, so steal the time, one way or another. I look forward to these future TEA guests at my bookstore in Northport.

Authors and books still to come this summer

P.S. Today's title was taken from this poem.