Don't Throw Out the Baby!

Summer is BUZZING!

I get a little nervous when I see articles about purging our lives of "too much stuff," especially when the "stuff" is books. How much would be lost from the world if “old” books were to disappear! Even among those published in my own lifetime (hardly ancient texts but all too easily discarded without a second thought), I find beautiful stories and important ideas still worth thinking over and through. One striking recent example is a Harper Colophon paperback from 1964, Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Looking online for mention of this title, I see that I’m not the only one to find Boorstin’s 1960s thoughts pertinent in the 21^stcentury: This short article from the Atlantic magazine, 2016, is definitely worth taking time to read, though beware – it may whet your appetite for the book! 

 

On one of my other blogs recently, I wrote of Bruce Catton’s Reflections on the Civil War, a book certain to interest readers of Catton’s many volumes on the Civil War.

 

Then a 20^th-century feminist classic, Woman and Nature, by Susan Griffin, called to me to pick it up. Did I read Woman and Nature decades ago? (This is the new edition.) If so, how could I have forgotten it? Griffin takes us on a breathtaking, gender-focused guided tour through the history of science and society at large, relentlessly pressing forward and at the same time presenting each historical moment (and they tend to be quite gruesome) not only succinctly but also poetically.

 

Boorstin, Catton, Griffin -- these books written decades ago are all worth reading today, even if the item you happen upon, like my copy of Griffin's book, is a paperback with the glued binding so dried out that the pages come out one by one as you turn them.... 

 

Ah, but yes! New books? Lots of those worth reading, too, for every interest and every age group.

And tonight at 7 p.m. at the Willowbrook in Northport, Sarah Shoemaker (author of the acclaimed Mr. Rochester, the Jane Eyre story told from “the other side”) will present her 2022 novel, Children of the Catastrophe. Join us for reading, discussion, and refreshments following the author's talk. 

Sarah's will be available for purchase and to have signed. 

Northport -- the place to be!

5 September Books Not to Miss!

 

Everyone has a list – newspapers, publishers, book bloggers – but mine is directed straight at you, northern Michigan, and especially you, Leelanau County, because the talented writers in our region are unstoppable. Here are five new September releases (alphabetized by authors’ last names for the sake of objectivity, because I love all these authors), and you won't want to miss a single one.

 

Harrison, Jim. The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015 brings together classic Harrison essays and some never before published. With a deeply moving introduction by Luis Alberto Urrea, who describes the late Harrison as “a big river in flood,” and a jacket photograph by Dennis Grippentrog of Jim in leaning in his granary/writing studio doorway, this is a book no fan of Jim Harrison and his writing will want to live without. As for the delightful and insightful contents, you'll have to read the book yourself, but I say, Thank heaven for written words and their power to live beyond the grave! 

 

Hardcover, $28

 

Oomen, Anne-Marie. All you have to do, if you have any previous acquaintance with this author’s work, is read the title, As Long as I Know You: The Mom Book, and you know you’re in for an unforgettable ride. Who dares to tell the truth – that mothers and daughters are not always best friends? Anne-Marie doesn’t stop there, however, but goes on with a compelling tale of compassion, big decisions, and the loss that is, eventually, part of all love, somehow (as she always magically does) making you laugh -- and, yes, cry -- along the way.

Paper, $19.95

 

Perkins, Lynne Rae. Our own Leelanau County Newbery author brings us this month another charmingly written and illustrated children’s books, Violet & Jobie in the Wild. A mouse story! Mice, rather. And a chapter book, on the order of her marvelous Nuts to You! (Remember those squirrel adventures?) And lucky me, lucky us, because Lynne Rae will be at Dog Ears Books on Saturday, October 1, to sign books for customers. So mark your calendars now and watch my blog and Facebook posts for coming details. 

Hardcover, $16.99

 

Shoemaker, Sarah. By now you’ve been hearing a lot about Sarah’s historical novel, Children of the Catastrophe, but if you didn’t make it to the book launch party on September 6, never fear. I have more signed paperback copies and have restocked hardcovers (after selling out of those at the launch) that I'm sure Sarah will sign soon. Children of the Catastrophe is this year’s “Leelanau Reads” choice by our county librarians, and other book clubs will want to include it in their lists for the coming winter, too. It's both historical and timely reading -- and an engrossing family story.

Hardcover, $28.99; Paper, $17

 

Wheeler, Jacob. Angel of the Garbage Dump: How Hanley Denning Changed the World, One Child at a Time is nonfiction and a story that was very important for the publisher of the Glen Arbor News to tell. Hanley Denning, a former track star and the “angel” of the title, couldn’t turn away from children she saw picking through garbage in a dump in Guatemala City, hoping to find enough to eat to stay alive, and the nonprofit she set up, Camino Seguro (Safe Passage), continues to save the lives of Guatemalan children, although Hanley was tragically killed (in a road accident) in 2007. One person can make an enormous difference. 

Paper, $17.95

Dog Ears Books is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 - 4, from now until the end of October. 

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!

Something Accomplished Every Day

Soon coneflowers, later asters

There are days, I’ll admit, when getting the garbage bagged and out to the highway for early morning weekly pickup feels like a major accomplishment. That is, sometimes I feel competent and close to confident; other times life seems overwhelming and almost impossible. But yes, the puppy. Or, as I say when she jumps up and catches a tennis ball in the air after one bounce, “Yes, the puppy!!!” She is very athletic. And she is a reason, every morning, to get out of bed and outdoors, and once we are outdoors, I am happy to hear bees humming in the linden trees, to get busy digging new garden beds between throws of that tennis ball (or a Frisbee or just an ordinary stick), and after we work and play a while in the yard, we go back on the porch for breakfast, and she doesn’t seem to mind if I pick up a book for 15 minutes or so before we go outside again.

We think a deer slept here.

This has been a big week for Sunny and me. For starters, a couple of companies were doing autumn olive removal and eradication in our immediate neighborhood, and I signed up to have my meadow cleared of the scourge. I used to do it myself, spending two full days out there every June (here is a post from back in the old days when I regularly and actively managed the meadow myself), but something (age) happened along the way, and now it’s more than I can manage and three years since I last waged battle. Amazing how much faster four young guys with power tools can do a job than an old lady with hand tools! They were done before noon and did just what I wanted – no mowing, no clear-cutting, only the autumn olive taken out – so my meadow is still a wildlife paradise of native grasses, wildflowers, young trees, and lots and lots of milkweed. If in time it reverts to woodland, I can live with that, but I definitely could not live surrounded by an impenetrable thicket of autumn olive, so it feels great to have that job done. 

For future generations of monarch butterflies --

What does Sunny Juliet care about autumn olive? Why was that part of a big week for her? Okay, you got me there. She didn’t care about eradication of an invasive plant species at all, but she was thrilled to meet the crew! Very excited to introduce herself, so to speak! When she first ran up the driveway to investigate (they were working for the neighbors that day), the guys made jokes about who was in charge, Sunny Juliet or me, but when I got her leashed and sitting and then even lying down, one of them said, “You’ve trained dogs before, haven’t you?” Well, never one as challenging as Sunny, but we are coming along, step by step.

Friends stopped by on Sunday and again on Wednesday, and once again Sunny was challenged -- or I was, more to the point. She is very sociable, which is good; it’s the jumping we need to eliminate. She does, however, sit when told to sit and can be redirected with a toy or a treat, and so, aided by plenty of “high-value” treats, she did much better in puppy class this week than last, too. She is learning not to pull on her leash like a maniac every time the instructor approaches or another dog barks. Progress! Impulse control! 

 

I am also making progress in my reading of Progress and Poverty, by Henry George, and am happy to have at least one friend as excited about the book as I am. George’s arguments and ideas are different and exciting, but my friend and I are also enamored with his use of language. Here is an example:

 

Poverty is the Slough of Despond which Bunyan saw in his dream, and into which good books may be tossed forever without result. To make people industrious, prudent, skillful, and intelligent, they must be relieved from want. If you would have the slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must first make him free. 

- Henry George, Progress and Poverty

 

I’m happy to have discovered recently nature writer Heather Durham and to have in stock now two of her books, Wolf Tree and Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust, and I’m also happy to have the new issue of the Dunes Review here at last. Between new books and old, there is something “new” at my bookstore almost every day, so my days are never boring at work – and with a lively young puppy to train, mornings and evenings at home are never boring, either. Exhausting, sometimes, but never boring. 

 

Then there is my exciting bedtime reading, bound galleys of a novel to be released right after Labor Day, Children of the Catastrophe, by Sarah Shoemaker (you remember her wonder Mr. Rochester), a family story set in early 20th-century Smyrna (site of present-day Izmir), and you will be hearing a lot more about that book from me in the weeks to come. As for Dog Ears Books, which opened down south on Waukazoo Street from its current location in 1993, we are now, as of July 2022, launched into our 30th year. (Sometimes it pays to be stubborn through the hard times, even if it means hanging on by your fingernails.) Please note that this will be the final summer for my late husband's gallery, next door to my bookstore. He died with his boots on, never retired.

 

My Muddled View of Current Events

Wednesday started out early as "one of those days" -- beautiful morning with heavy dew (I went out barefoot to hang clothes on the line); horror statements emanating (again) from the White House; smiling friends’ faces on the streets of Northport; sad news that a Northport woman had died at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City; no long lines at Tom’s, where I went to buy a paper, but I’d forgotten it was 5% senior discount day and hadn’t gotten together a full shopping list; a man slipping into the bookstore before I was ready to open – I told him I’d be right back and ran next door to Deep’s, but found coffee pots empty; then a string of happy bookstore customers, including one woman who returned to tell me how much she loved Mr. Rochester – had about 80 pages left and needed to hurry back home to finish it! Up, down, the momentous and the trivial all mixed up.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After the usual morning errands, instead of sitting in the car by the harbor to read my newspaper ... or taking Sarah out somewhere north of town to escape village streets a while longer ... I decided to walk around with my camera (and dog) to look for happy sights. I needed some happy sights. One of the first I found was the smiling face of George Twine of Abundance Catering. George and I discussed the sad topics of death and politics -- how could we not? -- but were also mindful of our good fortune in being where we are, among familiar Northport friends.

Colorful blooms and blossoms everywhere in town, both nurtured and volunteering on their own, were worth stopping to admire. 

I would have photographed David Chrobak and his new dog, but his dog took exception to Sarah's presence, so we continued quickly on our way -- stopping, however, for an unexpected beauty down by the creek. Hushed, we stood quietly and watched.

You can tell dog parade is past and the start of another school year coming on by glancing around at all the parking spaces on village streets. Even Tom’s parking lot on 5% senior discount day was not crowded.

Author Sarah Shoemaker stopped in, and I wasted no time in handing her a signing pen. But why didn't I think to grab my camera and photograph her signing her book? Next time! (Sarah, be forewarned!) People are still coming in to tell me how much they love Sarah's novel. Sometimes someone takes a break to come in and talk about it, reluctant to reach the end. I know the feeling!

The other evening I finally settled down to reading something very different, a book by George Orwell I’d never read before and one I probably would not have appreciated in my younger days. In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell describes in detail (he must have kept a daily journal) his time in the Spanish Civil War, both how he felt at the time and how he looked back on the time afterward. There are also chapters in which he discusses the politics of the conflict, both the official versions put out by journalists far from the action and the very different reality he and friends confronted on the ground. The author advises readers not interested in politics to skip those chapters, but why would anyone not interested in politics be reading the book in the first place? Well, that’s my at-home reading, anyway, in the morning dark and before going to sleep. 

...I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. ... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. ... There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I believed that things were as they appeared....

What Orwell initially believed he had found among the Catalans was a true classless society, a society of “complete social equality between all ranks,” even in military fighting units.

At the bookstore one day, during a quiet moment, I also got back to a book on Camus that had been buried in a tall stack. Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena, by Emmet Parker, is one I need to start over again at the beginning, but opening to where I left my bookmark (Chapter 4, “Men of Justice; ‘To Err is Human...’”), I find the author focused on Camus and the French Resistance during the World War II, and the parallels to the case in Spain a decade earlier fascinate me.

Many in the Resistance, Camus included, looked on the end of the German Occupation as an opportunity for meaningful social revolution; as was the case in Spain in the 1930s, however, there was no cohesive organization uniting all the different groups known collectively as the Resistance. Another parallel was the war/revolution conundrum: Must revolution wait until the war was won, or could war and revolution go forward together? There was no general agreement on this question. Thirdly, in both 1930s Spain and in France following World War II, there was a strong sense that the Communist and Socialist parties “betrayed the revolution.”

In France, following the Liberation, the Socialists proposed bringing prewar leaders, including collaborators, into a new provisional government.

Camus categorically rejected this proposal. Acceptance of it, he was sure, would mean the return to an order characterized by cowardice, abdication of responsibility, conniving parliamentarians, and personal ambitions, an order that was merely [sic] disorder.

Not long ago I read a book called The Ambiguity of the American Revolution. Looking back on the American Revolution, the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Nazi Occupation and Allied Lliberation of France, I can’t help but wonder where we are now, in our country, on the long arc of the universe. One of my favorite movie lines goes something like this: “God loves you just the way you are ... but he loves you too much to let you stay that way.” It’s easy to point the finger at people we judge to be worse than ourselves. But how can we be better? That is the question life poses to each one of us.

Are you dead certain or hopelessly confused? I am both. Pretty clear about the world I want to see but confused as to what I can do to move it in that direction. Give in to rage -- and escalate division and violence? Take the nonviolent high road -- and allow hate to flourish? Would the methods of Gandhi have been effective against Hitler? Did our Civil War resolve sectional animosity? Some of my friends come down 100% on one side or the other, either total warfare or absolute peace and love. Do I wish to see the matter that clearly, or would clarity only be oversimplification?

 

I live in a beautiful place, but I am part of the “real world” of hard work and anxiety and conflict, too, and there is no “path forward” laid out for any of us in advance. We can only do our best to carve one out. And then, sooner or later, whatever we do, the grass covers our bones, and the next generation takes its turn. That’s true, I know, but ... it doesn’t tell me what to do while I’m on this side of the grass....

Our Busy Days and Nights

He stands by his statement!

Wednesday evening, August 2, was the long-awaited reception for my husband, David Grath, at the Dennos Museum Center, where his one-man exhibition, “Three Decades of Landscape Painting,” will be up through September 9. And when the $5 million new addition is completed and opened in late fall, as planned (or surely, by the end of the year?), the permanent collections gallery will include one large David Grath painting. (Not the one pictured below, but turn left when you enter the gallery, and you'll see the one I mean. You see part of it above, over David's shoulder.)

We stand together, thrilled to be there

It was a thrilling, memorable evening for us -- one we will never forget as long as we live. Owing to the many delays, pushing the reception back beyond the film festival to August, many of our friends had conflicts and could not attend, but enough people managed to get there to make a lovely, large crowd. To say that we had a “wonderful time” would be understating the case wildly. It seemed almost like a dream.

Gathered to hear director's welcome and introductions

I must not neglect to mention Eugene Jenneman, director of the Dennos, and his wonderful staff; the magnificent caterers; and our own dear friend Dan Stewart, intrepid videographer of the evening. We are grateful to so many people for making this happen and joining us in a once-in-a-lifetime celebration of David's work!

Artist David Grath and museum director Gene Jenneman

Videographer Daniel Stewart

An unusually early bookstore morning

The very next morning I came to Northport shortly after the crack of dawn to clean and organize myself, the bookstore, and the gallery for an evening author event. The big storm came during my 3-6 p.m. break at home, so I was able to get to the bookstore again to meet my guest author without dodging lightning bolts.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” indeed! The Leelanau Conservancy cancelled its 4-6 p.m. event in Leland, and a Northport woman called the bookstore to see if Gregory Nobles was still on for the evening. Yes, indeed, I told her. Some people arrived late, but eventually we had a respectable turnout for a lively evening of tales about John James Audubon.

Author Gregory Nobles

I had been struggling to put into words my general response to the book, which was that reading it was immersion in the America of two hundred years ago. Much more than merely a biography. Then as Greg began to explain the way Audubon placed each species of bird on the page of his huge elephant folios, picturing the species in its natural surroundings, I had a brainstorm: Just as Audubon put a species in its place, its own regional habitat, so Nobles puts Audubon in his cultural time in American history.

And again, many thanks are in order: to guest author Gregory Nobles; his wife, Anne Harper; to our new township librarian, Nellie, for loaning us A/V equipment for Greg's slide show; to my talented and overworked husband, artist David Grath, for setting up chairs in his gallery for the evening event; and to the intrepid audience who braved the elements to come to the bookstore, gladdening the hearts of author and bookseller alike. Great to have you all here!

Sarah Shoemaker and Bronwyn Jones

Two major evenings successfully accomplished, I overslept a bit on Friday morning and had to hustle to get myself to Northport in time to shop at the weekly farm market, do my usual weekday morning errands, return borrowed A/V equipment to the township library, and open by 10 o’clock to accommodate a conversation between writers Sarah Shoemaker and Bronwyn Jones. It is a bookseller’s privilege to eavesdrop on visiting writers as well as being entertained by guest presenters. Sarah and Bronwyn will be presenting an event onstage at Kirkbride Hall in the Grand Traverse Commons at 7 p.m. on Thursday, August 10, so check that out if you’re in Traverse City.

David had to be in his gallery early today, also, meeting people who wanted to buy paintings. For one woman, buying a David Grath painting at last was a dream come true. Making dreams come true, seeing dreams come true, having our own dreams come true – even in the dizzying blur that is our busy summer, we are grateful for the richness of our wonderful life. 

Summer -- a beautiful blur of days!