Theory and Practice of Life

Crabbing upcurrent some evenings [walking in the river], feeling the force of the water on my legs and a night breeze in my face, I often think of myself as passing the house offshore. Up there in that room, as I see it, is the reading and the thinking through, a theory of rivers, of trees, of falling light. Here on the river, as I lurch against a freshening in the current, is the practice of rivers. In navigating by the glow of the Milky Way, the practice of light. In steadying up with a staff, the practice of wood.

 

-      Barry Lopez, “The Whaleboat,” in About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory

 

Carried away as I had been and still was by the writing, I felt a shock of recognition (a happy shock) when I came upon these lines in the Barry Lopez essay. This must be, I thought, the seed that Jim Harrison found and nurtured into a tree, his poem “The Theory and Practice of Rivers,” and then into the forest of his collection carrying the same name. Jim himself was a walker of rivers—the Sucker River that flowed by his U.P. cabin, the Santa Cruz (or was it a tributary?) outside the place he and Linda lived in Patagonia, Arizona, and others I don’t know at all in Montana. Somehow I feel closer to Barry Lopez through this bridge Jim built between us, and of course the Artist is there, too, with us, as one of the Artist's images along with a stanza from Jim's river poem appeared on the poster and wine label from the 1991 vendange Leelanau Cellars called Vis-à-Vis. 

(The Artist and I walked the Crystal River many times....)

 

***

 

But now, breaking news, sent by a friend in Tucson: There is a new threat to the Santa Cruz River, in the form of a 30-ft.- tall stretch of new border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, 25 miles of it, through the grasslands of the San Rafael Valley, where cameras placed along that section of the border have recorded an average of five pedestrian crossings a month, including Border Patrol agents, hunters, and hikers. Estimates are that there is one illegal border crossing in the area every 20 months.

 

Read those numbers again. Now once more. 

 

An article in the Arizona Daily Star by Emily Bregel reports that conservationists forecast “devastating” effects for migrating animals, along with a disruption of the hydrology of the Santa Cruz River. “‘Wall construction will bulldoze into a steep cliffside at the [Coronado National] memorial, which already acts as a natural barrier,’ said Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for the Sky Island Alliance. ‘The cliff where they're going to place new wall will be twice as tall as the wall itself,’ he said. ‘It really highlights how disconnected from logic this wall is.’”

 

Some pork barrel projects are simply a waste of money. This one qualifies on that count: “The $309 million contract for the border-wall project went to Fisher Sand and Gravel, a North Dakota-based company with a record of thousands of environmental violations and legal problems including a 2019 lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging poor workmanship on a 3.5-mile border-wall segment in Texas, which was privately funded by Trump supporters.”

 

But other kinds of pork barrel—and this one qualifies also on the second count—seem calculated not only to make money for a private construction company but also to set the stage for environmental tragedy and, no doubt intentionally, to spit in the faces of those who care.

 

In sum, the current U.S. administration has given a $309 million contract to a company with a record number of violations and lawsuits against it to build an environmentally destructive, unnecessary wall, accomplishing nothing of value. Hello, DOGE? Anyone home?

 

Oh, rivers, rivers! How the human race continues to desecrate you!

 

***

 

Back to my little corner of the world --  

 

(Not its permanent location)

The Artist and I moved from Leland out to our Leelanau Township farmhouse 24 years ago, and only now, inspired by having grandson Jack and his crew camping here recently, have I finally taken the plunge and gotten a fire ring for the yard. Sunny and I did not have our agility session this morning, due to rain and wet grass, so a trip to the hardware store fit in nicely, and I was also able to score some jar lids for the next round of rhubarb chutney, having made the first batch on Sunday.

 

My bedside reading stacks had gotten out of control, so it was good to finish three books in the last couple of days—Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, a mesmerizing post-Katrina true story; The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, by Betsy Lerner, a reality check for all would-be published authors; and, finally, the book of Barry Lopez essays quoted at the beginning of this post. I had gotten about 1/3 of the way through a biography of Judge Learned Hand before other books tempted me away from it. Will I ever read all of To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, by Edmund Wilson? Fascinating as it is, I find myself skipping around in the chapters…. And then there is Wilma Dykeman’s The French Broad from the “Rivers of America” series. I’ve only just begun that one and should really not have started it, with the others still waiting to be finished, but—no reading rules in my life! Taking classes, required reading, even teaching are all behind me now, and I can browse the endless buffet to my heart’s desire.

 

It's almost the 4^th of July! And the day after the 4^th (the 5^th, right?) is the annual Friends of Leelanau Township Library book sale in Northport, beginning at 9 a.m. Last year I was so busy and had so much on my mind that I completely forgot the sale, and the organizers were exclaiming to each other over my absence, as I am one of their best customers every year (if not the best). In the coming week the FOLTL summer author series kicks off with Karen Mulvahill and her historical novel, The Lost Woman, on Tuesday evening. I’ve taken a picture of the poster, since I didn’t see the list on the FOLTL website:

Planning an August bookstore guest

And sometime in August I’ll have as my bookstore guest author Tim Mulherin. (Note to self: We really need to set a date for that!) Tim’s book, The Magnetic North, addresses the idea that, as I put it, “Everyone wants to be here!” If you grew up in Leelanau County, do you regard newcomers as an invading force or grist for your make-a-living mill? If you’ve been coming up for summers all your life, are you dismayed or heartened by changes you see? Maybe you have just “discovered” Leelanau (I know it feels like that to a lot of people, some of whom have never been in Michigan before) and dream about living here someday. We are not the only area in the country experiencing growing pains, either, so Tim’s exploration of the issues will be of interest to just about everyone.

 

Before leaving the subject of books, I’ll mention that I’ve started carrying a few bilingual board books for little ones. So far I have English-French and English-Spanish but will look into other languages if anyone is interested. 

Now, breaking news, local—and good!

 

Saw this sign when I walked by today! Hooray!

More ice cream! Now there is Buster’s on Nagonaba, Barb’s Bakery on Mill Street for frozen custard, and Deep’s at the corner of Waukazoo and Nagonaba for your Moomer’s fix!

I wrote a four-page letter to a friend this morning, and almost all of it was about trees and wildflowers, appearances and disappearances of same in my little world. Will the purple coneflowers that failed to show up last year get back to me this summer? Time will tell. In the meantime, I’m enjoying every blooming thing in its time. 

 

Lately, the letters I write are less and less like chatty “newsletters” and more and more like rambling meditations, occasionally on a single theme. Do you ever read collections of some famous person’s letters? If you do, what interests you most in them? Their daily activities, family and social interactions, their reflections on contemporary events, or something else entirely? What do you most appreciate and enjoy in a letter you receive in the mail?

It occurred to me this morning that I may never write a book for publication—my doing so isn’t unthinkable, but neither is it highly probable after so many decades—and so my writing is of a very ephemeral nature, mostly letters and blog posts. Ephemeral and unremunerative, not to put too fine a point on it. But that takes a lot of pressure off. Metaphorically, I am scrawling messages and corking them up in bottles flung out onto the waves, in hopes someone will be entertained or someone's heart warmed, if only briefly. Sending a letter says, I hope, “I’ve been thinking of you. You were on my mind. Wish we could sit together in the shade and visit in person. If we could, here is some of what I would have to say.” Of course, if my friend were here, there would be no telling where our conversation would go. Even a reply to a letter isn’t always a response but the correspondent’s own rambling thoughts shared in turn. And that’s just fine! 

 

Last thought for the day: One of my recent customers thanked me for having the Ukranian flag in the window, telling me he was born and raised in Ukraine and showing me his tattoo (you can read about the symbol here), which he allowed me to photograph. Here is a statement today from Johann Walter David Rudolf "Jo" Wadephul , member of the German parliament and current Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, pledging European support to Ukraine. Why? Because all men are brothers. And because theory of freedom is nothing without practice. Will we Americans hold onto our freedom? That remains to be seen.

Where Do We Stand?

 

(That sign needs refreshing and straightening up, doesn't it?)

Oh, where to begin? 

 

With the weather? Warmup and sunshine, then soaking rain, and now, coming up, back to snow. The sunny days were a pleasure, but it is March in Michigan, after all.

Omena Bay, Monday, March 3, 2025

With books? Recently I set aside, unfinished, yet another, this one a biography of a famous author, because after 180 pages read I could not stand to spend another minute in that man’s life. A biography of photographer Edward S. Curtis, by contrast, held me to the end, by which time I concluded that his life was as tragic as that of his subjects, except that he did manage to get his work done, and the tribes he photographed appreciated his work, and he had not succumbed to despair at the end but had in mind yet another project, though that late-life idea was destined not to be realized. Amazing perseverance! An interesting side note in Curtis’s was his correspondence with Belle da Costa Greene, the subject of a book of historical fiction I read very recently (The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray) and whose biography (An Illuminated Life, by Heidi Ardizzone), I now have in my to-read stack. Curtis and Greene were connected through J. P. Morgan, who employed Greene as his personal librarian and who finally underwrote Curtis’s expenses for his 20-volume work, although Curtis himself received no pay for all the years he put in.

 

With the dog? I can hardly “begin” with her now, my paragraph above on books having gone on as long as it did, but I know my readers enjoy having dog notes squeezed in among the books, so, first, here she is in black and white, looking more like our old Sarah than she generally appears to me. One morning I told her, “You are all my dogs,” meaning that she has inherited my love for them and that I see them all now in her. Isn’t that the way it is with dogs, when you come right down to it?

Sunny looking like Sarah --

We got to the dog park two days in a row, too, first with hard-packed ice underfoot and then with melting snow and the reappearance of mud. The dogs, of course, don’t care. They could not care less! (And isn’t it strange how easily Americans in general—I have to watch myself!—have slipped into saying, “I could care less,” when they mean exactly the opposite?) At home, we had not only morning Frisbee time but even the return of tennis ball play one sunny afternoon!

 

Meeting friends!

So there you have weather, books, and dogs, and now I’m going to dip into politics, so if you can’t stand the heat, you can exit the kitchen now. Fair warning!

Late winter thaw

The nation-wide economic boycott of online and big box giants set for Friday, February 28, was largely overshadowed by the shameful spectacle that took place at the White House. There was a pretty strong view, anyway, that a one-day boycott would have no effect whatsoever, either economically or politically, and yet, in solidarity with the idea, I finally made a plan to support it in my own way, because it felt good to be doing something at last. And then I realized, from all the feedback I received to my announcement, that other people felt the same way, that there is a great hunger for ways to take action, other than making repeated calls to our so-called Congressional “representatives” who could not care less than they do about our opinions or what we would like to see happening in Congress. (What we would like to see: evidence of backbone!)

 

So that felt good, but what next? The answer came when a friend asked me if I wanted to go with her to a public protest in Traverse City on March 4. We would be protesting not only the administration’s shameful treatment of the president of Ukraine but every other destructive and hateful thing he has done in the last – is it possible that it’s only been six weeks???!!!

 

The thing is, I have never before taken part in a public demonstration. Mind you, I was paying attention in the Sixties and arguing against the war in Vietnam, and I certainly supported civil rights in principle, but I never marched once. And I was young back then. Now? Well, I can do it for my great-grandchildren!

 

My friend and I were nervous before we went. We didn’t know what to expect. As it turned out, the only thing that would have made the experience more positive than it was would have been a larger crowd, but there had been at least two other protest gatherings earlier in the day, and some of the people standing with us on Bayshore Drive at the intersection with Union Street in Traverse City had been to all three demonstrations, and while the rain held off (thank heaven!) it was a gloomy, grey day, not to mention cold for a couple of aging “protest virgins” who had forgotten their gloves.

 

But what a wonderful experience it was! 

Wearing my knitted cap from 2016--do you remember?

The vast majority of motorists who passed our intersection honked car horns in solidarity, waved, gave us thumbs up, and even cheered. (In the half-hour we stood there with our signs, only half a dozen people at most were negative.) It felt good to be standing in public for our principles, and to be affirmed by people passing by was icing on the cake. At one point, I was near tears, I felt such love for my country and for my fellow brave Americans out there in the cold wind! It was a happy, joyful feeling!

 

Will public demonstrations make any difference at all? 

 

We know protests will not change the positions or alter the plans of the divider-in-chief in the Oval Office, but he is not our target audience. We want to motivate Democrats in office to unify and raise their voices, to motivate Republicans with eyes open to join in bilateral resistance, and to show any Americans still on the fence—or wavering in their support of the administration as they see the gutting of programs necessary to their livelihood or even to their lives—that they are welcome and that we can prevail if we join together. 

 

I did not (how could anyone think I would?) watch or even listen to Tuesday evening’s hour and a half rant. And on Wednesday morning, why would I “read the full transcript” or “watch highlights”? I know all too well the “state of the union”: It is in a perilous state, brought low by the divider-in-chief whose bloviating fantasies illuminate nothing, ever. What would that 90 minutes provide? Boasting and blaming, threats and lies and name-calling. Why would I subject myself to that yet again, even after the fact? 

 

First thing Wednesday morning, though, I did watch Senator Elissa Slotkin’s entire rebuttal (link in list below), and I was so proud that she is a Michigan senator! I am looking toward not the haters but the helpers, not the dividers but to those who would reunite us, those with a positive vision of an American future that is sometimes these days all too hard to see. 

 

As for those who disagree with me, I am through playing Whack-a-Mole. Put the pieces together—or don’t. Here are some places to start, if you care to see what I see. I have chosen a variety of sources and have made each choice for clarity and basis in fact.

 

Fact-checking the State of the Union address.

Senator Elissa Slotkin rebuts president.

War in Ukraine.

 

Full meeting with Zelensky in the White House.

 

Lech Walesa weighs in.

U.S.-Russia-Ukraine recent history

 

Current administration’s ties with Russia.

Russia and U.S. cybersecurity.

Who is Vladimir Putin?

 

What does Musk’s own chatbot say?

DOGE savings?

 

Cost of president’s trip to the Superbowl.

What tariffs could cost Americans (from Fox).

Ontario’s response to tariffs against Canada.

What constitutes an “illegal protest” in the U.S.?

 

Voter fraud, facts and myths.

Beautiful Michigan!

Beautiful Northport!