If You Know Me, This Is Not News

Old school, Empire, Michigan

 

“Old School”

 

Yes, I am “Old School,” as the phrase is used nowadays – as an adjective for someone who clings to old ways rather than leaping (blindly, I would say) into every new technology that comes along and leaving the tried-and-true behind. Recently a friend told me about a family whose expensive home is completely “paperless,” and I was, frankly, appalled. Family members read books and magazines but don’t keep them when they have finished reading. Out they go!

 

My first thought was, how terrible that would be for babysitters! 

I was remembering a family I babysat for regularly in my old home neighborhood, a young couple who had only two printed items in their home, the current TV Guide and a tattered Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. The parents stayed out late when they went out, there was only one child, and the parents paid well, but the barrenness of their home environment made the hours heavy going. These days, though, I suppose babysitters are simply glued to their phones after the children go to sleep. It’s a different world….

Three letters went out in the mail to friends this morning.

 

Someone who is “Old School” writes letters on paper, buys stamps for the envelopes, and trusts to the United States Postal Service to deliver. (Thank you, Benjamin Franklin and USPS!) One day last week I hit the jackpot and found four letters from friends waiting in my post office box. Jackpot!!! Letter-writing is not about immediate gratification but about taking time, “spending time” with absent friends, anticipation, and so much more. Follow this link to Leelanau Letter Writers and see if you might want to join a slow movement.

Well-used and well-loved road atlases from my home shelves --

A road taken....

Someone who is “Old School” loves maps – maps on paper! Yes, everyone can access maps on their phones and, in newer model cars, on screens built into the dashboard, but when you zoom in for detail, you lose the big picture, and I want both at once! I also want to make notes on the pages. A 2015 atlas is not “outdated” for me; it is redolent of trips taken and sights seen, possible roads as well as those remembered, because dreaming over maps is also another form of armchair travel. There are places I have never been, except through books and movies and maps. 

 

The ivy isn't plastic, either.

Writing checks is really “Old School,” and I make no apology for paying my bills with checks. How many companies do I want to have access to my bank account to grab what they say I owe? How large a balance do I want on my credit card to pay off every month? Fewer and fewer people bring either cash or checks to my bookstore, and I’ve adjusted to the changing times in that regard (there’s no staying in business without adaptation to change), but I prefer to pay my own business expenses and home bills by check. When told by another business a few days ago that they have “no way to process checks,” I was more than a little annoyed by that flimsy excuse. They had no problem “processing” the cash I handed over, and the “process” is the same: check or cash, deposit it in your business account! I have not stayed in business for over three decades by passing bad checks and do not care for the implied – though carefully disguised – insinuation. 

 

Home library bookshelves reflected on glass of photograph

Finally, being “Old School” means loving books!!! Printed books, bound books, books on paper – the descendants of the 4^th century Greek Codex Sinaiticus. Handier than scrolls, much lighter in weight than stone tablets, books properly bound and cared for can outlast the civilizations that produce them. Take a look at the Florentine Codex, a 12-volume work on the Nahua culture in Mexico, before and during colonization by Spain, with a general explanation of what constitutes a codex. A proud tradition of literacy.

 

For me, having my own home library is essential to feeling at home at all. Besides books, I also have many physical albums of photographs. Although more modern people (more modern than I will ever be) are content to store their “books” and “photographs” in a “cloud,” make no mistake about it: A cloud isn’t some physical warehouse in the sky; it’s just someone else’s bigger computer somewhere else, and that’s not good enough for me. I want to know that my photographs will be in my albums every time I open the covers, just as I want to know that the books in my home library will contain the same words, in the same order, every time I open to see and read those pages. No one is going to hack into some distant computer and alter my favorite histories, novels, essays, or poetry books!

 

(I don’t want “virtual nature,” either. I want nature, the real thing. What is the point of living on earth if we have to live as if we’re on a space station?) 

 

As I say, if you know me, none of this is news to you, and if we’ve never met you might guess at some of it because, after all, I have been a bookseller, with an open shop, i.e., a “bricks & mortar” location for over 30 years. Are independent bookstores all disappearing? The people who think so are not regular bookstore customers. Does nobody read any more? The people who ask the question are not readers. 

Other questions people ask: “Where do you get all your books?” and “Have you read every book in here?” The answer to the second question is no. As for the first question, there is no single answer. Some books I buy, some are donated to me, some are brought in by customers for trade credit. I don’t have time to spend running around to auctions and garage sales, but occasionally I’ll be invited to take a look at a private library and make an offer – or simply take off their hands as many books as I think I can use. In the past few weeks, I had a chance to look at three different collections that needed to be downsized or dismantled. Classics, being classics, are always in demand; in a village on the Great Lakes with a maritime history and a beautiful modern marina, boating books are always important for my collection; and philosophy, while hardly a bestselling section, is one of my personal specialties, so I was happy to fill gaps that had appeared on those shelves. 

Aviation had to move over in the bookcase with military history ...

to make room for more boating books, with more in the way.

Philosophy got a complete reorganization ...

from A to Z.

Audiobooks

 

Now, before anyone takes me to task for my old-fashioned ways, let me say that I understand perfectly well that as we age, there can be problems with eyesight or even trouble with hands, either making the holding and reading of physical books difficult -- or maybe you just want to listen to a book while on your stationary bicycle --- so this “Old School” bookseller has jumped on a modern bandwagon with libro.fm for your listening pleasure. Your audiobooks won’t cost you any more on libro.fm than you would pay the online behemoth, you can choose an independent bookstore to support, and naturally I will be happy to have you choose Dog Ears Books. Thank you!!!

Old school, Maple City, Michigan

It's Travel Time

WHAT month is it???

In northern Michigan there are, besides weekend tourists and short-term vacationers, summer people and “year-round” people. The year-rounders who can afford to make a getaway in late winter or early spring, though, are not shy about doing so, and who can blame them? Some take February or March in Florida or Mexico or the Caribbean. For years, before and between the Florida and Arizona winters, the Artist and I made more modest forays to Lake Huron on early spring weekends when March rolled around, because cabin fever isn’t just about getting to an exotic location. It’s more about seeing different scenery and different people. 

 

“But we didn’t even have winter this year.” 

 

“We had a month of winter (January).” 

 

“No, we had ten days. That’s all!”

 

Okay, and now February, typically the coldest month in northern Michigan, has been bringing us daytime temperatures in the 40s! Along with many others, I feel a lot of ambivalence about this month’s weather. It isn’t right, isn’t normal, it bodes ill for the future – and yet, in the present, it makes life easier and certainly (because of lower fuel bills and no plow bills at all) less expensive, which is hard not to appreciate. And who can complain about blue skies? Besides that, for me (and I know I’m not the only one) this time of year is a minefield of associations. Anniversaries after loss are ambushes along life’s road, in that you know they’re coming – looming inexorably -- but not the moment or hour or the manner they will hit. So with all of the financial and emotional possibilities threatening, I found unseasonable February warmth and sunshine more than helpful.  

While we still had snow --

Blue view --

Thanks to books, I’ve also been spending a lot of time in Ireland and Scotland, France and Italy, some of it over a hundred years ago and some in more recent times. Fiction, nonfiction – one is as dreamy as the other, when it comes to exploring mountain villages, river sources, stone ruins, and local stories from local folks in faraway places. When March arrives, I’ll post my “Books Read” list for the month of February, with enough annotation to give an idea of each title’s contents for anyone who might be curious.

 

Leelanau County itself, though, provided me with antidotes to cabin fever. Monday, Presidents Day, was a bank holiday, so I had to go to Traverse City on Tuesday instead to take care of banking errands. By noon, though, I was already zipping out of town when the beautiful sunshine inspired me to detour to Good Harbor Bay, where Sunny and I walked on the beach! As close as I live to Lake Michigan, you would think beach-walking would be a frequent life activity for me, but somehow, unless I have company, time just seems to slip away. Well, not that day! I seized it!

Good Harbor, Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Again, the following day, Wednesday, the Artist’s birthday (he would have been 87, if still living), when I felt the need to do something special, Good Harbor was my choice. I'd first contemplated a stop at the Happy Hour for a beer on the way home, maybe even buying for whoever might happen to be sitting at the bar in the middle of the afternoon, but there was no way to include Sunny Juliet in that plan. And as it had on Tuesday, the sun was shining, the sky blue, so with sunset later and later every day, Sunny J. and I had plenty of time after I closed the bookstore at 3 o’clock to drive down to Good Harbor again, scenes of many memories and associations over the years.

Lake Michigan, Wednesday afternoon

Calm water

This is how I am traveling in February now. Books take me to other countries, and I take mini-vacations close to home with my dog, because, as the Artist loved to say, so often, “We live in a beautiful place,” and whatever the weather, every road of my county is saturated with memories, making it all the more beautiful. Travel time in my home county is any time, and any county drive is also time travel, my present brimming over with the past. 

Thursday morning fog -- beautiful!

 

Today’s postscript:

 

If audiobooks are your thing, please consider signing up to get yours from libro.fm – and choose Dog Ears Books as your bookstore. Your audiobooks won’t cost any more than they do if you buy from the online behemoth, but you will be supporting a small indie bookstore in northern Michigan. Thank you! And special thanks to those of you already ordering from libro.fm via Dog Ears Books!!!