What are you missing? What do you love?

Taking a break from the hurdles--with her beloved tennis ball!

“You haven’t been posting as much about Sunny on your blog lately,” one bookstore browser observed recently.  In the old days of Dog Ears Books and Books in Northport, the Artist and our dog Sarah were the stars. 

Sarah in the bookstore

Now (though not in the bookstore) it’s Sunny who is my blog star, so here she is opening the show today before I go on to my usual bookish meanderings. Sunny Juliet is still a Naughty Barker, nowhere near the almost-perfect bookstore dog that her predecessor, Sarah, was for 13 years, but she and I are pretty bonded, her recall improves steadily, and she is the stronger member of our one-person, one-dog agility team, no question about it.

Gli Etruschi e io

La campagna

“The Etruscans and me”? Not really. Not me, personally. It’s D.H. Lawrence and the Etruscans I encountered in the author’s posthumously published book, Etruscan Places. But the title captured my attention, because whether a book is fiction or nonfiction, place-based literature, stories and experiences anchored in a village or a region, is what I find most compelling. 

Il lago

Etruscan Places, in addition to being very much anchored in place, is also very personal to the author. Unlike his fiction, this book’s style is more like letters written to a friend, with emotional responses accompanying Lawrence’s observations. He doesn’t only write about the Etruscan tombs, either, but includes by name all the wildflowers along the way, which (naturally!) I found charming. Judgments on history and the present day also begin on the very first page:

 

The Etruscans, as everyone knows, were the people who occupied the middle of Italy in early Roman days, and whom the Romans, in their usual neighbourly fashion, wiped out entirely in order to make room for Rome with a very big R. They couldn’t have wiped them all out, there were too many of them. But they did wipe out the Etruscan existence as a nation and a people. However, this seems to be the inevitable result of expansion with a big E, which is the sole raison d’être of people like the Romans.

 

Lawrence was not a fan of the Romans. He saw the Etruscans as a people living attuned to Nature (and was instantly drawn to them when he first saw some of their artifacts in a museum),  the Romans as a foe of that sweet life, wanting only to crush and dominate it. Whether he is comparing paintings or architecture, he sees everywhere the same contrast. The “impious pagan duality,” a phrase he uses only in order to reject it, “did not,” he claims, “contain the later pious duality of good and evil.” He sees the Etruscans as a more natural people, more accepting of death—which they saw as a continuation of life on earth, rather than existence in an entirely different kind of realm—and at the same time much more playful than the Romans who came later. 

 

Besides his observations on the tombs and the art in the tombs and his personal judgments on the art and how it compares to Greek and Roman and modern art, Lawrence notes wildflowers he sees along the way, what he and his companion saw in the villages and the countryside, and the different mood called forth by each place.

 

It is very pleasant to go down from the hill on which the present Tarquinia stands, down into the valley and up to the opposite hill, on which the Etruscan Tarquinii surely stood. There are many flowers, the blue grape-hyacinth and the white, the mauve tassel anemone with the red, sore centre—the big-petalled sort. It is curious how the anemone varies. Only in this one place in Tarquinia have I found the whity-pink kind, with the dark, sore-red center. But probably that is just chance. 

 

The town ends really with the wall. At the foot of the wall is wild hillside, and down the slope is only one little farm, with another little house made of straw. The country is clear of houses. The peasants live in the city.

 

Probably in Etruscan days it was much the same….

 

Bellissimi fiori

What Lawrence never states explicitly but what readers in 1932 understood is that the Italy of Lawrence’s investigative travels into history was also the Italy of Benito Mussolini, who had transformed the country into a one-party dictatorship, first by outlawing labor strikes and soon with the use of secret police, eventually allying his Fascist authoritarian state with Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan. So when he writes about the “all-conquering Romans,” he is also heaping scorn on the Fascists, for the latter “consider themselves in all things Roman,” and he despises Romans and Fascists alike. 

 

Myself, I like to think of the little wooden temples of the early Greeks and of the Etruscans: small, dainty, fragile, and evanescent as flowers. We have reached the stage when we are weary of huge stone erections, and we begin to realize that it is better to keep life fluid and changing than to try to hold it fast down in heavy monuments.

 

Only a little while later he asks,

 

Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buidings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won’t last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.

 

We may well object here. How can anyone reject Michelangelo? But life in the shade of Fascism, along with the tuberculosis that was soon to bring about the author’s death, may have made him impatient. He did love the Italian countryside:

 

Such a pure, uprising, unsullied country, in the greenness of wheat on an April morning!—and the queer complication of hills! There seems nothing of the modern world here—no houses, no contrivances, only a sort of fair wonder and stillness, an openness which has not been violated. 

 

One morning I gave myself a complete vacation from news headlines and enjoyed, before my bookish day, immersion in my own “pure, uprising, unsullied” countryside. Deer in the orchard, ducks and loons on Lake Leelanau, Canada geese overhead, and everywhere the deep, rich, varied greens of summer! 

 

Una bella mattina! E vivo in campagna! Che fortuna!

 

But how long are we going to let ourselves be imposed upon, and how far will we let the impostors impose on us? Where and when is it going to stop?

 

Why we (I and others of my ilk) keep harping on current events

 

The question was asked, Why do Democrats care so much about ICE raids and deportation of immigrants? Why don’t they worry and demonstrate instead about other unsolved problems in our country, such as the plight of the mentally ill or the homeless or people suffering from natural disasters? Years ago, one of my uncles took me to task for donating to the ACLU, arguing that they had done nothing for disaster relief that week. I forget what the specific disaster was, but I explained to my uncle that the mission of the ACLU was not disaster relief and that I had donated to Lutheran World Relief and indicated that my donation was to go to that week’s specific disaster, for which LWR had promised to provide 100% of donations so targeted. 

 

Supporting one cause does not mean ignoring others.

 

There are always ongoing issues we care about and contribute to and work for year after year. Most of us contribute regularly to various nonprofit organizations, each one with a different and important goal. I have a sponsored child through “Save the Children,” donate annually to the Michael J. Fox Foundation (for Parkinson’s Disease), and generally give to disaster relief funds through Save the Children or Lutheran World Relief, besides making annual donations to the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center. Memorial donations are an opportunity to give to specific hospitals or churches or libraries (wherever they may be) or local organizations.

 

The reason to pay so much attention to "this stuff” right now—to pardons for insurrectionists; firings of judges for being impartial rather than partisan; arrests, detainments, and deportations without due process—and to demonstrate and to continue to spread the word about what’s happening is that our country, the country we love, is at a critical crossroads. Democracy is in crisis. Understandably but tragically, many Americans, including the young, have stopped following the news, and this is how authoritarianism takes hold. 

As Eric Holder, the 82nd U.S. Attorney General , wrote recently: 

Right now, core pillars of our democracy are under attack – including a free press and educational institutions that teach independent and critical thinking. This isn’t isolated or random — this is an intentional effort by the far right to weaken the very systems we have in place to ensure the health of our democracy. They are dragging us toward authoritarianism. What’s happening now is NOT normal. 

 

If law enforcement and the judicial system are replaced by authoritarian goon squads of revenge, no one will be safe, and all those people Democrats are accused of ignoring will be among the victims, simply because they are so vulnerable. The fight for American ideals is not choosing to care only about, for instance, immigrants. It is about assuring a future in which everyone in this country is accorded dignity, in which everyone’s humanity is recognized and respected.

 

 

Back to the Books

 

On Wednesday evening, August 13, Dog Ears Books will host Timothy Mulherin, author of This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan. These conversations with northern Michigan residents from all walks of life (he interviewed over 75 people for the book), explore the topic of “relocation,” how it may be (some think yes, some think no) changing the face and character of northern Michigan, and what different people think of the changes and hope to see in the future. 

 

Do you see our area changing? If so, how do you feel about it? What do you want us to hold onto, and what could be improved upon? Are there things you miss about the Old Days?

Kinda "old days" in Northport

Older days in Leland

We were all young once.

August 13 promises a lively discussion with this author, who splits his life between Indiana and Leelanau County, so mark your calendar and don’t forget! I’ll issue reminders, never fear.

Any Day Now…

"Cherry-ripe," wrote poet Robert Herrick of Julia's lips.

Trees are full of cherries, and equipment is in place (shaker, truck, vats) for tart cherry harvest in the orchard around my old farmhouse. My guess is that the farmer is only waiting for the Brix reading to be right where he wants it. 

 

Meanwhile, trees so full of cherries are not so full of leaves, so there’s another question, and my tentative answer is tied to the fact that my black walnut tree (not sprayed with anything) is also dropping a lot of leaves. I think the trees are hedging their bets. In the economy of a plant, it’s the seeds that matter for the future: leaves are there to take in needed nutrition, and when that work is done, and as we come into hotter, drier weather, the tree’s economy is best served with fewer expenditures of moisture – a sparser population to provide for, in other words. That is the explanation of a bookseller, not a scientist, you realize.

 

Yes, summer is hurrying along, and on Sunday morning I saw the season’s first goldenrod in bloom. In July!

 

Sneaky little devils!

I have monarda and tall phlox blooming now in my garden. Black raspberries keep on coming, too, and I finally have two batches of my patented (not really, but it is my specialty) ‘blackstraw’ jam made, with no end in sight. I use twice to three times the amount of raspberries to the smaller amount of Bardenhagen (local) strawberries, and mine is cooked, not freezer jam, because I don’t want to worry about losing all my work in the event of a winter power outage. For the same reason, when fall arrives I will be drying and saucing my apples. Let’s not have fall arrive too soon, though! That goldenrod makes me nervous….

 

Jammin'!

Time flies by because these are busy days, and the coming week will be an endurance test for this old bookseller. I will be closing at 3 p.m. on both Tuesday and Thursday this week, selling books at events at the Willowbrook Inn both evenings. Tuesday is the third of four FOLTL Summer Writers Series evenings, with Abra Berens as guest author. Northport claims Abra for her eight years at Bare Knuckle Farm and Friday farmers market. Her three cookbooks are Grist (grains), Ruffage (vegetables), and the latest, Pulp (fruit). Doors for her presentation open at 6:30 (with cash bar), and the event will begin at 7 p.m. It's free, and the public is cordially invited.

 

Showcasing Abra's books today in Northport --

Abra will be doing a special chef’s dinner on Thursday, but if you don’t have tickets already for that, you're too late. Not surprisingly, tickets to the dinner sold out early. Here is an interesting, if slightly outdated, interview where you can learn more about author/farmer/chef Abra Berens.

 

Is it any wonder my reading is suffering these days for lack of time? Between customers at the bookstore, slowly I make my way through Antifragile, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, but at home there seems to be very little reading time at all, what with (Sunday, for example) hanging laundry out in the sun, watering gardens when it doesn’t rain, mowing grass, making jam, and, on all-too-rare occasions, vacuuming floors and catching up on recording and filing business expenses and decluttering (which means picking up things I dropped on chairs rather than putting them away throughout the week, because the majority of my time at home, when not sleeping, is spent outdoors). Every morning lately has also held a stint of editing, rather than the reading in bed with morning coffee that I did all winter and spring. But soon I will make time to read new books, and then I will report to you on some of them.

 

Part of every single day, of course, involves outdoor time with Sunny Juliet. We take long walks, work on agility practice, and have agility sessions with Coach Mike. I throw tennis balls for her, and there are frequent though unscheduled romps with her new friend and neighbor, Griffin. Below are Griffin and Sunny at rest (rather than running like crazy or wrestling and rolling around, which allowed me to get a halfway decent photograph of them for a change), although they are “resting” in this shot only because Sunny had retreated from the field of play, determined to keep possession of one of her precious tennis balls. 

Griffin and Sunny take a little break.

Do you think life is going to slow down? Any day now? Ha! Not a chance! Yet I recall, dimly, the long summer days of girlhood, when hours barely seemed to move at all, and if we try we can still find a few moments like that now and then. Make them, I should say. 

My little heaven on earth --

Another point of view --

Who Doesn't Love a Bestseller?

A poet and fiction writer in the Upper Peninsula, Ron Riekki, collects from Michigan booksellers every month their lists of top-selling titles by Michigan authors and then puts it all together for the state as a whole. It’s been interesting for me over the past three years to keep track of and contribute, month by month, my bestselling titles from Dog Ears Books in Northport. So it occurred to me this morning that other people might find it interesting, too, and here's the result -- July's hot books out here at the tip of the Leelanau peninsula!

Note: Not all books are pictured because they are on re-order.

Leading the pack once again — no surprise — is Kathleen Stocking’s From the Place of the Gathering Light: Leelanau Pieces. Gathering Light is Stocking’s fourth book but the first since her Letters From the Leelanau (1990) that stays right here at home, with the people and places of our home county. Themes of geologic time and democracy on the ground are the threads with which these pieces are woven. I’ve sold 37 copies of this book in July, almost 70 since May 15, and there’s no end in sight, which makes sense because — truly — if you haven’t read Kathleen Stocking, you don’t know Leelanau.

It’s no surprise, either, to find Hard Cider, by Barbara Stark-Nemon, in the #2 position on my July list. The numbers for this title would have been higher still if we hadn’t sold out of available copies at her library event and if the book hadn’t been out of stock at my distributor’s warehouse. (I hope to have more copies soon.) This book seems to be catching fire elsewhere, too (hence the wait for restocking!), but it’s especially popular here because Northport and Leelanau Township are the setting. Locals and visitors alike will recognize familiar places (and a few people, e.g., Sally at Dolls and More) in this engaging novel featuring a mature woman reinventing herself as a cider maker in northern Michigan. Family complications and secrets add suspense to the plot.

The Trails of M-22, by Jim DuFresne, certainly deserves its third-place position on my July bestseller list in Northport. As I’ve mentioned before when writing about this book, the author did not simply loop around the highway south of Northport but made it clear to the tip of Leelanau Township (M-22 and Beyond?). Each trail in the book is shown with a detailed map, with level of difficulty clearly indicated, so beginning hikers can enjoy choosing their first trails, while I’ve heard a couple of avid and dedicated couples say they plan to hike every trail in the book. 

And fourth place goes to Dorene O’Brien, my Thursday Evening Author from July 25, with her short story collection, What It Might Feel Like to Hope. I’ve often remarked that most short stories seem darker in tone than most novels, and that was the case with O’Brien’s first collection, but this new book, while still introducing us to characters with difficult lives, does seem to offer hope on the horizon. Dorene’s bookstore presentation was delightful, too, giving us what one audience member later called “a magical evening.” More people should try reading short stories. I enjoyed this collection so much I've already read it twice this year!

Fifth place was a tie between Stark-Nemon’s Even in Darkness and Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems. I’m happy that Barbara’s first novel continues to find new readers and that the lovely small new Harrison anthology of poetry (posthumous) by the late Jim Harrison is also selling well. Since many of the early collections from which these poems have been selected are now out of print, Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems belongs in the library of long-time Harrison aficionados, as well as with readers only now discovering his work. A few of Jim’s novels were made into movies, his essays on food were published widely during his lifetime, but at heart Jim was always, first and foremost, a poet, and I believe his poetry will be his most enduring legacy. 

Finally, another tie for sixth place: The Marsh King’s Daughter, by Karen Dionne, and Beautiful Music, by Michael Zadoorian. Translated into twenty-five foreign languages, with a movie now in development, The Marsh King’s Daughter, set in Michigan’s wild Upper Peninsula, has taken the world by storm. Who would have predicted it? The author’s deep knowledge of northern natural terrain is what drew me to the novel. Readers unfamiliar with Michigan, off in Sweden or Korea, may read it more simply for the thrilling suspense. And I anticipate Zadoorian’s Beautiful Music to soar this month, with the author’s guest appearance as my Thursday Evening Author on August 8. A coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Detroit, Beautiful Music tells a story of a loner adolescent who finds salvation in rock-n-roll. Yeah!!! I have also restocked Zadoorian’s previous novel, The Leisure Seeker (made into a movie with Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren) as well as his dynamite collection of short stories, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit. 

And there you have it — just a few of the “must” reads of summer 2019 in Northport, Michigan. Time to get started, if you haven’t already! And please join us on Thursday, August 8, 7 p.m. to hear and meet Michael Zadoorian!

I Said, He Said

The little notice at the top of today's post is something I taped outside my bookstore door a couple weeks ago. Originally I had it inside on the bulletin board, but my helper, Bruce, thought it needed to be bigger, so Bill Coohon made me a full-size printed sheet (now on bulletin board), and the little original moved to its current location, where people see it as they reach to open the door. 

Another small notice on the door itself provides information on when the bookstore is open. I list my hours as 11-5, though I’ve generally been open by 10 this summer and often don’t get away right at 5, either, if the store is full of (ahem!) browsers. (No one minds when a store opens early and closes late. They do mind if it opens late or closes early!) As for those Mondays, I've been open regularly on Mondays, but yes, my bookstore is closed on Sundays this year. Having a day off preserves my sanity and helps me be happier in my work.

This morning I got to town earlier than usual, because Wednesday’s early morning errands get me on the road before 8 a.m. I wasn’t all that surprised to see a note taped beside my door: sometimes a friend stops by before I get here or a delivery person makes an unexpected early morning stop, or maybe someone I don’t know is leaving greetings from a mutual friend faraway. Today’s note was different, however. The writer, though I’m not sure why, seemed to take exception to my browsing instructions. Here’s what I found:

I admit I was puzzled. Could the writer not see through the windows that the space inside was furnished and stocked? Did the writer expect the bookstore to open before 8 a.m.? I have been serving my Up North market — locals, summer people, tourists — since 1993. Had the writer ever seen me crying over online shoppers? No one has ever seen that, because it doesn’t happen.

While my own note beside the door does not bear my name, people generally make the correct assumption that I am its author, and if they ask I say, yes, of course. The note left for me, on the other hand, was anonymous. (Wouldn’t you know?) Without a clue to the anonymous writer’s identity, therefore, other than handwriting (very neat printing, actually, using good ink) and the kind of blue masking tape used by painters, I’m going to hazard a guess. 

I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that Anonymous is male. I’m guessing further that he is relatively young. As I say, I could be wrong. 

Here is the background assumption behind my guess: Young people, and particularly young men, often think they have figured the world out much better than their elders. They are eager to proffer sage advice — and yet, not always eager to enter in dialogue. Those seeking the last word prefer the exit line zinger. Better yet, the anonymous message.

I wonder if Anonymous has ever read Nietzsche. Poor Nietzsche! He was so eager to have the last word that he larded his later writings with off-putting remarks about how no one alive could possibly understand him, how he was speaking to the future when, presumably, humans would have evolved the higher intelligence he himself already possessed. Ah, the Myth of the Elusive Last Word! The world has not yet ceased interpreting Nietzsche, and it never will as long as his works persists, so he didn’t have the last word, after all, and neither will Anonymous -- and neither will I, for that matter. The world spins on, opinions multiply. Whatever we say, however carefully we say it, someone will find a way to object. 

Well, sorry! I digress.

Anonymous left a second note written in black magic market on his blue masking tape. Or maybe this was his first note, the inked list his second? Anyway, here's the shorter message:

I don’t know if you can read that. What it says is, “Also, Respect Your Customer.” Then below that it says, “WTF? Nice Joke,” with an arrow that pointed down (before I removed it) to my browsing instructions. 

My first response to “WTF” was “NVN!” (By that I mean Not Very Nice.) But it’s so hard to interpret the rest without context or facial expression. By “Nice Joke,” was he saying he appreciated my humor (as do most people coming through the door)? Or was he being sarcastic? Well, no way to know, is there? As far as respecting the customer goes, though, I’m proud to say I have an excellent track record, but don’t take my word for it. Ask around. I'm not hiding behind anonymity. 

And now, enough of that nonsense. It was fun for a while and good for a laugh to start the day, but let’s not get completely distracted by anonymous note-writers or bullying tweeters, because the more we can talk to each other face-to-face, the better our lives will be. 

Also, whatever you do, do not lose track of my Thursday Evening Author series, with two more events to go this summer! Next week, Michael Zadoorian! Read about his new novel here, and come meet him on August 8! 

Winter Comes to Northport

The solstice is still in the future, but we have had snow (along with books) in Northport. We’ve also had some early holiday guests at Dog Ears Books.

Saturday morning (early)

Featured Guest Aaron Stander

Saturday was the long-anticipated book signing with Aaron Stander and his #10 Ray Elkins murder mystery, The Center Cannot Hold. Such is Aaron’s popularity that even before he arrived on the scene, his fans were pouring in, eager for face time with the author.

And so, despite gloomy weather, despite the existential crisis I fear Sheriff Elkins in facing (consider the title), we had a cheerful and convivial day in the bookstore. Aaron came all the way up from Interlochen, and Saturday’s customers were from Omena and Cedar, as well as Northport.

Happy customers!

Another visitor: my son

My son, Ian, was visiting from Kalamazoo, also, having arrived on Thursday evening. As the proprietor of a bookshop, I never have a problem entertaining visitors who are book readers — and happily, all of my relatives are readers. So it was that during quiet moments at home and in the shop, as Ian and I sat reading our respective books, every now and then one of us would pause to share a passage with the other. Readers, after all, are not antisocial. We are happy to read aloud to others and often to pass favorite books along to friends. Can’t do that with a pumpkin latte.

Bruce brought me a book

Bruce Balas, my part-time volunteer of many years, recently traveled to England, Ireland, and Scotland, and as he so often does from these international jaunts, Bruce brought back a book for me. This time it was The Diary of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell, a day-to-day account of one little shop selling used books in Scotland.

Each day in The Diary begins with a notation of the number of online orders received, along with how many of the books ordered the bookseller and his crew were able to locate to ship out, thus fulfilling the orders — his rating with the online behemoth selling engine rising and falling accordingly. He notes ruefully that while one of the compensations of self-employment, traditionally, has been not having a boss, the behemoth “is slowly but certainly becoming the boss of the self-employed in retail.” I read that, shivered, and thanked my lucky stars I pulled out of the online selling morass years ago, as prices realized raced to the bottom with no corresponding diminution in time required to process orders. 

(An order for a six-dollar book is as time-consuming as one for a sixty-dollar book, and in an open shop, with a single person working, it makes more sense to focus on live people who have taken the trouble to come through the door. Of course, that means depending on those live people to buy books in the shop so that it can remain open and viable. Word to the wise sufficient?)

The Book Shop in Wigtown sells mostly used books, only a handful of new, and their most popular used books are on the subject of railroads. The proprietor buys considerably more books than I do from private libraries being dispersed and, as I say, is selling online daily. He has a handful of part-time employees (what would that be like?) and a bookstore cat rather than a dog. He lives above his shop. And while he doesn't mention it, I know he drives on the wrong side of the road. All these are differences between his business and mine, but so much of what he experiences is still familiar to me that I keep laughing out loud as I read.

The meat of each day’s diary entry is a narrative including descriptions of weather, stories of shop help’s eccentricities, customer requests and staff responses, expeditions to examine private libraries offered for sale, accounts of local “festival” plans, and the bookseller’s recreational activities on his days off. Following the narrative is the number of customers in the shop that day (he calls them all “customers,” whether or not they spend a shilling) and the total “take” in British pounds.

On the minus side of Shaun Bythell’s observations are the following phenomena, sadly familiar to your bookseller in Northport: people who enter with boisterous proclamations of their love of books and bookstores and buy nothing (so it is not my imagination, and I’m not the only bookseller to have noticed!); those for whom nothing is cheap enough, no matter how much they supposedly “want” it or how many years they have been searching for it; the problem of the behemoth’s pricing algorithm (comments about “cheaper online” made within hearing of the bookseller); etc.

(I am waiting to see if he will mention the dramatic souls who confide with a shudder that bookstores are “very dangerous places” for them, folks who eye me suspiciously, as if I were a dealer in illegal substances luring them, at their peril, into an ambush! And are there in Scotland bookstores the annual visitors who stop by, look around, and sail out each time empty-handed with promises to “see you again next year”? I wonder what they think keeps my bookstore in business from one summer to the next.)

On the positive, brief side of the pro/con ledger — he prides himself on being a “curmudgeon” and tends to accentuate the negative — Bythell describes some of the joys of bookshop life: children who lose themselves in books (“It gives me a glimmer of hope for the future of bookselling  … to see a child reading, their attention rapt in the book to the total exclusion of everything else.”); a regular customer who orders from the shop rather than online (you how who you are, loyal Northport friends!); exclamations he overhears about how “cool” his shop is; the thrill of selling a treasure he’s had on the shelf for a decade and that of discovering another treasure among boxes of books otherwise good for nothing but to sell by weight to a scrap dealer. Occasionally he goes off on a paean of praise for something like historic publishers of quality books or a grump-fest about a planned wind farm he fears would ruin his view. 

There are also nuggets of old-bookish information to enlighten anyone not familiar with the trade, and so, as I read and laugh and share aloud bits to anyone fortunate enough to be nearby (at present, my son and/or the Artist), I keep thinking of others who would enjoy this book. The experienced bookseller would find, as I have, a kindred soul and familiar situations; for the novice or wannabe bookseller, there are useful lessons; and anyone genuinely interested in books and bookstores and human foibles would be amused and entertained.

Books about bookstores, like books about dogs, seem to be increasing in number. Is this indicative of a new and growing appreciation for bookstores and their continued existence? One can hope.

Not that long ago....

And now, Thanksgiving is coming

As Thanksgiving approaches, I am thankful for my years of Up North bookselling, despite the occasional frustrations. Making dreams come true is as much hard work as it is joy, but for me it has been worthwhile. I’m thankful for the Artist’s steadfast support from the beginning; for Bruce’s loyal assistance over many years; and for the collegiality of fellow bookstore owners, especially in northern Michigan (real booksellers, in my book, are those with open shops, willing to meet the public face to face). 

I am ever grateful for the generosity and talent and professionalism of authors it has been my privilege to meet and know in the course of the last quarter-century; for parents who bequeathed to me and my sisters a love of reading and respect for books; for other parents and teachers who have done and continue to do the same for children in their lives. 

And always I am thankful to my customers, both local and visiting, first-time tourists and returning summer people, all who continue to show their appreciation for my bookstore by buying books in Northport, at Dog Ears Books, on Waukazoo Street. That’s what keeps my bookstore here! Thank you all! May your holiday be blessed! You have all been blessings in my life!

“Going Forward”

(As if there’s any other way we can go, eh?)

In 2015 I called my winter away from Michigan a sabbatical. I didn’t give it a name in 2018. Now, however, still working long summer and fall days as younger friends and relatives retire, I have decided that “seasonal retirement” is a more meaningful term. 

This year the Artist and I will be away from home and our places of business from December through April, our longest absence from ever. You’ll be able to follow our adventures (as in previous, shorter absences) here on “Books in Northport,” should you be so inclined. Meanwhile, for the more immediate future, here is the plan for Dog Ears Books for the remainder of November:

NOVEMBER BOOKSHOP CALENDAR

Tuesday, 11/20: OPEN 10-2:30 (need to close early to keep an appointment)

Wednesday, 11/21: OPEN 11-5 (Take a bookstore break from mixing up cranberry relish and bread stuffing and baking pies.)

Thursday, 11/22: CLOSED FOR THANKSGIVING

Friday, 11/23: OPEN 11-5 WITH BEGINNING OF HOLIDAY SALE

Saturday, 11/24: OPEN 11-5. OPEN HOUSE IN BUSINESSES THROUGHOUT VILLAGE. HOLIDAY SALE CONTINUES. VILLAGE TREE LIGHTING 6 p.m. LIVE MUSIC

Sunday, 11/25 CLOSED

Monday, 11/26: OPEN 11-5 for CIDER MONDAY — YOUR LOCAL ALTERNATIVE BY SHOPPING ONLINE! HOLIDAY SALE CONTINUES.

Tuesday, 11/27: OPEN 11-5 HOLIDAY SALE CONTINUES

Wednesday, 11/28: OPEN 11/5 HOLIDAY SALE CONTINUES

Thursday, 11/29: OPEN 11-5 HOLIDAY SALE CONTINUES

Friday, 11/30: OPEN 11-5 LAST DAY OF THE BOOKSTORE YEAR???

Saturday, 12/1: Who knows? Not sure yet! Friday, 11/30, may be our last day of the season, so don’t wait for December 1st to do your holiday shopping at Dog Ears Books!