Books, Dog, Tree Guy, Me, and More

Another busy week has been flying by.

I took a real day off on Sunday, though. Well, most of a day off. Several hours, anyway. Tree guy and I ventured down to the Leelanau/Benzie county line to explore several little lakes: Armstrong, Brooks, and Pearl. My favorite was Brooks, the smallest of the three. (I have no explanation or excuse for why I originally named the wrong lake as my favorite but have corrected that error now.) There was a public access but no dock. Very few houses. A very peaceful setting. Just standing and gazing felt restorative. 

Shoreline mystery plant. Can anyone identify it for me?

Eventually, turning northward again, we stopped in Cedar for Polish food from Tom Koch’s Polish Kitchen food truck. Wow! Pierogis with jalapeño popper filling! And Tom’s dill pickles are the best I’ve ever had—just dill enough, with a fresh, satisfying, crispy crunch. 

Lakes and lunch were so exciting that we had to rest a while when we got home again in the early afternoon.

Monday, though, was a super-busy day off, as Mondays usually are. It began with an agility session for Sunny and me, only our second this summer. Good to get back in the swing! Then there was housework, laundry, shopping, mowing—the usual Monday routine. Up early on Tuesday, I had plenty of time and leisure to refresh my memory of The Vacation, by Robert ‘Carlos’ Fuentes, over coffee, even time to write up some questions to ask him in our onstage conversation that evening at the Willowbrook.

What fun! Carlos is such a lively guy, with such a happy, positive outlook on life! I only hope the audience enjoyed our onstage conversation as much as we did.

Carlos Unleashed! Give him a microphone and stand back!

After a long-anticipated event, I’m always happy to have a quiet morning, and Wednesday morning’s fresh, cool, still air made being outdoors the best possible way to start the day. I’d only had enough energy to read about four pages of Mistress Masham’s Repose before falling asleep the night before, but when Sunny was ready to get up and go! her momma wasn’t far behind. Coffee, toast, yogurt, and a handful of berries right off the canes was breakfast. I’ve made two batches of jam, and the freezer is still full of berries, so now I can indulge in desultory snacking as the annual harvest diminishes.

Although my new domestic partner is also a reader, my reading has slowed down with another human being in the house, but somehow I managed to finish a couple of books over the weekend, one long one I’d been working on for weeks, Spirit of Place: The Making of an American Literary Landscape, by Frederick Turner, another a short, quick novel from the first half of the 20th century, Edith de Born’s The House in Vienna. Then I thought I would re-read all of Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog stories, but I’m bogging down already in the second one. They really are “guy” stories! And while I may be a tomboy, in some ways, I have never been a “guy” and never wanted to be one. When I said as much one afternoon, Tree Guy reminded me of what a wonderful novel Dalva is. “Right. And that’s not a Brown Dog story,” I reminded him.

My attention was not held. 

The other day I received an email—no, actually, it was caught in my spam filter, but I did glance down the list of spam and saw the heading—entitled, “Can we be honest with you?” I don’t know what it was about. I did not read further. But the question stuck in my head. CAN whoever-it-was be honest? One hopes so! Some people, it seems, are incapable of honesty. No doubt the writer intended to ask, “May we…?” Well, why would I want to receive lies? If asked, “May we send you a garbage can of disinformation?” naturally I would decline. But then, as I say, I only looked as far as the heading before deleting what had already been caught by my spam filter.

Life with Dog

Zen-girl, a.k.a. Sunny Juliet, is blissfully ignorant of economics and politics. Sometimes her humans linger over coffee for what she considers an unnecessary length of time, but the corner of a piece of toast now and then is all the bribe she needs to be patient a little longer. I asked a friend how his new little dog was doing, and he said the dog is providing him with a lot of “satisfaction,” in that he is “good company."

When Sunny and I resumed agility sessions after a three-week hiatus, a hiatus during which the dog momma completely forgot about getting out and setting up the weave poles, the most challenging station of any course for our team, Sunny did not chide me for my mistake but did the best weaving she could, as if we’d been practicing every day! She is in the moment, whatever the moment may be. Of course, she doesn’t have bills to pay or meals to plan or laundry to do, and she doesn’t vote and never will. She’ll never apply for a paying job or move into her own apartment or even read a newspaper. All she has to do is be ready to jump in the car when the momma asks, “Go for a ride?” Or come in the door after our evening walk when she hears the word, “House!” A pretty simple life. 

No human life can ever be as simple as a dog’s life, but their companionship makes our lives all the more worth living. Really--what would we do without them?

P.S. For new flower photos, see here. For pj's latest rant, see here. 

Summer Flowers

WELCOME!!!

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

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

Diane and Izzy

Carlos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

¡Nunca te rindas!

And don't stop counting blessings!

Escaping Thoughts and Impressions of a Wandering Mind

Geese in smoky sky

Our Outdoor World

June’s weather story in northern Michigan was a flood. July’s is smoke. 

With over 800 wildfires burning in Minnesota and Canada, we are having evenings without sunset and mornings without sunrise. We catch a brief glimpse of the mid-morning sun before it is swallowed up by thick smoke (not haze, though it looks like haze), aromatic as a campfire but impossible to escape by walking away. A shifting orange-brown shroud hangs over almost half the country, though the flames are hundreds of miles away from us here in Leelanau. Will we get rain, and will it help dampen down the smoke? Time will tell. Meanwhile, I break out a mask for brief outdoor sorties.

Uncomfortable, but 95% protection is better than zero

“How’s your summer going?” It’s half-over! comes the unwelcome thought. But that’s only if summer is June, July, and August, right? If it’s July, August, and September, as I like to think, it is barely underway. After all, my cucumbers and beans have produced only flowers as yet, edible portions still to come. 

Black raspberries ripen continuously now and require twice-daily picking. 

There will be only a handful of gooseberries, but I’m hoping for a good apple crop this year, after two dud years (first codling moth worms in 2024, then in 2025 a late freeze that killed blossoms).

General garden knowledge can be gathered from books, but site-specific knowledge home accumulates only through the years. Monarda, a.k.a. bee balm, seems happy in my hard and has been blooming steadily in the border, a number of plants providing various colors in sequence—pale lavender, bright fuchsia, deep pink, pale pink. Hellebores are very happy in one spot; in another they were miserable, and I’m hoping they will be happier in a new corner. Hollyhocks by the backyard clothesline didn’t come back this year at all. That was disappointing, as I thought I would have them for the rest of my life, thinking of my grandmother’s hollyhocks growing by the outhouse. (Maybe if I’d had a working outhouse, my hollyhocks would have lasted?) In wild areas it’s all Black-eyed Susans and sweet peas now. 

My World of Books

Acquisition: It’s been two years since I made the big book buy from a former dealer in Leland. This year’s largest purchase wasn’t quite as big (only three carloads in 2026 rather than the eight trips in 2024, two with a pickup truck accompanying my car), but I am so well stocked that I almost passed on a chance to look at books from an estate—until I realized it was the home and the books of a very close friend of many years. The old friend’s house … his enormous book collection … some books he had written himself and many others by mutual friends … stray photographs and snapshots and prints by and of old friends … the yard engulfed by brambles, deck railings broken, electricity off in the house. As I went through shelves, selecting books, more and more memories kept coming to light. An emotional evening....

Authors: This past Tuesday Barbara Stark-Nemon was onstage at the Willowbrook, interviewed by another Northport author, Karen Mulvahill. It was the second in this year's Friends of the Leelanau Township Library summer author series and a lovely evening in every possible way!

Barbara's first embroidery project, a copy of her new novel's cover

Reading: Although I’d only gotten to Chapter 6 of that fascinating book about Roger Williams (a little about it in this recent post), more recently I fell into another that I’d never heard of before, its contents spellbinding and thought-provoking.

THE GURU PAPERS: MASKS OF AUTHORITARIAN POWER, by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad.

Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books/Frog Ltd., 1993

Here are some lines from the preface: 

…We found authoritarianism embedded in people’s psyches, affecting much more of day-to-day existence than is generally conceived. This is because in most people’s minds authoritarianism is associated with political systems such as dictatorships rather than with worldview…. In the process of writing this book, we deepened our understanding of how authoritarianism in its varied guises has been and largely still is a primary mode of social cohesion—and also how it has now become a major factor in social disintegration.

Then toward the end of the preface: 

This book presents a point of view and ideas that we want to stand or fall on their own merit. … Our major concern is clarity—namely, that anyone who cares to follow the train of thought will understand it, whether in agreement or not. 

The authors' “enemy,” so to speak, is any individual who (or institution) that would encourage people to mistrust their own minds and impressions and perceptions. They hope to foster “self-trust as a foundation for living.” 

Their view of authoritarianism, therefore, is broader than simply a study of dictatorships, and they use the guru relationship not as the only variety of authoritarian structure but as a paradigm. The first, early stage of the relationship they call messianic proselytizing, with the guru preaching a message of higher good, such as saving mankind. This phase offers a “celebratory, party-like atmosphere” to new recruits. The fully enlightened guru is at the peak of the group’s hierarchical pyramid, his inner circle just below, etc., but even the lowest can feel superior to outsiders who have not yet even realized their need to be on this particular path to enlightenment.

Then, 

A time inevitably comes when the popularity and power of the group plateaus and then begins to wane. 

People begin to doubt and must be pulled in more tightly. Our authors say either one of two things happen (I’m wondering if both can occur simultaneously): either the guru’s message will turn to a doomsday forecast of disaster, or he “makes increasingly extreme promises and bizarre claims….” It is dangerous, he tells his followers, to associate with anyone not on their path, and the mistrust the believers have for outsiders is 

...not totally paranoid (there is a reason for it) because as the group becomes more closed and bizarre, outsiders react more negatively. 

The chapter on “The Attractions of Cult Hierarchy” (the cult offers certainty in a tumultuously changing life or world—though the authors are careful to point out that a hierarchy in itself need not be authoritarian) ends on page 90, so I have a lot of ground yet to cover, but this is a fascinating book! I will not draw explicit parallels to our world today, which you can do for yourself. Oh, but here is one more bit before I get off the subject: 

Looking carefully at a guru’s inner circle is extremely revealing. Those closest to him, his most dedicated students, display better than anything else where his teaching leads…. Are they strong and interesting in their own right or are they boring sycophants who continually feed his ego? It is also very enlightening to observe how gurus treat and refer to those who leave their fold.

Bad News/Good News/Bad News

The death-dealing ICE traffic stops struck once again. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was on his way to work, as usual, and he was not even the target ICE was seeking, but he is now dead (his wife a widow, his children orphans), and so is Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, and so is a 28-year-old man in Florida—three deaths in one week—no charges made against them, let alone any opportunity for a trial.

One day we had surprisingly good news: ICE did not plan to cease traffic stops completely but would scale back on the number. Unexpected relief! Because otherwise, what could we do? Protest each succeeding death, with no hope that there would be an end to them? Hope surged.

The very next day came the bad news: the president told ICE not to reduce the number of traffic stops. The idea, apparently, is to keep people running scared.

It was hard for me to work up a lot of enthusiasm for the 4th of July 2026, the 250th birthday of our nation. I love my country. I love its ideals, and I love the progress we seemed to be making for decades. Now, from where I stand, we are going backward at rocket speed. I cannot think of a single aspect of our national life that has been improved under the current administration. In fact, it’s difficult to see any positive aspect of that same national life that has not been reduced, degraded, or outright eliminated. 

Protections for workers and for the environment are stripped away. Public health is on the trash heap. There has been no real help for health care costs and inflation in general, despite the campaign promises. Is discrimination against minorities even illegal any more, or is bigotry what is now protected? The United States has become an aggressor country in the world theatre—the bully, not the one protecting others from bullies. And the president is so terrified that his party will be voted out of power that he threatens the election process itself. No surprise there. No surprise—and yet it is heartbreaking, maddening, so shameful!

One night I woke up with the thought: This isn’t even murder. It’s vivisection. A living entity, our country, is being tortured and torn apart and cut up in pieces. No more sleep that night!

Yet all of us go on with our lives, because we are alive and have no choice. Both those who oppose the current administration and those who—incredibly! inexplicably!—continue to support it live our lives as best we can one day after another, we the opposition with breaking hearts and determined, resolute hope. 

Do their hearts not break, the hearts of the supporters? Do they not miss the neighborliness we used to share? Can they look unmoved upon the deaths of children, of children’s parents, of their own neighbors? If they are so certain that God’s will is ordering everything that happens, what explains their frantic politicking and their desperate denials of fact? 

I do still hope, fervently, stubbornly, however, that our country will survive and turn once again toward freedom and the common good for all our grandchildren and great-grandchildren—. Don't you?

***

Coming back to add another wandering thought I had this past week about Republicans in Congress: I was wondering whether they are simply spineless (afraid to lose favor with the naked emperor) or if they are terrified deer in the headlights of oncoming history, realizing full well that theirs is a doomed legacy of shame. The thing is that remaining paralyzed is no protection against history, which just keeps rollin’ along. The moving finger writes, and all that. In time, history itself throws cowards under the bus. Their only hope is to wake up, jump out of the road, and yell “Sorry!” as loud as they possibly can. A good first step would be to vote against confirmation of the most inappropriate candidate for U.S. Attorney General ever proposed to fill the position. 

On the Home Front

Merging households, especially in a busy season like summer, involves a period of transition, so there’s a little chaos and a lot of clutter at Casa Bookseller-Tree Guy these days. Small items go missing on a daily basis. We had that big three-carload book move during the heat wave immediately preceding the holiday weekend, too! Despite it all, we are finding our new life together almost unbelievably easy and natural, and Naughty Barker goes right along with it, too. She now has company during the day when her momma goes to work, and she gets extra walks and extra attention and another someone willing to throw tennis balls for her. And have I mentioned that Tree Guy is a reader? Icing on the cake!

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 --