Meeting and Making Mutual Friends

"Isn't it all about me?" Not always, girl!

New England is a long way from Michigan, and I’ve never been closer to the former than New Jersey (which doesn’t count at all, I’m sure). Neither has New England been part of my dream life, a place I’ve longed to see. My parents made the trip once to see the famed New England autumn and were appalled by the traffic and the difficulty of finding overnight accommodations, not having booked ahead. My father’s conclusion was: “Michigan is better.” And October 2024 in Michigan was certainly one of the loveliest ever. But this is all beside my point, which is that A Memory of Vermont as a book title would not necessarily draw me in, except for the subtitle, Our Life in the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop. Now that’s more like it! 

My outdoor winter world, as of a day ago --

Poet Walter Hard’s drugstore, following a tradition begun by his own father, featured a table of books, so when Walter and Margaret’s daughter wanted experience in the book world before graduating from college, her idea was to have her own summer bookshop in their little town of Manchester, Vermont. As a bookseller and reader, I am always interested to learn how someone else got into the business. What happened with Ruth’s seasonal shop was that after she graduated and went on to a career in publishing, her parents continued the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop. Her father even sold the family drugstore to have more time to devote to his own writing (a decision that shocked many in the town), and he and his wife, besides their other writings in poetry and prose, collaborated on a travel book called This Is Vermont. 

Well, there she is again!

As I read their story, which inevitably includes many other writers and mention of many books, what strikes me over and over is all the connections books make in a reading life – connections to other writers and other books. Walter Hard, for example, was asked to write The Connecticut for the “Rivers of America” series, and only just the other day I finished Hodding Carter’s The Lower Mississippi from the same series, having been led to Hodding Carter by Albert Murray, after having been led to Albert Murray by some other author’s book, though now I forget which book or author. And imagine my delight to learn that Ruth Hard, in stocking her original Johnny Appleseed Bookshop, carried all of Mary Webb’s books then in print, having fallen in love as I did with Precious Bane after reading about that book in yet another book, so that when I read of Ruth's love for Precious Bane, I feel I am meeting a friend with whom I share something important.

In their winter caps....

And then Hendrik Willem Van Loon himself pays a visit to the Johnny Appleseed Bookshop and inscribes his book on Rembrandt to Margaret (after she procures 10 copies of the remaindered volume for him and one for herself) with a wonderfully detailed drawing of Rembrandt in his studio! Van Loon! The first of his books I had a chance to obtain was his Geography, found at a yard sale in Leland one summer long ago, so long ago that the author’s name was then still unfamiliar to me, but the art on the pages captured my eye, and I was very happy years later to have in my own shop, for a while, a first edition of his The Story of Mankind, the very first Newbery winner (1922), written for children and so popular with grownups that a paperback edition had to be issued issued for adults.

The trees in their winter white....

My favorite Van Loon, though, has to be Lives. In Van Loon's Lives, the narrator and a relative decide to give a series of dinner parties with the most interesting guests they can think to invite. Following a brilliant decision that invitations do not have to be limited to the living, the first guest they invite is Erasmus. For each social evening planned, there is discussion of the menu and what aspects of “modern” life might most interest their guest or guests from the past. What intrigues the guests is not always what the hosts expected! But again the charm of the illustrations -- ! For instance, Descartes with his cape blowing in the wind! I have always wondered if this book might not have been the inspiration for the old television show, Steve Allen’s “Meeting of Minds.” 

 

Reading books and finding in them mention of other familiar books and authors, as well as encountering titles and names one is inspired to seek out, is only one aspect of the meeting of minds that takes place in reading, but I find it endlessly enchanting. 

 

In the more than three decades of my own bookshop, I too have met many interesting and delightful people from all walks of life, not only writers and other booksellers but people with backgrounds and callings very different from my own. Sometimes in the morning before we began our days in Northport, the Artist would muse, “I wonder who we’ll meet today.” For me, there has always been the additional question, What books will find their way to me today? Other minds, many connections, old friends and new.

Homeward bound

As you can see from the images in today’s post, winter has arrived at last Up North. I drove to Traverse City on Tuesday morning through the most beautiful scenes imaginable: sun-kissed, snow-laden branches glistening bright, blinding white against ominously dark masses of clouds. I’d been in my bookshop on Sunday and Monday, both supposedly days off according to my winter schedule, but there were still a lot of holiday visitors in town on Sunday, and I had deliveries to meet on Monday. Tuesday, then, was my first chance to get to Traverse City to pick up the new order of book bags, and Sunny and I made it to the dog park in Northport by noon, where we saw several of our mutual friends. Nice!

I thought I might be snowed in on Wednesday, but my plow guy had come, and the winter storm warning was from 7 p.m. on Wednesday to 7 p.m. on Thursday, so I went to Northport, picked up mail, bought some groceries, and opened my shop for four hours. One in-store customer and one phone order made my being there worthwhile. Now, will Thursday will be a snowed-in-at-home day? 

Back way into the village on Wednesday

Coming down the hill

Our beautiful village tree!

Postscript: All right, that is the bookish part of my life, but what of the rest? Here in the dark of Thursday morning, I am sitting up in bed with my dog leaning up companionably against my side, the wind “howling” (it doesn’t really howl; there must be a better word for the way it wraps itself insistently around our old farmhouse), and the furnace blower coming on at intervals, thinking about my life and the lives of others. 

As for people I meet in my bookshop (a big part of my life), the first batch of holiday greetings I rushed to the post office contained an egregious error. I had reported a visit by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin as one by Michigan Senator Carl Levin! Impossible, since Levin died in 2021! All I can say in my (feeble) defense is that both are on my “good guys” list, and I have been, after all, since January 1967 a “Michigan girl.” Senator Durbin, please accept my apologies!

And yet -- there they are together, connected, in my bookshop!

Widow brain? Lack of focus? The perils of haste?

I talked to a dear friend last night whose husband died on Thanksgiving Day, a week ago today. One week into widowhood, she is in no hurry to clear away his piles of books and papers and says that being in their home, surrounded by the life they made together, is a consolation to her. I had a letter from another dear friend on Tuesday who thinks I am “brave.” I am not brave. I get up in the mornings and do what has to be done and arrange for little treats for Sunny and me, e.g., dog park on Tuesday, potato chips on Wednesday, and look around at the beautiful world and feel gratitude for my life. 

At the same time – Tuesday’s drive to Traverse City, for instance, one of the most beautiful mornings I have seen in my entire life: Every moment of that lovely morning, drinking in its loveliness, awed by the world’s beauty, I also felt the pain of the Artist’s absence. He was not seeing it. We were not sharing it. Joy and sorrow commingled, the bitter and the sweet. Life is, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “a dappled thing,” no less lovely for its mixed and paradoxical nature. 

And yes, I am taking today, Thursday, as a snow day, staying home and off the roads.

Summer Is: Flowers, Family, Friends, and Books

Color riot in my front yard!
 

When the Artist was still with me in our old farmhouse, for some years I aimed at subtlety in my plantings. One year, for example, it was all white and dusty green. Then I came home from Arizona without him in May of 2022, and all I wanted in my gardens was color, a preference that is still very much alive. 

Bright colors! I need them! Especially after a Michigan winter, which was easy going as far as snow was concerned but had the usual short days with overcast skies.

During my son’s recent visit, we were out walking with the dog when I commented to him that this – July – seems like “real life.” What I meant is that in Michigan we look forward all year to summer, so while it is only a small part of the calendar year, our lives expand then to fill the long daylight hours. This year I’ve been keeping a list (somewhat haphazard, not nearly as methodical as the lists of Thomas Jefferson or Henry David Thoreau) of what I see emerging or blooming for the first time each day, starting with wild leeks in the woods in April. Now the black-eyed Susans have begun, joining daisies and coreopsis, and trees get in the act, too. 

My catalpa at home (at what a friend calls “Frost Pocket Farm”) flowered later than trees elsewhere in the county but has blossoms now, and soon the basswood will flower, and its branches will be – I hope! – filled with happy bees. And this year there were local cherries for Cherry Festival!

Overcast Wednesday morning turned sunshiny before noon.

My hiking parter from Arizona visited with her dog, my son and his wife visited, and next come my sisters on their annual northern Michigan getaway, something they’ve done every summer for years, bringing our mother with them many times, providing memories that sustain us now that she’s gone. 

 

I’ll post my “Books Read” list for June separately. For today I'm giving you timely information about Leelanau Township’s Friends of the Library (FOL) events for this new month. First, this Saturday, July 6, is the annual used book sale at the township hall, beginning at 9 a.m. You might want an umbrella this year and a few plastic bags, but the book sale is only one day, so you don’t want to miss it. 

 

Then there is the FOL Summer Author Series, every Tuesday evening for four weeks, beginning the week after the 4^th.

 

Tuesday, July 9: Don Lystra, with his third book, a new novel titled Searching for Van Gogh, a coming-of-age story set in 1960s Michigan. Don is the first presenter in this year’s series. I will be interviewing this beloved local author and will have copies of his book available for purchase, which he will be happy to sign. (In fact, I will have copies of the books of all the authors in the series at their respective presentations.)

 

Tuesday, July 16: Joan Strassmann, a summer Leland resident, brings us Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard, and who could resist that? The COVID lockdown may be over, but our love affair with birds continues. Strassman, a well-known writer on animal behavior, is Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Tuesday, July 23: Northport claims chef and author Abra Berens as one of our own, due to her history in Leelanau Township as co-farmer of Bare Knuckle Farm, established in 2009. After eight years as a farmer, she moved to Chicago to become a chef. Her two previous cookbooks are Ruffage and Grist; the new one is Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit – perfect for summer!

 

Tuesday, July 30: Traverse City’s Stephen Lewis, author of Murder on Old Mission and Stone Cold Dead, brings us historical fiction this year, with From Infamy to Hope, the story of a housemaid in 17^th-century Puritan Boston who is a victim of religious persecution, branded as a fornicator, and dresses as a boy to become a soldier in the colony’s war with the Pequots.

All events in the LTFOL Summer Author Series will take place at the Willowbrook Inn on Mill Street and will begin at 7 p.m. Admission is free. 

Note: On Summer Author Tuesdays, the bookstore will close by 4 at the latest, so I can go home to my dog for a while before returning to Northport for the evening event. 

 

It’s summer! Live it up! And Happy Independence Day!!!

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm in My Household Pack

The Artist liked to say, crediting Jim Harrison with originating the phrase, that “advancing age brings a diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms.” Recently a friend on Facebook credited Tom McGuane with those words, and then a long interview with McGuane had McGuane himself giving the credit to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Credit whom you will, many people have apparently found the idea true to their lives. 

Or did they only like the apparent truth of a witty phrase? I wonder.

Obviously, I never lived with F. Scott Fitzgerald, nor with Tom McGuane or Jim Harrison. David Grath’s enthusiasm, however, is something that enriched our life together on a daily basis, whether on cross-country road trips or mere jaunts to thrift shops and drives down to Cedar for ice cream. Some of our enthusiasms changed over the years (some falling away but new ones coming along), and our energy in later decades was not what it had been in our 20s, 30s, and 40s. (We didn’t go out to bars and stay until closing time any more, certainly!) But did the number of our respective and shared enthusiasms diminish? That would be harder to say, as what naturally enthusiastic person would have the patience to sit down and make a numbered list of their heart-quickening activities and experiences?

Horses introduce this post because, while I was always the horse-crazy girl and never left that enthusiasm behind, the Artist had loved horses as a boy and always loved seeing them, especially with me. Of course, we never drove by them without at least remarking and often stopping to visit. “Which one is yours?” we would ask each other.

But the Artist also waxed enthusiastic over Peterbilt trucks, big boat-like American cars, and stylish motorcycles, depending on me to notice tiny things such as the little lichens called “British soldiers.” In general, when it came to landscape, I called his attention to ephemera at our feet, and he called mine to look up and to the horizon. “Big picture! Big picture!” he would say.

In Kalamazoo, when we lived there, we were forever noticing architectural details on older homes and downtown buildings. On foggy evenings, we would drive out to the country to catch the “Japanese landscape” effects. Out west, the grandeur of mountains, skies, and long sweeps of desert and grassland called forth our admiration. (We were both “big picture” viewers out there.) And it was a rare drive here in Leelanau County when the Artist didn’t say aloud, in tones of grateful reverence, “We live in a beautiful place.” So now I say that to Sunny Juliet when we’re in the car and crest a hill that gives us a view of Lake Michigan: “We live in a beautiful place.” Then I tell her, “That’s what your daddy always said.”

Lake Michigan, winter view

You may recall that the Artist did not fall in love with Peasy right away, the dog we were only able to have for a year. Eventually, though, they bonded. “Do you love him a little bit?” I asked. His response: “How could I not? It would be churlish not to love him.” Well, yes, as the dog came to worship David so absolutely! (Me he adored, David he worshipped.) He also said, “He’s so full of life! I miss that in myself, and I love it in him.”

No really good pictures of the two of them together -- sigh!

I never saw the Artist as anything but “full of life.” Even on those last winter mornings in the ghost town, when I came home from rambles over desert and foothills with neighbor and dogs to find him still in bed, watching television, he was enthusiastic in his urgings for me to watch with him a show about dogs … or hurricanes … or history. “I’m learning a lot,” he often said, and he never tired of learning. Or of seeing beauty, telling me that his helicopter flight from the little hospital in Willcox to a larger one in the Phoenix area had been “transcendent!”

Sometimes Sunny Juliet needs to curb her wild enthusiasm, but I appreciate her joyfulness. It makes me smile and even laugh at times. When I feel distant even from the natural beauty surrounding me, she brings me back to the immediate present.

An Enthusiastic Author

It is always a joy to host Newbery-winning author Lynne Rae Perkins in my bookstore. On Saturday she brought her own mice! I’d put three little mice on the table ahead of time, but she had made hers, and their markings were those of Violet and Jobie, the mice in her eponymous children’s book (too good for adults to pass by, is my verdict) who did not seek adventure but had adventure thrust upon them. 

Those of you who missed Lynne in the store can stop by for a signed copy of her book while my bookstore is open -- for the last month of the 2022 season, because come the end of October, I’ll be going on seasonal retirement until May, and I’ll just say right here that July 2023 will be the 30th anniversary of Dog Ears Books, so there is that ahead of me, too.

Books Read Since Last Listed

93. Bythell, Shaun. Confessions of a Bookseller (nonfiction)

94. Balzac, Honoré de. Le Curé de Tours (fiction)

95. Woodward, Bob & Robert Costa. Peril (nonfiction)

96. Shafak, Elif. The Island of Missing Trees (fiction)

97. Perkins, Lynne Rae. Violet & Jobie in the Wild (fiction – juv.)

98. Harrison, Jim. The Raw and the Cooked (nonfiction)

99. Oomen, Anne-Marie. As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book (nonfiction)

100. Brann, Esther. Five Puppies For Sale (fiction – juv. – 1948)

101. Harrington, C.C. Wildoak (fiction – YA – ARC)

102. Colwin, Laurie. Happy All the Time (fiction)

103. Jamison, Kay Redfield. Nothing Was the Same (nonfiction)

104. Proust, Marcel. The Past Recaptured (fiction)

Apple Enthusiasm

I’ll need all the enthusiasm I can muster to keep at the apple projects this month. My trees are bearing more heavily than ever before, and the apples are big and beautiful. How many apples will it take to fill the dryer with slices? Not many, I’m afraid, which means there will be lots of applesauce, as well, and maybe a pie or two.

Happy October, everyone!

Lessons Without Words

"Backstage" at Junior Rodeo, Willcox, Arizona

In the preface to his book, Life Lessons From a Ranch Horse, Mark Rashid writes that his old horse, Buck, made him realize “that I wasn’t going to be able to get better in my work unless I first improved other things in my life.” In one of his books about dogs, Jonathan Katz recounted a dog trainer’s telling him (I have to paraphrase, since I don’t have that book in front of me) that if he wanted a better dog, he was going to have to become a better person. Finally, I recall reading that at a certain point in his career as a “dog whisperer,” Cesar Millan realized he needed to become a “people whisperer,” also, to achieve lasting results, since when he was done working with problem dogs, their future was in their owners’ hands.

Some people who would never hit a dog will whip or spur a horse. (Does that seem strange to you? It does to me.) There are riding instructors – I know because I had one once -- invariably kind to horses but cruel to other human beings. We humans can see through each other’s inconsistencies, but I’m pretty sure the horses and dogs see through us much faster. 

Calm. Confident. Consistent. Kind.

Not only do we get better results with animals if we approach them calmly, confidently, and consistently, but partnerships that develop between human and dog or human and horse strengthen those desirable traits in us. You’ve heard of a vicious circle. Well, this is a virtuous circle – and who wouldn’t prefer to ride that happy merry-go-round? 

Competing at Junior Rodeo, Willcox, Arizona

And the practice of kindness is very compatible with working on the other three behavioral traits. Now that it’s come to my mind and I reflect further, I realize that a certain quite horrid type of person might manage to be calm, confident, consistent, and cruel, which cannot be our aim, either in working toward partnerships with our animal companions or simply in becoming better human beings! So while I’ve had ‘3Cs’ in mind for 35 years or so, I see now that the addition of that ‘K’ as absolutely essential. 

If we approach them with kindness from the start, our speechless friends usually forgive us our lapses in calmness, confidence, and consistency. Isn’t that wonderful?

So how about leading with kindness -- with our fellow human beings? What do you think? 

It is not always easy! Being kind can be a struggle. Flashes of anger visit almost all of us from time to time. 

Here's a thought: Maybe looking at other humans as if they were horses or dogs would make it easier for us to remain calm and treat them better. Does that sound totally wacky?

Sarah likes my idea. Good girl!

If You Seek…

This is one of the many times of year when Michigan’s state motto keeps coming to mind: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you. Hills and woods and water and sky — and everywhere, right now, in the sun and in the rain, cherry orchards in bloom. Although I know cherry blossoms were not that different when I photographed them last year (and will be equally beautiful next year), I can’t help grabbing for my camera again and again. Since they speak for themselves, however, I’ll let them do just that for the remainder of today’s post.

Another of last year’s themes that will repeat in 2019 is my Thursday Evening Author series (TEA). I’ll be welcoming back three guests from former years and introducing to my TEA audience two seasoned writers new to Northport, with one change: this year series guests will appear only every other week, for a total of five rather than last year’s eleven. 

We will begin with Kalamazoo poet Jennifer Clark on June 27. Jennifer is coming back with a new book of poetry, A Beginner’s Guide to Heaven. Her previous visit was lively and full of surprises, and I expect no less this year. We look forward to having her with us to kick off our 2019 season — so glad to have a returning poet as our opening headliner!

Leelanau’s own Kathleen Stocking is no stranger to Dog Ears Books, and you certainly won’t want to miss her event in Northport on July 11. Kathleen is a Leelanau treasure, and From the Place of the Gathering Light: Leelanau Pieces is destined to join Letters From the Leelanau as a Michigan classic. Need I say more?

Our third returnee is Dorene O’Brien from Detroit. Dorene’s new collection of short stories, What It Might Feel Like to Hope, has been gathering praise right and left, so we are delighted that she will be with us to do a reading and signing on July 25 on her annual Leelanau visit. Also, as a writer who also teaches writing, Dorene will no doubt have some words of wisdom in the Q&A following her reading.

Another Detroit writer, Michael Zadoorian, comes to us for the first time on August 8, with his new novel, Beautiful Music. Did you read The Leisure Seeker? (Maybe see the movie?) Michael’s reputation has been building for a while now, so it will be exciting to welcome him in Northport. 

Finally, on August 22, we will host Charles R. Eisendrath, a “reporter’s reporter” (according to Tom Brokaw), formerly on the staff of Time magazine and now making his home in northern Michigan. Charles comes to us with a beautiful nonfiction book, Downstream From Here: A Big Life in a Small Place, addressing experiences from fly fishing and making maple syrup to witnessing assassination. Really!

I’m very pleased with and proud of our TEA lineup for 2019 and proud to bring authors and new works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to my bookstore audience.  These events are an opportunity for those of us in a small town on the end of a quiet peninsula to hear seasoned, published writers from all over the state read their own work aloud to us in a live, intimate setting. Having guest authors sign the books you purchase adds another dimension to memories of each occasion, as does the general give-and-take of questions, answers, and conversation.

So please put all five dates on your summer calendar now! And if you do not usually read fiction or nonfiction or poetry, make this the season you will step outside your reading comfort zone and try something new, because all of our TEA guests have already given richly of themselves in their books and now give of themselves additionally with these guest appearances in Northport. We are so fortunate! 

I Couldn’t Slow Down With Emily, After All

What I plan to wear on Thursday evening

Summer kicked into high gear early this year, it seems. No sooner did our little reading circle, a.k.a. (originally, years ago) the intrepid Ulysses reading group, choose a date to discuss the poetry of Emily Dickinson than the first member’s conflict arose, to be followed by another, and another, and another…. So while I didn’t have a specific conflict, we were so far from a quorum already that I didn’t feel terrible saying I could ill afford a social evening.

I’m hoping Thursday evening will be cool enough for me to wear my old, worn, thrift shop quilted jacket (see above), the one that looks like someone’s great-grandmother made it (as is probably the case). It is the perfect attire in which to meet Rachel May, author of An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery, and introducing her to my Northport audience. The date is propitious, too, only two days after Juneteenth, the date commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation. And on that subject, let me say that I am concerned with proposed changes to school social studies standards for the State of Michigan.  

Sadly, this year Juneteenth (June 19), as well as my guest author’s appearance (June 21), come at a time when another group is suffering within our borders. As punishment for their attempt to enter the country — even those seeking asylum — parents have had their children taken from them, and children have been put in detention camps. True, this is not an entirely new development, but it seems to be worsening daily. And is it relevant that these camps are run by private companies, profiting from the misery of brown-skinned children? Is anyone else reminded of parents and children of enslaved Black people being separated? Of Native American children being forcibly removed from their families and put in residential schools?

First TEA guest in our summer series

But Rachel May’s story is not one of unrelieved misery. Some of the people whose history she uncovers were able to make the transition to freedom. She is also, besides being a researcher, teacher, and writer, a devoted quilter, as well, and I know she will be happy to talk about her quilting life, what she has learned about quilts and outstanding American quilters, and how her approach to the craft has changed over time. So, crafters and historians and anyone eager to learn, welcome to our first Thursday Evening Author event. We'll begin at 7 p.m., and I hope you’ll be able to join us. 

Random image unrelated to post

Strangers Bearing Gifts – and Becoming Friends

After nearly a quarter-century in business, I have a pretty good idea who appreciates my bookstore. The appreciative may be regular local browsers or people from far away who visit once or twice a year but never leave empty-handed. (“This is the high point of our trip,” one such customer-friend said to me this past summer.) They may ask me to order something for them when I don’t have in stock what they need, rather than ordering it themselves online. We share news of family and friends and pets and travel. Selling books to my staunch supporters is a lot more than a series of “business transactions.” I don’t take any of this for granted – it still feels quite wonderful, after all these years – but the phenomenon has become familiar to me.

More surprising are first-time visitors who come bearing gifts of appreciation. Why would they? Well, sometimes there is a chain of connections linking my bookstore to strangers coming through the door. That’s what happened last week when Tom Corbett and his wife, Beverly, from Ann Arbor came in with big smiles.

It was a mention of Jim Harrison books in an area magazine that brought the Corbetts to my bookstore in Northport. A poet friend of theirs had known Harrison in Lake Leelanau. I asked their friend’s name and didn’t recognize it, but Tom explained that he, Tom, and his friend, Red Shuttleworth, had both received Western Heritage awards for their work.

“How long did you know Jim Harrison?” one of them asked, and my mind reached back to my first meeting with Jim and Linda. David, wanting to introduce me to them, had taken me over to their old French Road farmhouse (the house’s future remodeling not even a plan back then) when I was up from Kalamazoo on vacation. I remember it as late enough in the summer evening –it would have been August – that the porch light was on. We stumbled in on an unusual scene in the Harrison house, where few dared to stop by without calling first: a traveling poet had come on pilgrimage to meet Jim, accompanied by his wife, their baby, and a very large dog. I described the scene to the Corbetts. “It was an Irish wolfhound,” I recalled. “I’d never seen such a tall dog in my life, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

The faces of my new acquaintance lit up, and they exclaimed excitedly, “That was him! That’s Red Shuttleworth! He’s always has Irish wolfhounds!”

They wanted to show me a picture of Red, but I shook my head and said I had no memory of what the man looked like. I only remembered the dog.

“I think he was teaching high school English,” I offered, and they nodded. Yes, Red had taught English in high school and community college for years.

What were the odds? The Corbetts had never met Jim Harrison themselves, and I had met Red Shuttleworth only once and remembered only his dog, but because of the dog I remembered the incident, and that connected the Tom and Beverly and me. We were all delighted.

“So you’re a poet, too?” I said to Tom, recalling what he’d said about a book award. No, he was a physician, but he and Beverly had lived for a while on a reservation in New Mexico, and Tom had collaborated on a project that extended over many years with Native American photographer Lee Marmon to produce their prize-winning book, Laguna Pueblo: A Photographic History.

Tom went out to their car and returned with a copy of the beautiful book and inscribed a copy to me. Could I buy it? No, it was a gift. I was overwhelmed.

That meeting was over a week ago, and now I have finished reading the text of Marmon and Corbett’s book and have gazed long and carefully at the photographs, and it’s plain to see why the book received a Western Heritage Award. Besides the photographer's stunning images taken over several decades, there are also historical and family photographs, stories taken from written archival records, and recorded oral histories, all documenting life at Laguna Pueblo and how it has changed over the years but also held onto many important traditional ways. 

An additional bonus from my meeting with Tom and Beverly was learning about Lee Marmon’s daughter, Leslie Marmon Silko. Sherman Alexie says of her best-known work:

Ceremony is the greatest novel in Native American literature. It is one of the greatest novels of any time and place. I have read this book so many times that I probably have it memorized. I teach it and I learn from it and I am continually in awe of its power, beauty, rage, vision, and violence.

I’m excited about reading the work of this writer and searching out additional Native American voices in our country’s literature. 

All these connections, of course, came about by way of years spent in Leelanau County, besides getting to know people through my bookstore. And really, it was Jim who was the catalyst in bringing the rest of us together now, in 2017, reminding me once again that community is more than people living at the same time in the same place. It is many ties that link us over time and across space, sometimes over great distances and in surprising ways.