With Holiday, Real Summer Begins

Declaring independence!

In Northport, Beautiful 4th of July Weekend

Most years past in Northport, we've seen an influx of tourists and summer residents for Memorial Day weekend, followed by quiet weeks through June until the 4^th of July, but this time around summer seemed to kick off early, with more visitors in June than I ever remember before. Apparently word has gotten out that June is a heavenly month Up North. And this yea's 4th of July weekend could not have been lovelier. Weather was warm enough for the beach, not hot enough to be uncomfortable, with refreshing morning and evening breezes.

Kathleen Stocking signs book for Ty Wessell

My first bookstore event of the summer season was a signing of The Long Arc of the Universe, by Kathleen Stocking, on Sunday, July 3. Once again, I neglected to have my picture taken with my guest author! When will I learn to make this a routine part of every author event? Well, the good news – and not just for my memory book – is that Stocking will return for a second event in August. We will set up chairs in David Grath’s gallery next door, and the author will give a talk, with an opportunity for audience questions -- and I guarantee a lively, stimulating evening! More on this subject later....

Wildflowers on porch table

At home

There is never enough time for sitting at home on the front porch, but I enjoy every morning and evening minute of it that I have. Over the holiday weekend I re-read Letters from the Leelanau, by Kathleen Stocking, and Drummond Girls, by Mardi Link, then read Kelly Fordon’s short story collection, Garden for the Blind. Not only is Kelly my next guest author (Thursday, July 14, 1-3 p.m.), but she has been getting well-deserved rave reviews for this book. I look forward to meeting her and hosting her event, and I hope all my local writer friends will be able to make it to her reading. I'll have more to say about her stories, too, as we get closer to her visit. 

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Classics

Back in Northport

One day, during the usually midafternoon lull in the bookstore, I got to musing about phrases people use. For instance, people who come in out of curiosity, not necessarily because of an interest in books, usually insist that they don’t need assistance or information because they are “just browsing.”

Okay, I learned from my mother at an early age about telling salespeople, “Thanks, I’m just looking.” But looking, as I see it, is not browsing.

You can look with hands in pockets. You can look while in continuous motion, without ever coming to a halt. You can look pretty quickly -- and be out the door again in a flash! As I have heard tourists say to friends on the sidewalk, more than once, “It’s just books in there.” (Yep, pretty much just books, which explains why I call it a bookstore and why its name is Dog Ears Books.)

Browsing is something different.

Bookstore browsing is done with hands as well as eyes. It involves touching books, taking books from the shelves, opening book covers, sometimes reading a few pages, maybe even finding a nearby chair to investigate more closely a volume that has captured the eye and hands. A taste here, a taste there, the chewing-over of a thought or idea. Because unless you are already familiar with the book that catches your eye – and know that you want it – the title on the spine won’t tell you all that much. It’s what’s inside that counts, and the insides of books are a lot more than merchandise to be judged at a glance.

Now I know that I am not, single-handedly, going to change Americans’ use of the English language. “I’m just browsing” means, to most of the people who use the phrase in my bookstore, “I’m just taking a look around. I probably won’t buy anything. Don’t bug me!” I get it. Not that I bug anyone in my bookstore. There is no high-pressure sales force at work here. I offer once, so no one will feel ignored, and that’s that.

Browsers don’t have to explain themselves to me because their behavior tells the story. Like philosophers in the halls of academe, speculating on the dreams of dogs instead of obsessing about fringe benefits and retirement packages, browsers are my people. We understand each other. Looking is not enough for us. Rather, we look to lose ourselves in books.

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Random bovine

I’d just drafted the paragraphs above about browsing (originally with introductory material about horses and cattle browsing and grazing, just because I love horses and cows, but it was kind of a reach) when a mother and daughter walked in the door, and the mother exclaimed, “I’ve never been in a real bookstore before! I feel like I’m in a movie!” She had, as it turned out, been in large chain bookstores, but not in any quirky little independent place like mine, and her delight delighted me.

And they browsed! The daughter bought an art book! As they were leaving, I told them they had taken a new turn in their lives, and the daughter replied, “Yes, now we’ll never not go into a bookstore!” Music to my ears!

Bookstore bulletin board

A Pause as Time Rushes By

I hope everyone’s summer is off to a good start, and I hope it doesn’t race by too, too fast, though I already know that it will. Summer is like that. But we love it!

Tuberose begonias

Near at Hand, Serendipity Awaits

 Serendipity. That’s one of my pet names for Sarah, along with Sarasota, Serafina, and Triceratops. I remember first learning the word ‘serendipity’ as a young adolescent and being utterly charmed by the idea, the word itself something delightful I’d come upon by accident. Since we found our Sarah at the Cherryland Humane Society, much to our good fortune, the name she already had then, Sarah, has come to mean much more to us over the years, layered over with new meanings as our time together accumulates.

But where is serendipity to be found? The dictionary I’m consulting (an enormous, heavy thing it is, too, but I do not wish it abridged or shrunken or digitized!) gives “good fortune; luck” as the second meaning of the word, while the first, I’m intrigued to learn, is “an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident” (Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Fully Revised and Updated, 1996). In this first meaning, serendipity is a faculty possessed by a person, such as musical talent or being good at solving puzzles. So you or I or someone else might already “have” serendipity. Or maybe you think you don’t?

My hunch is that serendipity, like so many other abilities, can always be improved with practice and that practicing to improve serendipity involves nothing more than keeping one’s eyes and ears and attention open to the world and perhaps venturing down a different path from time to time. Here I think of what my friend said about people “taking orders” from GPS and failing to see the big picture or realize how many choices are available to readers of maps.

Certainly it must help, to be serendipitous, never to think of any situation or place or event that you’ve “been there and done that,” because it might be different this time around. Aren’t you an older and wiser person? Maybe more relaxed – or more confident – or more adventurous? And even if you think you haven’t changed a bit, circumstances themselves are never exactly the same from one occasion to the next, are they?

 As I typed the first draft of these sentences, a woman had come into my bookstore and was taking her time browsing the aisles. I was delighted! How often, it seems, people don’t take time to browse. They may buy a book they already wanted, but the rest of my treasures lie undiscovered, not buried at all but right out in plain sight, and this is true not only of the used books but even the new ones.

Here are a few treasures awaiting the adventurous and serendipitous browser at Dog Ears Books this first week of December 2014. I would write more, but I need to open one of these books....