On the Road: Bookman’s (not Busman’s) Holiday, Then One for Dogs

In case you had doubts....

The Bookman’s Holiday

 

The first leg of my winter odyssey south and west takes me only as far as Kalamazoo, where many family members and friends make their homes. One friend brought supper for me my first night in the ‘zoo, and in the morning when I picked my son up for breakfast, we went instead to – surprise! – a bookstore. “Do you mind?” I asked him. He looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would I mind going to a bookstore with my mother?” Okay, it was a stupid question.

 

This is a bookstore is the name of the bookstore where we found ourselves. That really is its name. It’s partnered up with the next door Book Bug, specializing in children’s books, and they share café space. 

When I visit any bookshop for the first time, I pretty much know right away if it’s going to be a memorable experience or just another ho-hum Hallmark moment. And the minute I got inside this is a bookstore I was excited. Who wouldn’t be? I should say, what booklover and bookstore lover wouldn’t be excited by such a place?

 

1) I love their counter!

 

Is this cool, or what?

“What if someone wants to buy one of those books?” I wicked-innocently asked a clerk behind the counter, pointing to the real books holding it up. He said those books were not for sale but that a “reasonable facsimile” could be provided. 

 

Here are some of other aspects of the shop I found to love:

 

2) The books are attractively displayed, categories easily identifiable, and there is an unspoken, silent invitation to venture quickly into the far reaches of the store.

 

3) A few used books, clearly marked as such, are mixed in among the new, and once I realized that I started seeking out the yellow tape on their spines, treasure-hunting.

 

        4) The café invites lingering, in much the way that the bookshelves invite browsing. If I still lived in the ‘zoo, I would be a regular. I can’t give the bagels high marks (my advice is to skip the bagel and go straight for a brownie), but the coffee was excellent.  

 

Nectar of the gods!

5) I overheard a couple of conversations, and the talk was interesting. That to me is another mark of a high-quality bookstore. And of course, at our table, my son and I were having interesting conversation.(Can you doubt it?) Our talk was of writing, as it often is when we get together.

6) Even the restroom was cool!

Doesn't everybody read in the bathroom?

 

Whenever I find myself in a really good bookstore for the first time, it takes a while for my initial giddiness to subside. Quickly I found a used book and bought it -- right away! -- but only after latte and conversation with my son could I could remember the name of a new book I wanted. Yes, they had it. Good! I bought that, too.

 

And okay, I’ll confess, with nary an apology to Jeff Deutsch, author of In Praise of Good Bookstores, that I also bought a couple pair of socks, because far be it from me to criticize a bookstore looking to enhance its slim profit margin by selling puzzles, socks, and other sidelines, as long as they are also stocking excellent books! If socks keep bookstores in business, I’m all for socks (particularly cute ones). And I am definitely not one of those people who loudly proclaims "love" of bookstores and leaves empty-handed!

My haul --

 

Holiday for Dogs

 

Sunny, having no choice in the matter, waited patiently in the car while her bookseller dog mom indulged a human love of literature. I told her that her turn would come in the afternoon. Did she believe me? Did she have any idea at all what I was saying?

I think she had doubts.

Our grandson and his wife have a 20-acre piece of property north of Kalamazoo, and grandson’s wife, her mother, and I, each bringing a dog, met there to walk trails in the woods. Motivated by a deep and abiding tick phobia, I wore a stupid-looking hat with a big, floppy brim and tucked the legs of my jeans into my socks. (You wouldn't want to see that image.) The dogs had no such worries. A malamute, an Aussie, and a Boston terrier walked into a bar – I mean, ran into the woods. Sunny’s leaps across the creek, a charming little creek with a sandy bottom, delightful turns, here and there a miniature waterfall, were stunning! If dogs ran steeplechase, she could!

 

The lovely little creek!

There is always so much to see in the woods, and every woods is different. This one had beautiful beech trees, one of the trees I love back in Leelanau County, but also different species, such as shagbark hickory, and I was told the mushrooms, both spring and fall, are plentiful and various. The fungi I saw may not have been edible (I don't know), but they were eye-catching.

Shagbark hickory

 

The dogs’ holiday in the woods, honestly, was as much a holiday for me as was the bookstore visit. The sun was shining! And tomorrow, at last, Election Day will be behind us, as is (finally) Halloween! I will be happy to see the landscape naked again, its human dressing of skeletons and political signs gone for another season.

How are you spending these fabulous, sunny, still unseasonably warm fall days? They are like windfall apples, aren’t they? Or merchants’ lagniappe. Unexpected, extra, delightful, unearned and perhaps undeserved gifts…. 

Dogs having fun!

Gift or Grind: It’s All in the Receiving

Although I do it every day, grinding coffee beans is not a "grind" at all!

 

When I was (belatedly) in graduate school at the University of Illinois, there was a wonderful coffee shop west of the main campus called the Daily Grind. “See you at the Grind,” we might say to a friend. “Oh, I was at the Grind.” Etc. Socializing did take place there, but usually only in the late afternoon. Earlier in the day, regardless of the number of people sitting at any given table, most heads were bent over books and notebooks, everyone reading and underlining and scribbling away. All of us regularly spent hours studying at home (some people until after midnight; my own preference was to get up at 4 or 5 a.m.), and there was no end to studying, but when we needed the comforting presence of others, the Grind was more help than distraction, so much so that when I think of my graduate school days, much of my nostalgia centers on the Daily Grind. You wouldn’t think that from the name alone, would you? 

 

This morning, the beginning of the day of the winter solstice, I was beset by all kinds of feelings, but I woke from dreams with a single thought: “We’re alive. We won’t always be alive.” It was not a new thought, not shocking or frightening. It didn’t even have a lot of feeling attached to it. Just truth. We’re alive. We won’t always be alive. The feelings came later, quite a jumble of them, when I looked at Facebook and saw a friend’s memory of her late son, then another friend’s memory of her late mother. May their memories be blessings to those left behind, I thought, and a third friend came to mind, one who is (as we all are, but she is close to the end and aware of it) in the process of dying, even as Christmas comes near. Our beautiful friend, so full of life and laughter!

Full moon, morning before solstice

solstice moon

On laundromat morning, I don’t get up any earlier than usual, but I certainly get dressed and ready to go to town earlier. As the pack made its way from ghost town to “civilization,” the full moon of the previous morning was fading on its right-hand curve, and, as always, I thought of Ahmed (another departed friend), who taught me to distinguish waxing moon from waning moon with the words ‘premier’ and ‘dernier.’ It is the curves of the miniscule ‘p’ and ‘d’ that hold the clue. So this morning’s no-longer full moon is beginning to wane, although the solstice means that our days now begin to lengthen again toward spring.

 

But before we were on the road, there was already Peasy.

the corner I share with Peasy

Peasy has half a dozen stuffed animals, which I try to keep corralled in my little book corner so we won’t be tripping over them everywhere in the small cabin, so when I told him this morning, “Go get your lion,” he first ran to the corner where most of his toys were gathered. But the lion wasn’t there, and he ran back to find it in the Artist’s corner. Has he learned the word ‘lion’ -- or is it simply that the lion, as the only toy still retaining (so far) its squeaker, is more fun than the other toys, his most valuable possession? Squeak, squeak, squeak! Joyously, proudly, he ran back and forth with his lion!

Peasy with lion, taking a break from running and squeaking

No morning is ever a “grind” to Peasy! He doesn’t care that one morning is pretty much like another. To him, each one is a gift. Another day! He’s alive! He’s with us! Life is fantastic! His enthusiasm is boundless and infectious, and we can’t help laughing and feeling grateful ourselves – for each other, for this crazy dog, for another day of life.

another glorious desert sunrise

Originally I had it in mind to write about grinding and milling – various methods from stones to mechanics – but really, do you want to read about that? Somehow I doubt it. You are basking in memories of Hanukkah or celebrating the winter solstice and/or looking forward to Christmas and a new year. And just maybe you have sadness, too, because someone you love is no longer with you or soon will not be. Turn, turn, turn – the seasons and the years. "Everything is temporary!" (my favorite line from the movie "Moonstruck"), I remind myself.

death in the desert (as everywhere)

Is life pointless because it is limited and ends, always, in death? Some people think so. Yet when it comes to gold and silver and diamonds and such, their value lies in their relative scarcity. For each of us, with one precious life to live, what could be more valuable?

All around us, even here in the desert, we are surrounded by life. I should say, by life and death, all mixed up. The earth teems with life and death, as do our days. Would you be a pioneer on another planet, given the opportunity? Not I. The way I see it, our species grew up on this planet and has adapted to it -- and tried to adapt it to ourselves, sometimes with disastrous results, but that is not part of my thought for today. Today I’m thinking only of what a gift our brief tenure is in this wonderful adventure. Not a single human being or even the minds of all human beings who ever lived, all those minds together, could ever have dreamed up such a vast, complex, incredibly fascinating set of wonders! 

So whether you give gifts or not or send holiday cards or not or bake cookies or light candles or have a decorated tree or do none of those things, I wish you joy in and of your life. Our future together -- as friends, as a species -- is, as our individual futures are, always uncertain, but if you are reading these words you are alive right now, and while we cannot hope to be joyful every moment we’re alive, intermittent joy is a recurring gift, n’est-ce pas? And gracious receiving can be as important as generous giving, I do believe. So if you possibly can, take a leaf from Peasy's book.

And Merry Christmas!!!

 

happy dog!!!

Books read since last listed (and who knows if I’ll squeeze in any more before year’s end?):

 

169. Sisman, Robyn. Weekend in Paris (fiction)

170. Wizenburg, Molly. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (nonfiction) 

171. Duncklee, John. Coyotes I Have Known (nonfiction)

172. Palka, Kurt. The Hour of the Fox (fiction)

173. Hudson, Virginia Cary. Flapdoodle, Trust & Obey (???)

The World of Then, The World of Now

Original digital photograph

Then: I was younger and tried hard to make my bookstore a year-round business. I even bowed to pressure from locals to serve coffee every morning one winter when Barb’s Bakery was closed, hoping to disprove a former landlord’s advice, gleaned from personal experience: “The key to a seasonal business is to keep it seasonal.” 

Now: I’m older, still working and still dependent on my business income, but I’ve given myself permission for several years now to take “seasonal retirement” during the off-season.

Then: When I took the photograph at the top of this post, Woodruff Palmer owned the building, and I managed sales for his Painted Horse Gallery, along with running my bookstore. 

Now: With Clare Gengarelly as the building’s current owner, a wall separates her space from mine, and Dog Ears Books has its own entrance. Very slightly farther down the building than this photograph shows, next to my door, is the door of David’s Grath’s studio and gallery. 

Then: We undertook our occasional travels with light hearts and a sense of excitement. An annual September getaway to the Upper Peninsula took us back to familiar scenes that pleased year after year.

Now: In the time of coronavirus, as spring progresses across the land, we continue to shelter in place in our winter rental cabin, leery of taking the road home and with hearts heavy over the many divisions in our country.

Then: My photograph of the snowy scene on Waukazoo Street appeared only in digital form on my blog. 

Now: One of David’s cousins has had it reproduced for us on canvas, even after the printer made the cousin sign a form saying he would accept the results regardless of resolution. The printer didn't think the image was good enough to reproduce. Really! Who expects a clear image in a blizzard? This is perfect! And not as dark as it appears below -- sorry about that!

Photograph reproduced on canvas

Then: Our reality was a daily commute from home to village on icy, snowy, slippery roads. Spring came gradually, backsliding frequently but eventually settling into days of sun or rain. We could count on spring wildflowers in the woods, and we hoped no late frost killed cherry blossoms.

Trillium

Cherry blossom

Altered orchard!

Mesquite blooms

Now: Our present reality is mountain scenery, birds at the feeder, quail coming for a morning drink at the water bar, mesquite forming almost solid green across the high desert floor. We follow the weather and other news from Northport and expect to be there again eventually but are unsure when that will be or what we can expect when we get there. 

Then: We looked forward to a summer of hard work, with a few weeks’ window of financial reward to get us through the next winter.

Now: It’s anyone’s guess what the future will bring. We do, however, draw on a rich store of memories.

Thank you, Jim!

Kitchens, Morning Coffee, and a Bit More

Stepping back into my Paris kitchen in our old northern Michigan farmhouse after several months far away was no big adjustment, any more than had been walking back into the one-room ghost town cabin in mid-December. Neither place is fancy or glamorous, which is probably why both feel like home. And that is how they are alike, but in other ways they are very different. 

My little kitchen in Michigan is a small galley, what one of my family members calls a “one-butt kitchen,”  which is why I began calling it a Paris kitchen in the first place. (Space is at a premium in Paris.) A second person can squeeze in, but it is difficult then for either person to move and work freely. — Well, moving and working are difficult, moving and working freely impossible. 

In the ghost town kitchen, there are steps to take across open space between stove and counter, sink and refrigerator. In my (Michigan) Paris kitchen, standing at one counter, I turn turn 180 degrees to face the sink, turn back and take a single step to the stove, and stretch an arm out to open the refrigerator. Only high shelves are a challenge. Everything else is within reach. 

In the ghost town cabin, as in Michigan, I was often up before dark or, when spring arrived, at least by first light. Both places, my morning begins with making coffee. 

This morning, for some reason, I thought of long-ago mornings in Paris, France, waking to the cooing and fluttering of pigeons, clink of spoons against china, and sounds of French conversation and singing through the open windows. That was in May, and I am now in May here, in northern Michigan. Is that what reminded me of the rue de Vaugirard and dear Hélène, the landlady who became a cherished friend? She, I remember now, made only instant coffee. (Does that seem strange?) Red wine she bought in bulk and kept a bottle filled for me on my shelf in her refrigerator. Her kitchen was somewhat larger than mine here in the farmhouse, but it was not large enough for a table, and our eating and drinking was all done in the apartment’s largest room, a combination parlor/dining room, the walls crowded with crowded bookshelves and an eclectic assortment of art work, courtyard window sill lined with herbs in pots. 

The largest kitchen I have ever had was in my graduate student apartment in Champaign, Illinois. It was an old sleeping porch on the third floor of an enormous Victorian house at the opposite end of a large city park from the downtown shopping district. Once a month, on the day I got my graduate assistant paycheck, I would get off the bus downtown and treat myself to fresh flowers from a little jewel of a florist shop (much like similar shops in Paris, France), next picking up a baguette from an Italian restaurant and bakery on my walk home, cutting through the park. My sleeping porch kitchen was enormous and filled with light. Also, and despite its generous size, because it was on the third floor and there were mature trees right outside the window, it felt like living in a treehouse.

I was alone then, without even a dog until — but that is another story. My point is that, living alone in Champaign, a single pot of French press coffee was enough to get my day started. Later in the morning, out in the world, near campus, I could stop in at a coffee house (say, the Daily Grind) or, toward the end of the long pay period when funds were running low, the basement cafeteria of the Newman Center. All that was a lifetime ago. Two dogs ago.

The ghost town coffee maker, one we bought new in early 2018, made the first pot of the morning quickly. During its operation I had time for a routine of yoga stretches but never enough time to become impatient.

Here in Michigan, in my little Paris kitchen, our equally modern but aging coffee maker takes its sweet time, even after a day-long ritual cleaning. Sometimes, not wanting to wait for the glass to fill, I pull it out ahead of time and pour a premature cup — always too strong, but the addition of hot milk makes it café au lait, thus more palatable. This morning another idea occurs to me, however, and I hunt through cupboards until I find a pair of seldom-used espresso cups and saucers.  

Yesterday I came to the last page of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, beginning at bedtime a Swedish novel recommended by a friend, Bear Town, by Fredrik Backman. I am generally careful what I choose to read before sleep, and so I saved for morning another book brought by another friend, a book of nonfiction by poet Carolyn Forché entitled What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance, a story of modern-day El Salvador. That story begins with one I have heard before: the seizure of indigenous people’s lands for the cultivation of cash crops, profits reaped by the cultural thieves. In this case, the first such crops were indigo and sugar cane, as the campesinos were pushed up into the mountains. Then came the realization that the mountain slopes were perfect for coffee plantations. 

I get up and go to the freezer to look at the bag of coffee beans. The contents are claimed to be “eco-friendly,” but I see no mention of here of “fair trade,” and I remember that when my sister gave me the bag (we were visiting sister and brother-in-law on our way back to Michigan), she commented that it wasn’t what she usually buys. I remember too a piece in the latest New York Review of Books discussing slavery in the United States and quoting William Lloyd Garrison, who wrote that slavery was “not a southern, but a national institution, involving the North as well as the South,” and I recall one of my guest authors in the 2018 Thursday Evening Author series at my bookstore, Rachel May, the woman who wrote American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery, who came on her own to the same conclusion as she researched a piece of material culture. 

My original review of Rachel May’s book is here. One of the questions I note that May asked was how we, the United States, came to be where we are today, in terms of race relations. I think of that this morning because Carolyn Forché’s book seeks to answer, among other questions, how we Americans came to be where we are today in relation to Latin America, especially Central America. We cannot understand why so many refugees are streaming north to our borders without realizing what they are fleeing — and if we understand the role of our own government in creating the intolerable situations in their native countries, we cannot help feeling as responsible for their lives as we feel for the lives of our fellow United States citizens. 

When a Salvadoran man with two young daughters showed up at her door and said he had come because she was a poet, Forché had no idea that a few days later he would invite her to spend her poetry fellowship time and money by coming to spend time in his country. He said that war was coming to El Salvador and it was her chance to see something like Vietnam from the very beginning. Besides, he asked, what else did she have in mind? “Write poetry about yourself for the rest of your life?” 

What are we going to do for the rest of our days on earth? What are we going to challenge ourselves to learn, and how might what we learn change our lives? It takes courage to learn and even more courage to change. I am not unmindful of the strong coffee that accompanies my reading this morning. I’m thinking of this year’s garden, also, and wondering how it would go if I dropped seeds of corn, beans, and squash into little hills surrounded by straw mulch from last year’s gale garden — a natural thought, given my morning’s reading. 

A Ghost Town New to Us -- and More Serendipity

For one reason and another, we have not been adventuring far from our usual daily track as often as we did three years ago. The Artist’s birthday, though, was a perfect occasion for a road trip. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we set off down the Kansas Settlement Road for the first time this winter. As things turned out, we never did reach the destination we had originally set for ourselves but instead found ourselves surprised along the way. We had not foreseen, for example, that we would discover another mining “ghost town.” But all in good order....

We had both been curious for quite a while about the name of the Kansas Settlement Road. The name definitely seems to indicate a story, and I thought perhaps a historic monument we had never detoured to see might provide the explanation. It did not. And that only makes sense, since the monument is not on the Kansas Settlement Road but a few miles down  Birch Road to the west. The monument’s story, as you see, tells how the Sulphur Springs Valley got its name, along with the sad episode of the short-lived Chiricahua Indian Reservation. We came, we read, we moved on.

Instead of turning back to the Kansas Settlement Road, however, we kept to Birch Road until it reached Hwy 191, a road we would have come to eventually, anyway. Along our resumed southern direction, however, temptation came along again, and we detoured once more, this time to the town, or “townsite,” of Pearce. 

For a population center that once boasted 1500 residents, there is not much remaining of Pearce, but the handful of buildings are definitely historic in appearance. There was indication of several current, ongoing business ventures — an antique shop, pottery studio and shop, and a local goat’s milk soap production (that last not pictured here — my omission — sorry!), but we saw no OPEN signs and no sign of any living human being. The Artist’s first question in any remote location is, “Where do they go for a cup of coffee?” It looked as if a cup of coffee would be hard to come by in Pearce. 

There was a rail to tie up horses, but there were no horses in sight, either.

[4/5/2018: Correction to paragraph below. It is not Cowboy Mall, but Mustang Mall. See here for more.]

Back onto Hwy. 191 and down on a stretch more familiar to us, we stopped at the “Cowboy Mall,” which is not a mall at all but a combination grocery-convenience store with a glorious selection of tack — saddles, bridles, bits, spurs — and a couple gas pumps out front. A birthday celebration was going on among the women working the counter, the “birthday girl,” just turned 22, being serenaded in Spanish, English, and American Sign Language. When I told them it was the Artist’s birthday, too, his coffee was on the house. What a great place! There is so much to see at the Cowboy Mall (including a couple sections of used books) that we were there a long time and got into conversation with a retired laborer from New Mexico, now living out of his camper. He was a reader and a bookstore lover, too. After a while, though, I left the two men talking and wandered around by myself, looking at more of what was on offer, and so it was that I found, to my delight, goat’s milk soap from Pearce! Very satisfying!

We never did find the elusive road we wanted out of Tombstone and finally decided to save that for another day, but we did not return to our own ghost town empty-handed. We had not only seen another ghost town, but I also managed to find one of its modern products, and that was reward enough, especially since unforeseen, for our day’s exploring.

Sunday afternoon serendipity again played a role in our winter life. All we had planned was a trip to the laundromat. One funny thing did happen there. As I was folding clothes, I was completely inattentive to the television playing behind me, had no idea of or interest in whatever might be on, and then suddenly the word “horses” hit my ear, and I spun around to face the screen. It was some kind of medieval reenactment, nothing I was particularly concerned to watch, but how funny that the single word “horses” should leap out of undifferentiated (to my mind) background sound with such urgent clarity!

When the laundry was done and packed away in the van, I had an idea. We could drive out to the rodeo grounds (officially known as Quail Park but always “the rodeo grounds” to me) and I could let Sarah off the leash to run and then work her through a few commands. We drove out Fort Grant Road, expecting to find an empty field. But that’s what comes, I said to the Artist, of not reading the Range News regularly: it was Junior Rodeo weekend, and we had nearly missed the whole thing! I’d left my camera home, along with my cowgirl hat, but we parked and got out to hang on the rails and watch the calf-roping. Nothing smells as good as fresh horse and cow manure! With all the rain we’ve had, this year’s rodeo wasn’t nearly as dusty, either, as the one we’d attended three years before. 

Well, that was serendipity indeed! Horses, horses, horses! I didn't have my camera with me, but I had my eyes and ears and nose to take in beautiful sights and sounds and aromas. Nothing better in the world! Why would I, how could I, not love a place with so many horses collected together? My heart is not yearning to be anywhere but Cochise County, Arizona, this winter.

Junior Rodeo, Willcox, AZ, 2015