Scenes & Thoughts From Life & Lit

"Can we play ball?"

 

This is what spring looks like. 

 

At least, it is what the month of March so often looks like here in northern Michigan, as the calendar announces spring in the midst of continued snow and ice. 

 

But a thaw brings its own troubles. Frozen mud ruts are jarring, but a slithery mud wallow can be much more difficult to navigate. And do we want the 70-degree temperatures in March that family in Minnesota and Illinois had recently? I should say not! Heaven forbid the “darling buds of May” be tempted to open any earlier and risk a killing frost!

Future Mudbath Here

Meanwhile, living in a book –

 

Published in 1859, the action of George Eliot's Adam Bede takes place in 1799 against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, but world-historic events are not the author’s concern. We are told the time only because the narrator insists that “all this happened, you must remember, nearly sixty years ago,” and so, she says, we should not be surprised that Adam exhibits a touch of peasant superstition along with his keen intelligence or that “Hetty’s sphere of comparison was not large.” The novel's world is a circumscribed rural world of a bygone past but also includes the inner, infinitely complex worlds of the people who lived there in that time.

 

Reading Eliot's classic novel in the 21^st century, it is difficult to view it, as many did in 1859, as the “vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind.” Seduction, pregnancy, and infanticide do occur in the story, but hardly in “lewd” language. Of the seduction, we see only kisses and an arm around a waist, while the infant is more abandoned than murdered—criminal, yes, but neither violently nor without feeling—and between the seduction and the abandonment, the terrified flight of a young woman never before on her own in the world has her pregnancy named to us by the author only, circumspectly, as her “hidden dread.” There are no graphic scenes or language.

Winter continues.
Seasonal road season is not here yet.

Shocking readers was not George Eliot’s aim. Rather, she encouraged the enlargement of sympathy for our fellow creatures.

 

The story takes place at the turn of a century over 300 years ago. We see the faces of George Eliot’s characters as their own friends and families see them, and at the same time we feel the beating of their hearts as if those hearts were our own. Hopes, illusions, doubts and all the rest of the changing weather that passes through their souls we experience along with them as, along with what we see, there is what the author allows us to feel, which is more than we might for our own neighbors and friends whose hearts are hidden from us. As the omniscient narrator tells a story so universal that it might have taken place at any time in human history, we are introduced not only to people as they appear to each other but also to the inner lives of each. We see clearly the querulous, jealous mother-love of Lisbeth Bede, the near-worship of young Seth for his brother Adam, Adam’s hard and unforgiving judgment of those who lack his devotion to work, Hetty’s inability to feel sympathy for anyone’s feelings other than her own, and Dinah’s gentle saintliness that asks nothing for herself—and if Lisbeth and Seth and Adam, Hetty and Dinah were our neighbors we might stop with what we see and judge them by a single standard, much as does the voluble Mrs. Poyser, with her rock-ribbed sense that her view of things was the only right view. But granted access to their inner doubts, fears, and hopes, we share (if we are sympathetic readers) in the author’s sympathy for them all.

Weak sun trying its best to shine --

A friend and I were texting one recent morning about writers able to move readers to such sympathy. As I have long said of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you might be unable, in real life, to tolerate sitting next to one of her characters on a long bus ride, but thanks to her insights into that character’s experiences and the marks it has left on the soul, a reader understands the why behind, for example, someone’s maddening anger or overwrought sensibility. By contrast, no subtlety or great knowledge of hearts is required to create a fictional hero or villain, only the willingness to play God and divide the human race into the saved and the damned. “An author needs a vision of human nature and unusual writing skill to produce characters that truly reflect reality,” my friend noted. 

Vision, skill—I would add that it takes generosity of spirit on the part of the writer, a largeness of soul. And a reader willing to open her own heart and mind to the vision of such a writer cannot help but feel increased sympathy for mankind in general.

 

How can it be that I never read this novel before? To think that I might have missed it entirely! It will be part of my mission as a bookseller to urge its reading to others, though I realize that not all readers will find it as compelling as I did because Adam Bede presents a couple of possible stumbling blocks for 21^st-century readers. 

First, there is the dialect. Repetition and context aid in translation, however, and a reader quickly realizes that ‘mun’ stands for ‘must,’ ‘war’ for ‘were,’ and ‘nor’ for ‘than.’ Also, the dialect is stronger in some characters’ speech than in others and occurs not at all in the exposition, so screw up your courage and dive in!

 

A more general stumbling block for many would be the novel’s opening pace. The story begins slowly and builds slowly. We see country people at their work and at their worship, the author in no hurry to cut to the action, her paragraphs long and dense with description. While impatience on the part of a reader will be ill rewarded, I can promise that once things begin to happen there are plenty of sudden scene changes and increasing drama.

Ice moving out of Omena Bay at last!

With eyes on the forecast –

 

I’m back in my bookshop today, for the first time since—was it really Thursday, March 12? Almost two weeks ago?! That’s what the double whammy of a couple feet of snow plus a debilitating cold will do to the most determined and intrepid bookseller. But she is back among the living, friends, and happy to be here for you once more.

Somewhere in the future will be more blue skies.

Without the blue snow!

And now? Will I take spring break next week along with everyone else in Northport, the public school and our hardworking friends at New Bohemian Café? Is there a road trip in my near future? Or will I stay put and be a destination for someone else? Much depends on the weather, my friends, as is so often the case in our extraliterary lives, but I am here this week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, for sure, March 25-27, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., so stop by if the spirit moves you. 

And someday soon Sunny will be rolling in clover!

Where I've Been Lately

I’ve been under the weather.

It’s hard to keep the days straight, but a week ago Saturday I expected to be in my shop and then could not get there because I had no plow-out at home until evening. I made a brief foray out into the world on Sunday before Monday dumped two feet of new snow. 

On Tuesday evening farmer/plow guy came with big tractor and monster snow blower, which allowed me to get out Wednesday to collect mail, purchase OTC relief for a nasty cold, and renew the license plate tab for my car, but since then I’ve stayed home, lying low, sleeping as much as possible. My laptop notified me that I spent 40% less time online in the past week than the week before. Duh! I'm sick! Leave me alone!

Here are a couple things I learned, hunches I followed up with online searches when finally I had the energy to pursue information again. If these tidbits keep one or two of my blog readers from being caught off-guard, it will be worth my mentioning them.

(1) A simple illness like a bad cold can bring on, trigger—mimic, if you prefer—depression. The scientific explanation has to do with cytokines and the body’s immune response, and my science nerd friends will want to follow up on the research in this area. For me, confirmation of my hunch was all-important to “bouncing back” (which I am doing in super-slow-motion), because at my lowest ebb I had no energy at all: no energy to care, to feel grateful, to feel hopeful, no energy to feel. And not feeling, not caring for or about anything but my own misery was worse than the misery itself. Everything dear and important seemed pointless. Life itself. Why go on?

Then on Saturday, the morning after the worst day, I woke up feeling, if not exactly “better,” at least not as completely terrible, and I cannot exaggerate the effect of that slight improvement. It was a re-entry into life! Still sick, coughing, and low on energy but able once again to smile when my phone's ping! announced a text from my special someone. Love was not an illusion, a sick joke played on me by a malevolent universe, and I was not dead to its wonder! I was reborn! Hallelujah!

(2) Coughing can cause [more] coughing. This was another hunch I had that proved out, and it’s a good reason to treat the symptom, in order to break the vicious cycle. 

I was still able to read — sometimes — off and on. 

At my worst, it was much more off than on, sleep too demanding to be denied. I would often wake from hours of sleep only to drag myself through a page or two before giving up, exhausted, to pull the covers over my head again. In better hours, though, the force of the story would pull me in and along, giving me as much of a reprieve from self-pity as I could hope to achieve. (Because self-pity was the absolutely most disgusting aspect of the whole thing!)

The Lincoln Reader, edited by Paul M. Angle, published in 1947, was one of that year's Book-of-the-Month Club selections. BOMC News, in announcing the choice, declared that while Angle’s book would have been impossible without all the previous books written about Lincoln (it borrows from many of them), it duplicated none of them. Angle’s selections are grouped according to the chronology of the subject’s life, beginning with “Kentucky Childhood” and proceeding through “Youth in Indiana,” “New Salem,” etc., all the way through Lincoln’s careers in law and politics, his presidency and the Civil War, to “Death—and a People’s Grief.” Let me quote from the BOMC News flier that accompanied the volume: 

[The book] is based on all the great biographies…. It draws from the intimate narratives of Nicolay and Hay, and from the priceless reminiscences of Herndon. It gets color and variety from the homely remarks of his contemporaries, many of them little known. It uses the newspaper reports of the political battles…. It includes off-the-record stories by a great many men and women who knew more than they would tell when Lincoln was alive. 

There are also sections in Lincoln’s own words, whether speeches given or letters written.

BOMC notes of distinguished Lincoln scholar Paul Angle that he “shepherds this flock of witnesses, and cuts them in and out like sheep in a moving picture…,” and as we proceed through the chapters we meet Lincoln from a variety of perspectives, both sympathetic and critical; from a distance, on state occasions, as well as in personal surroundings, alone or with his intimates, and the overall effect is that of living alongside him, in his times, from the first to last page of the book. 

Has there ever been a more American president than this gangly, rawboned, self-educated “Westerner”? For Kentucky and what we now call the Midwest were the West then (Michigan and beyond the Northwest), the country as raw as the man—not only the frontier but the capitol itself, Washington. This is how a member of the House of Representatives, Albert G. Biddle of Ohio’s Western Reserve, described the capitol when Lincoln arrived there in 1861:

 It was then as unattractive, straggling, sodden a town, wandering up and down the left bank of the yellow Potomac, as fancy can sketch. Pennsylvania Avenue, twelve rods wide, stretched drearily over the mile between the unfinished Capitol and the unfinished Treasury building on Fifteenth Street…. Illy paved with cobblestones, it was the only paved street of the town. The other streets, ... were long stretches of mud or deserts of dust and sand…. Not a sewer blessed the town, nor off of Pennsylvania Avenue was there a paved gutter. Each house had an open drain from its rear, out across the sidewalk. 

Squalid as were his surroundings, however, and informal as his manners could sometimes be, Lincoln’s presidential statements, within Cabinet meetings or to the public at large, were marked by thoughtfulness, principle, and dignity. His entire first term of office was passed in wartime, the first shots at Fort Sumter fired on April 12, scant weeks following the new president’s March 4, 1861, inauguration. Lincoln sought and carefully weighed advice from his Cabinet and his generals. He never thought he knew more than anyone else but accepted the fact that the ultimate decisions granted him in the Constitution were his responsibility. 

During his first inaugural address, Lincoln appealed to Americans’ sense of shared history and contiguous land, reminding them, “We are not enemies, but friends.” Then, perhaps more practically, “We must not be enemies.” On March 4, 1865, the war all but concluded (Lee would surrender to Grant on April 9) and his re-election accomplished, Lincoln’s inaugural address acknowledged the price suffered by four years of bloody conflict, a longer, greater, and more awful war than either side had anticipated. His final words that day are justly famous:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

Angle’s book, in giving me a fuller picture of Lincoln the man than I ever had before, also gave me a much clearer realization of his greatness.

And now, as I slowly come back to my own ever-so-modest role in the human race, still resting a lot between short bursts of housework (not really “bursts” at my current speed, to be honest), having so enjoyed The Mill on the Floss, I am reading another novel by George Eliot, Adam Bede. At the beginning of Book Two, the author addresses her readers directly to explain her reasons for choosing the characters she does. That they are not mythic heroes or villains, she readily acknowledges, but if she chose to present only such unrealistic figures, making it obvious where readers should admire and approve and where they should condemn and hate,

[W]hat will you do then with your fellow-parishioner who opposes your husband in the vestry?—with your newly-appointed vicar, whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted predecessor?—with the honest servant who worries your soul with her one failing?—with your neighbor, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you since your convalescence?—nay, with your excellent husband himself, who has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes?

She continues, without breaking her paragraph as I have done here:

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are, …and it is these people—amongst whom your life is passed—that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people, whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

Content to tell her “simple story,” the author tells us, she dreads nothing but falsity, noting that “things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome” and that she would rather reconcile us to love each other despite our faults and flaws than to be indifferent or coldly prejudiced against one another. Another author would have portrayed the character Hetty, for example, very differently. Eliot’s portrait is kindly and leads us to be more generous in our estimation:

…Hetty’s was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence—the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeple-chase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog.

Yes, I think George Eliot may become one of my favorite writers.

Someone has been a spectacularly good girl!

You know who I’m talking about! Sunny Juliet has been an angel dog for her momma this past dreadful week! Who walks my dog for me while I’m sick? She walks herself! I bundle up in my barn coat and sit in the porch doorway while Sunny goes out and tends to her business. She may do a little wandering around the yard and exploring, but there have been no long walkabouts: no, she has stuck close to the house and has come back without calling, sometimes so quickly that I order her back to “Run around! Run, run, run!” before we go back indoors together. I could not have asked for an easier, more compliant, easy-going companion than Sunny has been during what has to have been an incredibly boring stretch of days for her. Good dog! I am so proud of her and grateful for her presence! 

Grateful, too, for all the offers of assistance and get-well wishes by text and other means that have come my way. Thank you all for your caring concern! It means the world to me.

Again!

 

Sunday, 1/25/26: Another sunny January day!

We had another sunny day on Sunday. Sunshine again, for the third time this month!

Thursday--sunshine again!

On Thursday’s sunshine (sunny day #4), I locked up my shop just before noon, leaving a sign on the door telling anyone who might wander by that they could find me down on the corner to the south, where I stood with a group I call “the stalwarts.” They were a much larger group back in the summer, before the thermometer took a dive and the larger segment of Northport’s population took off for Arizona, Florida, and other points south, but nine or ten or eleven of them still get out there on Thursdays for half an hour or so, standing where they are most visible to drivers coming down the hill and turning left onto Waukazoo Street, and I decided it was time for me to join them.

 

I was sure I had posterboard somewhere, either at home or in the storage area behind my shop, but it stubbornly refused to reveal itself, so my sign was black felt marker on the raggedy top of a cardboard file box—not as big as it might have been and nowhere near as “professional” in appearance, but I justified the look by assuring myself that no one could mistake me for a “paid demonstrator.” 

 

(Does anyone really believe that there are paid demonstrators against ICE in American villages and towns and even large cities, Minneapolis or any other? I know the people who turn out for these events! They are my friends, my family, my neighbors! But I guess the same people who think it’s okay for right-wingers to carry assault weapons to demonstrations  and even kill people (do your own online search if you don't remember the names) but wrong for an ICE nurse from a VA hospital to carry, holstered not drawn, a gun he had a legal permit to carry—those people will clearly swallow any blatant lie or absurd argument in the world, as long as it comes from the “leaders” they follow blindly.)

 

Winter. Snow. COLD! Although even a sunny day without wind is darn cold when the temperatures are in the single digits, there are important reasons for not huddling indoors full-time, e.g., meaningful gathering of people aiming to protect democracy, e.g., getting a dog out for regular exercise.

Very COLD week!

Is a "warm-up" coming?

Thought-Stopping

A friend of mine who had trouble with anxiety was taught a method of overcoming it called “thought stopping.” When an anxiety-provoking thought or image comes into your mind, you say aloud, “Stop!” and then visualize something calm and beautiful, replacing a negative with a positive image. Some people have good results; however, the method is of very limited or no value for others, particularly anyone with OCD. By attempting to block the thought rather than dealing with it, the thought itself develops resistance to your resistance, studies have shown. Despite occasional temporary relief, you may be strengthening the fear you are trying to avoid by stuffing it into a closet. (See alternatives here.)

The other day another friend sent me a link for another kind of thought stopping, the kind that seeks not to conquer chronic fears but to avoid critical thinking, i.e., to avoid questioning whatever orthodoxy someone has accepted, to silence one's own doubt. The man who posts on Instagram under the name “epistemiccrisis” (great name!) says he was “born into” the MAGA culture and learned ways to avoid questioning the ideology by reaching for handy mind control techniques. Thought stopping, as epistemiccrisis explains it in this ideological world, holds questions and doubt at bay with phrases that short-circuit critical thinking and keep believers comfortable. One such phrase is “Fake news!” The phrases are used as shields to block a person's own intrusive thoughts but can also be used to block information from other sources that could lead to doubt.

One phrase that epistemiccrisis doesn't mention (please excuse me for not spelling it out completely) is “Tr__p Derangement Syndrome,” commonly shortened to TDS. Confronted with any unpleasant fact about the current president, his followers block thoughtful doubts with the catch-phrase, “TDS!” (That is supposed to imply that the person criticizing the president or simply bringing up an unpleasant fact about him is completely unhinged on the subject of the president, not that the president himself is unhinged or deranged, which would make much more sense.) A true-believing follower might follow up the thought-stopping accusation by asking the person who has criticized or brought up the unpleasant fact, “Are you off your meds?” 

You will notice that this method of avoiding critical thinking also has the general effect of shutting down discussion by sideswiping anyone with a different perspective, sending the clear signal that no challenge to the received orthodoxy will be received by the blocked mind.

Recent Reading

Ah, but we still have books! Not only my own interests but semipopular demand has determined me to enlarge my offerings of classic philosophy writings. Notice also Mary Webb’s novel, Precious Bane, for which I am an evangelist. Escape to the quiet world of Shropshire, back when plows were drawn by livestock and the Saturday market was as good as a county fair. Don’t worry, though. There is plenty of conflict and drama in the story; it isn’t all sweetness and light. Simply one of the Western world’s great books, too long overlooked.

The story told in journalist Martin Sixsmith’s work of nonfiction pictured above was partially familiar to me from the film version, “Philomena,” starring Judy Dench and Steve Coogan. While the movie focused on the mother searching for the baby she was forced to give up for adoption, however, the book follows the life of the child from birth to death and also delves deeply into political struggles within Ireland (between Church and government), as well as in the United States, where the adopted Irish child grows to be a successful lawyer working for the RNC on (of all things!) redistricting, so book and film are complementary, and I recommend both. 

This Week Up North

 

Despite single-digit temperatures and subzero wind chills, Leelanau bodies of water are not yet covered with ice. Looking past the mountains of snow that hide most of the Northport Youth Sailing School buildings, you can see the blue water of Grand Traverse Bay. How long will that be the case? How soon will ice boating and ice fishing be possible on Lake Leelanau? Stay tuned. I’ll let you know.

Blue water in Grand Traverse Bay is still visible.

Winter has arrived! Are you prepared?

Winter is all around us.

A friend of mine goes places in her car in winter in her indoor clothes, adding only a down vest. No gloves or mittens. No knitted cap. No heavy jacket. “I’m in the car!” she tells me. I ask her, “What if you had car trouble?” and she replies, “I would use my cell phone!” 

So wiper blades don't freeze to windshield overnight....

By contrast, I am not only layered up for driving but have an extra pair of work gloves with me in case I need to, say, open the hood—or get that shovel out of the back of the car to dig myself out of a snowbank—or whatever! Yes, I have a shovel with me. (No sandbags, but I figure I could use the car’s floormats, if necessary. Sandbags are very heavy.) Also engine oil, windshield wiper fluid, antifreeze, flashlight, and jumper cables. The bottle of drinking water, for myself and my dog, if she happens to be with me, has to come in the house overnight, or it would be just a bottle of ice, and who needs that in an emergency? (Note to self: Put blanket in car!) I take my clue from the old Tom Lehr song, “Be Prepared!”

 

On the evening of the day of his state funeral, I began reading Jimmy Carter’s memoir, Keeping Faith, about his years in the White House. I have had the book for several years but hadn’t read it because, while I have always loved Jimmy, I am usually bored by political memoirs. Too many big names, too many dates, generally not much that is personal, not much to give me insight into the writer’s personality and character. 

 

I’m happy to say that Carter’s book is very different. For one thing, he wrote it himself. It isn’t the work of a ghost writer. For another, he begins at the end, leading off with the most painful episode of his presidency, the hostage crisis. How many presidents would ever have done that? In the first pages of his memoir, he shows himself at his most vulnerable. And, of course, by then he has already lost his bid for re-election, so as the hostages are being released, he is onstage at the inauguration of his successor, Ronald Reagan. Hardly a moment of glory for Carter. But he had done the work, and the hostages were freed and came home alive.

 

He was never one to take shortcuts or “fake it,” in any of his life roles. He took the job of president of the United States seriously, writing of his preparation:  

 

From the beginning, I realized that my ability to govern well would depend upon my mastery of the extremely important issues I faced. I wanted to learn as much as possible…. (p. 57 of the Easton Press edition)

 

In his first campaign for the presidency, coming to national politics from the governorship of Georgia, Carter was so confident that he would win the White House that many called him overconfident. Yet he wrote that his “freedom to act and speak during the campaign was severely restrained by the same confidence.” What could that mean? How and why would confidence of victory restrain his freedom to act and speak? Precisely, again, because he took so seriously the job of president.

 

I ran as though I would have to govern—always careful about what I promised and determined not to betray those who gave me their support. Sometimes I irritated my opponents and the news reports by firmly refusing to answer to questions to which I did not know the answers. And repeatedly I told reporters, ‘If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president.’ Even during the earliest days I was always thinking about what would have to be done in the Oval Office after the inauguration ceremonies were over. (p. 65)

 

It drove reporters crazy that he would occasionally “I don’t know” to a question. What he needed to know, he worked to find out. What he couldn’t know ahead of time, he admitted. But always, as he campaigned for the highest office in the land, he prepared himself not only to win but to govern.

 

My life is ever so much simpler. I prepared for winter with snow tires, a new furnace, and a refill of my propane tank. Good thing, because in keeping with yo-yo weather patterns of recent months, our temperate winter weather over the holidays in northern Michigan has now given way to January temperatures in the ’teens, with single-digit wind chill (or “feels like”) readings. 

We have wind chill!

("When I was a kid," I used to tell my son, "we didn’t have wind chill!" That is, of course, we didn’t have a name for it. What would the word ‘rose’ name if there were no more roses?)

She doesn't mind snow or cold.

Dogs, though. A dog is like the legendary postman: Whatever the weather, out we go, and little does Sunny Juliet suspect how slight is her dog mom’s inclination for outdoor adventures in a punishing, sub-freezing northwest wind, sun perpetually hidden above low-hanging clouds of depressing gunmetal grey! I make my voice enthusiastic and let her watch me load my pocket with treats.... 

 

She doesn't mind at all.

Every day of our human lives, in one way or another, we are preparing for days to come, aren’t we? For me, Sunday was housework (an attempt to keep entropy at bay), Monday paperwork (getting ready for tax time), and Tuesday an early morning expedition, sans dog, to Leland to have a new (working) headlight installed, which gave me an opportunity while my car was at Van’s Garage to have coffee and breakfast in what was formerly the Early Bird (now Great Lakes Chocolate & Café) and to sit in the very corner where the Artist and I sat so many, many mornings in past years. 

View from the "bus driver's seat" --

The restaurant has not been the Early Bird for a long time, but after we moved from the village of Leland out to Leelanau Township in 2021, the Early Bird routine was no longer part of our lives, and more recent incarnations of the place never really registered on my radar. Anyway, the building has the same configuration, and the view from what the Artist used to call the “bus driver’s seat” (no booths now, but I hitched my chair around to face north) is pretty much the same. I should have been prepared for the flood of memories, but the emotions caught me off-guard. 

Then, home to books and dog! I am so lucky to have a warm, sheltering home and a lively, affectionate little companion! I still inhabit the life the Artist and I made together, and Wednesday will find me back in Northport, on Waukazoo Street, in my other little world, surrounded by books. 

Be prepared!

Cozy With Challenges

My title today comes to you from a voice in my head whispering, “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs,” the title of one of my nephews’ favorite books when they were little, as well as from a couple of conversations with locals, two of whom, separately, told me that winter is their favorite season. Is it yours? Why or why not? One winter aficionado said he loves it because it’s “more like the way life used to be here.” (That must have been back in the days of the “old school,” when Northporters didn’t run to Traverse City every week to do their shopping--and then complain loudly and bitterly about traffic and crowds.) I’ll have to ask the other friend why she ranks winter #1 season of the year. 

Winter is beautiful.

Winter is quiet and cozy. I have to give it that. Coming into a warm house, stomping snow off boots and pulling off jacket and cap and mittens to enjoy a hot cup of cocoa … reading by lamplight in a big chair … gazing into a cheery, flickering fire or out the window at falling snow … going to sleep under mounds of blankets and comforters--all of that is richly cozy, and the colder the wind and the deeper the snow, the cozier one’s snuggly home comforts.

Kneaded dough

Rising dough

On a snow day, too, nothing is more satisfying than kneading bread dough, although making soup is a good snow day project, too. Anything that adds warmth and mouthwatering aromas to counteract the lack of sunshine! Onion soup or a stew made from scratch (here is a yummy cauliflower soup) is good, but sometimes shortcuts work out well, too. One recent evening I had leftover shrimp fried rice and added it to a can of Progressive tomato soup, throwing in a generous handful of okra and drizzling with hot sauce at serving time, and that made a very satisfying supper. 

Shortcut

You’ll also want to wash out and save the Progresso soup can for making English muffins. It’s just the right size.

 

Desk work can be enjoyable while it’s snowing and blowing outdoors, especially if the “work” is writing letters to friends. You don’t even have to sit at a desk. A cozy reading chair with a big book for a lap desk works equally well, and you’ll want a cup of tea or cocoa nearby as you write, chatting on paper and picturing your friend’s pleasure when she receives your news in the mail. More and more of our visits, I’m thinking, will be this kind as we grow older….

 

It goes saying (but why would I deny myself the pleasure of saying it?) that reading is a most delicious winter pleasure. Grass doesn’t need mowing, and gardens don’t need weeding, so after you’ve shoveled snow and exercised the dog, maybe done a bit of laundry, who can blame you for sitting down with a book? And if you’re like me, you’ll want several throughout the house. You need something to page through idly, perusing and skimming while tea water is heating. Cookbooks or art books, even a volume of cartoons work for those times. For me, the loveliest of my casual browsing books is one I'm keeping these days on my dining table: a book of the history and geology and agriculture of the canton of Blesle, in France’s Alagnon valley in the old Auvergne province. It was in the medieval village of Blesle that the Artist and I spent one magical evening, night, and morning. Everything about the place made such an impression on me that I find it hard to believe our time there was so brief.

Just right of center is the old fountain,
across the street from La Bougnate, where we stayed.

I usually have at least one serious nonfictionbook going, and right now that is John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Age of Uncertainty. Wow! Talk about a writer who can make economic history come alive! Such a witty and pithy maker of sentences, a clear distiller of thought! Still, economic history isn’t something to read straight through cover to cover, at least for me, so although the book is generously illustrated as well as entertainingly written, I take it in small doses.

 

For bedtime, I tend to choose novels or memoirs, because I almost invariably fall asleep and then wake up at 3 a.m. to read a bit more before my second sleep, and if I attempt something serious or, worse yet, something horrifying (think political!), how will I ever get (or get back) to sleep? Margaret Hard’s A Memory of Vermont filled the bedtime bill for two or three nights, followed by Miss Buncle’s Book, a humorous novel by D.E. Stevenson about a woman who wrote a novel about people in her little village and then found almost everyone in the village up in arms over the way they had been portrayed. Before those, Albert Murray’s four autobiographical novels carried me through many dark evenings, and after them Moberg’s Unto a Good Land lasted three nights. The bedtime book doesn’t have to be fluff, though a little fluff now and then never hurt anyone.

 

Having enjoyed The Book Charmer, by Karen Hawkins, a while back, I yielded to the temptation of its sequel, A Cup of Silver Linings, another tale set in the little town of Dove Pond. I wouldn’t call it fluff. I’m also hesitant to classify the series as chick lit, though it has some of the earmarks. And despite lurking love interest, the books are certainly not rom-com. Each story presents men, women, and young people in the Dove Pond stories, but the most important relationships – at least, those in the foreground  – are between sisters or mothers and daughters or friends. There are secrets that cause problems, but there are also problems that aren’t so secret and can’t be eliminated but have to be faced. Not heavy but not fluff. Interesting without being obsessing. Perfect for winter bedtime.

 

Problems that can’t be eliminated but have to be faced, I just wrote. That is the other side of winter: the challenges. Like cold. Like higher bills. Expenses go up, income goes down: that is one big challenge of winter in a nutshell. Heating is expensive, as is snowplowing. But walking and driving can be hazardous, too, without summer’s firm footing or clear roadways. 

 

Then there are the holidays, which present their own challenges. The Artist and I had long ago stopped traveling for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, weather and traffic being productive of stress, at best, and completely out of our control. Our last Christmas together, in Dos Cabezas in 2021, he pronounced “the most relaxed” he had ever had, when after a big breakfast and opening a few presents, we lay around snacking and napping and watching movies and petting the blissed-out dog until dinner time, enjoying the quiet, peaceful lack of fuss. 

What is “lack of fuss” with a soulmate, however, is different with just a dog. --You should excuse the phrase “just a dog,” please! Sunny Juliet is a great comfort but not a conversationalist or even much of a cuddler! Oh, and she needs and wants to go out and play in the snow, too!

Do I want to go out and play in the snow? When the temperature is hovering in the ’teens and the wind is more than nipping at my nose--biting my face, rather? It doesn’t matter. We must go out!

Out! What if the power goes out? It has happened before, but the Artist was here with me. Still, I am as prepared as I can be. With propane, I can use my stove and gas fireplace; I have candles and oil lamps; a couple of stock pots are filled with water for emergency use; and I have charged up the little portable phone charger my sister gave me last year. I’m also well stocked with dog food and paper products--life’s essentials!

 

So that’s what I think of winter—cozy with challenges—and I can’t call it my favorite season. In the old days, with the Artist, I might have named autumn my #1, since we traditionally took a little vacation every September, but now I’ll probably go with spring, the season of promise, of new growth, of lengthening days, long days not yet bringing the hectic pace of summer. 

Spring will come again, I remind myself.

And yet, truth be told, there’s no telling when a nearly perfect day will drop down on you. An unexpected encounter or an errand unexpectedly turning into a delightfully surprising and wonderful time, the making of a new friend while visiting old friends. It happened to me last Tuesday, and it can happen in any season of the year. There is no foretelling life’s gifts.

 

An old friend told me a few days ago that he often quotes me. “What on earth--? You quote me?” “You said,” he reminded me, “that what bothered you most about the thought of dying was that you wouldn’t know how things turned out.” True. I did say that. Delights and torments, adventures and schemes, will continue, but I’ll have to leave the party while it’s still going on. 

All the more reason, while still here, to get out of bed every day, even in winter, and bundle up and get out there! As the Artist and I said to each other so many mornings, throughout so many years, as we wondered what a day might bring, you never know!

 

Sunny Juliet is always ready!

And on Saturday the horses came to Northport!

I'm glad to be there for that!