And here is the envelope, ready to open --

Happy morning sight, courtesy of SUNSHINE!
 

My top nonfiction picks of 2023 -- so far (the year isn't over yet) -- are not rank-ordered or alphabetical, as I limited the list to four books. First is one I read most recently, but all four work together in my mind. Maybe they would do the same in yours.

But first I should delay the opening of the envelope, shouldn't I? Quack on about the weather a bit, draw out the suspense? You already see by my opening image that we have sunshine this Monday morning in Leelanau County -- and what a lovely gift it is! I took time out from a big cleaning-sorting-reorganizing-decision project to hang laundry outdoors on the line and get Sunny up to the dog park in Northport after picking up my mail. On our way to the village, we stopped along one of my favorite back roads, too, but I'll save that image for the end of my post and use cloudier photographs between beginning and end to highlight the contrast. 

Tamarack on the first of November

But now -- the books!

 

Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, by Katherine May. 

 

Author Katherine May, though suspicious of groups, says she craves more and more being part of a congregation but doesn’t know where to start. “Nowhere has ever seemed to fit.” She doesn’t want to insult any religious community by making only a partial commitment, being a “wavering presence in the room,” and she is also “wary of stealing from traditions” and “cherry-picking the comforting parts of complex religious traditions – usually the aspects that tell us everything’s okay – and ignoring the counterbalancing obligations….”  But her strong sense is that we in the West have let ourselves lose childhood’s enchantment (“small wonder magnified by meaning”) by considering it “childish,” and let ourselves become indifferent to it. May wants enchantment back, and she courts it at the seaside, on hilltops, in the presence of stars and of fire. Who doesn’t want to be carried away, if only for a few fleeting moments? (Where do you court enchantment?)

Clouds, light, and color always enchant, don't they?

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, by Naomi Klein. 

At first Naomi Klein paid only peripheral attention to what she refers to as the “antics” of the “other Naomi,” but as Naomi confusion grew larger and larger, Klein gradually became obsessed with her double. You would be, too, if people kept attributing views to you that you had not only never expressed but never espoused! Klein is not, however, a shallow thinker, and her investigations went much deeper than the phenomenon of finding herself confused, on social media and elsewhere, with another writer with the same first name. “As I shadowed my double further into her world … I found myself confronting yet more forms of doubling and doppelganging, these ones [sic] distinctly more consequential.” In history, literature, and myth, a doppelganger is more than a confusing double. It can also be an unwelcome mirror, a warning. On social media, Klein points out, everyone presents a doppelganger of his or her real self, and while we in our 21^st-century doppelganger culture are paying attention to one another’s doubles and perfecting our own, we are distracted from and neglecting to notice more important changes in our world. This is a serious book, but it also contains funny moments. It is personal and at the same time important. I highly recommend it. (Did you ever wish you had a twin?)

Can you tell them apart? They don't care.

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, by Susan Cain. 

This book by the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking is probably not for everyone. Maybe there is no single book that would speak to all readers, but Bittersweet certainly spoke to me last winter with its meditation on “longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world,” and I don’t think it was only because grief had entered my life (although grief does have a way of cracking one open to small beauties and pains of everyday life, as well as to the feelings of others). But I can’t remember a time in my life without an acute awareness of passing time. “Always at my back I hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near” were lines that seem to have been with me always. (I wonder if there is a connection between introversion and feelings of life’s bittersweetness. If Cain addressed that question, I have forgotten her answer. What do you think?)

Sunny loves tart wild apples, both for play and for snacking.

 

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, by Iain McGilchrist. 

When this dense, heavy book first came into my hands, I skimmed the brain science and impatiently turned to the second part, focused on history. On my next reading, however, I determined to read more carefully from the beginning. There is a lot of repetition (for emphasis, I’m sure, not for “padding”), and not only does McGilchrist convince me, but I now read and look back on past reading through his lens. 

For instance: 

(1) I see May’s search for enchantment (see above) as a longing to recover the right brain’s “desire or longing … toward the Other.” 

(2) Tempting as it is to see those lost in Klein’s “mirror world” (see above again) as suffering under enchantment, I see them more as people who have abandoned enchantment and ambiguity for certainty, the left brain’s rigidity not allowing anything into the picture that would cast doubt on what it already “knows.” 

(3) Even Cain’s “bittersweet” feelings, it seems, would be rejected by the left brain, whereas the right brain has always realized that “light and dark, birth and death – bitter and sweet – are forever paired.”

Socrates and Plato prioritized ideas [of things] over “things themselves,” and while Hume declared that neither inductive reason, deductive reason. nor both combined were adequate to put together complete knowledge (implicit bodily/sensory/social background underlies all the rest, as Bergson and the phenomenologists finally realized, also), much of science to this day, and far too much of politics, continues to be ruled by the left brain’s hierarchies, rules, categories, etc. Even religious experience, when translated into theology and creeds, loses itself in left brain re-presentations of what was once known without mediation.

Leaves in the understory, overstory bare, sky cloudy

My favorite 2023 nonfiction list was longer at first, but I decided that these four will constitute my top recommendations for the year so far, because they came together for me, ideas from each strengthening and reinforcing and enriching ideas and thoughts from the others. I was reminded of my first semester in university, when everything I was learning -- drama, psychology, rhetoric, etc. -- seemed connected to everything else in a way that astonished and delighted me. 

 

I have yet to read either of the new books on private equity companies (my new self-study subject), books ordered for the bookstore and in stock now (one with “Plunder” as its title, the other with “plunderers” as part of its title), but one was featured in an interview on NPR with the author only the other day. 

There were also several other beautifully done and moving nonfiction titles in my reading since January. Among the latter group were: 

Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts; Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, by David Abram; Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, by Andrea Elliott; My Venice and Other Essays, by Donna Leon; Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth, by Marcia Bornerud; The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, by Florence Williams; Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power, by Susan Page; and Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz. 

 

Every book in the longer list is worth reading, and as my short list is a highly personal selection, if my top recommendations leave you cold you may be more strongly drawn to titles in the unannotated list. Or perhaps you have (and I hope you do!) your own top nonfiction picks to share. Are there books of history, memoir, essays, science, politics, or economics that made strong impressions on you this year? Anything you wish everyone in the country would read? 

Glorious blue sky!

Alone and Not Alone, Each and Every One of Us

Sunshine and shadows

 

...Brown eyes stared back at her bleakly. A serviceable, capable person with a heart like a volcano, one that was spewing out a lava of rage and confusion and grief. Oh, no one would ever guess it. Her customers would never believe her capable of such fury and desolation, the unending baffled confusion she felt…. 

-      Ellen Airgood, South of Superior

 

Our little reading circle, that long-standing, intrepid band that formed lo these many years ago to read James Joyce’s Ulysses together, has chosen Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! as November’s discussion group book (meeting via Zoom), so I’ve been plowing, dragging, trudging – picture a tired old mule, legs shaking with fatigue – through that depressing American classic. But last night, the night before Election Day, I needed a break, I needed comfort. And I needed to feel close to my friend, the author. So I fled, in spirit, to the U.P. before falling asleep (and waking at 3 a.m. to read some more, but that’s another story).

Toggling between the near and dear familiar and the difficult long-ago

The thing is (as another friend and I touched on earlier last night, during a phone conversation that we agreed at the beginning could not be long but which somehow kept going irresistibly once underway), we have all endured long years already of painful political and social division in our country, and on top of that came and still continue long months of pandemic restrictions and isolation. And still, on top of all the unusual, long-drawn-out, seemingly endless daily stresses of political and social strife and pandemic, the usual crises and disasters that life brings every year keep coming, too: accidents, unexpected expenses, job losses and business failures, fires, hurricanes, power outages, serious illnesses and hospitalizations and deaths – in other words, trials and losses of all kinds. Even happy events such as weddings and births cannot be celebrated as they would have been in normal times. It’s overwhelming and exhausting, the cumulative toll.

 

So no one is not exhausted. Which is why the long slog with Faulkner through the South, before, during, and after the Civil War, as we continue to feel nightmare reverberations today from that long-ago time, is not something I can handle nonstop.

 

Are Faulkner’s long sentences Proustian? One member of the reading circle thinks so, but I’m finding them very different, both in form and mood. A Faulknerian sentence, interrupting itself over and over on the way to each delayed and long-desired period, strikes me as an articulation of bottomless anger and frustration and regret and pain, while Proust’s sentences -- for me -- unfurl voluptuously in slow, bright, festooning ribbons of sensuous detail. Proust wraps a reader in long, luxurious moments, Faulkner withholds and torments. Of course, the respective content of these two brilliant writers cannot be separated from form, and the very different content undoubtedly colors my impressions….

 

These days many usually soft-spoken friends, feeling powerless and fearful despite their noble and tireless efforts to bring about better times for us all, express themselves privately in loud expletives. One dear friend, overcome by spells of panic that come without warning, bursts into uncontrollable sobs as we speak on the phone. Another loved one sadly expresses the feeling that he is alone in the world. Anger, panic, loneliness. Fear and sadness. Rage, confusion, grief, fury, desolation. Exhaustion.

 

Do I exaggerate? The basic condition of aloneness – that each of us is born alone, suffers alone, and dies alone – a truth that active, busy people generally manage to keep in the background of consciousness, is in our faces every day now. Giving up is not an option, however, and so we seek calm and comfort in prayer and meditation, long walks outdoors, playtime with children and pets, happy memories and current domestic joys, making art or baking pies -- and calling, texting, writing, making and maintaining connections, that is, to each other and to the precious ordinariness of life. Because joy is, we remind ourselves, as true as pain, loving connection as true as social isolation, every moment of life a precious gift not to be squandered.

Making connections

As Airgood’s character Madeline Stone realized about the U.P., life is “all mixed up, beautiful and bleak, both.” 

 

Will my friend Ellen be taken aback to find herself in company here with Marcel Proust and William Faulkner? Love you, Ellen and Rick!

 

I want to send a special “Hello and thank you!” to Margie Burns, also, up in Marquette, whose cheery note in the mail yesterday was such a lovely surprise. Warmest greetings to you and Jackie and all the members of your book club, Margie! I remember your visit to Dog Ears and am touched that you continue to follow my bookstore and life vicariously via this blog – and that you wrote to tell me so is a special gift.

 

In closing, on this long-awaited Election Day 2020: Better off than four years ago? Hardly! But not giving up, either, not by a long shot, whatever the results! It’s time to call on all our sisu and keep calling on it, daily, one day at a time, the only way life can ever be lived. That is today’s Upper Peninsula lesson, no less applicable here below the Bridge or in any other part of the world.

 

This tree has sisu!

Adventures Close to Home: Physical and Spiritual Hills and Valleys

Humans keep safe distance; Sarah eagerly leads the way

Saturday morning’s walk with my neighbor and our dogs would have been better had I not opened a bottle of wine the night before. It was wine I’d been saving for company, and then Friday night I thought, well, that isn’t going to happen! And I yielded to temptation, with the result that I woke up only 15 minutes before Therese and her dogs (“Puppies are restless,” she texted) were ready to hit the trail. As we set out on the dirt road that leads to the old mine in the mountains (we never go that far), Therese noted, “You don’t seem to have your usual zip.” No, I did not. It was a short walk yesterday morning. Lesson learned.

We don’t go as far as the mine, much higher in the mountains, but we do regularly visit some of the “ruins” of old mining structures. The walls in the image here, I thought, had quite a presence in the early morning light. But Therese teases me for lugging a camera along on these walks and directs remarks at Sarah, such as, “Hold still, Sarah. Your mom wants another picture of you!” It’s true. I do photograph my dog a lot. Although she is probably carrying a few extra pounds these days in dust alone, she is always beautiful in my eyes.

My friend is mocking me!

Beautiful girl!

We humans keep a safe distance not only from one another (life in the time of coronavirus) but also from at least one select spot along the way, and we encourage our dogs to stay away from this one, too. Javelinas live in that cave! We do not need any close-up encounters with javelinas! 

Plant life is safer. Cactus spines can be avoided by keeping a safe distance (and we are all about safe distance these days, aren’t we?), while other vegetation can be safely touched and examined. Look! Netleaf hackberry is putting out new spring leaves! What a cheery sight! And here a primrose, there a primrose — nice!

Later:

From the valley of a hangover to a peak of joy in the natural world, the walk with dogs was only one part of my day, the beginning, but it’s the only part for which I have visual images to share with you. Incidents after that, good and bad, were either not camera-friendly or not camera-worthy. I could have photographed the popovers that failed to “pop,” but why advertise such an abysmal failure?

One very bright spot of the day was e-mail from the friend who owns the building where the Artist and I have our studio/gallery (his) and bookstore (mine) back in Northport, dear Clare proposing a financial accommodation that lifted a big load of worry off our minds. We had been discussing the situation and wondering how much we could ask of her — and then she initiated a solution with terms more generous than we had considered requesting. Relief!

And you might think that would set me up for the rest of the day, but a couple of Facebook exchanges managed to plunge me into another dark valley. By this morning I finally came to a decision and posted the following on my status: 

There was a piece on NPR yesterday about Internet outrage. People post stories about happenings that outrage them, and then other people chime in with their outrage, and everyone’s outrage builds, and everyone feels as if they’ve done something, but they have done nothing. The postings do not reach the people whose actions outrage them — and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t change any minds with ringing contempt and death wishes! 

I understand the outrage some of my friends express. It comes from fear. I’m afraid, too. And I don’t mind criticizing government officials: after all, they are in positions of responsibility, and being criticized, even criticized harshly, comes with those positions. But I cannot join a chorus of disdain and contempt and hatred for ordinary Americans, whatever they are saying and doing, however misguided I find their views, however dangerous I find their actions. I certainly cannot wish death upon them! And reading posts filled with contempt and hatred and death wishes contributes nothing but agitation to my already troubled mind. 

There were bright spots in my day yesterday, but a cloud hung over all, brought on solely by a couple of Facebook exchanges. So I am going to be looking less, reading less, and joining in certain comment threads not at all, for the sake of my own mental health. Yes, everyone is “entitled” to their feelings and their free expression of those feelings. I am, likewise, “entitled” to express my disapproval of their expressions. Freedom of speech is a two-way street. But I’m not changing any minds, either. I’m not convincing anyone to refrain from rants. 

So right now I need to withdraw, even to pull away from certain of my friends. These times are hard enough for all of us. We all have our worries and fears already. And I do not find expressions of hatred helping me or anyone else, so if you want to engage in them, fine, but I’m turning you off. It’s what I need to do right now. And you won’t even miss me, I guarantee it. 

That, at least, was my draft. [I have now broken it into paragraphs, here and on Fb, at a friend's request.] Pasting it into Facebook meant losing the italics — and you know I am addicted to italics! (Note to self: try to wean yourself away from italics. Good, strong writing does not need italics! Or underlining....) By posting that paragraph in blue above to Facebook this morning, I was able to climb back up to higher mental health ground, though my spiritual feet still slip from time to time — on the loose gravel, as it were — due to not having heard from an old friend since she last e-mailed a week ago to tell me her husband was hospitalized for coronavirus. 

Ups and downs, joy and fear, gladness and anger. Deep breaths, deep breaths. I know you know what I mean. It is our world today.

Thank heaven for our old girl!

Wrapping, Unwrapping, and Wrapping Up the Old Year

Good morning! Last dawn of 2019!

In the days preceding Christmas, my writing desk displayed a row of colorful gift bags for local Arizona friends and neighbors. “Would you like me to find a box you could put those in,” the Artist asked, “so you wouldn’t be so crowded?” I thanked him but declined the offer. “I like to look at them,” I told him. For me, those colorful bags went some distance toward making up for the lack of the fragrant Fraser or balsam fir I would have had back in northern Michigan.

Outgoing gifts, only partially reflected in memorabilia-crowded mirror

Incoming gifts -- and ours to open!

Over on my bookshelf was a substitute “tree,” a shorter, less elaborate mesquite branch than the one I found and used last year, but something, at least, on which to hang Moravian folded paper stars and other ornaments from sisters and friends. I also cleared the remaining top of the bookcase of other items to make room for gift bags from sisters and friends. In that way, my book and writing corner served, for a little while, as our Christmas corner. 

lighting my corner of the darkness

Because I don’t know about you, but when the short, dark days of December roll around, I “need a little Christmas,” and I’m completely sympathetic to Jo March’s complaint that “Christmas [wouldn’t] be Christmas without any presents!” Poor as those “little women” felt, yet they managed to scrounge up gift surprises for each other and for their mother, and in my frugal life it means a lot to me to be able to do the same. 

Still in Michigan, and starting way back in summertime, I had great fun thinking up and making and buying little things and making a happy collection of items for the bags I would later assemble. But I’m lucky. I have sisters! The Artist thinks my gift bags are a “girl thing,” and maybe they are. I do know that my sisters and I have a wonderful time finding and buying things for each other. “Oh, Bettie will love this,” Deborah will say to me as we stand together in her friend’s gift shop, and I agree. “You’re right. That’s perfect for her!”

Gifts on any occasion need not be expensive or elaborate or enormous to say “I love you” to recipients. It is indeed the thought that counts. But giving tangible body to the thought counts, too, I find. For instance, my sisters and I typically give each other cute socks, tee shirts, books, holiday ornaments, and kitchen items, and whenever I put on a shirt or pair of socks from a sister, or pick up a book or admire an ornament or use something in my kitchen that a sister gave me, I think of that sister, and she is right there with me. The gift keeps on giving!

New shirt from a sister!

New socks from a sister!

New apron from a sister!

more new, heavenly soft shirts

Sometimes, surprisingly people other than the givers are with me, too, through gifts I receive. Such is the case with a book one sister sent me this year, a book of poetry by the cousin-in-law of a friend of the Artist’s and mine. I have yet to meet Cele Bona, but her poems are powerful, and her name and relationship to our late friend Al Bona, himself a friend we also admired for his poetic gifts, brings Al to mind, though he has been gone for years.

Years! They pass so quickly! Some years I send Christmas cards, other years New Year’s cards, and sometimes no cards at all. But the truth is that I enjoy buying bright postage stamps and taking stacks of cards to the post office almost as much as I enjoy going in with gift packages to mail. I often think of a friend who hated going to the post office (and now there are ways to avoid the p.o. altogether), but whether I’m at home in Northport, Michigan, or in Willcox, Arizona, the post office is almost always a delightful stop for me. I love the way the United States Postal Service connects us all, and when I go to the p.o. I feel that connection, a little the way I feel it when I go to my precinct voting place in northern Michigan (where I’m happy to say we use paper ballots!). We’re all in this together, these places say to me. We may be far apart in the moment, but these places, these rituals, these bits of paper and other stuff provide us with tangible links to each other.

A friend back home collects our mail and sends it on to us.

[Reminder: Gifts can be wrapped in brightly colored recyclable tissue or reusable cloth. Paper envelopes that hold cards can be recycled, and the cards themselves can be repurposed. Besides, it’s only once a year!] 

But just as I never tell anyone, friend or bookstore customer, “You have to read this book!” -- I only make suggestions or offer ideas -- so I do not intend to guilt-trip anyone into buying or giving Christmas presents. Whether or not one celebrates this holiday or any other, giving presents in the U.S. is, like so many other decisions in this freedom-loving country, an individual choice. Neither am I going to go all religious here (wouldn’t that be inappropriate?!) and dwell on the Infant as God’s gift or the gifts the wise men brought to the Infant, because the truth is that for centuries even Christians did not celebrate Christmas or exchange gifts. Is Dickens responsible for kicking off the holiday we all know today as “traditional”? Who knows, and what does it matter? Philosopher I may be, but there are some things I don’t want to argue about, and Christmas is one of them. 

And just as I will not guilt-trip anyone into giving gifts, neither do I intend to let anyone guilt-trip me into abstaining from gift-giving. I love that part of Christmas! I love looking for, thinking about, finding, selecting, buying, making, planning, wrapping and giving gifts for Christmas! It is a big part of my holiday joy. No colorfully wrapped packages? How sad! Maybe someday I will be an old lady in a nursing home, hunched up in a rocking chair and unable to indulge myself in what is, for me, a very modest seasonal orgy, but until then I’m not giving it up! 

For now, though, all the wrapped gifts have been unwrapped to exclamations of delight, bright bags and tissue are put away for another year, socks and tee shirts tucked into drawers, and soon it will be time to take down the ornaments and stow those in cupboards and closets, time to unplug and remove lights from the cabin windows. — But no, maybe I’ll leave those lights up a while longer. They are such tiny lights, such brave little lights, after all, and we do need our courage and indications of each other’s loving presence as we go into another new year, don’t we? So with that in mind, here is my wish for family and friends and everyone in the world, known to me or unknown: 

Amid the challenges and struggles that another year will certainly bring, may we find also hours and days of joy and gratitude and love, and may we return again and again to a calm center of peace. 

Happy new year, one and all!

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.

Fullness and Connections

Woods, fields, meadows, gardens are lush by the last days of July, especially this year, following our long, drawn-out, cool and moist spring and early summer. Cherry boughs bend low with fruit not yet shaken off the trees. Corn displays its near-tropical growth, and small grains wave richly in the breeze.

Hotel and motel rooms and B&B accommodations are also full. (Woe betide the would-be visitor looking for a room now for August!) Restaurants are full to overflowing, and grocery store lines stretch long. I’m sure many beaches are full on sunny days, but if Petoskey stone hunting in the rain is your thing, you might have the shoreline to yourself today.

Tuesday night was the last evening in the Friends of the Library Summer Author Series, and Sarah Shoemaker had the crowd eating out of her hand and lining up afterward to buy copies of Mr. Rochester, my runaway best-selling book for 2017.  Selling out of a title and having to restock sounds like the opposite of fullness, but it's been terribly gratifying to me to see Sarah's sales numbers mount since Mr. R (as I call him familiarly) was released on May 9.

Calendars are full (and already filling up for September, believe it or not). Days and nights and hours are full. We squeeze in visits with family and old friends wherever and whenever and however we can. An old friend I hadn’t seen for 25 years came for a breakfast visit with his family one morning this week. At my suggestion, they came to our house so we wouldn’t have to stand in line at a restaurant and then worry that their little girl would get bored and fidgety, and we had a lovely time. Now it may be another five years before we see each other again. And wouldn’t you know I forgot to get my camera out at the house! Made up for that omission at bookstore and gallery.

Summer is a time for reconnecting. Some people are reconnecting with their summer places, vacation memories, and retracing childhood souvenirs. Families and friends reconnect with reunions and shared vacations. And in the bookstore I reconnect with customers who are coming for an annual visit or coming back for the first time in ten years. One woman today had to hunt through photographs on her phone to find one she had taken of Sarah – she thought two years ago, then tried three and four, but it turned out to have been five years ago that she’d photographed our little darling. Thus today’s memorable bookstore quote: “I’ve deleted pictures of my relatives, but I couldn’t delete this picture of your dog!” Darling little Sarah!

Above was written on Wednesday. Now on Thursday I feel compelled to note that our basswood trees are full of sweet-smelling blossoms, and once the sun burns off the morning dew the bees will again come buzzing, irresistibly drawn to the nectar. Last year the blossoming branches seemed far too quiet. This year they are once more humming, afternoon and evening, with busy pollinators weaving tight, complicated, but invisible webs and trails through the air. That's more like it!